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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio boasts of being the only Republican presidential candidate to have dealt a blow to Obamacare — but he’s also insured under the law.
Rubio’s campaign confirmed to NBC News that the GOP presidential candidate and his family remain insured under the law, through the D.C. exchange. He first signed up in 2013, at which point spokeswoman Brooke Sammon told the Tampa Bay Times that Rubio “spent time looking at all the options and decided to enroll through the D.C. exchange for coverage for him and his family.”
He’s not alone — Sen. Rand Paul signed up for health insurance under the law in 2013, as did all of congressional leadership at the time. Sen. Ted Cruz received insurance at the time from his wife’s employer, Goldman Sachs, and now has private insurance.
But Rubio’s decision to accept a federal subsidy offered to congressional lawmakers and their staff could complicate his declaration on the trail that he’s successfully undermined the law. Rubio frequently touts his efforts to eliminate what he calls a taxpayer-funded “bailout” included in Obamacare, a fund set up in the health care law to help offset losses experienced by insurers as they took on new patients and help keep premiums down.
The Florida senator, however, benefits from a taxpayer-funded subsidy offered only to members of Congress and their staff valued at $10,000, far greater than the subsidies offered to most Americans who purchase insurance on the exchanges. The subsidy was established after Congress passed a law requiring its members to be insured under Obamacare, a move that effectively eliminated the employer contribution they received prior to joining the exchanges. The $10,000 subsidy merely re-establishes that employer contribution.
Still, the decision by some Republicans to accept the subsidy while railing against the law drew criticism, and other GOP lawmakers, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, another GOP presidential contender, signed up for Obamacare but denied the subsidy.
Indeed, some Republican lawmakers have been pushing since 2013 to eliminate the subsidy, criticizing it, as Graham did in 2013, as a “special deal” for lawmakers. It could prove a particular sticking point for Rubio as his feud with Cruz heats up, as Cruz planned to file an amendment to a must-pass spending bill to eliminate the subsidy as recently as July of this year.
A Rubio spokesman confirmed the senator is still accepting the subsidy. In 2013, Rubio defended the move, telling the Miami Herald that “it’s an [employer] contribution.”
“It’s available to every employee of the federal government,” he said at the time.
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The Republican National Committee (RNC) approved a resolution that would require parents to consent to their children’s participation in public school sex ed curricula only through an “opt in” process rather than one that invites parents to “opt out.”
Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, which released a press statement about the resolution, said:
This resolution approved by the Republican National Committee protects children from harmful and often illegal human sexuality content in the public schools. Parents deserve the right to know what their children are being taught and an opportunity to consent to it. The fact that the Republican Party has formally supported an ‘opt-in’ process over a flawed and meaningless ‘opt-out’ system should be applauded.
As Liberty Counsel notes, though many state laws and local school policies often require parents to be notified about sex ed curricula and then, if desired, request their child be exempted from participation, the policies are often not carried out as written:
[T]hese policies have been manipulated in many cases as districts do not always provide a complete description of the materials, make access difficult, and include the “opt out” forms with the flood of other permission slips and forms that parents have to fill out at the beginning of the school year. As a result, parents do not have effective notice of what their children will be exposed to or chance to opt them out. The “opt out” laws are also usually limited to “human sexuality instruction” or “sex ed” and do not cover other subjects in which the materials would be offered.
Cynthia Dunbar, the RNC member for Virginia, drafted the resolution – that was approved unanimously – and that seeks to also repeal obscenity exemptions.
“[P]arents are a child’s first and foremost educators, and have primary responsibility for the education of their children,” the resolution states. “Parents have a right to direct their children’s education, care, and upbringing.”
“[E]ducation is much more than schooling,” it continues. “Education is the whole range of activities by which families and communities transmit to a younger generation, not just knowledge and skills, but ethical and behavioral norms and traditions. It is the handing over of a cultural identity.”
The RNC approved the resolution “that public schools must disclose the content contained within human sexuality instruction to the parents and/or guardians of all unemancipated students and shall only enroll those students whose parents and/or guardians provide prior written permission to opt their student into human sexuality instruction.”
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President Trump Donald John TrumpFederal prosecutor speaks out, says Barr 'has brought shame' on Justice Dept. Former Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick MORE’s visit to Baltimore on Thursday is expected to be met with protests after he blasted its majority-black congressional district as a "rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live" earlier this year.
A coalition of local groups is planning to hold a protest, titled “Trump out of Baltimore,” according to a Facebook page for the demonstration. The groups include ICE Out of Baltimore, Peoples Power Assembly, Youth Against War & Racism, and one referred to as the Baltimore Welcoming Committee.
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An organizer behind the planned demonstration, Miranda Bachman, said in a press statement that the “people of Baltimore, especially young people, are deeply opposed to Trump’s policies of racism and division, whether it’s his attacks on migrants or refugees or his not so veiled racist attacks on Black and Brown people.”
Sharon Black, another organizer who is involved with the Peoples Power Assembly, said that the president’s policies are “anti-people, anti-worker and absolutely pro banks and big business; he is ramping up hate to divide people to weaken any movement to oppose the rich getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer.”
“Trump’s base of supporters includes not only big oil, bankers and business interests; it also includes neo-Nazis and white supremacists. We need unity and solidarity which is one of the major reasons we are protesting,” she added.
“Hey, the real rat is Trump himself!” both organizers also exclaimed in a press release for the event.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 150 people have signed up to attend the demonstration via Facebook. More than 500 people have indicated interest in the protest.
Trump is set to arrive in the city later on Thursday to speak at a GOP House retreat.
The visit is his first time stepping foot in the city since blasting the district as a “very dangerous & filthy place” and its congressman, Rep. Elijah Cummings Elijah Eugene CummingsBlack GOP candidate accuses Behar of wearing black face in heated interview Overnight Health Care: US won't join global coronavirus vaccine initiative | Federal panel lays out initial priorities for COVID-19 vaccine distribution | NIH panel: 'Insufficient data' to show treatment touted by Trump works House Oversight Democrats to subpoena AbbVie in drug pricing probe MORE (D), as a "racist."
