text
stringlengths 245
34.4k
| id
int64 0
1.27M
|
|---|---|
Ronaldo exit responsible for Real Madrid struggles – Luxemburgo
The former Blancos boss has no doubt that the summer departure of a five-time Ballon d'Or winner has made "all the difference" in their recent woes
Cristiano Ronaldo's exit is to blame for's underwhelming start to the 2018-19 season, according to the club's former coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo.
Ronaldo left Madrid for Juventus in July after nine hugely successful years at the Santiago Bernabeu, following coach Zinedine Zidane in leaving the Spanish capital.
Although Ronaldo put his departure down to a desire to have a new challenge, speculation has suggested it came about because of an increasingly fractious relationship with president Florentino Perez.
Either way, Madrid have not been their usual ruthless selves without him and sit fourth in after eight matches, having not won any of their last three.
A defeat at home to on Saturday will increase the pressure and potentially result in up to four more teams sitting above them in the table, and Luxemburgo is putting their struggles down to not having a player of the same calibre as Ronaldo.
"It does change. Cristiano makes all the difference," Luxemburgo – who coached Madrid in 2005 – told Omnisport.
"I've worked for Real Madrid and I know that such a special player worries opponents - big opponents.
"Real Madrid don't have a player now that makes the opponent feel they are dead. You know, that feeling of 'I have to face Cristiano Ronaldo'.
"Madrid don't have such a reference in the current squad."
While Madrid did not sign a like-for-like Ronaldo replacement, they did at least see Julen Lopetegui succeed Zidane having previously impressed with, before he was sacked on the eve of the World Cup for accepting his Los Blancos role.
The pressure is on Lopetegui because of their recent poor run, but Luxemburgo – sacked in December 2005 after 11 months at the helm – thinks Perez will not make a hasty reaction.
"The pressure is always intense there," he added. "We are talking about the biggest club in the world.
"If the results aren't coming, the pressure will always be huge, but Florentino Perez is a clever and successful man, and I believe that he knew this would be a difficult season for them.
"It would never be easy to replicate the previous titles. He knew it. So, I believe that he's calm now, waiting the right time for doing more investments in the squad to make Madrid champion again." | 5,200 |
A lot of people voiced their concerns about Pokémon Go‘s intrusive permissions requests which, if granted, would allow Niantic to access every bit of your Google identity. In an update released today for the iOS version of the application, Niantic has changed the permissions requests, and the game now only asks to view your basic data and your e-mail address. Players wishing to take advantage of the less invasive permissions have to uninstall the application, revoke the original application’s permissions on your Google account page, then install the updated app from the App Store. Unfortunately, Android users are plum out of luck for now, as this update and change is only being implemented for iOS users.
Originally the permissions granted to Pokémon Go allowed it full access to your Google account (provided that’s what you signed up with, and not the Pokémon Trainer Club). This means it not only had access to your basic information, but it could see your e-mails, write e-mails as you, basically everything you’d normally be able to do with your Google account.
Many folks’ concerns go beyond Google account access. Considering the fact that Pokémon Go is a game that literally tracks your movements and requires you to essentially “check in” to places to accomplish goals, it allows Niantic (whose former owner is Google) to track your location. To be fair, this isn’t a particularly new thing amongst apps; Facebook has been tracking people’s locations for a long time now, and back when Foursquare/Swarm were big, people voluntarily gave up their location information on a daily basis. The data we’re handing over to tech companies can indeed be worrying when you think about it all at once like that. Do I think that Niantic and Google are logging data for super nefarious things? No, not really. But that doesn’t change the fact that I still find the idea kind of squicky and shy away from things like that from time to time.
That being said, I can still fully enjoy a game like this while still being critical of its abilities and what it can see.
Anyway, if you were particularly concerned about the security of your Google account (which I do go out of my way to protect), then you can perhaps rest a little bit easier with this update.
(via Polygon)
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] | 5,201 |
Despite planning to send any asylum seekers approved for a medical transfer to Christmas Island, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeated claims that providing medical treatment to sick asylum seekers would see Australians miss out on public housing,
Mr Morrison said it draws on community services, when asked, during a visit to Christmas Island on Wednesday, who would lose their homes because an ill asylum seeker was flown to Brisbane for assessment.
READ MORE Criticism from residents and former detainees as PM visits Christmas Island
0:00 Morrison declares Western Australia will decide who wins the coming election 00:00 / 00:00 Share Share on Twitter
Share on Facebook
"Then they'll get their fish hooks into the legal system, long after any medical treatment has been done, and they'll remain often in community detention which requires us to actually go and provide housing," Mr Morrison told SBS News on Christmas Island.
Doctors are yet to recommend any asylum seekers or refugees on Manus Island or Nauru for medical treatment in Australia under the new medevac process which was made law on Friday.
The government plans to send anyone approved under the new laws to Christmas Island, spending up to $1.4 billion over four years to upgrade medical facilities to cater for 500 people.
SBS News
Some who require more serious treatment could then be sent to a public hospital on the mainland.
Mr Morrison backed Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton's claims last week that that would mean other Australians would be forced to wait longer.
"If someone's coming for medical treatment in a public hospital and they're getting a treatment in that hospital, well there's a finite amount of support.
"I mean, if they're in an operating theatre, that's an operating theatre someone else could be in, I think that's a fairly simple fact."
More sensational claims
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton on Thursday argued refugees brought to Australia for medical treatment would soon become citizens, against the wishes of the community.
However, under Australian law, it's entirely up to the minister to grant them citizenship.
AAP
This latest warning follows Mr Dutton's sensational claims refugees medically evacuated from Manus Island and Nauru would take up hospital beds and public housing usually reserved for Australians.
"Once they're in Australia you'll never see them deported or leaving our shores, they'll go on to become Australian citizens, and that is not the outcome that most Australians support," Mr Dutton told 2GB radio on Thursday.
Detainees brought to Australia for medical treatment are legally considered "transitory persons", and the minister has full discretion over whether to grant them permanent protection, residency or citizenship. | 5,202 |
Google’s latest AI toy may be its most clever: an automated drawing bot that analyzes what you’re doodling in real time to suggest a more polished piece of clip art to replace it. Called AutoDraw, the software is another of Google’s ongoing creative machine learning demonstrations that it releases as part of its AI Experiments series. It uses the underlying technology behind the company’s experimental image recognition software to identify potential objects and pairs that with a database of neat and simplistic hand-drawn images.
A doodle bot for fast and clean clip art
The company bills AutoDraw as a “drawing tool for the rest of us,” and by us it means aesthetically impaired individuals who couldn’t doodle themselves out of a paper bag. “AutoDraw pairs the magic of machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help you draw stuff fast,” says the narrator in Google’s AutoDraw teaser video. The actual tech under the hood comes from another Google AI experiment called Quick Draw, which uses machine learning to analyze human drawings and get better over time at guessing what they are.
Quick Draw was a neat distraction, but AutoDraw is an absolute blast with some very tangible benefits for non-artists looking to add art to everything from fliers and party invites to custom birthday cards. For instance, if you want to make some balloons and a cake, it takes just a few moments:
Of course, AutoDraw isn’t perfect. A lot of the times the program will suggest some truly bizarre replacements and it’s impossible to know really how the software arrived there. Write some English text, like the word “Verge,” and it will for some reason suggest toes or feet or yoga poses. But that does at the very least give you an opportunity to get really weird and experimental, like turning a taco into a boomerang:
Or turning a shooting star into a battle ax:
In other cases, AutoDraw feels truly novel and clever, like when it appears to understand doodling shorthand for turning a pair of triangles into a fish:
It’s a ton of fun to play with and it’s easily the first of these Google-made experiments I could see truly taking off with the general public. Google seems to know this, too, which is why it made the tool free and accessible through the mobile web, so you can access it on both your desktop and on a tablet or smartphone. Try it out for yourself. Just be warned, it can ensnare even the most casual of doodlers among us into long, procrastinatory art sessions. | 5,203 |
Ever since Riverdale premiered, fans of the series have been asking for official merchandise almost as much as they have for Jughead to finally eat a burger. And, thanks to Hot Topic, one of those wishes is about to be granted (Hint: not the burger one). Hot Topic announced on Twitter that an official line of Riverdale merchandise is finally a reality and it’s coming soon to stores and online. We did some detective work (AKA spent a lot of time on the Hot Topic Twitter and Facebook pages) and this is everything we know about the Riverdale merchandise so far:
Merchandise will be available online within the next two weeks.
Replying to a fan on their official Facebook page, Hot Topic confirmed that the Riverdale will make its debut online within the next two weeks, so now is the time to break open your piggy banks.
An officially licensed Jughead beanie is coming in the fall.
By far the most popular piece of Riverdale wardrobe (sorry, Cheryl’s spider brooch) is Jughead’s (Cole Sprouse) beanie. He never removes it because he doesn’t fit in. He’s weird. He’s a weirdo – and now you can be one too, because an officially licensed Jughead beanie is coming. Expect this to arrive in September and run around $16.
Tees and the beanie are the only items available in the first wave of merchandise.
Replying to a fan on Instagram, Hot Topic confirmed that Riverdale t-shirts and the Jughead beanie are all that is in the pipeline for right now, but that could change depending on how well these items sell.
FP Jones won’t be featured on any of the shirts.
This isn’t much of a surprise considering Skeet Ulrich was only recurring during Riverdale’s freshman season, but Hot Topic replied to a fan and let them know Jughead’s troubled dad wouldn’t be featured on any of the shirts this time around.
Hot Topic is always open to suggestions for new Riverdale merch.
Although t-shirts and the beanie are the only items confirmed to be available thus far, Hot Topic is currently taking fan suggestions for future merchandise ideas. The biggest requests so far? A Southside Serpents jacket and Archie’s varsity jacket.
What merchandise do you hope to see in Hot Topic’s Riverdale line? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned for a full merchandise review once the collection arrives online.
SaveSave
SaveSave | 5,204 |
FOXBORO, Mass. — Patrick Chung scrambled to find fellow New England Patriots safety Duron Harmon after he intercepted Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck on Thursday night.
Chung and Harmon had planned something special an hour before the game, and the rest of the Patriots probably thought the two safeties were crazy as they were setting it up.
“They didn’t even tell nobody about it,” cornerback Jason McCourty said after the Patriots’ 38-24 win over the Colts. “It was just them two.”
That something special? A “Karate Kid” inspired celebration, where Chung crane kicked a wobbly Harmon.
“We just thought about it in the locker room, so it was pretty good,” Chung said. “Gladly it worked out for us to be able to do it.”
And that’s the thing. One of the two players had to make a play worthy of celebration. Chung picked off Luck with 38 seconds left in the first half, while the Patriots already were up 21-3.
The Patriots got an extra three points out of the pick, kicking a field goal before halftime.
“I was super hyped,” Harmon said. “If you look at the replay, you’ll see like, Chung is looking up, running trying to find me, and I’m coming from the back trying to find him. Like, ‘this is our shot, man. This is what we talked about.’ It was all great.”
Harmon actually came up with the idea.
“The funniest thing is I told Chung about,” Harmon said. “It was whoever had the pick was going to get to be Mr. Miyagi, the Karate Kid, and the other guy got to be (Johnny Lawrence). So, nah, it just something we thought of right before going out there. Good thing we thought about it, because it came to reality.”
And Harmon and Chung aren’t constantly cooking these things up. This is the first choreographed celebration we’ve ever seen from the two safeties.
“It really is a spur of the moment,” Chung said. “Sometimes you think about it. But if you don’t play good, then you’re not going to have any celebrations to begin with. But that was just a spur of the moment, and it worked out, so we got it.”
Thumbnail photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images | 5,205 |
South Africa’s cost of living has risen sharply over the last ten years, with increases in VAT, petrol and electricity hitting consumers hard. Inflation rates have spiralled, with the rising cost of food being one of the main driving factors.
Food prices have risen so dramatically, it may now be cheaper to get your groceries in the UK. This is confirmed by a comparison of two major supermarkets that shows a shopping trip to Woolworths will actually cost you more than shopping at one of the UK’s premium supermarkets, Waitrose.
Comparing prices between 15 essential items such as milk, bread and sugar, and commonly purchased meat and fish and fruit and vegetable products at both shops, found 10 items to be more expensive at Woolworths.
If you bought everything on this list, shopping at Woolworths would set you back: R562.14, while shopping at Waitrose would cost you: R527.90, saving you a total of R34.24.
The most significant differences were between Salmon fillets, which cost nearly double the price at Woolworths despite weighing 65g less, and avocados and rice, which were over R11 more expensive than Waitrose. This is particularly bleak when considering the average monthly salary in SA is R40,665,49 less than in the UK.
The soaring price of food has also been highlighted in a nine-month research programme conducted from September 2017 to June 2018 by the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action ( Pacsa ) and the Pietermaritzburg Justice and Dignity Group. The study found on average potatoes were 31% more expensive and the price of eggs had increased by 23% over the time period.
How to save money on your grocery bill
To avoid having to go all the way to the UK to do your food shopping, we have compiled a list of useful tips that will help you shop smart and save money on your grocery bill:
Sign up to supermarket loyalty and rewards programmes. They often have great deals and perks that will save you money.
Go shopping after 4 pm. Some supermarkets will mark down prices on fruit and vegetables, which may save you up to 50% off the original price.
If you see non-perishable items or anything you can freeze on special offer, stock up and buy in bulk.
Avoid throwing unnecessary items near the check out into your basket. This strategic placement of last-minute products is a clever marketing ploy to get you to buy things you don’t need.
Try shopping at your local fruit and vegetable shop and butcher – they often have great deals on and local businesses will appreciate your support. | 5,206 |
Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, has reportedly signed a deal with a publishing house to write a book.
The New York Times reported Friday that the book was acquired by Random House. It’s unclear how much the book will focus on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and other matters involving President Trump and his associates.
ANDREW MCCABE SAYS MUELLER REPORT SHOULD PROMPT IMPEACHMENT
Weissmann, who has left the Justice Department and now teaches law at New York University, did not respond to an email from Fox News seeking comment Friday. A Random House spokesman also could not be reached.
But the news of the book deal follows recent releases by several anti-Trump former Justice Department officials, including former FBI director James Comey and former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.
Weissmann, whom The New York Times once referred to as Mueller’s "legal pit bull,” was heavily involved in the criminal case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He also served as general counsel at the FBI and was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. A veteran Justice Department prosecutor, he was the deputy, and then leader, of the department’s task force investigating and then prosecuting Enron executives in the energy giant’s collapse.
Throughout his career, Weissmann has taken on organized crime figures, corporate fraud and other complex cases.
"He took on New York's most feared organized crime families, unraveled the incredibly ornate frauds at Enron, and has tracked international criminals, exposing their carefully concealed financial dealings in many dark corners of the world," said Leslie Caldwell, who worked alongside Weissmann at the Justice Department and as a Brooklyn prosecutor.
He also has overseen controversial prosecutions in the past that ultimately resulted in dismissed convictions and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
But Republicans criticized Weissmann, and other prosecutors on Mueller’s team, for their assumed political affiliation. Weissmann donated a combined $2,300 to Obama’s campaign in 2008 and in 2006, he contributed at least $2,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Sidney Powell, who is now an attorney for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, has accused Weissmann of “prosecutorial overreach” in past cases.
The book could draw attention because Mueller’s team was famously tight-lipped during its probe. In his only public remarks about the investigation, Mueller said he did not intend to testify before Congress and hoped the report would speak for itself.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report. | 5,207 |
More than 1000 people were treated to a celebrity football match at Dorking FC’s Meadowbank Stadium, as Calum Best’s F2Freestylers team took on the ‘My Tribute’ team - to raise money for the grassroots game.
The charity event was organised by CoinBurp, a London-based crypto exchange that lets people quickly and easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies, and which has ambitions to rival Coinbase as the best fiat on-ramp for those new to investing in cryptocurrencies.
With the help of Calum Best, celebrity and son of legendary footballer George Best, CoinBurp managed to drive awareness of crypto, and also to give something back to the community.
Best was joined by a selection of celebrities including EastEnders’ Dean Gaffney, last year’s Love Island contestants, Idris Virgo and Josh Mair, Soccer Am’s ‘Tubes’, and reality TV star Josh Ritchie for the match, which finished in a 10-5 victory for the F2 Freestylers.
Following the game Best thanked CoinBurp for their involvement and praised their approach to offering a safe and simple way to find out about cryptocurrency investing.
“It was an absolute pleasure having CoinBurp as a sponsor for the ‘My Tribute’ celebrity charity game,” he said. “I am building a working relationship with CoinBurp, learning all things crypto, with the intent to help others who may not understand, and to help them learn more about its promising future.”
CoinBurp offers customers a simple, intuitive and safe platform to buy and sell cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum. They sponsored the event to raise money for the Dorking Football Development Alliance, a charity that works to get kids into the game.
Peter Wood, CEO, said it was fantastic to be involved and great to get people like Calum Best on board.
“I was honoured to be involved in such a momentous occasion, where celebrities and the community came together for a hugely charitable cause, Sponsoring the event gave us the opportunity to be a part of the great work being done to support grassroots development for the youth of today, providing them with the foundation for their future. CoinBurp will continue to do its best in supporting such powerful events where we have the chance to improve the lives of communities and families alike. It’s important for all start ups to consider their responsibility to the community and to give something back.”
To find out more about CoinBurp, and to learn more about cryptocurrencies, visit: www.CoinBurp.com | 5,208 |
, links, and evidence. The last thing journalists want is to confront massive pushback on every post. The idea that Google+ was a ghost town—the clear consensus on Twitter—confused active and passionate users who struggled to keep up with the firehose of activity on their streams.
advertisement
Life was good for the Google+ faithful. And then everything changed. Gundotra left Google in April of 2014, and the company seemed to sour on the aggressive policy of forcibly integrating other Google properties into the network. This probably had something to do with YouTube. In November of 2013, Google forced YouTube commenters to have a Google+ account. YouTubers rebelled, turning their channels into anti-Google screed soapboxes. A year after Gundotra’s departure, YouTube was de-coupled from Google+. Photos was spun out. So was Hangouts. The great unbundling began. In the end, Google executives decided that Google+ wasn’t about following people, but passions. A subsequent redesign elevated “Communities” (subject-specific areas where lots of people could join and post on a narrow topic) and “Collections” (subject specific categorization for an individual user’s posts, which enabled you to follow someone but opt out of their food pics). And they neutered Circles, and killed the sharing of Circles. As Google+ was being turned into a shell of its former self, the world’s spammers began noticing Google+ and flocking to it. Despite all its AI Kung Fu, Google was never quite able to deal with the spam problem. Most of the Communities on Google+ have been taken over by spammers. The problem is even worse in post comments. Half the spam isn’t flagged. And half the flagged comments aren’t spam. And so we say goodbye Most Google+ fans I know don’t mourn its closure as much as they mourn the loss of Google+ circa 2014.
advertisement
Imagine a social network where geeks have higher follower counts than celebrities. Where there’s no advertising. Where trolls get crushed and ordinary people have a voice. Where smart people gather for long, detailed and interesting conversations. Where most streams aren’t algorithmically filtered. Where photographs appear at full quality. Where social networking engagement leads to actual, real-life friendships. Imagine a social network that strikes fear into Facebook, and forces them to improve the site for their users. It’s all hard to imagine. But for about three years, this was Google+. Google+ is dead. But the best version of the site died in 2014. We should all mourn its loss. | 5,209 |
John Tortorella had high praise for Jack Capuano when the Islanders were in Columbus last month and the Blue Jackets coach still showed love for Capuano, who was fired last week.
“I was texting him during the time all the noise was around him for quite a while, just to try to lend support,” said Tortorella, who brought Capuano on to work with Team USA during September’s World Cup of Hockey. “I loved working with him. He is one intelligent guy. With the coaches, no one’s looking out after us. When I’m playing against Jack, I want to beat him, you want to do everything to beat him, but when you’re away from that and you see a guy in a situation he’s been in, I think we have to support one another as coaches.
“I’ve talked to him since the firing. He’s gonna be fine. One door closes another one’s gonna open up for him. He’ll land on his feet.”
Tortorella has certainly been there, having been let go by the Rangers and Canucks in consecutive seasons before coming to Columbus early last season. The Blue Jackets had a 15-game win streak and a perfect December but have been a little sluggish the last dozen games coming into Barclays Center on Tuesday.
“We just haven’t worked hard,” Tortorella said. “We really dug in on the video today and I think sometimes you think you’re working hard when you really aren’t. This is the first time a lot of these guys have gone through this.”
Lee out with illness
Andrew Ladd returned after missing five games but Anders Lee was a surprise scratch after falling ill early Tuesday. Stephen Gionta played in Lee’s place.
Rookie Anthony Beauvillier was a planned absence due to a sore foot, suffered when he blocked a big slap shot in Sunday’s overtime loss to the Flyers. Beauvillier played through the injury but was sore on Tuesday and Doug Weight decided to be cautious.
Subscribe to Newsday’s sports newsletter Receive stories, photos and videos about your favorite New York teams plus national sports news and events. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy.
The coach all but guaranteed Beauvillier, a Montreal native, would be back in when the Canadiens come to Brooklyn on Thursday.
“He’s out tonight but we want him to be the best player on the ice Thursday,” Weight said. | 5,210 |
Despite the ongoing rocket fire by Gaza terrorists, Israel has not halted the entry of trucks into Gaza – and on Thursday, some 200 trucks carrying food and “basic supplies” entered Gaza. The government said that the trucks were allowed to pass through for “humanitarian purposes,” and were inspected and found not to be carrying any items or equipment that could be used to attack Israel.
The trucks are said to be carrying a greater than normal supply of food, officials said. According to sources, the IDF and Defense Ministry officials urged the government's Coordinator of Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Yoav Mordechai, to allow an increased amount of supplies into Gaza, so that residents would have enough to eat in case the IDF begins a ground assault against Hamas.
The trucks enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is often targeted by Gaza terrorists for missile attacks. The workers at the crossing are all Israeli, and have been given special safety instructions by the Home Front Command, officials said. It should be noted that one of the terror tunnels destroyed by the IDF several days ago was located right next to the Crossing.
With that, officials said, the IDF has pulled two “gestures” granted after the conclusion of Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. Palestinian Arab farmers have been banned from tending to their fields which abut the security fence around Gaza, and cannot approach within more than a few hundred meters of the fence. In addition, fishing boats have been restricted to within three kilometers of the Gaza coast.
The IDF has also allowed 240 Palestinians with foreign citizenship to leave Gaza, at the request of their governments. Among them are citizens of the US, Sweden, Greece, Romania, and Serbia. They will be allowed to leave the country, or to travel to Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria.
It goes without saying that the IDF has not taken steps to cut off Gaza's electricity, which is supplied by Israel, as numerous ministers and MKs have demanded. IDF officials said that among the reasons for allowing the shipments to continue and the power to flow was to prevent Hamas from painting a picture of a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, in which people have no food, water, or power.
In contrast to the IDF's concern for the well-being of civilians in Gaza, Hamas, the Islamist group which controls the territory, has urged residents to act as human shields, placing them directly in harm's way - sometimes with tragic results.
On Wednesday night, Hamas spokesman took to Gaza-controlled TV to openly admit that the group is using civilians as human shields, and encouraged more Gazans to act as such. | 5,211 |
LGD.cn and TongFu closed out the second playday of Dota 2 Super League in spectacular fashion. Vici Gaming and LGD.cn are currently at the top of Group A while For.Love sits at the bottom. We are also halfway through Group A with only five games left to be played before the tournament shifts into group B.
A spectacular finish to the second week of the Dota 2 Super League as [team]LGD[/team].cn and [team]TongFu[/team] fought their wits out trying to secure the win after a 1-1 tie over two 50 minutes game. Viewers were treated to more eye-candy when TongFu, despite being down by almost 20 killls in game three defended their base for 25 minutes before finally succumbing to the loss. The plays from Ning 'xiao8' Zhang on the Kunkka impressed even Icefrog.
Icefrog Weibo post translated by allen_ami Director 8 maybe drank some Kunkka's rum, he's even more awesome today
Vici Gaming on the other hand, had a great run coming into the tournament defeating LGD.cn last week and For.Love on Thursday to top Group A. Their winning streak was stopped earlier today when they faced off against Invictus Gaming in which they were utterly outdrafted and outplayed in both games. That was the only game iG played in the Super League so far.
