text
stringlengths 245
34.4k
| id
int64 0
1.27M
|
|---|---|
[Guest post by Daniel L. Parton of the Chodera Lab, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.]
We’re about to roll out our first major F@h project on the new work server at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Our chosen target is a protein known as the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which is a member of the kinase family of human proteins. Kinases are key components in cellular signaling pathways, which control and coordinate all cellular activities. When kinases are activated, they pass messages to other proteins by attaching small phosphate molecules to specific parts of their structure. For proper regulation of signaling pathways, the cell must also be able to temporarily inactivate kinases. However, mutations in kinase genes may cause them to become constantly active, resulting in overactivation of the associated signaling pathways. In some cases, this causes the cell to begin dividing and growing uncontrollably, and this chain of events is the cause of many types of cancer.
EGFR mutations are specifically associated with certain types of cancer of the lung, breast, colon, rectum, and brain. Although a small number of anti-EGFR drugs are available (for example, gefitinib, erlotinib, and cetuximab), the development of resistance mutations during treatment is a huge barrier to their effective use.
The Chodera Lab is working to understand a number of factors which have historically hindered the development of effective kinase drug treatments. Firstly, we are interested in what makes a drug molecule selective for one kinase over another (since there are approximately 500 types of kinase in a human cell with nearly identical active sites). Secondly, we want to understand the physical mechanism by which resistance mutations develop to diminish the therapeutic effect of a drug. Eventually, we also hope to be able to use genetic sequencing data from individual cancer patients to predict which particular drug treatment might be optimal given a particular patient’s tumor mutations. There are many theoretical and algorithmic hurdles that we will need to overcome on the way, but these F@h simulations of EGFR will be a first step towards these goals.
Thanks again to all the F@h donors for contributing their computer time to enable this research!
—
The team of researchers studying EGFR includes Daniel L. Parton, Patrick M. Grinaway, Kyle A. Beauchamp, and Sonya M. Hanson in the Chodera Lab at MSKCC. Special thanks to Richard Knospler in the MSKCC Open Systems group for all of his hardware and software help in getting our servers up and running! | 4,300 |
of recent events. "Easily duped Palin supporters prove: Some white women are just as dumb as men." Is that all it is? Maybe so.
Ah, but there is good news. It appears the bloom is already off the McPalin rose, the baby bump she gave McCain is already gone, as everyone from here to Wasilla is sick to death of hearing about her. Every day that goes by it comes clearer that the Sarah juggernaut is no juggernaut at all but merely an increasingly disturbing PR stunt, and a bit of a disgrace for John McCain himself, whose once-noble aura of integrity and class has essentially vanished.
A potent backlash is coming fast. Actually, it began almost immediately, just after the Republican National Convention, when the GOP cheerfully announced they'd raised a whopping one million bucks in the 24 hours following Palin's speech, so inspired was the heavily drugged conservative base by her teleprompter-reading skills (she didn't write a single word of her own speech, of course; it came from a former Bushite, well before she was the VP pick).
Well, gosh. Really? A million? Wow.
But then Obama's campaign issued a statement of their own. Turns out they'd raised a bit money in the exact same time frame, a rather impressive outpouring of cash from all those on the left who could be heard screaming "oh my God no way in hell" to their TV screens as Palin's finger jabbed at the heart of all that's right and good with the world. The amount Obama raised in the same 24 hours? $10 million. Well now.
How much of that staggering amount came from the newly galvanized, infuriated female populace from the left who see right through Palin's shrill charade and damn well recognize an imposter in their midst, it's impossible to tell. But I think it's a damn safe bet to assume, they are legion.
And let me tell you, they are pissed.
Mark Morford's latest book is 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism'. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is markmorford.com. For his yoga classes, workshops and retreats, click markmorfordyoga.com.
Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate, and is frequently cross-posted to Huffington Post. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list, click here and remove three more.
This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page. | 4,301 |
THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice has defended procedures which mean it does not know the cause of death of about one in three asylum seekers who have died while in the direct provision system.
The Irish Catholic yesterday published details obtained through the Freedom of Information Act relating to the causes of death of 44 people in direct provision over the last decade.
The names and nationalities were not included in the released information, merely the causes of death.
The figures came from the Reception and Integration Agency, which falls under the Department of Justice, and recorded the causes of death of 15 of those listed as unknown.
The article further pointed out the causes of death that were listed were not definitive but were recorded as “suspected cause of death”.
“Of those for whom there is a suspected cause of death, two people are thought to have died as a result of suicide, one person as a result of a stabbing incident and another drowned in the last ten years,” the article stated.
The issue of the department being unaware of the causes of death of residents within the direct provision system is one which has been raised before.
Attempts have been made to push for greater transparency in the area but the department has consistently defended the failure to collect information and put it into the public domain.
Commenting on the latest controversy, the Department of Justice noted that the majority of the deaths in direct provision occur when the deceased people are outside of the accommodation centres. In practice, this frequently means the person died in a hospital.
The department argued that if the Reception and Integration Agency was to seek to record such information it may be in breach of privacy laws.
RIA does not and will not seek information on protection applicants outside its remit and views the seeking out of such information as a breach of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003. The RIA is not entitled to hold or have access to the death certificate of any individual.
The department also added that although the deaths of the individuals was not held by the government, this did not mean that they were not recorded.
“It is simply not true that the cause of death in such cases is unknown to the State,” the department said in a statement.
“Deaths of people resident in State-provided accommodation is recorded in the normal way and a record of the death is held by the registrar general of births, deaths and marriages.”
Direct provision centres house asylum applicants and their families while applications are being processed but the conditions in which the people are held and the length of time they are required to stay there has been frequently criticised. | 4,302 |
Photo
NEW DELHI— A diplomatic tiff between India and Italy showed no signs of easing Monday after India’s Supreme Court extended its travel restrictions against the Italian ambassador for another week.
A lawyer for Ambassador Daniele Mancini pleaded in a hearing Monday that his client enjoys diplomatic immunity that protects him against arrest or detention. But according to local news reports, justices on the court verbally rejected that argument.
The standoff between the countries has been brewing for a year after two Italian marines shot and killed two Indian fisherman they had mistaken for pirates. Italy claims the events took place in international waters, while the Indian authorities have responded that they took place in Indian waters off the southern state of Kerala.
The two marines, who always appear impeccably dressed and groomed and wearing stylish sunglasses, surrendered last year to the Indian authorities and went to jail. They were allowed to return home for the Christmas holidays, after which they returned to India and went back to jail.
Most recently, Mr. Mancini asked for permission for the men to return to Italy for four weeks to vote in that country’s elections, and he signed an affidavit promising that they would return.
Last week, Mr. Mancini formally reneged on that promise, saying the marines would not return. In response, the Indian Supreme Court issued an alert to airports barring Mr. Mancini from leaving the country.
The question is whether Mr. Mancini surrendered his diplomatic immunity in the matter when he filed his affidavit promising the marines’ return, as he may very well have. But Indian officials have so far declined to say how they would respond if Mr. Mancini appeared at an airport seeking to leave the country. Arresting or detaining the ambassador would be a highly unusual step.
Relations between Italy and India have been strained for other reasons, including a growing furor over alleged bribes paid to Indian military officials by officials of the Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica to win a contract to provide high-end helicopters. Indian officials repeatedly claimed to have gotten little cooperation from the Italian authorities in their investigations of the alleged bribes. Silvio Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister, has defended bribes as necessary “when you are negotiating with third world countries and regimes,” hardly a ringing endorsement of the Indian government.
An added part of the embarrassment for both sides is that Italy is the birthplace of India’s most powerful woman, Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress party. Mrs. Gandhi rarely likes to mention her foreign origins, so any scandal involving Italy is embarrassing for her, never mind two such scandals. | 4,303 |
Jagmeet Singh is doubling down on claims that the New Democratic Party would decriminalize personal possession of all drugs.
The newly elected leader of Canada’s federal NDP recently visited an overdose prevention site in Vancouver and says he witnessed the horrific toll of the country’s ongoing opioid epidemic.
“I saw that people’s lives are being destroyed while the federal government does little or nothing and it breaks my heart,” said Singh at this past weekend’s B.C. NDP convention.
“I saw with my own eyes the devastation of the opioid crisis.”
Singh – who worked as a lawyer in the criminal justice system for many years – added that drug addiction is a matter of social justice, not criminal justice. He also said federal legislation should reflect this distinction and implored the Trudeau government to declare opioid addiction a national crisis.
“To me poverty, mental health and addictions don’t sound like criminal justice problems,” he said. “They sound to me like a social justice problem.”
“That’s why I’m calling for the decriminalization of all personal possession offences when it comes to drugs to make a difference in the lives of people and actually bring real change.”
Singh has been vocal in the past about the need for decriminalization of cannabis and other drugs.
"People who are charged with personal possession offences are often those who are poor, often those who have mental health issues and often those who are addicted,” Singh said in September while running for the NDP leadership, adding: “what we need to do is decriminalize and work towards harm reduction, supports and rehabilitation.”
Just last month during an interview with VICE, Singh said it was “incredibly irresponsible” of the Trudeau government not to immediately decriminalize cannabis when plans for recreational legalization were presented.
“The signal's been given that [cannabis] is gonna be legalized but at the same time right now, people are still being arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated, for a substance that's going to be completely legalized in a short period of time,” he said.
During this same interview, Singh called for “automatic pardon[s] for an offence that’s legalized.”
“There also should be a path towards pardons,” he said. “People shouldn't have a criminal record that's going to preclude them from opportunities, like employment, traveling, maybe even in some cases educational opportunities.”
h/t Global News, VICE | 4,304 |
The Republican Convention this summer is already expected to be a hectic and impassioned affair.
Now, potentially adding to the mix is a suggestion by more than 20,000 people, that those attending the event be allowed to carry firearms.
A petition on the Change.Org website calls on the Republican National Convention organisers to permit the carrying of licensed weapons at the rally at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Donald Trump may not secure a majority of delegates before the delegation (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The petition says that current rules bar the carrying of firearms at the arena.
It adds: “This is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and puts all attendees at risk. As the National Rifle Association (NRA) has made clear, “gun-free zones” such as the Quicken Loans Arena are “the worst and most dangerous of all lies”.”
It continues: “Cleveland is consistently ranked as one of the top ten most dangerous cities in America. By forcing attendees to leave their firearms at home, the RNC and Quicken Loans Arena are putting tens of thousands of people at risk both inside and outside of the convention site.”
Many political observers believe that the convention, to be held between July 18-21, will likely be a dramatic and heated event.
The group has called on Ohio Governor John Kasich to use his executive powers (Reuters)
While Donald Trump is currently leading the Republican race, it is possible he will not secure a majority of delegates before the convention - a situation that last occurred in 1976. There are already a number of plans in place by those opposed to the tycoon, to try and stop Mr Trump becoming the candidate should the convention be “contested”.
Security for the event will be the responsibility of the Secret Service, along with police from Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, and other state and federal officials. The Secret Service banned guns at the Republican Convention in Florida four years ago.
“They are coordinating and will be continuously refining security plans leading up to the national convention,” Republican National Convention spokesperson Alee Lockman told the Akron Beacon-Journal newspaper.
The group behind the petition, the so-called Americans For Responsible Open Carry, also wants presidential contender Ohio Governor John Kasich, to use his executive power to override the so-called gun-free zone loophole in Ohio’s law.
It demands that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus explain how “a venue so unfriendly to Second Amendment rights was chosen for the Republican Convention”. | 4,305 |
Many have their minds made up as to whether or not they'll use recreational marijuana after the first of January, but for people who want to own and purchase guns, that decision may be more complicated.
The federal background check form you need to fill out to buy a gun from a dealer if you use illegal substances, and it reminds you that marijuana specifically is still illegal at a federal level, which has local officials and firearms users cautioning those looking to buy guns.
"We don't have a lot of information either from the state or the federal government as far as this is concerned", said Phil Alexander.
Alexander said when teaching his classes at Great River Fire Arm Training in Quincy, he doesn't know what to tell his students when they ask about recreation marijuana and buying guns.
"There's too many conflicts between the state and the federal government to be able to really give a definitive answer, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a court of law I really can't give legal advice, that's gotta come from those people," said Alexander.
Those concerns extend to the local State's Attorney's office as well, where officials say they're still waiting for more direction from the federal level
"On January first is a legal substance, there is no basis for an individual to not receive a FOID card because they legally use cannabis," said Lead Trial Attorney at Adams County State's Attorney office Josh Jones.
Jones said while firearm sales between individuals and purchases of ammo likely won't be affected as they don't go through the federal background check process. the same can't be said for all gun purchases.
"Now once you have that FOID card to purchase firearms, is certainly a question that's up in the air and deals with areas of federal law that our office doesn't deal with," said Jones.
Alexander said that's why he tells his students this:
"My personal advice would be, if you're just going to try recreational marijuana just because you want to try it, don't, until there's been a court case that actually sets the law," said Alexander.
Illinois State Police said troopers won't be revoking FOID cards based only on legal cannabis usage, but in accordance with state and federal law, those who are addicted or a habitual user of narcotics will still not be permitted to use firearms
While federal authorities haven't commented on the issue, the Illinois State Police said FOID cards could also be denied or revoked for those who violate certain provisions of the cannabis regulation and tax act.
Recreational marijuana will become legal in the state of Illinois January first, it was signed into law June 2019. | 4,306 |
Come sign with me: QPR are keen to land new faces this month (Picture: Getty)
QPR boss Harry Redknapp has opened talks with six players – Mohamed Diame, Robbie Keane, Tim Cahill, Nicolas Anelka, Yann M’Vila and Loic Remy – over moves to the club.
Redknapp is desperate to add to his struggling Rangers squad this month, with the club currently odds-on favourites to be relegated from the Premier League in May.
It’s a realistic threat that has forced Redknapp’s hand and the manager is said to be keen on bringing in as many new players as possible to help the fight.
The 65-year-old confirmed his interest in West Ham star Diame, Shanghai outcast Anelka and MLS-based duo Keane and Cahill over the weekend, and reports now suggest talks are ongoing with all of those players over a move.
Rescue me: Nicolas Anelka is desperate to leave Chinese club Shanghai (Picture: AFP)
Keane and Cahill are likely to be six-week loans maximum, but Redknapp is reportedly still willing to bring them for a short-term impact.
Elsewhere, deals for Diame and Anelka are at an early stage but Redknapp confirmed he is pursuing them on Friday even though they would be difficult.
‘Diame’s a good player. You would love to have him here but he belongs to West Ham. The whole of football knows about his £3.5million buyout clause though,’ teased Redknapp.
‘Anelka is another one. He is a top player so we would be interested but whether we could afford to get anywhere near him I’m not sure at the moment.’
Class act: France star Yann M’Vila is also wanted by QPR (Picture: Getty)
QPR have also cast an eye a bit further afield, with French newspaper L’Equipe suggesting that talks are underway with Marseille and Rennes for their international stars Remy and M’Vila.
Remy, who is also wanted by Newcastle, is available for £10million while M’Vila’s agent has offered him around clubs in Europe in recent weeks. He would cost upwards of £10m, though.
Redknapp is also expected to open negotiations with Tottenham over a loan deal for Jake Livermore in the next few days, having confessed recently that he’s already looking into a deal there. | 4,307 |
This will come as no surprise to us who have recognized Trump has the character of a sullen 6-year-old, but apparently he’s drawn up an enemies list of people that he will target if he gets in the White House, God forbid:
Spoke w/ a Trump friend this afternoon. Says Trump paying close attn to who in GOP is with him now, who is not. "Will remember," friend says — Robert Costa (@costareports) June 11, 2016
Now, do you all remember when a few “Never Trump” people said that they were going to keep track of the most virulent Trump supporters so that we don’t support THEM again in the future? We were called fascists and extremists and everything else. What do you wanna bet that those same TrumpRoaches are gonna LOVE that Trump wants to pay back his critics if he gets into office?
Here are some responses from people who don’t give a crap:
Retweet if you agree it's a privilege and honor to be on @realDonaldTrump's enemies list. https://t.co/eEgpzI47LY — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 11, 2016
Of course he is. Because this is all about him, not about making America great again. https://t.co/LumQZ2cH5A — Konni Burton (@KonniBurton) June 11, 2016
This is very, very un-American. It IS Mafia-like, and worse. Remember: This is America. Insist on your independence! https://t.co/Fu8PVDPpIi — Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) June 11, 2016
I hope he can spell my name correctly… https://t.co/4ee5iMJYsB — TheFOO (@PolitiBunny) June 11, 2016
Is there an email address where I can register my position, lest I be missed? https://t.co/HvT7uBRugD — Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) June 11, 2016
Here’s the essential difference – we were talking about a list when we are out of power so that we don’t support those who betrayed our principles. Trump will be using the full powers of the federal government behind him when he attacks his detractors because they won’t worship him personally.
He’s not making American “great again” – he’s making it into every pathetic despotic tyranny we see all over history. | 4,308 |
Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler tried to answer critics in a statement after the violence from Antifa protesters against journalist Andy Ngo on Saturday, but he was met with a scorching response.
"Portland has always been a beacon of free speech. We are proud of that history," said Wheeler. "But in the last couple of years, some have increasingly used their opportunity to exercise their 1st amendment rights, as an opportunity to incite violence."
"Over the weekend some chose to engage in violence in Portland, which is unacceptable and will not be tolerated," he continued.
"We stand against all forms of violence - regardless of someone's political leanings. Portland police officers have the unenviable task of keeping the peace. It's a difficult job and hard decisions are made in real-time," Wheeler added.
We stand against all forms of violence - regardless of someone's political leanings.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) July 1, 2019
"While we continue to learn more about what transpired over the weekend, we will keep you informed," he concluded. "We will do everything we can to make sure that those who have committed violence are held accountable."
Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner condemned the violence but demanded that Mayor Wheeler allow police to do their jobs.
"Where are the voices condemning the lawlessness and violence?" Turner asked in a statement. "If this violence had been directed at Antifa, there would have been an immediate call for an independent, outside investigation. This is a perfect example of Portland politics at work and why our great City is now under fire in the national news.
"It's our job to ensure that our community can peacefully protest without fear of violence but right now our hands are tied," he added later in the statement.
"It's time for our Mayor to do two things: tell both ANTIFA and Proud Boys that our City will not accept violence in our City and remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement action," Turner concluded. "Enough is enough."
On Monday, Ngo's lawyer issued a wanting to the Antifa provocateurs who attacked his client, while putting the blame on city government leaders.
"Goodnight everyone except Antifa criminals who I plan to sue into oblivion and then sow salt into their yoga studios and avocado toast stands until nothing grows there," Dhillon said in a tweet, "not even the glimmer of a violent criminal conspiracy aided by the effete impotence of a cowed city government."
Here's the latest on the Antifa attack in Portland: | 4,309 |
President Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to cast doubt on a UN report on climate change that had dire warnings about how little time we have to stop a global catastrophe.
Trump suggested that the world's climate might actually be "fabulous" and that he'd seen reports expressing that position.
The UN report outlines the effects of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Trump has previously called climate change a "hoax," and last year he announced he would pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday cast doubt on a United Nations report warning that we have just 12 years to curb climate change by suggesting it wasn't more credible than reports that say the environment is "fabulous."
The UN report, which is based on more than 6,000 scientific references from 91 authors across 40 countries, outlines the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It warns that the world is rapidly running out of time before the planet will see catastrophic effects.
Drafted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's climate-change body, the report calls for "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society."
Trump said on the White House lawn on Tuesday that the UN report "was given to me."
"And I want to look at who drew it, you know, which group drew it," he said.
He suggested that other reports were as valid as the UN's, though he did not specify any.
"I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren't so good," Trump said.
Trump has previously called climate change a "hoax" and tweeted in 2012 that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."
Activists protested after Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord last year. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
As president, Trump has been unwilling to take steps to curb climate change that he feels would damage some industries.
Last year, he announced he would pull the US out of the landmark Paris agreement on climate change. The accord, signed by 195 nations in December 2015, set a global goal of keeping the planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Trump's decision was met with condemnation from several world leaders.
"We are going to be environmentally friendly, but we're not going to put our businesses out of work, and we're not going to lose our jobs," Trump said at the time. "We're going to grow." | 4,310 |
they value their long-term compliance over short-term financial gain.
Bucking this trend, however, Binance has already run airdrop campaigns for BNB, its native token. It could, therefore, be argued that they will eventually be considered non-compliant for the listing of utility tokens if they ever decide to allow US customers to use their platform. This is despite them being the biggest exchange for utility tokens in the world with the largest user base. However, most observers can see that the decision to relocate to Malta from Japan and China exposed a worrying lack of regulatory planning that will eventually catch them up and put a stop to any potential US expansion.
Unfortunately, the pressure exerted by reckless exchanges to encourage utility tokens to behave like securities has crushed the future aspirations of almost all of them. In their hunger to offer listings for up to $1 million, they almost destroyed the industry in the process. It was simply a matter of good judgment that almost all of the factoring tokens managed to retain their utility token integrity. They are also still on course to continue meeting the exacting regulatory standards to come. And yes, following the logic above, that could mean choosing not to pursue a listing at Binance, despite it being the most popular exchange in the world.
Since Binance is not US-based, and therefore unlikely to ever meet the USA’s stringent criteria, there is a risk that any listing there could jeopardize a token’s future place on the fully regulated US-based exchange all token holders want. As everyone accepts deep down, the global blockchain community would be incomplete without the United States of America, and so it is completely understandable that PayPie and Hiveterminal (listed on less than 10 exchanges between them) have all avoided getting listed on any more non-compliant exchanges than absolutely necessary. And it is equally unsurprising to see Populous listed on so many too.
In the summer of 2017, all ICOs had the same choice: spend your ICO funds on product development or exchange listings. As you can see, the prudent PayPie and Hiveterminal mostly chose the former, whereas Populous mostly chose the latter. Only time will tell as to which decision was correct.
So, there you have it! I hope you feel slightly wiser and better acquainted with what’s going on among blockchain’s factoring tokens. These are just my own personal opinions, so if you are a platform used for any of the tokens listed above, please use the comments section below to let me know your own experiences. I’d be very interested to hear an inside view, especially if it is supported with links and evidence. | 4,311 |
new name and male pronouns. He began taking the hormones that would lower his voice and allow him to grow a beard. He had what is called "top surgery," to remove his breasts and create the masculine chest he’d always wanted. A year after that, he changed his name legally. Today, he is happier than he’s ever been.
Each of these steps was part of Jeremy’s journey of transition. Some of it was social: He presented himself as male through his clothing, hairstyle and name. Some of it was medical: He had surgery and began taking hormones. Some of it was legal: He changed his name and gender on his driver’s license, social security card and passport. Other transgender people experience a different journey, sometimes following the same steps, but not necessarily in the same order. Some may take fewer or additional steps. Each journey is unique. There is no one correct way to transition.
The social aspects of gender transition are the ones available to children as young as pre-school. When Jeremy was 4-years-old, he would have loved it if we had let him change his name, wear boys' clothing all the time and be accepted as one of the boys at school and in the neighborhood. He could have been one of the guys, instead of a tomboy in their midst.
But I had no idea 25 years ago what it meant to be transgender and I didn’t know how to be a gender-affirming parent. I couldn’t help Jeremy be a boy as a child, I couldn't protect him from the loss of his social circle when, in middle school, the boys stopped accepting him as part of the gang, and I couldn't stop Jeremy from eventually feeling the need to undergo surgery.
If we had known then what we know now, my husband and I would have put him on puberty blockers when he reached the right age, medication that is both safe and reversible. That would have stopped his breasts from developing and he would not have needed top surgery years later.