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experiment. The lower panel shows the synaptic weight distribution predicted by the PCM device model Full size image
First, we perform small-scale experiments in which multi-memristive synapses with PCM devices are used to store the synaptic weights. The network comprises 1000 synapses, of which only 100 receive temporally correlated inputs with a correlation coefficient c of 0.75. The difficulty in detecting whether an input is correlated or not increases both with decreasing c and decreasing number of correlated inputs. Hence, detecting only 10% correlated inputs with c < 1 is a fairly difficult task and requires precise synaptic weight changes for the network to be trained effectively51. Each synapse comprises N PCM devices organized in a non-differential architecture. During the weight update of a synapse, a single potentiation pulse or a single depression pulse is applied to one of the devices the selection counter points to. A depression counter with a maximum value of 2 is incorporated for N > 1 to balance the PCM asymmetry. Figure 5(b) depicts the synaptic weights at the end of the experiment for different values of N. To quantify the separation of the weights receiving correlated and uncorrelated inputs, we set a threshold weight that leads to the lowest number of misclassifications. The number of misclassified inputs were 49, 8, and 0 for N = 1, 3, and 7, respectively. This demonstrates that the network’s ability to detect temporal correlations increases with the number of devices. This holds true even for lower values of the correlation coefficient as shown in Supplementary Note 6. With N = 1, there are strong abrupt fluctuations in the evolution of the conductance values because of the abrupt depression events as shown in Fig. 5(c). With N = 7, a more gradual potentiation and depression behavior is observed. For N = 7, the synapses receiving correlated and uncorrelated inputs can be perfectly separated at the end of the experiments. In contrast, the weights of correlated inputs display a wider weight distribution and there are numerous misclassified weights for N = 1.
The multi-memristive synapse architecture is also scalable to larger network sizes. To demonstrate this, we repeated the above correlation experiment with 144,000 input streams, and with seven PCM devices per synapse, resulting in more than one million PCM devices in the network. As shown in Fig. 5(d), well-separated synaptic distributions have been achieved in the network at the end of the experiment. Moreover, a simulation was performed with the nonlinear PCM device model (see Methods). The simulation captures the separation of weights receiving correlated and uncorrelated inputs. In both experiment and simulation, ∼0.1% of the inputs were misclassified after training.
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The new welfare reform and work bill will be very damaging for disabled people. From April next year, new claimants of employment and support allowance (ESA) who are placed in the work-related activity group (which means they are deemed likely to be able to work in the future) face a 30% cut – nearly £30 a week – compared to what existing claimants receive today.
The cut is estimated to produce annual savings of £640m by 2020-21, but at the cost of further hardship to disabled people who are already poor and, by definition, unable to work. It’s hard enough for existing ESA recipients to get by on £5,300 a year, but for new claimants to have to survive on just £3,800 is devastating.
There’s no logic in this proposal. That is why the Disability Benefits Consortium has organised a lobby of parliament on 13 January. The claim that disabled people are more likely to get a job if their benefit is cut doesn’t stand up. In fact a review I chaired for the House of Lords last year found that the opposite is true. What stops disabled people getting jobs is not the financial disincentive of ESA, but employer attitudes, individuals’ health, difficulties with public transport, as well as lack of qualifications, experience, confidence and job opportunities.
If the government wants to halve the current employment gap for disabled people it needs proper investment and support programmes that do what they are supposed to – a point made by Iain Duncan Smith in a speech last summer.
Disabled people find it much harder to get and keep jobs, compared with non-disabled people. Their chances will be even less if they’re unable to pay telephone or broadband bills, or afford smart clothes, transport to interviews or the jobcentre – all necessities for job searching.
We need a more rigorous assessment of proposed cuts, which takes into account not just immediate savings to the welfare budget, but the impact on disabled people, as well as the knock-on effects on health and social services.
We need better support for disabled people who want to work. According to a survey by Disability Rights UK, 78% of disabled people want a wider range of support options they could purchase, with the money paid to companies funded to provide government schemes. Better targeted resources mean better value for the taxpayer, and a lower welfare bill.
What we don’t need is yet another benefit cut – a cut that will drive some of the poorest households in the country into further poverty, that penalises people who are too sick and disabled to work, and that will make it harder for them to get the very jobs the government says it wants them to get.
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A man who threatened to kill the family of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was today sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Markara Man, a 33-year-old from California, pleaded guilty on August 31, 2018 after making threats to Pai because he disagreed with the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules. In one email to Pai, Man wrote, "I will find your children and kill them."
"Threatening to actually kill a federal official’s family because of a disagreement over policy is not only inexcusable, it is criminal,” US Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia said in a Justice Department announcement of the sentencing today. The case was heard at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Man was sentenced to 20 months in prison with credit for time served, along with supervised release for three years with special conditions. Those conditions include participating in a substance abuse program and mental health treatment as well as paying "any outstanding balancing towards his location monitoring financial obligation." During the supervised release, Man will not be allowed to use or possess a computer without probation officer approval, and he will have to comply with computer monitoring requirements.
Days after the FCC's December 2017 vote to repeal of net neutrality rules, Man sent three emails to Pai.
"The first email accused Chairman Pai of being responsible for a child who allegedly had committed suicide because of the repeal of net neutrality regulations," the Justice Department announcement said. "The second email listed three locations in or around Arlington and threatened to kill the Chairman’s family members. The third email had no message in its body, but included an image depicting Chairman Pai and, in the foreground and slightly out of focus, a framed photograph of Chairman Pai and his family. The FBI traced the emails to Man’s residence in Norwalk, California, and when initially confronted in May 2018, Man admitted to the FBI that he sent the email threatening Chairman Pai’s family."
Man pleaded guilty to the crime of intimidating, interfering with, or retaliating against a federal official by threatening to murder a family member. He could have faced as much as 10 years in prison.
When Man admitted making the threats, he told federal law enforcement officers that he was angry about the net neutrality repeal because "they pretty much ignored, like, 80 percent of comments... they ignored us, and just didn't care," according to an FBI affidavit. Man's attorney attributed his actions to mental illness, telling the court that his client was being successfully treated.
After Man's guilty plea last year, Pai issued a statement thanking law enforcement and FCC security officials "for their hard work protecting my family and me."
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We’ve received a number of questions from BitGo customers about how to handle their wallets come August 1st. As you probably have read, there are two potential chain splitting events coming:
The BIP148 UASF The Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork (also known as the UAHF)
Overall, because all BitGo users hold their own keys, BitGo is safe for storage of Bitcoin during these events. To be extra careful, you can avoid transactions around this time period, but as of this writing we do not believe there is reason to do so.
Here is a short question-and-answer to help BitGo wallet users:
Do I need to do anything due to the UASF?
