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verse] and everything made sense after that."
That's great that [insert Bible verse] helped you. But guess what? God uses different verses with different people and your experience isn't invalidated if the same verse doesn't have the same meaning for others. I was once in an online forum with a guy who was emphatic that if I would just read Romans 6 and really let it soak in and maybe say it slowly in a dramatic voice and shed a few tears, then I would gain victory over the issue I was dealing with. This kind of Jesus juke especially sucks when the issue is some kind of legitimate mental illness. When you make salvation/deliverance/healing/etc. about a particular verse and not the Holy Spirit, you're making the Bible into a magician's tool.
6) "I guess I just believe that Jesus meant what he said about hell/poor people/other topic."
I know that nobody else really believes that Jesus meant what he said quite like you do, you radical Jesus freak! But maybe you'll experience a little more of his grace for yourself if your discipleship becomes something other than a self-justification spectacle whether you're of the "no cussing, no drugs, no premarital sex" branch of works-righteousness or the "no supporting any aspect of Caesar's empire whatsoever" branch.
What did Jesus say in Matthew 25 anyhow? Was he using a hyperbolic parable about eternal suffering to prophetically goad his rich listeners into thinking twice about their most vulnerable neighbors? Or was he demonstrating why nobody can possibly be saved from hell because his standards for loving your neighbor are so impossibly high but as long as you do everything Paul says to do to bag justification by faith, then you're good? Hate to say it, but there's actually a range of possible interpretation here. What did Jesus mean by what he said? That's a good question that a very large community of people has been working to answer for more than 2000 years.
7) [A long, non-sequitur string of scripture references without commentary that generally involve some kind of prophetic "warning" of apocalyptic destruction that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.]
This might not be a Jesus juke so much as a manifestation of mental illness. But maybe there are people who think that throwing non-sequitur scripture bombs at other people is a legitimate form of spiritual conversation. Here's the rule: if you can't explain in your words why you're using God's words, then you're abusing God's words and they certainly aren't your words to own. | 3,600 |
globally and stop unfair trade practices that hurt workers and our economy.” A scant 13 percent of voters want to put military action on the table to “stop Chinese expansion in the South China Sea and to defend U.S. allies.” Republican voters desire a more confrontational approach to China, while a solid majority of Democrats favor a more cautious approach with steps to defuse tensions and increase cooperation.
Conclusion
Although this report presents just one study of public opinion on foreign policy and national security issues, the findings strongly suggest that political leaders and foreign policy elites today are missing much of what the American voting public desires in this area.
Debates about maintaining the rules-based international order, working with allies through global alliances and multilateral institutions, promoting democracy, and fighting rising authoritarianism are clearly important matters. But they are secondary issues for voters, particularly as currently articulated to the public. In today’s fractured political and media-driven environment, old foreign policy language and ideas no longer penetrate the minds of most voters.
Voters do not see how these elite debates relate to their primary concerns around security and terrorism and a strong economy. They do not connect these debates to their shared desire for more domestic investments in infrastructure, education, and health care to make America more competitive in the world. They do not see how these debates are connected to new threats from cyberattacks, chemical weapons, and drones. They do not see these debates leading to a plan for the United States to measure up against China on the global stage.
To more fully engage the American public, this study suggests that foreign policy elites and policy makers should make these debates more tangible to voters, grounded in real security and economic priorities and more closely related to what voters desire most: an America that is stronger at home in order to be stronger in the world.
Authors’ note: Complete survey data available here.
About the authors
John Halpin is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Peter Juul is a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.
Karl Agne and Jim Gerstein are principals at GBAO, a public opinion research and strategic consulting firm.
Nisha Jain is a vice president at GBAO.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Meghan Miller, Irene Koo, Katherine Downs, and Chester Hawkins for their excellent editorial and graphic design assistance with this report and Kelly Magsamen and Katrina Mulligan for their helpful insights on the findings in the report. | 3,601 |
The US Army sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan villagers in 2012 was expected to face survivors of the assault and relatives of its victims Tuesday as his sentencing hearing began.
Robert Bales, 40, pleaded guilty in June to killing the villagers, nine of them children, and to burning their bodies, in an admission brokered by his defense team in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.
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A military panel of three officers and three senior soldiers was assembled Tuesday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle in Washington state, to weigh Bales’s sentence, with a decision expected this week.
The judge in the case, Colonel Jeffrey Nance, previously ruled that Bales would face a maximum of life in jail without eligibility for parole. The military panel is charged with determining if the sergeant could be released early.
Some 20 prosecution and defense witnesses at the latest hearing will include nine Afghans flown by the army to the United States from the village where Bales committed the killings.
Bales’s trial heard that he had been drinking alcohol and watching a film with other US soldiers in the Panjwayi district of southern Kandahar province when he embarked on his shooting spree on March 11, 2012.
The sergeant, a father of two, acknowledged the “horrible things” he did but did not formally apologize during his previous testimony. He may address the court once again during the sentencing hearing.
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Prosecutors, however, have presented an audio recording that captures Bales and his wife laughing at the charges lodged against the soldier, which military counsel Rob Stelle contends show the accused’s “lack of remorse.”
Bales’s lawyer John Browne has said he hoped his client could be out of jail after 10 years.
During his trial, Bales initially appeared a little choked up when responding to the judge’s request for his version of events, but then outlined the full extent of the massacre.
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“I formed the intent to kill and then did kill by shooting with a firearm and burning her,” he said, repeating the phrase for each of the 16 murder counts against him.
Asked why he had killed the villagers, he said: “Sir, as far as why, I’ve asked that question a million times since then. There’s not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did.”
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Bales recalled he had an M4 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol and that he had used both weapons. | 3,602 |
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer announced plans Sunday to introduce "Avonte's Law," named after Avonte Oquendo. View Full Caption NYPD
NEW YORK — Sen. Charles Schumer announced plans Sunday to introduce Avonte's Law — a measure named after the autistic teen who vanished from his Long Island City school three months ago — which would help provide voluntary tracking devices for children with the condition.
The announcement, attended by members of Avonte Oquendo's family, came a day after funeral services were held for the boy in Manhattan. His remains were found on an East River beach earlier this month.
"The tragic end to the search for Avonte Oquendo clearly demonstrates that we need to do more to protect children with autism who are at risk of running away," Schumer said in a statement.
"Thousands of families face the awful reality each and every day that their child with autism may run away."
Schumer's proposal would expand on an existing program that helps track at-risk Alzheimer's patients, and would provide $10 million nationwide for the devices to be distributed to local police departments, schools or other organizations.
The devices would be monitored by a third party, which would respond in case of an emergency. According to the senator, missing kids are usually found in about 30 minutes with one of the trackers, Project Lifesaver.
Use of the tracking devices — which can be worn like a wristwatch or anklet, clipped onto belt loops or shoelaces or even woven into specially-designed clothing — would be entirely voluntary, Schumer stressed.
They would cost less than $100 with operating costs estimated to be between $9 and $15-a-month. The cost to parents would be minimal, Schumer's spokesman said.
The senator cited statistics about "bolting," which is common among autistic children and teens, saying 49 percent attempt to run or wander off at some point.
Avonte, who was 14 and nonverbal, was last seen on surveillance footage running out a side door at his high school, The Riverview School, in Long Island City on Oct. 4.
His disappearance sparked a massive, months-long search effort that came to an end last week when remains that washed up on a beach in College Point were positively identified as Avonte's.
"There is no medicine to relieve the pain from the loss of a child," the family's attorney, David Perecman, said in a statement accompanying Schumer's announcement.
"However, Avonte's law will make sure that this grave loss and the pain it has wrought will not be vain." | 3,603 |
In 2009, we debuted the third edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. This new edition changed the way players experience the Warhammer Fantasy setting and brought new life to the Old World.
In the years since its release, we have published a veritable library of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay products, including twenty expansions, several core products, and even a digital application.
Today, we present the final FAQ and Errata, which are available for download on the support page. With these documents, we have fulfilled our vision for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, having delivered a complete game experience.
Although we've reached the end of our road for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, your journey continues. With published campaigns and adventure supplements, such as The Gathering Storm and Lure of Power, along with supplementary material available to help GMs create their own stories, such as the Game Master's Toolkit, we're confident that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay will continue to provide enjoyment for years to come.
A Word from the Developers
With the release of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Third Edition core set in 2009, Fantasy Flight Games launched an exciting new adventure in the Old World, both for our players and for ourselves. We'd never worked on a project quite like it before, and most of our players had never played anything quite like it, either. The new format brought on interesting design challenges, and talking those challenges was in itself an exciting and rewarding experience.
Our adventure in the Old World has come to a close with the release of this final FAQ update. As you can see, the changes between this and the penultimate version are modest (a few new errata for Hero's Call) and we don't foresee a need to update the document any further. We won't be releasing any new products for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition.
The design team would like to thank the fans for giving us the opportunity to make this game which we love so much an important part of our lives for so long. We hope you continue to enjoy Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and look forward to hearing your stories of playing in the Old World for many years to come.
Thanks for playing and, as always, enjoy the game!
-Jay, Dan, Michael, Tim, and Chris
Thanks!
While this foray into the Old World in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has concluded, we are huge fans of the Warhammer Fantasy world and would not be surprised if we found ourselves someday crafting new adventures in it.
Thank you for your support of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Together, we have crafted countless adventures and forged new paths. We wish you many years of continued enjoyment. | 3,604 |
Rare, anti-government protests have broken out in Egypt calling on president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to step down.
The former army general has overseen an unprecedented political crackdown, silencing critics and jailing thousands.
Mr El-Sissi came to power with the military’s ousting of an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013, amid mass protests against his one-year-rule.
In the capital, Cairo, dozens of protesters gathered on Friday night near Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 pro-democracy uprising that toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Demonstrators chanted slogans echoing the Arab Spring uprisings that briefly defied dictatorships across the region.
The protesters were responding to a call by a self-exiled businessman who claimed corruption by the military and government without providing evidence.
In viral social media videos posted over the past weeks, Muhammad Ali alleged his contracting business had witnessed the large-scale misuse of public funds in the building of luxurious hotels, presidential palaces and a tomb for Mr el-Sissi’s mother, who died in 2014.
The allegations came as economic reforms and austerity have squeezed Egypt’s lower and middle-classes badly.
'Sheer lies'
In a rambling speech on Tuesday, Mr El-Sissi angrily dismissed the allegations as “sheer lies”. He portrayed Mr Ali’s videos as an attempt to weaken Egypt and undermine the public’s trust in the military.
He said he would continue building new presidential residences for the good of the country. “I am building a new country,” he said.
The president also warned Egyptians against protesting or repeating the 2011 uprising.
On Friday, security forces speedily dispersed the scattered protests, which came directly after a football game between al-Ahly, Egypt’s biggest team, and their rivals Zamalek.
No casualties were reported. Unauthorised protests are not allowed in Egypt.
There were also small protests in other cities including the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Saturday urged Egyptian authorities to protect the right to peaceful protest.
“President al-Sissi’s security agencies have time and again used brutal force to crush peaceful protests,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at HRW.
“The authorities should recognise that the world is watching and take all necessary steps to avoid a repetition of past atrocities.” – AP | 3,605 |
A second free speech rally is planned for November on Boston Common, after a demonstration there in August was overwhelmed by counter-protestors, who accused the organizers of providing a platform for racists.
A group calling itself Resist Marxism says on its website that it will hold a “Rally for the Republic” at 1 p.m. on Nov. 18 on the Common.
Organizers of the prior rally adamantly denied they were propping up bigots, and Resist Marxism is toeing the same line.
Who’s not allowed at their event?
“No Marxists, No Fascists, No Communists, No Racists,” the site says.
It also dubs the November demonstration as a moment when “Freedom of Speech returns to Boston,” when those gathered will “Honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice” and “Stand for the flag, Stand for your Constitution.”
A spokesman for the city parks department said in an e-mail that a “Free Speech group did apply for a permit for what they call a ‘Patriotic Freedom Rally.’ The permit is pending and will go through our normal special event review process.”
The August rally ended early after the speakers addressed only a small group of sympathizers and were drowned out by counterprotesters, who chanted “Go home, Nazis” and other slogans.
John Medlar, an organizer of the August event, told the Globe last month that the Boston Free Speech Coalition was planning a second rally on the Common for November, with a theme of “Defending Free Speech.”
Medlar posted the Resist Marxism flyer for the November rally on his personal Facebook page Monday.
Resist Marxism describes itself as an umbrella organization that includes groups across the political spectrum, including “conservative, libertarian, civic nationalist, and classical liberal organizations. We do not associate with neo-Nazis, fascists, communists, and of course Marxists.”
The group says it was formed “in response to the extreme hostility towards free speech exhibited by local governments and militant Marxist, anarchist, and communist styled organizations. The administrations in cities such as Berkeley CA and Boston MA have worked to actively suppress the 1st amendment rights of those seeking to host patriotic and free speech rallies and events.”
Prior to the August rally, which occurred one week after the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh had vowed to do everything possible “so that the march or this demonstration does not happen in our city.” | 3,606 |
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A FORMER Labour first minister has rubbished claims an independent Scotland would find it “almost impossible” to get into the EU.
Henry McLeish said European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso made a “monumental blunder” when he made the remarks on Sunday.
Barroso was also slated by ex-European Court judge Sir David Edward, who branded his comments “absurd”.
EU membership is seen as vital for an independent Scotland as it allows lucrative trade links with Europe and provides support for the agriculture industry.
The Scottish Government’s White Paper claims Scotland would negotiate a “smooth transition” so we would be a full EU member on the first day of independence on March 24, 2016.
But Barroso said Spain had blocked Kosovo becoming an EU member, adding: “It’s to some extent a similar case because it’s a new country and so I believe it’s going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.”
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But McLeish last night said Barroso was dead wrong about Scotland’s potential EU status.
He added: “Manuel Barroso has made a monumental blunder in his remarks about Scotland and membership of the EU.
“He has either been misled into making such inaccurate comments or does not understand the context or the nature of the debate.”
McLeish cited documents drawn up by the European commissioner for enlargement which say: “The EU are open to all democratic countries that wish to join.”
He said: “It is clear that if Scotland becomes independent then an application to join the EU will be straightforward.
“Membership of the EU will not present significant difficulties.”
Sir David said Scotland’s EU membership would be negotiated from within to avoid millions of Scots suddenly ceasing to be EU citizens.
He said: “There would be a legal obligation to negotiate the outcome to avoid the absurdity that just at the stroke of midnight everything comes to an end.”
But PM David Cameron backed Barroso, saying: “An independent Scotland would have to apply to join the EU in the usual way.” | 3,607 |
We’re still probably a few years away from universal wi-fi in the developed world. Many municipal wireless networks are planned or in the works, but there are few currently existing. As we progress toward access-everywhere, both public institutions and private telecom companies (often working together) are finding creative ways to provide service in places we’d otherwise refer to as “dead zones.” In New York City, for example, some subway platforms now have free wi-fi service, but users need to watch (or more likely, ignore) a 15 second video before access the rest of the universe’s content.
But no one has been as creative a company in Mexico which decided to provide somewhat-free wi-fi in a handful of public parks. “Somewhat-free” because while it won’t cost users any money, they need to deposit something to get online. That something?
Dog poop.
Terra is a Spanish-language Internet portal (like Yahoo!) which has a large audience in Mexico. As part of a marketing campaign dreamed up by their agency, DDB Mexico, the company placed wi-fi hotspots in ten parks in the spring of 2012. To access the invisible beams, though, would-be customers had to pick up after their dogs and dump the waste in a big bin. The bin weighed the dog doo and rewarded everyone in the park with some free wireless minutes. The more poop scooped, the more minutes granted.
And, this being the Internet age, DDB and Terra made a promo video, available below, about their endeavor.
Of course, the system could be gamed. As CNET pointed out, the machines have “a simple scale to weigh the poop, so they would likely still work if people put rocks or trash in them instead.” Terra seemed OK with this — loophole-lovers who picked up litter would help keep the parks clean, too — but in any event, there may have been some informal policing. As Creativity-Online reported, the wi-fi hotspots weren’t left unattended: “to help consumers focus on the poop, however, hostesses manned each of the bins during the day, passing out bags for doggie droppings.”
Bonus Fact : What does “Wi-Fi” stand for? According to Boing Boing, absolutely nothing.
From the Archives: Meal Ticket: The story of the subway-riding dogs of Moscow.
Related: A not-terrible wireless hotspot (which I actually own). | 3,608 |
German officials have had hundreds of reports of the militant, far-right group's activity in recent years, according to an investigative media report published on Friday by the daily "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and the public broadcaster NDR.
Berlin banned "Combat 18" in 2000, while also banning its mother organization "Blood & Honour," the neo-Nazi association active all over Europe.
While "Blood & Honour" mostly deals with propaganda, notably setting up extremist-themed concerts and producing and disseminating audio material, "Combat 18" represents the armed wing of the movement and has conducted attacks on political opponents, migrants and journalists across the continent. The militia was first established in the UK in 1992. The "18" in the group's name stands for Adolf Hitler, corresponding to the numerical position of the letters "A" and "H" in the alphabet.
The group also recommends using small, "leaderless" cells to conduct the attacks. The same strategy has been successfully used by the National Socialist Underground terrorists in Germany, but investigators found no link between the two neo-Nazi factions.
Police detain "Blood & Honour" suspects
According to the reports, "Combat 18" has managed to reactivate in Germany over the last four years. Officials believe that the organization has established structures in at least seven out of Germany's 16 states. The exact number of the groups' members in the country remains unknown. The organization is believed to have been sending funds to other European countries, including Hungary, in order to support the local far-right movement across Europe.
Authorities compiled a file on the group in response to a late-October inquiry by members of the opposition Left party. Several weeks later, the police raided a far-right gathering in the central state of Thuringia, reportedly arresting four members of the "Blood & Honour Südthüringen" organization.
Combat 18's 'central role'
Federal security services and prosecutors keep the group's activities under observation, according to the report. At the same time, the prosecutors' office sees no grounds to start an investigation on the issue.
"Unlike the federal government, anti-fascist scholars have been stressing the central role of the ['Combat 18'] for years" Linke lawmaker Martina Renner told NDR. "Also, the informants who worked with the police on 'Blood & Honour' are asking: Why is there no significant pressure to investigate ever since the group has been banned?'"
Earlier this week, German authorities raised multiple locations to flush out "Reichsbürger," members of yet another far-right movement. | 3,609 |
but because he had style for days. He didn’t go out there and throw the gnarliest hucks. He did things his way. That’s what freestyle snowboarding is about.
In big air, it would be cool to see riders throwing a back five method, or one footed McTwist, just middle fingers up. But that’s not going to happen. Everyone wants that Olympic medal. I’m guilty of it. Everyone's guilty of it. Blood is in the water, everyone wants a bite of it.
I would assume that there would have to have both big air and PSL in the Olympics. Because of the size of the Olympic venue and its huge cost, the IOC is having a hard time attracting new host cities. They are trying to limit the footprint of Olympic games.
As an environmentalist, I support that. However, it doesn’t match up. A big air jump is built out of scaffolding, and it’s a huge cost. There will also be more athletes going to the Olympics because of big air.
Reiter throws a frontside slash outside of the gates. Oliver Kraus photo.
I believe that snowboard racing has a really influential place, to keep snowboarding sustainable. In terms of the market share, we’re losing that hand over fist to skiing.
More people compete in racing than half pipe at a young age. It’s the gateway to all snowboard competition. It teaches solid fundamentals. It becomes a lifelong process.
When people don’t learn how to actually ride a snowboard, they might progress in the park until you’re 25. Once you reach your late 20's and 30's, you can’t ride park and pipe any more. You’re not able to pursue the extreme side of snowboarding anymore. When people really can’t ride, what do they do? They go skiing. That’s one of the elements we overlook–that people get out of the sport.
Racing teaches you how to carve, and brings legacy continuation into freeriding. If you look at surfing, you start on something forgiving, like a long board. As you get older, you go back to surfing a long board. Snowboarding doesn’t have that. You might have snowboarded for 30 years and now you don’t have the sort of lifestyle where you can wear a flat-brimmed hat at 45. What if you work at a law firm? You’re no longer core? | 3,610 |
With massive layoffs hitting photographers, photo editors, and other visual media-based professions across the industry over the last few years, it’s not surprising that we’ve seen a recent uptick in glaring front-page mistakes.
Remember that newspaper that used the male symbol on their women’s march cover?
Or how about that time CNN used some Fallout screengrabs to illustrate the terrors of Russian hacking?
Via Reddit.
Now we have a new major embarrassment to cringe at.
Via Drudge Report.
That there is the homepage of the Drudge Report, the conservative news aggregation site, as it remained throughout the entire Thursday workday. That’s the lede image for a story about Iranian missiles. But something looks off, doesn’t it?
Not only is that a Photoshopped image of missiles—the original picture of four missiles was published by multiple outlets in 2008 before it was pointed out that the image was doctored—it’s a Photoshop of a Photoshop. Because in addition to those original four doctored missiles having been cut and pasted all over themselves, if you look closely, you’ll see the worst Where’s Waldo? hiding in their trails.
Weesa don’t think @DRUDGE bothered to check the featured image on their front page. pic.twitter.com/82x2lQ83Si — Mike Silangil (@msilangil91) February 2, 2017
In an era when the free press is becoming a thing of lore–both because of budget cuts and a Presidential attack on the entire industry–the effects of these cut corners (or just lack of interest) are becoming increasingly glaring. It’s a good lesson though. You start firing your photo and layout editors and before you know it, you’ve got one of the most hated characters in film history peering out at you from your home page.
Stories like these would be funny if they weren’t quite so depressing. (Okay, fine, some of them are still pretty funny. I suppose things can be both.)
(via The Verge, image via LucasFilms)
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Have a tip we should know? [email protected] | 3,611 |
BY AMIT BARAN ROY | The soccer with Rocket powered cars game, Rocket League continues to mesmerize fans around the world with its extravagant numbers. The game which was released by Psyonix two years back in 2015 has now hit 2 billion total matches played worldwide. The game recently completed its second anniversary in July when Psyonix had shared some more interesting facts. The game at that time had already seen 33 million players with an average of 1.6 million players per day. Also, over the period of 2016-17, Rocket League is dominated by PS4 players (41 percent) followed by Xbox One (32 percent) and PC (27 percent).
Wow! Our worldwide community has played 2 BILLION matches of Rocket League! THANK YOU to all of our players around the globe, and good luck in the next two billion!pic.twitter.com/Rrl9T2rwbO — Rocket League (@RocketLeague) December 1, 2017
Rocket League has recently been nominated for ‘Best Esports Game’ in this year’s GameAwards. Fans can cast their vote and the results will be announced on December 7th. What’s more, Rocket League is getting its velocity crate update starting Monday. This new update will include a new Battle car ‘The Imperator DT5’, six new Decals and Engine Audio that can be used on most of the other Battle-Cars in your Garage. The crate will also include new Goal explosions, ‘Hikari P5’ and ‘Equalizer’ wheels.