On the contrary, For.Love did not do too well, devastatingly lost both their opening matches to Vici Gaming and LGD.cn. With only two games remaining for them, For.Love would have to win all their upcoming matches to avoid relegation. For.Love is due to face iG and TongFu in the upcoming playdays.
LGD.cn and Vici Gaming is currently at the top of group A with one game lost each.
Team M W D L P LGD 4 3 0 1 9 TongFu 4 3 0 1 9 iG. 4 2 0 2 6 VG.cn 4 2 0 2 6 For.Love 4 0 0 4 0 Matches and results
The next playday will be starting on the 21st of May, three days prior to G-1 League. The highlight match of the next playday will be TongFu versus iG on the 22nd of May.
The VODs for all the Dota 2 Super League games including the recent LGD.cn versus TongFu are available in our coverage page here.
DSL Coverage Hub Check link for results, news, format and VODs
Source: Icefrog post
Image sources: replays.net | 5,212 |
The ACC is expected to discuss the safety of court storming and whether an SEC-like penalty structure is warranted when the conference holds its spring meetings in May, at least one athletic director told ESPN.com on Friday.
The AD, who preferred not to be named while the process was ongoing, was reacting to Thursday night's court storming at Virginia when the Cavaliers beat Duke.
The SEC has a fine system of $5,000 for a first offense, $25,000 for a second, $50,000 for a third.
When the SEC adopted the penalty system in 2004 and the issue came up for debate within the ACC, there was no support for levying such a penalty. No other conference has a penalty like the SEC.
"If they don't bring it up, I promise you I will resurrect the discussion,'' the AD said.
A Duke official said later Friday that security stopped Duke players and staff at the Virginia bench while fans rushed the court as opposed to stopping the fans and allowing the Duke players and staff to get off the court. The Duke official said they had more than enough ushers to get the Duke players and staff off the court.
The ACC plans to discuss the safety of court-storming at its spring meetings, one athletic director told ESPN.com. AP Photo/Don Petersen
Duke has been stormed on at Miami, NC State, Maryland and Virginia. Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski expressed concern for his players' safety after the latest incident.
"Look, do you know how close you are to -- just put yourself in the position of one of our players or coaches," Krzyzewski said, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. "I'm not saying any fan did this, but the potential is there all the time for a fan to just go up to you and say, 'Coach, you're a [expletive],' or push you or hit you. And what do you do? What if you did something? That would be the story. We deserve that type of protection.
"I'm always concerned about stuff like that, especially at this time of the year. What if that happened and we get a kid suspended? That becomes the national story. It's not all fun and games when people are rushing the court, especially for the team that lost. Again, congratulations to them, and they should have fun and burn benches and do all that stuff. I'm all for that. They have a great school, great kids, but get us off the court. That's the bottom line."
Virginia officials said Friday that the school's associate athletic director met with Duke at the shootaround Thursday. | 5,213 |
Logan Grimnar, Warrior King of the Space Wolves. Nobody show this model to PETA. Image Credit: Games Workshop
Or, to be more specific, that small, sculpted models of said Space Vikings stop being depicted as wearing fur. Or, to be even more specific, PETA UK have written to Games Workshop, makers of Warhammer 40,000 and its myriad table-top gaming models, asking them to cease depicting imagery of its myriad characters wearing animal fur and make them “fur free.”
That’s in quotation marks, because obviously, these models are already fur free in that they’re made out of plastic, resin, and metal. It’s just that some of them (say, the Space Wolves, the very Viking-inspired branch of the Space Marines that have a fondness for, well, actual space wolves) are depicted wearing fur pelts on top of their armor. Even that is too much in PETA’s eyes, who claim that it “sends the message that wearing fur is acceptable—when, in fact, it has no more place in 2017 than it would in the year 40,000.”
That’s silly enough, but the message continues, noting that “nothing on the bloody battlefields of Warhammer’s conflict-ravaged universe could match the terrible reality of the fur trade.” Guys, this is the franchise that portrays unspeakably grim catastrophes so casually it gave rise to the term “grimdark” as a storytelling trope! In a recent 40k campaign event, for example, one of the biggest planets in the Human Imperium, Cadia, was destroyed after the evil forces of Chaos (actual demons!) crapped out a mass of nightmarish horrors over the planet, then smashed a giant, ancient spaceship into it, and then absorbed the shattered remnants of the planet and most of its 850 million inhabitants into a rift which was basically a portal to literal space hell. And that’s like, a Tuesday in the Warhammer universe. Nothing can be gained out of a grimdark point-scoring contest when your opponent is Games Workshop.
As PETA itself notes, there are plenty of actual horrors within the fur trade with regards to the abuse animals face. Choosing to make a play against fictional fur garments in a setting as preposterously absurd as the world of Warhammer 40,000 instead seems like a profoundly poor area of focus when it comes to championing animal rights. But given that PETA has a long history of awful stunt campaigns, it probably shouldn’t be all that surprising to hear that they would focus on something like this in the first place. | 5,214 |
The Los Angeles Rams have several priorities to take care of this offseason, from signing their own free agents to exploring other players on the open market. Four key starters – Rodger Saffold, Dante Fowler Jr., Ndamukong Suh and Lamarcus Joyner – are set to hit free agency next week, all of whom the Rams would likely love to keep.
Unfortunately, there’s a salary cap preventing that from happening and it’s possible the Rams will lose all four in free agency. One player who’s still under contract, though, is Marcus Peters. The Rams picked up his fifth-year option last year, keeping him in L.A. through 2019 for $9.1 million.
The team can move on from him before that figure becomes official at the start of the new league year, but that seems unlikely to happen. The Rams can also sign him to an extension in order to lower his cap hit and keep him around long term, but Les Snead indicated contract talks will have to wait.
“Because his situation is a little less urgent on the timeline — because it’s not running out here in March — what we like to do is, hey, let’s take care of the urgent business first, and then get through it,” Snead said, via Myles Simmons of the team’s official site. “At that point, you’ve got to recalibrate and see where you stand. Many variables — dollars and budget being one — and then you get to the summer months and start talking about, OK, is there the Rob Havenstein? Is there the Brandin Cooks that you’d like to get done?”
The Rams typically take this approach with players who are still under contract. Rather than extending them before the draft and free agency, they wait until the summer to take care of those issues. They did that with Todd Gurley, Rob Havenstein, Aaron Donald and Brandin Cooks last year, and it seems the same approach will be used with Cooks.
Snead did say the team has had discussions about a long-term deal, “both internally and with the player’s representation at the time of the initial trade,” Simmons wrote. The Rams will take a look at the cornerback position with Peters and Aqib Talib’s contract expiring after next season, potentially leaving a hole at cornerback in 2020.
The safe move would be to let Peters play out the 2019 season on his fifth-year option before extending him, but perhaps the Rams feel good enough about his talent to make that deal happen this year. | 5,215 |
According to the World Health Organization, it costs $244 to test one person for Ebola. For every reported case, health workers need to trace at least 10 people the patient may have contacted, which costs about $225 per person. When a person dies their body must safely be buried and their household sanitized without workers risking infection. This costs $404.
The Ebola virus currently sweeping across West Africa has already killed more than 1,500 people and affected 3,000 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone without showing any signs of stopping. On Friday Senegal reported two cases, and Nigeria reported another outside of Lagos.
And as the death toll mounts, so do the costs.
The WHO estimates that it will take at least $490 million to give health workers a chance at fighting the largest recorded outbreak in history. Earlier this month they had estimated a cost of just $71 million, but that was before researchers said the virus has a potential to infect as many as 20,000 people.
“National authorities in the affected countries have been working with WHO and partners to scale up control measures,” the organization’s “Ebola Response Roadmap,” says. “However, the [Ebola] outbreak remains grave and transmission is still increasing in a substantial number of localities, aggravating fragile social, political and economic conditions in the sub-region and posing increasingly serious global health security challenges and risks.”
Their goal is to “reverse the trend in new cases and infected areas within three months, stop transmission in capital cities and major ports, and stop all residual transmission within 6 - 9 months.”
To get this done, the WHO has a set of priorities. These include Ebola “intervention packages” that include management of current cases, diagnoses of possible patients, victim burial, and using local community leaders and social networks to raise awareness.
Health workers also need to deal with movement -- keeping infected people from crossing borders but allowing “essential and supportive services” to move from place to place easily.
Doing this effectively and safely isn’t cheap. WHO researchers estimate that it takes roughly $5.7 million to set up and operate a 50-bed Ebola treatment center for six months, with a total cost of $126.5 million. Meanwhile, ensuring safe burials across the region through “burial teams” will cost roughly $6.1 million, while “social mobilization and community engagement” will cost about $12.2 million.
And even these costs barely scratch the surface. According to the report, these do not include costs of supplies and equipment or the deployment of staff. | 5,216 |
Alex Goodlett/Associated Press
Like many other teams, the Los Angeles Lakers are looking ahead to the star-studded 2019 free-agent class, and they may already have a primary target in mind.
Speaking on ESPN LA 710's Mornings with Keyshawn, LZ and Travis, ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne reported Golden State Warriors star Klay Thompson may be high on the Lakers' wish list (h/t Anthony Irwin of SB Nation's Silver Screen & Roll):
"In terms of who they target next year, it's whoever wants to come. My feeling about it, my sense from just talking to people in and around this [is that] one, it's a little early, but I think they like Mychal's boy. I think that would be the guy, in terms of skillset and how that would fit. Obviously Kawhi [Leonard], he's a great player as well, but we'll see if he stays in Toronto now. But I think they like Klay [Thompson]."
Thompson already has a personal connection to the Lakers. His father, Mychal, spent four-and-a-half seasons with the team, helping Los Angeles win NBA titles in 1987 and 1988. For the past 15 years, Thompson has worked as a color commentator on Lakers broadcasts.
Having failed to find a suitable star to pair with LeBron James this summer, the Lakers will try to do so in 2019.
According to Shelburne and colleague Adrian Wojnarowski, the Lakers will have $38 million in salary-cap space next offseason after agreeing to a buyout with Luol Deng. That would be enough to sign a max-level free agent such as Thompson.
Video Play Button Videos you might like
Still, this offseason has shown the Lakers can't assume anything regarding their chances of signing All-Star-caliber players. They succeeded in landing James, but Paul George remained with the Oklahoma City Thunder before giving the Lakers an opportunity to make a pitch.
For Thompson, joining the Lakers doesn't make much sense unless he's simply ready for a fresh challenge.
The Warriors are far better positioned to contend for NBA titles in the short term, and they can offer him more money than any other team. Plus, James' presence ensures he wouldn't be the biggest star in Los Angeles, which could otherwise be seen as a benefit to leaving Golden State.
The Lakers should look at Thompson—just like every other team that is planning to have max-level cap space next summer. But Los Angeles should have a number of scenarios in mind for how the offseason could play out, because a lot will change before next July. | 5,217 |
With the Temperance tarot card as this week’s selection, will this be the week that you are going to bring people with differences together? Or will you be self-indulgent and cause animosities? This is the week to make sure that your needs are met before your wants. The best thing is to keep your energies in check and put them to good use. At the end of the week, you decide if the Temperance card fell in the upright or reversed position for you.
MAJOR ARCANA NUMBER 14
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN or PLANET: SAGITTARIUS, CANCER, JUPITER
UPRIGHT:
The Temperance card denotes balance, harmony and moderation. You are in good health emotionally and physically. The forces behind it are those that keep us from giving in to temptation or over-indulgence and from developing unhealthy addictions or behaviors. Temperate spirits avoid extremes, spread harmony and bring opposing sides together. This card indicates that you have the ability to negotiate a happy medium when faced with two opposing views or ideas. They find a happy, healthy median between what they want and what they need. Temperance provides an environment in which most will thrive and a haven where the injured may heal and re-energize and that all will be well. The Temperance card signifies success and contentment, which is found by practicing self-restraint and using balance to create a personal shelter from the storm. A time to put your energies to work in the right areas. It is important to understand that inward reflection is key to finding balance with the external stimuli. You take a mature and objective approach with matters at hand.
REVERSED:
In the reversed position, the Temperance card can signify excess, impatience, conflict and hostile behavior. You will experience periods of restlessness which will result in quarreling and conflicts with others.You have been inconsiderate to the people you are close to. Your self-indulgence has caused animosity amongst your friends. This is not a time to make quick decisions. Your imbalances are causing physical stress. This behavior will get in the way of any new business opportunities, and new friendships. Your energies are not being put to good use. You may find yourself being overly competitive.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TAROT AND HOW TO DO A SPREAD,
VISIT THE TAROT ROOM.
?
FOR THE CURRENT AND MOST UP-TO-DATE TAROT CARD OF THE WEEK,
VISIT THE CONFERENCE ROOM.
?
Join our FB Fan page! | 5,218 |
The Australian federal police did not destroy all copies of phone records it obtained unlawfully, without a warrant, for the purpose of identifying a journalist’s source, according to a new audit by the commonwealth ombudsman.
In April 2017, the AFP commissioner, Andrew Colvin, confirmed such a breach had occurred within the professional standards unit and apologised, saying the accessed metadata had been destroyed.
But the ombudsman contradicted that account, saying its inspection of the AFP’s records “identified that not all copies of records containing the unlawfully accessed data had been destroyed by the AFP”.
“In relation to the destruction of all copies of records containing the unlawfully accessed data, the AFP advised our office that it had destroyed all of the material that was provided to it as a result of the breach,” the new report said.
“However, to confirm that this had been done, we arranged to revisit the AFP with technical assistance, appreciating the complexities of the AFP’s systems. This visit prompted PRS [professional standards] to conduct further checks of its systems with technical assistance, which identified additional records.
“We confirmed that these records were subsequently destroyed”.
The ombudsman has recommended the AFP immediately review its approach to metadata awareness and training to ensure all staff involved in exercising metadata powers had a thorough understanding of the legislative framework and their responsibilities.
The audit concluded that at the time of the breach, “there was insufficient awareness surrounding journalist information warrant requirements” within the professional standards unit.
It said within that unit, “a number of officers did not appear to fully appreciate their responsibilities when exercising metadata powers”.
“In any large, decentralised agency, there will inevitably be a risk that awareness-raising does not reach every officer who is required to be in the know,” the audit said. “In recognising this risk, all law enforcement agencies that can access metadata have implemented complementary measures to mitigate legislative non-compliance.”
“Unfortunately, the complementary measures adopted by the AFP were not strong enough to prevent this breach from occurring.”
But the ombudsman said it was of the view that “the AFP as a whole” respected that journalists had a higher threshold for accessing metadata courtesy of journalist information warrant provisions, which ensured that access to metadata to identify a journalist’s source was permitted only if the public interest in doing so outweighed the public interest in maintaining the confidentiality of a journalist’s source.
The audit said the AFP took “seriously” its legislative obligations, particularly in relation to its use of covert and intrusive powers. | 5,219 |
The LGBT community took to Mumbai's streets to show their numbers this year at the Queer Pride March
The beat of the Nashik dhol and chanting of slogans reverberated in the air as the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) community came together for the Queer Pride March on Saturday. “This year, pride is not just about celebration, but also protest. It is heartening to see so many straight people here to support us as well as many community members showing their faces with pride,” said Pallav Patankar from the Humsafar Trust.
A gay couple shares a moment at the march. Pics/Bipin Kokate
Many chose to wear Indian costumes with the Modi jacket being a huge hit. Darshil Sh from Yaariyan, Humsafar Trust’s youth wing, said, “We wanted to convey that the LGBT idea is very Indian. We feel our sexuality from within, and it has nothing to do with any foreign influence.”
Actor Manoj Bajpai (second from left), director Hansal Mehta (second from right) and Rajkumar Rao (extreme right) came out in support
Mr Gay World India, Anwesh Sahoo, also opted for an Indian look with a Rajasthan-inspired mirror-work outfit. He said, “I wanted to run wild with colours, and also be authentically Indian. Seeing so many others in Indian wear makes me feel proud of my choice.”
As the crowd began to fill up outside the August Kranti Maidan at Grant Road, some community members and supporters chose to paint their faces and bodies. Gayatree Joshi, the artist, said, “Rainbow dream catchers, flags in multi-coloured hues and Section 377 were some of the common things people opted to paint.”
Sr Lillyann Joseph, a Catholic nun, who is part of AHF (Aids Healthcare Foundation) India, a Navi Mumbai-based NGO that provides free HIV treatment, was there to support the LGBT community. She said, “I work with many people present here. So, I am here to support them.”
The NGO was distributing condoms to all those gathered. Bismay Raulo from Delhi, who was part of Impulse India, a sister NGO of AHF India, said, “This idea was a success at the Delhi Pride. So, we decided to replicate the idea in Mumbai. We have given out more than 7,000 condoms.”
According to organisers, the turnout was around 10,000 this year. | 5,220 |
The Eta Carinae nebula’s cosmic fireworks in ultraviolet – it’s been erupting for 170 years (ESA/Hubble /SWNS.COM)
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured some dramatic pictures of a cosmic eruption that’s been going on for 170 years.
The red, white and blue gases can be sheen shooting out of Eta Carinae, one of the Milky Way’s most ‘petulant’ nebula.
These new images from Nasa are the latest shots of the firework display that started with the star’s ‘Great Eruption’ in the 1840s.
The picture, taken by Nasa’s Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, reveals the ultraviolet-light glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue), which could help scientists better understand the unique star’s unpredictable behaviour.
The largest member of a double-star system, Eta Carinae weighs 150 times our sun’s mass.
This is a unique three-dimensional image of the star Eta Carinae, with its twin lobes and equatorial disk of expanding dust and gas. To see the 3D structure the image must be viewed through colour 3D glasses with the left eye looking through a red filtered lens, and right eye looking through a blue filtered lens. (ESA/Hubble)
Astronomers think the doomed super-massive star swallowed up its smaller brother in the violent blast leaving strange-looking ‘lobes’ of hot gas surrounding the system.
The eruption turned Eta Carinae into our sky’s second brightest star for more than a decade with mariners using it to navigate the southern seas at night.
The star has since faded and is now barely visible to the unaided eye, but the fireworks keep coming.
The Hubble telescope also funded by the European Space Agency has been studying them over the past 25 years.
The Hubble Space Telescope is orbiting above the Earth (Getty Images)
Dr Nathan Smith, at the University of Arizona and the Hubble program’s lead investigator, said: ‘We’re excited by the prospect that this type of ultraviolet magnesium emission may also expose previously hidden gas in other types of objects that eject material, such as protostars or other dying stars.
‘Only Hubble can take these kinds of pictures.’
The show’s finale will come when the stellar monster explodes as a supernova and dies. And this may have happened already with the beams from 7,500 light-years away yet to reach earth. | 5,221 |
Although an official announcement will have to wait until after the NBA Finals, Boston Celtics assistant coach Tom Thibodeau has accepted an offer to become the next head coach of the Chicago Bulls, a source told ESPNChicago.com on Saturday.
Thibodeau's deal is worth approximately $6.5 million, with two years guaranteed plus a team option, according to multiple media reports.
This development comes after ESPN.com's Marc Stein reported Thibodeau had withdrawn his name from consideration for the New Orleans Hornets' coaching job.
Bulls officials declined comment. The team and the NBA agreed to
wait until after the Finals are over to make the hiring official.
"We do not have any rules that prohibit a team from announcing a coaching hire during the Finals," NBA spokesman Tim Frank said. "In the Bulls case, because they have no plans to consummate any
deal before the end of the Finals, we agreed that they should defer
any announcement to the conclusion of the Finals."
Celtics coach Doc Rivers would not confirm the move before Boston practiced the day before Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
"I hope it's true, but we're not going to comment on it, I can tell you that," Rivers said. "We're focused on the NBA Finals. There's two teams. There's the Lakers and the Celtics, and that's what we're going to keep the focus on.
"But on Tom, he deserves the job. I think he's the best candidate out there. I've said that for three years now. So let's hope it's true."
In addition to getting interest from the Bulls and Hornets, Thibodeau was a strong candidate for the New Jersey Nets' coaching opening, Stein reported. Thibodeau interviewed with the Nets before the Celtics left the East Coast for Los Angeles for Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
Early in the Bulls' coaching search, conventional wisdom indicated the team was looking at candidates who had prior head coaching experience. Thibodeau's extensive experience as an assistant, however, was enough.
ESPNChicago.com had reported the Bulls were impressed with Thibodeau's basketball knowledge after a recent interview.
Those who worked closely with Thibodeau had high praise for him.
"Tom's a workaholic," Celtics forward Paul Pierce told ESPNChicago.com recently. "I'm always catching him in there working, watching film in his office. He's probably the most prepared coach I've ever seen."
Rivers agreed.
"It's tough to get a picture of him, because he's always in the office," Rivers told ESPNChicago.com. | 5,222 |
maybe not looking quite as sharp as their sister team Blast in the qualifiers, this will be a fun team to watch due to Ragan's antics in the top lane and the strong play in the mid lane. While maybe not a championship contending team, they surely have the talent to push for a playoff spot.As a new season of Champions flies into our calendars like a G6, new squads have joined the quest to become Korea's kings of League. OGN have decided to bump the amount of teams from 12 to 16 to ensure more amateur and start-up professional teams get their chance to shine their talents in the holy grounds of the Yongsan e-Sports Stadium. Let's have a look at who has the potential to royal road this season. (Note: Since HGD is ahq Korea with one different member, I don't consider them royal roaders. As for Xenics Storm, while there are completely new members, the team is still the same name wise).The strongest out of the four royal roaders this season. Led by old-school legend ManyReason in the mid lane, Blast showed some of the best teamwork and co-ordination in the qualifiers. The addition of Bang helps out in terms of veteran presence within the team, while Stark, Quality and Boink are well-regarded solo queue players determined to make the step up to the big leagues.From what was once a casual university team has spawned into Korea's most talked about up and coming teams over the past year, CTU are a dark horse of royal roading. Taking both mima and a Wolf from MVP and Najin respectively, it has now solidified its starting five. Keep an eye out for Riris, who was one of the most impressive players through out the qualifiers. It makes you wonder why KT Arrows passed on him.The pet project of Woong (who has been scrutinized for helping his team cheat in an online tournament) is set to make its 'technical' return to Champions (MiG spawned Frost and Blaze before their departure). Despite being a group of solo queue pub stars, Blitz showed good determination in taking down GOL in the qualifiers (check out game 2 for the super duper lane push composition). Blitz however, will have a hard time making it out of the group stages, with KT Bullets, CJ Frost and LG-IM #1 awaiting them.From Woong's pet project to Lilac's pet project, we have the second team of LG-IM. While the team in general has dropped off the map as more teams come and replace them, the strong coaching of director Kang Dong-hoon should be of some help to them.▲ Back to Top ▲ https://twitter.com/FionnOnFire | 5,223 |
. I shined a light out, and there were 6 deer walking around. Pretty cool. Well, enter having to get up to relieve myself.
It was a process in the dark. From finding the zipper to remembering there are no real good hand-holds and then face planting the tarp… Yep, I was wide awake by the time I readjusted the quilt and found my blanket that was laying under the hammock because I forgot about it when I got out. Right then, frustrating. Looking back, funny as hell. I also realized, at that moment, an under quilt was definitely needed and would make the whole process so much easier. So, after laying there, making micro adjustments, I finally fell asleep, and pretty much stayed that way for the rest of the night. I woke up somewhere around 8:00 AM. Love when the campsite doesnt have direct sunlight. I made some coffee, relaxed a bit and then started the process of breaking down camp.
It took less time to get everything broken down until I got to the lines. When I brought everything down off the hill, they got tangled. So, I took the time to redo them and get them untangled and put away. I also re-threaded the ridge-line inside the hammock through the guide loops so the built-in bug-net stayed in place. Forgot that when I was setting up. Actually, didnt see them at that point. After that, everything folded down and ended up back in their bags nicely and the bike was packed up within minutes after that. I ended up leaving camp right at 10:00 AM. GPS said I would be home at 12:30 PM, however, I was going to take a couple shortcuts, which ended up putting me in the garage at 11:45 AM and the bike unpacked by 12:25 PM.