No. Because the segregated witness (segwit) feature is well on its way to activation, UASF will not be a significant event on August 1st. Do I need to do anything due to the Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork?
No. At this time, Bitcoin Cash plans to implement two-way replay protection, meaning that all transactions specifically declare which chain they are intended for. You can safely spend BTC on the existing chain without losing the possibility of spending coins on the Bitcoin Cash chain in the future. Will all BitGo wallets operate normally, web as well as API, regardless of any kind of chain splitting events?
Yes. BitGo wallets will function normally. Do you recommend pausing outgoing transaction during any particular time period?
Not at this time. What will happen with any coins on the Bitcoin Cash chain from BitGo wallets?
Due to the short time period between now and when the Bitcoin Cash chain is expected to fork, BitGo will not be able to fully support a full Bitcoin Cash wallet in our API and Web interfaces. However, BitGo will produce a command line tool which users can use to specifically send Bitcoin Cash coins to an external Bitcoin Cash wallet. We expect this tool to be available by August 7. How do I trade Bitcoin Cash coins before the BitGo tool is available on Aug 7?
You’ll need to move your coins out of your BitGo wallet to a wallet compatible with Bitcoin Cash; you can then move your coins back into your BitGo wallet after the hard fork. Will BitGo support the Bitcoin Cash chain eventually?
Assuming sufficient customer demand, BitGo will support it. Although we would have liked to provide support on August 1, the short schedule and lack of a testable chain for the Bitcoin Cash makes it impossible for BitGo to provide a secure platform in that timeframe.
We hope this helps all BitGo users. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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Relatives of 30-year-old Brian Bole, a scientist killed over the weekend near his Oakland home, are trying to make sense of the slaying. The motive and perpetrator are not known.
Shortly after midnight Saturday, Bole was making his way home from a bar when he was fatally shot on the 3000 block of Richmond Boulevard near 30th Street, police said. His phone and wallet were still on him when detectives arrived, said Officer Marco Marquez, a police spokesman, but investigators are not ruling out a robbery attempt.
He had moved to the city last year and was working as a health data scientist for Armus, a Silicon Valley software company, according to his father, Brad Bole.
“It’s a shock and it’s a devastation and it’s difficult for us,” Brad Bole said. “It’s something you never expect to have happened.”
The victim’s mother and sister had spoken with him for an hour on the phone Saturday evening. In addition to his Florida family, Bole is survived by his wife.
“He was really excited about his life and the work he was doing,” his mother, Patricia Tezzas, recalled of their phone conversation. “He was going to go camping next weekend.”
Bole got his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech before moving to California in 2011 for an internship with NASA, his family said. He was eventually hired as a contractor for NASA’s Ames Research Center on the Peninsula, and within the last year started working at the Armus job.
His family remembered him as an avid traveler, science fiction reader and biker.
Bole was one of three people killed within a 24-hour period in Oakland shootings over the weekend. One of the victims, Oakland resident Lakeya Venson, was reportedly cleaning up after a birthday party when she was shot. Hayward resident Robert Hernandez, 34, was the third victim.
No suspect has been arrested in any of the cases. The killings brought the city’s homicide count up to 16, according to Marquez. And the violence left its mark on grieving family members near and far.
“We didn’t see each other a lot,” said Bole’s grandmother, Anna Bole, a Florida resident. “I guess the only thing I can say is we were really proud of him.”
Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @kveklerov
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A recent Twitter post by Peter McCormack allegedly reveals that Bitcoin SV founder Craig Wright has falsified a document. The news broke through some careful detective work on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) by the cryptocurrency influencer.
Wright has famously claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin. He has filed a lawsuit against McCormack for allegedly slandering him by denying that he is in fact, Nakamoto.
Wright’s newest document upload contains language that is very similar to the Bitcoin whitepaper abstract. The text appears to correspond almost exactly with the description of a peer-to-peer electronic cash payments system.
However, McCormack’s detective work appears to reveal that the document is not at all what it claims to be.
The Evidence Against Wright
Several indicators point towards Wright’s document being falsified. First, the upload date has been removed. This would not necessarily be a clear indicator, but a bit of further digging reveals that the only snapshot of the paper was August 18 of this year.
Second, the metadata of the document reveals that it was updated on August 18 as well. What’s more, it was created using Office 365, only released in 2011. These details make the creation of the document in 2007 an impossibility.
Finally, and perhaps most notable, a quick Google search of the title reveals that Wright published a paper of similar content in 2008. While this would seem indicative of a connection, the opposite is true.
The original paper does not contain the verbiage that the one from 2007 allegedly does. This appears to show that Wright added the sentence to the paper, more or less plagiarizing the Bitcoin whitepaper, and then published it as his own work.
Scammers Gonna Scam?
This most recent revelation adds to the list of potentially false evidence Wright has claimed to produce. While claiming responsibility for Bitcoin, he seems unable to produce conclusive proof of the claim.
Such antics also cast doubt on the viability of Wright’s other work, such as the hard forked coin, Bitcoin SV (BSV). While Wright claims that it maintains the original vision of Bitcoin, others disagree. Vitalik Buterin recently called it a ‘dumpster fire,’ and the community at large seems to have more or less ignored or rejected it.
Do you think Wright is truly Nakamoto and this is yet another error, or is he a scammer like McCormack claims? Let us know in the comments below!
Buy and trade cryptocurrencies with a 100x multiplier on our partner exchange, StormGain.
Images are courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter.
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WACO, Texas — Describing David Montgomery's running ability can be difficult, and even Iowa State coach Matt Campbell has struggled to provide adjectives to illustrate it.
Luckily, PFF College has helped define it.
Entering the weekend, Montgomery was just one forced missed tackle away from tying the single-season record in the PFF College era dating back to 2014. Montgomery's 88 forced missed tackles led the nation by quite a margin, and the sophomore only extended his lead with 13 more forced missed tackles on 27 carries in Saturday's 23-13 win against Baylor.
Montgomery now has 101 forced missed tackles this season to claim the record.
1 2017 David Montgomery ISU 101 2 2016 Dalvin Cook FSU 89 T-3 2015 Leonard Fournette LSU 88 T-3 2016 Kareem Hunt TOL 88 5 2016 James Butler NEV 87 6 2014 James Conner PITT 85 T-7 2015 Paul Perkins UCLA 82 T-7 2016 I'Tavious Mathers MTSU 82 9 2015 Royce Freeman ORE 81 10 2015 Donnel Pumphrey SDSU 79
That's pretty good company, even if the stat is only four seasons old.