In other news, Rocket League was recently ported out to Nintendo Switch on November 14th. The game is doing great and outselling some of the popular Switch games like Super Mario Odyssey, and Skyrim and Stardew Valley. The Switch version supports upto 8 players in online mode and also allows for cross-network play. There are exclusive Battle-Car and customization items, including Mario and Luigi hat toppers as well.
Rocket League has been a huge success for Psyonix and this is only going to grow. Though we may not see Rocket League 2 anytime soon. Psyonix’s Jeremy Dunham once said, "Our goal was to keep making Rocket League better and better so that we don't lose any of the people that want to play."
"If they're playing our game, we're not going to penalise them and make them buy our game again just because we want to add a couple new features. We want to let them know we're in it for the long haul, if they're in it for the long haul." | 3,612 |
Police said their investigation into the cache of ammunition found in woods in the Omeath area on the Cooley Peninsula could continue into Saturday.
"During the searches to date Gardai (Irish police) have recovered a substantial quantity of ammunition of varied caliber along with a mortar tube (pending examination by Garda ballistics experts)," the police said in a statement on Friday.
"A Garda operation is currently underway in Co. Louth as part of ongoing investigations targeting the activities of dissident Republican groups," police confirmed.
The material found appeared to be "in working order," according to Garda sources. Police requested the assistance of the army's bomb disposal unit.
Disruption and attacks
There are concerns the weapons were being stored in the Republic for use in Northern Ireland by dissidents aiming to attack security forces and cause disruption.
Two weeks ago there was a car bomb explosion outside a courthouse in Derry. The New IRA claimed to be behind that attack.
On Friday night in Derry, two men were shot in what police described as "paramilitary-style attacks."
The Irish border winds for hundreds of kilometers through fields, along roads and between houses
Brexit and the border
Germany's justice minister, Katarina Barley, visited the border area on Friday and emphasized the importance of an open border to Ireland: "Only when the UK has guaranteed an open border to Ireland, can there be an agreed Brexit," she wrote on Twitter.
With the UK due to leave the EU next month, there are concerns it may depart the bloc without a deal in place. This could mean a return to some form of control stations along the long and winding border between the EU state of Ireland and the UK province of the North.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to alter the draft withdrawal agreement her government negotiated with the European Union, most especially concerning the backstop clause. This is an insurance policy in the Brexit negotiations to ensure the border remains open in the event that the two sides cannot reach an agreement. Under those circumstances, Northern Ireland would remain within the European Union's regulatory and customs arrangements indefinitely.
Watch video 02:35 Share Ireland: Brexit Border Fears Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3BpJf Ireland: Brexit Border Fears
jm/bw (Reuters, dpa)
Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here. | 3,613 |
The U.S. House of Representatives was the site of a bizarre and unprecedented event late Wednesday evening, when House Democrats refused to relinquish a staged "sit in" on gun control, shouting over House Speaker Paul Ryan as he House into session for a vote.
"No bill, no break!" Democrats shouted as Ryan called a vote on a resolution to override President Obama's veto of a GOP bill to block a new Labor Department rule on financial advisers. Ryan called on members to respect the rules and the process, but was only met with more chanting as he quickly moved the House to the vote.
Ryan gaveled the vote, beginning 15 minutes of consideration on the override resolution. As expected, the resolution failed — members voted 239-180 in favor of the resolution, but it failed, as it needed a two-thirds majority to pass and Democrats refused to support it.
Meanwhile, the scene on the House floor was chaotic.
Democrats thrust pieces of paper into the air showing the names of victims of gun violence, then broke into the civil rights protest song, "We Shall Overcome"
The shouted through the chair announcing the votes and shouted "Shame, shame, shame," when Republicans hastily gaveled the House back into recess after the votes concluded. The GOP quickly processed the vote and left the chamber as soon as it was over.
The chaotic vote capped the end of a day that was marked by a constant protest by Democrats on the floor. They began by taking control of the floor around 11:30 a.m., chanting and embarking on speeches demanding votes on gun control measures before lawmakers depart for a week-long recess.
Shouts of "No bill, no break" where heard throughout the day.
Republicans tried to gavel in the House at noon but quickly gave up when Democrats talked over the opening prayer. Technically, the House was in recess all day as Democrats lined up to speak, without any official coverage on C-SPAN. Instead, video shot by Democrats was broadcast through the Periscope mobile app.
Republicans met in the basement of the Capitol earlier in the evening, deciding then to restart legislative business and hold a vote on the veto override measure.
The plan, they said, would be to simply conduct business, even if Democrats refused to relinquish the floor. While Republicans have the authority to forcibly remove uncooperative Democrats, many agreed that this would only add to the spectacle.
Some Republicans said they are working on legislation that would stop terrorists from being able to buy guns but Republican leaders say there is no plan to work out a deal with Democrats. | 3,614 |
Fraunhofer ISE in collaboration with industrial partners have developed a fine-line metallisation process to create contact fingers with a width of 19µm and a height of 18µm in a single printing step that is almost invisible to the naked eye.
Fraunhofer ISE in collaboration with industrial partners have developed a fine-line metallisation process to create contact fingers with a width of 19µm and a height of 18µm in a single printing step that is almost invisible to the naked eye.
The collaborative project dubbed, ‘FINALE’ includes screen manufacturers Koenen and Murakami and screen chemical supplier, Kissel + Wolf. Optical inspection specialist, Wickon Hightech also participated in the project which was funded by funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy BMWi.
Dr.-Ing. Andreas Lorenz, project manager in the Printing Technology group at Fraunhofer ISE said, “Working together with industry partners in fine-line screen printing metallization, in particular with screen manufacturers Koenen GmbH and Murakami Co. Ltd. as well as screen chemical supplier Kissel + Wolf GmbH, we have managed to reduce the contact fingers’ width to less than 20 micrometers — a reduction of 30 to 40 percent compared with the current industry standard.”
Fraunhofer ISE said that innovative fine-mesh screens were used in the metallisation of passivated emitter and rear contact (PERC) solar cells in two independent test series that created contact fingers with a width of merely 19µm and a height of 18µm in a single printing step.
When integrated into modules that would be able to deploy multi-busbar interconnection with 8 to 15 busbars, higher electrical properties and lower power losses can be achieved, according to Fraunhofer ISE.
“Using highly engineered screen and paste systems for fine-line metallisation, it could be possible to start manufacturing solar cells with nearly invisible contact fingers on an industrial scale in the near future. This would represent a great advantage for applications in integrated photovoltaics, where aesthetic, homogeneous module surfaces are in demand,” added Dr. Florian Clement, Head of the Production Technology — Structuring and Metallisation Department at Fraunhofer ISE.
The results of these test series will be presented at two upcoming PV conferences — the 36th EU PVSEC in Marseille, France, and the 29th PVSEC in Xi’an, China. | 3,615 |
TikTok has been found to have serious security vulnerabilities that allow attackers to take control of accounts. The timing is prescient given the recent commitment to blockchain technology by ByteDance, the app’s owner, as a means to verify data.
TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is actively exploring blockchain technology—and the recent security flaw found on its app may hasten its implementation and research.
Security Vulnerabilities Found on TikTok As Company Pivots to Blockchain
A few weeks ago, it was reported that ByteDance was working with Chinese State Media to implement blockchain and AI into its business model. The joint venture will be called Pengpai Audiovisual Technology Co. and is said to cost $1.43 million, according to Bloomberg. Its focus will be on security and on the “digital rights of short videos.”
Although the joint venture has been especially secretive, its focus on audiovisual content leads one to believe it will someday be implemented on TikTok if successful.
That transition couldn’t come sooner for TikTok, as the New York Times reports that the app has come under fire for its security flaws. Hackers have been able to hijack private accounts through malicious links and upload videos without the knowledge of individual users. According to Oded Vanunu, head of product vulnerability research at Isreal-based cybersecurity firm Check Point, “the vulnerabilities we found were all core to TikTok’s systems.” The security flaw was found to be so severe that a critical update had to be released today.
Authenticating Deepfake Content on Blockchain
However, aside from security flaws, there is another reason why TikTok is venturing into the blockchain space: as a means of verifying video content. With the recent rolling out of TikTok’s own deepfake capabilities to much criticism, some have claimed this was a step gone too far and that authenticity would be hard to decipher.
However, this seems to be part of the long-game for TikTok—with its new blockchain partnership specifically focused on ‘digital rights,’ we could someday see a blockchain-based verification system implemented on the app. This would mean that TikTok would be able to authenticate its users and offer deepfake capabilities, a first for the industry.
In short, the recent controversies surrounding TikTok make a strong case for the company’s pivot towards blockchain technology. We already know that ByteDance is already actively working on it, and the recent events just may hasten its implementation for security’s sake. | 3,616 |
"Don’t think about the pink elephant" is an often-used phrase in psychology to exemplify how to get someone to think about something by telling them not to. It also falls in line with the difficulty of not thinking about something when you are worried about it. So it’s not surprising to find out that religious teenagers who are told not to think about sex, end up thinking about sex a lot.
In the wonderfully titled paper “God, I Can’t Stop Thinking About Sex! The Rebound Effect in Unsuccessful Suppression of Sexual Thoughts Among Religious Adolescents,” Yaniv Efrati from Beit Berl College shows that religious teens end up feeling really bad about sex and they suffer for it.
The study is based on three surveys. The first, on 661 teens, showed that religious adolescents are more worried about sex than their peers. The second one with 522 people showed that due to their preoccupation with sex, religious teens report lower well-being. In the final one, the religious teens in a group of 317 have both lower well-being and more compulsive sexual behaviors.
“The study reflects, in my opinion, the complex reality among religious adolescents. It seems that the religious public should examine its ways regarding the importance of discourse and the ability to engage in sexuality and sexual education even in the early stages of adolescence,” Efrati told PsyPost.
“It is very important that religious society discuss sexuality and deal with sexuality in the right manner at the beginning of adolescence and even at the elementary age in order to prevent the development of compulsive sexual behavior.”
Parents’ responses towards things like pornography and masturbation play a key role in compulsive sexual development. It is important to remember, Efran explains, that religious people tend to overestimate how much their behaviors are compulsive.
“It would not be prudent to say that religious people have a higher compulsive sexual behavior than secular people,” Efrati added. “In the field of therapy, I see that religious people in self-reporting will indeed report that they have a compulsive sexual behavior when in practice they do not have a compulsive sexual behavior. They define themselves as such because of the negative feelings (shame and guilt) of the conflict in which they live – sexuality versus religion.”
Efran stresses the importance of discussing sexuality in the right manner in religious society, during and even before adolescence. This will improve the well-being of teenagers.
[H/T: PsyPost]
. | 3,617 |
Rico. Now, that seems to be contradicted by reporting our team on the ground is doing. So I want to ask you, does the president have the full picture of the situation there?
ROSSELLO: Well, it is - there is food coming. The ports have opened. There are medicines coming. There are, you know, articles of first-need that are here already. The (unintelligible) step is the deployment of those assets. So we've asked FEMA that we can get some more personnel over here. We've asked other National Guard - National Guards to come over here to Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, the air-traffic control has been slow as well. So getting those resources has been sort of slower than what we expected, but - but the resources are getting here.
KELLY: The resources are getting there. Now, let me ask you about something else, though, which is the - the point that you have made. People can't forget Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
ROSSELLO: That's right. That's right. This is critical. And let me just speak about that. About ten days ago, Puerto Rico, having gone through a (inaudible) was the platform to save other U.S. citizens. We gave them shelter even though we have destruction of our own. We gave them food, and we sent them out of harm's way. And now it's time - you know, Puerto Ricans have fought in wars and defended the United States, and taking a look at this - this catastrophe, this is one of the major catastrophes. It's unprecedented. You're talking about two category-5 hurricanes hitting one location in the span of two weeks. And my petition is, No. 1, don't forget that we're U.S. citizens. Number two, the magnitude of this is enormous. There's enormous devastation.
KELLY: That's Governor Ricardo Rossello. Thanks so much.
ROSSELLO: Thank you.
KELLY: Governor of Puerto Rico there.
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Coming soon indeed. The latest RGB lands next to one the largest and busiest Starbucks in Washington. Image: Rachel's Ginger Beer
We’ve been in straight-up countdown mode since January, awaiting the arrival of Rachel’s Ginger Beer in U Village accompanied by Ma‘ono hot fried chicken sandwiches. There might not be a better warm weather combo: spicy sandos and icy ginger beer—make it a mule and you have the makings of an ideal post-shopping drink (or hey, pre-shopping if that’s more your speed).
Whatever your imbibing agenda, the latest outpost of Rachel Marshall’s temple of ginger brew opens next week. Per Marshall, it’s looking like Friday, June 9 just may be the day, should final inspections go as planned.
Official open or no, ginger beer shall be had by all. Marshall says there will be popup lemonade stands pouring ginger beer out front, during U Village’s annual Sidewalk Sale, which runs June 1–4. Catch them outside from about 2 to 6.
Once open though, you’ll see those familiar summery-yet-all-weather beverages, both alcohol-blessed and non. There will be the usual lineup of colorful standbys plus some new flavors, like honeydew-mint. On the cocktail end, you’ll still be able to build your own mules and the like, but two new drinks will be U Village exclusives: a soju mule made with strawberry lychee ginger beer and a schorlé, a German-inspired spritzer, here made with sparkling rosé, aromatic bitters, elderflower, and served over crushed ice.
While Sunset Fried Chicken remains at RGB on 12th Ave, here Ma‘ono will be the resident purveyor of fried chicken. Chef Mark Fuller says the menu will be modest in size, but big in holy-hot-damn flavor. His fried chicken sandwiches, inspired by the Nashville hot chicken variety, will come in range of spice levels. Beyond those sandwiches, look for potatoes in some form—either French fries or jojos—plus Ma‘ono’s signature mac-and-kimcheese, a vegetarian shiitake chili (so you can indulge in chili fries, of course), a fried tofu sandwich, and a couple of salad options. For dessert, banana pudding, the creation of which includes vanilla wafers and freeze-dried bananas. There might even be some interesting soft serve ice cream collaborations afoot later this summer. | 3,619 |
There has been a huge disturbance in the Force. Not since the dodgy days of a certain Gungan has the fandom been so divided or angry. Huge numbers protested the divisive plotlines and ending of The Last Jedi. Major stars like Luke Hamill are popularly believed to be equally unhappy. Express Online sat down with Anthony Daniels to chat about his new book I Am C-3PO. We had to ask him about the backlash – and what he thinks of The Last Jedi.
The actor says: "Well, yes. I do understand why the fans are unhappy... It speaks to a devotion that they care so much that they mind if someone messes with it. I understand people being critical of the films." He has remained fairly silent until now, while stars like Mark Hamill have dropped loaded comments online and in interviews. Daniels says: "I know it has been particularly difficult for him (Hamill) lately because the new movies haven’t given him much to do. I certainly recognise that and can relate to it. "In these new movies, I have felt like a table decoration. And that is difficult because I recognise this character (C-3PO) is worth so much more. But I understand it is a whole film, not a feature about C-3PO. "That is just my personal disappointment. I get paid whether or not he does anything but it would be nice for him to have a purpose."
Star Wars 9: Anthony Daniel is C-3PO
Star Wars 9: Anthony Daniels with Mark Hamill and Kenny Baker in 1978
Star Wars 9: Will red-eyed C-3PO turn evil?
The actor also confesses to not being too thrilled with his time working on the divisive Prequel Trilogy: "It was certainly a bit weird in the prequels. But I accepted the storylines were very different. I was very glad to be there although they weren’t that much fun to do." There have been major hints the golden droid will finally play a much larger role in The Rise of Skywalker – and the red-eyed trailer scene hints he may perhaps even sacrifice himself or turn evil. Daniels obviously can not give much away but he teases: "C-3PO has a major arc. I am very satisfied with what I had to do in this movie and I am very satisfied with everything I know about this movie." Many fans have threatened to boycott the final film in the Skywalker saga. Daniels has a message for them. STAR WARS 9: 'ONLY THIS CHARACTER CAN KILL PALPATINE'
Star Wars 9: Anthony Daniels C-3PO book | 3,620 |
In a sense, the entire budget is about job creation, vice-chairman of Niti Aayog Rajiv Kumar told NDTV.
Government think tank Niti Aayog today brushed off an unreleased report from National Sample Survey Office that contended that unemployment was on a four-decade high that has fuelled the latest conflict between the government and the opposition. The government has said the report was incomplete and hence was not released.
"If there was highest unemployment in 5 decades there would have been social chaos," Rajiv Kumar, the vice-chairman of Niti Aayog told NDTV. Dismissing the opposition contention that there are no jobs, he said the "entire budget, in a sense, is about job creation".
His views were supported by his boss, Niti Aayog's Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant. "The story of jobs is all over this budget. You cannot have growth without distributed prosperity," Mr Kant said.
The opposition Congress has contended that "jobs" was one of the two words missing from the interim budget, which, they said was the government's "last jumla (political gimmick)" and "political manifesto" before the national elections due by May.
Yesterday, Business Standard newspaper reported that the unemployment rate in the country was at a 45-year-high of 6.1 per cent in 2017-18. The data it quoted was from the National Sample Survey Office's periodic labour force survey.
Two non-government members of the National Statistical Commission, which vets the report, had quit on Tuesday, accusing the centre of withholding its release.
Explaining the situation, Mr Kumar said, "When the (jobs) report came to the government, we realised the data for subsequent quarters was missing. And that's why it was not released".
Noted economist and Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra has accused the government of "lies and data manipulation".
"The way economists look at job creation is how many people are joining the labour force. Yes, growth creates jobs but is it enough? No, there is 6.1% unemployment," he told NDTV today. "In every sector, you have lies and manipulation of data - something you haven't seen in India before," he added.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has warned that in the coming days, the government will have to face "surgical strike" from the opposition over a number of issues. The list, he said, would include jobs, the "biggest issue the country is facing, demonetization and corruption, as seen in the Rafale jet fighter deal". | 3,621 |
’s exercise book. The student’s behaviour was already being monitored following a brief exclusion and it is our policy to refer any issues to parents and heads of year. I recounted the incidents and named the staff who witnessed them, but the parent responded: “That can’t have happened. I don’t want her head of year to deal with this.”
Despite numerous assurances, the student returned to school the following day and, after a simple instruction to remove her coat, launched into a blazing rant about how her dad said the school had it in for her. I was to understand she would not be allowed to attend any more detentions.
Lies to save face, I thought. Not so. I called home that afternoon to discuss this incident and her father assured me she would not attend future detentions. So that’s that. Unsurprisingly, her behaviour is not improving.
Parents, however you feel about us and our work, nothing good can come from undermining us in front of your children.
Parents, when you undermine us in front of your children, they walk around saying we’re rubbish teachers because they trust you. I become reluctant to contact you because I don’t want to be lambasted again – I will do it, because it’s my job, but I’ll dread it. I’ll be less effective that afternoon because I am human and I care. That’s what made me suitable for the job in the first place.
If you come and speak to me, I will ease your worries because I want to help. No teacher thinks they are perfect at their job and we are constantly trying to improve. I spend hours observing other teachers to learn from them. I read books to get new ideas, build websites of resources for students and find myself thinking about seating plans at bedtime.
However you feel about us and our work, nothing good can come from undermining us in front of your children. It gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card to shirk responsibility and means I have to work even harder to regain their respect (and that of the students around them) when I’m already working flat out. That time could be better spent on lesson planning, discussing my students’ learning, designing resources or working with you to help them.
Teachers actually like children. We want them to succeed, just as you do. Walking into that conversation with a shared goal is the only way to get results. We’re on the same side. | 3,622 |
NBC News is asking Americans to confess their climate change sins, though at least some people have taken the opportunity to troll the news company.
“Even those who care deeply about the planet’s future can slip up now and then. Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change?” reads the introduction to NBC’s “Climate Confessions” project.
Many of the responses appear to take the project seriously. One person confessed taking flights to see their son across the country. “I fly to see my son on the west coast. I live on the east,” reads the confession.
“I drive to work even though the bus is almost as fast. I often feel I have good excuses,” another person confessed.
“I wish I had been born a vegan and then maybe it would be easier. I can’t seem to give up meat,” another confession stated.
One person apparently used the project to tout their virtuousness, rather than confess their climate sins. “I LOVE meat. But I love the earth more. Vegan for over 4 years now,” they wrote. (RELATED: Bernie Sanders, Climate Hawk, Spends Nearly $300K On Private Jet Travel In Month)
Others appear to have taken the opportunity to troll NBC over the project. One such entry reads: “I require at least half a roll of TP when wiping.”
“I like my house to be 85 in the winter and 55 in the summer. Deal with it, hippies,” one person wrote. “I live on Earth, where even if we achieve carbon neutrality in the first world, that’s only 19.1% of the population,” another stated.
“I don’t do anything for the environment. I don’t care,” reads another entry. “I am eating bacon with breakfast this morning and I’ll have it again tomorrow,” another declared.
One person submitted lyrics about loving plastic straws: “I LOVE plastic straws & I cannot lie. As many as I can get, before I die. Such straight soda with apple pie. Yessir, I’m the guy.”
Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected]. | 3,623 |
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| 3,624 |
We had a little early information on the Project Hera task switching system before the announcement, but now things are becoming clearer as Googlers chime in with the specifics. At the I/O keynote, Google showed Chrome adding multiple tabs to the app switcher, but that's just the start of what's going to happen in Android L's multitasking.
First things, first – it looks awesome. The stack of cards is animated very smoothly and the way apps slide into place when you select them is great. Material Design apps also get title bar colors that match the app's dominant color. Beyond the visual appeal, the improvements to multitasking will allow all apps (not just Chrome) to have more than one card, provided they are for different tasks. Multitasking in L stresses documents, rather than activities (in the application sense). This leads us to the most underappreciated change to multitasking in L – the labels will always match.
If you're on Android 4.4 or below, try going to the Play Store and share an app to Gmail, Twitter, G+, anything really. The Play Store pulls up the app in question and you do your thing. However, if you hit the multitasking button, you're going to see an entry for the Play Store with a different app inside the preview (whatever you're sharing to). You can get pretty deep into another app like this, but the system still considers it part of the originating app's activity (in this example, the Play Store), so it stays under that single multitasking card. This is super confusing, but that's the way Android has always worked.
Android L changes that by tweaking the FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_WHEN_TASK_RESET flag. Even though the Play Store in the above example is launching the shared-to app, the L system goes out of its way to treat them as two different tasks. FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_DOCUMENT ensures that when you tap a link in an app that routes to a different app, that you aren't going to see an entry in the multitasking UI with the wrong name and icon attached to it. Additionally, when you go back to the original app, it should simply show the last screen you interacted with before the link. See the GIF above if you're still fuzzy. Even though the Play Store launched the Twitter share, it gets its own card in the stack. Going back to the Play Store is just the Play Store. It makes a ton of sense when you see it in action.
[+Adam Powell, +Dianne Hackborn] | 3,625 |
14 Stunning Photos of LGBT Military Personnel
Before "don't ask, don't tell" was officially repealed for gay, lesbian, and bisexual military personnel in 2011, a photo of a male Marine in drag could have landed him in hot water. Today, we can celebrate the diversity of those brave enough to take up the call to serve in the military, while living the life most authentic to them.