All in all, it was a successful weekend. I have a lot of notes to take back, including going back and rewatching the tutorial videos as well as updating the packing of the bike. There are some changes with that aspect that I think I can make that will pair down what all I end up bringing. I had the top box, dry bag and side bags, and while I didnt use everything, I wanted to see what the full pack looked like. I have quite a few changes to make, but after I get the under quilt in. I also want to do this before the organized hang at the end of the month.
So, for now, here are the photos I took while down there. If you want to know the stuff I took as far as the sleep system or stove or anything else, just let me know. | 5,224 |
Stephen G. Breyer casting the key votes.
Most legal experts predict the justices will rule in favor of maintaining the cross. They are watching closely, however, to see whether they will do so on narrow grounds or more broadly.
For example, the court could rule narrowly that the Peace Cross can remain because it has stood for nearly a century and because it was erected as a war memorial. Advocates of this approach cited Breyer’s 2005 opinion in the two cases involving the Ten Commandments. He said officials would violate the 1st Amendment if they put up new religious displays, but this does not require ripping up old granite monuments or tearing down faded murals in courthouses. High above the Supreme Court’s courtroom are marble friezes of great lawmakers of ancient history, including a depiction of Moses holding a tablet with the commandments.
“The Establishment Clause does not compel the government to purge from the public sphere all that in any way partakes of the religious,” Breyer wrote in Van Orden vs. Perry.
It is also possible that the chief justice will seek to have the lawsuit thrown out the grounds the three plaintiffs lack standing. In the past, several justices have questioned how a plaintiff is injured or harmed by the presence of religious symbol on public property.
But lawyers for the American Legion urge the court to rule broadly. They say “passive displays” of the cross or any religious symbol should be upheld because no one is forced to participate in a religious exercise. In the past, Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia espoused this so-called “no coercion” rule.
Defenders of church-state separation say this would amount to a major change.
“I am very concerned the court might adopt the view that the Establishment Clause is violated only if there is coercion. There well might be five votes for this approach,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School. If so, “there would be no limit on religious symbols on government property. A city could put a large cross atop city hall or in front of its chambers and it would be allowed because there is not coercion.”
Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, joined with the American Jewish Congress and other faith groups in urging the court to hold the line on church-state separation. “The cross is the singular symbol of Christianity,” she said. “I hope the court will say that government cannot pick and choose between religions or promote a religious message.”
The latest from Washington »
More stories from David G. Savage » | 5,225 |
White House Communications Director Mike Dubke announced yesterday that he’s stepping down from his post after just three months on the job. There’s been some discussion about whether the longtime Republican media strategist jumped ship or was pushed, but either way, there’s now a vacancy in a key office on Donald Trump’s presidential team.
The question is whether anyone will want it.
I noted yesterday that Trump World may find it challenging to replace Dubke, and after reading this BuzzFeed piece, it looks like I may have understated matters. BuzzFeed spoke with 20 Republican communicators and operatives, “many of whom have worked on Capitol Hill and in presidential campaigns,” and none of whom seemed eager to apply.
“Hell no!” said one Republican — one of the most common type of responses BuzzFeed News got from operatives. “That would be career suicide.” […] “That’s like asking someone who just witnessed a horrific bungee jumping accident whether they would like to go next,” one Republican source responded in a text message. “It would be only a few months on the job before tapping out the ‘I want to spend more time with family’ email,” another said. One operative whose spouse works in the Trump administration dissolved into laughter upon being asked if they would want the role. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” the source said between stifled laughter. “Oh, you’re being serious? Oh my god, I’m crying of laughter, why would anyone in their right mind want to be his communications director?”
A GOP communications specialist with presidential campaign experience added that this position would be “attractive to someone who is willing to ruin their reputation or who isn’t worried about what the future of their career looks like.”
The New York Times reported that the White House reached out to four different people about becoming the president’s new communications director, but all four “declined to be considered.”
Politico added that White House dysfunction and the investigation into Trump’s Russia scandal are pushing away prospective employees – for any prominent position.
I’m not even sure what a White House communications director is supposed to do in an environment like this. While Dubke no doubt tried his best, Team Trump’s communications strategies may have been carefully crafted masterpieces, only to be derailed by an impulsive president who enjoys publishing self-destructive tweets.
The mystery isn’t why Dubke only lasted three months; it’s why he didn’t run away sooner. | 5,226 |
Hollywood writer and director Paul Schrader has called for violence following Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States.
Schrader, writer of cinematic classics such as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, posted to his Facebook page Saturday night that Donald Trump’s election is a “call to violence,” claiming that he had heard a similar call in the 60s.
“I have spent the last five days meditating on Trump’s election,” wrote Schrader. “Upon consideration, I believe this is a call to violence. I felt the call to violence in the 60’s and I feel it now again. This attack on liberty and tolerance will not be solved by appeasement.”
“We should finance those who support violence resistance. We should be willing to take arms,” Schrader continued. “Like Old John Brown, I am willing to battle with my children. Alt right nut jobs swagger violence. It’s time to actualize that violence, Like by [sic] Civil War Michigan predecessors I choose to stand with the black, the brown and the oppressed.”
Many commenters on Schrader’s Facebook page disagreed with him, with one saying, “Paul Schrader is a rich fat old man who would do nothing to jeopardize his comfortable lifestyle. He will fantasize about being Travis Bickle (who he, himself, has said was no hero) while calling young people to fight his war for him.” Travis Bickle, the main character of Schrader’s film Taxi Driver portrayed by actor Robert DeNiro, at one point attempts to assassinate a presidential candidate.
Some celebrities seem to agree with Schrader, however, that Donald Trump cannot be allowed to act as president. Director Joss Whedon tweeted that Donald Trump, “CANNOT be allowed a term in office.”
This is simple: Trump cannot CANNOT be allowed a term in office. It's not about 2018. It's about RIGHT NOW — Joss Whedon (@joss) November 14, 2016
Conversely, other celebrities such as Oprah and Dave Chappelle have had much more calm and collected responses to Donald Trump’s victory.
Violent protests continue across America in the wake of the presidential election.
**UPDATE**
Paul Schrader appears to have deleted his post, but an archived version of it can still be viewed here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at [email protected] | 5,227 |
entire Deep State nexus would become. In Truman's era, spying and subterfuge were physical endeavors, involving skilled agents and analog technology. Today the covert arts don't require James Bond, but instead a trained technician who can pull information from a server farm.The digital revolution gives modern intelligence agencies vastly more power than they had during the Cold War spy days: they simply access existing metadata, from whatever source, rather than collect it in real time. And intelligence gathering is not just a supplementary form of warfare waged against hostile foreign governments, but also a domestic political tool that allows Deep State actors to strike at civilian and political targets. As Mr. Trump has discovered, the "strike" can consist of a coordinated media attacks, leaks from trusted officials, and even bizarre triangulations aimed at pinning his election on Vladimir Putin.One justification Truman provides for his action is the old bureaucratic unicorn known as "consolidation," which is often promised by politicians but never delivered. When then-congressman Ron Paul and his staff furiously argued against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, GOP congressional leaders assured us that an entirely new department would actually consolidate several different agencies and functions. "It will save money!", they told us, to bring all of these disparate federal employees under one efficient umbrella. Fast forward to 2017, and DHS is just another failed department with a thousand-page, $42 billion annual budget.But Truman apparently bought into the consolidation argument:Unfortunately it is only in hindsight that Truman came to see the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" at work, which posits that all organizations-- particularly government bureaucracies-- eventually fall under the control of an elite few. That elite, he came to understand, did not include the president or his cabinet:This is a remarkable statement by Truman, even if delivered during a relatively unguarded moment with a trusted biographer. It shows a humility and willingness to admit grave error that is lacking in public life today. It also stands on its own as a inadvertent libertarian argument against state power itself.Did Truman stand by his statements about the CIA? Yes and no. Speaking to Esquire in 1971, he continued to praise the agency as a needed consolidation:Hypocritical backpedaling on Truman's part? Perhaps. But his biographer Merle Miller calls the Esquire quote "pretty faint praise," and more importantly Truman never ordered the removal of his brief chapter on the CIA from the Plain Speaking biography. His mea culpa still stands, in print. So while he could not have fully imagined what the CIA would become, he knew in his gut he had made a terrible mistake-- a mistake we are only beginning to understand today thanks to WikiLeaks.Reprinted with permission from the Mises Institute | 5,228 |
FILE - In this March 14, 2011 file photo a man stands in front of the installation 'prayomat' (Gebetomat) of artist Oliver Sturm in Berlin. The praying booth has been installed for three months at the Stuttgart, southern Germany, airport. (Britta Pedersen//dpa via AP) FILE - In this March 14, 2011 file photo a man stands in front of the installation 'prayomat' (Gebetomat) of artist Oliver Sturm in Berlin. The praying booth has been installed for three months at the Stuttgart, southern Germany, airport. (Britta Pedersen//dpa via AP)
BERLIN (AP) — Feeling nervous before your flight? Travelers at one German airport can now receive spiritual solace by entering a booth and listening to a prayer of their choice before boarding the plane.
The prayer booth at Stuttgart Airport’s Terminal 3 features 300 prayers from various religions in 65 different languages, airport spokesman Johannes Schumm said Friday.
“Often, passengers still have a bit of time before their departure at the gate,” Schumm added. “The prayer booth is an offer by the airport’s chaplains to provide a moment of contemplation.”
Designed by Berlin artist Oliver Sturm, the former photo booth offers a vast variety of prayers, including the Christian Lord’s Prayer, the Jewish Shma Israel and the Islamic muezzin’s call to prayer. The Hindu Hare Krishna chant, Tibetan monk chants, Buddhist sutras, prayers of Shamans from New Guinea or Mali, even American TV preachers are also available on the touch-screen display.
In addition to the big monotheistic faiths, polytheistic religions and animist beliefs are also included.
ADVERTISEMENT
The ‘Gebetomat,’ which roughly translates as ‘Pray-o-Matic,’ was first designed by Sturm in 2008. Its red cabin has a gray curtain and an adjustable swivel chair inside. The booth is free and will be available for three months at Stuttgart Airport’s boarding area next to Gate 310.
The artist, who could not immediately be reached for comment, writes on his home page that “all prayers are real prayers of believers, gathered in worship, prayer rooms, homes.”
Sturm has designed several prayer booths in recent years that have been installed at schools, universities and museums.
___
Follow Kirsten Grieshaber on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kugrieshaber | 5,229 |
Image 1 of 15 ▼
Stockton Police continue to search for 21-month-old twins who are missing in Stockton. The twins were first reported missing, along with their parents, Thursday, Jan. 4.
Stockton police released photos of one of the twins Thursday. Police released two photos of Setina Weddles although they say they don’t have a photo of her brother Ren Weddles. Police say the photos are dated as they were taken in November of 2016. They are both described as biracial (half black, half Asian), 2’6” tall, 30 pounds with black hair.
Police say the twins’ parents were located Tuesday, Jan. 9, but Setina and Ren are still missing.
The parents were identified as 41-year-old Aaron Ivan Weddles, and 32-year-old Princess Dara Canez Walker. When the parents were located they were found with a 4-year-old girl and 2-year-old twin girls in a white, 2002 Suzuki. It’s unclear if the children found with Weddles and Walker are the couple’s children.
Knives, a machete, ax, suspected mold and narcotics were found in the vehicle. “The investigation so far has indicated that the parents forced their children to live in these deplorable and dangerous conditions,” according to Stockton Police.
The three children found in the vehicle are now in protective custody.
Weddles and Walker were booked into San Joaquin County Jail on child endangerment charges.
Police say Weddles and Walker have been uncooperative with the investigation.
The Stockton Police Department is encouraging citizens to call if they have information pertaining to this investigation.
Callers are asked to call the Stockton Police Department at 209-937-8377, Investigations at 209-937-8323 or Crime Stoppers at 209-946-0600. Callers can remain anonymous.
Citizens may also text information from their cell phones to ‘Crimes’ (274637) and type the keyword TIPSPD and then their tip or logon to the Stockton Police Department’s Facebook page and click ‘Submit A Tip’. Tipsters may also send tips on the Stockton PD Mobile Phone App. Tipsters can remain anonymous.
If you have any information that may lead to an arrest, call Crime Stoppers at 209-946-0600. Crime Stoppers pays cash rewards up to $10,000.
| 5,230 |
Scriptwriter King Ryū recently announced via his personal “Behind the Mask” website that Toei Animation has charged him with the responsibility of series composition for the Dragon Ball Super TV series beginning with the “God of Destruction Champa” story arc.
King Ryū is in charge of series composition for the new chapter, the God of Destruction Champa story arc: Thank you for supporting King Ryū all this time. A lot has happened, and so for the duration of this new chapter, the “God of Destruction Champa Arc” (*from beginning to end), King Ryū will be in charge of series composition. After the “Battle of Gods” and “Revival of ‘F'” story arcs, which were based on movies, this “God of Destruction Champa” story arc will be the start of a totally new work. Both the story and characters spring from Akira Toriyama-sensei’s pen, a Dragon Ball nobody has ever seen before. In order to be faithful to the scenario sensei has given us, and also to make an anime series that everyone can enjoy, I shall do my very best to make this series together with director [Kimitoshi] Chioka. The first episode of the “God of Destruction Champa arc” (episode 28) airs 24 January 2016. Thank you all very much.
King Ryū is the pen name of an unknown scriptwriter for the Japan Creative Management Company. He made his debut as a scriptwriter in 2014 for Marvel’s Disk Wars: Avengers, eventually being appointed the role of series composer. Following the finale of Disk Wars in March 2015, King Ryū was hired as a script writer for Dragon Ball Super, writing the script for the second episode and numerous others following that. With this announcement, it is no surprise that King Ryū is currently listed as the scriptwriter for six of the first seven episodes of the “God of Destruction Champa” story arc.
When Dragon Ball Super debuted in July 2015 it did not have a series composer, as is common with most TV series adaptations. While the series composer is typically responsible for determining and establishing the overall plot of the series, it appears, as King Ryū mentions, that the first two story arcs were merely based on the movies and therefore there was no need for a series composer. It should be noted that as of this post King Ryū has not been officially credited as the series composer in the TV series.
Thanks to Sodhi and JacobYBM for giving us the heads up.
UPDATE: King Ryū’s blog post announcing his appointment as series composer has since been removed. | 5,231 |
Save Our Studios
Save Our Studios is a coalition of San Francisco artists with studios and those who have lost or will lose their studio space. Artists all over the City are being affected by the current burgeoning commercial real estate market. When artists are forced to move out of the heart of the City, the city's cultural life suffers. If you support keeping the arts in San Francisco, or are affected by skyrocketing rents in San Francisco, we want to hear from YOU.
What we want:
Permanent, affordable studio spaces for visual artists in San Francisco
Support TODCO's * (see below) Central SOMA Community Plan
This plan proposes that existing Production/Distribution/Repair/Arts space must be retained/replaced:
1. 100% in the current “Service/Arts/Light Industrial” district of SOMA
2. 50% in the current “Service/Light Industrial” districts of the City
3. 25% EVERYWHERE ELSE in San Francisco.
How you can get involved:
We need your story and photo. Go to "Tell Your Story" for details.
Inform other artists about sending their stories. The more we collect, the more power we have as a group to get attention and push for change.
Support our effort. Even if you are not an artist, we would like to hear from you. Tell us why it is important to keep artists in the City.
Come to our next meeting, and help determine the next steps. Contact Flora Davis at [email protected] for the date, time, and location of the meeting.
Save Our Studios was started by SOMA Artists' Studios at 689 Bryant. We are a coalition of San Francisco artists with studios, who are advocating for affordable rents for artists working in the City. After 25 years of providing work studios for artists, we will lose our space in November 2015 due to a 60% rent increase.
* TODCO (Tenants and Owners Development Corporation) is a community-based housing/ community development nonprofit corporation for San Francisco's South of Market Neighborhood. We have been on the front line, challenging downtown expansion, and becoming active participants and activists addressing the impact of 40 years of "redevelopment" and the last 5 years of rapid "dot.com-live/work gentrification" upon the South of Market's vulnerable communities. TODCO's experience and leadership in neighborhood building has made it an organization of excellence and commitment. With the help and support of our partners and residents, we will continue to provide high-quality residences and services for our South of Market Community. | 5,232 |
North Korea failed to include information about Japanese abductees in a report it presented to Japan during negotiations in the spring, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Japan rejected the report, in the absence of information about 12 Japanese whom it recognizes as abduction victims who are still missing, an issue on which Tokyo has placed a high priority, the sources said.
North Korea told Japan that it “is investigating” the abduction cases, they said.
The report contains North Korea’s findings of the remains of Japanese who died around the 1945 end of World War II in what is now North Korea and the Japanese wives of pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan who moved to North Korea under a 1959-1984 resettlement project.
The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.
During the negotiations, North Korea demanded that Japan lift more sanctions in return for information about the remains and the Japanese wives based on the principle of reciprocity, according to the sources.
Pyongyang also demanded that Tokyo provide funds for collecting the remains because it would be costly to retrieve them.
Japan said North Korea must present its findings on the abduction victims by July, a year after Tokyo lifted some of its sanctions on North Korea in return for the launch of a new investigation into the abduction victims, as well as a comprehensive probe into all Japanese nationals residing in North Korea.
While Japan regards the deadline as July, some in the government say Tokyo should wait until September to determine whether to reinstate sanctions on North Korea because Pyongyang said last September that it would carry out the investigation in about a year.
Since January, Japan and North Korea have held unofficial monthly talks in China, according to the sources.
Junichi Ihara, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of the Foreign Ministry, is believed to have met with officials of the Ministry of State Security, North Korea’s secret police organ, and Song Il Ho, Pyongyang’s ambassador for negotiations to normalize relations with Japan.
Japan attaches the highest priority to North Korea’s reinvestigation into the fates of the abduction victims, or those abducted in the 1970s and 1980s presumably to train spies in Japanese language and culture.
Japan officially lists 17 nationals as abduction victims but suspects North Korea’s involvement in many more disappearances. While five of the 17 were repatriated in 2002, Pyongyang has maintained that eight have died and four others never entered the country.
North Korea conducted investigations in 2002 and 2004 into its abductions of Japanese nationals, but Japan rejected the results as unconvincing.
The abduction issue has prevented Tokyo and Pyongyang from normalizing diplomatic relations. | 5,233 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Washington Post ignited a debate over the role of children in U.S. presidential campaigns when it published - and then retracted - a political cartoon portraying Republican candidate Ted Cruz as an organ grinder and his daughters as monkeys.
Slideshow ( 2 images )
It followed a new Cruz campaign TV ad in which the Texas senator shares with his wife and two young children faux Christmas stories entitled, “How Obamacare Stole Christmas” and “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails,” a reference to Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton. The debate dominated cable news television and social media.
The Washington Post pulled the cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes.
Telnaes said that since Cruz used the girls in a campaign video, she was justified in putting them in her cartoon, which was on the Post website on Tuesday before editors removed it.
Cruz, rising in polls ahead of next November’s election, said at a campaign event in Oklahoma that he expected to be attacked but not his daughters.
“If folks want to attack me, knock yourself out,” he said. “... I signed up for that, that’s fine. But my girls didn’t sign up for that.”
Cruz responded to the cartoon on Tuesday with an email to supporters that, according to NBC’s website, featured the cartoon. He sought $1 million in contributions in 24 hours to “send a message to the Washington Post.”
The Post said its policy generally is to avoid children in its editorial section.
“I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published,” Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said. “I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.”
Over the years there has been spirited debate whenever the children of presidents and other politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, have had their mostly private lives pierced by journalists.
Their clothing, physical features, underage drinking and even boyfriends have been fodder for barbs.
Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator John McCain, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2008 against Barack Obama, appeared on Fox News and called on the Washington Post to apologize.
“There’s a complete double-standard for daughters and sons of Republicans,” she said, claiming the media treated her differently from offspring of Democratic politicians such as Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, “Tales from the Trail” (here). | 5,234 |
Argentina's Chamber of Deputies approved the Micaela Law, which calls for mandatory training in gender issues and perspectives for public sector workers.
The Argentine Chamber of Deputies approved the Micaela Law to eradicate gender-based violence Tuesday with 171 votes in favor and only one against. The Senate will debate the bill Wednesday.
The bill, named after Micaela Garcia, a femicide victim, calls for a mandatory gender training for all state officials and workers. This training is much needed because of the insensitivity of public servants while dealing with cases of gender-based violence.
Legislator Analia Rach of the Front for Victory Party and vice president of the Women, Family, Children and Adolescents Commission explained that “the fundamental thing of the project is that the training is obligatory for all the officials of all the levels of the three branches. And to ensure compliance, sanctions are established for those who refuse without a valid justification...”
Micaela Garcia was murdered in 2017 in Argentina. In April, her family reported her missing. Her body was found after a week on the outskirts of the town of Gualeguay, around 230 kilometers north of the capital, Buenos Aires.
The 21-year-old was an active participant in the #niunamenos (not one less) movement which started in 2016 after the femicide of 16-year-old Lucia Perez, whose case was handled by three male judges who ruled to absolve the three men accused in Lucia's murder.
The key points of Micaela Law are:
1. Everyone in public service must go through training on “gender and violence against women.”
2. The National Institute of Women (INAM) will enforce the law. It will also be responsible for directly training the high officials.
3. The training will be conducted in collaboration with their own gender offices if they have one. New materials and programs will be produced for training.
4. The INAM will control the quality of the said materials and the training must be imparted within a year of the law coming into force.
5. INAM will also publish information regarding the degree of compliance of each state agency and do follow-up reports on its impact.
6. If any public employee refuses to attend the training “without just cause”, they would be subjected to a disciplinary sanction.
During the session in the Chamber of Deputies, deputy Alejandra Martinez quoted a report published by La Casa del Encuentro (The Meeting House), an Argentine civil society organization, which revealed that one femicide is committed in the country every 32 hours. | 5,235 |
The girl's family has filed a complaint against United Airlines for neglecting to detain Krishnappa.
Highlights 28-year-old doctor allegedly groped teen seated next to him
She reported the incident to the crew; was allowed to move seats
FBI called in for the case; they charged him with criminal sexual contact
A 28-year-old Indian doctor has been arrested for allegedly groping a minor girl who was sitting next to him on a New Jersey-bound United Airlines flight, according to media reports.The 16-year-old girl, who was travelling alone on July 23, was asleep on the flight, when a stranger's hand on her thigh awakened her, the Washington Post reported.The man, identified as Vijakumar Krishnappa, sitting next to her quickly removed his hand, according to a federal court complaint, and the teenager went back to sleep. Then, she woke up again and this time, the man was groping her, the complaint says.She reported the incident to the airline crew and was allowed to move seats.Once the flight from Seattle landed at Newark Liberty International Airport, the girl, from Washington state, called her parents. While she did, the accused left the airport, said Johnny McCray, an attorney for the girl's family.The girl's family has filed a complaint against United Airlines for neglecting to detain Krishnappa after the alleged assault, the report said.The FBI was called to handle the investigation. It used the flight manifest to track down Krishnappa, a doctor from India. The girl identified him from a photo array, ABC reported.Krishnappa was charged in the federal court in Newark, a day after the incident, according to court records filed by the FBI charging him with criminal sexual contact.Court records show he was arrested and charged with knowingly engaging in sexual contact with a minor female, the report said.He has been released on bond, placed on electronic monitoring, and ordered to not have any contact with minors while the criminal case is pending, according to court records.The doctor's court-appointed attorney, John Yauch, told the Post that his client "adamantly denies the charges and deserves to be considered an innocent man."Krishnappa is studying medicine in the United States through a months-long fellowship that allows for doctors from foreign countries to learn from experts in the US, the daily said.
A spokesman from the Federal Aviation Administration told the daily that the airlines typically notify law enforcement about incidents before landing."The safety and security of our customers is our top priority. We take these allegations seriously and continue to work closely with the proper authorities as part of their review," a spokesperson for United Airlines said in a statement. | 5,236 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s top markets regulator, backed by the United States, urged the European Union to soften its stance and grant broad access to UK banks after Brexit to avoid hitting investors and harming markets.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is seen at the agency's headquarters in the Canary Wharf business district of London April 1, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo
Britain and the EU are negotiating the outline of future trading terms and Brussels has said the best option for banks, insurers and asset managers is probably the bloc’s current system of market access known as equivalence.