“You know how I feel about him. He’s as good as there is in a lot of ways. He put the team on his back," Campbell said of Montgomery. "I thought the offensive line, I haven’t bragged about them very much but I tell you the last three weeks they’ve started to play some really good football. That group has done some really good things and obviously I think David would be the first one to tell you that too. David’s ability to break tackles and do what he does, I mean, it's what makes him really special."
Through 11 games, Montgomery's forced missed tackle rate is an eye-popping 38.3 percent according to PFF College, well above the national average of 17.2 percent. His 101 forced missed tackles this season have come on 264 total touches (230 runs and 34 receptions).
According to PFF College, roughly 690 of Montgomery's yards have come after contact.
Montgomery rushed for 144 yards on his 27 carries Saturday, enough to become the 14th player in program history to eclipse 1,000 rushing yards in a season. He now has 1,080 rushing yards on the season and 1,362 all-purpose yards with one regular season game remaining if he's healthy enough to play after X-rays came back negative on the left ankle he injured in the fourth quarter Saturday.
Regardless, he's now quite possibly the most elusive running back in college football.
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.”
She said she’ll see some of the same patients over and over.
“Some are regular Walmart shoppers,” she said. “We are the only Walmart with a clinic. People walk by and see us.”
Grooms emphasized that she is not a primary care provider, even though many patients try to treat her as such. She can give prescriptions refills on a limited basis, because she said it can be difficult to get in to see a primary care provider.
Her mother was a primary care doctor in Robeson County for 27 years, and Grooms said her mom frequently saw her patients the same day they called. But that’s not the case anymore.
Sponsored
Grooms said she believed the urgent care clinics take the load off primary care offices more than the Emergency Department.
“I use to be an ER nurse. It was bad. We had 13-15 hour waits, and a lot of this county is unemployed,” she said. “With unemployment comes no insurance. The only place in town that will see you regardless of anything is the ER.”
Across from the hospital
Another way Southeastern has sought to divert patients on their way to the emergency room is by placing another urgent care clinic right across the street from Southeastern Health’s hospital emergency department.
Barry Graham is a physician assistant there in the “health mall.” He said it’s difficult to say how many patients come to the urgent care instead of the ED. Some people definitely walk into his clinic who should be getting emergency care.
The health mall is in a strip mall next to a JC Penny and has a variety of providers and services. Within the health mall, there is an express lab, an urgent care, a pharmacy, a surgical center, weight loss center, and a diabetes community center.
The health mall urgent care clinic is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as some weekend hours and Graham said the clinic is in the process of expanding to evening hours. He sees about 30 patients a day, which is more than most primary care providers will see in the same time period.
But Graham agreed with Grooms, saying his clinic likely takes more pressure off of primary care physicians with busy offices than the ED.
“I mean, they try to see walk-ins but, but you know, especially as it gets later on in the day, it’s hard to have a walk-in,” he said. “They feel comfortable having folks come see us.”
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functions,†Kriegstein told Gizmodo in an email. “This concern has already been realised by the creation of mice…[that] perform better than native mice on a battery of learning tests,†in reference to the aforementioned study from 2013.
“Thus, the potential of chimeras to manifest enhancement of brain function is a near-term concern, while sentience or self-awareness is a distant future possibility. Nonetheless, as thoughtfully articulated here, the potential behavioural consequences of chimerisation should be a concern of all scientists creating human-animal brain chimeras.â€
Reiner said now is a good time to advance this conversation, as the technology is developing rapidly. A “discussion is needed to set the grounds for future advances that will require setting specific frames for the use of these new technologies so that they will be based on concrete data and not ‘fake news,’†she said.
Sandberg thought the arguments posed in the paper were “reasonable,†but he’s more concerned with another issue: the potential for suffering.
“Can organoids suffer?†he asked. “This is a tough question. A random ball of neurons with no senses do not seem likely to have an inner world. Yet we can get pain from nerve damage that causes the wrong cross-connections — but that may still require a conscious brain to interpret the random signals as pain. So while I think an organoid in a petri dish is less likely to suffer than a non-random nervous system, when implanting it into a brain it might actually make the brain experience bad things.â€
Sandberg said experimenters need to be aware of this possibility and assess whether their chimeric animals might be in distress. He said “odd states†might exist in which the “potentially exotic wiring of these systems might be harder to notice than regular pain.†Ultimately, “some caution is needed,†according to Sandberg. “It does not mean we should stop researching, but we may need to look carefully.â€
Sandberg brought up a quote from the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who famously said, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?â€
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Relatives of deceased Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are believed to be among four people killed when a private jet crashed in southern England.
A spokeswoman for Britain's Hampshire police service told Reuters there were no survivors of the crash.
"There were four people onboard, including the pilot," Olga Venner, acting chief inspector of Hampshire police said.
Footage of the aftermath of the crash showed plumes of black smoke rising into the sky and several cars on fire in the outdoor area of British Car Auctions, where vehicles were parked awaiting sale.
Former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's Saudi Arabian family have vast business interests. ( Reuters )
"I saw it when it had just happened, and could see the plane and cars in flames," Andrew Thomas said, who was buying a car when he witnessed the accident.
"The plane nose-dived into the cars and exploded on impact."
Without confirming the identities of the victims, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, offered condolences on the embassy's official Twitter account to the bin Laden family, a prominent Saudi Arabia clan with vast business interests.
"His royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, the ambassador of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to the United Kingdom, offered his condolences to the sons of the late Mohammed bin Laden and their relations for the grave incident of the crash of the plane carrying members of the family at Blackbushe airport," he said in the tweet.
The Saudi embassy said it was working with British authorities to investigate the incident and to ensure the speedy handover of the bodies for funerals and burials in the kingdom.
The Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper, citing a statement by the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), said on its website that the Embraer Phenom 300 with three passengers and the pilot crashed during takeoff from Blackbushe airport.
GACA said in a statement that the plane was registered in the Gulf state and that it would work with British investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
The statement did not identify the victims, but some Saudi media suggested on social media or on their websites that they were relatives of Osama bin Laden, who was shot dead by US forces in Pakistan in 2011.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the reports.
British media, including the Daily Mail website, said the plane had been carrying relatives of Osama Bin Laden. It said the plane was registered in Saudi Arabia and had originated in Milan, Italy.