Last November, photographer Devin Mitchell unveiled a photo series documenting the lives of service members. Since then, Mitchell has photographed even more veterans for The Veteran Vision Project. The images spotlight veterans, occasionally revealing the stark contrast between their lives in and out of uniform.
"One photo that really speaks to me the most is the picture depicting Joshua Zitting and his husband Patrick Lehmann," Mitchell told Mic last November. "It reminds me of how unfair it is that this man can serve while enjoying all of this constitutional rights as an American, while other men and women similar to him cannot in other parts of the country, due in part to recent decisions such as the one made by circuit judge Jeffrey Sutton [who upheld same-sex marriage bans in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee]. Judges like him are blind in my eyes. Maybe pictures like this will help him see better."
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual military personnel had been serving our country for decades without receiving equal protection, while transgender troops are still prohibited from serving openly. While, as many speculate, marriage equality may be the law of the land come this June, there is still plenty of work to be done to truly accept and integrate all LGBT service members. Mitchell says he hopes this photo series will put a face to the LGBT people who tirelessly serve our country.
"As a gay man, I can relate to what is still the oppressive stigma of homosexuality. Legislation is just the beginning of a long sociological process to acceptance," Mitchell tells The Advocate. "The subjects featured in this project might be an example of such development in our communities. Images such as these would have been unprecedented before December 2010. Perhaps a century from now history students will look back and commemorate the turn of the tide."
The Advocate exclusively obtained 14 more photos from Mitchell's series that show LGBT military personnel after the dismantling of the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy.
Editors note: Mitchell has not yet photographed many female-identified military personnel, which is why the photos are predominantly male-identified persons. To join Mitchell's project contact him through the Veteran Vision website. A Kickstarter has been launched to fund the full project.
Click through for more photos>>>
Pages | 3,626 |
The same expensive, dubiously beneficial “wellness supplements” are available for sale at Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s tony Goop lifestyle blog and at Texas-based conspiracy-monger Alex Jones’ InfoWars.com, said Quartz on Thursday.
While the conventional wisdom says red and blue America will never see eye-to-eye and that the cultural gulf that between “coastal elites” and “white working class America” is all but uncrossable, it seems Lululemon-wearing Manhattanites and angry rural Trump supporters can agree that adding “eleuthero root, cordyceps mushrooms, and ‘nascent iodine'” to your diet can somehow boost your life essence.
“Near the end of a profile of Amanda Chantal Bacon, founder of the ‘wellness’ brand Moon Juice, the New York Times Magazine noted that many of the alternative-medicine ingredients in her products are sold — with very different branding — on the Infowars store,” wrote Quartz’ Nikhil Sonnad.
Sonnad continued, “Moon Juice is frequently recommended by Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness blog, Goop; it’s a favorite of Hollywood celebrities and others who can afford things like $25 ‘activated cashews.’ Infowars, on the other hand, is a dark corner of the American right, heavy on guns, light on government intervention, and still very mad at Obama.”
Quartz assembled a compendium of ingredients sold at both Moon Juice and InfoWars, the names they fly under at each site — “Super Male Vitality” at InfoWars is sold as “Sex Dust” Moon Juice — and their respective costs.
Multilevel marketing schemes are a staple in the right-wing methods of generating revenue. Glenn Beck, Jones, Rush Limbaugh, President Donald Trump and Ben Carson have all lent their names to dubious “supplements” and shilled for pyramid schemes.
All of this is an outgrowth of the tangled network of mailing lists, mail order scams, PACs and other money-making endeavors that prey off of gullible conservative voters, many of whom are elderly and on fixed incomes.
A 2015 report said that Republican voters donated more than $50 million in 2014 to scam political outfits like SarahPAC, only to have that money “siphoned off to vendors, wasted, and just plain old pocketed by people in these PACs.” | 3,627 |
Water heaters are an essential appliance that keep our day-to-day lives running smoothly. It’s simply the modern way of life and definitely not something we think about… until it’s not working! A huge part of your home’s comfort, and the comfort of your daily life, comes from your water heater. It’s important to pick one that’ll last a long time and that’ll do a great job heating your water.
With water heaters, you have the option to heat your water using different methods: gas or electricity.
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The decision to use gas vs. electric is entirely up to you.
Depending on where you live and what your local utility companies charge, gas water heaters are generally cheaper to operate than electric ones. They’re also thought to be more cost-effective up front, however electric water heaters are more energy efficient. You’ll typically make the difference in price up within one year.
A gas water heater uses heat from burning natural gas, or another fuel, and heats the water that’ll be used in your home. An electric water heater, on the other hand, utilizes electric resistance coils to heat your water.
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The French news media reported that the thieves who commandeered the Mercedes eventually released the driver, an official and a bodyguard on the side of the road. The police initially said the thieves wielded Kalashnikov rifles, but later said they had handguns. The Mercedes was later found abandoned and burned, the police said, its charred remains discovered near a wooded area, along with one of the gang’s burned BMWs.
Prosecutors are investigating whether the robbery was an inside job, as the gunmen appeared to know the convoy’s route. The French police have opened an investigation into “armed theft by an organized gang,” but there have been no arrests.
“The robbers were experienced, well organized,” said Nicolas Comte, a police officer and secretary general of Unité SGP Force Ouvrière, a leading police union. “They did it with self-control and equipment, without committing any mistake. We can imagine that they knew that a large amount of money was being carried, and that perhaps people in the convoy knew some of the robbers.”
The police did not reveal the names of the victims. In a statement published on the S.P.A., the state news agency of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Embassy in Paris said that the stolen car was a Mercedes Viano with German plates and rented by a Saudi citizen, “who was heading for the airport with his luggage.”
“On the way, the driver was forced to get out the car,” the statement said. “The luggage and car were stolen.”
On the official Facebook page of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a statement was also issued denying reports by the French police and news media that a car belonging to the Saudi Embassy had been attacked on the way to the airport, “where money and sensitive documents were stolen.” Such reports, the statement said, “are not true at all.” The statement also quoted one delivered by the embassy saying that it was cooperating with the French authorities.
The crime fit the pattern of other recent attacks in the French capital, law enforcement officials said, and Mr. Comte, the police officer, said the threat of violence and the element of surprise suggested that its perpetrators could be from Eastern Europe or the Balkans. In recent years, criminals from the former Yugoslavia, including globe-hopping jewel thieves known as the Pink Panthers, have snatched jewels worth hundreds of millions of dollars, from Dubai to Geneva to Paris, in swift “snatch and grab” attacks that usually take no more than three minutes. | 3,629 |
Winners:
You + 1
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TBD
Location:
Seoul, South Korea
Sponsor:
Omaze, Inc. (“Sponsor”)
Charity:
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Details:
One winner and a guest will be picked up by G-Dragon in his car, go for a tour of the YG office in Seoul, then have lunch at the YG restaurant.
Deadline to Enter:
January 18th, 2017 at 11:59pm PST
Mail-in Entries:
Postal entries must be received by January 11th, 2017 at 11:59pm PST and postmarked by the deadline to enter.
Winner Announced:
On or around January 27th, 2017
Who's Eligible:
You must be at least 13 years old to enter. If you're under the age of 18, you must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. If winner and guest reside outside country of where campaign experience occurs, winner and guest need to have a current, valid passport and be able to travel to South Korea. If they cannot travel to South Korea, they will forfeit the prize. Must not be a resident of Belgium, Cuba, Czech Republic, Finland, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Malta, North Korea, Norway, Singapore, Sudan, Syria, and Thailand. In certain countries, local rules and laws may restrict or prohibit the award of certain prizes or impose additional restrictions on participation. Entry is subject to all local laws. See Official Rules for more details. Employees, Officers, and Directors of Sponsor or Charity, and members of their immediate families and households are not eligible to win.
How to Enter:
Visit Omaze.com and utilize any of our methods of entry, including free mail in entry, free web entry and receive bonus entries for donations (see Official Rules for details).
Selection Process:
Winners are chosen through a process of random selection. Odds of winning depend on the number of tickets held. A verification process will take place, during which conditional winners will be required to sign paperwork re-confirming their eligibility and their ability to participate on given dates. Conditional winners will be required to consent to a background check before an official winner is announced. You are not eligible to win any prize if you have already won an Omaze prize within the same calendar year.
No purchase, payment, or contribution necessary to enter or win. Contributing will not improve chances of winning. Void where prohibited. | 3,630 |
Australia's obesity rate continues to grow
Just over 30 per cent of Australians have obesity, costing the country about $60 billion dollars a year.
But just 2 per cent of this year's federal health budget has been allocated towards preventative health.
It is something health advocates like Mr Slevin have been consistently campaigning to change.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures showed that in 2015, almost 40 per cent of the nation's disease burden, which is the impact of a health problem as measured by things like cost, or death, was preventable.
Mr Slevin said the Government should be allocating at least 5 per cent of its health budget to preventative health.
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There are also calls for tax on sugar sweetened beverages, as part of a broad range of strategies to target obesity, despite both industry and government push back.
"It is not a panacea for all obesity, but empty energy calories, empty energy input is simply not part of a good healthy lifestyle," AMA President Tony Bartone said.
"Also that levy can feed in to other important preventative strategies, and can be used to fund those initiatives appropriately — it's understanding it is only but one part of a complex solution."
But Dr Stanford said a sugar tax was effectively useless.
"People might buy less, [but] if they still want sugar — they will have sugar."
Calls for cheaper fruits and vegetables
Dr Stanford said with many factors causing obesity, it was time for governments around the world to start taking a different approach to treating the disease.
She said the first thing governments needed to do was make sure fresh fruit and vegetables were available and cheaper.
The Government needs to target obesity from every angle as it is a complex disease. ( ABC News: Emma Machan )
"You need to target them with education about diet, exercise, sleep, about medication they're on, you need to target them by maybe offering discounts or incentives to go to the gym, make sure they have high-quality, minimally processed foods.
"Every angle. It's hard - this is hard work. And this is why governments don't want to do it.
"This is harder than anything they've ever had to do."
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt this week confirmed the government would establish a new national preventive strategy.
"This is a comprehensive approach," he said.
"The critical thing is to explain that health is not about weight... it's about ensuring people have the right amount of physical activity and a balanced diet." | 3,631 |
Max Verstappen says his radio messages criticising the performance of his Renault power unit are intended to put pressure on the manufacturer to improve.
The Red Bull driver complained about his engine several times on the radio on Saturday in Shanghai.
He admitted his frustration with the situation when asked by RaceFans about his comments after qualifying.
“I think it would be a bad thing if it wouldn’t frustrate me, right?” said Verstappen. “I’m here to win races and I think everybody who’s working on my car wants exactly the same thing.
“If I would say it quietly I think I would be racing in GTs because I wouldn’t bother too much.”
Verstappen admitted his remarks were intended “to put a bit of pressure on them.
“Not only in public because what I say I don’t meant to the public, it’s to the guys who are listening to my radio.”
RaceFans believes Red Bull are forbidden from publicly criticising Renault’s power unit under the terms of their contract with the manufacturer. Red Bull’s engines are branded by sponsor TAG-Heuer.
Verstappen said he is still suffering from degradation in his power unit’s top speed when run at high revs, something he complained about last year.
“The gap on the straights were a bit bigger than we expected before we came here,” he said. “But then also from our side just fine-tuning [is needed].
“The power modes were not great. Some of the issues as well I’ve had before, like [getting] close to the limiter, some problems while upshifting and stuff, it just doesn’t really work.”
Verstappen’s radio messages
Final practice Verstappen On the exit I don’t know what the [censored by FOM]’s is going on there. What’s going on Max? Verstappen All the time when I push to the limit I’m just losing speed. I don’t want to do another fast lap. I’m not sure it’s healthy. I said this already last year in Baku about same kind of things happening now. Q3 Verstappen “Mate the engine again clipping in turn seven, [censored by FOM].
2018 F1 season | 3,632 |
A 27-year-old man was left fighting for his life Monday after being shot by an intruder at the Paris offices of left-wing French daily Liberation.
The victim, a photographer’s assistant, was shot in the chest and stomach with a pump-action shotgun and was in a critical condition, police and the newspaper said.
The shooter fled the scene and was still at large several hours after the attack, which occurred around 10:15am (0915 GMT).
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Police were quickly deployed at major media offices in Paris for fear of further attacks.
The Liberation shooting came three days after a man stormed into the Paris headquarters of news channel BFMTV and emptied several cartridges from a similar shotgun before warning a senior editor: “Next time, I will not miss you.”
Police are investigating a possible link between the two incidents.
Several hours after the shooting at Liberation, a number of shots were fired outside the headquarters of the Societe Generale bank in the La Defense business district on the western outskirts of Paris. No one was injured in that incident.
Liberation executive Nicolas Demorand said the shooting in the paper’s entrance hall had left staff horrified.
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“When you have someone with a shotgun coming into a newspaper’s offices in a democracy, it is very, very serious, whatever the mental state of the person,” Demorand told AFP.
“If papers and other media have to become bunkers, something has gone wrong in our society.”
A police security cordon had been erected around Liberation’s editorial offices in central Paris.
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The newspaper said the injured man worked as an assistant to one of the photographers for Next, a supplement of the newspaper.
Liberation journalist Anastasia Vecrin described the horrifying scene she was confronted with on what was otherwise just a normal Monday morning.
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“I was just arriving for work and I saw a man lying on the ground, holding his stomach and with blood everywhere,” she told AFP.
“I met two of the reception staff who were completely white and who told me ‘we’ve just been shot at’.”
The shooting provoked a shocked reaction amongst French politicians. Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced that everything possible would be done to apprehend the shooter.
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“This individual is on the run and he represents a real danger. We will do everything we can to arrest him,” Valls said. | 3,633 |
CAIRO -- Tens of thousands of Egyptians marched to the presidential palace Friday demanding that President Mohamed Morsi step down.
“Leave, leave like Mubarak!” they chanted, referring to Morsi’s predecessor, deposed leader Hosni Mubarak.
Many protesters no longer asked for Morsi to rescind a decree that expanded his powers and postpone a referendum scheduled Dec. 15 on a proposed charter written by an Islamist-dominated assembly.
Protesters said they were upset by Morsi’s televised address Thursday, during which he offered a “national dialog” with opposition leaders but remained adamant about the referendum and kept his unpopular decree in place.
At least six people have died and hundreds have been injured in clashes that began Wednesday between Islamist supporters of Morsi and protesters from mainly secular opposition movements.
The civil strife has been the bloodiest the country has witnessed since last year’s uprising that toppled Mubarak. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have refused to retreat as the opposition promised more protests.
“Morsi has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the people, especially after yesterday’s speech. As a leader, he is responsible for those who died,” Waleed Essam, a 30-year-old artist said as he waved a large white banner with the image of one of the revolution’s fallen victims.
“He didn’t even acknowledge that those who died were revolutionaries. He spoke 24 hours after the violence. This is not a president for Egyptians,” Essam said.
The country’s National Salvation Front, led by opposition leaders Mohamed El Baradei and Hamdeen Sabahy, has refused to negotiate with the president until he rescinds his decree and postpones the referendum.
“The president now must leave; he is a president for the Brotherhood. He didn’t respect the judiciary, the people, or the constitution. He wants to turn the country into a Brotherhood nation,” said Tamer Sherif, a 38-year-old engineer protesting outside the palace.
Also Friday, the head of Egypt’s election committee said the planned voting of Egyptians who live abroad on the disputed draft constitution had been postponed, the Associated Press reported.
Ismail Hamdi reportedly said that the weeklong expatriate voting, which had been due to begin Saturday, will begin Wednesday instead.
ALSO:
Famous French attractions could be left in the dark
Egyptian President Morsi appears besieged; six dead in clashes
In Syrian war’s end game, Moscow maneuvers away from Assad | 3,634 |
The first employee hired to work on the Oculus Rift at Oculus VR — the virtual reality headset company Facebook paid $2 billion for — is quitting.
"Chris Dycus, employee number 1, out," he wrote in a Facebook post on May 15.
Christopher Dycus is the guy wearing the early Oculus Rift prototype headset in this image, surrounded by co-founders Nate Mitchell (left), Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, and Michael Antonov. stuff.co.nz
Dycus was a hardware engineer at Oculus VR, where he worked on early prototypes of the Oculus Rift headset as well as the final consumer model that launched in 2016. He was hired in 2012 by founder Palmer Luckey directly; they were longtime friends before Dycus became the first Oculus employee.
"I am a little disappointed I won't make it to my 5 year Oculus anniversary — only 2.5 months away! Oh well," he wrote in his Facebook post.
It sounds like Dycus is leaving under amicable terms. He wrote that he's leaving for a startup that, "really sounds like something I want to do," though he doesn't explicitly say where he's going other than "to beautiful, sunny SoCal."
Dycus was part of the original crew that started Oculus VR, long before it was purchased by Facebook for $2 billion. Some of that crew remains in place at Oculus — Nate Mitchell, Michael Antonov, and Brendan Iribe (seen above) are still with the company. The company's founder and poster boy, Palmer Luckey, exited earlier this year following an anti-Clinton political donation controversy.
Oculus VR co-founder and former figurehead Palmer Luckey. Matt Weinberger Business Insider
Though Dycus is leaving on seemingly amicable terms, the past year for Oculus VR was rife with trouble:
The next project from Oculus VR, an Oculus Rift that operates without the assistance of a powerful gaming PC, is currently in the works.
The Santa Cruz prototype of the Oculus Rift, in action. Facebook
It's codenamed the "Santa Cruz" prototype, and it's a bit of a step down from the experience offered on the first Oculus Rift. Instead of targeting so-called "high-end" virtual reality — the kind of VR powered by a powerful gaming PC or game console — the Santa Cruz prototype is aiming to compete with the likes of Samsung's Gear VR and Google's Daydream in the mobile VR space.
Facebook declined to comment on Dycus' departure, but confirmed he had left, and that he was the first company employee after the founders. | 3,635 |
US presidential candidate and Texas senator Ted Cruz says it is time for law enforcement to "patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods" in response to the series of deadly attacks in Belgium.
Cruz, who is seeking the nomination in the Republican Party in the United States, said in a statement on Tuesday that authorities should implement the policy before those neighbourhoods "become radicalised".
"We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaeda or ISIS presence," Cruz said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
READ MORE: After Islamophobia comes the criminalisation of Arabic
In a separate statement posted on Facebook, Cruz said "radical Islam is at war with us. And the truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even name it".
He was also quoted as saying on Fox News television: "ISIS has declared jihad on Europe and on the United States of America. They have declared their intention to murder as many innocents as possible."
Earlier on Tuesday, a series of bomb attacks hit Belgium's capital Brussels killing more than 30 people and wounding about 200 others.
ISIL said it was responsible for carrying out the blasts at Brussels' airport and an underground train.
A 'disgrace'
Cruz' call drew a swift response from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairman of the Democratic Party, who called him a "disgrace".
"His comments today were worse than opportunistic and inappropriate politicking in the way of the terrible tragedy in Brussels - they were a shameful display of hate that only serves to foment anger and make the world less secure."
Rising Islamophobia concerns US Muslims
The Council on American-Islamic Relations - the largest Muslim civil rights organisation in the US - also condemned Cruz and called on him to "retract and apologise for his unconstitutional policy proposal".
"Does that mean checkpoints on every corner? Does that mean 'your papers please' requests for anyone who looks stereotypically Muslim?
"Does that mean kicking in the doors of Muslim homes and businesses?" said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the council, in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.
"We're harkening back to the dark days of the 1930s with this kind of mentality. It's unconstitutional. It's un-American and it’s unbefitting someone who's running for our nation's highest office."
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump also reacted to the Brussels attack saying President Barack Obama has been "so weak" that "terror groups are forming and getting stronger". | 3,636 |
An aeroponic system is similar to a NFT system in that the roots are mostly suspended in air. The difference is that an aeroponic system achieves this by misting the root zone with a nutrient solution constantly instead of running a thin film of nutrient solution along a channel.
Some growers prefer to mist on a cycle like an ebb and flow system, but the cycle is much shorter, typically only waiting a few minutes between each misting. It’s also possible to mist on a continual basis and use a finer sprayer to ensure more oxygen gets to the root zone.
Aeroponic systems have been shown to grow plants even quicker than some of the simpler systems like deep water culture, but this has not been verified to be true in all cases. If you want to experiment with this system, you will need specialized spray nozzles to atomize the nutrient solution.
Benefits of Aeroponics
Roots often are exposed to more oxygen than submerged-root systems
Downsides of Aeroponics
High-pressure nozzles can fail and roots can dry out
Not as cheap or easy to set up as other methods
To learn more, check out the video tutorial:
Drip Systems
Drip systems are extremely common in commercial operations, but less common in recreational gardens. This is because they’re simple to operate a a large scale, but slightly overkill for a smaller garden. Regardless, they’re a great way to grow hydroponically that you should consider.
Benefits of Drip Systems
High level of control over feeding and watering schedule
Less likely to break
Relatively cheap
Downsides of Drip Systems
May be overkill for a smaller garden
Fluctuating pH and nutrient levels (if using recirculating system)
High waste (if using waste system)
To learn more, check out the video tutorial:
Well, there you have it. The six major types of hydroponic systems, how they work, and the ups and downs of each one.
No matter which one you choose, your plants will grow fast and big provided you care for them properly. Hydroponics offers amazing flexibility, so even if you’re experiencing some troubles, you should have no problem correcting them and getting your plants back on track.
All Articles About Hydroponic Systems
If you want to read more about hydroponic systems, have a look at everything else I’ve written about them on the site: | 3,637 |
Amazon-bestselling horror collection.
Multiple Award-Winning Authors
Is there anything as horrifying as what David's wife gave birth to?
How about that advertisement Tobias found that was selling a human head, condition used?
Then there's Hayong's experience in heaven (which isn't nearly as nice as it sounds)...
... and Kyle encountering that bionic cult that's a long way short of being human.
Spine-tingling terror from horror writers around the world. Dozens of diverse short stories containing gruesome murders, supernatural mysteries, grotesque hellscapes, and deranged psychopaths to keep you up at night. Surprise twists ensure you keep guessing until the last page.
Special Edition with Full page original illustrations!
Excerpt:
Every sense, every muscle, every feral instinct begged for me to close my eyes against the nauseating tumult of color. To let go of the insurmountable force I was thrall to; to find acceptance in defeat, and peace in death. But louder than the diminishing throb of my heart were the words:
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And so I did. I swam through the sea of melting colors, fixating on the black blemish which refused to relinquish my throat. I fought back, tooth and nail sinking into yielding flesh, kicking and screaming as stale air tore through my howling lungs. I lunged after that, digging my fingers into the thing that attacked me until warm wet rivers bubbled over my hands up to the wrist. I wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, pouring all my love for the light and rage against its defiler with one unified assault.
Not until it lay still did I allow myself to fall gasping onto my back. One reluctant star at a time unraveled from the tapestry of madness to find its rightful place in the heavens. My body ached to the core, and were it not for the last utterances of my internal voice still coaxing me back to life, I would have been confident that I had died that night.