Under this, the EU alone decides if a foreign country’s rules are close enough to its own to grant access.
“It would be a mistake to move away from open financial markets as they are needed to support trade in goods and services,” Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, told a Eurofi conference in Vienna.
Britain has said equivalence does not cover all activities and lacks certainty, leaving the country facing patchy access to its biggest export market for financial services in future.
The EU’s financial services chief Valdis Dombrovskis told the same event that Europe must be and will be the champion of an open and integrated international system, based on multilateralism.
“This is true whether you look at the global trading system, or at financial regulation and equivalence,” Dombrovskis said.
Earlier this week, Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, urged his counterparts in the EU and elsewhere to defer to each other’s rules when based on international standards.
He criticised EU plans to supervise U.S. and other foreign clearing houses on their home turf under revised equivalence rules.
Bailey said he strongly welcomed Giancarlo’s calls and urged the EU to back Britain’s proposal for a much broader form of equivalence, given that both sides will have identical rules when Britain leaves the bloc next March.
“And we should now work together to put in place the arrangements to achieve this in practise,” Bailey said.
Giancarlo told the Vienna conference it was time for the EU to expand the use of equivalence in a way that avoids “rule-by-rule exactitude”.
“Thus, EU can provide necessary legal and regulatory certainty to third country firms, and the EU should rely as much as possible on third country regulators and supervisors,” Giancarlo said. | 5,237 |
as the cost of imaging sensors, processors and software has fallen dramatically in the past few years and it will eventually become cheap enough for farmers of all sizes to utilise.
When the dairy barn system was first designed, he says, the first cameras the company installed cost $750 each and the first server cost $20,000. In a few years, the price of the camera was down to $70 and the server is $5,000.
"This is exponential technology. While the farmers can't afford our technology this year, they can probably afford it next year," he says.
Mr Hunt adds that his system is inverting traditional farming practices. Farmers typically follow what they learned in college or what their parents taught them to do, which basically involves making animals adapt to what humans want.
"But the most important thing in dairy farming is not the farmers. It's the cows that make the money. So rather than having the animals reacting to the actions of the farmer, the farmer will now be reacting to the actions of the animal," he says.
In fact, he adds, the less time humans spend in barns, the better for the animals as they still see humans as predators.
'MAKE YOUR HEART SING'
When he's not busy with Cainthus, Mr Hunt sits on the Exponential Advisory Board of Singularity University and spends his recreational time reading and enjoying outdoor sports. He is also a qualified ski instructor and an avid rugby player. His weakness is sci-fi strategy games.
"I love computer games so much that I can't really play them because I'll just get addicted," he says, laughing.
He also admits he does not have a great work-life balance but this was a lifestyle decision he made a long time ago.
"With modern business the way it is, I'm not completely convinced that work-life balance is actually possible, so I decided to pursue something that I really like so it doesn't really feel like work," he explains.
Referring to signature phrase in The Green Platform Book by the Irish motivational speaker Declan Coyle, Mr Hunt says we should do things that "make our hearts sing".
"Agriculture, the outdoors and technology -- those are the things that make my heart sing," he says. "Even if I work very hard and I don't have many free hours in the day, that's irrelevant because everything I do makes me happy.
"If you do something that you love doing every day, you don't feel tired at the end of the day, so you're more open to getting up and doing other things. I love farms and I love farmers." | 5,238 |
Tim Tebow passionately defends the status quo in the NCAA and worries about how California's Fair Pay to Play Act could affect that. (1:58)
A state senator from Brooklyn is aiming to make New York the first state to require colleges to pay student-athletes directly.
Sen. Kevin Parker proposed a bill earlier this week that would give college athletes the ability to sell the rights to their own names, images and likenesses. Parker told ESPN on Wednesday that he has since added an amendment that would require college athletic departments to give a 15% share of annual revenue to student-athletes.
The revenue, Parker said, would be divided equally among all student-athletes who compete for the school.
"It's about equity," Parker said. "These young people are adding their skill, talent and labor to these universities.... You don't need the shortcuts and the end-arounds because now we're providing some real support for these student-athletes."
Parker said he modeled his initial proposal after California's Fair Pay to Play Act, which passed the state's assembly and senate with unanimous votes earlier this month. The California bill would make it illegal for colleges in that state to take away an athlete's scholarship or eligibility as punishment for accepting endorsement money. California Gov. Gavin Newsom will decide sometime in the next month whether to sign the bill into law.
Nancy Skinner, the state senator who wrote California's bill, said she hoped that other states would adopt similar policies. Politicians in South Carolina, Maryland, Colorado, Washington and now New York have all discussed creating laws to change the way college athletes are compensated. Mark Walker, a U.S. congressman from North Carolina, has proposed changing federal laws to create a similar effect nationwide.
Prior to the amendment in Parker's bill, no other state had proposed giving college athletes money directly from their schools.
The NCAA has publicly opposed California's bill in letters sent to legislators during the past several months. Michael Drake, the chair of the NCAA's board of governors, said he is concerned that making money in college athletics could blur an important line between professional leagues and amateur college sports.
The NCAA has assembled a working group of university presidents, athletic directors and conference commissioners to examine ways in which the national body could modernize or evolve its rules for compensating athletes. That group is expected to report its findings in October.
New York's legislative session runs from January through June. Parker said he has the support of one other senator thus far and is searching for a co-sponsor in the state assembly. He said he hopes to make his bill a high priority when the legislature reconvenes at the start of the year. | 5,239 |
Interactive graphic comparing the top picks to the top performers in the NBA
This is another remake, courtesy of the NYT:
Assorted thoughts:
Clearer differences between players of different skill level. In basketball, there is a huge difference between the best player in a draft (Lebron James in 03) and the 5th best (David West in 03). Representing the top players with a gradient highlights these differences. Shades of grey also differentiate average players from those who never played. I’m not sure this color scheme would have worked as well with the NFL graphic since the larger drafts require thinner bars.
More information about players.
Instead of a tricky formula based on “number of starts, Pro Bowls and other factors,” I went with the product of minutes played and player efficiency rating. Adding a chart of those numbers exposes those calculations and making it yearly creates a snapshot of a player’s entire career. Looking at the bar graph in isolation now, it really looks like it needs axis tickmarks. In the context of the whole graphic though, they make things way too busy.
I also copied from the last two projects I worked on and added an image of each player to the tooltip.
Finally, clicking a bar opens a link with more information about the player which makes it significantly simpler for the viewer to continue finding things out.
Team specific information. To make it easier to find a player or see how a team has done over time, mousing over or clicking a team name highlights picks by that team. Moving the slider also updates each team’s number of top picks. I’m a big fan of having animated transitions be accompanied by text updates. It makes the comparisons between two stats more concrete and quantitative while generating memorable takeaway numbers on the fly (“did you know that the Grizzlies have never drafted a top 3 player?”). I think the NYT’s incorporation of this effect was more successful; by only updated two numbers at a time it could explain them in a sentence, drawing attention to them with bold text.
Because I was tacking on features, I ended up with a more cluttered display. I usually try to make the instructions only a sentence long to reduce the amount of text on the page. That wasn’t possible here, so I ended up a big block of words at the end. I probably should add some images, color, and/or formatting to it but it has been almost a month since my last post and I’m ready to move onto the next project now.
I really like how the NYT graphic passively shows player names in an unobtrusive manner. | 5,240 |
Russian MiG-31 supersonic interceptor aircraft was mistakenly shot down by “friendly fire” during a training flight near the Telemba proving ground in Siberia almost two years ago, according to a leaked Russian government document.
The incident with MiG-31BM had occurred on 26 April 2017.
“A MiG-31 interceptor jet of the Eastern Military District crashed during a training flight near the Telemba proving ground, the Republic of Buryatia, at 12:05 Moscow time. Both crewmembers reportedly ejected themselves,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. “A search and rescue service helicopter was dispatched to the site of the incident.”
- ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW -
“The plane crashed at a proving ground in an unpopulated area. Both pilots ejected themselves. They were promptly evacuated. Their life is not in danger,” the Defense Ministry said.
But now, the authoritative Baza source reported that Russian Air Force MiG-31 fighter jet had been hit by an air-to-air missile launched from the second fighter, which also took part in the exercises.
“… the accident of the MiG-31 aircraft as a result of the crew’s violation of safety measures and missions for flight, expressed in the premature activation of the aircraft’s on-board radar station by the navigator and the unauthorized launch of the R-33 guided missiles by the commander of the MiG-31 fighter aircraft,” said in leaked government document.
It is necessary to clarify that the R-33 long-range air-to-air missile when launched, requires radar homing of the target, so the navigator turns it on before the launch of the rocket. In a combat situation, the commander will have to make a decision on the launch himself – without the sanction of the command being on the ground and often not seeing the target.
According to The Drive, the investigators concluded that the crew in the plane that got shot down had improperly followed procedures, allowing them to stray into the potential line of fire during the live-fire exercise. It also faulted aviators flying the other Foxhound for turning on their Zaslon-AM’s fire control function at the wrong time, cueing an R-33 missile right at their wingman. They further blamed the pilot for firing the weapon when this individual should have known they were not engaging a target drone.
The Russian Air Force refused to comment on speculation that the MiG-31 interceptor aircraft, which crashed in 2017, may have been “accidentally” shot down by another fighter jet. | 5,241 |
2.1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit
Magic Leap, the mysterious AR startup with a multiple-billion dollar valuation, still doesn’t have a headset to show the world, but in a recent paper published by Magic Leap researchers entitled Toward Geometric Deep SLAM, we get a peek into a novel machine vision technique that aims to bring the company closer to their goal of creating a robust standalone AR headset.
Authored by Magic Leap researchers Daniel DeTone, Tomasz Malisiewicz, and Andrew Rabinovich, the paper describes a tracking system powered by two deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs)—a type of artificial ‘brain’ used for image processing. Called MagicPoint and MagicWarp, the researchers contend the two CNNs allow for a system that’s “fast and lean, easily running 30+ FPS on a single CPU.”
Here’s the quick and dirty: According to the paper, MagicPoint operates on single images and creates 2D points important to the purpose of tracking, with these points destined to be fed into a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) visual algorithm. Comparing their network to classical point detectors, the team discovered “a significant performance gap in the presence of image noise.”
Because calculating the shape of objects as they move around isn’t an easy task—it could be either the object or the viewer moving—MagicWarp’s job is to use a pair of these images containing the 2D points generated by MagicPoint to essentially predict motion as it models the world around it. The MagicWarp SLAM algorithm does this in a different way from traditional approaches because it only uses the point’s location and not the more complicated ‘local point descriptors’, a term used in computer vision jargon that describes a thing containing coded, unique identifying information.
Tested using physical and synthetic data, the two convolutional neural networks are said to be capable of running in realtime. “We believe that the day of massive-scale deployment of Deep-Learning powered SLAM systems is not far,” the authors conclude.
If your brain isn’t already spinning, check out the full paper here.
So while we don’t have a clear idea of exactly when Magic Leap will have a public prototype of their light field display-packing headset, or what CEO Rony Abovitz teases as “small, mobile, powerful and pretty cool,” we’ll take anything we can get after more than 3 years of waiting. Anything but their post-cool, pre-factual marketing campaign, that is. | 5,242 |
News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
A depraved woman has admitted a string of horrific sex attacks on children after police caught her having "highly sexualised and exceptionally graphic" conversations online.
Vile Rebecca Holloway pleaded guilty to rape, conspiracy to sexually assault children and distributing indecent images - in a case described as 'one of the most distressing ever heard' at Grimsby Crown Court.
The 26-year-old, who had no previous criminal record, was exposed as a paedophile when cops came across the sick chats she had online about the serious sexual abuse of children.
A close-up picture of a girl's underwear was found when cops went to her house, Grimsby Live reports.
They also discovered sex toys and sexual images of children.
The went on to discover a girl had been sexually abused and raped, while a very young boy had suffered a sexual injury.
(Image: Grimsby & Scunthorpe Newspapers)
Holloway has admitted two rape of a child offences, including on multiple occasions, and conspiracy to sexually assault a child under 13, as well as making and distributing indecent images of children.
Paul O'Shea, prosecuting at Grimsby Crown Court, said: "It's a depressing, serious and grave case."
He said Holloway sank to "real depths of depravity to satisfy her own sexual urges."
She has no previous convictions and was said to be of good character, so there was no reason for authorities to suspect her of anything until the shocking truth was uncovered.
Her social media profiles have now been removed.
She should have been sentenced over a year ago.
(Image: Grimsby Telegraph / BPM Media)
But unusually, because of the seriousness and complexities of the case, the court ran out of time and the sentencing was abandoned to be restarted another day.
Recorder Bernard Gateshill, who was hearing it at the time, said: "This is a most distressing case.
"I have never before come across a case of such depravity."
The case was adjourned to fix a date when all involved could attend for a half-day part-heard sentencing hearing but, later, in November last year, it was taken over by Judge Paul Watson QC to be started again from scratch.
But that still hasn’t happened and the case remains unresolved.
In the meantime, she is behind bars awaiting her sentence date to be fixed. | 5,243 |
DONETSK, Ukraine—Deep in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on Ukraine’s eastern fringe, crumbling statues of Lenin were guarding a century-old coal mine, testifying to a former master who had begun encroaching again. A high-pitched bell sounded, signaling the end of the night shift, and a precarious cage brought exhausted, soot-faced workers to the surface. The sudden glare of daylight made the miners squint. “These men are finally working honestly,” the mine’s chief engineer, Andrei Popovchenko, told me. “Under Ukraine, things were corrupt and illegal. Taxes were stolen.” We were walking around the Udarnik mine in Snizhne, which lies east of the city of Donetsk, close to the Russian border.
More than a year into the war between forces loyal to the Ukrainian government in Kiev and pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine, the formerly 460-strong staff at Udarnik had dwindled by around half. (The mine’s name means “shock worker,” a prestigious Stalin-era title for an employee whose production exceeded quotas.) Many of the miners had fled the violence; 12 had gone to fight on the side of the rebels, Popovchenko said. “We’re holding places for them, just as we would for a woman on maternity leave,” he told me with a wry laugh. Udarnik’s modest monthly production of 3,700 tons of coal would be sold “internally” within the DPR. “Why sell to Ukraine when we need to help our own people?” he asked. Much to the chagrin of officials in Kiev, Ukraine still receives the bulk of its coal—a resource necessary for about 40 percent of the country’s electricity production—from the rebel-controlled east.
This division between what natives of the Donetsk region now call “Ukraine” and their own statelet of the DPR, carved out by separatists last May and recognized by no one else, appears to be solidifying. Separatist-held areas—which before the war were home to around 4.5 million people—are still hurting from the Ukrainian government’s move last November to halt payments for pensions and public services in the region. The gulf appeared to widen further last week, when Ukraine’s parliament took a step toward changing the constitution to devolve more powers from the central government to the country’s eastern regions, as part of a ceasefire agreement signed in February in Minsk. But in eastern Ukraine itself, the move to decentralize power seemed almost irrelevant. | 5,244 |
india
Updated: Sep 01, 2017 18:50 IST
Rape convict Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim kept screaming all the time and did not eat anything when he was brought to Rohtak’s Sunariya jail on August 25, says a prisoner now out on bail.
Dalit activist Swadesh Kirad who had been in the same jail for the past nine months and came out on bail on Wednesday, said he was locked in a high security cell adjacent to Ram Rahim’s and could hear him scream at night.
“He would say things like ‘What is my fault, what have I done?’ He would cry in the night and request authorities to not lock him in the cell because he feels afraid,” Kirad told reporters.
A CBI court on August 28 sentenced the self-styled godman to 20 years in prison and fined him Rs 30 lakh for raping two disciples.
Used to a lavish life, Ram Rahim demanded bottled water, which was provided to him from the jail canteen, Kirad added. “All prisoners have their accounts in jail. He was given bottled mineral water from jail canteen after opening his account. He would not eat jail food, but had fruits that were given to him as per jail manual,” he said.
On the day of sentence, the 50-year-old Dera chief was so depressed that he could not even walk, Kirad claimed. “Since then, he has maintained a low profile and has not eaten much.”
He said the Dera chief wears a capri and T-shirt inside jail, though jail superintendent Sunil Sangwan had on the day of his sentence said they would not let him wear his personal clothes anymore.
Kirad said due to high security in Rohtak jail after the Dera chief was brought there, other prisoners felt like “they were jailed inside the jail”. “All our rights were suspended. We could not meet our families, not talk to them on phone like we used to every day for five minutes and not go for court hearings. My bail was sanctioned by high court on August 24, but I had to stay for longer,” he said.
Kirad eventually came out of jail on August 30.
Jail authorities have so far refused to give any information on the Dera chief.
Last week, 38 people were killed in the violent clashes in Panchkula and Sirsa between Dera followers and security personnel after a CBI court found Singh guilty in the 15-year-old rape cases. | 5,245 |
It’s no secret Nick Foles’ NFL career has been a rocky one. The 29-year-old quarterback has endured his fair share of setbacks over the years, so much so that he almost retired from the league following the 2015 season. But despite the obstacles and disappointments, Foles didn’t give up. The backup QB persevered, worked hard, and was able to lead the Eagles to a 41-33 victory over the Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday. He is now an unlikely Philadelphia hero, but he hasn’t let any of the newfound glory get to his head.
While accepting the Super Bowl MVP trophy on Monday, Foles took the time to bless fans with some much-appreciated wisdom on failure. And what’s great about his statement is that it wasn’t strictly applicable to athletes, sports, or general competition; it was a universal message about resilience and, above all, humility.
“I think the big thing is don't be afraid to fail. I think, you know, in our society today, Instagram, Twitter, it's a highlight reel. It's all the good things,” he told reporters at the Super Bowl headquarters. “And then when you look at it, you know, you think like, wow, when you have a rough day or your life is not good as that, [you think] you're failing. Failure is a part of life. It's a part of building character and growing. Without failure, who would you be? I wouldn't be up here if I hadn't fallen thousands of times, made mistakes. We all are human, we all have weaknesses, and I think throughout this, just being able to share that and be transparent—I know when I listen to people speak and they share their weaknesses, I'm listening.”
"So I'm not perfect," he continued. "I'm not Superman. I might be in the NFL, I might have just won a Super Bowl, but, hey, we still have daily struggles, I still have daily struggles. And that's where my faith comes in, that's where my family comes in. I think when you look at a struggle in your life, just know that's just an opportunity for your character to grow. And that's just been the message. Simple. If something's going on in your life and you're struggling, embrace it. Because you're growing.”
We can see why he has aspirations to be a pastor one day. The man has a way with words and definitely knows how to inspire.
You can check out some of Twitter’s reactions to his message on failure below. | 5,246 |
On February 21, it reached 80 degrees in Washington, DC — the earliest date on record to achieve a temperature so high in the city. Since then, the weather has been unusually mild, and the environment has responded accordingly. Cherry trees are budding, spring flowers are shooting up out of the ground. In sum, it feels like spring has arrived, four weeks ahead of schedule.
And it’s not just happening in Washington. For almost the entire West Coast, Southwest, and mid-South, spring is weeks ahead of schedule, as this helpful map from the US Geological Service shows.
The map is built of a model of 50 years of data linking temperatures to first spring buds. And it’s pretty accurate in determining when spring has arrived in an area — and whether the day is behind or ahead of schedule.
You’ll see that much of the map is blank (like in the Northeast and Midwest). That just means spring hasn’t arrived yet in these areas. In the South, spring buds and leaves are arriving a few days later than average, due to oddly cool temperatures there.
“If spring has arrived, the map gets color: blue if it’s relatively late, and red if it’s relatively early,” said Jake Weltzin, the USGS’s director of the National Phenology Network, the department dedicated to studying the timing of seasonal events.
An early spring can feel like nice escape from the dull winter landscape, but it comes with some consequences, as the USGS explained last year. The early spring could bring “early-season disease-carriers such as ticks and mosquitos, and an earlier, longer and more vigorous pollen season.”
Also, if another frost does occur, baby flower buds could be killed off before they get to bloom (sad!). “Even something as seemingly simple and beautiful as flowers blooming earlier can disrupt the critically important link between wildflowers and the arrival of birds, bees, and butterflies that feed on and pollinate the flowers,” the USGS warns.
Early springs are a sign of a warming planet. And they’re becoming more common. “We’ve known for over a decade now that climate change is variably advancing the onset of spring across the United States,” the USGS writes.
The world is clearly changing — the Arctic is currently warmer than it’s ever been while still plunged in winter darkness, global sea ice is nearing record lows, and 2017 was one of the top three warmest years on record. These trends aren’t going away.
But enjoy the nice weather! | 5,247 |
Share Email 429 Shares
Christine Hallquist is pitching a familiar idea to Vermont lawmakers.
The former Democratic candidate governor was called to House and Senate committees Thursday to lay out her proposal to expand broadband in Vermont by encouraging utilities to install fiber infrastructure — a signature plank of her unsuccessful campaign in 2018.
Get all of VTDigger's daily news. You'll never miss a story with our daily headlines in your inbox.
Hallquist maintains that if electric companies — rather than internet companies — hang broadband cables, it will reduce the cost of expanding and delivering internet access throughout the state.
Electric utilities already operate large systems of poles to string electric wires, Hallquist says, and if they also strung fiber cables they would eliminate the expense that often discourages internet service providers from installing fiber in rural areas with few customers.
Internet companies would pay utilities a fee to use the fiber.
Hallquist — like many lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott — sees expanding broadband as an essential step in turning around the state’s struggling rural economies.
“I know with absolute certainty that we are not going to improve our rural economy if we can’t get connected,” Hallquist told the Senate Finance Committee Thursday.
Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, the vice chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee, is sponsoring a bill that would fund a study to look into the feasibility of Hallquist’s plan in Vermont, which has been implemented in several states, including Virginia.
VTDigger is underwritten by:
Sibilia said, however, that while encouraging utilities to install broadband may be a good solution to improving internet connectivity in the long-term, the state should take immediate action and throw a “life raft” to the rural municipalities that have struggled for years to get connected.
The Scott administration has pitched a slew of proposals to boost rural Vermont’s access to broadband, including a new loan program for “start up” internet companies that would be administered by and funded through the Vermont Economic Development Authority.
The governor also wants legislators to change law so that municipalities underserved by broadband providers can use general obligation bonds to pay for broadband projects.
But in an interview Thursday, Hallquist said lawmakers should prioritize her plan to change the way fiber infrastructure is installed over these other initiatives.
If it doesn’t become cheaper for internet service companies to deliver service in the most rural parts of the state, it will never reach those regions, she said.
“All these other proposals are dancing around what is a flawed model,” Hallquist said.
Share Email 429 Shares | 5,248 |
As great as Marvel’s superhero presence on the big screen and small screen alike has been, their sole female-fronted series has been Netflix’s Jessica Jones. So until Captain Marvel debuts in early 2019, star Krysten Ritter and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg will be representing for the ladies on the Marvel side of things. And if a new report is any indication, they’ll be playing up the gender card to its fullest potential.
As Variety writes, Rosenberg announced that all 13 episodes of the second season of Jessica Jones will be directed by women. Rosenberg revealed the news of the all-female directors roster Friday at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism during her panel for the “Transforming Hollywood 7: Diversifying Entertainment” conference.
That wasn’t the initial plan, though Rosenberg and Marvel are both totally on board with it. Originally, they began their search for female directing talent in an effort to increase the number of female directors on the show’s second season and because such talents are in high demand as of late; male directors would be considered further along in the pre-production process. But when the idea was floated that Jessica Jones feature an all-female directing team, Rosenberg and her producers ran with it.
Regarding the inclusive practice of hiring behind-the-scenes talent, Rosenberg said it’s “a conscious decision and it’s very important that showrunners do that.”
“When I interview a writer, I’m less interested in what you’ve been doing professionally than I am in where you’re from, what your parents do, what’s your life experience, what are you bringing to the table personally?” Rosenberg said. “I don’t want a bunch of people who look and sound [like me] and have the experiences I have.”