The Hampshire police service spokesman said an investigation into the causes of the incident had been launched.
Reuters/AFP
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On Friday, I had the opportunity to go and see the epic U.S. Open in person. As I watched the “These guys are good” guys get worked by the golf course, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would shoot if given the opportunity to play Merion. On one hand, the course was playing hard, the greens were fast, and the rough was thick and muddy. On the other, I have a lot more experience playing from shitty lies than the PGA tour players have.
One way for the USGA and the PGA Tour to handle such questions is to launch a new initiative. I call it the PGA Average Lad Program (the P.A.L. Program). The basic gist of the PAL Program goes like this: Think you could shoot an 80 at Merion? Let’s see it PAL. In other words, in every PGA tournament, one average lad would join the elite players when they tee it up on Thursday. The PGA PAL would play the same set of tees and would serve as the proverbial pace car for the tour.
Because the PGA PAL is not a professional golfer, the PGA should follow the following guidelines when implementing the program:
The PAL can’t have a handicap lower than 7.
The PAL can’t miss the cut. What would be the point if we couldn’t compare the PAL to Phil Mickelson on the weekends? However, if the PAL hits 3 or more spectators with errant shots, he will be disqualified from the event and will have to stand up against a wall like in Butt’s up while Tiger and Bubba Watson fire punch shots at him.
The PAL has a maximum score of double par on every hole. Once he reaches double par, he picks up his ball and places it on the green next to his PGA Tour playing companion. If the PAL putts his ball closer than the PGA Professional, the USGA donates $7 to charity.
I will be the first PAL, and the program will be launched at the 2014 Masters.
One PGA Tour player will be paired with the PAL. To determine this player, the competitor who finished in the worst position the previous week will be paired with the PAL.
The PAL can wear shorts.
If the PAL finishes in the top 10 of a tournament, he receives 1,000,000 from a corporate sponsor.
That’s basically the proposal. It makes complete sense to me and I think it could really take the game to a whole new level. USGA – Let’s make this happen. Thanks, Pal!
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Fredrik Önnevall is accused of people smuggling after helping Abed, a teenager, get to Sweden from Greece during making of a documentary in 2014
This article is more than 3 years old
This article is more than 3 years old
A Swedish TV journalist is to face trial for people smuggling after helping a Syrian boy migrate from Greece to Sweden, an offence punishable by imprisonment.
In the spring of 2014, Fredrik Önnevall was filming a documentary about European nationalist parties’ response to the migration crisis when he met 15-year-old Abed in Greece. Along with two colleagues, Önnevall helped the boy enter Sweden.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority said on Wednesday that Önnevall and his colleagues had “during the period of May-June 2014 intentionally helped a foreigner pass through Greece … [to] Sweden despite the fact that the person was missing a passport or any other permission required to enter these countries.”
The journalist, a presenter for the Swedish public broadcaster SVT, who along with his two colleagues could face up to three months in prison, has pleaded not guilty.
“I regret absolutely nothing. I know what we did and I would have done the same today,” Önnevall told SVT in March when he was called for questioning over people smuggling. “How can I regret helping a terrified boy begging for my help?” he said.
Broadcast nearly two years ago, the documentary sparked a wave of sympathy among Swedes as well as anger, prompting complaints over the Syrian boy’s entrance to Sweden.
Nearly half of all refugees are children, says Unicef Read more
“[He] was a 15-year-old boy in danger and in need of help,” Önnevall told SVT on Thursday.
“The prosecutor clearly does not make this judgment, but the legal experts I have spoken to say this doesn’t constitute a crime,” he added.
However, Kristina Amilon, a prosecutor in charge of the case, said that “just helping someone cross a border into a European country” is constituted as illegal immigration and therefore an offence.
“I had no excuse to not do it, no one else could help him. I also realised that it was a decision I would have to live with for the rest of my life,” Önnevall told Swedish daily newspaper Expressen last year.
Önnevall has asserted that he did not act as a smuggler because neither he nor his colleagues accepted any money.
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Tower of David.
We walk to the Western Wall, carrying shawls to cover our shoulders at the holy site and, as is the custom, leave written notes of prayer between the stones of the ancient Temple wall.
The lobby of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art VIVIAN SAPER FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
My sister, ever the planner, has secured dinner reservations at Machneyuda, one of Jerusalem’s hottest restaurants, located near the Machane Yehuda marketplace. We sit at the bar, with a view of the busy, open kitchen and enjoy carpaccio of yellowfin with pickled radish and yogurt sauce and ribs so tender the beef drips off the bone. Once the first seating is served, the chef turns over his cast iron pans, whips out drumsticks, and launches into an impromptu drum concert to accompany the restaurant’s sound track of Israeli popular music. Subdued this place is not.
The next morning, we visit Yad Vashem and spend a few sobering hours in the Holocaust History Museum, housed in a dramatic Moshe Safdie-designed skylit prism that cuts through the mountain and rises, at the far end, to a glass-walled, light-saturated vista. The museum presents an exhaustive look at the Holocaust, filled with historical and personal artifacts and searing oral histories captured on video. We rent audio guides, but, with long narration at each station, they prove more distraction than enhancement and we soon disconnect them. Among our fellow visitors are several groups of young Israeli soldiers here as part of their basic training.
Our trip is almost over. We head back to the Machane Yehuda neighborhood for falafel at Rachmo, where the fried chickpea balls are lightly spiced and crisp but not greasy. The modest eatery brings decades of experience to the task. It has been serving Middle Eastern specialties since the 1930s. After lunch, we meander through the Machane Yehuda Market, where soldiers and ultra-Orthodox in black hats and long forelocks and all manner of other folks shop at colorful stalls of nuts, dried fruits, candies, and produce.
For our final dinner in Israel, we choose Eucalyptus, by the Zion Gate entrance to the Old City, in the artist enclave of Yemin Moshe, and sample crispy baked cauliflower with tahini and figs stuffed with chicken in tamarind sauce. Then we walk back to the hotel through a hilltop neighborhood and one last view of the Old City.
Irene Sege can be reached at [email protected].
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About once per game, Harris would give up a big play. Not all of the touchdowns given up to the player he was covering was his fault as miscommunications happen, but Harris will still get dinged by those plays when it comes to deciding how much he has left in the tank.
***
The Market
There are not a lot of great cornerbacks on the open market in 2020. In fact, Harris is one of the best cornerbacks set to be an unrestricted free agent this offseason.