About Haunted House Publishing:
We're passionate about publishing horror stories for adults, scary books for teens, and all sorts of dark fiction. We've got new horror kindle books every month, specializing in supernatural stories, supernatural book collections, and paranormal books for adults. We've got zombie books, demonic horror, ghosts and specters, angels and demons, gothic novels, and haunted houses and ghosts novels. We promise some of the top horror books 2018. | 3,638 |
In the world of farming, the calendar reigns supreme. When spring arrives, most farmers must plant a brand new batch of plants in their fields—a downside of annual crops. But for wheat farmers, that longstanding practice could be about to change. As NPR’s Eilís O’Neill reports, a new perennial hybrid plant could change the way America grows grain.
It’s called Salish Blue, and it's a cross between wheat (an annual) and wheat grass (a perennial, wild grass). The new species was developed by scientists at Washington State University intent on making wheat that grows over and over again without the need to replant. What they've created is a blue-hued grain that acts just like wheat.
Salish Blue is more than a science experiment: It could reduce both the hassles and the environmental repercussions of farming. The vast majority of American crops are annuals, which means that every year they must be torn out and new seeds sown in the ground. Some exceptions include fruits and nuts that grow on trees, berries, and grasses like clover and some alfalfa.
Reseeding the nearly 75 percent of American crops that aren’t perennials costs a large amount of money, constitutes an annual hassle and contributes to erosion. As MIT’s Mission 2015 notes, annual farming usually means that fields lie fallow and inactive until next year’s crop is planted. This can make them susceptible to erosion. In turn, water, air and soil quality suffer.
Crops that regenerate themselves do just the opposite. Not only do they have deeper roots and promote healthier soil, but they don’t need as much fertilizer or energy to grow. “Perennial grains add value in other ways than just being wheat,” Colin Curwen-McAdams, a graduate student and research assistant who helped develop the wheat, says in a press release. “What we need right now are crops that hold the soil, add organic matter and use moisture and nutrients more efficiently. That’s the goal of this breeding program.”
Curwen-McAdams and his colleagues recently published a paper on the grain in the journal Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. They note that the grain’s scientific name, Tritipyrum aaseae, honors Hannah Aase, a late botanist who also has an onion named after her. No matter what it’s called, making crops more perennial will benefit the world—even if right now, Salish Blue only benefits the animals who get to munch on it. | 3,639 |
Liverpool FC has signed up to be a Stonewall Diversity Champion, becoming the first Premier League club to join the programme.
Stonewall, Europe’s leading charity for lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality, works with more than 750 organisations to help them create workplaces that are inclusive and welcoming of LGBT people.
As a Diversity Champion, the club will receive expert consultation and advice from one of Stonewall’s client account managers.
Working together, LFC and Stonewall will review current polices, practices and staff training and work on reinforcing the club as a workplace where everyone can be themselves.
Committing to be a Diversity Champion is another progressive step for the club, which was also rewarded this year with an accolade from the Premier League.
In May, LFC became the first club to achieve the Advanced Level the Premier League Equality Standard, recognising the commitment of club leadership to equality, diversity and inclusion, the development of inclusive policy and procedures as well as the great work of LFC’s community programme, Red Neighbours and the club’s official charity, LFC Foundation.
The club’s commitment comes just weeks before Stonewall holds its annual Rainbow Laces campaign, which will see sport across the UK turn rainbow from November 24 to December 3 in support of the LGBT community.
Peter Moore, CEO of LFC, said: "Liverpool FC has long been committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and to ensuring that it is embedded in all areas across the club and we are delighted to be spearheading Stonewall’s Diversity Champion programme.
"We believe that sport should be inclusive and that nobody should miss out simply because of who they are. From our club charity’s inclusive sports programmes to achieving the Premier League’s Advanced Equality Standard this year, we are proud to keep striving to make sport for everyone."
Ruth Hunt, Stonewall’s chief executive, added: "It’s so important for organisations to actively work towards making sport everyone’s game. Many LGBT people want to take part in sport, either as players or fans, but at the moment not everyone feels welcome.
"We also know that most sports fans want a better, more inclusive game. To make this happen, we need individuals and organisations to step up to show their support for LGBT people and that’s what Liverpool FC have done today. We’re excited they’ve joined us as a Diversity Champion and we look forward to working with them to help further LGBT equality in football." | 3,640 |
After some ugly executions, states have had a hard time getting lethal injection drugs, and have thus been examining older methods of execution instead of thinking about abandoning the practice altogether.
Recent botched executions aren’t doing much to sway proponents of the practice in a number of states where it remains legal — in fact, they’re causing states to look at older and potentially more brutal methods of execution, according to a recent report.
Oklahoma’s most recent execution of Clayton Lockett in April was an extremely disturbing one, in which he writhed while being pumped with lethal drugs, prompting executions to eventually draw the curtains for the gallery. The warden described it as a “bloody mess,” according to the Associated Press.
The execution joined a pair of others in Ohio and Arizona, giving capital punishment opponents ammunition to attack the legality of the practice, hoping to use the incidents to encourage people to change their minds on the death penalty. However, the report indicates that the campaign does not appear to be working.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin suspended further executions after the incident with Lockett, but only to review the methods of execution, and months later unveiled an overhauled execution chamber that will resume killing the condemned in January.
In fact, the recent ugly deaths have caused states to explore older methods of execution due to the difficulty in securing the right lethal drugs.
Lydia Polley, a member of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said in the report that the group had a “flash of hope” that the botched execution would help their cause, but it ultimately “just led to people thinking of better ways to kill them.”
Oklahoma has killed more inmates than any state except neighboring Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Officials have even provided tours of the $104,000 renovated execution chamber to the media.
The Oklahoma House of Representatives recently conducted a study on using nitrogen gas to execute inmates, which would make it the first state to make legal the use of hypoxia by gas as an execution method.
Oklahoma isn’t the only state to explore alternatives to drugs, which have been hard to come by as many pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell them the compounds they need.
Tennessee, for example, has passed a law reinstating the electric chair in instances where it can’t get the right drugs, and Utah has even examined resurrecting the firing squad.
Still, proponents have pledged to push on, even if many states remain firmly in favor of capital punishment, regardless of the risks. | 3,641 |
The latest report from The Russia Studies Centre at The Henry Jackson Society documents how individuals and organisations across the British political spectrum have established connections with their counterparts in Russia, many of which are funded or supported by the Kremlin to undermine the West.
The report’s main findings include:
Over the past five years, there has been a marked tendency for European populists, from both the left and the right of the political spectrum, to establish connections with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Those on the right have done so because Putin is seen as standing up to the European Union and/or defending “traditional values” from the corrupting influence of liberalism. Those on the left have done so in part because their admiration for Russia survived the end of the Cold War and in part out of ideological folly: they see anybody who opposes Western imperialism as a strategic bedfellow.
In the UK, individuals, movements, and parties on both sides of the political spectrum have deepened ties with Russia. Some individuals have praised Putin and voiced their support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine; others have travelled to Moscow and elsewhere to participate in events organised by the Kremlin or Kremlin-backed organisations; yet more have appeared on Russia’s propaganda networks. Some movements have even aligned themselves with Kremlin-backed organisations in Russia who hold views diametrically opposed to their own; this is particularly the case for left-leaning organisations in the UK, which have established ties with far-right movements in Russia.
In an era when marginal individuals and parties in the UK are looking for greater influence and exposure, Russia makes for a frequent point of ideological convergence, and Putin makes for a deceptive and dangerous friend. But what does this mean for the UK? And what can other countries learn from this experience? There are a number of recommendations that follow from the conclusions this paper draws:
Activists, journalists, and politicians should point out the pro-Russian connections of individuals and parties across the political spectrum and challenge the credibility of these entities via political debates.
The personal and organisational connections of left-and right-wing politicians and parties and their Russian counterparts should be mapped across Europe.
As individuals and movements on the left and right grow in influence across Europe, the continent must wake up to their insidious means of funding.
Parliaments across Europe should amend current legislation or pass new legislation that forces politicians to declare all media appearances they make, whether they receive money for them or not.
Academics, commentators, and others should raise awareness in the West of the nature of the Russian regime.
To read the full report, click here. | 3,642 |
Latest leak points that Intel’s upcoming i3-10100 would feature four cores and eight threads. The present generation i3 doesn’t come with hyperthreading, so this would be an inviting change for the entry-level market. Sharp-eyed Twitter user TUM_APISAK spotted the latest entry at the SiSoftware benchmark database which showcases details concerning the performance of Intel’s upcoming Comet Lake Core i3-10100.
The four-core eight-thread feature is quite significant as just two years ago, a feature like this would have cost you some $350, but Intel is launching the i3-10100 somewhere around $120, which is almost one third the cost it used to be before. The i3-10100 processor runs at 3.5GHz, but what is important is that it features four cores and eight-thread model- if what the leak reveals is true and the benchmark isn’t fabricated.
Intel’s present generation, the 9th core i3 is a four-core four-thread model, the addition of Hyperthreading to the i3 lineup is indisputably a response to AMD Ryzen processor’s success in the CPU market. AMD is offering more core at less price and that is hurting Intel’s market share. Hyperthreading is what Intel calls Multithreading, that is the physical core if the CPU can be divided into virtual ones, treads, which would help with hefty multitasking.
Incidentally, the Core i3-9100 also runs at a base clock of 3.6GHz, but it’s possible the Core i3-10100 spotted in the benchmark is an early engineering sample, and it’ll likely be clocked a bit faster with the production chips. However, currently the chip has a base clock of 3.6GHz with 6MB LE cache and 4x 256KB L2 cache, the leak doesn’t reveal anything about the boost clock, but other leaks says that i3-10100 would have a boost clock of 4.4GHz.
Previous specs points at 4 cores 8 threads core i3 models with Comet Lake. Core i5 chips featuring 6 cores and 12 threads, Core i7 running with 8 cores and 16 threads, and Core i9 with 10 cores and 20 threads. Comet lake chips are assumed to be out by early 2020, however before that, this very month the Core i9-9900KS would be unveiled at the high-end of Intel’s current CPU line up, a chip which capable of reaching 5GHz across all eight cores. | 3,643 |
OK, we're gonna give it to you straight: Getting a medical marijuana card in Florida can take several weeks and run you $200 to $300 before your ID card arrives in the mail. The good news is, once you've obtained your doctor's referral and your medical marijuana-use registry application has been approved, you can pretty much start shopping for your THC right away. Clear the relatively uncomplicated hurdles outlined below, and you'll be enjoying your legally purchased pot in no time.
Here's how to get a medical marijuana card in Miami as of February 2019:
Step 1: Find a doctor. You'll need a signed physician's statement from a medical marijuana doctor. That shouldn't be hard, since there are currently around 270 doctors licensed to prescribe THC in Miami-Dade. Check here for a complete list of qualified physicians and their contact information.
Did you know? Florida physicians must pay $250 for a mandatory two-hour course and earn a passing score of at least 80 percent every two years to certify patient eligibility and write referrals or recommendations for medical marijuana (marijuana "prescriptions" are still technically illegal).
Step 2: Go to your consultation. You and your physician will discuss your medical history and treatment options, including dosage. Some common qualifying medical conditions include cancer, seizures, and posttraumatic stress. Check here for a list of some other qualifying conditions. Your doctor will then write your recommendation, enter your name and information into the Florida Marijuana Use Registry, and provide you with your patient ID number, which you'll use to apply for your required ID card. Be sure to provide your email address to receive important updates.
Did you know? Prices vary, but consultations typically cost around $150 per visit. Doctors can order no more than three 70-day supplies per written recommendation. Recommendation renewals require a consultation each time. Insurance does not cover consultations, nor can you pay with credit cards.
Step 3: Apply online. Once you've received your doctor's recommendation and patient ID number, completing the online application for your card is pretty straightforward. The current application processing fee is $75, and online payments take five business days to process. After payment has posted, it can be another five days before your application is approved.
Did you know? You don't need the physical card to begin shopping. Once your ID card application has been approved, you'll receive a temporary identification via email to use to fill your order until your card arrives.
That's it! We've already outlined where you can purchase medical marijuana in South Florida. Here are a couple of other items you should know:
| 3,644 |
Image caption Northern said the strike meant any services that ran would be "extremely busy"
Rail passengers face disruption as Northern staff stage a 24-hour strike, days after travel chaos when new timetables were introduced.
RMT union members at Northern are striking for 24 hours on Thursday in an ongoing dispute about safety involving driver-only operated trains.
The union said Northern had declared "war on passengers".
Northern called for "meaningful" talks and said the majority of trains running would be between 07:00 and 19:00 BST.
The firm faced widespread criticism over cancellations, delays and the implementation of a new timetable on Monday.
The government announced urgent plans to deal with Northern's "poor performance", which the transport secretary Chris Grayling will discuss with leaders from the north of England later.
The meeting comes as Thursday's strike from 00:01 to 23:59 BST is set to be followed by similar action on Saturday.
A spokesman for Northern said it expected the "trains and any replacement buses we operate to be extremely busy".
Passengers have been told to allow extra time for journeys, "plan carefully and consider whether travel is necessary".
The majority of available trains would run between 07:00 and 19:00 to get people "into work and home again", Northern said.
Anthony Smith, chief executive of the independent watchdog Transport Focus, said Northern's passengers "have had a torrid time recently and these strikes will mean yet more cancelled plans and disrupted journeys".
"It is vital that all parties in this dispute get back around the table to resolve this matter without bringing the railway to a standstill," he added.
Image copyright PA Image caption RMT members have staged several previous walkouts over the driver-only issue
The latest strikes are going ahead as Northern "refuse point blank to engage in talks", according to RMT general secretary Mick Cash.
He said the operator had shown it was "not capable of running a railway" and had declared "war on passengers and staff in the drive for increased profits".
The union said passenger safety would be put at risk by getting rid of guards and extending driver-only services and has been in dispute with five operators for more than two years.
Northern's deputy manager director Richard Allan said it was "disappointing" the union had targeted the bank holiday weekend and "the first week of the new timetable".
"We urge RMT to move away from its nationally co-ordinated strikes and allow its local representatives to engage in meaningful discussions with us on how we better serve customers." | 3,645 |
President Donald Trump questioned the complexity of modern aviation technology after a Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashed Sunday in Ethiopia.
Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
….needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
Trump’s tweet comes as several countries grounded the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from their airspace and investigations are underway. The Ethiopian Airlines crash was eerily similar to an October 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia. Both crashes occurred minutes after takeoff, killed all passengers on board, and involved pilots reporting flight control problems before losing control of the specific aircraft.
The investigation into the Lion Air crash revealed that pilots were flummoxed by new software in the Boeing aircraft and the automatic flight control systems. Boeing updated its flight control systems after the crash and is standing by the safety of its aircraft. (RELATED: Nearly 190 People Feared Dead After Indonesian Plane Crashes Into The Sea)
“Boeing has been working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on development, planning and certification of the software enhancement, and it will be deployed across the 737 MAX fleet in the coming weeks. The update also incorporates feedback received from our customers,” the company said in a statement, adding “it is important to note that the FAA is not mandating any further action at this time, and the required actions in AD2018-23.51 continue to be appropriate.”
Despite Boeing’s statement, several countries have banned the particular 737 from operating, including Germany, the U.K., Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Sens. Mitt Romney, Richard Bluementhal, and Dianne Feinstein also called for the grounding of the aircraft until an investigation is pursued.
The FAA & the airline industry must act quickly & decisively to protect American travelers, pilots, & flight attendants. All Boeing 737 Max 8s should be grounded until American travels can be assured that these planes are safe. https://t.co/6yRQFasFHR — Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) March 12, 2019 | 3,646 |
Aquileia is an ancient Roman city in Italy at the head of the Adriatic. Nowadays the city is small (about 3,500 inhabitants) but in antiquity it was the fourth Roman town in Italy and the ninth in the whole Empire. Aquileia is one of the main archeological sites of Northern Italy and has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1998 for its well preserved remnants from the early Roman Empire and its Patriarchal Basilica.
Coordinates: 45° 46′ 11.01″ N, 13° 22′ 16.29″ E
Aquileia was founded as a colony by the Romans in 181 BC along the Natiso River. The town provided protection for the territories that bordered areas subject to the influence of the Veneti (faithful allies of Rome) to the west, tribes of the Alpine Gauls to the north and the Histri to the east. In 90 BC Aquileia obtained Roman citizenship and was used as a base for the military campaigns of Julius Caesar in Gaul and in Illyia. With the administrative reform of Augustus, Aquileia became the capital of the tenth region “Venetia et Histria”. The town underwent a period of prosperity and soon became a centre of important trade exchanges thanks to the navigable river that crossed it and to the efficient network of roads that linked the town to the Po Valley and to Central Europe.
Destroy ed by Attila in the mid 5th century, Aquileia rose again in the 6th century AD to became a powerful Episcopal seat with one of the most beautiful basilica complexes of the Christianity. The Patriarchal Basilican Complex played a decisive role in the spread of Christianity into central Europe in the early Middle Ages.
The site of Aquileia is believed to be the largest Roman city yet to be excavated. Excavations, however, have revealed some of the layout of the Roman town such as the remains of the forum, a segment of the decumanus, some impressive funerary monuments, two luxurious residential complexes, baths as well as the former locations of an amphitheatre and of a circus.The most striking remains of the Roman city are those of the river port installations, a long row of warehouses and wharfs that stretched a long distance along the bank of the river. But the dominant feature of Aquileia is the Basilica with its magnificent 4th century mosaics. The National Archaeological Museum and its lapidary galleries contain over 2,000 inscriptions, statues and other antiquities, mosaics, as well as glasses of local production and a numismatics collection. | 3,647 |
Judge warns over 'professional beggars' Published duration 26 March 2019
image caption A judge in Londonderry said he believed groups of professional beggars were flying into NI on a shift basis
A district judge in Londonderry has warned professional street beggars are taking advantage of the "generous and good nature of the local people in this community".
Barney McElholm made the comments on Monday when sentencing Florica Crina Ispas from Romania.
The 30 year old was jailed for two months for stealing a bottle of vodka.
Judge McElholm said he believed she was part of a group who flew into Northern Ireland every six weeks.
He said he did not believe she was a genuine indigent street beggar, as she had claimed following her arrest.
'Great disservice'
Instead, he said he believed the defendant was "a member of a professional gang of street beggars who could afford to fly into and out of Northern Ireland every six weeks, on a shift basis, to beg."
Judge McElholm said: "I don't believe a single word of what she has said and I am going to take a tough line in such cases in future."
He went on: "I know what help is offered to genuine homeless people. They have been offered accommodation, they have been advised as to what benefits they may be entitled to and if they are truly indigent they would receive offers of support.
"These people are doing a great disservice to people who are genuinely homeless.
"They are simply a professional group coming here to street beg and to take advantage of the generous and good nature of the local people in this community."
image caption Judge Barney McElholm told Londonderry Magistrates' Court he would "take a tough line in such cases in future"
Judge McElholm said he had met police and Derry's City Centre Initiative recently to discuss the issue of street begging.
PSNI Chief Inspector Johnny Hunter said street begging was among a number of issues discussed by civic stakeholders at that meeting.
"Issues such as public alcohol consumption and begging are dealt with on a daily basis in co-operation with our partners," he said.
"Where those people we find on the street are vulnerable and in need of help, we will work with our partner agencies to keep them safe."
He said local officers also worked closely with colleagues in the Modern Slavery Human Trafficking Unit.
"Where there is evidence of exploitation or of other offences we will take the necessary appropriate action," he said. | 3,648 |
Former Kentucky Wildcat Marquis Estill has found his way back to the University of Kentucky. Estill, who played at the University of Kentucky from 1999-2003, is coming back to the university to finally earn his degree. While doing so, John Calipari, who never coached Estill, decided that he would add him to the coaching staff as a graduate assistant. The NCAA rule for this move states that any former player who is still working towards his undergraduate degree can be used as on court game staff. Here is what Estill had to say on the subject of being hired as a part of Coach Cal’s staff at UK:
I’m really excited about joining the staff this season. I’m very grateful that Coach Cal is giving me this opportunity. He is a great coach, and I look forward to working with him and this talented team.
Hiring someone familiar with the Big Blue Nation is nothing new for Coach Cal as he has done it multiple times in the past, and he sees it as a great opportunity for any person who may one day want to pursue a career in coaching.
It’s great that we get to help guys like Marquis or Wayne (Turner) or Tony Delk or Scott Padgett – all guys who are members of our family – to get a start in coaching and help them pursue their goals.
When Coach Cal says that this is a player’s first program, he really means it. This includes any former player as well.
One thing I always tell our players is that they are always welcome back here, especially to get their degree. This is a players-first program, and we will always be here for them in whatever capacity they need. I applaud Marquis for coming back to finish his degree, and I encourage all of our former players to do the same.
Marquis Estill only played 3 seasons in the four years he was a part of the University of Kentucky basketball program, as he sat out his freshman season, redshirting due to a knee injury. In three seasons Estill accumulated 936 points, just shy of the 1,000 point club, and averaging 9.4 points and 4.7 rebounds per game. Before he came to UK, he attended Madison Central High School where he earned the Kentucky Gatorade State Player of the Year award. He accompanied that award with others at UK including, All SEC Tournament Team, All SEC Second Team, and All NCAA Regional Team. Estill left after the 02-03 season for the NBA but was undrafted and could not return to UK to play a final season. | 3,649 |
The organizers of the Anime Expo convention announced this week that it will host Sunrise producers Osamu Taniguchi and Naohiro Ogata, Gundam game producer Kotaro Usui, GUNPLA modeler Katsumi Kawaguchi, Neptunia series character designer Tsunako, and Neptunia series producer Naoko Mizuno.
Taniguchi and Ogata will participate in the Sunrise industry panel, and Taniguchi will also participate in a screening of the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin anime's sixth episode, "Rise of the Red Comet," which will also feature appearances by voice actors from the anime.
Taniguchi joined TMS Entertainment in 1999, and served as animation producer on Moyashimon, among other titles. He joined Sunrise in 2012, and is credited as assistant producer on Natsuiro Kiseki, and producer on Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin.
Ogata joined Sunrise in 1997. He worked as production assistant on Turn A Gundam and Inuyasha, and is credited as producer in such titles as Tales of the Abyss, Mobile Suit Gundam UC, Gundam Reconguista in G, and Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt.
Usui is the head of Gundam games at Bandai Namco Entertainment, and he will participate in the company's Gundam -focused panel. Anime Expo noted that he is "aiming to create a Gundam game not only for the Japanese audience, but also for the world."
Kawaguchi will participate in a GUNPLA beginner's workshop panel. He joined Bandai in 1985 after creating his own modeler group while still in school.
Tsunako and Mizuno will appear at two Neptunia panels and an Idea Factory International localization panel. They will also particpate in autograph sessions.
Tsunako is an illustrator at Idea Factory, the parent company of Neptunia developer Compile Heart. Apart from designing the characters of the Neptunia franchise, she also drew the illustrations for Koushi Tachibana's Date A Live light novel series, and is credited as the original character designer for the manga and anime adaptations of the novels. She is also a character designer for the Ange Vierge franchise.
Mizuno joined Idea Factory as a 3D designer. She produced Hyperdimension Neptunia, the first game in the Neptunia franchise, 10 years after she joined the company. She is also the producer for the Fairy Fencer F series.
This year's Anime Expo will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from July 5 to July 8, with a pre-show event on July 4.