And yet when other Texas parents today try to be gender-affirming, they face the terrifying possibility of losing custody of the children they love.
Please take a stand. Let your elected officials know that you support laws that make it illegal to discriminate against transgender people or their loving parents. Let your school administrators know that you expect them to respect and protect transgender students. And if somebody says that being transgender isn’t a real thing, tell them: “I know of a mom with a transgender son. And he is very real. He is brave. He is a person.” | 4,312 |
5 0 31 7 12 21 23 99.0 Steelers 58.2 OAK 0 0 25 25 4 27 18 98.0 Bears 97.3 LAR 5 0 7 16 6 32 32 98.0 Giants 5.9 WAS 0 0 29 23 28 7 11 95.0 Vikings 85.1 SEA 0 0 10 28 3 29 25 94.0 Lions 11.6 ARI 0 0 28 21 32 8 5 93.0 Cardinals 23.2 DET 5 0 20 18 18 11 21 93.0 Texans 91.6 IND 5 0 17 1 13 31 26 92.0 Colts 27.5 HOU 0 0 8 29 15 18 22 88.0 Jets 16.1 BUF 0 0 23 12 26 14 13 88.0 Ravens 78.1 KC 0 0 4 9 16 30 29 87.0 Chiefs 69.2 BAL 5 0 15 14 22 19 12 87.0 Browns 10.7 CAR 5 0 11 10 29 12 20 81.0 Seahawks 29.5 MIN 5 0 21 6 14 20 15 78.0 Packers 55.7 ATL 5 0 18 24 8 13 10 63.0 Panthers 60.3 CLE 0 0 16 4 25 9 9 61.0 Eagles 57.5 DAL 0 0 14 31 2 6 8 47.0 Dolphins 25.9 NE 5 5 6 2 7 16 6 39.0 Bengals 14.9 LAC 0 0 3 17 10 5 4 37.5 49ers 5.2 DEN 5 0 9 8 5 3.5 7 37.0 Raiders 1.5 PIT 5 0 2 3 24 1 2 31.0 Falcons 6.5 GB 0 0 5 22 1 2 1 26.5 Buccaneers 2.1 NO 5 0 1 5 9 3.5 3
Defenses on Bye Week: NONE!
Optimum Score: 150
Top Defenses for Week 15
Alright, optimistic owners need to be looking ahead to next week’s defenses as well. I ran the Stream-O for next week and here is the early top 11:
There’s not a ton of opportunity here to stash defenses. I would just be sure to check out your league activity board to see if any of these defenses were dropped on waiver day.
The Broncos defense is rapidly becoming available in leagues for some reason. The Seahawks may have been dropped after a couple of weird performances, but they’ll be fighting for a Wild Card berth next week and I doubt they let Nick Mullens throw for 400+ yards a second time. The Jaguars-Redskins matchup is going to be a slugfest and great for fantasy defenses.
Check out the rest of our 2018 Fantasy Football content from our outstanding team of writers. | 4,313 |
to country first in 2017, The Crown is a gobsmacking enterprise, one with a surprising backstory. Series creator Peter Morgan, who has written every episode so far, first visited this territory with The Queen (2006), which won Helen Mirren an Oscar for her portrayal of the Elizabeth of 1997, dealing with the aftermath of her daughter-in-law Diana’s death. That led to an ambitious stage piece, The Audience, which dramatized the sovereign’s weekly meetings with prime ministers, jumping around in time to afford Mirren the opportunity to play Elizabeth again, at every stage of her reign, as various actors played the nine premiers who (as of the play’s debut in 2013) had led Her Majesty’s government. That latter effort was a late-breaking example of Bush Derangement Syndrome by proxy; it branded Tony Blair as a deluded partner of George W. Bush whose decision to join in the invasion of Iraq was merely a heedless reprise of Eden’s Suez adventure. (Both mistakes could have been avoided, at least according to the play, if the politicians involved had only heeded Her Majesty’s friendly counsel.)
Bush obsession caused otherwise talented artists to try to cram their loathing into places where it didn’t fit, but fading memories of the Dubya years have proved a tonic to the arts. The Crown is not only devoid of the kind of fatuous reductionism seen in The Audience, but amounts to a sustained, sometimes ingenious rebuke of today’s shallow dismissiveness, or even ignorance, of the ways of our forebears. The entire first season (the second season is currently being filmed) is a serial demolition of many of today’s least-questioned shibboleths: “Be yourself,” “Follow your heart,” “We’re all the same underneath it all,” “The newer the better.” The Crown, with a rumored budget of $130 million for its first two seasons, is one of the most expensive television series ever to be produced. Yet those sumptuous sets, the fixation on minute questions of protocol, the splendidly imagined balls and royal weddings and coronations, are mere window dressing designed to lure in throne-sniffers. What The Crown is really up to is instructing the masses, perhaps more adroitly than any other current television series, in the intermingled values of duty, honor, discipline, self-control, patriotism, and tradition. Long may it reign.
— Kyle Smith is National Review’s critic-at-large. | 4,314 |
Moreover, we have no clue whether Mr. Romney paid any gift tax on transfers, now valued at $100 million, to a trust he set up in 1995 for the benefit of his five sons. Until this year, the federal gift tax had a lifetime exemption of $1 million, and it taxed gifts in excess of that amount at rates between 29 and 44 percent. A gift of $100 million to one’s children could, therefore, require paying a tax of as much as $29 million to $44 million.
But every good tax professional knows that gift tax returns are rarely audited, except after the transferor’s death. And normally the I.R.S. cannot challenge such a return after three years from its filing. But if the values of the gifts were not properly appraised and disclosed on Mr. Romney’s gift tax returns, a challenge may still be possible. If he did not file any gift tax return, he would still be liable for the tax, plus interest and penalties.
Based on his aggressive tax planning, revealed in the 2010 returns he has released and his approval of a notably dicey tax avoidance strategy in 1994 when he headed the audit committee of the board of Marriott International, my bet is that — if Mr. Romney filed a gift tax return for these transfers at all — he put a low or even zero value on the gifts, certainly a small fraction of the price at which he would have sold the transferred assets to an unrelated party. Otherwise, he should be happy to release his gift tax returns. According to a partner at Mr. Romney’s trustee’s law firm, valuing carried interests, such as Mr. Romney’s interests in the private equity company Bain Capital, at zero for gift tax purposes was common advice given to clients like Mr. Romney in the 1990s and early 2000s.
If detected, undervaluing large gifts to one’s children could provoke large penalties from the I.R.S. These are the kinds of tax penalties that even multinational corporations try to avoid because they fear how the public would react to the adverse publicity that would inevitably follow.
To settle these questions, Mr. Romney should release his gift tax returns, or other documents showing how he valued his transfers to his family’s trust and to his I.R.A., and at least three additional years of income tax returns.
No one should begrudge Mr. Romney or his family the wealth they have earned. But if he has not paid the taxes that apply to transfers of such wealth, this should concern us all. After all, who do you think pays for the shortfall? | 4,315 |
Sen. Tammy Baldwin will fight for milk until the cows come home.
Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, otherwise known as America’s Dairyland, introduced the Dairy Pride Act on Thursday to fight back “against non-dairy products that are mislabeled as milk, yogurt and cheese,” a practice Baldwin says “hurts our dairy farmers.”
Passage of the bill would mean all nondairy items now labeled as some form of dairy product, including the health-conscious community’s beloved almond milk, would need to undergo name changes. Plant-based cheddar-like nondairy brick?
The bill would support American dairy businesses and “protect the integrity of milk” by enforcing label restrictions on nondairy options to milk, yogurt and cheese.
Though Food and Drug Administration regulations define dairy products as coming from dairy animals, alternatives remain on the market, often labeled using dairy-specific terms. Baldwin’s bill targets those products.
“Imitation products have gotten away with using dairy’s good name for their own benefit,” the act states.
Still, there’s growing evidence that American consumers are loving their options, despite dairy’s good name.
Almond milk sales rose 250 percent in five years, according to a 2016 consumer report by market-research firm Nielsen. Other milk alternatives, such as cashew and coconut, have also seen increased popularity, reports the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, dairy milk consumption has been on the decline for decades. Department of Agriculture data show that Americans drink 37 percent less milk today than they did in the 1970s.
bhofack2 via Getty Images Would almond milk by any other name taste as sweet?
The proposed legislation promotes the health benefits of dairy and suggests that labeling plant-based alternatives as “milk,” “cheese” or “yogurt” could be confusing for consumers, conveying “a nutritional equivalency that is not accurate.”
While calcium is an important part of a balanced diet, and current federal dietary guidelines suggest that adult women and men consume three cups of dairy each day, the best way to get enough calcium remains a source of debate. As the Harvard School of Public Health points out, there are many nondairy sources of calcium that can be included in your diet.
If the bill passes, we’re eagerly awaiting the alternative names for almond milk. Almond juice? Almond sweat? Aqueous almonds? To be honest, we’re not sure what else to call it. | 4,316 |
The concept cars weren't the only stars of this year's Frankfurt Motor Show. Trucks, vans and utility vehicles of all shapes and sizes also helped make the show the major industry event it was. Plush, first-ever SUVs from the cunning British luxury minds at Bentley and Jaguar were contrasted by far more rugged products like the the Mercedes G500 4x4 Squared and dirtied Land Rovers. Similarly, world-class business luxury vans were offset by fun-loving camper and sport vans.
Bentley's Bentayga packs 600-bhp of 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 muscle Chris Weiss/ Gizmag.com
The biggest SUV news out of Frankfurt had to be the world premiere of the Bentley Bentayga. Everyone was wondering what exactly an ultra-premium Bentley SUV would look like, and they finally got to find out. While we did find it more impressive in person than in photos, it's certain to be a polarizing design that some will love and some will hate. Welcome to the new world order of utility vehicles from auto brands we're used to seeing design anything and everything but.
The F-Pace is Jaguar's first crack at an SUV Chris Weiss/ Gizmag.com
Jaguar was the other British luxury brand to show its very first SUV effort, giving consumers a curvier, sportier alternative to the hard lines over at sibling brand Land Rover. After a world record stunt drive, the F-Pace rolled into Messe Frankfurt and showed the world what a cat-badged crossover is all about.
Since we last saw the G500 4x4 Squared in Geneva, it's been approved for production Chris Weiss/ Gizmag.com
The Frankfurt show also served a reminder that a few SUVs are still built to actually go off road. After giving it the green light a few months ago, Mercedes showed the G500 4x4 Squared in bright yellow attire. And if the 422-hp stock version somehow isn't tough enough, Brabus has tuned things up to 500 hp. Land Rover reminded us who the real SUV-maker at Jaguar Land Rover is by showcasing two of the starring Rovers of the upcoming James Bond Spectre film.
Land Rover previews its Spectre (James Bond) movie trucks Chris Weiss/ Gizmag.com
Beyond SUVs and Crossovers, Frankfurt also had plenty for truck and van lovers, from ultra-comfortable, spacious van limousines for wealthy businessmen to trucks and campers designed for weekend warriors. Check out each and every new model, concept vehicle and old favorite in our photo gallery. | 4,317 |
30,964 -2,626 -8.5% Daily Mirror 34,158 38,355 -4,197 -10.9% Irish Daily Star 50,649 53,945 -3,296 -6.1% The Sun 55,674 60,371 -4,697 -7.8% Tabloids 140,481 152,671 -12,190 -8.0% Daily Express 2,517 2,476 41 1.6% Irish Daily Mail 41,190 46,544 -5,354 -11.5% Daily Telegraph 2,180 2,434 -254 -10.4% Financial Times 2,314 2,291 24 1.0% Guardian 2,191 2,311 -120 -5.2% The Times 3,728 2,587 1,142 44.1% The Herald 39,093 44,085 -4,992 -11.3% Total 418,958 460,910 -41,952 -9.1%
The Irish Independent had an average sale of 94,500 down 8,000 or 7.8% on last year. They had around 18% bulks within that figure which is a marginal increase on last year. Digital subscribers were 1,900 for the first half of the year.
The Examiner fell by 8.5% to 28,300 with a multiple copies sale of only 2%.
The morning tabloids showed a collective decline of 8% with The Daily Mirror taking the biggest hit down 11% to 34,000. The Star finished just on the right side of 50k and The Sun dropped 4,600 or 8% to 55,600 (The Sun also ran a half price offer during the Euros in the first half of 2016)
The Daily Mail fell 11% to 41,000 and The Times are showing a pretty impressive increase of 44% year on year. Again, like its sister Sunday, the use of multiple copies which were not used in the Jan June figure last year account for that dramatic swing.
The Herald was down 11.3% to 39,000.
In the overview, the figure for the morning market, in the copy and the chart, does not include The Herald. It’s included in the total market along with the Echo. The rationale is that there was also a comparison to 2012 in that section when The Herald was an evening newspaper. It would have completely thrown the figures had been included in one year and not in another.
In the morning section, the Herald is included and that’s why there’s a difference between the overall morning figure in the overview and morning sections. | 4,318 |
comparison. What’s more, adds 2014 Indy winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, another Alonso team-mate: “It’s no secret that Formula 1 has much higher safety standards. The tracks have a lot of run-off. You have less of a shot of hitting a wall. But when it comes to open-wheel racing, when it comes to closed-circuit racing in general, oval racing in IndyCar is by far the most dangerous there is.”
The warm reception to Alonso’s crossover to the IndyCar paddock stands in marked contrast to reactions among Alonso’s F1 peers, which are easily summed up in a simple, Seinfeldian phrase: good luck with all that. “I’d take [the] Daytona 500 over Indy,” Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo said after Alonso’s Indy plans were announced in April. “Indy kinda scares me, actually.” Mikhail Aleshin, a fourth-year IndyCar veteran from Moscow, isn’t surprised: “Some of the drivers who don’t want to do the Indy 500,” he says, “they just have small balls. I think that’s the only explanation.”
Alonso, though, not only has the nerve, but one skill in particular that should help a smooth transfer. “Just watching him race in Formula 1,” says De Ferran, “it’s clear to me that he’s very good at wheel-to-wheel racing. Makes good choices. Positions himself well. Knows when to attack, when not to attack. He’s got a very good strategic mind. That is probably going to serve him well.”
The triple F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, after expressing his own reservations about Alonso’s Indy trip, nonetheless pronounced his former McLaren team-mate “the best driver in the [IndyCar] paddock.” That’s not hyperbole. Neither is this: he could very well etch his name on the Borg-Warner trophy. Sure, he’s the rookie in a crowd that is likely to include at least six Indy 500 winners. But upsets at the Brickyard are not unprecedented. Remember: Rossi – who had a modest F1 record and only one oval start to his name – was the one guzzling milk at the end of last year’s race. Alonso is well positioned to win too. It’s just going to take practice. Miles and miles and miles of it. | 4,319 |
It’s been revealed a US county has used the Ethereum blockchain to send almost 1000 digital marriage certificates to newlywed couples.
In April last year, the Washoe County in Northern Nevada announced it was partnering with blockchain startup, Titan Seal, to offer digital marriage certificates.
Since then, around 950 digital certificates have been secured using the Ethereum blockchain, according to a report by the Reno Gazette Journal.
“April 10th was the first time a person got (a digital marriage certificate from Washoe County)… The person had no idea that it was part of a pilot program,” Titan Seal Co-founder Phil Dhingra told the Reno Gazette Journal.
Utilising the Ethereum blockchain
Before Washoe County’s marriage certificates are emailed, Titan Seal generates a secure cryptographic hash representing the certificate on the Ethereum blockchain.
The hash is a unique number that can only be generated from a certified digital copy of the corresponding marriage certificate.
The Washoe County has reinforced its faith in the ledger, telling residents “it is very improbable that the Ethereum blockchain could ever be hacked”.
“There is no central authority or computer to compromise; instead there is a worldwide network of thousands of computers that work together to protect the authenticity of transactions on the network,” says the County on its website.
“This is one of the most secure methods of storing information that has ever been invented, and it has already spawned a renaissance in parts of the computer and financial industries.
“It is much more secure than our current method of paper certification (embossing, stamp, and signature), which is the gold standard of paper certification, but can still theoretically be forged.”
Australian state extending roll-out of blockchain driver licences
The New South Wales Government successfully used distributed ledger technology to deliver driver licences to 1400 residents in Dubbo, NSW, during a trial in 2018.
A second trial is currently underway in Sydney’s eastern beaches region and a state wide roll-out via an ‘opt-in’ system is expected later this year.
The digital driver licences being trialed in NSW are backed by Secure Logic’s TrustGrid ledger.
“The era of standing in line to file government paperwork is coming to an end, as is our reliance on physical identification cards to establish your identity or proof of age with law enforcement or at licensed venues,” said Secure Logic’s CEO Santosh Devaraj.
Micky first reported on the NSW digital driver licence trial in September, 2018. Click here to read the article. | 4,320 |
President Trump wants to recognize the military working dog injured during the raid that killed ISIS boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria last month, a source told The Post.
“It is the president’s desire to honor the dog. They are working out the details,” said the source, who claimed the commander-in-chief is even exploring a way to present Conan with a prohibited Purple Heart.
It could “swing the animal lovers vote” for Trump, one of the few presidents who has not had a pet dog at the White House, the insider said with a laugh.
Trump is intrigued by the historic possibility of presenting the Belgian Malinois with the revered medal, and is known for setting precedents, like his decision to appear at the Veterans Day Parade in Manhattan Monday, or his summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, said the source, who is close to the First Family.
Logistics have gotten in the way.
President Trump hinted at a ceremony with Conan at the White House this week in an Oct. 31 tweet. That became “a few weeks” while speaking at a rally in Tupelo, Mississippi the next day.
“The dog is working, probably involved in missions and everyone wants to keep the dog safe,” said the source. “When there is an opportunity, we can honor him and his handlers and the president is most certainly interested in doing that.”
Reps for the White House declined to comment, but did not deny a plan to present the dog with the medal.
Department of Defense rules currently forbid military working dogs from receiving the Purple Heart. The regulation was put in place after a dog named Chips was given one in 1943 for heroic action in World War II.
Conan, assigned to U.S. special forces, chased al-Baghdadi down a tunnel before the ISIS leader blew himself up with a suicide vest. The dog was injured during the explosion by exposed electrical wires. During a press conference announcing Baghdadi’s death, Trump heaped praise on the “beautiful” and “talented” dog.
In the days since, multiple human veterans and Purple Heart recipients have come forward to insist that President Trump reverse the DoD rules, saying dogs like Conan are as important as any human soldier.
“Do I believe Conan should receive a Purple Heart for actions on target? Absolutely,” Michael Bollinger, 26, a former Army Ranger now studying at Columbia University told The Post. “They’re out there with us every step of the way.” | 4,321 |
to jail or given a criminal record.
"Here, if you're caught in possession, you will have a stain on your record for life," Tim Bingham says. "Think how hard it is to rebuild your life if you've got a criminal record, especially in a climate like this where jobs are now so hard to come by. In the UK, it's a bit more progressive because some records are erased after five or six years."
Portugal's success story, meanwhile, has attracted the attention of some of the world's most successful people. Luminaries such as billionaire investor George Soros, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and entrepreneur Richard Branson are part of an influential think-tank, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and they are advocating decriminalisation in the so-called 'war on drugs'.
"Locking people up in prison is not the answer," says Branson. "Treating the problem as a health problem, rather than a crime, is. In the few countries in the world where they have decriminalised the taking of drugs, Portugal being the best example, the amount of heroin addicts has dropped by half. There's been a drop in the HIV figures and the amount of cannabis use is the lowest in Europe."
This punishment-does-not-work view is endorsed by one of America's leading drug policy analysts, Mark Kleiman. "We should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption."
Ireland is no stranger to drug problems with an estimated 20,000 people considered to be addicted to heroin. Some 15,000 of them are Dublin-based and they are a highly visible presence on the streets of the inner-city, much to the chagrin of local residents and tourists.
"Much of Irish society regards addicts as social delinquents rather than people in need of help," says Tony Duffin, director of one of Ireland's best regarded drug treatment centres, the Dublin-based Ana Liffey Project. "But that attitude only exacerbates the problem and it leads to even greater marginalisation than before."
Tim Bingham notes that even the language used to describe addicts suggests we have a long way to go to reach Portugal's stance. "How can people regularly called 'junkies' feel any sense of communion with the wider populace? The lack of tolerance or understanding of society is very damaging.
"The problem of drug addiction won't just go away if it is ignored, we need real vision if anything is to change. And the lead to follow comes from a country in much the same situation economically as Ireland -- Portugal."
Indo Review | 4,322 |
the way he did in New York,” said Saureen Shah, a 33-year-old engineer and Indian-American citizen in San Francisco who came to India to work for Modi’s election campaign last year. “It was like pressing the restart button in our relationship with India.”
Modi’s affinity for the diaspora is not just strategic, but also personal.
In 2005, the US government denied him a visa on the grounds that he had committed “severe violations of religious freedom” because he failed to stop Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002 when he was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat. It was only after Modi became the prime minister last year that he could visit the US. But during the long years of visa denial, diaspora Indians were his most ardent advocates. Shah began working on creating Modi’s brand strategy online in 2010, before the 2014 elections.
In many ways Modi’s speech in New York was a show of gratitude.
“The Indian-American community here stood behind him like a rock. Many of us here felt the denial of a visa was unjust. He was viewed as the underdog,” said Bharat Barai, a doctor in Chicago who left India in 1976.
But not all Indians in the US are Modi supporters. In 2013, an invitation to Modi to address students at the Wharton School via Skype stirred controversy after Indian-American activists launched an online campaign against him because of his Hindu nationalist politics. The invitation was rescinded.
Modi also has faced criticism at home for his wide-ranging travel in his early months in office, including showy events in the United States and elsewhere.
The Hindu nationalist BJP has traditionally had close ties with Indians abroad as part of its vision of a grand Indian civilization with global footprints. When the party was in power earlier, they launched an ambitious annual event called Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Overseas Indian Day) in 2003. Last month, 9,000 people of Indian origin from around the world came to Gujarat to attend the event.
Modi’s colleagues in the BJP say they want members of the diaspora to be local ambassadors and even cheerleaders of Modi’s government with their local neighbours, media and legislators.
“They can tell them about the good changes taking place in India and remove the image of India as an inefficient place to visit and invest in,” said Vijay Chauthaiwale, who heads Overseas Friends of BJP.
This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post | 4,323 |
Previously deported illegal aliens are joining the now 7,000-strong migrant caravan headed to the United States-Mexico border, to inundate and overwhelm the country’s asylum and immigration system.
A new report by the Washington Post reveals that the migrant caravan now includes illegal aliens who have already been deported from the U.S., but who are looking to illegally re-enter through the southern border with the caravan.
As noted by the Post, illegal aliens who have been deported multiple times are now a part of the caravan, including 29-year-old Imner Anthony Fuentes, who has been deported from the U.S. six times.
“That’s just how it is,” Fuentes told the Post. “They catch you, and you try to get back.”
Fuentes was most recently deported five months ago for the sixth time out of Birmingham, Alabama. Another previously deported illegal alien, 36-year-old Job Reyes, has joined the caravan.
“It’s time for me to go back to the United States. It’s a country where I can live my life, unlike Guatemala,” Reyes told the Post. Reyes was deported after over-staying his visa for 14 years.
“When I heard about the caravan, I knew it was my chance,” Reyes told the Post.
Another previously deported illegal alien, 32-year-old Juan Jimenez, told the Post he joined the caravan as well in an effort to go back to working in the country.