In 2020, the annual average salary for the highest-paid cornerback (Miami’s Xavien Howard) is just a little over $15 million. Originally slated to make $8.7 million in 2019, Harris got a raise and played last season for a price tag of $11.9 million.
Based on the lack of cornerback talent available in free agency, Harris might push for a similar price tag in 2020. The No. 10 highest-paid cornerback, New England’s Stephon Gilmore, makes $13.0 million in this upcoming season.
Getting around $12 million in annual average salary would put Harris in the top 15 for cornerbacks in 2020. Based on his play and projecting his play going forward, Harris likely should be paid that much.
Harris may only get two- to three-year contract offers from teams interested in his services, and he may not get any guaranteed money past 2020. He’s just at that point in his career, but the Broncos can take advantage if they want.
***
The Verdict
The Broncos should make a player like Harris a Bronco for life. He is exactly the type of player that you can point to as a franchise and say “that’s the way you play in the pros.” Harris is a seasoned veteran who is respected as a leader in the locker room. Replacing him would not be easy.
I would love for the Broncos to pay Harris.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the Broncos prioritize bringing Harris back, as they may go after Cowboys cornerback Bryon Jones (four years younger than Harris) in free agency. If Harris is willing to take a discounted contract, then perhaps the two sides can stay together. I don’t think Harris should have to take a discount, and instead the Broncos should compensate him properly.
With so much money tied up in cornerback Bryce Callahan, the Broncos may not want to keep spending big money on Harris. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems like Harris might have played his last game as a member of the Broncos.
Follow @CecilLammey
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An Army carry team carries the remains of Sgt. Dillon Baldridge at Dover Air Force Base, Del., on June 12, 2017. Baldridge, of Youngsville, N.C., died June 10 in Afghanistan. Steve Ruark
ZEBULON, North Carolina (WTVD) -- The grieving family of a fallen soldier says it harbors no anger nor resentment toward President Donald Trump for being late on his offer to donate money.Jessie Baldridge, whose 22-year-old stepson Cpl. Dillon C. Baldridge died in Afghanistan, confirms the president offered $25,000 of his own money during a condolence call last summer."We just thought he was saying something nice," Baldridge told ABC11. "We got a condolence letter from him and there was no check, and we kind of joked about it. We didn't take to social media and didn't complain."That check, according to White House officials, is now in the mail."There is a substantial process that can involve multiple agencies anytime the President interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds," a White House official said Wednesday. "The check has been in the pipeline since the President's initial call with the father. The President has personally followed up several times to ensure that the check was being sent. As stated earlier, the check has been sent."Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said any suggestion the president didn't intend to follow through on his pledge, despite the months that have passed, is unfair."It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the president, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda," Walters said.Dillon Baldridge was killed in June when anin an insider attack. The Taliban claimed responsibility.The Taliban took responsibility for the attack and claimed one of its terrorists "infiltrated" the army to carry out the ambush, which killed two other soldiers. The 2012 graduate of Franklinton High School in Youngsville had always dreamed of being a soldier."I feel betrayed," Chris Baldridge, Dillon's father, told ABC11 earlier this summer. "(Dillon's) over there training people to take care of themselves, and then they turn on us."Now four months later, the Baldridges continue to grieve and much prefer their focus and attention remain on their beloved hero."The money (from President Trump) doesn't mean anything to us at all," Jessie Baldridge told to ABC11. "I would give my own life to have Dillon back."Dillon leaves behind his mother, stepparents, and four siblings, including a baby sister he'll never meet. He's buried at a military cemetery in Boone.
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The 12 rules a local church leader prescribed for his community
Borker.net/Flickr
In Spain, traveling through a cork forest near the Portuguese border, James Michener once stumbled upon a small town in a clearing, where he found posted to the oak door of the church a list of twelve rules. They'd been promulgated years before by a local bishop intent on shaping local life. And they capture something about Spanish life in the days of Franco and Catholic dominance.
Dated July 11, 1943, the poster read as follows:
1. Women shall not appear on the streets of this village with dresses that are too tight in those places which provoke the evil passions of men.
2. They must never wear dresses that are too short.
3. They must be particularly careful not to wear dresses that are low-cut in front.
4. It is shameful for women to walk in the streets with short sleeves.
5. Every woman who appears in the streets must wear stockings.
6. Women must not wear transparent or network cloth over those parts which decency requires to be covered.
7. At the age of twelve girls must begin to wear dresses that reach to the knee, and stockings at all times.
8. Little boys must not appear in the streets with their upper legs bare.
9. Girls must never walk in out-of-the-way places because to do so is both immoral and dangerous.
10. No decent woman or girl is ever seen on a bicycle.
11. No decent woman is ever seen wearing trousers.
12. What they call in the cities'modern dancing' is strictly forbidden.
That's the translation provided in Michener's singular nonfiction book, Iberia, and every time I read it I can't help but marvel at how singularly focused the rule-makers were on female sexuality - and that all this happened in the lifetime of the older woman who owned the apartment where I boarded while I studied in Seville. The Spain I know may be less liberal about nudity than the Germans and Swedes, but it is a country where young couples kiss in the streets, nude beaches are easily found, and topless sunbathing is common from San Sebastian to Cadiz.
Today clothes-related controversy more often turns on whether Muslim women are wearing too much of it. Seven decades hence, one wonders if the hijab will seem as unfathomable as the church door rules of yesteryear, or if those who would outlaw it will be remembered as small tyrants.