The move puts Jessica Jones in the same conversation as Ava DuVernay‘s Queen Sugar, the OWN drama that also featured an all-female directing roster in its debut season. Unfortunately, no details about the directors themselves have been revealed and neither has any information about the superheroine’s second season been released. Rosenberg did say that scripts were nearing completion in anticipation of the start of shooting, which is set for next year.
If you find yourself in need of a strong female role model or a little extra boost to your self confidence, Rosenberg has a lot more to say over at Variety’s write-up, so be sure to take a look. In the meantime, get caught up on all of our recent Jessica Jones coverage below: | 5,249 |
Breitbart News is preparing a lawsuit against a "major media company" over claims that it is a white nationalist website, it said in an exclusive statement to The Hill.
The website has been under intense scrutiny since President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE named Stephen Bannon as a senior White House counselor and strategist. Bannon is the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, and the site has become associated with the “alt-right” movement that helped propel Trump’s candidacy.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Breitbart News Network, a pro-America, conservative website, is preparing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against a major media company for its baseless and defamatory claim that Breitbart News is a ‘white nationalist website,’” the statement reads.
"Breitbart News cannot allow such vicious racial lies to go unchallenged, especially by cynical, politically-motivated competitors seeking to diminish its 42 million monthly readers and its number one in the world political Facebook page. Breitbart News rejects racism in all its varied and ugly forms. Always has, always will," the statement continues.
"The diversity of the company’s news coverage and its staff continue to embody Andrew Breitbart’s colorblind, distinctly American commitment to ‘E pluribus unum’—out of many, one."
Breitbart News — which generated 240 million page views and attracted 37 million unique visitors in the month of October leading up to Election Day — would not comment on which major media company the publication plans to sue, nor when the suit will be filed.
Critics have taken aim at the site’s coverage in recent days.
While Bannon was executive chairman of Breitbart, the website published a story by David Horowitz referring to conservative commentator Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew,” something that has been mentioned repeatedly in media coverage calling Breitbart a white nationalist website.
Democrats have also slammed Bannon, arguing that Trump is bringing a “white supremacist” into the White House.
A spokesman for the Trump transition defended Bannon on Monday, calling the media coverage of his appointment “irresponsible.”
“What I think is frustrating is when we see so much news coverage, particularly on this network, unfortunately, on the issues that divide us after the election,” Jason Miller, communications director for Trump’s transition team, said on CNN’s “New Day.” | 5,250 |
It was 02:00h on 11 January 2009 when the sea along the coastline of Australia's "Sunshine State" of Queensland receded to such an extent that it exposed a population of water-adapted spiders. The observant researchers who would later describe these spiders as a species new to science, were quick to associate their emergence with reggae legend Bob Marley and his song "High Tide or Low Tide".
In their paper, published in the open access journal Evolutionary Systematics, the team of Drs. Barbara Baehr, Robert Raven and Danilo Harms, affiliated with Queensland Museum and the University of Hamburg, describe the new Bob Marley's intertidal spider and also provide new information on two of its previously known, yet understudied, relatives from Samoa and Western Australia.
Unlike the spiders which people are familiar with, the intertidal species, whose representative is Bob Marley's namesake, are truly marine. They have adapted to the underwater life by hiding in barnacle shells, corals or kelp holdfast during high tide. To breathe, they build air chambers from silk. Once the sea water recedes, though, they are out and about hunting small invertebrates that roam the surfaces of the nearby rocks, corals and plants.
The new species, listed under the scientific name of Desis bobmarleyi, is described based on male and female specimens spotted and collected from brain coral on that night in January.
Both sexes are characterised by predominantly red-brown colours, while their legs are orange-brown and covered with a dense layer of long, thin and dark grey hair-like structures. The females appear to be larger in size with the studied specimen measuring nearly 9 mm, whereas the male was about 6 mm long.
While the exact distribution range of the newly described species remains unknown, it is currently recorded from the intertidal zones of the Great Barrier Reef on the north-eastern coast of Queensland.
"The song 'High Tide or Low Tide' promotes love and friendship through all struggles of life," explain the authors for their curious choice of a name. "It is his music that aided a field trip to Port Douglas in coastal Queensland, Australia, to collect spiders with a highly unique biology."
Apart from reporting their research, the scientists use their paper to pay tribute to a German naturalist from the late 19th century - Amalie Dietrich, as well as the famous Jamaican singer and songwriter. Both admirable figures, even if representative of very different fields, are seen by the authors as examples of "the adventurous and resilient at heart" human nature in pursuit of freedom and independence.
###
Original source: | 5,251 |
Andrew Wiggins was impressive in his first 12 games in a Warriors uniform.
The 25-year-old averaged 19.4 points, 4.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.4 blocks, while shooting nearly 46 percent overall and just under 34 percent from 3-point range.
"Our coaching staff is very excited about Andrew and how he may fit here going forward," Warriors owner Joe Lacob told Tim Kawakami of The Athletic on Thursday. "Very hard -- it's so hard -- to find wings right now in the NBA with good positional size and athleticism.
"He's a walking 20 points. He's gonna go out there and he's gonna get you 20 points in any game. He's capable of doing a lot more than that. But that's pretty good."
And then Lacob mentioned a former Warriors player that had to sign elsewhere once Kevin Durant decided to come to Golden State.
"When Harrison Barnes was with us -- and I loved Harrison, different kind of player a little bit -- but we would sit there and say, 'If we can just get him to get 20 points in a game it would really help,'" he said. "You know (you've got a) good chance to win a game if you got three guys scoring 20 in a game.
"And we needed that."
Listen and subscribe to the Runnin' Plays podcast
Barnes averaged 10.1 points per game during Steve Kerr's first year at the helm in 2014-15, and then 11.7 points per game the following season.
Over the 2015 and 2016 NBA Playoffs combined, he scored 20 or more points only one time (Game 5 of the 2015 Western Conference finals against the Houston Rockets).
In Game 5 of the 2015 West Finals, Harrison Barnes (after Klay Thompson was knocked out of the game/concussed by Trevor Ariza) scored 9 straight points over a two-minute span to give the Warriors a 15-point lead. This driving dunk truly was his best moment in a Warriors uniform pic.twitter.com/pI2NZc3oYX — Drew Shiller (@DrewShiller) April 3, 2020
[RELATED: Lacob acknowledges Warriors could trade down in NBA draft]
Assuming the Warriors are fully healthy next season, it might be difficult for Wiggins to average 20 per game. It's probably more realistic to expect him to register 15 to 18 points per night, but on the best shooting percentages of his career.
Combine that with consistent defense and engagement and Golden State would be thrilled with those results.
Follow @DrewShiller on Twitter and Instagram | 5,252 |
Human rights groups call for children to be taken off Nauru Published duration 20 August 2018
image copyright Getty Images image caption Nauru is a tiny island in the Pacific, north-east of Australia
A group of human rights organisations has demanded the Australian government remove all child asylum seekers held on the Pacific island of Nauru.
It comes as reports of a 12-year-old boy on a weeks-long hunger strike fuelled fresh fears about their health.
The #KidsOffNauru coalition wants the 119 children on the island resettled by November.
Australia's controversial offshore detention policy has been criticised for its toll on asylum seekers.
The facility on Nauru was established under the country's hardline immigration policy, which sees asylum seekers who try to reach the country by boat processed at offshore centres.
image copyright World Vision Australia image caption A World Vision image of Melanie, three, an asylum seeker in Nauru
The 'clock is ticking'
The coalition of more than 30 charities and advocacy groups, including World Vision Australia and Oxfam Australia, wants all children moved to Australia or settled in a safe country elsewhere.
Chief executive of World Vision Australia Claire Rogers said the children on Nauru have "no hope".
"Many of them have lived for years in tents, they have been separated from close family members and have no safe place to play or access to acceptable medical care."
"The clock is ticking. This harmful, secretive and dysfunctional system of indefinite detention must end," Ms Rogers said.
The Australian government did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment.
Hunger strikes
Allegations of human rights abuses and overcrowding have plagued Australia's detention centre in Nauru for years.
The mental toll on young people is drawing increasing focus and includes reports of suicide attempts.
The issue attracted fresh concern last week with news of the 12-year-old on hunger strike - a boy from Iran.
Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, said the child has now been on a hunger strike for around 19 days. Efforts were being made to transfer him to Australia for urgent medical care.
Access to Nauru is difficult - with foreign journalists hampered by the $8,000 Australian dollar ($5,850; £4,591) non-refundable charge per visa application.
Advocacy groups say families live squalid conditions, in mouldy tents with dirty bathroom facilities. Children have few places to play on the island.
The tiny nation in the Pacific is around 53km from the equator, and covered in phosphate rocks. | 5,253 |
Scottish people have some of the strongest stomachs in the world – but even they may struggle with a restaurant from cheese-obsessed North Korean lardball Kim Jong-Un.
The waddling dictator has already opened branches of the Pyongyang restaurant in China and Holland – with some serving delicacies such as dog-meat soup and a bottled aphrodisiac allegedly made from bears.
Next to that lot, deep fried Mars bars and a national dish made from sheep’s bowels sounds positively delicious.
Kim is alleged to be eyeing up Scotland because of his love of whisky – which is so popular in his communist dictatorship it’s sometimes used instead of money.
The podgy autocrat also admires Alex Salmond’s attempt to break free of English control last year.
While that is something that Scots might be able to get on board with, it’s debatable whether they’ll share Kim’s taste in food, with Western Pyongyang outlets serving ‘delicacies’ such as pine nut gruel.
MORE: Puppies are rescued from tiny cages in Korean dog-meat farm
MORE: Google thinks photoshopped picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in drag is his younger sister
The key question may be whether Kim offers Irn Bru alongside the ginseng wine offered in other Pyongyang outlets.
Not all items will be available in Western European outlets, happily for our pets (Picture: Getty/Ben Nicholls)
Michael Madden, editor of the North Korea Leadership Watch, said Jong-un is desperate to build diplomatic ties with European countries with left-wing leanings.
‘The Scottish independence referendum catapulted Scotland into the North Korean elite’s thoughts.
‘Despite voting No’ they’d consider left-leaning Scotland to be more suitable to deal with than England. Plus, North Koreans love whisky. Tourists in North Korea are told to tip people in Scotch instead of the currency.’
One of the restaurants has already opened in Holland.
They are run in partnership with Office 39, a secretive branch of the North Korean government, which uses them as a legal way of raising overseas cash.
Mr Madden, a frequent visitor to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, added: “They are one of the few ways to experience North Korean culture without having to go there.
‘They are done like a franchise with the state renting the brand out to other Koreans to run.
‘But they tailor the menus to suit. Customers in Western Europe won’t get a plateful of dog!’ | 5,254 |
【7月2日 AFP】米アイダホ州ボイジー（Boise）で、3歳の子供の誕生日パーティーが開かれていた難民向けの低所得層複合住宅に男が刃物を持って侵入し、子供6人を含む9人が襲われ負傷した。警察当局が1日、明らかにした。
警察によると犯人は同じ複合住宅に住んでいたロサンゼルス出身のティミー・キナー（Timmy Kinner）容疑者（30）で、退去要求に腹を立てたことが犯行の動機とみられている。
警察幹部によるとキナー容疑者は難民ではないが、知人と共に同住宅に数日間滞在。退去後の6月30日夜、報復を目的に再び住宅を訪れ、標的だった子供たちや親たちを襲ったという。
負傷した子供は3歳から12歳で、被害者9人のうち4人が生命に関わる傷を負ったが、警察はその4人に子供が何人含まれていたか明らかにしていない。
同住宅にいた難民の多くがシリア、イラク、エチオピアの出身だという。(c)AFP | 5,255 |
piece of safe ground. I waited until my lungs were fit to burst, then breathed through my sleeve. I regretted it as I choked on dry dust, coughing.
When I opened my eyes, I could see lights, so distant and numerous that they could have been stars of the night sky. Except they were ordered in rows and columns.
I looked up, and I saw they were ceiling lights, on a floor far above where we had been. Past the choking dust, I could make out the skeletal rows and columns of walls and floors, from the parts of the facility that were still intact, surrounding us on four sides.
Too many had thralls perched on them, staring down at us. Many of those thralls were armed. We stood in no man’s land, an area of devastation so vast I knew that even if I’d flown from the moment the Custodian had disappeared, ducking and weaving through corridors, I might not have escaped the full breadth of the damage.
And yet even with all of that gone, we were still indoors, still surrounded by facility. By thralls.
Yips, instead of waiting and letting us assess the situation, heaved himself free of the concrete slab that was now resting against him. Monstrous and the size of a horse, he shook the dust off.
Byron was wet, joined by the Harbingers and Mortari capes. The remains of the elevator were a spear of metal, stabbing skyward.
Contessa straightened, dusting herself off.
“His lieutenants are here. They know how I operate, so they’ll be careful,” she said. “They’ll be sure to only engage me from a distance, but that doesn’t mean they won’t target you if they can. Be ready.”
I could see Saint’s angel craft. I could see costumed figures with glowing points on their armor, that could have been the Speedrunners. Could have been anything. I saw Scapegoat, Black Lamb, whatever he called himself. Had to be, with the motif to his helmet. He wore tinker gear.
I used flight to straighten myself up, because I still didn’t have my sea legs after that drop. Ashley got to her feet, hand at her ribs, in an uncharacteristic show of weakness. Rain remained crouching, looking around.
“I’ll need your decision,” Contessa said, before stepping forward to pick a fight with what looked like half of Teacher’s facility.
Previous Chapter Next Chapter | 5,256 |
The MMO Investor is a weekly column on the state of the MMO industry when it comes to business. Get a quick weekly glimpse at the real life auction house that is high finance in the MMO Industry!
As the size of the MMO industry continues to grow, there's a relatively new, but massive shift taking place. Big traditional game developers are starting to seriously embrace mobile and it's starting to pay serious dividends. Remember IGG (I Got Games)? The company behind Tales of Pirates, Angels Online, Voyage Century Online, and several other client based MMOs? Well, they started to embrace mobile gaming a couple years ago and it's been a huge success for them. IGG self-publishes over a dozen internally developed mobile games from Castle Clash to Brave Trials. Take a look at IGG's revenue breakdown for Q1 2015:
Revenue breakdown for IGG Q1 2015
Mobile made up 85% of revenue in 2014 and 93% in Q1 2015, and this trend will likely continue. Client based games make up a mere 1% of IGG's revenues; just 4-5 years ago, IGG didn't have any mobile games. How quickly things change. Not every traditional F2P company has embraced mobile this quickly though. Nexon, the Iconic South Korean developer behind Dungeon Fighter Online and MapleStory, generates about 16% of their revenues from mobile games as seen in the graphic below:
Revenue breakdown for Nexon Q1 2015.
Nexon's mobile revenues will increase in the quarters to come, as their most successful game, Dungeon Fighter Online, will be getting a mobile version later this year in Asia. Despite being only 16% of revenues, mobile growth is significantly higher than PC growth (Mobile grew 10%, PC shrunk 4%). Another company just starting to embrace mobile is Blizzard Entertainment. Earlier this year we reported that Hearthstone generated more revenues on mobile than on desktops. Current trends suggest that the gap between mobile and desktop revenues are set to widen, with mobile continuing to eat into the game's PC market.
Hearthstone Mobile vs PC Revenues
Perfect World Entertainment also began embracing mobile in the last few years with the release of Forsaken World Mobile and Elemental Kingdoms through Fedeem Games, the international mobile affiliate of the larger Chinese company. The game's mobile push in China has been so successful that the entire company was recently purchased by its founder for over $1 billion.
Mobile is quickly becoming a bigger and bigger focus for game developers. Call me old school, but I prefer to game on my desktop, but I'm clearly the minority. How does this affect you? Do you play any mobile MMOs? Let me know in the comments below! | 5,257 |
Richmond has secured talented on-baller, Josh Caddy from Geelong on a four year deal in the 2016 Trade period, in exchange for Richmond’s pick 24 and 64 in this year’s National AFL Draft.
Richmond also receive Geelong’s third round selection, pick 56 in the deal.
The 24-year-old who was originally drafted to the Gold Coast Suns with pick seven in the 2010 National AFL Draft.
Don’t Hold Back! Enter the draw for your shot at winning a signed guernsey + an inner sanctum experience at the final 2016 training session
Following two seasons at the Suns, the big-bodied midfielder was traded to Geelong at the end of 2012, where he has played for the past four seasons.
He has played 95 games for a return of 76 goals in his six seasons of AFL.
In season 2016, Caddy played 18 games, missing five through the middle of the season with a minor knee injury.
He played in Geelong’s two finals matches this season, booting two goals in the Cats’ qualifying final win over the Hawks.
Playing a variety of midfield and forward roles, his 2016 season averages include 20.9 disposals (8.9 contested), 3.9 tackles and 1.2 goals per game.
Richmond’s General Manager – Football Talent, Dan Richardson said the Club was delighted to make Caddy a Tiger.
“We love what Josh is going to bring to our team, he’s a big-bodied, aggressive midfielder that can run, win the contested footy, and also kick goals,” he said.
“Josh has already shown his talent, but at 24 years of age, his best football is still in front of him, and that’s really exciting for us.
“Josh will really add to our midfield depth, and join players like Cotchin, Martin, Prestia, Grigg, Corey and Brandon Ellis, Miles, Conca and Vlastuin all running through the middle, which is a great asset for us entering season 2017."
Caddy joins fellow midfielder Dion Prestia and ruck/forward Toby Nankervis who made their way to Richmond in this year’s Trade period.
Richmond currently hold picks 27, 56, 82 and 100 in the 2016 National AFL Draft.
Josh Caddy will speak to the media at approximately 4.00pm on Thursday afternoon. Like and watch live on Richmond's Facebook page and follow it on Twitter and Snapchat. | 5,258 |
protesters as “foreign-funded noisemakers” trying to “make us disappear.”
Heavily redacted government documents released to the BC Civil Liberties Association in summer 2019, dubbed the “Protest Papers,” appear to confirm what has been long suspected: the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was surveilling environmental and Indigenous organizations in 2012, the era of the Northern Gateway pipeline protests and the birth of Idle No More, and allegedly sharing that information with the National Energy Board and oil companies.
In the months immediately after the Husky spill, Boe had travelled down to Standing Rock, North Dakota, the site of the high-profile blockade against a proposed pipeline. There, she shared the story of the spill and the citizens’ campaign.
Most of the affected First Nations maintain the cleanup of contamination is “inadequate and incomplete.” Chief Burns of James Smith Cree Nation says he still has to warn local kids about the risks of eating fish from the river. That nation and its neighbour, Cumberland House Cree Nation, have filed lawsuits over alleged damages, which have yet to be proven in court. James Smith continues to collect evidence in its freezer.
But the citizens’ group eventually lost steam, its members say. Boe is back at home by the river, where she still doesn’t drink the water. And after more than thirty years of advocacy, Buchan is laying low to care for her health.
New people have started digging for independent information around the Husky spill and its long-term effects. Patricia Elliott, a journalism professor at the University of Regina, has gone to court to gain access to documents related to inspection records and spill cleanup, after the province denied their release despite her successful appeal to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner. She launched a crowdfunding campaign in May to help cover the estimated $12,000 in legal fees. By pleading guilty to reduced charges, she says, “the company and the regulator escaped court scrutiny on larger questions of public safety and oversight mechanisms.”
Still, Buchan, even on her break, can’t help but follow headlines. In mid-August I got a Facebook message from her: “And yet again...” A riverbank had collapsed and forty thousand litres of crude from a Bonterra Energy Corp. pipeline had burst into a creek that feeds into the North Saskatchewan River, which flows into taps as far as Edmonton.
And Boe keeps talking to everyone she meets, including politicians, for whom she’s developed a new stock question: in the case of a power-grid failure, she asks, “where’s everybody getting their water from?” | 5,259 |
ago because she had young children.
Nothing brings the issue into sharper relief than a child looking up at you in desperation, saying they need to go, she says.
"I recognised that I was changing the way I used the city because I always had to have bathroom radar.
Surfers Paradise bus shelters that have been repurposed as public toilets. ( Supplied: ACT Bus )
"So I started looking at different people, for example, people who have Crohn's or Colitis. Their entire day may be structured around where [they] can go, where [they] know [they] have instant access."
Of course, people with serious health conditions are just the pointy end of the problem. Lowe quotes one estimate that suggests when you include the elderly, parents with children, and menstruating women, roughly a quarter of the population has special bathroom needs.
"That's a really fascinating way of seeing bathrooms.
"[Because] actually a lot of us structure our lives around public bathrooms."
A gendered problem
While there are many layers of injustice and exclusion at work in the design and provision of public toilets, gender inequality has been one of the most enduring, says Lowe.
"Even when public space is equal for men's and women's [bathrooms], men often get more provision. Where women get six cubicles, men might get four cubicles plus four urinals", she writes in No Place to Go.
"But that's not where the inequality ends. Women, biologically, need more provision. For one thing, they take longer to empty their bladders... [And] women use the bathroom more frequently than men. Again, biology: women menstruate, women can be pregnant."
The ongoing failure of our public facilities is, in part, the result of our reluctance to confront some profoundly challenging social problems.
As Lowe writes, "Public bathrooms are private spaces that reveal public truths".
It is not simply our bodily needs that give rise to our discomfort. Talking about public toilets, Lowe suggests, would require us to confront the structural inequalities embodied in our built environment, the problems of homelessness and dignity, of gender, and ultimately of how we share (and fail to share) public space.
The solution, according to Lowe, must begin with an acknowledgement of the social and political dimensions of our most mundane public spaces.
"When we talk about liveable cities, and when we talk about accessibility, what we're talking about, in part, is public bathrooms."
Lezlie Lowe is author of No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs (Coach House Books). | 5,260 |
FRASER (WWJ) – Macomb County officials have an unusual, but quite serious, special request for residents on Sunday.
“I can’t believe I’m lecturing people on their bathroom…you know, what they’re doing in there, but we really need to think about that, if it’s possible, if they could all not flush their toilets at the same time here at Super Bowl halftime,” Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller said.
About 400,000 residents in11 central Macomb County communities last month were asked to restrict water usage at their homes as repair crews deal with “a dire situation” — a damaged regional sewer main as a result of the massive sinkhole that opened up in Fraser on Christmas Eve.
The sewer line is owned by the Macomb Interceptor Drain Drainage (MIDD) District, which services Fraser, Sterling Heights, Utica, New Haven and Chesterfield, Shelby, Clinton Township, Harrison, Lenox, Washington, and Macomb Township and Selfridge Air National Guard Base.
Miller explained the amount of sewage able to flow through the damaged sewer interceptor line, along 15 Mile Road, is minimal — and too much water usage in the area could force them to pump raw sewage into the Clinton River to avoid backups into basements.
Miller said there was a similar situation with a sinkhole in Fraser back in 2004, so engineers are aware of mass flushing consequences.
“Yeah, everybody is just all hands on deck here,” Miller said, speaking lived on WWJ Newsradio 950 on Friday. “I know this sounds crazy…but we’re all monitoring, we’ve got everybody on these shifts. We’re just trying to get through this Sunday, and hopefully we don’t have any incidents.”
[Michigan Extends Emergency After Macomb County Sewage Line Collapse]
Miller said work is continuing around the clock to install pipes and divert the flow, fixing the problem, which will take at least a couple of more weeks.
In the meantime, residents are asked to:
Reduce the length of showers
Only flush solids in the toilet (leave liquids until you have to flush)
Only run full wash loads
Don’t run the water while brushing teeth.
Run full dishwasher loads only
Reused towels
Use paper plates
Miller has said she expects repairs to the sewer line to cost about $78 million, and overall sinkhole repairs as much as $140 million.
[Catch up on the sinkhole story] | 5,261 |
Updated 22.45
THE DATA PROTECTION COMMISSIONER (ODPC) is warning that sensitive information about individuals is being made more accessible by the upcoming introduction of Ireland’s new postcode system.
The office says they have previously voiced concerns that individual postcodes for each dwelling could be used for “any purpose” including ”State services to commercial exploitation”.