President Trump on Monday announced that he would begin the process of cutting off foreign aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador for their inability to stop the migrant caravan from marching up to the U.S.-Mexico border. The president also called the caravan a “national emergency.”
“Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.,” President Trump tweeted. “We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.”
The Central American countries receive more than $500 million in federal aid from the U.S. every year. Trump has not yet indicated how much of that federal aid will be cut.
Watch–Caravan Migrant Says March to U.S. Border Is for Jobs, Not Asylumhttps://t.co/2JOPrSfQGu — John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) October 20, 2018 | 4,324 |
, while ADAC Rallye Deutschland has a new base at Bostalsee in northern Saarland.
Television
The 2017 WRC will generate more TV content than ever. Over 12,000 hours were broadcast globally in 2016 to a cumulative audience of over 700 million people and this season offers even more for fans.
The Sunday lunchtime rally-ending Power Stage programme, now established as a firm fixture across all rounds, will increase from 60 to 90 minutes. It will feature more interviews, extended coverage of the podium ceremony and reaction to the final result from the service park.
Also new for this year is another regular live stage on Saturday afternoons.
Long-term broadcast partners across the globe have renewed rights deals, eager to relay the news and action from one of the most unpredictable seasons for years. A blend of free and pay TV offers exposure to fans in more than 150 countries.
Digital
An updated version of official championship website wrc.com has been launched this week. It offers quicker access to major news stories and video content from the landing page, as well as an easier menu bar from which to locate other key sections.
There is also one-click entry to the popular WRC+ interactive digital service (www.wrcplus.com), which this year offers extended broadcasts from live stages, on-demand highlights programmes, live maps, exclusive onboard videos and much more.
A Japanese language version of wrc.com has been launched by broadcaster J SPORTS. The site will deliver the latest news during a rally, as well as key information including the itinerary, stage times and overall results.
Fans in Japan will be automatically redirected to their own language version when they open www.wrc.com. Outside Japan, it is available at www.jsports.co.jp/motor/wrc/.
eSports WRC Championship
After an inaugural season which ended in a thrilling finale in Britain, the eSports WRC Championship returns for a second year.
Thousands of players chased the title throughout 2016 on the official video game of the FIA World Rally Championship, as the competition ran in parallel to the real-life WRC calendar.
Entries are open for the 2017 eSports WRC Championship, based on the WRC 6 game. Players will accumulate points over the 13 rounds and the best eight will face off in a live final, hoping to succeed 2016 champion aTTaX Johnson. The first round takes place during Rallye Monte-Carlo.
PaddockTalk Perspective
| 4,325 |
Today's lesson: Don't be over dramatic.
---Text:
How quickly can a honeymoon be ruined?
For Bertha it was as soon as she stepped off the plane into paradise, they began to fight and scream and she ran off to the beach.
After two failed marriages and many more failed boyfriends she thought this guy was the one... and once again she was wrong...
Maybe it was just blowing off steam from the pressure of the wedding, but alone on the long beach, leaving a long path of steps in the sand, she couldn’t bring herself to think clearly.
She wanted to be a good wife, a mother, but she just seemed to be a failure, she felt as if she was worth nothing... less than human... and that was her ultimate doom...
The sea, the salt and the sand absorbed her grim thoughts and the beach began to drag her down.
...
Bertha moaned, feeling the pull of the earth in her guts, she grabbed her bikini top and tossed it away.
Her knees landed in the sand, the woman rolled her bikini bottoms down and her scream of horror resounded above the crash of the waves.
She saw her pussy turning into the same sand she was standing in and then it continued spreading all over her body, changing her from the inside out.
Confused and scared she leant down, her hands in the sand, her body transforming, she wanted to cry, but her mind began to slowly drift into an empty sense of peace.
A faint attempt of resistance didn’t accomplish much and she found herself slowly lying down in the sand, the warm sand, that was calling her... of which she was part...
...
The lonely man walked around the beach, screaming his wife’s name into the darkening sky, he had been looking for her for hours, walking around the lonely beach, following the irregular trail of naked steps left in the sand by the woman.
The trail ended and he could distinguish a figure lying in the sand a little way ahead, he ran towards it.
“BERTHA!”
It wasn’t his wife, but a sand sculpture of a naked anguished woman.
“People have too much free time...” he said disappointedly.
The sculpture wasn’t all that bad, almost looking like a person, very detailed, but it was starting to crumble, giving the impression it was one with the beach, as if it had grown from the sand itself... it almost looked like... | 4,326 |
A new 8-part Times Picayune series on the prison industry in Louisiana starts off with these foreboding sentences:
Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran’s, 13 times China’s and 20 times Germany’s.
One out of every 86 Louisianans is in prison.
The motivation is money. Most prisoners in Louisiana are in for-profit prisons. The state spends $663 million a year on imprisonment; $182 million of that goes to for-profit correctional companies or contracted local sheriffs. Many small towns depend on the prisons to fund their law enforcement.
Burk Foster, a criminologist who’s been studying Louisiana prisons, explains:
They don’t want to see the prison system get smaller or the number of people in custody reduced, even though the crime rate is down, because the good old boys are all linked together in the punishment network, which is good for them financially and politically.
State Rep. Joseph Lopinto (R-Metairie) agrees:
The bottom line is, if locking everybody up and throwing away the key works, then we should have the lowest crime rate in the United States. We don’t. So then you have to really look at your policies. In my opinion, it’s strictly a fiscal issue.
Those who benefit from the prison industry have pushed through some of the severest sentencing laws in the country and aggressively resist reform. “Few lobbies in Louisiana,” writes reporter Cindy Chang, “are as powerful as the sheriffs association.” As a result, Louisiana’s sentencing laws are out-of-step with the rest of the country:
All life sentences are, automatically, without any chance of parole and more than one in ten Louisiana prisoners are serving life sentences (the majority of lifers were convicted before age 30):
Harsh where other states are lenient, and harsh where other states are harsh, Louisiana has “a much higher percentage behind bars for [non-violent] drug offenses.” In 2009, 82% of the 17,223 new admissions to Louisiana prisons were convicted of non-violent felonies.
Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a post on why there are so many for-profit prisons in Louisiana and how it’s affected the lives of prisoners both during and after incarceration. | 4,327 |
VMK launch 'first African-designed' smartphone and tablet Published duration 27 December 2012
image caption Verone Mankou insists his devices are designed and engineered in Africa
A smartphone and tablet said to be the first designed by an African company have been launched.
The products, designed by Congolese entrepreneur Verone Mankou, are manufactured in China.
His company VMK's devices run Google's Android software. They will retail at $170 (£105) for the smartphone and $300 (£185) for the tablet.
"Only Africans can know what Africa needs," said Mr Mankou at the Tech4Africa conference in Johannesburg.
"Apple is huge in the US, Samsung is huge in Asia, and we want VMK to be huge in Africa."
Technology blog Smartplanet reports that the tablet offers wi-fi connectivity and four gigabytes of internal storage. Its name, Way-C, means "the light of the stars" in the local Lingala language.
The smartphone has rear and forward-facing cameras and a 3.5in (8.9cm) screen.
There are plans to sell the devices across 10 other West African countries as well as Belgium, France and India.
Mr Mankou said he hoped to launch a cheaper tablet for students next year.
First?
The devices will come up against several already well-established and popular brands.
Most notably, Blackberry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) has a significant presence on the continent, despite flagging sales in the western market.
image caption The tablet is similar in size to Samsung's Galaxy Tab
Popular too are handsets from Nokia which is working closely with Facebook to grow African's interest in both mobile communication and social networking.
However, there is an increasing desire among African communities to support homegrown products, spurred on by fledgling technology scenes in various cities across the region.
'Offended'
Attempts to be seen as African have caused some firms to be accused of dishonesty. Companies were highly criticised after they were deemed to be marketing products that were made offshore but simply branded locally.
VMK insisted that while the product was manufactured in China for cost reasons, the design and engineering was entirely African.
page on the company's website stressed that statement, saying: "We are somewhat offended by the disregard of those who persist in denying the authentication of our products, despite evidence.
"Most of those critics are either Afro-pessimistic (who argue that 'nothing good can come from Africa'), or just (future) competitors." | 4,328 |
The Document Foundation's LibreOffice and Thunderbird project could join forces in an effort to push for a singular solution.
Mozilla stopped the active development of the Thunderbird email client a few years ago and moved the reigns of the project in the hand of volunteers and members of the community. Mozilla is not seeing a future for this kind of applications, but it looks like that's not really the case.
Thunderbird is described as PIM, personal information manager, and it integrates functions like email, address book, calendar, and tasks. As it turns out, The Document Foundation would welcome the integration of such a powerful application into its own suite, and that's not really that far from happening.
Thunderbird and LibreOffice might have a future together
It's not really all that difficult to see that Thunderbird is not moving in straight line and that the development of the application has slowed down considerably. New features are rarely added and most of the releases just integrate security fixes.
Some discussions have been started by the Chair of the Thunderbird Council, R Kent James, who wants to know what's happening with the relationship between Thunderbird and Mozilla. It turns out that the email client could move out of the house, sooner rather than later.
"I understand that Thunderbird's future is currently under discussion and pretty much open. If it is decided to move Thunderbird out of Mozilla, I'd like to suggest to reach out to The Document Foundation and ask if they are interested. It seems to me that Thunderbird might be a good addition to their LibreOffice productivity suite," Executive Chairwoman for the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker said just a couple of days ago.
The Document Foundation is already planning to develop its own PIM software and that might not be necessary if Thunderbird joins forces. For now, only talks took place, but it actually looks like a really good match.
Update: The information that The Document Foundation is looking to build it's own PIM software is not accurate. Italo Vignoli, Marketing & PR lead for The Document Foundation explained this in an email.
"TDF has never thought to develop his own PIM software, because there are already several free software solutions which solve the PIM issue, providing a number of alternatives to the user."
Italo Vignoli also said that if Thunderbird finds a home with The Document Foundation, it's not necessarily true that it will integrated in a similar way with Outlook and Microsoft Office.
A comprehensive wiki, albeit unofficial, has been put together with all the ideas and statements that have been made so far regarding a collaboration between The Document Foundation and Thunderbird. | 4,329 |
by coincidence.
Despite the following two things, his family came from Spanish-occupied Flanders (now Belgium) during the Moors’ reign over Spain without including any African genetics.
Or, the following one answer to all points of evidence:
He was black.
So basically, my problem here is that people are more willing to accept multiple coordinating outlandish explanations that reassure them Beethoven might not have been black (and, in their minds, the fact that we can’t empirically prove it means we should stop talking about it completely) than they are to accept one simple explanation that wraps everything up in a nice bow and changes nothing other than reveal historical whitewashing and increase awareness that yes, Africa was a major player in World history rather than (as it’s so often erroneously cast) a secondary character in a Eurocentric version of World history. The fact that people need empirical proof he was black but don’t even need a logical argument to convince them he was white is all kinds of problematic. I could write a book on how racist that is.
Challenging Eurocentrism in history is going to uncover a lot of times when whitewashing has occurred (see: How just about everything good Abraham Lincoln did for black people was something Frederick Douglass told him to do). While yes, there is a chance Beethoven was completely white, that answer is less likely than “historians intentionally left out certain details to keep people from challenging the stereotypes about black people they were spreading to ensure their continued ability to oppress them,” or, as it’s more commonly known, a “dominant narrative.”
So maybe Beethoven wasn’t black. Maybe he was. The evidence presented wasn’t an attempt to convince you one way or another. It was intended to show you that while someone who says “I believe Beethoven may have been black, and not, as previously assumed, white” can answer the follow-up question of “why do you believe that,” a person who says “I don’t believe Beethoven was black” can’t. There’s nothing to suggest he couldn’t have been black. They could argue “I believe Beethoven might not have been black” and present alternate lines of reasoning, but since that’s the dominant narrative already, you’re not challenging a well-established assumption, and you’re not going to get any disputes because “might not” is implied in the “might” argument. | 4,330 |
Fight Back News Service is circulating some quotes from the icon of the South African anti-apartheid movement. The following quotes are from Mandela’s 1990 speech at a Johannesburg rally to re-launch the South African Communist Party.
Nelson Mandela: The ANC [African National Congress] is not a Communist Party. But as a defender of democracy, it has fought and will continue to fight for the right of the Communist Party to exist. As a movement for national liberation, the ANC has no mandate to espouse a Marxist ideology. But as a democratic movement, as a Parliament of the people of our country, the ANC has defended and will continue to defend the right of any South African to adhere to the Marxist ideology if that is their wish.
To us as a democratic movement, the lesson of our history is very clear. It is what the peoples of Europe learnt during the turbulent decade of the 1930s, when fascism began its assault on democracy by launching a violent offensive against the Communists.
It is the same lesson that the people of the United States learnt during the decade of the nineteen fifties, when the forces of Macarthyism launched an assault aimed at undermining the democratic heritage of the American people, by conducting a virulent offensive against Communist and left opinion.
Theologians of the German Church understood these processes very well when they said the Christian Church did nothing when the Nazis attacked the Communists. And again the Church did nothing when the Nazis turned their brutal attention to the Socialists. And when the Nazis turned against Christian men and women of conscience, the Church found that there was nobody to defend it.
This is a mistake the ANC never made, because we understood that the banning of the Communist Party in 1950, was but a prelude to the suppression of all democratic opinion in our country. This is a lesson that those within the National Party, who consider themselves to be Democrats, need to learn very quickly.
Mandela: We are here today to participate with you in the public launch of the Communist Party, 40 years after it was banned. We do this because during the nearly 70 years of its existence, the Communist Party has distinguished itself as an ally in the common struggle to end the racial oppression and exploitation of the black masses of our country. It has fought side by side with the ANC for the common objective of the National Liberation of people, without seeking to impose its views on our movement.
Mandela: Because we have an urgent task to attain our emancipation, we insist that the talks must go on. Our freedom should not be postponed or denied simply because some people have a secret agenda to sustain an anti-democratic crusade against Communist opinion. | 4,331 |
I'm in the middle of writing a meaty Wild blog with a lot of info and updates, but I figured I would get this up now.
I tossed this briefly into Thursday’s newspaper, but former popular Wild forward Andrew Brunette has officially been named an assistant coach along with Rick Wilson, Darryl Sydor and Darby Hendrickson.
In the past two years, Brunette has held the role of hockey operations advisor, a role that saw him work with GM Chuck Fletcher, work with the coaches and even scout. Last year, he predominately worked with the coaches, particularly on the power play. Next season, Brunette will work solely with the coaches. He’ll be in charge of the power play, and in fact, will likely join head coach Mike Yeo, Wilson and Sydor on the bench as a third assistant.
Previously, Brunette was an eye in the sky with Hendrickson, but Yeo feels having Brunette on the bench during games will provide further value, particularly on the power play. The Wild’s power play ranked 16th in the NHL last season, converting 17.9 percent of the time. That’s exactly where the Wild finished in 2012-13 when Brunette wasn’t running the power play.
As we get closer to training camp or in camp, I’ll sit down with Yeo and Brunette to discuss the power play further, but Yeo said at the draft that the coaches are spending a portion of this offseason working on the power play and discussing everything from personnel to concepts to the way it’s run.
Obviously, the hope too is that Thomas Vanek’s addition will help. Vanek has scored the third-most power-play goals (113) in the NHL since the start of the 2005-06 season. Of course, ex-Wild/now-Duck Dany Heatley ranks fourth at 112. Ahead of Vanek in that time? Alex Ovechkin at 151 and Teemu Selanne at 115.
In Wild history, Brunette ranks third in goals (119), fourth in assists (202) and points (321) and second in power-plays goals (55).
I talked to Brunette a little about this at the draft, but I wasn't able to get him Wednesday. He, along with a number of Wild peeps, was heading to Finland to attend Wild captain Mikko Koivu's wedding. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail!
As I mentioned, I'll post another blog soon with a little bit of this and a lot of that. | 4,332 |
I hold no brief for Putin or Trump, and, unlike many on the left, I never had any illusions about the Soviet Union. But the conventional narrative on Nato still needs to be challenged (Trump ‘reckless’ on Nato, says defence chair, 17 January). There is no evidence that Stalin or his successors ever had any plans to sweep across western Europe. Indeed, in 1949, when Nato was founded, it would have been quite incapable of doing so, after the devastation it had suffered in the war. Likewise, however deplorable Putin’s actions in what he, like his predecessors, considers to be his backyard, his sphere of influence, this does not make him a threat to the west. What possible motive could he have for an unprovoked attack on any Nato state? But behind Putin’s personal ambitions and great power aspirations, there remains the folk memory of three invasions by western powers, and accompanying paranoia. Whatever Nato may claim, this is not diminished by its expansion to the east. Rather than continuing to base “security” on Nato and military strength, greater support should be given to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which currently operates with a fraction of Nato’s budget, yet, without any publicity, still manages to defuse some potential conflict situations.
Frank Jackson
(Former co-chair, World Disarmament Campaign), Harlow, Essex
• The comments by Julian Lewis, the chair of the Commons defence select committee, that “European countries, without the US, could deter nuclear blackmail from Russia, because of French and UK nuclear weapons, but not a conventional force attack” indicates that UK and French nuclear weapons would not be used in the event of a “conventional” attack by Russia, which Lewis describes as “our principal adversary”. This is probably a calculation the Russians have already made and surely gives lie to the claim that nuclear weapons are our best form of defence “guarantee”. By soaking up large amounts of defence spending and technical resources, to create the “big stick” which can’t be used on our most likely threat, nuclear weapons leave us in a weaker not stronger position. Since forces are currently being built up on both sides of the “European-Russian” frontline, maybe it really is time to “think it out again”.
David Mellor
Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire
• Join the debate – email [email protected]
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters | 4,333 |
Join Nature Canada, the Child & Nature Alliance and local nature experts for a NatureBlitz on Saturday, October 3rd and Sunday, October 4th at Ottawa’s Forest & Nature School on 411 Corkstown Road (Wesley Clover Campground)! This event will feature walks*, nature-based activities and family fun from 10:30 am Saturday until 2 pm Sunday (map and daily schedules below).
Help us explore your NatureHood in Ottawa’s amazing Greenbelt, and test your ability to migrate like a bird, find clues about animals preparing for winter, or detect bats using a special ultrasonic microphone! NatureBlitzes are a great way to get outside and learn about nature with members of your community and local nature experts! This is the first survey of its kind in this area and we hope to identify as many different living things as possible at the site.
Visitor events will include guided wildlife walks, a migration obstacle course and flap-a-thon, nature scavenger hunts and a search for bats and other night creatures! Participants will have an opportunity to learn how to identify the trees, plants, birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects and fungi found around the Ottawa Forest & Nature School, which is located on this property and includes a great outdoor classroom. The walks will also have a special focus on local species at risk, including Little Brown and Northern Long-eared bats, which might be foraging in the area before or as they are forming into colonies to roost and hibernate for the winter. So get your binoculars, rain gear, hiking boots and flashlights ready and come join us as we get up close and personal with a world of mystery right outside your door. It’s nearby nature! And it’s your NatureHood!
Don’t have binoculars? No field guide? No flashlight? Don’t worry! You can borrow one of ours. We have 8 pairs of binoculars, bilingual field guides and some head-lamps available to sign-out at the Nature Canada tent once you’ve registered for a guided walk. And we’ll have handheld ultrasonic bat detectors available for sign-out, too!
Check the schedule to see which walk(s) you would like to join, or come out for all of them! Beginners, experts and especially kids and their families are welcome to this FREE event! We hope to see you there! Please download your free NatureBlitz tickets at EventBrite.
A detailed trail map by Orienteering Ottawa is also available here.
Financial support for this NatureBlitz is provided by: | 4,334 |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexicans held a minute of silence on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of devastating earthquakes that struck the country in September 2017, and the postal service honored three search-and-rescue dogs in a stamp.
Slideshow ( 12 images )
More than 450 people were killed and tens of thousands of homes were damaged when the quakes hit Mexico 12 days apart.
Mexicans stood silently in the street with their fists raised aloft just after 1:14 p.m. (1814 GMT), the precise moment the second, deadlier quake struck the capital city and surrounding states on Sept. 19 last year.
Quake rescue workers had used the gesture to request quiet as they listened for signs of life below the rubble of fallen buildings. Specially trained dogs searched through the wreckage for survivors, and became symbols of the rescue efforts.
The Mexican postal service said in a statement it issued a 15 peso commemorative stamp for navy rescue dogs Frida, Evil and Ecko, showing them decked out in search goggles. All three worked to find trapped victims of both September quakes.
The Mexican navy said in July that Frida, a yellow Labrador, was a veteran of eight years of rescue operations extending from Haiti to Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. In that time, she had found 12 people alive and 41 bodies, the navy said.
After the minute’s silence, authorities triggered quake alarms in Mexico City and office workers began filing out of buildings in a mock emergency evacuation. The timing brought back traumatic memories for many city residents, including children who were at school when the quake struck.
“My daughter came out crying last year, and I think she’s going to be worried again today,” said Adriana Guerrero, waiting for her child outside a school in the wealthy Polanco area of Mexico City as pupils and teachers evacuated classrooms.
The 7.1 magnitude quake hit central Mexico last year hours after a memorial evacuation drill. It killed 370 people, most of them in the capital. Tens of thousands of buildings were damaged, and dozens died as a school and offices collapsed.
It followed a separate, 8.2 magnitude quake off the southwest coast on Sept. 7 that killed about 100 people.
Hundreds of people in Mexico City have been unable to return to their homes since the quakes and some staged protests on Wednesday to complain about a lack of government support.
Even before the disaster last year, Sept. 19 had been ingrained in the minds of older residents of the capital, who remembered a massive 1985 earthquake that killed thousands of people in the city on that date. | 4,335 |
The space agency has been working tirelessly to identify dangers that Earth face from space, and has said that it has found 10 new asteroids of meteors which it believes could harm life on Earth. The discovery was made by NASA’s asteroid detecting mission – Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or NEOWISE. Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: “NEOWISE is not only discovering previously uncharted asteroids and comets, but it is providing excellent data on many of those already in our catalog. “It is also proving to be an invaluable tool in in the refining and perfecting of techniques for near-Earth object discovery and characterisation by a space-based infrared observatory.”
GETTY Nasa has discovered 10 potentially hazardous asteroids
On top of the 10 “potentially hazardous” objects, Nasa says that they have identified 97 other space rocks and seen an unexplained spike in comet activity. Emily Kramer, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at JPL and lead author of paper on the NEOWISE study stated: "Comets that have abrupt outbursts are not commonly found, but this may be due more to the sudden nature of the activity rather than their inherent rarity. "It is great for astronomers to view and collect cometary data when they find an outburst, but since the activity is so short-lived, we may simply miss them most of the time.”
GETTY Nasa says that they have identified 97 other space rocks
Amazing facts about Asteroids Tue, April 4, 2017 The first asteroid was Ceres, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. There are currently over 600,000 known asteroids in our solar system. Most asteroids are found orbiting in the Asteroid Belt, a series of rings located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Play slideshow Getty Images 1 of 10 There are Millions of Asteroids in the solar system, usually found in the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, however those in that pass the Earth are called Near-Earth objects
The findings come shortly after a group of Czech scientists warned fragments of asteroids which could wipe out entire countries are hidden in the Taurids meteor shower. The startling finding means that experts may not be able to spot the massive space rock hidden in the annual Taurids meteor shower until it is too late. According to the group of researchers, one of the fragments could hit Earth in 2022, 2025, 2032 or 2039 during the annual meteor shower.