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news, latest-news
Are we green and clean? The bush capital? A city of diversity? Canberrans can now vote for the number plate slogan they think best represents the capital. The government received almost 2000 suggestions for a new catchphrase after opening submissions in October. The final 10 were revealed online Thursday morning. For those who enjoy a play on words, "CBR - Driving the nation" was included. "Brilliant possibilities", read another. A phrase reminiscent of one of Chief Minister Andrew Barr's favourites - "CBR - Australia's cool capital" - also made the cut. He retweeted a journalist's suggestion people vote for the phrase to "piss of [sic] SYD and MELB". The shortlist was curated by a judge's panel including 2016 ACT Young Australian of the Year Nipuni (Nip) Wijewickrema, Canberra Business Chamber chief executive Robyn Hendry and Cultural Canberra director Adam Stankevicius. Mr Barr described the number of slogan submissions as "overwhelming". "Many Canberrans tapped into their imagination and submitted some interesting ideas," he said. Social media lit up with new phrases that didn't reach the shortlist. "Canberra - You Went Here for Year 6 Camp", suggested one Twitter user. "Canberra: WELL WE LIKE IT!!!", said another. On Facebook, someone suggested "Canberra - what APS level are you?" while another asked why "Starbucks free since 2008" failed to make the cut. People can also vote to keep an existing number plate slogan, including the much-maligned "Feel the power of Canberra" and 2015 winner "Age friendly city". Despite the derision, the former phrase has sold out and is currently unavailable, but has not yet been taken off the books. However, it could be soon. The losing four slogans will be taken out of circulation. The other existing options are "Canberra the Nation's Capital", "Canberra - Heart of the Nation" and an image of Parliament House. Voting closes February 2. As of Thursday afternoon, "Canberra - the bush capital" was leading the field. "Canberra the nation's capital" is proving most popular among existing plates. The winners will be revealed in March, and the new number plate slogan will go into circulation later this year.
https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/8d90624a-19e2-4925-9a23-c608089596e7/r646_0_1671_579_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg
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Hundreds of Sikh, Nepali and Tamil demonstrators gathered outside Downing Street to protest against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Britain on Thursday (12 November). Modi hopes that the visit will yield trade deals worth billions of dollars and be a boost to his authority after a damaging electoral failure back home.
The crowd of people on Whitehall chanted against the Indian Prime Minister and accused him of human rights abuses. Protester Bigyan Brasai criticised the UK for rolling out the red carpet for Modi and said Cameron needed to put pressure on him to stop blockading roads into Nepal.
The UK should not only look into the political and commercial aspects. The UK has a rich pride and culture of raising a voice for the voiceless countries and people, and instead of the glory of the British values and culture, there is disrespect. They should keep pressure, that you [Modi], what you are doing is wrong, he said.
Nepal adopted a secular constitution in September. Protesters said that Modis nationalist Hindu party, the BJP, have tried to blockade routes into the Himalayan nation to put pressure on it to stay as a Hindu state. Nepali protester Kapil Rijal said that Cameron should help to find a diplomatic solution.
The UK is a country of democracy. We can voice ourselves here and I hope David Cameron is going to do something and talk about these issues.There is nothing that cant be solved with diplomacy, but we need something to be done. We need a diplomacy talk going on, he said.
Protesters said that Modi was guilty of human rights abuses, with some banners depicting him with Adolf Hitler alongside a swastika.
Theres tens of thousands of South Asian background people living in this country, the British public. We all know what Modi is capable of and what he has done. He is complicit in war crimes. We are very, very angry that he was welcomed here, speaking in our parliament and shaking hands with the Queen and also elevated and having a party sort of thing tomorrow. Were very angry about that. Why do we have to celebrate this criminal? said Tamil protester Sanam.
More than 200 writers, including well-known authors, such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Nikita Lalwani, have signed an open letter to Cameron urging him to raise concerns about freedom of expression in India during their talks. A group of counter-demonstrators, waving British and Indian flags were separated by barriers near Downing Street.
Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister since 2006 to visit Britain. He will address the British Parliament on Thursday afternoon (12 November) and lay a wreath at the Mahatma Ghandi statue in Parliament Square.
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It’s one of the deepest and most anticipated fight cards in MMA history, and it had avoided the injury bug – until now.
Former Invicta FC 105-pound champion Michelle Waterson (13-4 MMA, 1-0 UFC) has suffered an undisclosed injury and been forced out of her bout with fellow strawweight Tecia Torres (6-0 MMA, 2-0 UFC). A rep for Waterson confirmed her withdrawal with MMAjunkie.
A formal announcement hasn’t been made, but a replacement is being sought for the short-notice bout.
UFC 194 takes place Dec. 12 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass.
The card is so deep that many familiar names, including Torres, are slated for the prelims.
Waterson recently moved up to 115 pounds for her UFC debut. The 29-year-old Team Jackson-Winkeljohn fighter earned a submission victory over Angela Magana in May and is now 7-1 over her past eight fights. However, she’ll have to wait a bit longer to try to get her second UFC win.
Torres, a fellow Invicta FC vet, joined the UFC after a quarterfinal-round finish on “The Ultimate Fighter 18.” In her official UFC debut on the undercard of the show’s live finale, the 26-year-old American Top Team fighter earned a decision win over Magana. She then followed it up with a decision victory over Angela Hill in June to keep her official undefeated pro record intact.
The full UFC 194 lineup now includes:
MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)
Champ Jose Aldo vs. Conor McGregor – for featherweight title Champ Chris Weidman vs. Luke Rockhold – for middleweight title Yoel Romero vs. Ronaldo Souza Demian Maia vs. Gunnar Nelson Max Holloway vs. Jeremy Stephens
PRELIMINARY CARD (FOX Sports 1, 8 p.m. ET)
Urijah Faber vs. Frankie Saenz Tecia Torres vs. TBA Warlley Alves vs. Colby Covington Kevin Lee vs. Leonardo Santos
PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass, 7 p.m. ET)
Magomed Mustafaev vs. Joe Proctor John Makdessi vs. Yancy Medeiros Marcio Alexandre Jr. vs. Court McGee
For more on UFC 194, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.
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Scaling Bitcoin to the next level is direly needed. The current technology is ill-equipped for mass adoption. Blockstream, a controversial software company in the Bitcoin world, is now offering a solution. The launch of Liquid Network introduces a viable sidechain solution.
The Liquid Network Concept
Various developers are looking for ways to scale Bitcoin to the next level. Blockstream is one of the collectives leading the charge. Their scaling solution goes by the name of Liquid Network. It is the first-ever sidechain solution for Bitcoin. Its main benefits include fast, secure, and confidential transactions. All of these aspects will make the world’s leading cryptocurrency more robust in the future.
So far, the Liquid Network has received significant support form service providers. Exchanges such as Bitfinex, BitMEX, and OKCoin are all running this sidechain solution at this time. This also means these providers use L-BTC, the native asset used on the Liquid Network. It is a two-way peg to Bitcoin, which provides fast and reliable transactions to network participants. Moreover, L-BTC can be redeemed by the recipient in two minutes. Compared to the current 10-minute transaction confirmation window, it offers a significant improvement.