Source: Anime Expo | 3,650 |
tickets to the National Prayer Breakfast for a delegation of Russians in 2017, he wrote, “if we can accommodate them, we can empower rational insiders that have been cultivated for three years.” He referred to Torshin as “Putin’s emissary,” and told a contact to pitch the Kremlin’s involvement when asking members of Congress and other influential Americans to meet with them — “reaction to the delegation’s presence in America will be relayed DIRECTLY to President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.” The message went on to note parenthetically that both Putin and Lavrov had had to “personally approve the delegation’s travel to this event.” In a previous message to Erickson, Butina wrote that the purpose of the Russians attending the event was to "establish a back channel of communication." Butina’s lawyer argued that she just “believes and desires peace and better US-Russia relations,” and that what prosecutors describe as her “reports” to Torshin were just due to her being “energized by the excitement of witnessing history and charmed by American culture and politics,” which she wanted to tell people back home about. “For all of the government insinuation and media coverage of Hollywood style, spy-novel allegations, in reality this case is bereft of any tradecraft or covert activity whatsoever,” he said last week. “There are no dead drops, no brush passes, no secret communication devices, no bags of cash or payoffs, no bribes, no confidential secret information gathering, no espionage type activity, and no agency or agreement to commit crime.” US prosecutors countered that no one is accusing her of Cold War–era spycraft. “Stealing 'national secrets' is not an element of any of the offenses with which the defendant is charged,” they wrote. But they also made clear that they believe the Russian government's actions show that Butina was no average Russian caught up in an American court case. Since her arrest, the prosecutors said, Butina has been visited in jail six times by Russian officials, her detention has been the subject of four notes from the Russian government to the State Department and two conversations between Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the Russian Foreign Ministry has changed the avatar on its Twitter account to an image of Butina. "Russia has issued more diplomatic notes on the defendant's behalf in the past month than for any other Russian citizen imprisoned in the United States in the past year." Butina’s next court date is in November. | 3,651 |
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warned Sunday there is'significant evidence of collusion.'
'There's a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy,' he said on ABC's 'This Week.'
'The investigation is a criminal investigation. Congress's responsibility is very different, and that is, it's our responsibility to tell the American people these are the facts. This is what your president has done, this is what his key campaign and appointees have done, these are the issues that we need to take action on, this is potential compromise,' he added.
Trump, who is spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, relaxed on Saturday, spending about five hours at his golf course
Trump (seen left with his lawyer, Emmet Flood, at Mar-a-Lago on Friday) has reportedly been in a good mood as word came down that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will likely not recommend any further indictments
President Trump is spending the weekend with first lady Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago, they are seen here on Friday greeting Caribbean leaders, hours before the report was handed in
Trump relaxed on Saturday by hitting the links with rocker-rapper Kid Rock while his attorney general was seen arriving at his Virginia home after spending the day at the Justice Department reading the Mueller Report.
The president was photographed smiling next to the Bawitdaba crooner at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Saturday.
Kid Rock, who posted the image on his Twitter account, was appropriately dressed for the occasion.
He wore a red sweater vest over a white collared shirt, which complemented his American-flag style slacks and what looked like a gold belt.
Trump was standing next to him in his red ‘USA’ hat, white collared shirt, and blue slacks.
‘Another great day on the links!,’ the Michigan-born musician wrote.
‘Thank you to POTUS for having me and to EVERYONE at Trump International for being so wonderful.
‘What a great man, so down to earth and so fun to be with! KEEP AMERICA GREAT!!’
Kid Rock is an outspoken supporter of Republicans and was one of the first to back Trump during the GOP primary in 2015. He also considered running for the U.S. Senate seat from Michigan.
Attorney General William Barr (left) is seen arriving at his home in McLean, Virginia on Saturday evening | 3,652 |
In the movie Gone in 60 Seconds, starring the ubiquitous Nicolas Cage, there’s a scene where his character talks about Eleanor, the car that he keeps trying to steal but can’t, and for him that’s a 1967 Mustang code named ‘Eleanor’. And at the end of the day, with the whole plot on the line, he gets it, he gets his unicorn, his Eleanor.
Well, with just a few weeks until he ages up, Michael Andrew has gotten his Eleanor. He swam a 19.85 in the 50 yard free on Saturday night at the Jenks Sectional in Oklahoma, breaking the National Age Group Record that seems to, ironically, have been the hardest for him to get at the 13-14 level (among his wheelhouse events, at least).
That broke the 20.02 that Arizonan Ryan Hoffer swam in 2013 and makes Andrew the youngest swimmer ever under 20 seconds in the event. Hoffer now holds the National Age Group Record for 15-16’s already at a 19.54, but Andrew’s not far off of that time either.
Andrew now has 8 out of 14 yards-course National Age Group Record offered for 13-14’s. This break means officially that the list of ones he holds is longer than the ones he doesn’t:
Michael Andrew Records:
50 free – 19.85
100 free – 44.16
100 back – 48.10
100 breast – 54.04 (pending ratification)
100 fly – 47.47
200 fly – 1:46.29
200 IM – 1:47.44
400 IM – 3:52.08
Non Michael Andrew Records:
200 free – Maxime Rooney – 1:38.42
500 free – Alex Katz – 4:26.73
1000 free – Matthew Hirschberger – 9:02.37
1650 free – Arthur Frayler – 15:14.17
200 back – Benjamin Ho – 1:45.73
200 breast – Reece Whitley – 2:00.14
Now that the 50 is gone, perhaps we’ll see him change his focus for these last two weeks and take a shot at some of the records that he’s not traditionally associated with, like the 1000 or 1650 free. Either way, this has been another absurd year of swimming for Michael Andrew, and a level of age group dominance that we haven’t seen in a decade. | 3,653 |
There are a lot of questions surrounding the new Batman movie, especially when it comes to Robert Pattinson's younger take on Bruce Wayne and what director Matt Reeves has planned. With rumors of multiple villains involved, including Penguin and Catwoman, fans are wondering if Reeves is tackling a classic storyline, or at least a different take on Batman Returns. But many people have theorized that Reeves' film, based on what he himself has said about it, will actually be adapting one of the seminal comic runs from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. And according to Kevin Smith, that's exactly what's happening.
During the latest episode of the FatMan Beyond podcast, Smith was taken back when co-host Marc Bernardin explained the rumor that it would adapt The Long Halloween.
"To be fair, I heard it to, and I heard it from a good source too," Smith explained.
Reeves previously made it clear that he was not making a movie connected to the DC Universe, and The Long Halloween would go a long way in making a lot of connections while also remaining disconnected from the established DC Universe with Wonder Woman, Shazam, and Aquaman.
"Right now, I'm involved in The Batman," Reeves said. "What it will be called ultimately, I don't know. Aquaman is going to be very different from the Todd Phillips Joker movie, and that's going to be different from Shazam and Harley Quinn. Warners believes they don't have to try to develop a giant slate that has to have all the plans for how it's going to connect. What they need to try and do is make good movies with these characters."
Reeves also teased the kind of story his plot will tackle, which probably lead to many of the theories that were pointing toward The Long Halloween.
"It's very much a point of view-driven, noir Batman tale," Reeves said of his take on the Caped Crusader. "It's told very squarely on his shoulders, and I hope it's going to be a story that will be thrilling but also emotional. It's more Batman in his detective mode than we've seen in the films. The comics have a history of that. He's supposed to be the world's greatest detective, and that's not necessarily been a part of what the movies have been. I'd love this to be one where when we go on that journey of tracking down the criminals and trying to solve a crime, it's going to allow his character to have an arc so that he can go through a transformation."
The Batman is set to premiere in theaters on June 25, 2021. | 3,654 |
The U.S. Supreme Court, which is due to hear arguments in March in an important abortion case from Texas, on Tuesday rejected a bid by Arkansas to revive a state law blocked by a lower court that had banned abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The justices left in place a May 2015 ruling by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down the 2013 law, saying it violates a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy at a point before the viability of the fetus. A lower court in 2014 blocked the law.
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The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on March 2 in the first major abortion case to come before the justices since 2007, a challenge by abortion providers to parts of a restrictive, Republican-backed Texas law that they contend are aimed at shutting clinics that perform the procedure.
While the high court legalized abortion more than four decades ago, abortion remains a contentious issue in the United States. Some states, particularly those governed by Republicans, have sought to chip away at a woman’s right to end a pregnancy by passing laws imposing a variety of restrictions.
Lawyers for Arkansas said their appeal does not directly challenge a woman’s right to have an abortion. They said it instead questions the Supreme Court’s finding in Roe v. Wade that “sets in stone” the viability of the fetus as the point at which a state’s interests, including its desire to protect the life of the fetus, can trump a woman’s right to an abortion.
Viability, according to medical experts, occurs around the 23-to-24-week mark of a pregnancy. Lawmakers in Arkansas and other conservative states have sought to ban abortions at an earlier stage, citing among other things hotly debated medical research suggesting a fetus feels pain starting at 20 weeks of gestation. The Arkansas ban prohibits abortions after 12 weeks, when a fetal heartbeat is detected, except in cases of rape, incest or when the health of the mother is in danger.
The federal appeals court judge who backed the lower court’s decision to block the law said they were bound in part by a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that upheld the right to have an abortion before viability.
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Two doctors challenged the Arkansas law. The state has an existing ban on post-viability abortions that is not affected by the case.
The case is Beck v. Edwards, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-448.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) | 3,655 |
LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Diana Taurasi, Magic Johnson, Bill Walton, Larry Bird and Kobe Bryant will be among the numerous stars featured in the documentary.
ESPN announced a 20-hour, 10-part documentary called "Basketball: A Love Story" that will feature 165 interviews with stars from across the game.
Director Dan Klores made the film from more than 60 interconnected short stories that will "explore the complex nature of love as it relates to the game and opens the window to insights and perspectives about race, politics, media, art, business, style and entertainment," according to ESPN's press release.
Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Dr. J, Yao Ming, Lisa Leslie, Charles Barkley, Steve Kerr, Stephen Curry, Diana Taurasi, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant will be among the stars featured in the documentary.
In addition to the legends from the court, the series will feature different celebrity narrators including Chadwick Boseman, Julianne Moore, Chris Cuomo, Robin Quivers and more.
"These are ‘short stories’ to which I think millions around the world can relate," Klores said. "The game, for me and others, has been an escape, a chance to pretend, feel safe, learn, love, lose and even despair. It has an obsessive quality to it, whether one is a player as great as Jordan or LeBron, a fan, a park player, a team member – and to me, 'obsession' is a form of love, so in a real sense each of these stories touches upon that feeling."
A book titled, titled "Basketball: A Love Story" by Jackie MacMullan and Rafe Bartholomew, that is based on interviews for the documentary, will be published in conjunction with the film.
All 62 short stories will be available on the ESPN App on Sept. 18.
The full film will air on ESPN over five Tuesdays: Oct. 9, from 7-11 p.m., Oct. 16, from 7-11 p.m., Oct/ 23, from 7-11 p.m., Oct. 30, from 8 p.m-12 a.m., and Nov. 13, from 8 p.m-12 a.m. (all times ET.) It will also be shown in two parts on ESPN 2 on Sept. 25 (9 p.m. – Episodes 1–5) and Sept. 27 (9 p.m. – Episodes 6–10). | 3,656 |
John Wutsell Jr., a fisherman who was hospitalized after becoming ill while cleaning up oil in the Gulf, has filed a temporary restraining order in federal court against BP.
Apparently, Wutsell missed the update issued by BP CEO Tony Hayward that he wasn’t made sick by oil fumes, or exposure to Corexit, but by food poisoning.
Wutsell (who experienced severe headaches, nosebleeds, and stomach pains) humbly disagrees, and he wants BP to give the clean-up workers masks, and — get this insane demand — not harass workers who publicly voice their health concerns.
On Friday, Wutstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday. … “At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital,” Wutstell sais. “When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned.”
Hm, now why would BP want to confiscate all of Wutsell’s clothing? One possibility is that they want to destroy any evidence that they’ve been exposing workers to unsafe conditions so as to avoid future criminal liability charges.
This is the same warped logic behind BP refusing to allow fishermen to wear respirators that I reported last week.
Wutsell’s restraining order also demands that BP stop using Corexit, the toxic dispersant, which has been banned in the UK.
The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should “avoid breathing in vapor” from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air. BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants.
BP doesn’t want to give these workers masks because doing so would be an acknowledgement that the company is exposing them to harmful chemicals. If workers later develops respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney or blood disorders, symptoms that have been linked to Corexit exposure, it would be easier for them to sue BP for damages.
Stories have been coming in of workers reporting feeling “drugged and disoriented.” Meanwhile, doctors at West Jefferson have said that the symptoms appear to be caused by “a combination of some sort of chemical irritant and dehydration, and they have diagnosed one of the 11 oil-spill workers with “chemical exposure.” | 3,657 |
used in) operating activities (1,716,916)
(1,961,331)
Cash Flows From Investing Activities
Capitalization of intangible assets (2,503)
(16,454) Purchases of property and equipment (232,109)
(14,566) Proceeds from payment of tenant improvement allowance 100,000
- Cash disbursed for equipment held for lease (16,237)
- Cash disbursed for lease deposit -
(51,000) Payments received on note receivable -
157,218 Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities (150,849)
75,198
Cash Flows From Financing Activities
Cash proceeds from sale of common stock and warrants 1,210,000
2,685,000 Payments on convertible notes payable -
(270,000) Proceeds from issuance of notes payable -
500,000 Proceeds from exercises of stock options 3,375
- Proceeds from exercise of investor warrants 15,000
- Repurchase of common shares from related party (400,000)
- Purchase of option to repurchase preferred stock from related party (5,000)
- Payments on loans from shareholders (6,927)
(47,707) Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities 816,448
2,867,293
Net (decrease) increase in cash (1,051,317)
981,160 Cash, beginning of period 2,468,199
319,546 Cash, end of period $ 1,416,882
$ 1,300,706
Supplemental cash flow information:
Interest paid $ 35
$ 44,150
Non-cash investing and financial activities:
Conversions of promissory notes and accrued interest to common stock $ -
$ 1,205,856 Equity issued in settlement $ 226,400
$ - Extinguishment of derivative liability on cashless exercise of warrants $ 389,477
$ - Unpaid purchases of equipment and other assets $ 2,525
$ -
Media Contact:
Surna Marketing
Jamie English
Director of Marketing
[email protected]
+1-(303) 993-5271
SOURCE Surna Inc. | 3,658 |
This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
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BOULDER, Colo. -- A study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology Monday took a look at the use of ecstasy during psychotherapy to treat chronic PTSD. Part of the study was conducted in Boulder and the result are promising.
Ecstasy, or MDMA, is a schedule 1 drug that plenty of people abuse during raves or party situations. But therapists found it had benefits for people like Jessi Appleton, who was a part of the study.
Jessi says she was surprised at first. “My first thought was like, you want to give me what?” she said. But she agreed to the trial, saying that nothing else was helping her chronic PTSD. “I was scared all the time, I wasn`t able to leave my house for weeks at a time because of my anxiety,” she said.
During three appointments over three months, she was administered the drug before an eight hour psychotherapy session. “I feel like your guard goes down, it’s like everything. You are able to process things with less fear, less anxiety,” she said.
That’s when she was able to tackle some of her serious traumas including sexual abuse. “It was intense,” she said.
She faced it all, and the other 27 participants, including veterans, had similar results. One year out, 76 percent of the participants no longer had PTSD.
“It was a big experiment. There were a lot of things that we had never done before, and the results were amazing,” said Marcela Ot’alora G, the principal investigator and psychotherapist in Boulder. She says patients felt safer to confront their trauma, accept it, and move forward.
“People’s lives actually changed,” said her partner, Bruce Poulter. If these kinds of results continue in the next phase, Poulter believes the FDA could approve this use of the drug by 2021. “I find it incredibly hopeful, for something that is so difficult for people,” he said.
Government research has not been able to definitely say if MDMA is addictive, but during the trial it is administered only three times.
The study was sponsored by MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. They are looking for participants for the next phase. | 3,659 |
Japan on Thursday hanged a Chinese man convicted of the murder of a family of four whose bodies were found handcuffed and weighted down with dumbbells in a bay, the justice minister said.
Masako Mori said she ordered the execution of Wei Wei "after careful consideration", over robbery and multiple murders carried out with two other students in 2003.
"It is an extremely cruel and brutal case in which the happily living family members, including an eight-year-old and 11-year-old, were all murdered because of truly selfish reasons," she said.
Wei, a 40-year-old former language student in Japan, had pleaded guilty to the four murder counts, but had contended he was not a central figure in the case.
The trio robbed the home of Japanese businessman Shinjiro Matsumoto, 41, in Fukuoka in June 2003 and strangled him with a tie.
His 40-year-old wife Chika was drowned in a bathtub and the children strangled or smothered.
The victims' bodies were found dumped in Hakata Bay in Fukuoka, handcuffed and weighted down.
The other two suspects fled to China but were arrested there. One of the two was executed in 2005, according to Jiji Press, the year a Chinese court gave him a death sentence and his associate a life sentence.
A relative of the Fukuoka family told public broadcaster NHK that "the only feeling that remains is sadness".
"We were finally be able to think of happy times when the four were alive after many years have passed since the incident, but today's execution only brought back painful memories," he told NHK.
According to the Asahi Shimbun daily, the first execution of a foreigner since the ministry began announcing the names of those executed was in 2009.
A Chinese man was hanged for killing three Chinese people he lived with near Tokyo and for injuring three others, the Asahi said.
Japan last executed inmates in August, when two men were hanged after being convicted of murder.
Japan in 2018 hanged 15 people of which 13 belonged to the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out the fatal 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway and other crimes.
With more than 100 inmates on death row, Japan is one of few developed nations to retain the death penalty, and public support for it remains high despite international criticism, including from rights groups.
A 2014 government survey of around 1,800 people showed 80 percent thought capital punishment was "unavoidable", with only one in 10 in favour of abolishing it. | 3,660 |
Chord Finder The Chord Finder tells you which notes are in a given chord; it includes seventh, ninth, eleventh, augmented, and diminished versions of each chord.
Close The Chord Finder tells you which notes are in a given chord; it includes seventh, ninth, eleventh, augmented, and diminished versions of each chord.
Delay Calculator The Delay Calculator converts note lenths into milliseconds and Hertz. Use it to synchronize delays, reverbs, and anything that accepts ms or Hz as a parameter.
Close The Delay Calculator converts note lenths into milliseconds and Hertz. Use it to synchronize delay plugins, reverb predelays, compressor release times, and anything that accepts ms or Hz as a parameter.
Frequency Translator The Frequency Translator converts note pitches to Hertz, and vice versa. Use it to tune percussion instruments to a key, or for designing sounds in a synth.
Close The Frequency Translator converts note pitches to Hertz, and vice versa. Use it to tune percussion instruments to a key, or for designing sounds in a synth.
Producer Tools is a musical Swiss army knife for musicians, producers, and DJs: it includes a delay calculator, frequency-to-note translator, chord finder, harmonic mixing wheel and equalization guide. It takes care of the tedious parts of making music so you can focus on being creative, and it"s all optimized for working with DAWs like Ableton Live, FL Studio, and Logic. Check out Producer Tools on your Android, iPhone, or iPad, and boost your workflow to the next level. Like Tweet
Equalization Guide The Equalization Guide gives you a cheat sheet for mixing drums, bass, synths, vocals, and more. Use it to bring out certain sounds in an instrument, and to help fit your mix together.
Close The Equalization Guide gives you a cheat sheet for mixing drums, bass, synths, vocals, and more. Use it to bring out certain sounds in an instrument, and to help fit your mix together.
Harmonic Mixer The Harmonic Mixer wheel is based on the circle of fifths. Use it to plan out a harmonic DJ mix, or to work out a great chord progression for your track.
Close The Harmonic Mixer wheel is based on the circle of fifths. Use it to plan out a harmonic DJ mix, or to work out a great chord progression for your track.
Web Tutorials The Web Tutorials section provides quick access to our collection of online music production tutorials (requires an Internet connection). | 3,661 |
Wyden Opposes 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act that Expands Government Surveillance and Undermines Independent Oversight Board
Bill Allows FBI to Demand Email Records With No Court Oversight by Simply Sending a National Security Letter; Narrows Scope of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Washington, D.C. –Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today voted against the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The bill includes provisions to expand warrantless government surveillance and takes aim at a valuable independent oversight board.
“This bill takes a hatchet to important protections for Americans’ liberty,” Wyden said following the vote. “This bill would mean more government surveillance of Americans, less due process and less independent oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies. Worse, neither the intelligence agencies, nor the bill’s sponsors have shown any evidence that these changes would do anything to make Americans more secure. I plan to work with colleagues in both chambers to reverse these dangerous provisions.”
Wyden opposes multiple provisions to the bill, including;
-Allowing the FBI to obtain Americans’ email records with only a National Security Letter. Currently, the FBI can obtain email records in national security investigations with an order from the FISA Court. The bill would allow any FBI field office to demand email records without a court order, a major expansion of federal surveillance powers. The FBI can currently obtain phone records with a National Security Letter, but not email records.
-Narrowing the jurisdiction of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), for the second consecutive year. The bill would limit the PCLOB to examining only programs that impact the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. Wyden has supported the PCLOB’s focus on the rights of US persons. Wyden opposed this provision, however, since global telecommunications networks can make it difficult to determine who is an American citizen, and this provision could discourage oversight of programs when the impact on Americans’ rights is unclear. Furthermore, continually restricting a small, independent oversight board sends the message that the board shouldn’t do its job too well.
The bill does include one proposal from Wyden, which would allow the PCLOB to hire staff even when the board’s Chair is vacant. Currently the PCLOB is prohibited from hiring staff unless a Senate-confirmed Chair is in place. This proposal is also included in separate bipartisan legislation introduced by Wyden and Representative Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii. PCLOB Chairman David Medine is scheduled to step down on July 1.
### | 3,662 |
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan's National Police Agency unveiled Friday planned changes to the nation's traffic laws that define road rage and impose harsher penalties for dangerous driving, as authorities look to respond to public concern sparked by several high-profile incidents.
The NPA told a traffic safety panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that the new regulations will allow police to immediately revoke drivers' licenses after one confirmed road rage offense to quickly get volatile and dangerous people off the road.
Drivers who lose their license after a road rage incident will be banned from getting behind the wheel for more than a year, while the NPA is considering punishment of a prison term of up to three years or a fine of up to 300,000 yen ($2,800).
At present, drivers' licenses are only revoked immediately in cases such as drunk driving or driving with a suspended license, among other offenses.
In comparison, current penalties for aggressive tailgating on expressways are up to three months in jail or a maximum 50,000 yen fine.
The NPA plans to work out details of a bill to revise the traffic laws through discussions with the LDP panel so that it can be submitted to parliament early next year.
According to the NPA proposals presented to the LDP and sources familiar with the matter, road rage will be defined as dangerous driving with the intent of obstructing others, such as tailgating, sudden braking or repeated swerving between lanes.
Forcing another vehicle to stop on an expressway will also be included.