GETTY "Impact hazard increases significantly when the Earth encounters the Taurid new branch" | 4,336 |
Omar said the inclusion of language committing $38 billion in American military assistance to Israel hurt U.S. efforts to bring peace to the region, a position increasingly gaining momentum among progressives.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer Steny Hamilton HoyerCentrist Democrats got their COVID bill, now they want a vote House to vote on resolution affirming peaceful transition of power On The Money: Anxious Democrats push for vote on COVID-19 aid | Pelosi, Mnuchin ready to restart talks | Weekly jobless claims increase | Senate treads close to shutdown deadline MORE (D-Md.) offered support for the military assistance, saying it was "critical to America’s national security."
He said he was opposed to placing any conditions on the assistance.
Tlaib criticized the resolution as ignoring steps taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Benjamin (Bibi) NetanyahuMORE that she said would “ensure” the “demise” of the two-state solution.
“They increased their illegal taking of Palestinian homes, imprisoned more Palestinian children than ever before and are building walls right now to annex the West Bank and other Palestinian villages,” she said.
Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants and who grew up in Detroit, often refers to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict through the lens of the African American civil rights movement, saying only a one-state solution would ensure equal rights for both Arabs and Jews.
“Separate but equal didn't work in our country and I can't see it possible in other countries,” she said. “Given our nation's history of segregation, we should recognize when such injustices are occurring.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel Eliot Lance EngelHouse panel halts contempt proceedings against Pompeo after documents turned over Engel subpoenas US global media chief Michael Pack The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by The Air Line Pilots Association - Pence lauds Harris as 'experienced debater'; Trump, Biden diverge over debate prep MORE (D-N.Y.) spoke out against a one-state solution as incompatible with “Israel’s right to exist as a state that is both Jewish and democratic” in his opening remarks on the floor.
“Do you know what a one-state solution means? It means a state where Jews can become the minority in their own country. It means one Palestinian state with no determination for the Jewish people or for the Palestinians. Israel's right to exist as a state that is both Jewish and democratic is incompatible with a one-state solution, period.” | 4,337 |
pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.
Studies on parent-child relationships and child wellbeing show that father love is an important factor in predicting the social, emotional, and cognitive development and functioning of children and young adults.
24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.
Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
43 percent of first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children each year experience the divorce of their parents.
Fathers who live with their children are more likely to have a close, enduring relationship with their children than those who do not.
Compared to children born within marriage, children born to cohabiting parents are three times as likely to experience father absence, and children born to unmarried, non-cohabiting parents are four times as likely to live in a father-absent home.
About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.
Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
From 1995 to 2000, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes slightly declined, while the proportion of children living with two married parents remained stable. ##### Think about high profile mass murderers like Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook) who came from Fatherless homes. Raising children without Fathers (or Mothers) is happening too much in this country and, thus, we are contributing to our own destruction. This has to stop America. “THE STRONGEST PREDICTOR OF WHETHER A PERSON WILL END UP IN PRISON, IS THAT THEY WERE RAISED BY A SINGLE PARENT”. C.C. HARPER AND S.S. MCLANAHAN, “FATHER ABSENCE AND YOUTH INCARCERATION”, PAPER PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOC., SAN FRANCISCO, CA, 1998 Article posted with permission from Dean Garrison | 4,338 |
The Kentucky Senate approved a bill on Wednesday that would create a separate marriage license application for gay couples in the state and would remove county clerks' names and personal information from the licenses, a measure inspired by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis's protest last year over having to marry gay couples.
The bill will still have to pass the state's House, which is controlled by Democrats, and receive approval from Republican Gov. Matt Bevin before it is signed into law, but opponents of the bill already say it is unconstitutional, setting up a legal fight over the separate-but-equal licenses.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the bill would create two licenses, one that lists a "bride and groom" and another that lists a "first party and second party."
The state's former governor, Steve Beshear, a Democrat, changed the traditional "bride and groom" language on the licenses in the summer of 2015, following the Supreme Court's gay marriage decision, to make it more inclusive. The proposed legislation would bring back the traditional language, and couples would be allowed to choose which form to use.
"Quite frankly, [the change was] almost disrespectful to the traditional family," said Republican state senator John Schickel, of Union, according to the Associated Press. "That's why, wisely, we decided to have two forms. That has nothing to do with bigotry, nothing to do with discrimination. It has to do with the vast majority of Kentuckians that respect traditional marriage."
The Senate voted 30–8 to approve the bill.
"Separate forms for gay and lesbian Kentuckians constitute unequal treatment under the law," Michael Aldridge, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said in a statement after the vote. "Pure and simple, this bill is motivated by the desire to accommodate discrimination against same-sex couples."
The Kentucky Senate, the statement added, was "setting a dangerous slippery slope precedent" of giving privileges to one religious belief over another.
Davis's refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples following the Supreme Court's gay marriage decision last year sparked rallies outside the Rowan County courthouse, where she was remanded to jail in contempt of court. The rallies drew the attention of then–presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and scored Davis a visit with Pope Francis on his trip to the United States in September.
The ACLU sued Davis for acting with "careless disregard for" four gay couples who were denied marriage licenses by her.
Bevin, a conservative who took office in December, issued an executive order in his first weeks in office to remove county clerks' names from marriage licenses. | 4,339 |
In his second address before the U.N. meeting on international migration, the Vatican’s secretary of state said that the Holy See’s primary objective is to make migration work for everybody.
“To achieve the declared objective to make migration work for all,” said Vatican Cardinal Pietro Parolin, “it is crucial to clarify the roles to be played by the different actors or stakeholders, so as to promote shared and balanced responsibilities.”
In order to be successful, said the Vatican chief, U.N. organizers need to engage all the players on the global scene.
“The partnerships necessary to implement successfully the vision of the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration should include national and local institutions, the private sector, trade unions, civil society, academia, migrants and diaspora groups,” Cardinal Parolin said.
“Among the non-governmental actors, the Holy See would like to highlight the special role of faith-based organizations, which have proven themselves especially effective in providing locally-tailored support to migrants in vulnerable situations,” the cardinal added, while insisting that “the work of faith-based organizations should be properly acknowledged and effectively encouraged by the responsible authorities.”
Religions and faith-based organizations offer “are the ‘first responders’ in those areas of need, including migration,” he said.
The key to making migration work for everybody, Parolin said, is “the engagement of migrants themselves.”
“In this context, the Holy See calls for greater participation of migrants in formulating and implementing those policies, programmes and innovative initiatives that concern them,” he said. “Such participation should be promoted at all levels, both individually and collectively, and institutionalized whenever possible, so as to provide regular and official avenues of effective partnership with institutions.”
Migrations “often reveal failures and shortcomings on the part of States and the international community,” Parolin said.
In his address Tuesday, the cardinal underscored “the commitment to ensure fair and ethical recruitment of migrants, including young people, to undertake decent work” as well as “ensuring migrants’ access to employment, fostering their skills development, and empowering them to contribute to sustainable development in their communities both of destination and of origin.”
The cardinal did not discuss the effects of mass migration on local populations or its impact on the workforce, a concern often cited by those who question the logic of uncontrolled migration.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 4,340 |
Zoe Baldwin was inspired to lose weight as she transitioned (Picture: Media Drum World)
A transgender woman has revealed she was almost raped on her first date after transitioning.
Zoe Baldwin admitted she thought she ‘might be female’ as a child, but only decided to book hormone therapy when she was 25.
HSBC allowed fraudsters to move millions around the world, leaked documents claim
Now 27, Zoe, from Tuscaloosa in Alabama, has opened up about the transitioning process – including her harrowing first date as a woman.
She said: ‘I experienced first-hand how differently men treat me when dating, I didn’t expect my first OK Cupid date to turn into attempted rape, which was very scary.
‘You get used to how your fellow gender treats you in one life and somewhere in your head even if you can look in the mirror and know you aren’t that person anymore, you just don’t expect things like that.’
A friend of a friend’s transitioning photos inspired her (Picture: Media Drum World)
Zoe, pictured in April 2016, said she always suspected she was a woman (Picture: Media Drum World)
Zoe had always suspected she may not be male, but was inspired to undergo hormone therapy when she saw a friend of a friend’s transition photo album.
It hit her ‘like a brick’ and convinced her to begin the process within days.
She said: ‘It really showed me what was possible in transitioning if you put the work in. The one thing that started going through my head is that I badly wanted to be pretty like her.
‘I started shaving my beard down completely every day and made an appointment for hormone therapy a few days later.’
She has now spoken out about her story (Picture: Media Drum World)
Zoe, pictured in February 2017, repressed her true feelings for years (Picture: Media Drum World)
As a child, Zoe told her brother and other children about her feelings, but was laughed at and repressed her true self.
She said: ‘I didn’t really even know what transgender meant until I was 20 and dating my first girlfriend who was transgender.
‘She was beautiful, and I was jealous of her. I thought about it very seriously over the next few years but kept it mostly to myself until 2016.’
Zoe added that her transitioning has inspired her to undergo a dramatic 50lbs (22.7kg) weight loss. | 4,341 |
Story highlights Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: The chances for securing stability and building peace grow when women are included.
The new Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017 is an important step in the right direction, she writes
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a CNN contributor and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of "Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield." The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.
(CNN) This week saw a great deal of discussion about America's wars. But less has been said about its peace. And in an era of partisan rancor in which precious little wins over both Republicans and Democrats, legislation pushing to put one group in particular at the negotiating table managed to win bipartisan support: Women.
Indeed, President Trump recently signed into law the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017 -- a bill years in the making backed by Republicans and Democrats alike that aims to strengthen, support and promote the role of women in peace talks and post-war stability. The idea -- backed by data-led research -- is that when women are part of the discussions to end the fighting, wars are more likely to stay ended. And to bring a just peace that includes all the population, not just half.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
This is a good idea, not just because half the population should have a say as their country fights for its future. The chances for securing stability and building peace grow when women are included. A study conducted by the International Peace Institute found that peace agreements are more likely to last at least 15 years when women are included in the process.
Women are often the canary in the coal mine when it comes to security: Two years ago -- months before US military officials began speaking about the role of ISIS in Afghanistan and years before the "mother of all bombs" got dropped, Wazhma Frogh -- a civil society leader and women's rights activist who is now part of her country's High Peace Council -- wrote to tell me about ISIS leafleting in Nangarhar. Frogh told me that women activists in the area had written to say that extremism was taking hold in their neighborhood, with little to stop it.
But despite their presence on the front lines of extremism, peace talks have stubbornly excluded women. As Jamille Bigio wrote recently in Newsweek: " between 1992 and 2011, women were fewer than 4% of signatories to peace agreements and 9% of negotiators." The most recent talks on Syria's future have included no women at all.
Read More | 4,342 |
2.2k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard
Advertisements
NBC’s Chuck Todd seized on and called out a new lie that Trump was building that Obama wanted to go to war with North Korea.
Trump said, “When I came into office, I met right there in the oval office with President Obama. And I sat in those beautiful chairs and we talked, it was supposed to be 15 minutes, it ended up being many times longer than that. I said what’s the biggest problem? He said by far, North Korea. And I don’t want to speak for him. But I believe he would have gone to war with North Korea. I think he was ready to go to war. He told me he was so close to starting a big war with North Korea.”
Chuck Todd called out this obvious lie on MSNBC, “He’s amping up a new lie about President Obama wanting to go to war with North Korea which is something he dangled that a little bit earlier in the state of the union. He’s advanced it some, saying it was going to be a full-fledged war. That’s something we need to note and call out. I don’t think anybody would believe that we were anywhere close and that President Obama was anywhere close to a war with North Korea.”
Advertisements
Video:
Watch Chuck Todd call out Trump's new big lie that Obama wanted to go to war with North Korea. https://t.co/lqfw3UE0wB pic.twitter.com/xmSN30xpbY — PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) February 15, 2019
Obama was never close to war with North Korea
As Chuck Todd said, this is a lie. It is impossible to believe that the president who pulled troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and spent eight years avoiding getting the US into another war was suddenly eager to fight a war with North Korea. The reality is that it was Trump who was tweeting insults at North Korea and threatening to invade or bomb them. Trump’s appeasement of Kim Jong-un has been a total disaster. His “summit” with Kim resulted in North Korea keeping their nuclear program going while playing Trump on the world stage.
Todd was right. Trump is cooking up a new lie to try to make himself look like a successful foreign policy president, and it is vital the media kill this falsehood in its tracks.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Follow Jason Easley on Facebook | 4,343 |
Blackberry 10 to be launched in January, RIM announces Published duration 12 November 2012
image caption There will be two handsets - one with a keyboard, and one without
The next Blackberry smartphone, which manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) hopes can revive its fortunes, will be introduced on 30 January.
RIM, once a leading name in smartphones, has struggled to keep up with the likes of Apple and Google in recent years.
The new range will run on Blackberry 10, an upgraded operating system.
RIM has not said when the smartphones, which have been set back by multiple delays, will be available to buy.
The devices were set to be launched late this year, but in June the company announced a delay - which means it will miss the critical holiday shopping period.
However, news of the January launch has buoyed investors - shares in the Canadian company rose 5.5% ahead of trading on Monday.
The company said that it will release two models: one with a touchscreen, the other with a Qwerty keyboard - seen as a key benefit among Blackberry fans.
Plummeting shares
In its more successful years, RIM's Blackberry products were considered pioneering devices due to their email capabilities and strong security.
Among young people, Blackberry Messenger - known to many as BBM - was very popular.
However, handsets from the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC has seen the Blackberry fall way behind - blamed in part on its poor support for many of the most popular apps.
media caption RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins talks through the Blackberry 10 system
Since 2008, the company's share price has dropped by 90%.
"In building Blackberry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs," RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins said.
"Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best-in-class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities.
"All of this will be integrated into a user experience - the Blackberry Flow - that is unlike any smartphone on the market today."
According to the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Blackberry Flow is designed to allow users to move seamlessly between a whole range of apps, heading from an email to calendar to a social network without returning to a home screen.
In an interview with the BBC last month, Mr Heins said users should not "underestimate" the new handsets' potential in the market. | 4,344 |
A father and son have been charged with several crimes after they allegedly shot a mother bear and her crying newborn twins inside their Alaska den, authorities said.
The men’s actions were captured on a motion-activated video camera installed by wildlife officials who were tracking the mother bear.
Owen Renner, 18, was seen on the video shooting the mother black bear in April on Esther Island in Prince William Sound, said police. According to a sworn summary of events by police that was filed in court, the “cubs begin shrieking in the den after the initial shots are fired,” The Anchorage Daily News reported Wednesday.
His father, Andrew Renner, 41, then took “aim through his rifle scope only feet away and fires several more shots, killing the newborn bear cubs,” per the court documents. He was also seen on video saying: ‘It doesn’t matter. Bear down,’” authorities said.
It’s illegal to kill a mother bear with cubs in most areas of Alaska, including where the sow and her newborns were slain.
After the Renners discovered the mother bear was wearing a tracking collar, they returned to the den to collect their gun shells and dispose of the cubs’ bodies, officials said. They later turned in the mother’s collar and skin to authorities but claimed they had shot the sow at a different location and saw no cubs with her, according to a statement from the Alaska State Troopers.
Other clips showed the men skinning and butchering the sow, and Owen Renner declaring, “They’ll never be able to link it to us,” authorities said.
The mother bear had been part of a three-year study by the U.S. Forest Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The study was launched due to concerns about the declining black bear population in the area.
The men now face charges of unlawfully taking a female bear with cubs, killing two bear cubs and illegally possessing and transporting three illegally hunted bears. Andrew Renner was also charged with tampering with evidence, which is a felony, filing false documentation and contributing to the delinquency of a minor (his son was 17 at the time of the shooting), the Dispatch reported.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
More from :
Laura Ingraham distances herself from ‘racist freak’ who agreed with her rant
Missouri couple accused of imprisoning 4 children in 'boxes' secured with plywood
Jared Kushner ordered deletion of Observer articles critical of his friends: Report | 4,345 |
The S&P 500 headed for a record close on Tuesday as Wall Street cheered stronger-than-expected quarterly profits from some of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies.
This is the busiest week of the corporate earnings season. Once the dust settles, more than 140 S&P 500 companies will have released their calendar first-quarter results. So far, the results have largely topped expectations. More than 78 percent of the S&P 500 companies that have reported have surpassed analyst expectations, according to FactSet data.
The broad index traded 0.8 percent higher at 2,932.09, above an all-time closing high of 2,930.75 set on Sept. 20.
Tuesday’s move toward an all-time closing high comes less than six months after a sharp decline in late December, which led the S&P 500 to its worst annual performance since 2008. But stocks quickly turned around as the Federal Reserve reversed course on monetary policy while the tone around U.S.-China trade talks improved.
“These market levels are justified,” said Kevin Barry, chief investment officer at Captrust Advisors. “The fourth-quarter sell-off actually prevented a recession because policymakers responded extremely quickly. Both President Xi and President Trump cooled off the rhetoric and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell came out and reversed course.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite also traded higher, gaining 155 points and 1.2 percent, respectively. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was also headed for a record close.
Dow members Coca-Cola and United Technologies reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday. Their shares rose 1.7 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
Twitter shares jumped 16.3 percent on its stronger-than-expected results. The social media company said its monthly active users totaled 330 million, more than a FactSet estimate of 318 million.
Defense giant Lockheed Martin also rallied more than 6 percent after its earnings easily topped expectations. The company reported strong operating margins across all its major businesses, which include aeronautics and missiles.
“Among the key companies that have reported, most of them have beaten expectations,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities. “That means we’re probably going to escape an earnings recession. That will be key for the market to rally from here.”
Wall Street also kept an eye on oil prices as they hit their highest level this year amid intensifying concern about global supplies. It comes after the U.S. announced a further clampdown on Iran’s oil exports. | 4,346 |
David Letterman wasn't camera-ready Tuesday, but "Late Show with David Letterman" went on nonetheless, thanks to some fancy footwork.
A CBS spokesperson tells TheShowbuzz.com that Letterman had to go home sick with a stomach virus, but he was able to find a last minute fill-in to handle his "Late Show" hosting duties: Adam Sandler.
Sandler was already scheduled to appear on the show as a guest, along with actor Don Cheadle, to promote their new film "Reign Over Me," a drama about a man who reconnects with a college roommate after losing his whole family in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox
Cheadle, who was nominated for an Oscar for 2004's "Hotel Rwanda," remained on the guest roster for the night, providing a leg up for Sandler, whose other guests were auto racing driver Danica Patrick, roots rock singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams, and comedian Todd Barry.
2 Sandler opened up with a monologue saying, "Welcome to the show, this is very big. I know you're thinking, 'I had no idea Dave's son got so big... and Jewish!'"
"This is bizarre, but it's cool," said Sandler, as he settled into the big chair at Letterman's desk.
The 40-year-old comedian and actor also spoke about his ten-month-old daughter during his banter back and forth with musical director Paul Schaeffer.
Sandler brought out his bulldog Matzoh Ball as a "practice guest," asking questions of the inscrutable pooch.
He brought one other thing with him – a touch of humility - as he tackled the job so many comedians crave.
At one point during his interview with Cheadle, Sandler proclaimed: "I really suck at this!" and switched seats.
3 Guest hosts have filled in for Letterman in the past, following his emergency heart surgery in 2000 and during a four-week-long absence in 2003 due to a severe case of shingles.
This is believed to be the first time the "Late Show" host has shown up for work and been unable to do the show.
Wednesday night's show was taped Monday, and will feature Letterman as host with actor Jack Black, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan, and beer-launching refrigerator creator John Cornwell.
The shows airing Thursday and Friday are both repeats due to delays by NCAA basketball tournament games.
Letterman is expected to be back on the job on Monday. | 4,347 |
THE first few days of April were supposed to be a period of reflection, when you could to look at countries' environmental promises and assess what progress—if any—had been made towards signing a global climate treaty in Paris in December. That agreement is to be based on INDCs, or “intended nationally determined contributions”—ie, aims and policies that countries promise to abide by after 2020. Countries were asked to announce these contributions by March 31st, making it easier to draft and debate a treaty by the end of the year. Needless to say, most haven’t.
Only 34 of the 196 countries that are taking part in the Paris talks actually unveiled their plans by the deadline. They account for just under a third of all greenhouse-gas emissions but include two of the biggest and most important polluters: the United States, which promised to cut emissions 26-28% by 2025 compared with 2005 (it is already half way to that target) and the European Union, which promised a 40% reduction by 2030 compared with 1990 (the fact that countries are using different periods and different measures is one reason negotiators want plenty of time to work on the treaty). Norway’s offer was similar to the EU’s. Russia—so often a spoiler in global talks these days—this time chose to take part and offered to cut emissions 25-30% from 1990 levels by 2030.
But most middle-income and developing countries decided not to show their hands. There were two exceptions: Gabon, offering a 50% cut by 2025 compared with business as usual, and Mexico, with a 25% cut compared with business as usual by 2030 (this would mean, it said, its emissions would peak in 2026). Mexico’s offer, though, contained an intriguing incentive: the 25% cut would be unconditional. But if a treaty were signed, then Mexico would cut by 40% instead. China and India, though, decided to wait until nearer the Paris meeting. Since they are the world’s largest and third largest national polluters, it makes it almost impossible to calculate whether the contributions on offer so far add up to anything substantial.
The deadline of March 31st was informal. Countries were merely invited to meet it. But a global treaty failed in Copenhagen in 2009 partly because too much happened at the last minute and negotiators felt blindsided. The process adopted for the Paris meeting—in which countries were supposed to make their offers in good time—was intended to avoid that. Negotiators are still hopeful that the biggest emerging markets will make their contributions early enough, perhaps by June. That might happen. But the process still flunked its first test. | 4,348 |
article
A Lakeland woman was arrested for murder after she said she accidentally stabbed her husband, deputies said.
The stabbing death occurred on June 25, but a medical examiner’s report recently ruled the death of 40-year-old Bryant Fidanian as a murder. Polk County detectives said the wife, and suspect, 38-year-old Rachel Fidanian “gave several inconsistent statements” about the events leading up to the stabbing.
According to her arrest affidavit, Rachel gave two different explanations during the initial 911 call. She first said she was holding her dog while doing dishes, then ran towards her husband, slipped, and a knife entered his shoulder area. Later in the call, detectives said she explained holding her dog while slicing pizza, went to talk to her husband, tripped and accidentally stabbed him.
While Polk County Fire Rescue officials were providing medical care, detectives said Rachel explained she was slicing a pizza she just cooked and noticed her dog defecated on itself. She went to clean the feces with the knife still in her hand, investigators said, but tripped on the mess and fell on the victim.
Bryant was transported to Lakeland Regional Health but later died at the hospital. During the investigation, a detective spoke to Rachel, and she provided another account of what lead up to the stabbing death.
Detectives said she told them she woke up around 8 a.m. to cook a frozen pizza for herself and the victim. The victim was sleeping on the couch, and Rachel ate half the pizza. Later, she said she used a filet knife to start slicing the other half of the pizza for the victim, when she heard the dog whimpering outside.
She said she observed orange feces covering the dog, so she picked the dog up, and brought him inside, according to her affidavit. The dog began urinating and defecating on itself in the living room, so she asked the victim for help, but she tripped on the rug, fell forward and ended up stabbing the victim.
Detectives said they found no signs of feces or urine inside the living room or on her clothing at the time of the stabbing. They also asked her to demonstration how she was holding her dog, but she was unable to pick it up.
"The suspect made a lot of excuses, but none of them made sense,” said Sheriff Grady Judd in a statement. “Our detectives did a thorough investigation. In the end, they determined this was an intentional act of domestic violence. Incidentally, her arrest occurred during Domestic Violence Awareness Month."