In it’s annual report published today, the ODPC said:
This serious concern has since turned into a reality with the Minister’s announcement on the 8th of October 2013 that Cabinet had agreed to the rollout of the unique seven digit character code to every letter box in the State by 2015.
The ODPC argues that a public database linking a code to a single unit residential address “could be considered as being personal data of the occupants of that dwelling”.
“In the Irish context, a person’s home address is an important part of their identity and is the second most important piece of personal information to verify a person’s identity,” the report adds.
Furthermore, Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes says that, through the use of modern technology, a public postcode database can be “easily assimilated into any sort of electronic device” and “have the potential for the ready identification of sensitive information about individuals”.
The office say that they have made inquiries with the Department of Communications about how the system will operation in compliance with the Data Protection Acts and is waiting for clarification.
State protection
Overall, the ODPC is highly critical about the State’s protection of personal information, saying that audits have shown that senior management have “in too many cases, shown scant regard to their duty to safeguard the personal data entrusted to them”.
#Open journalism No news is bad news Support The Journal Your contributions will help us continue to deliver the stories that are important to you Support us now
Hawkes threatens that a failure to deal adequately with these problems will “also inevitably lead to more formal action by my Office.”
One of the issues the office specifically points to are related to customer service and the problems people face when attempting to gain access to their personal data. They say that this often leads to individuals having to request a copy of all their personal data.
Problems accessing personal data accounted for 57 per cent of the 910 complaints made to the office last year.
There were 204 complaints relating to unsolicited marketing communications and the office dealt with 1,577 data security breach notifications in 2013.
Read the Annual Report of teh Data Protection Commissioner here > | 5,262 |
The Congressional committee investigating the long-delayed the recall of millions of vehicles equipped with a faulty ignition switch, released a flurry of internal General Motors documents Friday showing what it described as "failures within the system" that allowed critical safety issues to go unaddressed.
Exactly why the ignition switch problem went unresolved for as much as a decade has spurred a series of investigations by the Department of Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and both houses of Congress. During two Capitol Hill hearings last week, GM CEO Mary Barra was repeatedly criticized for failing to offer clear answers about the ignition switch problem.
One of the documents released Friday showed that while in her previous job as GM's global product development chief, Barra was kept clearly in the loop about a separate recall issue involving steering problems on the Saturn Ion and other GM products.
Read more from The Detroit Bureau
Motorists Growing Worried About Security of Connected Vehicles
BMW Joins Recall Rush
GM Places Two Engineers on Paid Leave as Ignition Switch Recall Probe Deepens
Some initial news coverage of the newly released documents suggested that this might be a direct link between the GM CEO and the ignition switch problem. But a senior staff member of the House Energy Committee stressed that was not the case, telling TheDetroitBureau.com, such a connection was "premature."
"I would say it provides some evidence as to what sort of matters reach the (executive) level" at GM, explained the Energy Committee's Charlotte Baker. But she stressed the e-mail had no direct connection to the ignition switch problem.
Indeed, GM commented Friday afternoon on Twitter that the 2011 email Barra received was unrelated to the ignition switch recalls.
This is GM's Tweet
If Barra did, indeed, know about the problems with the ignition switches—now linked to 13 deaths and 31 crashes—during her time as product development chief, it could potentially lead to perjury charges in light of her testimony to Congress. But despite the harsh criticism the executive faced during two contentious days of hearings, there is no evidence linking Barra to the ignition switch problem.
At this point, evidence appears to point to two senior engineers who declined to take action, one noting that a recall was not a cost-justifiable solution. On Thursday, GM put those two staff members on paid leave. The maker did not identify them but other sources indicate they are Gary Altman, who previously served as program engineering manager for the Chevrolet Cobalt, and Ray DeGiorgio, a project engineer for both the Cobalt and Saturn Ion.
GM's stock traded lower on Friday. (Click here to track the latest price for its shares.) | 5,263 |
everything was tidy and it was warm inside against the spring chill. José is maybe five feet tall, 40, muscular, wears an easy smile, and has small, thick hands. José’s younger brother is Diego, the young man who was arrested in the wake of a DUI and who will most likely be deported. José told me that Diego arrived in the United States when he was just 15 and thinks of America as his home. Miguel told me that he too came to the States as a young man; originally from Mexico, he’s now 40 and has two American children, 14 and 18, who are both citizens. “We see it on TV—but it’s in California, somewhere else, so you don’t know if you should believe it,” he said. “Now it’s happening here … It’s real.” At the end of my visit with José and Miguel, I told them that I wanted to take a photo of them standing together. So we stepped outside the warm trailer into the flat spring light. I assured them I wouldn’t show their faces to protect their identities. “Thank you,” Miguel said, “but I wish Americans could see our faces. They need to understand, we’re real people, too.” One afternoon, I went back to the farm where Luis works; I visited him in the shabby kitchen/common room of his house. “I want to go home to my country someday,” Luis told me. In the past, he had always been ready with a smile and even his body language had been warm. But on this visit, there was a weight of defeat to him. “I want to go home,” he said again. “But I don’t want to go with ICE. I have a bank account; I have things. I want to go home, but not like that.” Here in the Hudson Valley, Luis works on Sam’s farm as a jack-of-all-trades—packing apples, pruning trees, running a forklift. “He’s one of my best workers,” Sam said. “He’s been with me for over a decade. There needs to be some dignified work visa for people who’ve come here and done nothing but work, proving themselves.” But that’s not the direction things are going, and the results will be felt far and wide, by the farmers whose businesses may go under, the consumers who may see prices rise, and, of course, the workers themselves, who may not be here for long. | 5,264 |
This is a quick way to expand the scope of the site and generate new questions and answers.
How it works: One topic will be designated each week. Each person who asks a question relating to that topic will be eligible to win a prize. The current topic is listed below.
How to enter: Ask a question relating to the topic of the week, and tag it accordingly. Each question you ask will get you one entry into a random drawing to win a sci-fi item of your choice from your local Amazon (under $50). The question must not be closed or deleted to be eligible. Users may only win a topic contest once a month. Users will be informed of the month's topics in advance.
Choosing the topic of the week: If you have suggestions for a future topic, please leave them as answers to this post. Topics must be trackable with a tag, meaning that specific authors, books, television shows, movies and franchises are encouraged. Basically anything that currently has a tag is probably fair game. Topics will be chosen based on either their timely and increased notoriety or to expand the Sci-Fi's content and scope.
Current Topic: INDEFINITE HIATUS
At this moment and for the foreseeable future, I will not be able to run any Topic of the Week endeavors. That does not mean that the site can't have Topic of the Week contests, especially since people still seem very keen on them. These can still happen, they will just have to be run by you, the community. I pass along my power to you! That does mean that there will no longer be a prize awarded by Stack Exchange, which I hope isn't a massive deterrent.
But why?!
I apologize for not including this earlier; my haste caused me to not expand. My co-worker Laura summed this up pretty well on the Cooking site, when their TOTW was discontinued. For the most part, the reasons are the same. A $50 a week prize for the contest that results in-between 5-7 questions a week isn't that sustainable on our end. But the best thing, truthfully, is that Sci-Fi doesn't really need it as much as it did 8 months ago. The site is showing exponential growth and diversification, to the point where we on our end don't feel you need us nudging you along. Y'all are doing great on your own!
But you also aren't alone! If the community wants to keep going with the TOTW, then please do! It should just now be controlled organically from the community. And if the community needs advice or input from SE, please ping me!
Completed Topics: | 5,265 |
Some people think that academia is all work and no play, but that won’t be the case at the University of Cambridge. In 2015, the English educational institution announced that they were looking to hire the world’s first full-time professor of play, development, and learning. As The Guardian reports, the application for the LEGO professorship is due on Friday, January 20—meaning fun-loving scholars only have three days left to throw their hats in the ring.
Cambridge’s so-called "LEGO professorship" was established by a £4 million donation from the LEGO Foundation, a corporate foundation whose mission, according to its website, is "to make children’s lives better—and communities stronger—by making sure the fundamental value of play is understood, embraced, and acted upon." More than a third of that donation will fund a new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development & Learning (PEDAL), led by the LEGO professor; the remaining money will go toward the professorship.
Scientists are still figuring out how play contributes to child development, and they’re hoping that PEDAL will provide some answers. Ultimately, their findings may influence how children are taught in schools—think more playful learning instead of tests.
"The value of play is relatively under-researched," Cambridge professor Anna Vignoles, who's currently serving as PEDAL’s interim director, told The Guardian. "You have people who are claiming that it enhances learning, that it’s important, that it’s good for children’s wellbeing. All of that might be true, but actually there’s remarkably little evidence for that. The aim of the PEDAL center is to conduct rigorous research into the importance of play and how playful learning can be used to improve students’ outcomes."
Cambridge University is in charge of the hiring process, and they’re seeking a candidate whose focus is educational psychology. Even though the LEGO Foundation has no ultimate say in the final hire, they’re hoping the candidate will be playful, curious, open-minded, imaginative, and possess a "childlike mindset," according to Bo Stjerne Thomsen, the LEGO Foundation’s global head of research. As for experience level, applicants don’t need to have already held a professorship, as more emphasis will be placed on their research skills.
No word on whether the position will include playing with actual LEGOs, but if that's the case, the world's largest LEGO store opened in London's Leicester Square in November, making it worth a field trip.
[h/t The Guardian] | 5,266 |
February 22, 2017
Please tell me this is satirehttps://t.co/ldQTdbncF6 — Kristian Bannister (@bnnstr) February 22, 2017
It’s important to note that (according to The Independent) Becca Gronski lists multiple jobs on her Facebook page including being an artist of vagina paintings and selling dreamcatchers on Etsy... so it could indeed be a prank.
But watch a few videos on her YouTube channel Soul Journey and you get the sense this is legitimate.
The video of her cutting her hair as an exercise in empowerment is particularly earnest.
There seems to be a growing trend of slightly dubious crowd-funding campaigns — particularly from “selfish, unimaginative millennials with no reservations about panhandling on the internet,” (as bossip.com puts it in the post Here’s how millennials have killed crowd-funding).
This week Kayla Lewis — the girl who coined the term ‘on fleek’ — set up a crowd-funding page for people to pay her for her contribution to pop culture.
“I have a problem with crowd-funding just for the sake of crowd-funding,” writes Brandon Wenerd from BroBible.
“The internet has run amok with crowd-funding campaigns attempting to be absurd phenomena these days, with the most notorious example to date being the Kickstarter campaign that raised $50,000 just to make a bunch of potato salad.
“It’s not because I hate fun or just how silly-awesome and circle-jerky the internet can be, but because I think it’s teaching an entire generation that they can simply get what they want by asking strangers for it, rather than working to achieve a goal.
“The way a current generation abuses crowd-funding to finance a good time fuels an unrealistic expectation of how someone should be treated by strangers. Quite simply, no one owes you anything.”
But we can take mild comfort in the fact that Becca seems to have cottoned on to the fact that people are questioning the validity of funding her spiritual journey.
The roasting on social media didn’t cause her to remove the campaign entirely, but she did post an update to the GoFundMe page on Friday:
“UPDATE! If we reach $5,000, I will donate $1,000 to the charity of your choice! With your donation, please comment the charity you would like the money to go to and the one with the most votes will get the money! Peace and love to you all!” | 5,267 |
AFP | Police officers guard the entrance to the closed central station in Munich on January 1, 2016.
German officials said on Friday the Islamic State group was believed to be plotting a suicide bomb attack on New Year’s Eve in the southern city of Munich.
Advertising Read more
German authorities were tipped off by a “friendly intelligence service” about the plan, which IS had planned to carry out around midnight, said Joachim Herrmann, interior minister for the southern state of Bavaria.
“Five to seven” suspects were believed to be planning to carry out a “suicide attack” as festivities were under way to welcome in the New Year, Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said.
Police evacuated Munich’s main rail station and another station in the western suburb of Pasing after an alert of a possible “terror attack”.
Rail services at the sites were also halted and police urged the public to keep away from large gatherings.
Some 550 officers had been deployed to track down the suspects and secure the sites, although no arrests have been made yet.
Police officers, some in riot gear, were posted at different entrances of Munich’s main rail station which was eerily quiet on a night of traditionally raucous celebrations.
Some revellers sought to enter the station but were turned away.
A police spokeswoman said it could not be ruled out that the attackers could seek another target.
German media had earlier reported that police were acting on a tip from French authorities.
European capitals are on high security alert, with Brussels and Paris both scrapping fireworks for New Year’s celebrations.
Belgian police were also holding five people over an alleged New Year plot in Brussels.
In Berlin, police presence has been stepped up at the Brandenburg Gate, where hundreds of thousands of people have gathered for festivities. All large bags and backpacks have been banned from the site of the huge street party.
Days after the November 13 attacks in Paris claimed by the Islamic State group that left 130 dead, German police called off an international football match at the last minute due to a bomb threat.
No explosives were subsequently found, and no arrests made after the Germany-Netherlands friendly in Hanover which was to be attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel was cancelled and thousands of fans evacuated.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere who had been due to attend the match with Merkel later said the event was cancelled “to protect the population”, but did not provide specifics.
(AFP)
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning Subscribe | 5,268 |
Kennewick, WA – Kennewick Police have arrested a 35-year old man after he was caught sexually assaulting an injured wild animal in Columbia Park in Kennewick, Washington.
According to a news release posted on the Kennewick Police Departments Official Facebook page, late on the evening of Monday, September 3rd, 2018, Kennewick Police Officers responded to Columbia Park for a report of a transient male having sexual contact with an injured beaver.
Officers contacted 35-year old Richard Delp and arrested him on charges of First Degree Animal Cruelty and Possession of a Controlled Substance-Methamphetamine.
During the course of the investigation, Officers learned that a woman in the park witnessed a beaver get struck by a vehicle in the park. The animal was still alive and appeared to have two broken legs. In an attempt to help the injured beaver, the woman wrapped it in a towel and went to her nearby home to retrieve a bin to put the beaver in, so she could figure out what to do with it. The woman said she called many places to find someone to take the injured beaver before heading back to the park.
When the woman returned to the park a short time later she saw the man lying on top of the beaver. At first, she thought the man was trying to help the animal. As the man rolled over, she was horrified to find the beaver was on its back (she had left it on its stomach) and the man’s pants were unzipped, unbuttoned, and unbuckled. When she asked what he did to him, the man replied; “it’s not a him, it’s a her.” The woman said she called the man out on what he was doing to the animal and he replied “its just a beaver.”
The woman the called Kennewick Police who responded to the park and arrested Mr. Delp after he admitted to sexually assaulting the injured animal. He was also arrested for possession of Methamphetamine. The beaver had reportedly died before police arrived on scene.
Delp has a lengthy criminal record and comments on the Kennewick Police Department Facebook page from people who claim to know him say he has suffered from Mental Illness prior to his drug addiction and becoming homeless.
He is currently being held without bail in the Benton County Jail.
0
Share this: Facebook
Pinterest
Print
Tumblr
LinkedIn
Reddit
Twitter
More
Pocket
Telegram
Skype
WhatsApp
Like this: Like Loading... | 5,269 |
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden laughs with audience members during a meeting with local residents, Monday, Dec. 2, 2019, in Emmetsburg, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Joe Biden’s descent into madness continued with yet another nonsensical rant Thursday, this time in front of donors via a remote fundraiser. In his comments, Biden made the charge that Trump would absolutely try to postpone the 2020 election and attempted to use funding for the US Postal Service as his proof.
That’s quite the conspiracy theory. Does Joe also see little green men as well?
For starters, no one has threatened not to fund the post office. What’s been talked about is not providing them with yet another bailout for their completely unsustainable pension funds. Even if those funds don’t meet their payouts in the decades to come, the USPS would simply be restructured. We are not going to stop having a federal postal service in the process, though privatizing the entire operation would likely make the most sense.
Regardless, there is no actual indication we’ll all be voting by mail in November anyway. Things will be far different by then, with the very likely possibility that we’ll simply vote as normal. That’s infinitely preferable given the widespread possibly of fraud with mail in ballots, including the trend of ballot harvesting. In the end, states will make those decisions though.
But even if Biden were right about mail in voting and the post office being shut down, his silly assertion still makes no sense. The President does not have the power to postpone the election. The date is set via three different acts of Congress. The only way to stop the election from happening on that day is for Congress to change those laws. Other entities like Ohio, which postponed a primary election earlier this year, did not have those limitations (obviously, primary election dates are not routinely codified by law). There is no scenario where Trump signs an EO and the election doesn’t go off as its supposed to.
I’ll also note that not a single mainstream “journalist” is gnashing their teeth over this statement by Biden, suggesting it’s dangerous or a threat to our democracy, both charges they’ve routinely made against Trump over his past questioning of the integrity of our elections. But the former VP can spin some wild tale about postponing the election due to the post office not being funded and all we get is crickets.
Front-page contributor for RedState. Visit my archives for more of my latest articles and help out by following me on Twitter @bonchieredstate. Read more by Bonchie | 5,270 |
Texas authorities have ordered Automated Web Services (AWS) mining, an Australian cryptocurrency mining firm, to refund its investors. The company had guaranteed its investors a 200 percent return on the purchase of Cryptocurrency Mining Power (CMP) contracts. The company, however, failed to register the program with the state’s Security Commissioner first, thereby selling an unregistered and illegal security.
Shifting Goalposts
According to the Texas State Security Board, AWS violated the law by offering its contracts without registration and making misleading statements that deceived investors. And according to the order, the company will be forced to repay all 19 Texas-based investors to the full extent of their investments.
AWS mining, also known as MyCoinDeal, reportedly mines cryptocurrency at its farms in China, Russia, and Paraguay. Investors were required to use the wallet issued by the company to participate in all CMP-related contracts. It also charged investors exorbitant fees, including 2 percent on all fiat deposits and withdrawals, and 0.5 to 1 percent for all cryptocurrency-related transactions. The company, however, promised daily returns in Bitcoin (BTC) to its investors.
Each CMP contract was initially sold for $400. While investors were guaranteed a 200 percent return on their purchases, the company later said that users would have to shoulder the risks of cryptocurrency volatility and price fluctuations. Other risks mentioned in the company’s disclaimer included technical failure and changes in the price of electricity used to power the hardware. After receiving the emergency cease and desist order in November last year, the company stopped offering CMP contracts to Texas residents.
AWS: A Multi-Level Marketing Scheme?
According to the emergency action ordered by the Texas Securities Commissioner, AWS was illegally recruiting sales agents through social media portals such as LinkedIn and Facebook. The company used a multi-level marketing system, run by Pennsylvania-based AWS Affiliate to recruit sales agents and sell CMP contracts. The securities board concluded that AWS mining and its affiliates engaged in ”illegal, fraudulent, deceptive, and/or misleading practices in their business activities.”
Earlier this year, Travis J. Iles, the Texas Securities Commissioner filed three cease and desist orders against promoters of fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. These individuals reportedly attempted to defraud Texas residents using “work from home” forums on Facebook. The first two promoters, Mikhail Rania Safia and Madeline O’Farrell, promised investors lucrative profits from trading cryptocurrencies. The third promoter, Tint X Mining, offered investors high returns through Bitcoin mining.
Have you or anyone close to you been defrauded by a similar illegitimate cryptocurrency scheme? Let us know in the comments below. | 5,271 |
Last updated on.From the section Championship
Famara Diedhiou celebrated his first start after three months out with a knee injury with a goal and an assist
Bristol City scored twice with 10 men as they beat Queens Park Rangers.
City had lost six of their previous seven, including their EFL Cup semi-final with Manchester City, and had Nathan Baker sent off for a late tackle on Josh Scowen after half an hour.
Record signing Famara Diedhiou put the 10-man Robins ahead just before half-time, glancing home Ryan Kent's corner.
Diedhiou, back after three months out with injury, set up the second as his saved shot was turned in by Joe Bryan.
The victory moved City above Aston Villa into fourth place in the Championship, while Rangers remain in 16th.
There was no hint of a post-Manchester City hangover for Lee Johnson's men as they had the better chances, but the City boss was left livid after Baker's dismissal with an hour to go.
Jamie Paterson had a volley blocked by QPR's Nedum Onuoha before the opening goal, while Korey Smith forced a good save from Alex Smithies five minutes before Bryan's second.
Massimo Luongo had two good efforts for Rangers in the final 20 minutes, but the Robins hung on to register a first victory since Boxing Day and a second clean sheet in successive league games.
Nathan Baker faces a three-match ban after this challenge on Josh Scowen
Bristol City head coach Lee Johnson told BBC Radio Bristol:
"In the first half I thought we moved the ball well, maybe didn't have as many clear cut opportunities as I would have liked, but always looked in control.
"The sending off could have changed the game, but it didn't, and that bit was down to character - we continued to play our game and still pressed when we could.
"I'm delighted for Famara to get his goal after a long road back to recovery and it was an emotional celebration with the physios and everybody that had taken him through that period."
Queens Park Rangers manager Ian Holloway:
"It was probably my worst result ever. That was not my team out there today. We will never have a better chance of beating Bristol City considering the effort they put in against Manchester City in midweek.
"Our performance was unacceptable and we will have a big meeting on Monday because I can't put up with that.
"The sending-off should have helped us. Instead, it galvanised them and they were the better side." | 5,272 |
株式会社サードウェーブデジノスは、10.1型Windowsタブレット「Diginnos Tablet DG-D10IW3SL」を発売した。税別価格は29,800円。
既存モデル「DG-D10IW3」からCPUをアップグレードし、Cherry trail世代のAtom x5-Z8350(4コア、1.44GHz)を採用。メモリも4GBへ増強し、Windows 10をさらに快適に利用できるとする。最大64GB対応のmicroSDカードスロットによりストレージを拡張できるほか、IEEE 802.11ac対応無線LAN、WUXGAの10.1型液晶などを搭載する。
そのほかの主な仕様は、10点マルチタッチ対応の10.1型WUXGA(1,920×1,200ドット)液晶ディスプレイ、64GB eMMC、OSにWindows 10 Homeを搭載。
インターフェイスはUSB 3.0、microUSB(給電用)、IEEE 802.11ac、Bluetooth 4.0、Mini HDMI、micro SDXC対応カードスロット、約200万画素前面/約500万画素背面Webカメラ、音声入出力。加速度センサー、GPSを備える。
バッテリはリチウムイオンで、駆動時間は約8.5時間(JEITA2.0)。サイズは約260×168×9.6mm(幅×奥行き×高さ)、重量は約590g。 | 5,273 |
, but contended that it was "totally appropriate" to show through the court's sentence "that sexual assault, even if perpetrated upon an acquaintance or in a professional setting, is a serious offense worthy of a lengthy prison sentence."
Defense attorneys were seeking a minimum sentence of five years.
PHOTO: Tarale Wulff speaks to the press after Harvey Weinstein's sentencing, in New York, March 11, 2020. (Erik Pendzich/Rex/Shutterstock)
"As an individual with no criminal history having spent no time previously incarcerated, his health concerns, his age, and as famous as he is, a custodial sentence will no doubt prove much more difficult for Mr. Weinstein than most other inmates, which further counsels in favor of a sentence of five years' imprisonment," defense attorneys Damon Chernois and Donna Rotunno said in their own letter to the judge.
"With respect to deterrence, counsel will again note that Mr. Weinstein is a first-time offender."
Attorneys for Weinstein told ABC News they plan to file their appeal of his New York convictions in July, ahead of the next session of the appellate court in September.
What's next for Weinstein?
After sentencing, Weinstein will be sent to Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York, a maximum-security prison and inmate reception center where New York City inmates get a medical evaluation before being assigned to a state prison facility, according to state corrections officials.
While state corrections officials are responsible for determining where Weinstein will serve out his sentence, those officials can take recommendations from the judge about an inmate with medical problems like Weinstein.
MORE: Weinstein trial spotlights the use of 'prior bad acts' witnesses
Three of New York state's 52 correctional facilities -- in Fishkill, Bedford Hills and Coxsackie, New York -- have residential medical units.
Weinstein is also preparing to defend himself against four felony sexual assault charges filed earlier this year by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. In that case, Weinstein is charged with attacking two women in separate incidents in February 2013 within a day of each other.
A spokesman for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office said in a statement that authorities there "has begun the process of extraditing defendant Weinstein to California to face the sexual assault charges that were filed in January." No arraignment date has yet been set, according to the statement.