To avoid punishing drivers who have accidentally driven in a dangerous manner in what appears to be a road rage-like incident, police can consider whether repeat offenses are carried out before categorizing it as a road rage incident.
Evidence such as dashcam recorder or security camera footage and testimonies from passengers will be required to establish a case.
In a related move, the Justice Ministry is planning to submit a bill to the Diet early next year that will outline penalties for drivers who cut off another vehicle to force it to stop.
Public concern over road rage in Japan mounted after a high-profile 2017 case in which motorist Kazuho Ishibashi forced a car to stop in the passing lane on an expressway where it was hit by a truck, killing a man and a woman and injuring their daughters.
On Friday, the Tokyo High Court upheld a determination by the Yokohama District Court that Ishibashi, 27, caused the accident, but ordered the reexamination of the case and the 18-year sentence he was handed at the lower court due to a procedural issue. | 3,663 |
Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
I opened my eyes a touch reluctantly this morning and began to read my e-mails in bed.
It was raining outside and the fog was thicker than "War And Peace."
Microsoft, however, wanted to cheer me up. It sent me an e-mail with the subject line: "You deserve something better."
"How sweet," I thought. "I'm not sure I actually deserve something better, but, you know, if you're offering, why would I not listen?"
I eagerly opened the e-mail and then recoiled a touch. For there was a picture of a half-eaten apple that looked like it had been sitting on a nightstand for a couple of days.
Beside it were the words: "Ditch that old apple."
Well, who wouldn't ditch a decrepit old fruit like that? But why had Microsoft chosen me for this slightly unedifying morning greeting?
The copy began: "You deserve something better."
"Yes, so you said. Please tell me you've had a chat with you-know-who about you-know-what and got you-know-somewhere," I mused.
But no. Instead, it explained that I needed something better like "the Nokia Lumia 1020 with a 41 MP camera. Trade in your iPhone 4S and get a Nokia Lumia 1020 or 1520 for free with a 2-year contract."
I was rendered marginally insensate. Which isn't so difficult at 6:47 a.m., but still.
I do like the Lumia. I've always liked Nokia phones. But I'm one of those people who is embedded in the Apple ecosystem and has, at least for the couple of years I've had an iPhone, insufficient reason to leave.
But what made me scratch my eyebrow and crinkle my nose was that I don't have an iPhone 4S. Why would Microsoft think I have one?
In fact, I've never had an iPhone 4S. I've owned an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 5. That's it.
Microsoft is much better feisty than flaccid. It's enjoyable that it wants to put up a fight, even if, at times, the stance is a touch gauche.
But if you're going to express a "rise and shine" to someone first thing in the morning, it's as well not to offer them a rotting apple or get their basic particulars wrong.
Every college student knows that. | 3,664 |
] Important files" (that's set by the -s switch in your.bat file.) Use message filters and that [backup] in the subject line to fritter these messages out of your inbox and into a "backups" folder automatically, so they don't get in your way.
Scheduling
The neat thing about this script is that you can use Windows Task Scheduler to set it to run at certain times of day. Once a day could work. I've been working on a huge client project every day for months now, and I've got a spare Gmail account with lots of space, so while those documents are undergoing massive changes, I have the script run every 20 minutes. See more on using Windows Task Scheduler.
Warnings
I haven't tested this out with very large files, but keep in mind that some SMTP servers may limit the size and number of attachments you can send at a time. Also, if you're a Gmail user, keep in mind that.exe file attachments don't make it through Gmail's spam filters. Basically this method isn't for backing up more than just a handful of smallish files, like Office documents.
Troubleshooting
If your script doesn't work, from the command line cd to c:\Blat250\full\. Then run the command from there (just type email-file-backups.bat) and watch the output. If there's a problem connecting to your SMTP server, it'll be listed there. There are tons of switches and options for Blat - if you need to specify a non-default mail port, or username and password to log onto your SMTP server, for instance. Run Blat -h to see the full rundown. Also, the Blat Yahoo! Group is active and the archives contain a lot of great troubleshooting information.
Mac OS X users
You Mac peeps don't even need Blat to get this done. You've got a program called mail all built into OS X and available for use at the Terminal, so this is even easier for you, ya lucky, shiny things.
If you're looking for a more, ahem, comprehensive backup plan, check out my previous feature, Automatically back up your hard drive.
In the meantime, enjoy your email backups!
Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, thinks redundancy is a very good thing. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader. | 3,665 |
From Steve Jobs to the Beatles, many of Western culture's most brilliant minds hold a special place in their hearts for LSD, the psychedelic substance that Timothy Leary once said "allow us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos." Although Leary's description sounds intriguing, if you haven't dropped acid yourself it's hard to imagine what these "bits and zones of Chaos" actually look like. That's where Chelsea Morgan comes in.
Morgan creates hallucinatory photographs that mimic the effects of the drug, giving viewers a small taste of the tripping experience. Her boyfriend Joseph Edmunds also explores the mysterious effects of LSD on his blog Disregard Everything I Say. We reached out to the couple to learn more about their explorations in communicating the incommunicable effects of the substance.
(Scroll down for a slideshow.)
HP: What is your process for manipulating these photos?
CM: I use two different pieces of editing software to create my images, Adobe Photoshop and Coral Paint Shop Pro X and all of the images used are taken by me.
Although the images I have created are accurate in appearance they do not come close to the real thing simply because the factors of impossible complexity and continuous movement within these distortions play a crucial role.
HP: What exactly is "symmetrical texture repetition"?
JE: Symmetrical texture repetition is just one of many complex visual distortions or alterations which consistently occur throughout psychedelic experiences on substances such as LSD, Psilocin, Ayahuasca, Mescaline, 2C-B, 2C-E and many others.
It can be described as the organization of rough textures within the external environment becoming mirrored repeatedly over its own surface in an extremely intricate and symmetrical fashion that is consistent across itself. This remains at an unchanging level of extremely high detail and visual clarity within both a person's direct line of visual focus and peripheral vision.
As these repeating textures are generated they begin to give rise to a huge array of abstract forms, imagery, geometry and patterns that are perceived to be embedded within and across the symmetry.
HP: How would you describe the relationship between drugs and art?
JE: Deep psychedelic hallucinatory experiences show anybody who chooses to undergo them that there is an infinite neurological universe within each and every one of us that has existed all along... This shows all of us that we as a species have barely scratched the surface in terms of the infinite possibilities regarding our creative output.
Check out Morgan's trippy images in the slideshow below and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
PHOTO GALLERY LSD Photos | 3,666 |
Autocomplete Maps (beta)
Autocomplete Maps are a way to display Google Search Autocomplete results for a collection of places on a map. Although the results are not necessarily scientific or correct they can be quite informative and/or entertaining. Clicking the labels will display a list of all the Autocomplete results that were obtained.
Click on the links below to view some example maps. You can create and manage your Autocomplete Maps using the Dashboard. A range of options let you select the search terms and display format for your map.
This project is based on Autocomplete Maps originally developed by Keir Clarke at Google Maps Mania.
The code incorporates the MapLabel control developed by Luke Mahe and Chris Broadfoot from Google.
Create Your Map
Example Autocomplete Maps
(Login required, register here for a free account)
Loves
Likes
Dislikes
Eats
Drinks
Can
What If
When Is
Why Is
Is Going To
Was
Is
Will
May
Does
When Did
When Is
When Will
Notes
You can use the default map of country names or specify your own KML of place names, e.g. US states or British cities.
Results do not always refer to the country name in some cases. For example 'Georgia' results tend to be for US state of Georgia rather than the country. Results for Chad are often for a person named Chad. Results for Guinea tend to be for Guinea Pigs instead of the country.
If no results are obtained for a search then no label is displayed on the map for that place.
The project is currently in beta. Please contact us if you encounter a bug or to request a new feature.
Map Labels
The labels displayed on the map are based on the original MapLabel code. Some additional features have been added:
• Labels which overlap with other labels at the current zoom level are hidden. The z index of each label is determined randomly so that labels have an equal chance of displaying. Zoom into the map to view more labels.
• The label colour is changed when the cursor is moved over a label. You can set the highlight font and stroke colour in the Map Edit page.
• The labels can be clicked to display an info window which lists all results returned from the original Google search query.
• You can click on a listing within the info window to search Google for the displayed text. | 3,667 |
ics. (C and D) The state feedback from the sensors may be used for closed-loop control of cylinder deflection. Solid lines indicate the set point, dashed lines indicate the mean position, and clouds indicate the 95% confidence interval, over multiple trials. Five trials are shown for the pneumatic skin and 10 trials are shown for the SMA skin. The sensor information can be used to create sense-plan-act loops. To demonstrate these loops, we wrapped both the pneumatic and the SMA skins around a foam cylinder with a 31.75-mm (1.25-in) diameter. By controlling a single actuator, the robot was commanded to shorten one side of the body in a stair-step pattern (Fig. 5, C and D). We were able to consistently control the change in length of one side of the cylinder to a resolution of 1 mm, with an initial sensor length of 90 mm, with both types of skins. The pneumatic skin had its sensors bonded to its contraction-type McKibben actuators (which start in their extended, strain-limited state), and thus, its sensors can only contract. In contrast, the sensors in the SMA skin were not strain-limited by their corresponding actuators. When the SMA skin bent a deformable body, the sensor on the outer surface of the curved body was fully pressed against the body, therefore giving a reliable measure of the strain in the underlying surface. Therefore, in Fig. 5C, we plot the pneumatic skin’s set point as a contraction (the skin using an actuator to contract its underlying sensor), whereas in Fig. 5D, we plot the SMA skin’s set point as an extension (the skin using an actuator to stretch its opposing sensor). Because we measured the deformation of the surface of a body, our control algorithm was not dependent on the material or the dimensions of the underlying deformable body. Rather, the linear response of the sensors was used to infer the length of the underlying portion of the skin. For the SMA skin, we implemented a bang-bang control algorithm. For the pneumatic skin, a proportional-integral controller was used as an additional control loop to deal with the faster dynamics of the pneumatic system. The complete actuation time of the pneumatic actuators was on the order of 20 ms, relative to an actuation time of a few seconds for the SMA actuators. The actuator dynamics are detected by the sensors, which have a sample time on the order of 4 ms. Further information about the control algorithms can be found in the Supplementary Materials. | 3,668 |
�As if clearing the way for a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Syrian Kurds wasn’t enough, President Trump seems determined to keep handing political and military victories to Russia and Syria, kowtowing to Turkey, and opening the door for further Iranian expansion in the region,” said New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“The murderous Syrian regime and the Russian security forces continue to rejoice over their control of almost all remaining autonomous Kurdish territory, in some cases literally standing in abandoned American military posts,” he said. “The only question remaining is whether President Trump is acting directly at the behest of Russian and Turkish leaders, or whether he is willfully blind to his own failures.”
David Petraeus, former CIA director and former commander of U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, was asked Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union if he thought the U.S. was sanctioning ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.
“Well, it certainly is ethnic displacement. And, arguably, it may turn out to be ethnic cleansing,” he said.
He added that Turkey has “legitimate security concerns” about Syrian Kurds who have worked both with the United States in the fight against ISIS and with Turkish Kurd terrorists.
A buffer zone the United States established and patrolled was useful in keeping the adversaries apart, though not to Turkey’s satisfaction. It’s now controlled by Turkey and Russia.
“It took 10,000 Syrian Kurd losses, years of effort by our Special Forces. … And then, in a single period of a couple of days, we are abandoning all of that on the battlefield,” Petraeus said.
Cornyn readily agreed that the U.S. withdrawal may have been ill-conceived and hasty.
“They have been fighting alongside of Americans and others to try to contain ISIS. So I have many concerns, but perhaps the overarching concern is [that] President Obama did not have a strategy, and President Trump didn’t inherit one, nor did he come up with a comprehensive strategy,” Cornyn said. “I wish that there had been more consultation with Congress and others and our allies in the region.”
Asked if he was satisfied with Trump’s latest moves, lifting sanctions on Turkey and declaring victory after last week’s withdrawal, Cornyn was cautious: “This thing changes pretty quickly, and we need for this to play out a little bit to have some clarity.” | 3,669 |
A black female rider was photoshopped into this promotional picture for RideLondon (Picture: RideLondon)
Organisers of RideLondon, an annual festival of cycling, have come under fire after it emerged a photo on their website had been edited to make the event appear more diverse.
The photograph on the website had been photoshopped to include a black woman participating in the event.
The picture has since been deleted from the site, the Sunday Times reported.
The full picture showed a group of male riders, with female riders from ethnic minorities on either side.
However, while the two men shown in the image took part in the event in 2018, one of the women only did so the previous year.
Event director Hugh Brasher confirmed that the image had been created from three separate photos and was intended at highlighting the diversity of people who take part in events, including the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 sportive.
RideLondon is an annual festival of cycling (Picture: Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto)
He said: ‘Three images have been combined to create this composite image: the female cyclists on the bottom left and bottom right were added to the central image of the two male riders bumping fists as they come down The Mall.
‘All images are from riders who have participated in sportives at Prudential RideLondon, and there was absolutely no intention to mislead.
‘It is not our usual practice to use composite images and this image has been removed from our website.’
Towns and cities across northern England and Wales to face new restrictions this weekend
He continued: ‘We know that cycling needs to do more to encourage people from all backgrounds to get involved and that is one of the key aims of Prudential RideLondon.
Cycling writer Jools Walker, who blogs under the name Lady Velo, and is black, said that organisers ‘should be embarrassed’ of the picture.
‘All I can imagine, is a group of white marketing executives looking at this image and thinking, “there’s a problem”, she said.
‘But instead of trying to address why people from these groups don’t see cycling as inclusive, they decide to photoshop in ethnic minority women — badly. They should be embarrassed.’
Got a story for Metro.co.uk? Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected]. For more stories like this, check our news page. | 3,670 |
Blog Post
AEIdeas
AEI’s Brad Wilcox has a new piece that looks at the connection between the safety of women and children and family structure. For instance, Wilcox points out, one study by the Department of Justice suggests “married women are markedly less likely to be the victims of intimate partner violence than are single women and women living in ‘other household’ arrangements.” While another DOJ study found “that never-married women are almost four times more likely to be victims of violent crime, compared to married women.” So both inside and outside the home, married women appear to be generally safer.
Wilcox also looks at data from Nicholas Zill (originally gathered from the 2011-12 National Survey of Children’s Health),which shows domestic violence is a great deal lower in families “headed by intact, married parents.” Below is a chart that shows, by family structure, the differences in “the odds that parents reported that their child had ever seen or heard ‘any parents, guardians, or any other adults in the home slap, hit, kick, punch, or beat each other up.’” This is after adjusting for “differences in the sex, age, and race or ethnicity of the child, as well as family income, poverty status, and parent education.”
Zill finds that homes headed by never-married, separated, or divorced mothers are about five times more likely to expose children to domestic violence, compared to homes headed by married, biological parents. What’s more: family structure outweighs education, income, and race in predicting the odds that children witness domestic violence in the home.
Of course the DOJ studies and 2011-12 National Survey of Children’s Health are not completely comparable, as one focuses on women and one on children, and the survey data controls for the variables of education, income, race, and so forth. However, both indicate that there is a relationship between marital status and violence.
Wilcox concludes:
We can speculate about the precise mechanisms—is it the commitment, the stability, the mutual support, the kinship ties, or the sexual fidelity marriage fosters more than its alternatives?—that accounts for this empirical link. But what should be clear to analysts willing to follow the data wherever it leads is this: a healthy marriage seems to matter more than money when it comes to minimizing the scourge of domestic violence in American families.
Follow AEIdeas on Twitter at @AEIdeas, and Natalie Scholl at @Natalie_Scholl. | 3,671 |
A Catholic priest in the Philippines was caught by police allegedly driving a 13-year-old girl to a motel to have sex after paying her 16-year-old pimp.
Monsignor Arnel Lagarejo was arrested Friday in a joint operation by Marikina police and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) after the victim’s mother contacted authorities.
READ MORE: Vatican's 3rd most powerful figure, Cardinal Pell, charged with multiple sex assaults
The priest, president of Cainta Catholic College and parish priest of St. John The Baptist, faces charges of violating the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.
Read: The Diocese of Antipolo's official statement on the incident involving Msgr. Arnel F. Lagarejos. pic.twitter.com/EA47Y9IYPv — Diocese of Antipolo (@antipolodiocese) July 29, 2017
Eastern Police District Director Chief Superintendent Romulo Sapitula said Lagarejos found the 16-year-old pimp on social media, reports PhilStar.
The Diocese of Antipolo issued a statement noting the seriousness of the incident and expressing its willingness to cooperate with investigating authorities. It confirmed that Lagarejos has been relieved of all of his duties in the diocese.
Lagarejos is also “forbidden from having contact with all but his lawyer, his brother-priests, and church authorities. He is particularly forbidden from any communication with minors and from maintaining company with them in any way whatsoever.”
The diocese said it does “not in any way condone or abet the trafficking in persons, particularly of minors, nor protect the offenders from prosecution, and subsequent trial and punishment when evidence so warrants.”
READ: The second Official Statement from the Diocese of Antipolo regarding the arrest of Msgr. Arnel Lagarejos. pic.twitter.com/eyJrFFz1Kh — Diocese of Antipolo (@antipolodiocese) August 1, 2017
Meanwhile, a separate inquiry will be carried out by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). Church authorities say this will be conducted independently of whatever conclusions may be reached by the police, and will be submitted to the Vatican upon completion.
Lagarejos has been released on bail after three days in police custody and is due to appear in Marikina court on August 3. Church officials told Rappler that they did not provide the bail money. | 3,672 |
Taking to the streets: Protesters show their anger during a water charges demonstration in Dublin. Photo: Collins Photos
THOUSANDS of water protesters are set to take to the country's streets again today as the deadline for registering households for charges looms.
The focal point of the demonstrations will be the capital, but rallies are also taking place in other cities and towns.
The protest comes as Irish Water confirmed that about 660,000 households still haven't registered for billing ahead of the deadline on Monday.
Marchers in Dublin will assemble at 2pm at Connolly and Heuston stations and walk along either side of the quays and meet on O'Connell Street.
Among those involved are the Anti-Austerity Alliance (AAA) and Dublin Say No.
AAA TD Paul Murphy was asked about the expected size of the protest on Newstalk radio yesterday.
"In terms of the protest on Saturday, one thing to stress is that this is not a national protest in Dublin taking place on Saturday," he said.
"This won't have the same character as the major protest which took place before Christmas," he said.
Scuffles
December's protest saw tens of thousands of people made their way into Dublin's Merrion Square.
There were scuffles with Gardai when a small group of protesters tried to get on to Kildare Street which had been sealed off.
Others blocked O'Connell bridge and rush-hour traffic was brought to a standstill in the city centre.
At that time the Right2Water group estimated that more than 100,000 people attended the main rally, while gardai put the figure at "30,000 plus".
That protest came despite of the government's attempt to quell the public anger with reduced water charges announced in November.
The Environment Minister Alan Kelly said the new fees were €160 for a single-person household and €260 for homes with two or more people.
He announced a €100 'water conservation grant' that would be refunded to Irish Water customers by the Department of Social Protection.
Last night Irish Water confirmed that about 660,000 households have yet to sign up to its books out of the 1.5m eligible.
While 1.06m have registered, only 837,000 of these were households that will be customers of the utility.
The remaining 220,000 are households on private water schemes.
Irish Water said unregistered households will receive the full bills without receiving the water conservation grant.
[email protected]
Online Editors | 3,673 |
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
According to the World Health Organisation, up to a half-million people around the world suffer a spinal cord injury each year. Often caused by road traffic crashes, accidents or violence, the loss of motor control or paralysis significantly impacts quality of life and requires years of treatment and care. Spinal cord injury is also associated with lower rates of school enrollment and economic participation, and carries substantial individual and societal costs.
Current methods for spinal cord injury treatment involve cumbersome brain-machine interfaces, with many cables linking the patient and a computer to restore limited motor functions. Other methods to map brain activity, such as magnetoencephalography, require very large machinery and particularly low-temperature working conditions.
To improve the quality of life of those suffering a spinal cord injury, ByAxon is bringing together a consortium of researchers from across Europe (Spain, Italy, France and Germany) to devise a new generation of spinal cord treatments. The four-year project started in January 2017 and is seeking to create implants that restore sensory functions.
Project co-coordinator Dr. Teresa González from IMDEA says they are focusing on recovering sensitive functions. "We want signals that start from the extremities to go back to the brain. This is very important since it has been shown that therapies focused on recovering the sensitive part as soon as possible are usually more successful in recovering the motor part."
The new nanowire-coated electrodes can act as a neural interface coupled with sensors able to read the magnetic signals of neurons. Special nanomaterials used in conjunction with the nanoelectrodes, such as carbon nanotubes, would also serve as a supportive framework for nerves cells, enabling them to pass signals over the spinal cord injury, effectively creating an active bypass. The nanotubes as neuronal prosthetics could promote neuroplasticity processes and as a final goal, contribute to the restoration of neural activity in the spinal cord.
If successful, ByAxon could have a huge medical and social impact in the long term. Not only would it enable sufferers of spinal cord injuries to regain sensory functions, but the technology could also serve as a basis for a new applications. Advanced neural interfaces with utility in retinal implants, brain-recording systems for patients with epilepsy, and deep brain stimulation devices for Parkinson's disease could all benefit from the project's research. The new sensors could be used beyond medical applications in a variety of everyday brain-machine interfaces that, for example, through wireless communication, can be used to control computers, drones or robots using thought alone.
Explore further Spinal cord injury affects the heart | 3,674 |
2016 represents the 20th installment in the series.Smitty's eighth studio recording entered the Billboard 200 at number 16, representing the highest-debuting Christian album in the history of the chart. Michael continues to record and tour today.The title track won "Rap Recorded Song of the Year' at the 1996 Dove Awards and the album spawned eight music videos during the height of Carman's career. Carman continues to tour today after announcing his cancer has gone into remission.Signed to a newly formed Gotee Records, Johnny Q. Public's debut earned them mainstream distribution from Elektra Records, virtually unheard of in the industry at the time. The video for "Body Be," their biggest hit from the album, got picked up by MTV. The band released one more album in 2000 before breaking up the following year.Long before it became popular to hold long vowel sounds throughout a chorus, Geoff Moore & the Distance had the nation singing "Home Run," the title track from their fourth album on ForeFront Records. Geoff Moore recently completed a Kickstarter campaign to record his 15th album in 31 years, raising just under $40,000. It's expected to be completed by the end of the year.Releasing on the now disbanded Benson Music Group, the second (and last) album from duo Neal Coomer and Jay DeMarcus hit No. 16 on Billboard's Top Christian Albums chart and produced 4 Top 20 singles. The band broke up in 1997 and DeMarcus later went on to become a member of the group Rascal Flatts which earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2012.A fixture on the charts ("Another Time, Another Place," "Friend of a Wounded Heart," "Watercolour Ponies"), Wayne Watson's 11th studio recording was not the commercial success his label was hoping for, peaking at No. 21 on Billboard's Top Christian Albums chart. Wayne currently is breaking from touring and recording but is still active with his fans on social media.The fourth album on Sparrow Records by Out of the Grey --husband-and-wife team Scott and Christine Denté--continued to push the group from their folk roots into a more mainstream pop sound that they have reclaimed since becoming independent in 2003. They are currently completing a brand new album and their son, Julian, completed a crowdfunding project for his debut EP.Want to discover (or rediscover) the best of 1995? Check out our official Spotify Playlist! Kevin McNeese started NRT in 2002 and has worked in the industry since 1999 in one form or another. He has been a fan of Christian music since 1991, witnessing first hand the year that changed Christian music forever. | 3,675 |
No one calls her album Athena if she isn’t trying to convey the strength of women. Brittney Parks makes her strength in her guise of Sudan Archives immediately known. The singer and violinist brings presence and personality to her debut full length album, having carved a unique space for herself over two EPs in as many years. Parks has a knack for writing massive hooks that will dig straight into your brain. But where her EPs stubbornly wrapped tracks of jarring, syncopated beats around those massive tracks, Athena leans more towards R&B, and Parks takes advantage of the space of an LP to smooth out any previous idiosyncrasies.