Rachel was arrested Wednesday on a murder charge. | 4,349 |
, that allowed me to get rid of the native dependency and have a 100% Go app, which made crosscompilation super easy again ( while this is the hell you’re going to have to manage if you just can’t avoid having native dependencies … sorry about that :/ ).
If your super-smart-self is now screaming USE STATIC BUILDS!!!! all over (statically compile libraries in order to at least have them -inside- the binary), just don’t. If you compile everything statically with a given version of glibc the binary will not work on systems with a different glibc.
If your even-smarter-self is now screaming USE DOCKER FOR BUILDS!!!!!, find a way to do it correctly for -every- platform and -every- arch and then send me an email :)
If your but-i-kinda-know-go-for-real-self is about to suggest some exotic glibc alternative, see requirements for his brother, Mr even-smarter-self :D
So ok, this is kind of controversial, Go binaries have no ASLR, BUT, given how Go manages memory (and mostly, given it doesn’t have pointer arithmetic) that should not be a security issue, as long as you do not use bindings to native libraries with vulnerabilities, in which case the lack of Go ASLR would make exploitation way easier.
Now, I kind of get Go developers point and I kind of don’t: why adding complexity to the runtime just to protect the runtime from something it is not vulnerable to in the first place? … but considering how often you end up using native libraries (see the previous section of this post :P) just ignoring the problem is not a wise approach regardless IMHO.
Conclusions
There are many other small things I don’t like about Go, but that is also true for every other language I know, so I just focused on the main things and tried to skip stuff like i don't like this syntax X which is completely subjective (and I do like Go syntax btw). I saw many people, blindly embracing a new language just because it’s trending on GitHub … on one hand, if so many developers decided to use it, there are indeed good reasons (or they’re just compile-anything-to-javascript hipsters), but the perfect language which is the best option for every possible application does not exist (yet, I still have faith in nipples and fault injection U.U), always better to double check the pros and cons.
peace
| 4,350 |
It seems Instagram user _pw40_ is in the right place at the right time. The place is Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, and the time is apparently right now. We don’t know much about the ninth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, but thanks to _pw40_ we do know this: At least some of the action takes places in eastern Europe, and the 2020 Toyota Supra makes an on-screen appearance. Not only that, it looks like it’s wearing the same Day-Glo shade of orange as Brian O'Conner's MkIV Supra from the very first movie. Be still our nostalgic hearts.
In addition to photos, we’re also treated to a few videos showing action shots being filmed. To nobody’s surprise we see a black Dodge Charger in the mix, along with what looks like a classic Chevrolet Nova. A badass SUV is pulling the Supra, while two people looking a lot like Vin Diesel and John Cena (or more likely, their stunt doubles) are duking it out on top of a truck. You know, typical Fast and Furious stuff.
At this point, we know nothing about the plot, but we’re going to make a bold prediction that it involves the Fast and Furious crew facing off against some big baddie while driving modified cars. We do know the core Fast family is back, including Michelle Rodriguez who at one point said she might not return over concerns about females not getting stronger roles. Charlize Theron also returns as Cipher, though it’s unclear if the Fate of the Furious villain will still actually be a villain. Speaking of bad-guys-turned-good, Dwayne Johnson won’t be in the film – his Fast spinoff Hobbs & Shaw is currently in theaters, and there’s also been something of a public feud between him and franchise staple Vin Diesel. Whether he appears in future films is still unknown.
Also returning is Jordana Brewster, who didn’t appear in The Fate of the Furious following the death of Paul Walker. It’s unclear if Walker’s character Brian O’Conner will have some kind of role in the new film, but we can’t help wondering if there’s a connection between that and the appearance of a shiny orange Toyota Supra. Of course, Brewster’s character Mia could be the pilot of the car while hubby Brian keeps the minivan running at home.
The next Fast and Furious romp will hit theaters in 2020.
Source: _pw40_via Instagram | 4,351 |
The Toronto Marlies have clinched a playoff spot. Exciting, right?! What’s more exciting is the fact that they did that without even having to win tonight’s hockey game, as their position was secured by a Hamilton Bulldogs loss. With that said, a victory against the Milwaukee Admirals could help them climb even further, and after sixty three and a half minutes, they got just that.
The Rundown
Toronto’s powerplay wasn’t particularly amazing tonight, but late in the first period, they converted on their first effort. William Nylander turned contributions from Byron Froese and Matt Frattin into his twelvth goal of the season, giving his team the lead after twenty minutes.
Despite this being a nothing game for the Admirals, they were committed to winning their final home game of the year. The second period made that look like a distinct possibility, as Antony Bitetto and Viktor Arvidsson both beat Antoine Bibeau within an eight minute span. The second period ended not with a response by the Marlies, but a fight between Michael Liambas and Frazer McLaren. Both left their benches after the period’s conclusion to unleash some frustration, and as such, were ejected.
Midway through the third period, Sam Carrick beat Magnus Hellberg to tie the game. The goal was reviewed at first, but upon realization that the puck did indeed cross the line, the two sides continued to play through to overtime. In the extra frame, Nylander set up Brendan Mikkelson for a heavy shot that crossed in a much more obvious fashion to secure the 3-2 victory.
Blue Warrior
Why does anybody even care about the draft lottery tomorrow? The next one is already in Toronto, and he’s Swedish. Okay, that might be excessive praise for William Nylander, but he picked up another goal and an assist tonight, bringing him to 29 points in 35 games. Not bad for somebody who hasn’t played in North America since he was a 14 year old playing AAA.
Summing It Up
The season isn’t over yet. The Marlies still have two important games ahead against Rockford and Chicago, the latter being a team that they’re actually chasing in the standings. While it’s unlikely, the Marlies could go as high as sixth place in the standings with the right results.
Tonight, however, was all about the game on the ice, and they had a decent enough one to get by. Puck drop for tomorrow’s game against Rockford is at 8PM.
| 4,352 |
an add-on to the existing ePrivacy directive, one aim was to broaden the scope to include online communications providers under the same requirements as traditional telecommunications providers. In this regard, companies including Gmail, Skype, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are now required to provide the same level of customer data safety as EU bricks and mortar providers. Providers of any electronic communication service are required to secure all communications through the best available techniques. This creates a need for websites to stay technologically in sync with the best safety features available on the market.
The new provisions also create the necessity for metadata to be treated the same as the actual content of the communication that it is facilitating being sent. It prohibits the interception of any such communication except where authorized by an EU member state specifically under law (such as within a criminal investigation).
Main differences between the two regulations
Each regulation was drawn up to reflect a different segment of EU law. The GDPR was created to enshrine Article 8 of the European Charter of Human Rights in terms of protecting personal data, while the ePrivacy regulation was created to enshrine Article 7 of the charter in respect to a person’s private life. The private sphere of the end user is covered under the ePrivacy regulations, making it a requirement for a user’s privacy to be protected at every stage of every online interaction.
The ePrivacy directive takes the broad online retail sector into account in terms of how personal information might be used and in this sense is what it adds to the overall regulations that make up the GDRP.
Conclusion
On March 20, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien announced he was launching an investigation into whether Facebook violated federal laws by allowing user data to be misused, the latest in the political crisis engulfing the social media giant as it struggled to respond to intensifying calls from global lawmakers to address privacy breaches and political interference. The probe would investigate reports that a U.K. political data-analysis firm Cambridge Analytica hired by the President Donald Trump’s election campaign team improperly accessed data from 50 million Facebook users.
The Commissioner has also repeatedly called for legislative changes similar to those proposed above.
Also, on March 20, the acting Minister Responsible for Democratic Institutions, Scott Brison, indicated an openness to update Canada’s privacy laws which presumably means an openness to update the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
With the first of Europe’s new privacy rules set to take effect in just 6 weeks and new stories breaking everyday of privacy violations by the private platforms, political consultants, and the political parties themselves, the Trudeau government must move now on long overdue privacy reforms. | 4,353 |
This four-year-old boy, Billy, claims that he is the reincarnation of the late Princess Diana and remember details from her life.
Billy is a son of an Australian TV presenter David Campbell who is the father of three revealed that the young boy telling something unusual to him.
The 45-year-old parent-of-three recounted the chilling tale in a column for Stellar Magazine, which he described as the “weirdest” thing he’d ever written, Mirror.co.uk reported.
He begins by saying that his youngest son first started talking about the famous royal at the age of just two, with the toddler pointing to an image of her on a card and exclaiming, “Look, it’s me when I was a princess.”
Despite not having been taught anything about the royals, Billy’s strange comments continued and included one incident where he told his family about having a brother named John (Princess Diana’s brother John died before she was born) and another where he mentioned his two ‘boys’ – i.e. William and Harry.
“He started to refer to his two ‘boys’,” recalls David. “When asked what boys, our then three-year-old would say his ‘sons’. Ok… strange, but sure, mate.”
And if that weren’t enough, the youngster also managed to accurately describe what Balmoral, the Queen’s favourite residence, looked like – without ever having seen it for himself.
“To a Scottish friend of ours, he claimed when he was Princess Diana he used to go to a castle in that kilted wonderland. He described the castle as having ‘unicorns on it’ and was called Balmoral,” the dad said.
“The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland and there are unicorns on the walls, how does he know this??? ”
The boy’s most recent comment is perhaps the most shocking of all though – as he appears to discuss Diana’s passing.
“Lisa showed him another photo of Diana,” adds David. “‘Billy said: ‘There’s me as a princess. Then one day the sirens came and I wasn’t a princess anymore.'”
Princess Diana was married to Prince Charles between 1981 and 1996, they shared two sons.
Tragically she was killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.
Comments
comments | 4,354 |
A New Hampshire lawmaker came under fire last week for claiming that American slavery was based on economics, not racism.
Republican state Rep. Werner Horn stated his case in a now-deleted Facebook post, then reaffirmed his position in multiple interviews with media outlets.
Horn initially drew attention for his comments in a Facebook post by former state House member Dan Hynes, who posed the question: "If Trump is the most racist president in American history, what does that say about all of the other presidents who owned slaves?"
Horn responded, “Wait, owning slaves doesn’t make you racist..."
"I guess not," Hynes answered Tuesday. "Which is surprising since everything else makes someone a racist."
Horn then added, “It shouldn’t be surprising since owning slaves wasn’t a decision predicated on race but on economics. It’s a business decision.”
Sanitized textbooks:Schools do a terrible job teaching about slavery
Hynes took a different position on Thursday via Facebook, saying that "slavery in the U.S. was in fact racist."
But, Horn, a three-term lawmaker, further denied racism's role in interviews with the Huffington Post and the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Horn told the Union Leader that people have been enslaving others throughout history, calling the American institution of slavery an "economic reality."
“Slavery later on in the American South was not about the color of the skin of the slaves but their value as workers on the plantations,” Horn told the newspaper. "The U.S. had abolitionists since the start, people who felt slavery wasn’t moral but they weren’t enslaving black people because they were black. They were bringing in these folks because they were available.”
'Poison of America':Bill on slavery reparations gains backing from Sen. Chuck Schumer
Millions of Africans were kidnapped, then shipped to the U.S. where slave owners forced them to do physical labor and brutally punished those who rebelled. Blacks still face discrimination related to the color of their skin, including disproportionate incarceration rates and overdiscipline in schools.
Ray Buckley, the state's Democratic Party chairman, criticized Horn's comments as well as the lack of condemnation from Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.
“Sununu’s silence on Trump’s racism has sanctioned this kind of behavior from his Republican Party and has permitted comments like these with impunity," Buckley said in a statement to the Union Leader. "It’s disgusting." | 4,355 |
THE story of Schrödinger's cat illustrates a nice finding of particle physics: you cannot measure something without changing its outcome. Curiously enough, that is true of a lot of social policy too. Take poverty. Until the late Victorian period, poverty in Britain was well documented–read almost any Dickens novel. But it wasn't well measured. That meant that it tended to be seen in individual terms: this person is poor for that reason. It was only in the 1890s, when social researchers such as Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree started knocking on doors and actually counting poor people, that Victorian Britain got a sense of the sheer amount of poverty in their midst. That made the rise of the welfare state, which really began with old age pensions in 1909, slightly more inevitable.
All of which is a long way of saying that measuring poverty matters. This is something that Iain Duncan Smith, the welfare secretary, is well aware of. Yesterday, he gave a speech arguing that poverty "simply cannot be captured by assessing whether their household has more or less than 60% of the average income." He wants the measure to be broader–and not primarily about income. We've published a story on the proposed change here. Mr Duncan Smith's argument that the current poverty line isn't an effective measure. But his real motivation for wanting to change it is surely how it affects government policy.
A dedicated, income-based poverty measure committed the last government to supporting household incomes, with tax credits and other benefits. That, after all, was the only effective way to reduce child poverty, as the government measured it. The Children's Society, a charity, has created a helpful online calculator here which shows quite how this worked: input characteristics for any family (how many children, etc) and you get a poverty line based on those characteristics. You can then see quite how the generosity of benefits have changed over time for that particular family. Essentially, they've become a lot more generous for pensioners and families with children, and a fair amount less generous for childless people.
And so it should be no surprise that pensioner and child poverty fell under the last government, while poverty rates for childless people increased. The measure dictates the policy. But all benefit rates are likely to become less generous now, thanks to the government's shortage of cash. That might be why Iain Duncan Smith wants a new measure: one that includes variables like family stability and educational attainment, rather than just how much money a family has. Quite apart from whether that is a good idea (I happen to think not), it raises an interesting question: will it be able to influence government policy in quite the same way? | 4,356 |
KNOX Project will be the primary insurance agency to join this present reality with the computerized world utilizing Blockchain innovation, and will make the most proficient and modern structure in the area, to discover answers for affirmation and hostile to fake protection strategies.
Through the web and portable stages can get to every one of the administrations of the organization and check all strategies. A shrewd contract ensures the receipt of authentic MTPL strategies, since the framework will issue them after installment is gotten. For insurance agencies, blocking enhances work forms, secures against extortion. On account of brilliant contracts, there will be no deferrals in gathering premiums, which will essentially enhance the organization's income. For agents, blocking is helpful in light of the fact that there will be a moment check of your executive's report and a moment conveyance of commissions.
Protection arrangement.
Because of the stage created by Knox protection, the approach will advance into a completely mechanized and take out the likelihood of irreconcilable circumstance between the gatherings included.
Insurance agencies will be set up in Lisbon, Dubai, and the Bermuda Islands, to empower Knox protection to work in different laws and empower token economies on a worldwide scale.
Savvy Contract.
Abstain from spreading counterfeit protection arrangements since it is a similar framework that evacuates them in the wake of accepting installment.
With keen gets, the organization isn't deferred in gathering credits in light of the fact that the arrangement is just issued after the installment is gotten. This factor is proposed to essentially enhance the administration of the organization itself.
The keen contract if there should arise an occurrence of a mischance is a genuine judge who chooses to pay or no more organization, which can have crafty conduct, yet the chain square framework, totally uninterested in the human personality, will choose whether the mishap meets the arrangement necessities. This advantage will be the most vital on the grounds that it expands the organization's straightforwardness to clients.
Deals Token.
Ticker : INSC.
Sort : ERC20.
Supply : 500'000'000 INSC.
Cost : 1 ETH = 5'000 INSC.
Allotment Token :
Token deals = 54%.
Distributer Broker = 15%.
Group and Counsel = 10%.
System Partnership Brokers = 10%.
Stores for 3 organizations = 9%.
Airdrop and Bounty Program = 2%.
Store Usage :
Setting Insurance Company = 60%.
Stage Development = 20%.
Showcasing = 10%.
Hold support = 10%. | 4,357 |
controlled by Monsanto,” Papantonio told Hartmann. “And every forecaster is predicting that these prices are going to climb even higher because of this merger.”
Yet it’s hard to imagine the situation getting any worse for the American farmer, who is now facing the highest suicide rate of any profession in the country. The suicide rate for Americans engaged in the field of farming, fishing and forestry is 84.5 per 100,000 people - more than five times that of the broader population.
This tragic trend echoes that of India, where about a decade ago millions of Indian farmers began switching from farming with traditional farming techniques to using Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds instead. In the past, following a millennia-old tradition, farmers saved seeds from one harvest and replanted them the following year. Those days of wisely following the rhythms and patterns of the natural world are almost over. Today, Monsanto GMO seeds are bred to contain 'terminator technology', with the resulting crops ‘programmed’ not to produce seeds of their own. In other words, the seed company is literally playing God with nature and our lives. Thus, hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers are forced to buy a new batch of seeds – together with Monsanto pesticide Round Up - each year and at a very prohibitive cost.
But should the world have expected anything different from the very same company that was involved in the production of Agent Orange for military use during the Vietnam War (1961-1971)? More than 4.8 million Vietnamese suffered adverse effects from the defoliant, which was sprayed over vast tracts of agricultural land during the war, destroying the fertility of the land and Vietnam’s food supply. About 400,000 Vietnamese died as a result of the US military’s use of Agent Orange, while millions more suffered from hunger, crippling disabilities and birth defects.
This is the company that we have allowed, together with Bayer, to control about one-quarter of the world’s food supply. This begs the question: Who is more nuts? Bayer and Monsanto, or We the People?
It’s important to mention that the Bayer – Monsanto convergence is not occurring in a corporate vacuum. It is all part of a race on the part of the global agrochemical companies to stake off the world’s food supplies. ChemChina has bought out Switzerland’s Syngenta for $43 billion, for example, while Dow and DuPont have forged their own $130 billion empire.
However, none of those companies carry the same bloodstained reputations as Bayer and Monsanto, a match made in hell that threatens all life on earth. | 4,358 |
If the Sarah Mclachlan ASPCA ad for abused animals makes your heart sink, the idea of caged bears kept under inhumane conditions to have their gall bladders milked daily for use as a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) might bring you to tears. Even more heart wrenching is a recent report of a mother bear killing her cub and herself to stop a life of continued torture and pain.A bile farm worker in North-West China witnessed a mother bear break free from her cage and attempt to rescue her cub after hearing it cry out in fear, as a worker prepared to puncture its abdomen. Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and eventually strangled it. It then dropped the cub and ran headfirst into a wall, killing itself.Farm bears receive a permanent hole cut into their abdomens for their gall bladders to be milked regularly. The holes are never closed and the bears are often fitted with iron vests to prevent them from maiming or killing themselves in an attempt to stop their suffering. What’s more, the bears are kept in so-called “crush cages” which are the size of telephone booths with iron-bar floors. The bears often succumb to various infections and diseases including tumors, cancers and death from peritonitis.Bear bile is used to treat high fever, liver ailments and sore eyes in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It has been reported that many TCM practitioners denounce the use of bear bile as there are cheaper herbs and synthetics that can be used in its place; yet, bile farms still thrive under little or no regulatory control.Bears have been long known for intelligence comparable with that of higher primates and possess the largest brains relative to their size of any North American land mammal. They are highly evolved social animals, form hierarchies and structured relationships, use tools like sticks for scratching and throw rocks during play, and have been known to show self-awareness by covering their tracks when pursued by hunters and poachers.I am no card-carrying member of PETA and realize humans are at the top of the food chain, and will by default use “lesser creatures” for our own selfish purposes, but as the more advanced and intelligent species, we have a moral obligation to treat these animals with compassion.Chinese actor, martial artist, and filmmaker Jackie Chan is a passionate animal advocate and in collaboration with the World Society for the Protection of Animals, is working towards creating awareness for Asian bear farming. Lending support for WSPA or at least signing a petition is a small step towards preventing further cruelty, but even just a tiny bit of awareness can go a long way.
| 4,359 |
(Reuters) - Germany’s Kristina Vogel claimed a record-equalling 11th world title as she powered to victory in the individual sprint at the UCI track championships in Apeldoorn on Friday.
Slideshow ( 2 images )
Vogel followed up her victory in the team sprint to move level with Australia’s Anna Meares on the all-time women’s list.
The 27-year-old was taken to a deciding sprint by Australia’s Stephanie Morton, the fastest qualifier in the heats, but once again the Olympic champion showed her quality when the pressure was on.
“At the moment and on this day I’m not counting,” Vogel, who sat on the track draped in a German flag after her victory, said of matching Meares. “It was very hard at the end and it took me three final heats to get the gold medal.
“Today it took everything to make it to the finish line. I’m just proud to make this world title.”
There were more home celebrations as Kirsten Wild claimed her second gold medal of the week to make it three wins for the Dutch so far.
Wild, who delivered Dutch gold on the opening day of the event when she topped the podium in the scratch race, won the last sprint of the points race in the multi-discipline omnium to secure the title in style, delighting the home crowd.
It was an eighth world championships medal for the 35-year-old but first gold in the omnium, having won silver last year.
Amalie Dideriksen of Denmark was second with Rushlee Buchanan of New Zealand third.
Earlier in the day Australia’s Cameron Meyer controlled the men’s points race to win his fifth world title in the event and ninth rainbow jersey in total.
“It’s special,” Meyer, who won five intermediate sprints and took two laps on the field, said. “Every one of them is special when you win a gold medal in the world championships.
“To win today was not easy. To be one of the favourites every time is a lot of pressure, but I enjoy it.”
Jan Willem van Schip won silver, adding another medal to the hosts’ total, with Britain’s Mark Stewart third.
Italy’s Filippo Ganna won the men’s individual pursuit, storming back to beat Portugal’s Ivo Oliveira in a nailbiter. | 4,360 |
You are not signed in as a Premium user; we rely on Premium users to support our news reporting. Sign in or Sign up today!
CHICAGO (ChurchMilitant.com) - A dissident theologian and pro-homosexual is scheduled to speak in February at a conference on religious life.
The Catholic Theological Union is allowing Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, to give the keynote address at its Consecrated Life Symposium on February 5–6.
Father Radcliffe is a Dominican friar, notorious for his heterodox theology including his approval of homosexual relations and the ordination of women to the priesthood. In 2013 he wrote of "gay" sexuality:
We cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means, and how far it is eucharistic. Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So in many ways, I would think that it can be expressive of Christ's self-gift.
In 2006 he said in a talk titled "The Church as Sign of Hope and Freedom": "We must accompany them.... This means watching "Brokeback Mountain," reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord."
The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered and acts of "grave depravity" — meaning they can never have any good value to them, no matter what the situation.
Father Radcliffe is a popular speaker at officially sponsored Catholic events across North America and Europe, but he's never been officially disciplined by the Dominicans or the Vatican for spreading bad theology or promoting homosexuality.
Catholic Theological Union is a graduate school of theology started in 1968 after the Second Vatican Council, geared towards lay and ordained ministry, with a faculty that is Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim. It's home to the Bernardin Center of Theology and Ministry, inspired by the theology of Cdl. Joseph Bernardin, one of the most powerful and influential prelates in the American Catholic Church in the late 20th century, who coined the phrase "seamless garment" with reference to social justice issues.