If you or someone you know experienced sexual assault and is seeking resources, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years on sex crime convictions originally appeared on abcnews.go.com | 5,274 |
Israel is the 31st country to join the ProtonVPN network. These servers should help improve latency for ProtonVPN users in North Africa and the Middle East.
It is important that our users have a secure and private connection to the Internet no matter where they go, so we will continue to add new servers until we have filled in the map.
These VPN servers will be housed in Tel Aviv and are reserved for users with one of our paid plans:
IL#1 is available on our Basic plan
IL#2-4 are available on our Plus and Visionary plans
Why install servers in Israel?
Several Israeli TV stations, like Makan 33, do not allow you to stream their shows unless you visit their sites with an Israeli IP address. With these new servers, all our users on paid plans will be able to browse the Internet with an IP address from Israel and keep up with their favorite Israeli shows. With our new Israel servers, you can stream online from Kan 11, Keshet 12, and Reshet 13.
Our servers in Israel have been reserved for our users with paid plans. Members with a ProtonVPN Plus or Visionary plan will have exclusive access to servers IL#2-4 as well as access to our Secure Core architecture. By using our Secure Core feature, users route their Internet traffic through multiple servers, including hardened servers that are controlled and owned by ProtonVPN. Secure Core servers offer our users an extra layer of protection from even the most advanced network attacks.
Still need an account?
ProtonVPN is a secure, community-supported VPN service. It was developed by the same team that created ProtonMail, the world’s largest encrypted email provider. We offer the only free VPN service that does not have data caps, bandwidth limits, privacy-invading ads, or log user activity. To join today, click the signup button below. Or, if you already have an account and want to upgrade to access our VPN servers in Israel, click upgrade.
Sign UpUpgrade
Protect all your devices
ProtonVPN works on various desktop and mobile clients: Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and iOS. You can download all our native apps here.
Our mission is to make online security and privacy accessible to all. Thank you for your support. Keep an eye out for new developments on our social media pages below.
Best Regards,
The ProtonVPN Team
You can follow us on social media to stay up to date on the latest ProtonVPN releases: Twitter | Facebook | Reddit
To get a free ProtonMail encrypted email account, visit: protonmail.com | 5,275 |
Man, the only way Sega could ever hope to top something like this off, would be to combine "Sonic Riders" and "Burnout Paradise!" (I'd ubbuy that at the drop of a hat!)I couldn't decide between "Team Sonic Fortress" and "Sonic Team Fortress," so I flipped a coin.Yeah, I wanted to do some Sonic fan art, but I couldn't decide on just one!Then I saw this: [link] I then resolved that I had to do a Sonic version! Ant the franchise has so many characters, that I had no trouble picking out which ones would be best for the various classes!(From Left to Right)-Blaze the Cat :as: The PyroThis one should be dead obvious. It was kinda humoring to do the hair-doo poking outside the mask. (The flamethrower was unusually hard to do though!)-Tails the Fox :as: The EngineerAnother "duh" thingy! The kid's always building stuff! He's a freakin' Lego Maniac!-Espio the Chamelion :as: The SpyThey both go invisible. There ya' go. (It'd be a pain to put a ski mask on with that horn in the way though...)-Big the Cat :as: Heavy Weapons GuyAt first, I was gonna do Omega, or something along those lines, but it seemed WAY too funny to NOT have Big be in there! ('bout the same brain capacity too...)-Fang the Sniper :as: The SniperYet another "duh" moment! Heck, this guy was toting guns around like nobody's business LONG before Shadow even figured out how to work a trigger!-Sonic the Hedgehog :as: The ScoutNot only do they share the speed attribute, but I can see Sonic as the overly-boastful type too!-Knuckles the Echidna :as: The SoldierI was actually thinking about using Vector or Mighty for this one, but Knuckles isn't exactly the brightest candle in a deck of cards. Soldier class fit him perfectly!-Bean the Dynamite :as: The DemomanI find it funny they never really gave Bean a species! (Or a decent name for that matter...) Like how I gave him the 5'o clock shadow... on a bill?-Dr. Eggman :as: The MedicTechnically, he IS a doctor, and so the only one who could legally fill in the role! The saw fits him well, I think...So I hope you all enjoyed this humorous crossover brought to you by yours truly!(Heck, this makes my third deviation on my birthday! WOOOO! Go ME!) | 5,276 |
Luann de Lesseps is coming under fire this week after her former assistant, Danny Marin, shared a number of posts on his Instagram Stories about her.
Ahead of Thursday night’s premiere of The Real Housewives of New York City season 12, Danny took to his social media page, where he made allegations against Luann, including a claim regarding her allegedly bogus sobriety storyline on the show.
“She’s human and has good and bad qualities. The good things were great, the bad things were a nightmare,” Danny began, via Best of Bravo on Instagram, as he answered a series of questions from his online audience.
When Danny was asked if Luann was “ever sober,” he responded with a gif of a man shaking his head.
According to Danny, Luann’s RHONY co-stars likely knew that she allegedly wasn’t sober during the past season of the show.
“Didn’t [Ramona Singer] call her out on it at the reunion?” he asked.
Danny went on to suggest Luann was using her supposed sobriety for a storyline on the show and slammed her for doing so.
“All I want to say is that sobriety is not a game. Rehab is not a storyline. If you are struggling with addiction or remaining sober in these times, please seek help,” he wrote.
“A lot of stuff went down when I worked for Lu that was unacceptable behavior,” Danny continued.
When asked why he turned on his former boss, Danny said that while a number of things he did for Luann were things he was required to do due to his job as her assistant, he didn’t receive the credit he felt he should have been given.
“The fact of the matter is that it was my job to do all of that stuff, but it is the responsibility of the artist to credit everyone involved, not just some, in making your stuff happen,” he explained.
Danny also said that while Luann may attempt to spin things and suggest he is nothing more than a disgruntled former employee, it was actually his decision to stop working for her.
“She’s gonna say I was fired and I hold a grudge or something. The reality is I quit twice,” he shared.
Danny then confirmed that he has “receipts” to prove he quit.
The Real Housewives of New York City season 12 premieres on Thursday, April 2 at 9 p.m. on Bravo. | 5,277 |
An open access journal has succeeded in taking minor strides in bringing about innovation in scientific journal publishing by creating a Wikipedia like model of publishing papers that can theoretically be infinitely updated.
Research papers have followed the same model of publishing that was popularised decades ago before the advent of the internet. However, one journal is taking a new approach to adapting to the flexibility of the internet. F1000 Research is bringing a new form of innovation into research publication by allowing peer editorial via ‘living figures’.
Walk of the Fruit Fly
The first successful such edit by an external scientist has been made to a paper published a year ago on F1000. A paper on the connection between the relationship between genes and the walk of fruit flies by Bjorn Brembs had one of it’s figures replaced by another group of scientists. This is the first such edit by scientists on F1000 towards replacing the age old model of publishing.
The concept of ‘living figures’ fits with the process of continuous update adopted by F1000. The model which allows instant publication of research papers (well almost instant, 7 days as opposed to months), after which the paper is tagged under ‘Awaiting Review’ and reviewers are invited to post their reviews, during which the editor of the paper can modify the ‘published’ paper. This reduces the to and fro that usually happens in the conventional publishing model.
Drawback to Publishing in F1000
However, a major drawback to this model of wikipedia like editing is that researchers will have to let go of a chance to have their names as lead author or co-authors of a paper. The names of contributing scientists appear in legend of the figures they are contributing to, a big drawback considering how much researchers value their names on research papers. On benefit is that these updated figures also get their own DOIs. Researchers who once contribute sufficiently to the paper can also seek a formal publication linking to the original paper, a process called ‘Data Note’ by F1000. This is opposed to ‘Research Note’ where a contributing author’s findings oppose the original paper’s findings.
Way Towards a more Flexible Future
Although quite early in their efforts to bring flexibility to research, the journal is on the right path to change the now defunct scientific publishing industry. By taking inspiration from wikipedia and the highly unfathered yet collective software development sector, the journal can bring in concepts of editing, branching, forking, etc to publications from Wikipedia and Github. This can bring an end to constant need for peer review and starting the process of writing a paper from scratch every time even a minor discovery is observed.
Source: F1000 Research | 5,278 |
The lawyers defending California’s Proposition 8 and its ban on same-sex marriage urged the U.S. Supreme Court today to block video coverage of next week’s trial in San Francisco.
They filed an emergency appeal with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and argued that their client’s right to a fair trial would be jeopardized if each day’s proceedings were put on YouTube.
The trial “has the potential to become a media circus,” wrote attorney Charles Cooper. “The record is already replete with evidence showing that any publicizing of support for Prop. 8 has inevitably led to harassment, economic reprisal, threats, and even physical violence. In this atmosphere, witnesses are understandably quite distressed at the prospect of their testimony being broadcast worldwide on YouTube.”
FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article said opponents of Proposition 8 sent petitions signed by more than 50,000 people urging TV coverage of the trial. More than 140,000 names were sent on Friday.
Kennedy asked for a response from the state by noon on Sunday.
At issue is whether the California voter initiative that forbids the state from granting marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is conducting the trial beginning on Monday, agreed to limited TV coverage. The proceedings will be taped and made available to YouTube at the end of the day. He acted based on a recent rule change by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing TV coverage of some civil cases.
On Friday, opponents of Prop. 8 sent petitions signed by more than 140,000 people urging TV coverage of the trial.
“It’s vital that this trial be open to the public,” said Rick Jacobs, founder of the Courage Campaign Institute in Los Angeles. “The outcome will affect millions of people, and it’s the American way to open the judicial process to the public.”
Foes of Prop. 8 criticized the appeal to the Supreme Court as a desperate attempt “to shut cameras out.”
“Those who want to ban gay marriage spent millions of dollars to reach the public with misleading ads, rallies and news conferences during the campaign to pass Prop. 8. We are curious why they now fear the publicity they once craved,” said Chad Griffin, Board President of the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
“Apparently transparency is their enemy, but the people deserve to know exactly what it is they have to hide.”
[email protected] | 5,279 |
Sarah Palin continues to embarrass herself and America with her Trumpism.
Here’s how it was described when she tried to tout his foreign policy genius at a dinner in Milwaukee:
At Milwaukee GOP dinner, Sarah Palin intro'd as "icon to conservatives everywhere." Man in the back snorts. Polite applause as she walks up. — Matt Flegenheimer (@mattfleg) April 2, 2016
Outright laughs from Milwaukee GOP crowd when Sarah Palin says "Only Trump talks rationally about military threats." — Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) April 2, 2016
"Why is she still talking?" young woman asks friend as Palin talks in Milwaukee. — John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) April 2, 2016
At Milwaukee County GOP dinner, probably the quietest room I’ve ever heard for Sarah Palin speech. — Byron York (@ByronYork) April 2, 2016
In Milwaukee, Sarah Palin says illegal immigrants who come across Mexican border get "gift baskets with soccer balls." — Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) April 2, 2016
Palin's airing of grievances in Milwaukee over trade and immigration is going over like a lead balloon. — John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) April 2, 2016
Palin on lack of energy in room: "I felt a lot of seriousness, which is really good in a pres. race at this stage…I didn’t get booed." — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) April 2, 2016
. @SarahPalinUSA's talk at Serb Hall tonight may be worst political speech I've ever seen. Every Republican I talked to hated it #JSPolitics — Daniel Bice (@DanielBice) April 2, 2016
The contrast between that reception for Walker/Cruz compared to Palin's remarks makes the GOP politics of the Milwaukee area quite clear. — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) April 2, 2016
Just the thought of this "Palin speaking to a silent room in Milwaukee" situation seems bleak. — Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) April 2, 2016
Here’s her entire speech:
You betcha!!
Palin on if crowd responsed well to her in Milwaukee: "Well I think so–I didn’t get booed. You know–I don’t know." pic.twitter.com/vj7WXhz5yT — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) April 2, 2016
I can’t believe I defended her 4 years ago. | 5,280 |
This is the extraordinary moment a police car collided with a cyclist, drove over a bike and then sped off after tensions flared during a mass bike ride in central London.
The police 4x4 hit the cyclist – causing him to stumble backwards and drop his bike – and then crushed a second bike under its wheels before racing off on Friday night.
Witnesses described the incident at the junction of Vauxhall Bridge Road and Millbank as a “hit and run” as they slammed the officers’ actions.
Scotland Yard said police were trying to drive away in their BMW X5 after being “targeted by demonstrators”. They drove over the bike after it had been deliberately left in the road as an obstruction, a spokesman said.
The incident took place just after 9pm during the monthly Critical Mass bike ride, which sees hundreds of cyclists take to the streets for a group ride through London.
One observer who filmed the confrontation said it was “completely unacceptable”.
IT consultant John, 25, who did not want to give his last name, told the Standard: “I can imagine the police line is that they felt threatened, but frankly they’re armed police officers – do a bunch of cyclists pose a threat to them?
“Was it necessary to run over this kid’s bike? The police were trying to push people out of their way with the car.
“I think it’s entirely fair to call it a hit and run. The police were involved in an accident, they completely crushed a bike, and then they ran away.”
John said cyclists were remonstrating with the officers in the car after they had earlier “collared” a cyclist and treated him roughly.
Witnesses said they “wrestled” him off his moving bike and then dragged him across the road.
“They collared this one guy very forcefully,” said John.
“I started filming as the level of force the officers used was disproportionate.
“I don’t know why they collared this guy, but it looked like they wanted to make an example of them to the rest of the group.”
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “At approximately 9.10pm on April 29, police became aware of a demonstration involving a number of cyclists at Vauxhall Bridge.
“During this a police vehicle was targeted by demonstrators. As it tried to drive away, the vehicle ran over a cycle that was left in the road as an obstruction.
“No one was injured.” | 5,281 |
be willing to acknowledge your anger, and your determination to do something about it. But anger is not good for you internally. It’s bad for your system. It upsets your stomach. It may cause other symptoms. So I don’t want people to just be angry, I want people to be strategic,” Clinton said.
“You know in the reviews of this book, a number of reviewers have said, ‘Oh she’s angry.’ Well, yeah, I am. I am angry. But I also know that if I’m only angry, I can’t sound the alarms I’m trying to sound in the book, about sexism and misogyny, about voter suppression of African-Americans and young people in particular, about the Russians who not only impacted our election but are still working against us. So I have a list of things that make me really angry that I’m trying to be strategic in addressing.”
That’s why she started the group Onward Together to provide funding to grassroots anti-Trump resistance groups and groups working toward flipping Congress in 2018, she said. “I don’t want us just to be angry. I want us to win,” she said, adding that she “proudly” considers herself a member of the resistance.
“I consider the fact that I didn’t go away, that I didn’t get, you know, frightened off by my critics on both the right and the left, as part of my personal resistance,” she said. “I think I’ve got a lot of experience. I have some insight that I’m going to keep sharing and talking about. If you don’t want to hear it, don’t listen.”
“We are facing a clear and present danger from this administration,” she said. “There’s a lot at stake for everybody in this.”
As far as the path forward for Democrats, they need to talk about race, gender, homophobia, Islamophobia and “immigrant-bashing,” as well as the economy, she said. “So yeah, do we have to do a better job getting rising incomes? I had great plans for doing that. Nobody heard them. Because all they wanted to talk about was my emails, which was the dumbest scandal of the universe. Dumb mistake, but an even dumber scandal.”
“We have to stand up to Trump on all grounds,” she said. “Not just a few.” | 5,282 |
explosions.
An official with Earthjustice -- one of the groups that signed the Murkowski letter -- told IBT the House bill also would help natural gas companies get around longstanding laws designed to prioritize environmental stewardship and encourage local input in pipeline siting decisions.
“What we want is a process that enables all of the involved agencies to take the time they need to do a good environmental review -- but the process under this bill does the opposite,” Earthjustice’s Deborah Goldberg said. “The process under this bill is weighted to get pipeline applications approved as opposed to making legitimately independent decisions about whether a project should even go forward. It also tells state agencies they really have no power to assert any control over the permitting processes.”
Oil Exports On The Committees' Agenda
The recent natural gas legislation is not the only government business that donors to the Murkowski-Upton fundraising vehicle may have before the two lawmakers’ legislative committees.
According to federal records from recent months, Energy Transfer has lobbied on "issues associated with pipeline infrastructure development, pipeline safety, and environmental compliance” -- all issues that Murkowski and Upton’s congressional panels oversee. Upton’s committee also periodically holds hearings to scrutinize corporate mergers. On the same day that Energy Transfer officials cut checks to the Murkowski-Upton fundraising committee, the company announced a $37 billion merger with the Williams Companies, a natural gas pipeline company. A combination of Energy Transfer and Williams would create one of the world's largest energy companies.
Beyond the contributions from Energy Transfer, the Upton-Murkowski joint fundraising committee took in money from top executives at major oil industry concerns, $5,400 from Hunt Consolidated CEO Ray Hunt and $10,800 from Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson.
Tillerson has publicly called for a lifting of the ban on the export of American crude oil, a controversial aim that Upton has recently come to support: Weeks after Tillerson’s donation to the fundraising committee, Upton pushed a bill through his panel that would deliver that result.
According to 2014 federal financial disclosures, Upton’s family stood to benefit from Exxon Mobil’s increased fortunes: Upton’s wife owned between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of Exxon Mobil stock.
In the Senate, Murkowski’s committee passed legislation aimed at lifting the oil export ban while encouraging greater offshore oil and gas exploration. Murkowski publicly praised federal regulators’ approval of a natural gas export terminal linked to Exxon Mobil.
Tillerson’s donation also came just before Democratic legislators began demanding congressional committees investigate the company over reports that it hid data about climate change. | 5,283 |
AN ANIMAL WELFARE group has expressed concern about a plan to export another batch of cattle from Ireland to Libya this week.
The organisation, Compassion in World Farming, has conducted investigations into slaughtering in a number of countries in North Africa and the Middle-East, where many European farm animals are sent, and are exposed to what would be considered serious breaches of EU animal welfare law.
They have been calling on EU countries to desist from exporting live animals to countries that do not fall under the remit of the EU, to protect animals from what they describe as “hellish” deaths.
Brutal
Pru Elliott, campaign officer with Compassion, told TheJournal.ie this week that animals who are sent to this part of the world often experience “brutal treatment” and “slow protracted deaths”.
When EU animals are exported for slaughter they face being tied up, beaten, having their tails snapped, being dragged by their limbs or even eye sockets and nostrils, shot at, stabbed and having their throats hacked at multiple times to kill them.
A video of an investigation in the Middle East last year shows some incredibly cruel practices used by those working in slaughter houses, which we should warn you, may be very upsetting to watch.
Elliott said that although Compassion has not been able to get investigators into Libya due to the obvious danger, conditions in the video are mirrored across the region, and once Irish farm animals board a ship, the treatment they receive is out of the hands of the Irish government.
Already this year, more than 14,000 cattle have been sent to Libya.
Past safety concerns
The ship involved is called Express 1, and has previously transported animals from Ireland as it is one of the vessels approved by the Department of Agriculture. It will arrive in Waterford this evening.
Earlier this year, Express 1 was detained by the UK coastguard over a number of safety and welfare concerns. Grounds for detection included inoperative fire detection and resisting systems and a lack of fire training among workers. It was noted that electrical devices were unsafe and that the vessel was dirty.
Following emergency training for staff and repairs to the vessel to ensure it was up to scratch, it was released by UK authorities in March.
Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has always maintained that his department enforces a strict system of transport rules. In correspondence with Compassion earlier this year regarding the transport of cattle on Express 1, the department said the vessel will be subjected to any necessary inspections by the Port Authorities here when it arrives and veterinary officials will make preloading checks to ensure safe conditions for the animals. | 5,284 |
The Trump DOJ just put an estimated 52 million Americans with pre-existing conditions at risk of losing health insurance coverage.
Trump's Justice Department filed a briefing late Thursday stating it will no longer defend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) against state lawsuits, and telling courts to strike down provisions including the individual mandate and protections requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
The brief was filed as part of a case brought by 20 Republican-led states, which contends the ACA's individual mandate requiring most Americans to have health insurance is unconstitutional, since it was struck down by Republicans in Congress. By extension, the states argue, the rest of the law should no longer be valid, either.
The DOJ largely agreed with this position in the brief filed on Thursday, saying the consumer protections guaranteed by the ACA should be ruled unconstitutional.
The legal premise has already been called into question, including by officials within the DOJ. Just before the brief was filed Thursday evening, three career DOJ attorneys involved in the case withdrew from it entirely.
What the DOJ is doing — refusing to defend an existing law — is extraordinarily rare and, in this case, will almost certainly face serious legal challenges.
However, this doesn't mean the case should be taken any less seriously. The Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress have already made it clear they want to get rid of the ACA and see no problem allowing insurers to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.
Now Trump's DOJ has made its first move toward taking us back to the days when people could be priced out of the insurance market — or denied coverage entirely — based on current or prior health conditions, including everything from pregnancy and migraines, to cancer and diabetes.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an estimated 52 million American adults under the age of 65 would likely become uninsurable if the ACA's protections for people with pre-existing conditions were rolled back.
With so many people being forced out of the insurance market, an estimated 130 million Americans would see their health care costs go up.
If the sheer cruelty isn't bad enough on its own, the Trump administration also added a cynical twist to its plot to strip coverage from millions of Americans. Knowing that the move will be wildly unpopular, the administration doesn't want the change to go into effect until after 2018 midterms, so Americans won't be able take out their anger in the voting booth.
Make no mistake: Regardless of how it's presented or when it would take effect, the Trump administration is taking aim at millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions — and as long as Republicans remain in control of Congress, they'll be waiting in the wings to assist in the effort. | 5,285 |
He goes out to his truck to get some tools and Jeff arrives. We watch together as he removes the cable, coils it up, and prepares to take it with him.
“Just leave that here,” I say.
“Why?”
“I just want to keep it,” I tell him. I figure when I drop off my computer for analysis in a few days, I’ll send along the mystery cable, too. The Verizon technician seems hesitant but puts down the cable on top of the air-conditioning fan next to us. We continue to chat and I make a mental note: Don’t leave the cable there. If you do, it might disappear. The Verizon man really seems to want to take it. Am I imagining that?[hr]
Read excerpt #1 here: The Computer Intrusions: Up at Night
Read excerpt #2 here: Big Brother: First Warnings
Read excerpt #3 here: The Computer Intrusions: Disappearing Act[hr]
Jeff and I walk the technician back to his truck. Jeff has a few more questions for him but it’s chilly outside and I leave the two of them to finish their conversation.
A couple of days later, I’m driving to work when I remember the cable. I call my husband at home.
“Go get that cable off the air-conditioning fan,” I tell him.
I listen as he walks outside with the phone to look. “It’s gone.” “Gone? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s nowhere around here,” he says. Also gone are several
other pieces of wire that Jeff had pulled up from the ground in front of the Verizon man.
“Well what happened to it?”
“The Verizon guy must’ve come back and taken it,” my husband speculates.
Later, at the office, I decide to call the Verizon technician and ask him myself. I want to know if he took the cable after I’d said to leave it, and why. More important, I hope he still has it so that I can have it examined. I have that handwritten business card he gave me. I call the phone number on it, it rolls me to his voice mail, and I leave a message. But he doesn’t call back. That day or any other. I call almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for the next month. But the once- helpful Verizon man never responds. | 5,286 |
We are very excited to announce that we are now making the Runbox 7 App available as open source software!
Runbox 7 is our new Webmail service currently in open beta, featuring unprecedented email indexing and search capabilities. It’s the first product whose source code we are making publicly available, and marks a major milestone for Runbox.
Open source software powers most of the Internet, and makes up a large part of the platform Runbox is running on. Now Runbox 7 will become part of this global collaboration, and you can join in by visiting the Runbox repository on Github: https://github.com/runbox.
Why we are going open source
Runbox has utilized and promoted open source software since the very beginning, and we owe much of our success to the open source community.
Now we’re contributing back to the community with the front-end of Runbox 7, which will allow others to review our code and verify that it’s safe and secure.
It also allows others to copy and modify the codebase for their own use, and contribute back to Runbox and our community.
Additionally it means that we will automatically publish the Runbox 7 changelog and issues, and even let Runbox users create issues for bug reports or feature requests.