Parks learned to play violin by ear as a child and her approach to the instrument shows a creativity unburdened by classical constricts. It’s apparent that she has absorbed the potential of the violin and fits it according to the song. Sometimes that means orchestral filler gets tucked under R&B grooves and sometimes the violin stands in for a guitar or ukulele, either played in pizzicato or strummed.
The violin is also the axis her influences turn on. While songs on Sudan Archives’ EPs sometimes ceded ground from the violin to straight electronics, Parks’ instrument of choice is consistent throughout Athena. It’s dominant on songs like ‘Confessions’ – which brings to mind the sharp, defining leads that John Cale played on his viola – and ‘Glorious,’ in which the strong West African-styled rhythm on the violin is underscored by a thudding, buzzing bass.
The presence of Parks’ voice is also a sign of the strength she commands. She knows how to layer her vocals, how to punctuate a phrase, how to restrain herself to great effect. Mid-album track ‘Iceland Moss’ is a good showcase for this range, as what is a mostly achingly sincere breakup song shifts to a playful, teasing outro.
Parks has made her sense of self and ability to maintain her identity central to her music. The violin, already an outlier as a lead instrument in popular music, is one aspect of that identity. Her assorted rhythmic influences are another. Lyrically, Parks drives home her self-possession, whether in relation to a love interest or a community or a friend who is losing her way. “I’m too unique to kneel,” she asserts on ‘Confessions.’ Sudan Archives is honest, she is vulnerable, but she does not bow, she does not break. | 3,676 |
Star Wars Resistance Producer Confirms Orka and Flix as Star Wars’ First Gay Couple
Star Wars Resistance Producer Confirms Orka and Flix as Star Wars’ First Gay Couple
In a recent interview with the Coffee With Kenobi podcast, Star Wars Resistance producer Justin Ridge confirmed that Orka and Flix, a pair of alien starship-parts salesmen featured in the Star Wars Resistance cartoon, are the first openly gay couple on screen in the Star Wars mythos.
On the 298th episode of Coffee With Kenobi, a Star Wars podcast, hosted by Dan Zehr, Zehr sat down to speak with Star Wars Resistance executive producers Athena Portillo, Justin Ridge, and Brand Auman and voice actors Bobby Moynihan (Orka), Suzie McGrath (Tam) and Christopher Sean (Kaz) during a recent press day for Star Wars Resistance Season 2.
Related: Disney Cancels Star Wars Resistance as Kylo Ren Appears in Season 2 Trailer
During the interview, Ridge confirms to Zehr that Flix and Orka are “absolutely a gay couple.”
“I think it’s safe to say they’re an item, absolutely. They’re absolutely a gay couple, and we’re proud of that. We love Flix and Orka.”
Moynihan, who provides the voice of Orka, also commented that he had been preparing a response to questions regarding the characters’ orientation for “a year and a half.”
“I have had a sentence prepared for a year and a half. If someone would finally ask me, I would say, ‘All I can say is that when Flix says, ‘I love you,’ Orka says, ‘I know’…. They’re the cutest.”
Related: Disney CEO Bob Iger Doesn’t Believe Star Wars Has a Storytelling Problem: “I Think the Storytelling Capabilities of the Company are Endless”
Fans have long speculated that the two Office of Acquisitions owners were a romantic couple, citing small hints dropped throughout the show, such as when the two asked Kazuda Xiono to watch their store so that they could visit Flix’s mother together:
Fans should temper their expectations regarding further appearances of Orka and Flix as an on-screen couple, as Star Wars Resistance will be ending after its second season, which debuts on October 6th.
(Visited 1,527 times, 1 visits today) | 3,677 |
"Pop!"
That's the last thing Texas resident Aron Embry claims he heard before his Motorola Droid 2 phone "exploded" in his ear Thursday morning, leaving a trail of blood dripping down his face, according to his account, told to reporters at WFAA-TV in Dallas/Forth Worth, Texas.
Embry—and his hearing—survived the incident. And while the details are still unclear (both Motorola and the Consumer Products Safety Commission are investigating the case), this incident, if proven true, is different from most of the rare cases of gadget explosions for one key reason: It doesn't seem to have involved the battery. According to Embry, the screen broke into shrapnel, while the battery and phone innards survived intact. Could there be an explosion risk beyond the battery packed in your smartphone? We'll keep our eyes on the investigation to find out.
Lithium-Ion and Exploding Gadgets
The culprit in the vast majority of gadget explosions is the lithium-ion battery—marvels of electrical engineering that allow bright touchscreen phones and laptops to run for hours between charges. Of course, packing all that power into such a tiny package can have its downsides.
"We've had a few hundred incidents with lithium-ion batteries in cellphones and notebook computers," Consumer Products Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson says. "Not all of these resulted in injuries, but there are cases involving overheating, smoking, and potential fires."
It should also be noted that, although there a few well-publicized cases of exploding laptops a few years ago, the industry has since tightened its standards—batteries now come with safeguards to shut down or vent if they begin to overheat—and such occurrences are now extremely rare (not that they were ever very common).
So how can you prevent your phone from exploding? The Consumer Product Safety Commission has three tips for consumers.
1. Don't use chargers or batteries that aren't designed to work with a particular phone. Users should be particularly wary of knock-offs and counterfeit accessories.
2. Keep your phone away from excessive heat. That means don't leave it in a car in the middle of the summer, or near a heater or stove.
3. Keep the battery's positive and negative connections from crossing. This is typically caused by a piece of metal coming into contact with the battery.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io | 3,678 |
Over the weekend Armadillo Aerospace successfully launched an advanced sounding rocket from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The launch took place on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. (MST), and the STIG A rocket reached its expected sub-orbital altitude of 41.91 km (137,500 feet). Below is an image of Earth taken by a camera on board the rocket.
This latest launch is the thirteenth vertical launch test from the Spaceport America Vertical Launch Complex since 2006.
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“This successful test of our “STIG A” reusable sub-orbital rocket technology represents major progress for the Armadillo Aerospace flight test program,” said Neil Milburn, Vice President of Program Management at Armadillo Aerospace. “The flight successfully demonstrated many of the technologies that we need for our manned sub-orbital program.”
The STIG is a long, sleek rocket designed for lower drag, high speed, high altitude flights. This rocket is aerodynamically optimized for high altitude flights with long 15 inches (38 cm) diameter cylindrical tanks instead of larger spherical tanks.
Armadillo requested that the test flight be a non-public, unpublished event, as the company is testing proprietary advanced launch technologies.
The company is one of the leading developers of reusable rocket-powered vehicles and plans to provide a platform for civilian access to suborbital space via a partnership with Space Adventures, Ltd. Armadillo Aerospace has flown over 200 flight tests with over a dozen different vehicles.
On board the rocket was an experiment designed, built, tested, integrated, and performed by a team of undergraduate students at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics in the College of Engineering at Purdue University. The experiment studied a liquid and gas flow process that is sensitive to the gravity and acceleration levels encountered during spaceflight.
“Spaceport America has been an ideal launch facility for this kind of vehicle R&D testing activity,” said John Carmack, President and CTO of Armadillo Aerospace.
Officials from the spaceport were please at the launch’s success as well.
“Spaceport America continues to set the precedent for safe, efficient, effective service for commercial spaceflight customers,” said NMSA Executive Director Christine Anderson. “We are extremely pleased to support Armadillo Aerospace as they conduct their high altitude vehicle flight testing, and look forward to hosting their NASA-funded suborbital research launches.”
Source: Spaceport America | 3,679 |
Ethereum classic developers are speeding up plans to test a proposed upgrade for the blockchain network.
The move to ramp up the timeline came during a developer call on Thursday, during which ecosystem stakeholders expressed a desire to see the system-wide upgrade — dubbed “Atlantis” — occur sometime later this summer. But rather than committing to a mainnet activation date more than two months in advance of the original proposed timeline, it was agreed that the testnet activation of Atlantis could be brought up to two weeks from Thursday, or June 19, instead of in early August.
“The July 1st target is off. No need to further discuss that,” concluded user “soc1c” in the ethereum classic Discord channel. “We have agreed on testnet and can still decide on mainnet.”
The Atlantis upgrade introduces changes to the ethereum classic network that were formally introduced on the original ethereum network back in 2017. The goal is to enhance interoperability between the two blockchains such that migration of decentralized applications (dapps) from one blockchain to the other is easier.
Now, with a moderately sped-up timeline for testnet activation, some ecosystem participants hope to see Atlantis implemented on the main network as early as August.
Created in 2016, ethereum classic came about following a fork of the ethereum network in the wake of the now-infamous collapse of The DAO, a smart contract-based funding vehicle that failed following a debilitating code exploit. It arose amid disagreements over plans to hard fork the network to effectively undo the damage caused by The DAO’s failure, with ETC continuing on with the original chain.
Still, as early as last week, developers were in disagreement last week over certain components of Atlantis.
Namely, concerns had been raised over the efficacy of making a fixed cap to the size of smart contract code on the blockchain a backwards-incompatible change – warranting a hard fork – as opposed to a backwards-compatible change which would not require a mandatory upgrade.
No resolution to this disagreement has been made yet. However, developers did agree during Friday’s meeting that another call would be coordinated for June 13 to further discuss the contents and schedule for the upgrade.
As soc1c told CoinDesk:
“I can’t tell what the future will bring. For now we agreed to fork the testnets with everything included in [Atlantis] as it is, and reserve the option to modify mainnet spec and date in a subsequent call.”
Ethereum classic image via CoinDesk archives | 3,680 |
In a rare move, Microsoft is breaking its normal procedures and will issue an emergency out-of-band security update on Thursday to address a recently disclosed vulnerability that affects various Web platforms industry-wide.
Update: Microsoft has released the security bulletin as planned. The patches are available here.
The vulnerability comes in the way attackers could exploit hash tables to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. “Attacks targeting this type of vulnerability are generically known as hash collision attacks,” Microsoft notes. “Attacks such as these are not specific to Microsoft technologies and affect other web service software providers.”
According to n.runs AG, the research firm who discovered the issue, the vulnerability has been discovered to impact PHP 5, Java,.NET, and Google’s v8, while PHP 4, Ruby, and Python are somewhat vulnerable. The Ruby security team has addressed the issue, as well as Tomcat.
According to Microsoft, the vulnerability affects all versions of Microsoft.NET Framework and could allow for an unauthenticated denial of service attack on servers that serve ASP.NET pages. Sites that only serve static content or disallow dynamic content types listed in the mitigation factors below are not vulnerable.
Microsoft released the bulletin on December 29, 2011, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, and said it addresses vulnerabilities in all supported releases of Microsoft Windows.
“Hash tables are a commonly used data structure in most programming languages. Web application servers or platforms commonly parse attacker-controlled POST form data into hash tables automatically, so that they can be accessed by application developers,” n.runs AG's report explains.
“The impact of this vulnerability is similar to other Denial of Service attacks that have been released in the past, such as the Slowloris DoS or the HTTP POST DoS,” Chris Eng, Vice President of Research at Veracode told SecurityWeek. “Unlike traditional DoS attacks, they could be conducted with very small amounts of bandwidth. This hash table multi-collision bug shares that property. What’s particularly unique about this bug is that it affects a broader range of platforms and technologies in a virtually identical way.”
Microsoft is hosting a webcast which will provide additional information and address questions on the out-of-band security bulletin on December 29, 2011, at 1:00 PM Pacific Time. You can register for the webcast here.
The research from n.runs AG explaining the vulnerability in detail is available here. Information on mitigation and patches are available for the following: PHP | Ruby | Microsoft | Tomcat | 3,681 |
lot in classes, not talking a lot in classes, getting tattoos, looking for a higher purpose, looking to achieve moral or social change within a society—all of those things are things that can render a person reportable to Prevent,” he said. “Prevent allows police to interrogate children without the presence of their parents.”
Many Muslims say the government program legitimizes racism and fuels Islamophobia, which is on the rise in Britain. A 10-year-old was reported to anti-terror authorities for misspelling “terraced house” as “terrorist house.”
Muslim student groups, especially at universities, say they feel constantly watched and in danger of being reported for any activity or statement, however benign, that is deemed a bench mark on the road to extremism. Muslim children can be removed from their families if the counterterrorism program decides the parents espouse extremist beliefs. David Muritu, a maths lecturer, was fired earlier this month from Sandwell College in the West Midlands after he wrote the words “racist” and “should be illegal” on a poster promoting Prevent.
A spate of attacks on Muslims has included the vandalizing of five mosques in March in the second-largest city in the United Kingdom, Birmingham, which has a large Muslim population. White supremacist groups, such as the English Defence League, the Scottish Defence League and the British National Party, spew racist rhetoric, xenophobia and hate speech in public rallies and marches. These neofascist organizations condone and perpetrate physical assaults on Muslims.
A divided population is more easily controlled. It turns its venom on itself. The march of corporate totalitarianism intends to transform all of us into serfs regardless of our religious beliefs or ethnicity. It skillfully manufactures scapegoats—immigrants, Muslims, black people and others of color, dissidents, the poor—so the rising fury of a betrayed population will vent against a demonized target. This disease is as far advanced in Britain, which looks set to get the Trump-like Boris Johnson as prime minister, as it is in the United States. It is spawned by the same ideology, neoliberalism, and the same corporate forces that have seized political and economic power and orchestrated social inequality. These forces are, to us and to the ecosystem that we depend on for life, forces of death. The Grenfell fire is a harbinger of a day when greed will rule, human life will be cheap and the rule of law will be meaningless. Those who lost friends and family in the fire, or who witnessed the disaster, know a truth about corporate power that the rest of us must quickly learn. | 3,682 |
Yesterday, John noted that the escalating Democratic attacks on Catholicism are, in part, an attempt to prepare the battlefield for the day when Justice Ginsburg dies or is unable to continue on the Supreme Court. In that event, said John, President Trump will likely nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ginsburg, and Democrats will make Barrett’s religious faith the basis for attacking her nomination.
To which I say, bring it on.
Judge Barrett is the mother of seven children. Two of them were adopted from Haiti. Her youngest biological child has special needs. She is a remarkable and very sympathetic women.
In addition, she is a first rate legal mind. Barrett graduated summa cum laude from the Notre Dame Law School, where she was executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She then clerked for our friend Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.
As a law professor at Notre Dame, Barrett was twice named “distinguished professor of the year.” She continues to teach law as a sitting judge.
Do the Democrats really want to got after someone this sympathetic and this distinguished because she believes in the tenets of the Catholic faith? The answer seems to be yes. After all, they did it when Barrett’s nomination to the court of appeals was before the Senate.
But the Supreme Court is different. The public pays virtually no attention to battles over appeals court nominees. By contrast, as we saw with Brett Kavanaugh, fights over Supreme Court nominees rivet the nation.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that Judge Barrett is nominated to the Supreme Court in mid 2020, as the presidential race is heating up. Let’s hypothesize further that Senate Democrats try once again to savage Barrett because, as Sen. Feinstein once put it, Catholic dogma “lives loudly within” her.
How would serious, believing Catholic voters take this? Probably not well.
For this reason and because of her stellar qualifications, I’d be delighted to see President Trump nominate Judge Barrett for the Supreme Court if the opportunity arises. I’m a little less confident than John that Trump would nominate her. She interviewed with Trump for the last vacancy. According to the rumor mill, for whatever that might be worth, the interview didn’t go that well.
But if the Democrats are prepping the battlefield for a fight over Judge Barrett’s religious beliefs, it’s because (as John suggested) they can’t help themselves, not because they are thinking clearly about strategy. | 3,683 |
trails him with $302,000.
Both covet financial support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which typically waits until the dust of the primary race has settled to weigh in with an endorsement. A more immediate goal is to win an endorsement of two-thirds of the delegates to the state Democratic Party convention in February.
Laguna is home to four candidates. Besides Rouda and Keirstead, Roberts and Kotick also live in town.
Newport Beach residents are among the challenger pool: Brandon Reiser, the libertarian investment manager from Corona del Mar, and Laura Oatman, a Democrat and business owner.
California uses what’s called a “top-two” system in its primaries. The two candidates with the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, get their names on the general election ballot in November. In the 2016 battle to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate, 16 Republican candidates so fragmented the GOP vote statewide that none were on the general election ballot. To avoid a reprise, the party made a rule change last October to endorse candidates for statewide office in the primary, Kennedy said.
Splintering of Democratic votes among eight candidates in the 48th District buoys the hopes of Reiser, the libertarian. “It’s a nice vision, a path to getting there,” said Kennedy, citing the outcome of the Senate primary, where Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez contested each other. “There’s a case for that occurring,” he said.
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper based in Washington, D.C., calls the race a “toss up.” Inside Elections, another nonpartisan election watch group, predicts the 48th district will “tilt Republican,” meaning Rohrabacher is predicted to have an advantage over his challengers, none of whom are household names.
Tickets for the Newport Beach forum must be purchased and are available at eventbrite.com/e/andc-ca-48-candidate-forum-tickets-40885158610.
Dates to remember:
*March 9 is the deadline for candidates to file in the 48th District for the House of Representatives.
*June 5 is the primary election.
*Nov. 6 is the general election.
Correction:
Congressional candidate Hans Kierstead’s name was misspelled in the Jan. 5 print edition of the article “Capitol Aspirations Start in Newport.”
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If you use any version of Internet Explorer to surf Twitter or other Web 2.0 sites, Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina can probably read the entire contents of your primary hard drive.
The security consultant at Core Security said his attack works by clicking on a single link that exploits a chain of weaknesses in IE and Windows. Once an IE user visits the booby-trapped site, the webmaster has complete access to the machine's C drive, including files, authentication cookies - even empty hashes of passwords.
This isn't the first time security researchers at Core have identified security weaknesses in IE. The company issued this advisory in 2008 and this one in 2009, each identifying specific links in the chain that could potentially be abused by an attacker.
"Every time we reported this to Microsoft, they were fixing just one of the features," Medina said in a telephone interview from Bueno Aires. "Every time they [fixed] it, we managed another way to build the attack again."
Medina said he has fully briefed Microsoft on his latest attack, which he plans to demonstrate at next month's Black Hat security conference in Washington, DC. Microsoft's "rapid response team" didn't reply to an email, but a statement sent to other news outlets said the company is investigating the vulnerability and isn't aware of it being exploited in the wild.
The hole is difficult to close because the attack exploits an array of features IE users have come to rely on to make web application work seamlessly. Simply removing the features could neuter functions such as online file sharing and active scripting, underscoring the age-old tradeoff between a system's functionality and its security.
Based on Medina's characterization, it appears that fixing the weakness will require changes in a Windows network sharing technology known as SMB, or server message block, as well as the way Windows makes file caches available to a wide variety of applications.
"The things we are reporting are not bugs, they are features," Medina said. "They are needed for many applications to work, so [Microsoft] can't simply remove or truncate" them.
IE suffers from at least one other long-standing security bug that can enable attacks against people browsing websites that are otherwise safe to view. It can be exploited to introduce XSS, or cross-site scripting, exploits on webpages, allowing attackers to inject malicious content and code. Microsoft has said it's unaware of this vulnerability being exploited.
Core's previous advisories contain a number of workarounds, including setting the security level for the internet and intranet zones to high to prevent IE from running scripts or ActiveX controls. ® | 3,685 |
FBI Director James Comey refused to attend a classified briefing with the House Oversight Committee despite receiving an invitation to testify about the bureau's reluctance to disclose thousands of pages of evidence compiled in its year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email use.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee's top Democrat, said Monday that Comey had declined to appear at the meeting because he had "already bent over backwards" to explain the FBI's decision-making in the Clinton email case.
But Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the Oversight Committee, disputed the suggestion that he had invited Comey to the public hearing on redactions in notes from the Clinton email case, noting he had discussed specific points of concern in a personal phone call with the FBI director but had not issued a subpoena for Comey's presence at the hearing.
Chaffetz called the hearing to question officials about why whole and partial documents had been withheld from Congress, including unclassified files.
"I don't expect to have to issue a subpoena to see unclassified information," Chaffetz said.
"As far as we can tell, the redactions are covering information commonly given to Congress," he added, suggesting some of the details withheld from the FBI's notes were simply embarassing for the agencies or the people involved and were not sensitive enough to warrant redaction.
Cummings accused the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee of first inviting witnesses to a classified hearing about the FBI's redactions before moving at the last minute to make it a public meeting. Comey had been invited by committee Republicans to a classified briefing held last week, but no one from the administration appeared.
Chaffetz demanded the FBI provide its full investigative file to Congress rather than the "hand-picked" elements shared with lawmakers to date. During a heated exchange with an FBI agent present at the hearing, Chaffetz issued a subpoena for summaries of all interviews conducted with witnesses throughout the probe.
The Utah Republican demanded representatives of the State Department, FBI, Justice Department and three intelligence agencies — some of whom appeared under threat of subpoena— outline what records the government felt compelled to withhold from Congress and explain why they felt members should not be permitted to read those documents.
Administration officials from the Justice and State departments stated for the record that they had appeared voluntarily.
The FBI's decision to release a 58-page summary on the Friday before Labor Day rankled Republicans who questioned the bureau's reasoning for declining to publish any additional materials from its volume of documentary evidence. Critics blasted the timing of that release after the summary revealed scathing new details about Clinton aides' destruction of records under subpoena, among other findings. | 3,686 |
This is terrible news both for Ji Sung and for the production of Kill Me Heal Me, but there is one amusing angle that I’ll get into later after tackling the serious side first. With KMHM headed into the final week of its broadcast with two episodes remaining, the initially beleaguered production appeared to have overcome huge odds to become a relative critical and popular success with no major hiccups.
I should have waited before throwing in the congratulatory towel because news broke over the weekend that leading man Ji Sung abruptly came down with a vocal cord inflammation so serious he lost his voice. The man literally cannot speak a word. Oh boy, what’s going to happen with he is in most scenes of this drama and there are still two episodes left to film? His wifey Lee Bo Young is so not going to be happy after sending food to the production and telling them to use her hubby and return him nicely afterwards.