The director for CTU's Center for the Study of Consecrated Life, Sr. Maria Cimperman, can be contacted at [email protected]
Watch ChurchMilitant.com's show "Faith-Based Investigation: Homosexuality" to learn the extent of the homosexual agenda.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line. | 4,361 |
長年謎に包まれていた正体が、ついに明かされたようです。
現在の金融の仕組みを根本から変える革新的な技術ともいわれる、ビットコイン。しかしその開発者は｢サトシ・ナカモト｣という名前以外、完全な謎に包まれていました。
去年12月、米Gizmodoの取材によって、その正体がシドニー在住のオーストラリア人、Craig Wrightさんなのではないかという噂をお伝えしていましたが、ついに本人がそれを認めたとのことです。
Wrightさんは、BBCとの会合において自身がBitcoinの開発者であると発言。その証拠として、開発初期の暗号キーを提示。これはサトシ・ナカモトでなければ知り得ない情報であり、｢2009年1月に最初のBitcoinとしてHal Finneyに送られたものです｣と語ったとのこと。
Wrightさんは、今後も自身がサトシ・ナカモトである証拠を提示していくとのことで、いよいよこの世紀の発明の謎が解けはじめそうですね。
image by Jim Cooke
source: BBC NEWS
（渡邊徹則） | 4,362 |
Cow dung cakes have been used for centuries to fuel fires for cooking and are specially laid out on the festival of colours, Holi. (AP Photo)
Online vendors like Amazon, ShopClues and eBay are selling cow dung patties to India's ever-increasing urban population. (AP Photo)
There's one unusual item flying off the virtual shelves: Online retailers say cow dung patties are selling like hot cakes.The patties - cow poop mixed with hay and dried in the sun, made mainly by women in rural areas and used to fuel fires - have long been available in villages. But online retailers including Amazon and eBay are now reaching out to the country's ever-increasing urban population, feeding into the desire of older city folks to harken back to their childhood in the village.Some retailers say they're offering discounts for large orders. Some customers are asking for gift wrapping."Cow dung cakes have been listed by multiple sellers on our platform since October and we have received several customer orders" since then, said Madhavi Kochar, an Amazon India spokeswoman.The orders come mostly from cities where it would be difficult to buy dung cakes, she said.Cow dung cakes have been used for centuries for fires, whether for heating, cooking or for rituals. Across rural landscape, piles of drying cow dung are ubiquitous.Radhika Agarwal of ShopClues, a major online retailer in the country, said demand for the cow dung cakes spiked during the recent Diwali festival season, a time when many people conduct prayer ceremonies at their homes, factories and offices. On a recent day, ShopClues' website showed that the patties had sold out."Around Diwali, when people do a lot of pujas in their homes and workplaces, there is a lot of demand for cow dung cakes," said Ms Agarwal, referring to rituals performed during the popular festival."Increasingly, in the cold weather, people are keeping themselves warm by lighting fires" at outdoor events, she said, adding that people who grew up in rural areas find the peaty smell of dung fires pleasant."It reminds them of the old days," she said.Online retailers said people were also buying the dung cakes to light fires for ritual ceremonies to mark the beginning of a new year and for the winter festival Lohri, celebrated in northern India.The cakes are sold in packages that contain two to eight pieces weighing 200 grams (7 ounces) each. Prices range from Rs 100 to Rs 400 per package.Dung cakes are also used as organic manure, and some sellers are marketing them for use in kitchen gardens. | 4,363 |
TALKING to the soldier’s family in Bisaya, President Rodrigo Duterte was at the wake of fallen 30-year-old Cebuano Corporal Reymund Paracuelles in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City, Sunday night.
“The President extended his condolences then shook our hand,” said Reymund’s father, 57-year-old Cesar Paracuelles.
“He also asked where we were from and so we told him from Badian, Cebu. He talked to us in Cebuano,” Cesar recounted.
Badian is a town located 106 kilometers southwest of Cebu City.
Reymund was the eldest of Cesar’s five children.
“The President nodded and then proceeded to talk to Reymund’s widow. I did not hear the rest of their conversation,” Cesar told CDN in Cebuano.
Though his family would have wanted him buried in Badian, Reymund will be laid to rest at the Libingan ng mga Bayani on Saturday, June 17 upon the wishes of his wife, Ann Catherine.
“Ang dili lang g’yud nako makalimtan aning akong anak kay sobra ka buotan. Wala jud ni nagpabuyag. Manggihunaon sa ginikanan bisag minyo na. Wala sad me pasakiti og storya niya,” Cesar said.
(What I will always remember about my son was that he was very kind. He never gave us problems and always thought of his parents even though he was already married. He never said anything hurtful.)
Reymund was killed last June 6 shortly after he had spoken on the phone with his father, Cesar.
(Read: Cpl. Reymund Paracuelles: ‘He did not die in vain’ )
The fallen soldier studied fisheries at Cebu Technological University (CTU) Moalboal Campus and graduated in 2007.
He worked to become a supervisor of an Sbarro outlet in Cebu City when he decided to resign in 2012 to join the military service.
Reymund was assigned to the Army’s Engineering Battalion in Fort Bonifacio when he was deployed to Marawi City as part of the engineering support group.
It was Reymund’s first assignment to a war-stricken area. | 4,364 |
Coinbase Explores Adding ADA, BAT, XLM, ZEC, and 0x
In a blog post today, Coinbase announced the company is exploring the idea of adding Cardano, Basic Attention Token, Stellar, Zcash, and 0x to its platforms. The information was released to the public to remain transparent, as the company is simultaneously releasing this information to their internal team.
Coinbase stressed that this does not mean these crypto assets are guarenteed to be added to the platform:
Unlike the ongoing process of adding Ethereum Classic, which is technically very similar to Ethereum, these assets will require additional exploratory work and we cannot guarantee they will be listed for trading.
The popular exchange also noted additional factors which could impact how these assets’ are implemented into its services:
Furthermore, our listing process may result in some of these assets being listed solely for customers to buy and sell, without the ability to send or receive using a local wallet. We may also only enable certain ways to interact with these assets through our site, such as supporting only deposits and withdrawals from transparent Zcash addresses. Finally, some of these assets may be offered in other jurisdictions prior to being listed in the US.
Cryptocurrency Price Increases
With Coinbase being one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, particularly for common and institutional investors, prices have historically risen when new assets are announced to be added to its platforms. Last month Unhashed covered Ethereum Classic‘s 20% price surge after news of its addition to Coinbase.
While the cryptocurrencies discussed today aren’t guaranteed to be added, that hasn’t stopped traders from buying into the news. In the last 24 hours, all of these assets have seen dramatic increases in their prices – Cardano ADA (+11.78%), Basic Attention Token BAT (+23.14%), Stellar XLM (+10.85%), Zcash ZEC (+15.26%), 0x ZRX (+26.78%).
Another Blow to Ripple XRP Supporters
Investors and supporters of the cryptocurrency Ripple XRP have long hoped their coin would be added to Coinbase. There have been multiple unsubstantiated rumors of the coin being added in the past, which led to short term price increases.
Despite XRP currently being the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap, today shows Coinbase has no immediate plans to implement it. The blow is especially devastating because Ripple competitor Stellar is potentially being added.
At Stellar’s launch, it was based on the Ripple protocol. Stellar Co-Founder Jed McCaleb was also a co-founder of Ripple and he’s had a heated history with his former project. | 4,365 |
Brandon, MB. – For the first time in close to thirty years the Brandon Wheat Kings will have a new General Manager in place when they open up Training Camp at Westman Communications Group Place next week.
Brandon Owner / Governor Kelly McCrimmon is pleased to announce that Grant Armstrong has been named the team’s new General Manager.
Armstrong joins the Wheat Kings after spending the past four seasons as an Assistant GM and Director of Player Personnel with the Victoria Royals.
The 54-year old North Delta, B.C. product joined the Royals in 2012 after spending four seasons as Head Scout for the Portland Winterhawks. Working under Victoria General Manager Cameron Hope, Armstrong has been instrumental in the Royals climb to the WHL’s elite.
“I am excited to join the Wheat Kings organization with the rich history they have and the legacy their teams have created over the years” said Armstrong. “I am looking forward to getting to Brandon and becoming a part of the community there.”
With the Royals, Armstrong was responsible for coordinating the club’s scouting staff, overseeing all WHL and minor hockey scouting operations, assisting the development of the Royals’ 50-man Player Protected List and the recruitment of prospective players.
This past season, the Royals captured the Scotty Munro Memorial Trophy as the League’s Regular Season Champions.
“We are pleased to announce we have chosen Grant to lead our organization forward” said McCrimmon. “He has a record of success in the WHL with both Portland and Victoria, and we are confident he will add great value to the Wheat Kings. I would like to thank the Victoria Royals Owner Graham Lee and General Manager Cam Hope for their support of Grant and allowing him to take this step. ”
Armstrong has been heavily involved in British Columbia hockey for most of his life. During the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons, he served as coach of the North Delta Devils Junior B team in the Pacific International Junior Hockey League. At the same time, he served as North Vancouver Minor Hockey Association’s Director of Hockey Operations.
Joining Armstrong as Assistant General Manager will be Mick McCrimmon. The 30 year old is a recent graduate of law school and has an extensive background in the game. He will assist on both hockey operations and business operations as he begins his career in management.
McCrimmon, who joined the Wheat Kings in 1988 and bought the franchise in 2000, recently accepted the Assistant General Manager’s job with the new National Hockey League franchise, set to begin play in 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada. | 4,366 |
The wasteful structure of private competition in the electricity sector is costing every Australian household over $200 per year, according to new research from The Australia Institute.
As heatwaves across Australia heighten concern for high electricity prices as households try and stay cool, new research shows the problem in electricity pricing is structural and the Prime Minister’s proposed ‘big stick’ approach to breaking up electricity companies will likely exacerbate the problem, rather than fix it.
Key findings:
Real output per employees in the electricity sector has fallen by 37% between 2000 and 2018, due to the excessive allocation of ultimately unproductive labour to advertising, sales, contract administration and other activities associated with privatisation.
Productivity growth has been worse than for any other industry in Australia, completely contrary to the assumption that privatisation enhances efficiency.
The number of sales staff employed by electricity companies has grown almost 400% since the industry began to be privatised in the mid-1990s and the number of managers has grown over 200%.
Over the same period, the number of electrical tradespeople and other workers involved in actual production has grown just 21%.
Electricity sector now spends more on finance and banking costs than the actual fossil fuels that power electricity generation.
“Reining in soaring electricity prices requires addressing the huge inefficiencies and wastes associated with privatisation — not just symbolic tough-talk to a handful of CEOs,” says David Richardson, Senior Research Fellow at The Australia Institute.
“Privatisation of the electricity industry has resulted in enormous increases in wasteful spending, including high-pressure sales tactics, excessive numbers of managers, and dizzying advertising and so-called ‘chase’ costs.
“The annual cost of these economically wasteful activities adds up to $2 billion per year. These costs are passed on to customers in their electricity bill, leaving households over $200 worse off a year.
“The financial sector have also reaped huge rewards from power privatisation. In fact, the electricity industry now spends more on finance and banking costs than it does on the actual fossil fuels to power its electricity generators.
“Further fragmenting the electricity sector will see these costs increase as more players set up with their own advertising departments, duplicate management structures and so on.
“The productivity of electricity production has been dismal under privatisation, contrary to the promises of the architects of the competition model.
“The government’s phony ‘big-stick’ approach to reducing electricity prices is merely an attempt to manage the political optics of the crisis in the system, not address its true causes.” | 4,367 |
hit Flappy Bird – they've achieved global recognition with very limited resources. But the Oliver twins, whose latest creation is the online game Sky Saga, equate success in the app world with winning the lottery. "The criteria for success is completely random," says Philip, "and I worry that people are investing time and money in something that won't yield very much."
Kingsley agrees. "[Success with an app game is] more about discoverability, eyeballs and business speak than creating something beautiful just because you can."
There's a fierce, low-level nostalgia for those early 1980s computers, machines that sold millions of units in the UK alone. Crowdfunding site Indiegogo has, in recent weeks, raised £125,000 for the production of the ZX Spectrum Vega, a new eight-button gaming machine based upon the original Spectrum with thousands of retro games pre-loaded.
ZX81 action-adventure maze game 'Mazogs' (1982)
But while the outward ripples from our early interest in computer gaming have touched more people than the Sex Pistols et al ever will, that initial British gaming explosion is often overlooked – in the meantime, punk music is constantly cited as a pivotal moment in British culture. "A lot of people don't understand how much power you can have if you know how computers work," says Kingsley, "and the only thing you can do in that situation is to assume it's not important and belittle it.
"We didn't know it was important at the time. It's only with hindsight that you realise just how influential it was in terms of setting things up for the digital future. But none of us were doing it deliberately. We were just having fun."
'From Bedrooms To Billions' is available to view online now at frombedroomstobillions.com
High scores: Games that levelled up
'Football Manager'
While emptying bins for the council, Kevin Toms saw an advert for a ZX80 and sent off for one on impulse. With tremendous foresight, he saw a gap in the market for a football-management simulation game; he created Football Manager for the ZX81, which spawned a number of sequels. The genre continues to be hugely popular.
'Jetpac'
Tim and Chris Stamper, described as the "Gilbert and George of the computer game world", brought arcade-standard gaming to the ZX Spectrum, VIC-20 and BBC Micro with Jetpac. The first title in the Ultimate Play The Game series, it raised the bar in terms of slick graphics and addictive gameplay.
'Elite' | 4,368 |
“Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Dorit Kemsley’s husband is close to having his UK bank account seized, as part of his nasty court battle.
According to court documents obtained by The Blast, Paul “PK” Kemsley was questioned about an overseas bank account during a recent court hearing. The case centers around $1.2 million PK owes to a man named Nicos Kirzis, who has been trying to collect on the debt.
Kirzis wants to seize the money in the UK account. The judge heard from both parties during the hearing. He did not make a decision but set a hearing for later this month. He asked for more information about the bank account before he issues an order. PK could face having the account seized.
In docs, Kirzis blasts PK, “Despite living in a multi-million dollar mansion and being featured on a show highlighting his and his wife’s wealth and opulent lifestyle, Mr. Kemsley steadfastly refuses to pay his debts.”
Related:
'RHOBH' Star Dorit Kemsley Shows Up To Court in $1.2 Million Battle
'RHOBH' Star Dorit Kemsley's Husband Shut Down in Attempt to Block Her From Testifying in $1.2 Million Battle
'RHOBH' Star Dorit Kemsley Shares High School Graduation Photo Amid Legal Troubles
'RHOBH' Star Dorit Kemsley Warned To Show Up To Court Or Risk Arrest in $1.2 Million Battle
'RHOBH' Star Dorit Kemsley Celebrates 43rd Birthday in Luxury Despite Bank Account Being Frozen
View photos
The battle over the money has been going on for over a year. Kirzis accuses Kemsley of not paying a dime for years.
Kirzis said Kemsley has made a payment of $250,000 but that only covered the interest that racked up for years, leaving a remaining balance still of $1,235,573.66.
Dorit was ordered to appear in court, as part of PK’s battle and bring her financial and bank records.
View photos
Kirzis went to court trying to seize moneyin a City National Bank Account under PK and Dorit’s name.
Dorit demanded Kirzis not be allowed to seize the $29,634.10 in the account. She argued the account was her separate money and PK had not contributed to it.
View photos | 4,369 |
Florida Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Bittel will remain in his post- for now.
The Florida Democratic Party chair reached a truce with the two top African-American Democrats in the Florida legislature in a Tuesday meeting, the Miami Herald reported.
Bittel had been facing calls to resign from his post after he made a statement saying that black lawmakers are like “children” after a fundraising gala Saturday evening.
“They’re like children, these black lawmakers. They just don’t get it,” Bittel reportedly told Sen. Lauren Book (D-Plantation). “I raised more money in this amount of time than they ever could.”
Bittel made the comment referencing lawmakers who were unhappy because their names did not get called on stage at a million-dollar fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party.
The party made a decision not to introduce the lawmakers by name because of time constraints having to do with an appearance by former Vice President Joe Biden, who said the appearance at the Leadership Blue Gala was cutting into the time he would spend with his wife for their 40th wedding anniversary.
Democratic legislators were upset with Bittel for cutting the portion of the program where Braynon and Rep. Janet Cruz (D-Tampa), the House Democratic leader, would introduce members from each of their caucuses.
When Sen. Oscar Braynon (D-Miami Gardens) aired his grievances with the chairman, Bittel responded by telling the Senate Democratic leader he was “acting like a 3-year-old.”
“I wouldn’t have cared if he told us we couldn’t be on stage,” Braynon said Sunday after the gala. “I was trying to protect you, tell him members were going to be upset. And he has the audacity of calling me a black child.”
Several black legislators set up a private meeting with Bittel Sunday in a conference room at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida to say how angry they were with him for referring to them as “children.”
“I’m sorry,” Bittel said, according to three people who attended the meeting.
Politico reported that one of the Democratic lawmakers at the meeting who spoke to Bittel said the party chair would be “ready to quit if asked.”
The two African-American lawmakers who met with Bittel Tuesday, although still upset with him, urged to Bittel be more inclusive in his efforts to lead the party through the 2018 elections. | 4,370 |
Minnesota United is working to finalize a contract for Thomas de Villardi. The Loons selected the French defender out of the University of Delaware with the 42nd pick in the MLS SuperDraft in January.
Tanner Thompson, the son of Gregg Thompson, a record-setter in football and track at Stillwater High School, is no longer with the Loons. United drafted Thompson out of the University of Indiana with the 67th pick in the SuperDraft.
Related Articles Minnesota United acquires striker Kei Kamara in trade with Colorado
New Loons star Emanuel Reynoso brings his lifelong ‘fight’ to fresh start in Minnesota
Loons acquire backup goalkeeper Adrian Zendejas from Nashville
Minnesota United’s injury list won’t shrink much in near future
Loons set new record low in 1-0 loss to Sporting Kansas City Goalie Alec Ferrell, who is talking to surgeons to deal with his preexisting injury, remains unsigned after being selected with the 23rd pick. That status is a continuation of the Loons’ wait-and-see approach with the former goalie from Wake Forest.
“We’re hopeful he gets a clean bill of health and we can get him into the building and start working with him, but at this moment he’s just not fit to play,” United coach Adrian Heath said.
United will retain the rights to both Ferrell and Thompson.
Midfielder Raul Gonzalez and goalie Marco Carducci, who were with United as trialists, have left the club.
UNITED AND USL
Minnesota is the only club among the 22 in MLS without an affiliate to send developing players to the United Soccer League this season. Instead, United will send players to individual teams based on the best fit to have them gain playing experience.
BRIEFLY
Abu Danladi, the first overall pick in the SuperDraft, was training Tuesday after missing a week with an injury. “There is no point in rushing him to get back for Friday’s” season opener at Portland, Heath said. … Defender Vadim Demidov will captain United this season, Heath said. …Di Villardi is dealing with an ankle injury he received in the 2-0 loss to San Antonio in the last preseason game Sunday, Heath said. … United is still waiting for new defender Jerome Thiesson’s travel paperwork in order for him to make the trip from his native Switzerland. “The minute he gets his visa and everything to travel, he will be here the next day,” Heath said. | 4,371 |
UPDATE: 3:26 p.m.
The death toll in an early Sunday mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub has jumped dramatically, making it the deadliest mass shooting is U.S. history.
Officials now say 50 people were killed when a Florida man in his late 20s identified as Omar Mateen opened fire in the gay club around closing time.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said there was an “enormous amount of havoc” on the scene.
It was originally reported that the shooter killed approximately 20 people and injured dozens of others after opening fire in the nightclub.
But, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a news conference later in the day that the death toll had risen to 50 people and 53 people were injured.
Officials said Mateen was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun. An ATF official said in a news conference Sunday that Mateen legally purchased two guns within the last “few days.”
NBC News and CNN reported, citing anonymous law enforcement officials, that Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Baker Baghdadi. An FBI official confirmed Sunday in the news conference that the call took place and the Islamic State was discussed, but did not disclose the contents of the conversation.
Mateen died in a shootout with SWAT members as they tried to free some 30 hostages he was holding in the club.
NBC News reported that Mateen was 29. A police officer was injured in the incident.
Mateen’s father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News that the incident “has nothing to do with religion.” He said that his son was angered a couple months ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami and thinks that it may be related to the shooting.
“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country,” Seddique said.
Seddique told NBC that Mateen was a father and a husband. He reportedly worked in security. NBC reported he had active gun licenses.
The FBI investigated Mateen twice before. The first, in 2013, an FBI official said in a news conference Sunday was launched due to “inflammatory” comments he made to co-workers. In 2014, he was investigated for potential ties to an American suicide bomber. Mateen was interviewed in both investigations and both were closed.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) said it was “clearly an act of terror that should make every American angry.” | 4,372 |
Jake Morphonios
Nolan Chart
January 27, 2012
On Thursday night, the four remaining GOP presidential candidates squared off in Jacksonville in the second of two Florida debates, hosted by CNN and moderated by Wolf Blitzer. While much of the debate time was again wasted on callow rhetoric between neo-con candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, Congressman Ron Paul indoctrinated the audience with principled lessons on liberty and the proper role of government.
Paul showcased his brand of non-interventionist foreign policy in a series of exchanges with former senator Rick Santorum. These exchanges provided crystal clear contrasts in opposing political philosophies from which voters much choose. Each time that Paul and Santorum sparred over foreign policy, the Texas congressman pummeled the feeble foundations of Santorum’s unprincipled ideologies and tutored his opponents on the basics of the US Constitution (that pesky, outdated thing they would have to swear to uphold if elected president).
Wolf Blitzer addressed the following question to Congressman Paul:
“What would you do as president to more deeply engage in Latin America and, more importantly, to support the governments and political parties that support democracy and free markets?”
To which Paul responded:
“I think free trade is the answer. Free trade is the answer to a lot of conflicts around the world. And you might add Cuba too. I think we’d be a lot better off trading with Cuba. But as far as us having a military or financial obligation to go down and dictate what government they should have? I don’t like that idea. I would support the people by encouraging free trade and trying to set a standard that countries in Central and South America – or anywhere in the world – would want to emulate.” “Unfortunately, sometimes we slip up on our standards and we go around the world and we try to force ourselves on others. I don’t think the nations in Central and South America necessarily want us to come down there and dictate which government they should have. I believe that with friendship and with trade you can have a strong influence.”
Congressman Paul’s answer reflected both his moral character as well as his deep understanding of constitutional foreign policy as intended by the Founding Fathers. Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, is often credited as the original patriot to strongly inject into American politics the notion of non-interventionism. He argued in Common Sense of the need for the new nation to avoid the formation of alliances with other nations.
Full article here
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today! | 4,373 |
American artist Jennifer Angus has used an intricate pattern of insects to decorate a vivid pink room at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC, set to reopen next month following renovation work (+ slideshow).
Designed to resemble wallpaper, the bug-covered wall installation is titled The Midnight Garden and was made using preserved insects from a variety of species.
Angus has arranged the specimens into geometric patterns including spirals, grids, and circles, as well as images of skulls. The patterns reach from floor to ceiling on all four walls in the room.
The delicate bodies of the insects also add texture and iridescence to the walls, as light and shadow play off their shells and wings.
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, where she teaches at the university, Angus has long used insects in her work – collecting the creepy crawlies in an ecologically sustainable way from locations around the world. She also meticulously reuses her stock of arthropods from project to project.
Related story Ink made from insects by Evelien Crooy
"Many people who visit my exhibitions were never aware that such unusual insects exist," she said. "I hope that my exhibition will get them excited and perhaps they will be motivated to get involved with one of the many of the rain forest preservation projects out there. I would also like people to think about their own environment and behaviour."
The Renwick Galleries installation is part of an exhibition called Wonder, which features eight other artists including Maya Lin, Leo Villareal, Tara Donovan, Patrick Dougherty, Janet Echelman, John Grade, Chakaia Booker and Gabriel Dawe. Many of these artists use architectural-scale works to transform perception, and work on the border between art and craft.
"The concept of 'wonder' – that moment of awe in the face of something new and unknown that transports us out of the everyday – is deeply intertwined with how we experience art," said curator Nicholas R Bell. "These elements matter in the context of this museum, devoted for more than four decades to the skilled working of materials in extraordinary ways."