Why we chose GPLv3
It was important to Runbox that we ensure that any derivative work remains open source, which the GNU General Public License does.
Another reason for selecting the GPLv3 license is that Runbox 7 utilizes the open source Xapian search engine library which is licensed under GPLv2.
What’s new in Runbox 7
Runbox 7 isn’t merely an upgrade to our existing services, it’s a bold step into a new world of synchronized Webmail apps that provide unprecedented speed and usability.
Our new app is the cornerstone of Runbox 7, and is the first of several development stages that will culminate in a completely new user interface.
Runbox 7 Webmail currently features superior speed, incremental search, infinite listing, inline message previews, threaded conversation views, web push notifications, and a Progressive Web App for mobile phones.
Contributing to Runbox 7
In the future we plan to publish the entire Runbox 7 codebase including the backend, but you can already develop the Runbox 7 App while using the Runbox servers as the backend.
More information about this can be found at https://github.com/runbox/Runbox7.
Ready to give it a test drive? Head to https://runbox.com/app! | 5,287 |
Warning: The photos in the story may be distressing to readers.
A U.K. woman nearly lost her top lip after it ballooned and split following a botched filler injection.
Rachael Knappier was left in excruciating pain after the procedure at a Botox party in August.
The 29-year-old claims she was injected by an unqualified beautician who hit an artery causing necrosis.
After being turned away from the National Health Service, Knappier, from Leicestershire in the U.K., endured three rounds of dissolving treatment at a specialist clinic in London before her lips reduced in size.
“I had filler in the past to even up a lump on my lip from an accident I had as a child, it left me with an uneven lip,” Knappier told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview.
“Just one of those things I was insecure about I suppose.”
Knappier, who is head of operations at a law firm, was having an injection in her forehead when the beautician pointed out the lump on her lip, claiming she could fix it.
She agreed to the procedure, but woke up in agony in the early hours after her lip tripled in size.
Following her recovery, Knappier launched a petition in September calling for more regulation in the aesthetic medical industry. She went public with her experience about two weeks ago.
“People need to do their research, use my mistake as their lesson,” she told CTV News.
Knappier urged people considering similar procedures to ask questions about how long the person administering the treatment has been qualified and what the emergency procedure is.
“I went off a recommendation from a friend, I should have researched more,” she told CTV News.
Kanppier said aesthetic treatments should only be performed by medical professionals.
“Every day we are hearing horror stories involving inexperienced and unqualified people administering medical treatments such as botox and derma fillers,” she said.
“There is an increasing need to regulate the aesthetic medical industry and provide awareness on the dangers.”
There is no legislation in the U.K. that prevents non-medical professionals from delivering injectable cosmetic treatments.
Health Canada regulates the safety, efficacy and quality of health products and consumers can report complaints about fillers or other medical devices here.
According to the Canadian Association of Medical Spas and Aesthetic Surgeons, Botox should only be given by or under the direction of "a licensed and authorized health-care professional.” | 5,288 |
Analysis - The fault in the fuel pipeline from Marsden Point has produced calls for better care of all New Zealand's infrastructure, with industry leaders saying there should be more regular checks of pipes and wires and better backup for when things go wrong.
Photo: RNZ / Lois Williams
Reports prepared for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment from 2012 found it would not be cost effective to provide a second pipeline in case the first one fails.
Nor would it be cost effective to have enough fuel stored in tanks to keep an area supplied for the full duration of a pipeline failure.
Almost no industry maintains 100 percent back up systems for failures that fall into the category of low-probability, high-impact events.
Many commercial businesses operate a just-in-time system, to keep storage costs for unsold goods to a minimum. That leaves very little room for error, but when it comes to vital infrastructure, the view differs.
Stephen Selwood from Infrastructure New Zealand said the country had muddled through previous infrastructure failures.
"They all have a ripple effect across the economy, they impact on jobs, they impact on incomes for businesses, they impact on core services, medical services etc."
The Maui gas pipeline failed due to a landslip in 2011, costing the economy up to $175 million a day, according to the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.
There were two huge power blackouts in Auckland in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the vital Manawatu Gorge has been blocked twice in the past decade.
Earlier this year a Commerce Commission report said many power companies had out of date transformers, switching gear and power poles.
Mr Selwood said whoever won the next election would need to deal with this.
"The incoming government should give priority to reviewing all strategic infrastructural networks," he said.
"We have had too many incidents in the last few years and I would suggest we need oversight by a permanent commission.
"We have the Commerce Commission... we have the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Enviornment... but we do not have any central organisation for national infrastructure and this is an enormous gap in our strategic governance of New Zealand."
Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett has a similar view.
"Whether it's roading, whether it's electricity, whether it's fuel storage, these are things we can see coming, and we don't plan well enough for them," he told Morning Report this morning.
"We need to make decisions quicker than we do, and instead of being in catch-up mode, we need to have infrastructure that is growing for a growing population." | 5,289 |
Slim teen brunette with a hot, round ass getting hardcore rammed and filled with black cock. She clutches the sheets and moans hard before cumming. After kneeling down on the floor a small, petite teen get her naked and juicy mouth around a throbbing and long cock. She then gets pushed onto her knees and filled up from behind. After getting naked and agreeing to get recorded a petite and slim brunette is on her stomach, clutching the sheets while getting hardcore rammed from behind by her well endowed black lover. After getting naked with her black lover a teem blonde with a nice figure starts sucking him off. She expertly lubes up the pole and then gets it deep into her velvety tunnel. After getting his hands deep into her panties a black stud makes a petite, dark haired teen so wet she has no choice but to fuck him. Petite teen on her knees licking up and sucking off a massive and throbbing cock. She looks so content while doing it even thought it's too big for her. This teen wife still wants to be wild, so she found a black stud with a huge dick who bangs her like a slut and fills her pussy up to the max. Teen slut dressed in black lingerie seductively suckling in her black lover's massive cock and getting it deep down after jerking and rubbing it.
A slim black man keeps ramming his massive pole deep inside a teen babe with natural blonde hair. She is on her knees and moaning like and experienced whore while the cock slips in and out of her. A tall black hunk keeps ramming and jamming his massive and shaved tool into the deep and wet hole on a horny and good looking blonde teen. While flat on her stomach a blonde and pale teen gets her holes stretched with a plastic toy before her black lover and his massive, shaved pole get deep inside her. Old babe with bleached blonde hair and massive fake tits sucking on a black teen's rod before getting rammed and hardcore slammed from behind. At first she is on her back getting humped and hardcore fucked before getting onto her knees. First she is fingered and rubbed from behind and then moans in ecstasy after the rod goes deep inside her velvety tunnel. After stripping and teasing all around the house a brunette with small tits gets on her knees and is more than happy to receive a massive black cock into her needy and stretchy holes. After her lover is naked a tanned teen with small tits gets on the bed and is looking up to her black hun while rubbing and stimulating his cock. A ebony babe gets onto her small back and has her tight slit plowed and hardcore rammed by a mature man's rock hard pole. | 5,290 |
developers found a loophole in the city's wetland policy.
"The wetland policy protects wetlands that were [previously] mapped, and wetlands that were above the 190 metre contour line were never really proposed or accessible for development," he said.
Piers Evans, project coordinator with the Northeast Avalon Atlantic Coastal Action Program says Galway's developers are taking advantage of a loophole in the city's policies. (Paula Gale/CBC)
"We have this odd scenario here where this wetland is exposed, the city policy doesn't cover it … now there's this technicality that allows this wetland to be exposed to development."
Evans said the 2014 plan sacrifices wetlands in exchange for areas of forest cover.
"The problem is that this compensation doesn't really work out," he said.
"The ecosystem services provided by wetlands and the ecosystem services provided by forest habitat are not equivalent."
A 'preservation model'
Dewcor CFO Craig Hippern, meanwhile, said the company is committed to preserving the natural environment in and around Galway.
He said the company used nationally-recognized best practices and engaged three different experts to identify the areas to be preserved, then tailored the the original survey to create a natural protected area with added trees and shrubs.
The Galway plan … is a preservation model for other developments in the city, and in fact the province. - Craig Hippern
"It creates a wide, fully-connected and protected area, and that helps support — much more so than the irregular shape of the original wetlands," Hippern said.
"It supports the pollination of plants and the movement of animals and is safe refuge for nesting birds and things of that nature. We've had a nationally renowned ecological expert [state] that the Galway plan, the revised plan and providing these buffers, is a preservation model for other developments in the city, and in fact the province."
Galway Boulevard, in the Galway development of St. John's (Bruce Tilley/CBC)
Hippern said Dewcor will protect a 170 acre wetland area and has spent millions of dollars to protect natural areas and wetlands.
He said the company has also worked closely with the city to put in services to Galway, and that one small edge of the the wetland was used for trunk sewer, in accordance with the 2014 report.
Hippern said it is important to consider the work of the environmental experts his company has consulted with, and he's hopeful council sees the benefits of the development.
With files from the St. John's Morning Show
Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador | 5,291 |
What makes a hit? A catchy hook? A good beat? Even the experts can't really explain what the recipe is. "You can check off all of those checkboxes," says Keith Caulfield, an associate director at Billboard, "but it doesn't necessarily mean that song is going to become a hit. Because otherwise everyone would have a hit single and we'd all be incredibly wealthy, and it doesn't work that way."
But ask the question differently, and you might get a better answer. Joseph Nunes, a marketing professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, decided to try: "What distinguishes the top hits from songs that made it to a broad audience but didn't get that power of a number one?"
Nunes hired a team of grad students to classify each Billboard number one hit, over 50 years of pop music, by its core configuration of sounds and instruments. But they also listened to the bottom dwellers: tracks that never made it above number 90. When the data were in, they found that the most successful configurations all featured background vocals. And the least successful configurations were conspicuously missing them.
All in all, about 60 percent of the Billboardnumber one hits had backup vocals. So while putting backup singers on your track won't guarantee a hit, it's the most significant distinguishing factor between winners and losers. Nunes and his co-author Andrea Ordanini published the study in Music Scienti: The Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. The results make sense to Keith Caulfield. "People like harmonies, they like groups of voices that sound good together. It makes them feel good." Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, chalks this effect up to what she calls imaginative participation, which she has observed in the brain. "When a subject is lying in an fMRI scanner, listening, you see all this activity in motor planning regions. So there's this very literal sense in which some kind of participatory mechanisms are at play." Margulis says these phantom motor impulses make sense when one considers the evolution of music: passive listening is a relatively modern phenomenon. "If you look at the way music is used historically and across cultures, you'll find it's used in ritual, and everybody's joining in and playing and dancing and hanging out together."
For a listener, backup singers help us imagine ourselves in the music. "When people are asked to describe their peak musical experiences," Margulis adds, "when music was really blowing their minds, they talk about a sense of merging with the music." If you can't carry the melody, backup singers let you join the crowd. | 5,292 |
According to The Sunday Times, the latest issue of the ISIS ‘Al-Naba’ newsletter refers to a new set of “sharia directives” warning against travel to Europe.
The Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group has issued a travel advisory for its operatives to steer clear of coronavirus-hit Europe, described as “the land of the epidemic”.
According to The Sunday Times, the latest issue of the ISIS Al-Naba newsletter refers to a new set of “sharia directives” warning against travel to Europe.
The West Asia-based terror outfit, which has in the past encouraged operatives to plot attacks in Europe, also instructed those of its followers who may have become ill with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) not to leave the region, in order to prevent the disease spreading.
The newsletter says that the “healthy should not enter the land of the epidemic and the afflicted should not exit from it”. It also instructs followers to “cover their mouths when yawning and sneezing” and to wash their hands regularly.
The newsletter refers to a “plague” described as a “torment sent by God on whomsoever He wills”, adding: “Illnesses do not strike by themselves but by the command and decree of God.”
ISIS has lost a lot of ground in West Asia after a series of defeats, but it remains active in Iraq and Syria in a fragmented form. West Asia has also been hit by the virus outbreak, with Iraq reporting 101 cases and 10 deaths from COVID-19.
Read | Over 230 Indians evacuated from Iran, quarantined at Army wellness centre in Jaisalmer
Europe is now the epicentre of the worldwide pandemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with Italy, France and Spain all banning public gatherings and the U.K. set to follow suit as the virus claimed over 5,300 lives around the world.
In Italy, 2,547 new COVID-19 cases were reported and 252 deaths on Saturday, the highest number of deaths in a single day since the outbreak began.
Also Read | 44 Indian pilgrims evacuated from Iran
Italy has now confirmed 21,157 cases, second highest in the world after China.
As of Saturday, in Spain the number of COVID-19 cases have reached 5,753 people, half of them in Madrid.
The deadly virus has claimed over 5,300 lives and infected more than 142,000 people across 135 countries and territories, with the World Health Organization describing the outbreak a pandemic on Wednesday. | 5,293 |
blesses it, absorbing 1979 revenue losses of $2.6 billion from taxes it might have levied on housing transactions. No wonder there is a curious sense of resignation in a time when popular reading consists of real estate books such as Nothing Down and Crisis Investing. Calgary’s Dan Mothersill is a “boomie” with a sense of the new game. He seems content to lose his house if interest rates continue high. He says he will simply invest his 30to 36-per-cent profit and go back to renting. In the 1980s, houses are for buying and selling, not for living in. “We’re dealing with a gypsy economy,” Mothersill shrugs. “People have to develop gypsy lifestyles.”
With files from Diane Luckow, Suzanne Zwarun, Dale Eisler, Peter Carlyle-Gordge, Ann Walmsley, Ann Beirne, Sue Calhoun and Ann MacGregor.
The little house that grew
It’s more of a cottage than a house. The daffodils were ringing the little place on Vancouver’s West 30th Avenue late last week. A new coating of pale-green stucco glinted dully in the spring sunshine. Inevitably, some realtor in its 57-year history must have labelled it an “ideal starter home” for a young family. It had certainly been a good house for Etherl Middleton. She had lived in it for decades. When she moved out in 1977, she sold it for $51,000 to a new couple as their first home. It seemed like a lot of money to her, but those were strange times. Something similar must have crossed the mind of Katherine MacRae recently when she
bought the little green-roofed house for $215,000.
It’s the hunger for land, of course, and the location of the 10-metre by 40metre lot on Vancouver’s West Side that really matter. The couple who bought for $51,000 put in two bedrooms and a bathroom in the basement. In 1978, they sold to a veterinarian for $76,000. A year later, a husband and wife team, both professors, picked it up for $82,500. They landscaped the small front yard, plugged the leaky walls with insulation and moved a wall. The $215,000 they got for it raises no eyebrows in Vancouver and will certainly mean it will be a very long time before the little house with the daffodils will be anybody’s first home again. —T.H. | 5,294 |
The Indian rupee kicked off 2019 on a resounding note, building up on gains of the previous two sessions and adding another 34 paise on Tuesday to close at 69.43 against the U.S. dollar on increased selling of the greenback by exporters and smart gains in domestic equities.
The domestic unit has rallied by a hefty 92 paise in the last three trading sessions.
Traders said sustained selling of the American currency by exporters and banks propped up the rupee.
At the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex), the rupee opened on a firm note at 69.63. It gained further to hit a high of 69.43 following dollar selling by exporters, before finally closing at 69.43, up 34 paise.
On Monday, the rupee signed off the last trading session of 2018 with 18 paise gains at 69.77 per dollar.
However, the domestic currency clocked a 9.23% fall in 2018.
On year-over-year basis, the rupee depreciated by a whopping 509 paise, or 9.23%, as compared to 2017-end level of 63.87.
Domestic brokerage firm Kotak Institutional Equities in a research report said that the year 2019 seems to be a better starting point in terms of valuation, currency.
“The INR seems to be fairly valued; we see mild depreciation in 2019 compared to the sharp correction that it saw in 2018,” the report said.
Traders said, a positive trend in the domestic equities also supported the local unit.
Indian equity market started the New Year on a positive note, with BSE benchmark Sensex rising over 186 points on Tuesday. The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 36,254.57, rising 186.24 points or 0.52%. Similarly, the NSE Nifty ended at 10,910.10, gaining 47.55 points or 0.44%.
Meanwhile, foreign funds pulled out ₹326.87 crore from the capital markets on a net basis, while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth ₹321.98 crore on Monday, provisional data showed.
The dollar index was trading down by 0.31% at 95.87 against a basket of six currencies in the late afternoon trade.
The Financial Benchmark India Private Ltd (FBIL) set the reference rate for the rupee/dollar at 69.7131 and for rupee/euro at 79.9330. The reference rate for rupee/British pound was fixed at 88.9748 and for rupee/100 Japanese yen at 63.57. | 5,295 |
A security researcher has discovered that changes to Directory Services in Lion make it much easier to access and potentially crack hashed user passwords. Worse yet, it is possible for any user to change the currently logged in user's password, making it much easier to gain root remotely.
According to researcher Patrick Dunstan, Directory Services' command line utility can be run by any user. By itself, this isn't necessarily a security problem, but at least two functions make it trivial to access user password hashes or even change the current user's password without administrator authentication.
Using Directory Services to read a user's profile doesn't normally show password information; it is usually stored in a shadow file that only the root user can access. However, using a "Search" directory path will show a range of extended attributes for the user, including the user's hashed password.
Running the command:
$ dscl localhost -read /Search/Users/currentuser
will include the following output:
dsAttrTypeNative:ShadowHashData: 62706c69 73743030 d101025d 53414c54 45442d53 48413531 324f1044 74911f72 3bd2f66a 3255e0af 4b85c639 776d510b 63f0b939 c432ab6e 082286c4 7586f19b 4e2f3aab 74229ae1 24ccb11e 916a7a1c 9b29c64b d6b0fd6c bd22e7b1 f0ba1673 080b1900 00000000 00010100 00000000 00000300 00000000 00000000 00000000 000060
As Dunstan notes, hackers can use the hashed data to attempt to crack the actual password.
Perhaps an even easier attack vector, though, is using Directory Services to simply change the current user's password. Attempting to change the current user's password via Directory Services will simply result in a prompt for a new password without a request for administrator authentication. If a remote user can gain shell access, they could use this method to simply change the password of the current user. If that user is an admin, the hacker could use sudo to run as root. If not, the hacker may still be able to access hashes of other users and attempt to crack them.
Dunstan recommends limiting access to Directory Services command line utility until Apple can issue a patch for these issues. If you are comfortable in Terminal, running the following command as an admin will limit other users from being able to run Directory Services:
$ sudo chmod 100 /usr/bin/dscl | 5,296 |
Merseyside likely to enjoy the best weather, with some areas of the UK hotter than Athens
The UK will continue to bask in a heatwave this week with temperatures expected to rise to a scorching 33C (91.4F).
Parts of the UK are currently hotter than Athens, and on a par with Kuala Lumpur and Rio de Janeiro.
On Monday temperatures peaked at 30.1C in Hampton in west London, with all of the UK enjoying a hot start to the week.
Merseyside is likely to enjoy the hottest weather on Tuesday, the Met Office said, with highs of 31C forecast. Temperatures are set to rise, with a possible high of 33C on Thursday, meteorologist Alex Burkill said, soaring above the UK average for this time of year of 17.3C.
The fine, hot weather is even set to continue into next month, according to Burkill. “At the moment it looks like that will be the general theme through much of July,” he said.
Police and public health services issued warnings about the weather. The Met Office’s heat-health watch alert is now set at level two, meaning social and healthcare services are at the ready to reduce harm from a potential heatwave.
Police have also urged people to be careful of the temptation to swim in open water in the hot weather. The warning came after the body of a man was recovered from a lake in Nutfield at the start of the week.
A search for a missing child at Westport Lake in Stoke-on-Trent resumed on Tuesday morning, after emergency services were called to reports that three children were in distress in the water. Two of the children are safe and well, Staffordshire police said.
Dr Thomas Waite of Public Health England urged people to keep in mind those who may be vulnerable, including the elderly, young children and those with underlying health conditions for whom he said the summer heat could bring real health risks.
“That’s why we’re urging everyone to keep an eye on those you know who may be at risk this summer. If you’re able, ask if your friends, family or neighbours need any support.”
Network Rail’s extreme weather action teams are being activated across the country to monitor vulnerable locations. Services on the London Waterloo to New Malden line are being subjected to speed restrictions from 11am each day until Friday.
Network Rail said hot weather can cause the steel on rail lines to expand and in some cases buckle, causing travel disruption. Slower trains exert lower forces on the track, reducing the likelihood of buckling. | 5,297 |
the dressing room prior to the game, Carwyn goaded Phil Bennett, saying "Phil you have a great sidestep, but I don't suppose you will use it. Yet these All Blacks are made to be sidestepped, you could sidestep them off the park". With these words ringing in his ears in just the third minute of the game, Phil Bennett would show several sidesteps deep in his own half that put in motion arguably the greatest team try ever scored on a rugby union pitch. The game itself was a classic, and if readers have yet to see the game in its entirety, I cannot recommend highly enough that you watch it.
Again a team coached by Carwyn James came out on top against New Zealand, with the scoreline 23-9 to the Barbarians.
For the next few years, Carwyn James would remain as Llanelli coach with many successes. However in 1977, to the surprise of many, he took up a coaching role at Rovigo, in Italy. He remained coach of Rovigo for three years, changing their playing style and encouraging players to play his brand of attacking rugby.
They won the Italian Championship under his command, and the trophy was awarded to the team by Pope John Paul II, who commented to Carwyn that he had been told that rugby was a very rough game. James’ response was to tell the Pope that it was not rough if played properly, again encapsulating his beliefs on how the game should be played.
He felt more comfortable in Italy, immersing himself in the culture and developing his poetry, unable to express himself fully in his own country. Even now, he is adored by Italian rugby fans for what he achieved with his team. There is still to this day an annual youth tournament played in Italy in his honour.
After his time in Italy, James drifted out of the game, and this great man full of rugby knowledge was not being put to use. He had put on a lot of weight, was smoking in excess of 50 cigarettes a day, and had an unquenchable thirst for a drink, regardless of company.
On the 10th January 1983 in Amsterdam, Holland, Carwyn James passed away in his hotel room, at only 53 years of age.
Carwyn James was a true rugby legend, and one of the greatest coaches that has ever lived. He was a man who had the magical touch over the All Blacks, and whose brand of rugby was a delight to watch.
Filed under: British & Irish Lions, Legend Series, Wales
Written by: Craig Muncey
Follow: @CraigMuncey · @therugbymag | 5,298 |
The mystery surrounding the envelopes containing explosive devices that have been sent to prominent Democratic political and entertainment figures across the country grew more complex Friday, as authorities located another suspicious package addressed to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
The package was found in a Florida mail facility, the FBI confirmed Friday, and reportedly featured an address in Camden, New Jersey, NBC News reported. It was similar in appearance to the 10 others recovered this week.
New York City police also cleared an area of midtown Manhattan Friday morning following reports of a suspicious package in a postal facility. The object inside appeared to be a pipe bomb, according to The Associated Press.
It was reportedly addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at CNN’s New York office, the network said, where he is a contributor.
“This is definitely domestic terrorism,” Clapper told CNN Friday after learning he was a target. “No question about it in my mind.”
He added that he was relieved no one had been hurt, and that he was not surprised to find himself a target.
Packages containing potential bombs have been mailed this week to high-profile Democrats including Hillary and Bill Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and former CIA Director John Brennan via CNN’s New York City offices. (Brennan is a contributor for NBC and MSNBC.)
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a prominent Democratic donor, received one earlier in the week. A New York City address connected to frequent Trump critic Robert De Niro also received a package Thursday morning.
All packages ― manila envelopes with bubble wrap lining ― listed Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, as the return sender.
Miami-Dade police said they joined federal teams in investigating the Opa-Locka postal facility as a “precautionary measure” on Thursday. Several of the packages passed through this facility, according to CNN and The New York Times.
Authorities have yet to share a motive, but the Department of Justice said one person had been taken into custody as of Friday morning. Law enforcement officials told the news outlet that some of this work includes forensic examinations and data analysis from cell towers, the Times said.
None of the suspected pipe bombs have detonated, but New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said Thursday that authorities were treating them as “live devices.”
“This is something that should be taken seriously,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates. | 5,299 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.