Ji Sung was rushed to the hospital emergency room after he realized that he couldn’t speak at all while he was about to do a scene on set. The doctor diagnosed him with severe vocal cord inflammation, likely caused by exhaustion and the heavy workload he’s been shouldering while playing 7 different personalities in the drama. He was told to rest immediately for an extended period of time, but Ji Sung elected to go back to the set to power through the filming. The PD explained that all the non-Ji Sung scenes will be shot first until he regains some of his voice back and then his scenes will be filmed. No word on what the production will do if he doesn’t get some of it back, or whether his scenes will be revised to limit his dialogues as much as possible.
The grueling K-drama live shoot has caused countless on-set catastrophes from car accidents rushing to scenes to falling off horses to working with broken bones, so Ji Sung losing his voice is totally not a shocking development. I do feel terrible for him but his hard work on this drama is definitely acknowledged, appreciated, and rewarded, so that might be a sliver of solace. The funny aspect of him losing his voice stems from the irony that it’s him, as opposed to his leading lady Hwang Jung Eum who screamed so damn much in the first four episodes of the drama I seriously thought she would lose her voice at any moment. Her screaming had to have turned off tons of viewers and I barely stuck with KMHM until that early phase passed and she calmed down to start acting vaguely sensible. Fervent wishes to Ji Sung for a speedy and full recovery! | 3,687 |
On Monday, protesters in Durham, North Carolina, pulled down a Confederate statue — without any official permission. In the following days, police arrested several people for the act on riot and property destruction charges.
But on Thursday, a crowd of residents in Durham showed solidarity with the arrested: Dozens lined up to turn themselves in for the “crime” of tearing down a Confederate statue — in an attempt to get all the charges dropped for those arrested.
Wow! Line of residents in Durham, NC attempting to turn themselves in for 'crime' of removing Confederate Monuments
(photo Katina Parker) pic.twitter.com/DjdNS8S6rc — Auburn (@AuburnSeminary) August 17, 2017
According to the Herald Sun, three activists actually turned themselves in, while about 100 others went to the jail to show support. More of these activists planned to turn themselves in as a symbolic gesture, but they were stopped from entering the building.
“It was a community all together who did that, who was responsible for that toppling of racism,” activist Lamont Lilly said in a speech to the crowd. “Very often, it does take one person to be the spark — to be the initiator like sister Bree Newsome. But it takes a movement, it takes a mass of people to support that — and keep those movements sustainable.”
This is just the latest phase in America’s ongoing battle over Confederate symbols and monuments.
The current debate goes back to a mass shooting in 2015, when self-described white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people in a predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof drew a lot of attention for posing with the Confederate flag in images that came out after the shooting — and that helped spur a fight within South Carolina about whether it should take down a Confederate flag that had flown at the state capitol for years. The state eventually agreed to officially take down the flag (after it was unofficially taken down by activist Bree Newsome).
Since then, many cities and states, particularly in the South, have been questioning their own Confederate symbols. The argument is simple: The Confederacy fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy in the United States, and that isn’t something that the country should honor or commemorate in any way.
But as cities resist or move slowly on this issue, some activists are taking matters into their own hands. That’s what we’re seeing in Durham this week.
For more on the battle over Confederate statues, read Vox’s explainer. | 3,688 |
The front doors of REI stores are staying locked on the biggest shopping day of the year.
"We think that Black Friday has gotten out of hand," said Jerry Stritzke, CEO of the chain that specializes in outdoor and fitness gear.
American retailers have been pushing "door busters" earlier and earlier, dragging employees in to open stores on Thanksgiving afternoon.
But this year, REI's 12,000 full and part-time workers will not only have Thanksgiving Day off, they will have Black Friday off with pay.
Stritzke acknowledged that keeping REI's 143 U.S. stores closed will put a dent in revenue. He said Black Friday has been among the company's top 10 sales days in past years.
"When you close...on one of the busiest days of the year, it's going to cost you money," he told CNNMoney's Cristina Alesci.
About 20% of REI's sales are made on its website, but the retailer won't try to lure online shoppers on Black Friday either. Customers will be able to place orders, but its homepage will try to divert buyers with a "cover screen" encouraging them to explore the outdoors instead.
Related: Americans ARE shopping again...selectively
REI isn't worried that its strategy could be costly. For one thing, it doesn't have shareholders to mollify because it's a "consumer co-op." That means instead of shareholders, REI has member customers who pay a one-time fee and receive an annual dividend -- usually equal to about 10% of their purchases that year.
Members account for about 90% of the company's sales, Stritzke said, and keeping their loyalty means focusing on what they care about.
"This business centers [on] the outdoors," he said. "Thus, we can do something like close our doors on Black Friday, and we'll have the membership that'll think that's cool."
Stritzke said that it's more valuable for REI to bring in new, passionate members than to compete for holiday bargain hunters.
"You need people to go to the mountain, you need people to catch that outdoor bug," Stritzke said.
That mantra has worked for REI. With 5.5 million members, it's the nation's largest retail co-op and has seen two years of double-digit growth.
"There is a lot of disruptive forces in retail. I think, doing retail today requires that you have a very crisp view of why your members or customers should come to you," he said. | 3,689 |
as the winner before the official results were in. This was similar to the Bush administration's efforts to aid Calderón in 2006, which began immediately after the vote. The Calderón campaign to establish his "victory" as a fait accompli was modeled after the Bush team's successful exploitation of its "home field advantage" in Florida in 2000, as chronicled in Jeffrey Toobin's excellent book, Too Close to Call.
As I have noted previously, it is not because Mexico has a rightwing electorate that it has gone against the trend of the last 14 years in Latin America. One country after another (Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and others) has elected and re-elected left governments in response to Latin America's worst long-term economic failure in more than a century (1980-2000). Although the rest of the region has done better over the past decade, Mexico has not.
Some have pointed out that the other left presidents in the Americas also faced hostile, biased media, and nonetheless won. This has certainly been true in all of the above-named countries; some, such as Bolivia, have even worse media bias than Mexico. But Mexico is, as the saying goes, "so far from God and so close to the United States".
It is one thing to portray a leader of Ecuador or Bolivia as "another Hugo Chávez", as the media campaigns there and elsewhere did. These candidates mostly laughed it off. But when the media in Mexico does the same to López Obrador – as it has been doing since 2006 – it has another meaning. Mexico shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States and sends 80% of its non-oil exports north. Not to mention the 12 million Mexicans living in the United States.
Mexico's rightwing media are in a stronger position to boost an effective scare campaign. From Greece to Ireland to Mexico, that is how the elite maintains its grip on power in failing economies – not by offering hope, however tenuous, of a better future, but by spreading the fear that any attempt at a positive alternative will bring Armageddon.
So long as Mexico's right controls the TV media – and can get some extra insurance by manipulating the electoral process as needed – Mexico will have a very limited form of democracy and will also fall far short of its economic potential.
• Editor's note: the article originally stated that the 2006 "adding-up" problem applied in a majority of polling places; in fact, it did so in nearly half. This was amended at 4pm on 10 July 2012 | 3,690 |
Jose would not stand out in that setting," said Mirabelli. "He was not a natural athlete in terms of size."
Ramirez was listed at 5-foot-9, 165 pounds in 2010.
The largest bonus given to a Dominican player by the Tribe was $1 million to Dorssys Paulino in 2012. He is listed at 6 feet and 175 pounds at 16. He is batting.268 (.735 OPS) with 4 HR and 21 RBI in 43 games at Class A Lynchburg. Signed as a shortstop, he has been converted to the outfield.
Paulino is in his fifth pro season, but he's only 21.
Because the MLB player draft does not apply to the Dominican Republic, players sign younger and the bidding can go high for a talented 16 year old.
While Mirabelli and Pena talked about other prospects, they kept coming back to Ramirez.
"Go ahead, sign him," said Mirabelli.
The Indians offered a $50,000 bonus. That's a lot of money to most Dominican families, but a small bonus for a ballplayer -- even in 2009 when Ramirez was signed.
The average bonus back then was in the $200,000 range.
HITTING HIS WAY UP
"From the moment Jose signed with us, he hit," said Mirabelli. "A lot young players have trouble with breaking balls, especially sliders. Not Jose."
In 2011, Ramirez batted.325 for the Tribe's Arizona League rookie team. In 2012, he batted.354 at Class A Lake County.
"He also knew how to play," said Mirabelli. "He can steal a base. He can bunt. He did a very good job with the glove at second base. He may not have been a big-time athlete, but he's a baseball player."
Ramirez reached the majors late in the 2013 season at 21. He split the 2014 and 2015 seasons between Class AAA Columbus and Cleveland, struggling a bit at the plate. It all came together this spring, when he belted the ball all over Arizona. It continued this season.
The guy who was considered too small, too slow and even too old to sign a big-league contract has become a big-time player for the Tribe.
And he won't be 24 until Sept. 17.
"He is very determined," said Mirabelli. "He never listened to those who said he couldn't play. What he's done so far in his career -- considering where he came from -- is just amazing." | 3,691 |
St. Paul and Ramsey County have officially joined the Vera Institute of Justice’s “Safety and Fairness for Everyone” Network, a group of 18 communities working with private partners to represent immigrants facing deportation.
The New York-based Vera Institute announced Tuesday that six new communities had joined the network. In addition to St. Paul and Ramsey County, the network now includes Philadelphia; Long Beach, Calif.; Dallas; San Francisco; and New Haven, Conn.
With the institute’s help, the local effort has raised $250,000 toward hiring a legal defense organization this summer that will assist those who have been detained by federal immigration authorities. Vera will contribute $100,000, Ramsey County will contribute $100,000 and St. Paul will contribute $50,000.
The goal is to mirror a public defender system, said Edmundo Lijo, an assistant city attorney in St. Paul overseeing the effort. “A community-based legal organization (will) represent people who have lived in Ramsey County who are being detained, so they’ll have access to an attorney during removal proceedings,” Lijo explained.
In a written statement, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said: “At a time when federal authorities are creating fear and apprehension amongst our residents, and discouraging the exercise of due process rights of immigrants, it is incumbent on local governments to address that fear and apprehension with support and resources to residents who are fighting to keep their families together and safe.”
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Ford Foundation grants $2.5 million to St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre, a record for the Black arts organization Ramsey County Board chair Jim McDonough added: “Ramsey is Minnesota’s most diverse county and throughout our history we have welcomed immigrants and refugees — indeed, this is one of our strengths. At heart, providing fair representation to immigrants in removal proceedings ensures that we uphold the constitutional guarantee of due process for all those who live here to maintain strong families and connected communities.”
According to Vera, 38 percent of people represented by the network’s attorneys in immigration court were allowed to remain in the United States. By comparison, only 3 percent of unrepresented and detained people nationwide are successful. | 3,692 |
One person is dead and two others are injured after a shooting at an assisted living complex in Westerly, R.I., Thursday morning, state and local police say.
The three victims were all women. Police say 47-year-old Julie Cardinal, a manager at the Babcock Village apartment complex, was found dead at the scene. Robin Moss, 38, also a manager, remains in critical condition as of Friday morning, and Donna Thornley, 66, a resident at the complex, is in stable condition.
The shooter was a 66-year-old male resident of the complex, police told reporters at a press conference Thursday. He was found dead in his residence with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. He has not yet been named by police. Only one weapon was recovered at the scene, but police did not identify the type.
“There’s no ongoing threat to the community at this point,” said Westerly Police Chief Shawn Lacey at the Thursday afternoon press conference.
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said on Twitter that she is closely monitoring the situation. “I stand with the people of Westerly and all Rhode Islanders in coming together to support the victims and their families during this difficult time,” she wrote.
Westerly Public Schools were on lockdown beginning at 10:30 a.m., according to the school district’s Facebook page. By 12:40 p.m., the district was notified by Westerly Police that it was clear to lift the lockdown.
“Our students and staff could not have been more appropriate in their response to this situation and the Westerly Police were as usual outstanding in their response, communications and support,” wrote superintendent Mark Garceau in the post.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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Write to Jasmine Aguilera at [email protected]. | 3,693 |
With Trump's Commerce Secretary, Wilber Ross, currently speaking in his confirmation hearing, it is convenient that overnight Barclays released a report looking at steel demand in the US as a result of Trump's proposed stimulus projects, an area that will be of substantial focus by Ross as he seeks to revitalize the moribund US steel sector.
That said, Barclays notes that while the potential demand from US infrastructure is there, it notes that it is skeptical on implementation for two main reasons. One is the rising risk of protectionism:
we think that hopes for a large infrastructure boost are premature, and the risks from potentially increased US protectionism are a significant headwind to higher global consumption. The potential for a large rise in commodity demand is certainly there, but we think that the market is “trumping up” the likely effects of Trump’s policies, as additional infrastructure spending requires rapid execution to yield the full metals’ demand boost.
Second is the still overarching lack of clarity about Trump's plan:
Given the unknowns about Trump’s infrastructure plan – lack of clarity on total spend, past ineffectiveness of stimulus efforts, timing of implementation, pushback from Congress – we currently model no additional metals demand from supplemental infrastructure investment during 2017-18 into our baseline forecast. As greater visibility becomes available, we will adjust our consumption forecasts to take into account the latest spending plans. The key issue we think is facing the metals sector is that even if infrastructure spending is approved at the headline level ($1trn over 10 years, or $100bn a year) and implementation is effective, the project schedule does not allow for an immediate effect on metals consumption, particularly over the next two to three years.
And while Trump's plans may or may not materialize as rapidly as home hope - or may be hindered entirely due to the rise of protectionism - Barclays has compiled this handy list of the top 10 infrastructure projects currently under planning or development in the US. As it notes, of the top 10, 7 are in the planning or conceptual phase. According to Cg-LA, an infrastructure consulting firm, and the average time to complete an infrastructure project currently stands at 9.5 years, meaning that many of the identified projects will not be completed during 2017-18.
The projects have a combined cost of $132.6 billion, and have the potential to materially boost demand for both copper and steel, not to mention create tens of thousands of jobs.
As for the final, and rhetorical, question - whether California really needs a high-speed rail system at a cost of $68 billion - it remains open for debate. | 3,694 |
with classical liberal value of open-mindedness. On that view, even refusing to hand money to one’s ideological enemies violates the principles of the Enlightenment. Somehow, the demands of “liberalism” mean that it’s necessary to pay for whatever the tastemakers at elite publications foist upon the public. Once the boundaries of “reasoned discussion” have been declared, one is obliged to subscribe to them.
These notions of liberalism and tolerance, then, are both offensive and illogical. They’re offensive because they deem it illegitimate to hold a different notion of what constitutes “reasonable discourse” (i.e. one that excludes climate change denial and anti-Arab racism). And they’re illogical because they have no clear definition of what the boundaries of debate should be. It’s not a violation of tolerance for a paper to exclude leftists and brown people from the ranks of its columnists, but it is a violation of tolerance if a layman refuses to fork over money for their racist hackwork.
This hypocrisy consistently pervades “free speech” and “open debate” advocacy from both conservatives and liberals. “Blacklisting” is an illiberal horror if newspaper readers stop subscribing when the paper becomes full of unscientific bunk, but when it’s used to keep pro-Palestinian professors like Steven Salaita or Norman Finkelstein from getting academic jobs, it becomes unobjectionable. When a racist pseudoscientist like Charles Murray is kept from speaking on campus, it means the left is “intolerant,” but when Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is forced to cancel her Black Lives Matter talks after receiving dozens of death threats from Fox News viewers, the “hear all sides” types fall strangely silent.
This misuse of “free speech” rhetoric by right-wing commentators is precisely what Marcuse warned of: “When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted.” If an “open forum” is confined to a certain set of ideas acceptable to political and economic elites, its vision of tolerance is a repressive lie. If the Times truly did believe in a “diversity of ideas,” the ranks of their columnists would look very different; they would certainly have to hire a socialist, and yes, maybe even a Trump supporter. Anything else, after all, would be illiberal. | 3,695 |
’t have the same space for character growth and development. They’re static, they’re boring.
- The crew of the show likes catradora! They care so much about these two characters and their bond, and I don’t see a crew of LGBT people making a romantically coded dynamic between 2 female characters, hyping it up, creating content of the two of them, just to have one be an evil abuser
This is also where I’ll point out that many other antagonistic characters have been much beloved by the fandom and part of majorly popular ships
- Zuko: Zutara & Zukka
- Bakugo: Kiribaku
- Sasuke: Sasunaru or w/e it is
And you’ll notice these are moooostly m/m ships, and people still stan them to this day. But catradora of course is f/f, and we know f/f ships are subjected to much higher criticism than m/m pairings. In fact, the defense for Zuko and Bakugo is their traumatic abuse backstory, so the same should apply for Catra.
I’m also going to say, at great risk to myself, that I think the discourse around this ship is mostly happening because the current She-ra fandom is largely made of of (ex) v/d fans, where discourse was basically a hobby. And for good reason, there was a lot of dumpster fires in that fandom and show, but I think it’s resulted in people coming into this fandom just chomping at the bit to jump on some discourse and be the most Unproblematic and Self-Righteous. Am I basically vaguing myself by saying that? Yeah, kinda, but I’ll have to stand by it. We’ve seen so little of this show and people are already making major decisions about what’s ok and what’s not because they’re coming off of a fandom with a pretty shitty crew, and they’re expected to be hurt again. But the She-ra crew isn’t the v/d crew, and they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
This got really rambly and stuff but the point is, I like catradora. I want to see them grow and heal and love each other, because I care about both characters. It isn’t about shipping an angsty abusive ship, it’s about wanting them to find each other again without the toxic influence of the Horde. | 3,696 |
ows from a stretch of fire in the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondonia on 23 August AFP/Getty Amazon rainforest swept by fires: In pictures A view of logs felled illegally in the Amazon rainforest are seen in sawmills in the Brazilian state of Amazonas on August 22 Reuters Amazon rainforest swept by fires: In pictures A scorched patch of land in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil on 20 August EPA Amazon rainforest swept by fires: In pictures Several fires are seen burning in the Amazon rainforest in this satellite image taken by NASA on 11 August AFP/Getty Amazon rainforest swept by fires: In pictures Smoke billows from a stretch of fire in the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondonia on 23 August AFP/Getty Amazon rainforest swept by fires: In pictures The sunsets behind clouds and smoke from fires in the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rondonia on 18 August EPA
Probably most notoriously, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been roundly lambasted for taking four flights on private jets in the last few weeks, as aviation is one of the leading contributors to carbon emissions. A diverse range of people – from TV presenters to environmentalists – saw the couple’s behaviour as audacious, given they’ve called for people to consider “how they treat the planet” – only to climb aboard a private plane to travel to destinations well served by commercial airlines from the UK.
Celebrities often face this difficult choice: they may want to support a cause, increase awareness, maybe raise some money, help people and use their platform and influence for good. But once they stick their head above the parapet they’re in the firing line.
We, as a society, have become harsher in our condemnation, far less willing to be forgiving and more than happy to judge everyone and everything. The rise of social media, particularly Twitter, has given users a platform to air their grievances – this can come in the form of anonymous abuse, or, in the case of President Trump, in very open attacks on opponents.
Given the condemnation thrown his way in reaction to previous climate change call-outs, that DiCaprio put the image up anyway shows his unwavering commitment to the cause. His stance highlighted the issue to millions and the story climbed up the news agenda of media organisations around the world.
Days after DiCaprio’s post, French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted describing the fire as an international crisis and calling for it to be discussed by the seven most powerful world leaders at the G7 summit this weekend in Biarritz. | 3,697 |
10. Deadgirl (2008)
At this point in time, zombies have cemented themselves as a main stay amongst the litany of horror sub-genres which can be found spread across multiple mediums. With Brad Pitt starring in and producing a zombie film, The Walking Dead being the top rated scripted show of the last television season, and a legitimate horde of zombie themed games being released over the past year or two, theres seemingly no end to this invasion of zombie fiction. Due to the mass presence of zombie-themed media these days, it can be hard to sift through the bad in order to find the good. Cliches and stereotypes run rampant through zombie films, which too easily lend themselves to archetypical end of the world scenarios, so I'm here to help guide you. Behold, my own list of ten awesome zombie films that you just have to see. But, just in case youre a bit tired of your run of the mill zombie apocalypse film, Ive dug up some more nontraditional titles as well. There may be some light spoilers for the films listed, but nothing too serious, so consider yourself warned. Go turn on Netflix, hit the lights and dust off your copy of The Zombie Survival Guide, were jumping right in:
Oh, Deadgirl, what an interesting experience you are. One of the more nontraditional zombie flicks on our list, Deadgirl is about a couple of marginalized teenage boys who uncover a female zombie, tied up on a gurney deep within the bowels of an abandoned building. These boys decide that, hey, for a dead chick, you could worse, and so they take it upon themselves to get a little rapey. Everything that follows is quite grim, and the movies pessimistic nature has earned it some criticism. I find though, that horror films can be quite effective when they work to make the viewer feel bad, and Deadgirl does just that. Its a grimy flick, probing into the darker recesses of human capability. What sort of nasty things would you do if you know you wouldnt get caught? Theres also an unknown element to the plot as the dead girls origin is never explained and it adds to the films overall creepiness factor. Not your traditional end of the world scenario type zombie film, and definitely not for the faint of heart, so if youre in the mood for something just a little bit different, give Deadgirl a watch. | 3,698 |
doing everything in their power to kill any truthful discussion about vaccine damage (that might save children)
As the truth about vaccines damaging children and causing autism continues to emerge, vaccine holocaust denialists like Gorski and Arianna Huffington are turning to more desperate, heavy-handed measures to silence filmmakers, censor internet journalism and attempt to prevent the public from gaining knowledge of just how much vaccines harm their children. In many ways, their efforts resemble the last ditch bunker-inspired propaganda of Adolf Hitler, who insisted on his “intellectual superiority” and righteousness right up until the day he finally put himself (and the rest of the world) out of his misery.
There is little question that people like Gorski will continue to aggressively push dangerous medical interventions that provably harm and even kill children… as long as he can keep getting away with it. Somehow, the wanton medical destruction of children seems perfectly aligned with his twisted psychopathy and deeply-rooted hatred for all those who promote healthy living. That Arianna Huffington is now joining the intense hatred of truth that has long emanated from the foul, dark corners of Gorski’s twisted mind is more than a bit alarming. Huffington is a democrat who claims to care for humanity while exercising compassion and empathy. So where’s her empathy on vaccine-damaged children? It has apparently been replaced by intellectual totalitarianism and a desire to destroy voices of dissent (which is similar to Gorski’s challenge of trying to destroy the voices, too, but in his case they’re the voices in his own head).
Wikipedia discredits itself by granting Gorski editorial control
As far as David Gorski goes, he seems wholly incapable of writing even a single paragraph without engaging in the deliberate, fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts. That he has managed to wrangle so much editorial control over Wikipedia is perhaps the most damning indictment yet seen about the editorial power structure at the online encyclopedia, where in some topic areas (such as vaccines and GMOs), the most psychopathic muckrakers seem to consistently rise to the top.
As a result, on certain topics, Wikipedia has become little more than a reflection of the derangement and mental illness that has infested the minds of its most powerful admins. While there are a great many dedicated and honest editors at Wikipedia, they do not possess the power craving and twisted fanaticism of people like David Gorski. It’s much the same in the political world, where the most insane criminal minds seem to rise to the top in almost every election (including the one we’re all enduring right now, come to think of it). | 3,699 |
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