The Renwick Gallery, which first opened in 1874, was the first purpose-built art museum in the United States. It has been a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum since 1972, hosting the institution's collection of contemporary craft and decorative art.
The building will reopen next month following a two-year renovation led by Westlake Reed Leskosky, an architecture firm with offices in Washington DC, Cleveland, New York and other cities across the US.
Wonder, one of the inaugural reopening exhibitions, will be on show from 13 November 2015 through 10 July 2016. | 4,374 |
Sen. Mitt Romney says he’s open to removing President Donald Trump from office, but is trying to stay as impartial as he can until he hears all the evidence.
“ “We certainly can’t have presidents asking foreign countries to provide something of political value. That is, after all, against the law.” ”
In an interview airing Sunday night on “Axios on HBO,” the Utah Republican said “it was shocking” for the president to ask Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Romney is among the most outspoken Republican lawmakers willing to publicly criticize Trump, though he said many share his concerns but are too afraid of voter backlash if they speak out.
“There’s no upside in going on out and attacking the leader of your party, ’cause that’s just gonna let someone come in and primary you on the right. So people want to hang onto their job,” he told Axios. “And they don’t want to do something which makes it more likely for Elizabeth Warren to become president or for us to lose the Senate.”
Romney criticized Trump’s sense of honor and said he most disagrees with how, on divisive issues, the president appears to appeal to racism and misogyny. “Those are the kinds of things I think that have been most, most harmful long term to the foundation of America’s virtuous character,” he said.
Romney said that if impeachment went before the Senate, it would have a high bar to pass and the evidence would need to be compelling, noting that past presidents have done unethical or possibly illegal things and not been removed from office. “I’d like to learn the full background of who all was involved in communications with Ukraine,” he said. “I just want to get as much information as we can, make an assessment consistent with the law and the Constitution.”
In a separate profile published Sunday by The Atlantic, Romney was described as preparing for an impeachment. “Romney is taking the prospect of a Senate trial seriously — he’s reviewing ‘The Federalist Papers,’ brushing up on parliamentary procedure, and staying open to the idea that the president may need to be evicted from the Oval Office,” The Atlantic‘s McKay Coppins wrote.
“I do think people will view this as an inflection point in American history,” Romney told The Atlantic. “At this stage, I am strenuously avoiding trying to make any judgment.” | 4,375 |
Well, we have bad news: The world of ambulances, and the long-suffering crews who work inside them, is quite a bit more horrifying than you thought.
You will probably never have a good encounter with an ambulance. Either they're shrieking past in traffic and making you late for work, or you're riding in one while blood squirts from a horrific fireworks injury.
5 Ambulances Tend to Explode
Photos.com
Continue Reading Below Advertisement
You know you've had a bad day when you can't describe it without using the term "ambulance explosion." But ambulances do explode. A lot. The oxygen tanks carried by the majority of EMS units detonate every now and then, as compressed gas is wont to do, and sometimes ambulances themselves just burst into flames for no apparent reason. One ambulance caught fire while just sitting in the bay after only one year of service, and another ignited while transporting a patient to the hospital.
Via Wusa9.com
Tragically, their brand of burn salve turned out to be highly explosive.
Continue Reading Below Advertisement
The thing is, you kind of assume ambulances are the safest mode of transportation around. After all, they're designed specifically to transport fragile sick people. And look at them -- they're like big medical tanks. Surely they have been expertly constructed to be death proof, like in the Kurt Russell medical docudrama of the same name.
Nope. Ambulances are fragile and extremely crash-prone for a variety of reasons, and they're dangerous as hell for the people inside. For starters, even with seat belts for the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and restraints for the patients (which often aren't used), the patient compartment is very unsafe for all passengers. Everyone is riding in a box full of cabinets and loose equipment ready to crash into your skull should something go wrong.
Getty
"Sir, you're going to have to stop screaming, the ambulance is here to help you."
Continue Reading Below Advertisement
And things frequently go wrong. Ambulances are wired with dashboard computers, high-tech radios, navigation systems and phones -- all of which must be used by the EMTs while weaving in and out of traffic at top speed and blasting through stoplights like they're being chased by the Batmobile.
All of this adds up to a potentially chaotic driving experience, particularly when you consider that many drivers make no attempt to clear a path for rampaging emergency vehicles, because The Adventures of Tin-Tin starts in 15 minutes and goddamn if they're going to miss all the previews. | 4,376 |
hp at 6,400 rpm and 492 lb-ft of torque at 5,200 rpm. The cam swap was worth 64 hp and 27 lb-ft on the naturally aspirated, low-compression LSX376-B8 crate engine. This just goes to show how tame the factory cam was.
See all 21 photos 16. The cam swap netted power gains through the entire rev range; always a good sign that you made the right cam choice. The fact that this cam was designed for a blower makes the gains in naturally aspirated form even more impressive.
See all 21 photos 17. For this test we decided to bolt on our tried-and-true ProCharger D-1SC supercharger. For an engine rated to handle about 8 psi of boost the D-1SC was a bit overkill, but our P-1X test blower was occupied on another test. Still, our goal was to exceed 10 psi of boost, so either would work given the right pulley combination.
See all 21 photos 18. For an intercooler we chose our ProCharger heavy-duty air-to-air unit. With large 3.5-inch inlets and outlets it would keep our temperatures in check.
See all 21 photos 19. After installation of the ProCharger D-1SC supercharger and intercooler, the power output of the modified LSX376-B8 crate engine jumped from 532 hp and 492 lb-ft of torque to 878 hp and 748 lb-ft of torque. Only the fuel injector sizing limited the power output of this combination, as the power was still climbing.
See all 21 photos 20. So, in the end we stuffed 13.6 psi into the 8-psi engine and made a ton of sweet intercooled power. In fact, the thing that limited the power output was that our 65-pound FAST fuel injectors were maxed out. Considering that this engine is destined for a certain '63 Chevy II project we will most like dial it back a bit for the street. But still, it's nice to know that our Chevrolet Performance LSX376-B8 crate engine is good to go if we decide to dial things up a bit.
Sources
ATI Performance Products
877.298.4343
atiracing.com
Chevrolet Performance
chevrolet.com/performance
Competition Cams COMP
800.999.0853
compcams.com
Westech Performance
951.685.4767
westechperformance.com | 4,377 |
like they need politics, their pay, and oxygen to breathe. The problem is that too many people dismiss pop as crap because nobody has had the courage to make pop that’s relevant to the modern world. Pop music has become so stagnant. This is really a paradox because it should change and evolve everyday. I don’t think anybody has made a decent pop album in years.”
Could Debut be the one to change that? Björk isn’t so sure. “I still have so far to go and though I think this album is alright, I don’t think I’ll make a really good album until maybe three or four records down the road. There’s so much that I still need to learn.”
Björk is perhaps her own worst critic but at heart she is also a serious idealist about her music. “I want this album to be pop music that everybody can listen to. I think not sticking to any particular musical style makes the album real. Life isn’t always the same. You don’t live in the same style from day to day, unexpected things happen that are beyond your control. That’s this record. One song is about the mood you’re in walking to the corner shop, another is about being drunk and out of it on drugs in a club, and the next one is about feeling romantic and making love.”
This is pop philosophy according to Björk, where meaningful music and disposable pop aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. “Pop is music for a particular moment. You should be able to throw it away the next day but it has be real for that one moment so that as you’re doing the dishes and hear it on the radio, you can relate to it, go deep into it, and know that it matters and makes a difference for you. It have to be some existential arty piece, it can just be a song that everybody can sing along to. But it has to touch you deeply for that moment.”
Björk takes her pop music seriously and so should you. Listen to the single, immerse yourself in the album and see if it doesn’t affect you on more levels than the usual uninspired pop fare, even if only for that precious, fleeting moment. “That’s how I want people to experience this record,” she says. “As pop music for 1993.”
Human Behaviour is out on May 31, Debut on June 28, both on One Little Indian. | 4,378 |
blustery billionaire has taken a liking to keeping rates down. “I do like a low-interest rate policy, I must be honest with you,” Trump said in an April interview with the Wall Street Journal. The president reportedly told outgoing Fed Chair Janet Yellen that he considered her, like himself, a “low-interest-rate” person. (Trump ultimately decided against re-nominating Yellen as Fed chair, instead opting for Jerome Powell, who is considered a moderate choice; like Yellen, Powell is expected to take a measured approach to increasing interest rates.)
In December, the Fed increased interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to a 1.25 to 1.50 percent target; in 2018, it’s projected to increase them three times. That would gradually increase the cost of borrowing for businesses and consumers and, in turn, eventually decrease consumer spending. Some economists worry it could cause a recession, but there is hardly a consensus.
In the present, things are going quite well: We’re nearing full employment — the unemployment rate is 4.1 percent — the stock market is at record highs, and the American economy is relatively strong. Amazon and its competitors appear to be doing their part by keeping inflation down, and pushing the Fed in the direction Trump wants it to go. Which makes the president’s shots at Amazon all the more baffling.
Of course, whether Trump’s take on Amazon is actually about Amazon at all is... well, debatable. Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, also happens to be the owner of the Washington Post — a fact that the president appears well aware of.
The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
E-mails show that the AmazonWashingtonPost and the FailingNewYorkTimes were reluctant to cover the Clinton/Lynch secret meeting in plane. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 8, 2017
For some context: On Friday, the day Trump fired off a tweet about how much Amazon pays the Postal Service to send packages, the Post had run a story detailing the White House’s worries for 2018, another looking at the damaging effects of his Twitter habit, and an op-ed declaring him “unfit and ignorant.” | 4,379 |
The identity of the final two headliners who'll grace the Pyramid Stage at next year's Glastonbury Festival have reportedly been revealed.
In October, it was announced that Radiohead will be returning to Worthy Farm for a headline performance on the Friday.
Following intense rumours that have included Daft Punk, The Stone Roses and Lady Gaga, it now looks as if the final two headline acts will be Ed Sheeran and Foo Fighters.
10 acts rumoured to headline Glastonbury 2017
It makes sense for the Foos to be handed the slot; the Dave Grohl-fronted group were already down to play in 2015 before they pulled out due to the frontman's broken leg.
Sheeran, while bandied about tentatively, is an unexpected decision evidently designed to tap into the 'Saturday night Adele slot' that swept this summer's Festival.
Glastonbury Festival takes place
Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Festival-goers arrive for the Glastonbury festival at the Worthy Farm site PA Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Festival-goers wearing matching tie die t-shirts do a star jump in front of the Glastonbury sign Rex Features Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Festival-goers relax and walk at the top of the hill over looking the tipi village, the Ribbon Tower and the Park Stage Rex Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Participants arrive for the Glastonbury Festival at the Worthy Farm site, Somerset, where heavy rain over a prolonged period has caused isolated flooding and muddy fields PA Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Members of the Shakti Sings National Choir sing during a procession from the Stone Circle to the Headling Field. The choir was formed to honour the earth through song Rex Features Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures A reveller carries her belongings after arriving at Worthy Farm in Somerset for the Glastonbury Festival REUTERS Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Revellers set up their tent after arriving at Worthy Farm in Somerset for the Glastonbury Festival REUTERS Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Participants arrive for the Glastonbury Festival at the Worthy Farm site PA Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Festival-goers arrive for the Glastonbury festival at the Worthy Farm site PA Glastonbury 2016 - in pictures Festival-goers arrive for the Glastonbury Festival at the Worthy Farm site PA
The news has been reported by The Sun who states that the performance will mark the singer-songwriter's return to music after a one-year hiatus; he last played the festival in 2014. | 4,380 |
Reading Time: ~ 2 min.
News Site Suffers Data Breach
Flipboard, a news aggregation site, recently revealed that it’s been the victim of a data breach that could affect many of their more than 100 million active users. Digital tokens were among the compromised data, which could give the attackers further access to other sites, though Flipboard promptly removed or replaced them. At least two separate breaches have been reported by Flipboard, with one occurring in the middle of 2018 and the other in April of this year. Both allowed the attackers nearly unlimited access to databases containing a wealth of user data.
Keylogger Targets Multiple Industries
At least two separate campaigns have been found to be sending malicious emails to industry-leading companies in several different areas of business. Hidden within these emails are two variants of the HawkEye keylogger that perform various malicious activities beyond simply stealing keystrokes from the infected device. By acting as a loader, HawkEye can install additional malware and even contains a script to relaunch itself in case of a system reboot.
Australian Teen Hacks Apple
A teen from Australia was recently in court to plead guilty to two separate hacks on Apple, which he conducted in hopes of gaining a job with the company. While Apple has since confirmed that no internal or customer data was breached, they have chosen leniency after his lawyer made a case for the perpetrator being remorseful and not understanding the full impact of his crimes.
Fake Crypto-wallets Appear on App Store
Several fake cryptocurrency wallets have made their way into the Google Play store following the latest rise in the value of Bitcoin. Both wallets use some form of address scam, by which the user transfers currency into a seemingly new wallet address that was actually designed to siphon off any transferred currency. The second of the two wallets operated under the guise of being the “mobile” version of a well-known crypto-wallet. It was quickly identified as fake due to an inconsistent icon image. Both fake wallets were tied to the same domain and have since been removed from the store.
Ransomware Focuses on MySQL Servers
While the threat of GandCrab is not new, organizations discovered its persistent risk after researchers found it has been refocused on attacking MySQL servers. By specifically targeting the port used to connect to MySQL servers, port 3306, the attackers have had some success, since many admins allow port 3306 to bypass their internal firewalls to ensure connectivity. As GandCrab continues to narrow it’s attack scope, its remaining viable vectors are likely to be even more lucrative given that most organizations are not able to secure everything. | 4,381 |
Sarah Silverman apologized for jokes she made about getting 'a quickie aborsh.' Sarah Silverman: I was not funny
On Tuesday night, comedian Sarah Silverman apologized for her jokes about abortion late last week.
She had posted a picture of herself with an inflated stomach, saying, “It’s a burrito!” only to later post another picture with a flat stomach with the caption, “Got a quickie aborsh in case R v W gets overturned.”
In her apology, Silverman tweeted:”It wasn’t funny for me to talk so casually about abortion. But when they take our right to choose away it will be HILARIOUS!” And: “The government should STAY OUT of our PRIVATE LIVES except when it comes to who we marry & what we do w our uteruses!!”
( See also: PHOTOS: 10 eye-popping celeb quotes on 2012)
It got her in some hot water. The Drudge Report drew attention to her tweets and the London’s Daily Mail accused Silverman of “joining America’s current War on Women” and “reigniting the women’s rights movement via Twitter.”
Some speculated that Silverman’s comment was designed to bring attention to a potential Romney administration.
“In the press about the photos, the gag has brought attention to the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s intentions to overturn the 1973 case that made abortion legal, Roe V. Wade,” wrote the Hollywood Reporter.
( Also on POLITICO: Mitt would govern as conservative)
The Wrap speculated that Silvermans’ joke could get her in professional trouble.
“Could Sarah Silverman’s ‘Abortion’ Tweet Hurt Her NBC Sitcom Odds?” read the article’s headline.
Silverman currently has a pilot before NBC (titled “Susan 313”) and The Wrap’s Tim Molloy writes:
“The pilot has a very strong chance of becoming a series when NBC makes its pilots decision this spring. It already has a put-pilot committment, which means NBC would have to pay a hefty penalty if it doesn’t air it. … NBC must know what it’s getting into with Silverman. Picking up the show will be a signal that the network is willing to deal with at least the possibility that she’ll say or do something controversial, on or off the air.” | 4,382 |
In the depths of the Red Sea, a magical world exists.
It's a world where corals light up the dark. They harvest light, providing an underwater rainbow of beautiful colours.
These fluorescent corals were already known to exist in shallow waters, but deeper down, new glowing coral reefs have been discovered.
Found at depths of 50-100 metres, these colours had not previously been observed in shallower water of the same reef.
Some of these corals even change from their natural green colour to a red hue when exposed to ultraviolet light.
What's more, the fluorescence of these deeper corals were orange and red.
Living at these depths only makes them glow more brightly as they absorb the scarce light available.
“These fluorescent pigments are actually proteins," explains Jörg Wiedenmann, of the University of Southampton’s Coral Reef Laboratory in the UK.
“When they are illuminated with blue or ultraviolet light, they give back light of longer wavelengths, such as reds or greens."
He and colleagues have published new insights into these glowing reefs in the journal Plos One.
The colour pigments of the corals in shallow water protect them from light stress or too much exposure.
They serve as a sort of sunscreen for the coral, to protect the "symbiotic algae" which lives inside their tissue.
These algae are symbiotic because corals and algae have a harmonious relationship. The algae produces sugar that fuels the coral. The coral in turn produces rich nitrogen and phosphorous waste, which acts as fertiliser for the algae.
That fluorescent corals were discovered in darker depths, where light barely reaches, is puzzling to the researchers.
"At 50 metres or greater you would not expect the corals to suffer from too much light. They actually struggle to get enough for the photosynthesising algae," says Wiedenmann.
It is believed that their fluorescence may help them absorb more light, needed for the algae to survive.
Their fluorescent glow could even make them useful tools for biomedical research. They can be used to highlight living cells.
By implanting the fluorescent proteins into living cells they can be used to visualise cellular processes in action, or track the activity of genes of interest.
"The fact that we now have a whole area of pigment from a completely different environment makes us hope there might be some new properties among them," adds Wiedenmann.
"They have evolved for different biological functions in a different light environment."
Follow Melissa Hogenboom and BBC Earth on twitter. | 4,383 |
Smokeasac, Fat Nick, & Bexey have lashed out at Quavo over what they perceive as a diss.
UPDATE (Oct. 15, 2018): In a statement on Twitter, Quavo clarified that “BIG BRO” isn’t meant as a diss towards Lil Peep:
See below for original story.
There’s no evidence that Quavo knew Lil Peep before the his death in 2017, but Peep nonetheless seems to be the subject of one of the Migos MC’s new songs. Quavo dropped his debut solo album QUAVO HUNCHO last night, and the project’s 16th track “BIG BRO” opens with a pair of lines that some have interpreted as a diss aimed at the late Lil Peep, who passed away from a fatal drug overdose.
On the track’s first verse, Quavo raps:
Think you poppin' Xanax bars, but it’s Fentanyl
Think you’re living life like rockstars but you’re dead now
Peep died after accidentally overdosing on Xanax laced with fentanyl before a scheduled concert in Tuscon, Arizona. The young rapper was considered a major voice in the emergent emo-rap scene, and often referred to himself as a rockstar. Quavo’s reference plays into the song’s larger theme of providing guidance for young artists coming up in the tumultuous climate of the music industry, and it doesn’t necessarily seem to be meant in a malicious way. However, the lyrics have already drawn scorn from some of Peep’s friends and collaborators.
Producer Smokeasac, who worked extensively with Peep during the rapper’s lifetime, quickly criticized Quavo for the lyrics:
Rapper Bexey, another one of Peep’s friends who was with the rapper shortly before his death, also demanded answers from Quavo:
Florida MC Fat Nick also chimed in:
Quavo’s song represents the second controversy this week over a diss aimed at a recently deceased rapper. Vic Mensa ignited controversy over the weekend after he took aim at the late XXXTENTACION during his cypher at the BET Hip-Hop Awards. Artists like Denzel Curry, Trippie Redd, and producer DJ Scheme called Mensa out on social media afterwards.
Listen to the song above and read all the lyrics to Quavo’s “BIG BRO” on Genius now. | 4,384 |
. So I installed “diffutils”.
On rebooting, after the ssh server install, I noted that “sshd” was still not running. So I tried:
# systemctl enable sshd.service
and rebooted again. This time the ssh server was started.
Installing software with the software manager seems to work well, with the exception of failing to enable “sshd”. However, I had to install one at a time. I did not find a way of selecting several packages, and then installing them all. Doing it one-at-a-time worked. As long as I kept the software manager open, I was not again asked for authentication.
According to announcements, Solus is switching to being a rolling distribution. It does appear that this is in place. I updated several times, and each time there were new updates available after checking. Installation of updates went well.
One of the updates installed a newer kernel version. It deleted the previous kernel. But it failed to delete the “initrd” (or “initramfs”) for the removed kernel. That’s the only glitch I ran into with the updating process.
Crypto
At present, Solus does not do crypto. Their announcements suggest future plans. The installed system does include the “cryptsetup” command. But I have to use that manually. I tried adding entries to “/etc/cypttab” and rebooting, but there was no attempt to access the encrypted partition. Looking through the systemd service units, there does not appear to be a unit for crypto.
Management tools
I could not find a management tool. I looked for one, to see if I could use it to start the “sshd” service. But I could not find one.
Similary, my network connection was IPv4 only. I could not find a management tool to enable IPv6 support. The network setup uses NetworkManager, and the NetworkManager settings were already set to automatically enable IPv6. My router/isp do support IPv6. But I could not find a way to get Solus to use it.
Summary
Solus is an interesting distro. But it is probably not aimed at me as a potential user (the absence of “rsync”, “vi” and “diff” all suggest this limitation). While there is improvement since my previous review, I think it still not ready for prime time. It needs a management tool, ipv6 support and better crypto support. | 4,385 |
It is eloquent in many parts, stirring in its defense of religious liberty, with only a couple of notes off-key:
Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.
Ahem. But it has two deep flaws. The first is the absence of any notion that religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion whatever. A president of the United States does not just represent people of all faiths, he also represents those who have none. There is a lacuna in Romney's vision of religious tolerance, and it is a deliberate lacuna. In order to appeal to evangelicals, he places himself on their side against the other: the secularists. But that is simply another form of the religious test. By insisting on faith - any faith - as the proper criterion for public office, Romney draws the line, oh-so-conveniently, so as to include Mormonism but exclude atheism and agnosticism. And so he side-steps the critical issue in the debates over religion in public life: what if there is no unifying faith for a nation? What if faith itself cannot unify a nation - and, in fact, can divide it more deeply than any other subject? That is our reality. An intelligent and wise conservative would try to find a path to a common discourse that does not rest on religious foundations.
The second flaw is that he simply cannot elide the profound theological differences between the LDS church and mainstream Christianity. Since I'm a secularist - a Christian secularist - this doesn't make a difference to me. But if you are appealing to religious people, especially fundamentalists, on the basis of faith, you cannot logically then ask them to ignore the content of the faith. The religious right have tried to do this with the absurd neologism, the "Judeo-Christian tradition," as if the truth-claims of Christianity and Judaism are not, at bottom, contradictory. But the "Mormon-Judeo-Christian tradition" is a step too far even for those who have almost no principles in using religion for political purposes.
I think it's a tragedy that a man of Romney's obvious gifts should be reduced to this. But he asked for it; and the petard he has been hoist on is his own. If you want a religious politics, you'll end up with one. That's why Huckabee is the natural heir to the Rove project. And why Romney is falling behind.
(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty.)
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected]. | 4,386 |
TOKYO—Close to 3,000 people were trapped at a major airport in southern Japan after a powerful storm made landfall Tuesday, bringing widespread flooding and winds of up to 210 kilometres per hour. Nine people were dead, according to local news reports.
The storm, Typhoon Jebi, prompted government evacuation orders for about 49,000 people across southern Japan, with an additional two million people advised to flee, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.
The storm traversed Japan’s main island of Honshu before travelling up its western coast, leaving a trail of death. Among the fatalities was the owner of a warehouse that collapsed on him, news reports said.
Early in the afternoon Tuesday, an oil tanker unmoored by the storm crashed into the only bridge that connects Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay to the mainland. The Coast Guard was using a helicopter and patrol boats to rescue crew members, the public broadcaster NHK said.
Local police said that travellers stranded at the airport, which sits on a man-made island, had been issued emergency water, bread and blankets, and that ferries were expected to start bringing people to safety Wednesday morning.
Much of the airport’s runways remained under water into early Wednesday, though the main terminal buildings were safe, said Takayuki Nomori, an officer with the Kansai Airport police.
There “is no way to know” when the airport, or the bridge linking to it, can reopen, he said. Close to 800 flights were canceled and several rail lines, including bullet train services, were suspended.
In Kyoto, damage to the roof of the main rail station brought debris crashing down onto passengers below, injuring three people and closing parts of the station. News footage showed shipping containers strewn across Kobe port, a cargo hub. About 2.2 million homes were without power late Tuesday, according to a central government tally.
The typhoon hit during a summer of meteorological misery for Japan, with floods and landslides killing more than 200 people in western Japan in July, the same month that heat waves claimed about 130 lives.
Evacuation orders in Japan are not mandatory, but the failure to heed such orders during the July rains was seen as a contributing factor to the high number of deaths.
Read more:
Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...
Japan’s weather-related deaths top 300 in July
More than 100 dead in Japanese floods as rescuers search for dozens still missing
More than 7,000 people still in shelters after deadly flooding in Japan
Read more about: | 4,387 |
The University of Glasgow’s Queen Margaret Union have banned a livestream Q&A with former Breitbart Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, claiming his opinions to be in breach of the union’s constitution.
Milo is currently nominated to become the university’s rector. According to the campaign team who nominated Milo, other candidates have been allowed to stage similar live events.
“Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing on behalf of the Milo for Rector Campaign. We are enquiring to find out if we would be able to book a room in the QMU to host a livestream Q&A with Milo and the students of Glasgow University,” wrote Glasgow’s “Milo Squad” to the Queen Margaret Union. “We are aware that some other candidates such as Aamer Anwar have held similar meetings and would appreciate if our campaign could receive similar treatment.”
“We believe that it is important that students are able to question all candidates in order to make an informed decision,” they continued. “We would aim to have the room on Sunday if possible, but we are overall flexible with our dates. We look forward to hearing from you.”
The campaign team’s inquiry was quickly shot down by Queen Margaret Union’s Vice President Katrina Denholm, however, who claimed that Milo’s conservative beliefs were “deplorable” and broke the union’s constitution.
“The Board of Management of the Queen Margaret Union has found some of the comments made by Mr Yiannopoulos regarding during his campaign to be completely deplorable, and to allow such opinions to be voiced within our Union would be in breach of our Constitution: section VII, Equality and Diversity,” Denholm replied. “Therefore we will not be allowing use of any space in our building for this purpose.”
Milo was one of twelve names put forward for the “prestigious position,” according to The Independent, and his candidacy has already prompted several protests from left-wing students.
“The current rector is exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden,” The Independent reported. “Other candidates nominated this year include human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, former Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable, PissPigGranddad, an American internet celebrity fighting with the People’s Defence Unit in Syria, and Lady Hazel Cosgrove, the first woman to be appointed a Senator of the College of Justice.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 4,388 |
Red Team Arsenal is a web/network security scanner which has the capability to scan all company's online facing assets and provide an holistic security view of any security anomalies. It's a closely linked collections of security engines to conduct/simulate attacks and monitor public facing assets for anomalies and leaks.
It's an intelligent scanner detecting security anomalies in all layer 7 assets and gives a detailed report with integration support with nessus. As companies continue to expand their footprint on INTERNET via various acquisitions and geographical expansions, human driven security engineering is not scalable, hence, companies need feedback driven automated systems to stay put.
Installation
Supported Platforms
RTA has been tested both on Ubuntu/Debian (apt-get based distros) and as well as Mac OS. It should ideally work with any linux based distributions with mongo and python installed (install required python libraries from install/py_dependencies manually).
There are a few packages which are necessary before proceeding with the installation:
Git client: sudo apt-get install git
Python 2.7, which is installed by default in most systems
Python pip: sudo apt-get install python-pip
MongoDB: Read the official installation guide to install it on your machine.
Finally run python install/install.py
There are also optional packages/tools you can install (highly recommended):
Integrating Nessus:
Integrating Nessus into Red Team Arsenal can be done is simple 3 steps:
Download and install Nessus community edition (if you don’t have a paid edition). If you already have an installation (it can be remote installation as well), then go to step (2).
Update the config file (present on the root directory of RTA) with Nessus URL, username and password.
Create a nessus policy where you can configure the type of scans and plugins to run and name it RTA (Case sensitive - use full uppercase).
Once the config file has the correct Nessus information (url, username, password), use the flag --nessus while running RTA to launch nessus scan over the entire subdomains gathered by RTA (one single scan initiated with all the subdomains gathered).
Usage
Short Form Long Form Description -u --url Domain URL to scan -v --verbose Enable the verbose mode and display results in realtime -n --nessus Launch a Nessus scan with all the subdomains -s --scraper Run scraper based on config keywords -h --help show the help message and exit
Sample Output | 4,389 |
President Donald Trump yielded a 45 percent approval rating in the latest joint Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll carried out between July 15th and 18th. His approval is up one percentage point from June and is at its highest point relative to previous polls of presidential approval jointly conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News.
Trump enjoys support for 88 percent of surveyed Republicans. The Wall Street Journal writes:
Of the four previous White House occupants, only George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, had a higher approval rating within his own party at the same point in his presidency.
The Wall Street Journal‘s analysis of its own poll credits Trump — not Democrats or their news media allies — for sparking “controversy” related to the president’s approach towards Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin: “President Donald Trump’s approval rating edged higher during a week in which he faced withering criticism following a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, signaling that he is positioned to weather the latest controversy sparked by his unusual brand of politics.”
The poll asked its participants if they “believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election,” further asking if Trump’s election was dependent on “Russian interference.”
Those who accept the aforementioned assertion of “Russian interference” were further asked: “And do you believe that Donald Trump would have lost and Hillary Clinton would have won the election if Russia had not interfered with the 2016 presidential election?”
One of the poll’s questions is phrased thusly: “In general, do you believe that Donald Trump has a relationship with Vladimir Putin that is too friendly and therefore not appropriate for an American president to have with the president of Russia or do you not have an opinion on this?”
Democrats had a sampling size advantage among the poll’s respondents. Among those polled, 40 percent identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 15 percent identified as independents, and 36 percent identified as Republicans or leaning Republican.
The poll’s ideological breakdown was as follows: 25 percent identified as “liberal” or “somewhat liberal,” 36 percent identified as “moderate,” and 36 percent identified as “conservative” or “somewhat conservative.”
Despite surveying people about their views of “Russian interference,” the poll’s composers did not list Russia or Vladimir Putin as possible issue priorities shaping poll respondents’ voting decisions in the forthcoming congressional elections.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter. | 4,390 |
Women do a larger part of agricultural work in developing countries Women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change, a report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned. The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality. They do most of the agricultural work, and are therefore affected by weather-related natural disasters impacting on food, energy and water, it said. Slower population growth would help cut greenhouse gas emissions, it added. The report suggested family planning, reproductive healthcare and "gender relations" could influence how the world adapts to rising seas, worsening storms and severe droughts. "[There] are fundamental questions about how climate change will affect women, men, boys and girls differently around the world, and indeed within nations, and how individual behaviour can undermine or contribute to the global effort to cool our warming world," UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid said. 'Cycle of deprivation' She called for any treaty that might come from the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen next month to take into account individuals' power to "reverse the warming of the Earth's atmosphere". Temperatures are predicted to rise by 4C to 6C by 2100, with a "likely catastrophic effect" on the environment, habitats, economies and people, the report said. Migration could be affected, as rising sea levels and droughts prompt people to leave uninhabitable lands, and poor people could lose their livelihoods. But women, particularly in poor countries, will be affected differently from men, the UNFPA added. Describing "a cycle of deprivation", the report said that women in developing countries did a larger share of farming and had less access to income-earning opportunities. They also managed households and cared for families, which limited their chances of moving around and increased "their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters". 'Centuries' to tackle When drought strikes, the women had to "work harder to secure food, water and energy for their homes". "Given women's significant engagement in food production in developing countries, the close connection between gender, farming and climate change deserves far more analysis than it currently receives," the UNFPA said. Societies which will be more resilient to climate change are those with education, healthcare and legal protection for all, and where people have more say in their own lives, it added. It warned it was a long-term goal - taking "decades, even centuries" - to keep the atmosphere suitable for human habitation.
Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version | 4,391 |
A 21-year-old pregnant woman was allegedly murdered by her family members for having married a boy outside her community. The police said it is a case of “honour killing.”
The gruesome killing at Om Sakthi nagar here came to light on Sunday when the district police launched an investigation of the whereabouts of the woman on the orders of the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on a habeas corpus petition filed by her husband R. Suresh Kumar (24)
The court directed the police on March 21 to produce the woman (five months pregnant) before the court, but investigation by the police revealed that the girl was done to death by her family members — her mother, brother and three maternal uncles — on the night of March 17 itself.
On Sunday, the police exhumed the decomposed body found buried on the Vaigai riverbed at Kuyavankudi near here and arrested R.Venkateswari (41) and R.Vimal Raj (21), mother and brother of the deceased and two of her maternal uncles Janakiraman (37) and Bagyaraj (35) on charges of murder, after registering a case.
“It’s a clear case of honour killing,” Superintendent of Police N. M. Mylvahanan told The Hindu.
The family members hatched the conspiracy and engaged the anti-social elements to execute the murder, the SP said, adding Azhagarsamy, another maternal uncle of the woman, was absconding.
The woman’s family, which objected to her marriage with Suresh Kumar belonging to another community, lured her to return home for a patch-up after the couple had gone to Nedukandam in Kerala in September last, fearing threat to their lives.
Suresh said he had handed over his wife to her mother Venkateswari at Veerapandi temple in Theni on March 16.
She took her daughter home, stating that she would send her back after two days.
The woman’s two aunts were also present at the temple, he said.
He was in regular touch with his wife, but her mobile was switched off after he last spoke to her at 9. 30 pm on March 17. As he feared danger to his wife’s life, he moved the court on March 20, little realising that she was done to death on the night of March 17 itself.
Her maternal uncles had ransacked his room in Madurai and destroyed all his certificates, Suresh alleged. | 4,392 |
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has confirmed it was making enquiries about regular travel and cash transfers to the Philippines by Queensland MP George Christensen for 12 months.
Key points: George Christensen has dismissed the referral to police as an attempt to smear his reputation
George Christensen has dismissed the referral to police as an attempt to smear his reputation AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the Senate hearing that senior members of the Government were briefed
AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the Senate hearing that senior members of the Government were briefed Mr Colvin said there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by Mr Christensen
The AFP told a Senate estimates hearing that inquiries began in late 2017, at least a year before Mr Christensen revealed he was the subject of a referral to police.
Mr Christensen has dismissed those referrals and suggestions he sent money to foreign bank accounts as an attempt to smear his reputation, given the country is known for prostitution and drugs.
Senior members of the Government, including former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, were all briefed by police at different times.
Nationals leader Michael McCormack was also told about the investigation when he took over leadership of the party.
"We were concerned that the information that we were evaluating was becoming known," AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the hearing.
"I believe it was appropriate for [Deputy Prime Minister McCormack], because of the particular circumstances with the Deputy Prime Minister, to brief him."
The AFP told estimates that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr Christensen.
Andrew Colvin told a Senate estimates hearing there was no evidence of wrongdoing. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts )
Police officials also said the Nationals MP has repeatedly described allegations against him as an attempt to smear his reputation.
Last week, when News Corp Australia published his travel records in the region, Mr Christensen said it was part of a "putrid" smear campaign against him.
"This whole matter is vile and defamatory," Mr Christensen wrote.
"I've asked myself why I've been the subject of such a vile and hateful smear campaign and I can only think it is because I stood up for my electorate against the powers that be, or rather, that were, on too many occasions.
"They now want revenge and have sided with Labor in this smear campaign to try and get that revenge.
"No doubt they will still throw mud from the sidelines without putting their name to their allegations, because the people involved in this smear campaign are so gutless, in fact they are the lowest of the low to stoop to such actions as they have." | 4,393 |
Research suggests that Donald Trump’s bombastic communication style was the key to his success during the 2016 Republican primary.
The study found that Trump employed speech patterns that are often associated with narcissism.
“My psychology lab has focused on the dark side of personality for 20 years. We concluded that four dimensions stood out in the empirical literature: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, sadism, and narcissism,” explained study author Delroy L. Paulhus, a professor at the University of British Columbia.
Previous research has indicated that U.S. presidents with personality traits associated with grandiose narcissism are rated as better leaders and are more persuasive.
“During his 2016 campaign to become the Republican nominee, it became clear to all that Donald Trump is the prototypical narcissist,” Paulhus said. “With many speeches now publicly available, we sought to code his narcissism using objective methods. New computer software is now capable of generating a wealth of such indicators.”
The researchers analyzed early campaign speeches of the top nine Republican presidential candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee. They also examined how the GOP candidates used Twitter.
Paulhus and his colleagues found that Trump’s language contained substantially more grandiosity and substantially less formality than the rest of the candidates. Both grandiosity and informality, meanwhile, were associated with political success in the GOP primary race.
Trump also ranked highest on the use of first person pronouns, had greater vocal dynamics, and used Twitter more often.
The findings were published in Personality and Individual Differences.
“Bottom line is that a politician’s vocal style is at least as important as the content of his speeches,” Paulhus told PsyPost. “In debating with 17 other candidates, his political platform differed little from the others. ”
“However, his statements were typically more extremely and bombastically worded,” he explained. “The software analyses also singled out a dynamic vocal range, and a strong preference for simple, informal wording. All of these variables predicted the number of states won in the Republican primaries.”
“We did not analyze the federal election, where Trump debated with Hillary Clinton. Many more variables played a role at that stage. And speech content certainly played a role.”
The study, “Explaining Trump via Communication Style: Grandiosity, Informality, and Dynamism” was also co-authored by Sara Ahmadian and Sara Azarshahi. | 4,394 |
. sugar program force Americans to pay about twice as much as the rest of the world for the sugar they eat, and few have benefited more from the industry subsidies than Pepe Fanjul and his family, whose company, American Sugar Refining, is the largest sugar-processing conglomerate in the world. The company’s American brands include Domino, Florida Crystals, Redpath, Tate & Lyle, and C&H. American Sugar Refining controls refineries by ownership or shareholder status in four states and six countries.
And the Fanjuls just so happen to be among Rubio’s staunchest supporters and fundraisers. Why do they love him so much? Glad you asked!
Rubio has remained a consistent, vocal supporter of the sugar subsidy during his rise to national prominence. Defenders compare the sugar industry in Florida to the ethanol industry in Iowa and the Midwest more broadly, and say that just as lawmakers from Iowa, including Republicans are virtually obliged to support the controversial Renewable Fuel Standard, so lawmakers from Florida are expected to support sugar subsidies. And Rubio has. At a Koch brothers’ Republican summit in August, Rubio gave a defense of the federal sugar program that left many in the audience of staunch free-marketeers scratching their heads. If the U.S. eliminates the program, he argued, “other countries will capture the market share, our agricultural capacity will be developed into real estate, you know, housing and so forth, and then we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we’re at the mercy of a foreign country for food security.”
As National Review‘s Windsor Mann wrote last year, Rubio’s line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense:
We have as much reason to grow our own sugar as Lithuania does to make its own cars: none. The fact is that other countries produce certain things more cheaply and efficiently than we do. That is why we trade with them.
Rubio’s versed deeply enough in conservative thought to understand that, but he just doesn’t care. That’s because he’s not a principled conservative but a warmongering and amnesty-loving crony capitalist. It goes without saying that he’s much less worse — even much better, which isn’t necessarily the same thing — than Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, so conservatives should certainly pull the lever for him if he ends up the Republican nominee, but it doesn’t make sense for them to do so while there are still solid conservatives in the race — like Ted Cruz, who has a Liberty Score of 97%, an A. | 4,395 |
After more than 111 years of living, the nation's oldest veteran was treated to an unexpected first: a trip on a private jet.
On Saturday, Austin's Richard Overton was flown to Washington, D.C., for a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The trip was made possible by billionaire Austin businessman and philanthropist Robert F. Smith. On Friday, Smith spent a couple of hours visiting Overton, believed to be the oldest man in America, at Overton's home. Overton mentioned that one day, he'd like to visit the museum, to which Smith donated $20 million.
The next morning, Overton was on the jet.
He and his friends flew to D.C. and received a private tour of the museum. According to The Washington Post, during the tour, former Secretary of State Colin Powell called the supercentenarian to welcome him.
Overton was born in 1906, the same year as the first wireless radio broadcast.
The Army veteran fought in World War II in a segregated unit. After returning from war, Overton spent the bulk of his career working at furniture stores, then at the Texas Department of Treasury.
Lately, Overton spends many of his days on the front porch of the home he built 70 years ago. His friends called it his "stage." It's on Richard Overton Avenue, as the town renamed the street for his 111th birthday. His 112th birthday is coming up on May 11.
The porch is where Overton smokes his 12 daily cigars, and sometimes enjoys his favorite drink, a whiskey and Coke.
Back in October, Overton had a home makeover, which among other things included the installment of another first: After more than 111 years, Overton finally had central air conditioning.
Over the course of his life, he's met many celebrities, athletes and politicians, including President Barack Obama. Each asked him the same question about his secret to longevity. His answer?
God and cigars.
According to The Post, Overton enjoyed his tour of the D.C. museum. After seeing the WWII exhibit, Overton mentioned to his friends that he "didn't see his name up there," which got a laugh.
"One of these days," he said, "it will be."
CORRECTION, 1 p.m. April 11, 2018: This story was corrected to remove a reference to Richard Overton arriving by ship at Pearl Harbor immediately after the Japanese bombing. He arrived there after the West Loch disaster, a maritime accident 2 1/2 years later, in May 1944. | 4,396 |
times when we were driving, I thought God was going to kill us."
Now, Megan says, "We don't have a set home." They feel a responsibility to help out the Jewish and gay communities, given how much picketing they did aimed at both groups. When they were with the WBC, "You feel like you know everything," Megan says. "You know what's right and wrong." But now, Grace says, "We can be sure of nothing."
Their stay in Montreal was devised by Mike Savatovsky, the director of Le Mood Festival. "David Abitbol introduced us, and we had some Skype conversations," Mr. Savatovsky says. "I thought they had some very interesting things to say, and I liked the idea of having them present their story as an inter-faith connection."
Gay Christian activist Jeff Chu is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?, a book about reconciling being gay with the Christian faith. In 2011, he spent several days at the WBC to interview church members about their beliefs for a chapter in his book. "I was surprised a year later to get a call from Megan, who told me she had left the church," he says. "Megan was really one of the strongest voices in the third generation of the Phelps family. They were both junior, but key members of the WBC. They visited and my husband and I went to church with them – something I never thought would happen."
Megan and Grace are uncertain of precisely what they want to pursue now. Grace wants a university education, perhaps in Montreal: "I want to work on a blueberry farm, I want to be an actress, there's so much I want to do." Megan confesses, "I'm at a complete loss. But I do know that I want to do good, to have empathy. Even though we intended to do good [with the picketing], we hurt a lot of people." Despite book offers and even a proposed reality TV show, Megan insists, "We do not want to use our past as a way to make money. We abhor the idea."
Story continues below advertisement
The sisters say they think of their family every day. "I won't get to hear my brothers playing piano again or see my parents' hair go grey," Grace says, wiping back a tear.
"The thing is, they are trying to do what they believe is right," Megan says. "We were taught that everyone outside the church wasn't trying to do good. We know that they hurt so many people, and we see that now, but the majority of them are doing it from good intentions." | 4,397 |
Kelly Lawler
USA TODAY
Who you gonna call? The new, very female Ghostbusters, that's who.
The first trailer for the all-new, all-female Ghostbusters is here and goodness gracious it is everything we hoped and dreamed for. In addition to being incredibly hilarious and visually on point, the trailer is also unabashedly proud of its four female leads and the feminism it is espousing. Don't believe us? We rounded up five times the trailer used proton packs to shoot right through Hollywood conventions about gender.
1. "A new team will answer the call"
Ready for your new heroes? They're not any different from Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. This isn't "female Ghostbusters," it's just Ghostbusters. Director Paul Feig said as much at the launch event for the trailer. "The first movie worked because it had four of the funniest people," he said. "And honestly, I just want the funniest people. And the funniest people I happen to know are these women. It shouldn’t be about that (that they are all women). Ghostbusters are for everybody."
2. Even the ghost is a woman
Talk about all women all the time. The trailer is entirely composed of ladies (save for Chris Hemsworth, but more on him below) from the get-go, including the first ghost we get to see (also, great joke from Kristen Wiig just after this).
3. "Sorry"
It was subtle and may fly past some viewers, but Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig had a total woman-in-a-meeting moment in the trailer. Here's to hoping the movie goes into other little moments from women's lives.
4. Kate McKinnon
Licking guns? Making us swoon? Wearing that wig? The SNL actress is playing with gender and sexuality conventions all over the place and we can't wait for more.
5. Chris Hemsworth, eye candy
How many trailers have you seen where a woman was in a revealing outfit and didn't speak? Oh, wait, all of them. Ghostbusters took aim at this tired, sexist trope by very pointedly only had women speak in this trailer and including this female-gaze shot of Hemsworth that would, in a conventional Hollywood action film, be something more like Megan Fox in a bikini. And it has been.
You can watch the full trailer in all its glory below:
Ghostbusters is set to hit theaters and set fire to the patriarchy on July 15.
Contributing: Bryan Alexander | 4,398 |
its going to close. That customer will get 18% more watts in the same area – at a price ~$0.50/W cheaper than SunPower, but ~$0.20/W more than the standard 16% product.
Of course, it isn’t a cake walk yet. With companies like Yingli fighting for their existence in the 16% space and losing money, there are going to be plenty who push toward the higher margin, lower volume middle efficiency space like SolarWorld or LG. In fact, it seems SolarWorld made it official to only compete in this higher efficiency range (we’ll see if they can hold on).
An increase in efficiency – meaning more revenue for the same solar panel – could be a path if component costs can be held in check. If those component costs can’t be held in check – then these groups won’t be able to stay in the ‘solar technology buy cycle’ some proclaim we’re in.
And if this efficiency path can come to be – it gives everyone in the supply chain a chance to breath, make a little bit of profit and expand further. One way this path can occur if the price per watt falls slower than the efficiency increases. In 2016, I started buying solar panels in the 305-310 range regularly, by the end of the year we were closer to 330-335W panels. These were the 15-16% panels making an efficiency move to 16-17% – ~6% effective efficiency increase within a single business year. Yes, our pricing per watt fell much further – but our volume per rooftop increased. And total job volume relative to fixed costs matter.
Interestingly, as panel efficiency grows – there will be downward pressure on job growth per volume installed. This I am sure will be balanced out by general installation volume growth.
There is a clear path for significant further price falls for solar power installations for the next five years. That price – for whole systems – could be as much as 35% from panel efficiency alone. Of course, waiting for those panels means you miss the healthy incentives and positive net metering laws of today.
Header image of Obama and Biden on a building east of downtown Denver, Colorado
Considering residential solar? Understand Solar will connect you with local contractors. Tweet me to pick apart quote.
For more electric vehicle, autonomous transport and clean technology news, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Newsletter, RSS or Facebook to get our latest articles.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Subscribe to Electrek on YouTube for exclusive videos and subscribe to the podcast. | 4,399 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.