Scaling Bitcoin is not the only benefit of Liquid Network. The technology is capable of tokenizing existing assets. A digital version of reward points or gold are just some of the options to explore. All of this can be achieved without the involvement of complex software. The primary short-term use case for Liquid Network will revolve around Bitcoin first and foremost.
Expanding the Overall Functionality
In its current form, Blockstream’s solution introduces many benefits. Not just in terms of faster transactions. Unlike the current version of Bitcoin, Liquid network facilitates private transactions. It masks the amount and asset type broadcasted to the network. Transacting parties will remain privy to all information at all times.
Blockstream also indicates they will continue to enhance the technology. Third-party hardware wallet support will be added in the near future. Owners of the Trezor and Ledger products can benefit from this upcoming integration. Overall, it is a positive development for Bitcoin. Not everyone sees it that way, as is to be expected.
Bitcoin needs solutions like these to grow and evolve. Although Liquid network may not be perfect, it marks an important first step. There is still work to be done prior to taking Bitcoin into the mainstream. Sidechains are one possible way of scaling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
How does Liquid Network compare to Lightning Network in terms of Bitcoin scaling? Which is your preference? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of ShutterStock
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Now that the dust is settling, let’s discuss who won in the Spider-Man rights battle between Marvel and Sony. The fans win, obviously, as we’ll finally get to see a true Spider-Man movie made in the vision of Marvel Studios. And the wall-crawler will share the screen alongside the mighty Avengers in, from what we’re hearing,and the upcomingsaga. But financially speaking, which studio has the upperhand?The answer, strangely, is both. Variety has a breakdown of the negotiations between Sony and Disney – which was going on for months and finally settled on a level everyone could appreciate. And the results of the deal are… unusual, starting with the fact that Marvel reportedly paid nothing for the rights to use Spider-Man in their upcoming slate of films. That’s right. They got Spidey for free.According to the trade, the studios worked out a deal that will have each respective studio receiving the profits from the movies they make with Spider-Man. So Marvel doesn’t have to share profits with Sony foror. At the same time, Sony will benefit completely from the profits made by the solo Spider-Man movies, which appear to be being made under the Sony umbrella.Sony, in the process, rehabs Spider-Man’s image by allowing him to show up in Marvel movies, and earning goodwill from the Spidey fanbase for allowing their beloved character to show up on screen alongside other staples of the Marvel comic universe. In essence, the two studios have agreed on a system that allows them to share Spider-Man, and each use them to their own ends.The biggest question stemming from this deal is, "How will this work, creatively?" The financial side of it makes so much sense, I’m still surprised the deal went through. Both studios seem to benefit, financially. But will the Spider-Man solo movies pull plots from the MCU? Will they continue to exist separately, or will the actions of the MCU movies dictate what Sony can (and will) do in the standalone Spider-Man movies – the first being penciled in for July 28, 2017?Variety notes that it is Sony who will work on re-casting the role of Spider-Man, with an intention of finding a teenager. Will Marvel have input on the hire? This line, from Variety’s report, is potentially troubling. "While Marvel’s Kevin Feige is involved with Sony’s newfilms, he is currently not expected to be creatively involved with the [Venom and Sinister Six] spinoffs, sources say." Why not? If this deal is truly going to work, shouldn’t he be?
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After a lengthy legal battle, two Christian colleges have won a lawsuit seeking to obtain a religious exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate.
Last week, a federal district court ruled in favor of the schools, represented by religious liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, barring the federal government from enforcing the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandate requiring employers to provide health care plans that cover contraceptives, including emergency contraceptives.
"Defendants now agree that enforcement of the rules regarding the contraceptive mandate against employers with sincerely held religious objections would violate the RFRA."
While the mandate technically exempted religious organizations, it was commonly criticized for narrowly defining the term, thereby excluding many faith-based colleges and universities from the list.
[RELATED: Students slam Northwestern for ‘morally wrong’ Plan B advice]
Grace College and Seminary in Indiana and Biola University in California are both Christian institutions of higher education and subscribe to the biblical view that God created man in His image, meaning that human life is sacred.
Likewise, both institutions see abortion as violating this sanctity, arguing that their faith prohibits them from paying for drugs that may act as abortifacients.
Although the government offered faith-based schools a compromise in 2012, whereby contraceptive coverage would be paid for by third-parties, Grace and Biola deemed that solution inadequate and filed an amended complaint against the government in 2013, the ruling noted.
While the Trump administration issued new regulations in 2017 that would have resolved the issue, the court documents note that judges have ordered preliminary injunctions against them over procedural issues, preventing them from taking effect.
[RELATED: Christian College wins court battle against contraceptive mandate]
In accordance with Trump’s call to refrain from defending the mandate, however, the government acknowledged that the requirement would violate the colleges’ rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and on June 1, United States District Court Judge Jon E. Deguilio issued an order giving the schools a permanent injunction against the enforcement of the mandate and a declaratory judgement in their favor.
“After reconsideration of their position, Defendants now agree that enforcement of the rules regarding the contraceptive mandate against employers with sincerely held religious objections would violate the RFRA,” the judge wrote, adding that “the Court agrees that Plaintiffs are entitled to a permanent injunction and declaratory relief.”
Deguilio also cited “the public interest in the vindication of religious freedom,” noting that students and faculty at the schools were previously aware of the institutions’ religious beliefs regarding abortifacients.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @SFarkas48
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two immediate predecessors were at fourteen per cent (Barack Obama) and five percent (George W. Bush) at this point in their Presidencies. Bill Clinton, the highest after Trump, was at forty-two per cent, and that number was mostly made up of advisers who were reassigned to other senior White House roles, not fired or pushed out, according to Kumar.
The Trump Cabinet has been similarly tumultuous: Pruitt’s departure, on Thursday, adds to a list that already included a fired Secretary of State, a fired Secretary of Health and Human Services, and a fired Veteran Affairs Secretary, as well as a vacancy that was created when Kelly moved from the Department of Homeland Security to replace Trump’s fired first chief of staff, Reince Priebus. All together, Trump’s Cabinet has the fastest turnover rate of any Administration in a hundred years. Tenures are so short that Kumar is now reporting on the turnover among the second and third waves of aides. And it could be that Trump has no problem with this situation, or even with the seemingly untenable situation of having a chief of staff who is regularly reported to be on his way out. Over the past few months, Kelly has looked increasingly like a dead man walking, and “that may be what Trump wants,” Kumar told me on Thursday.
When we look back at the Trump Administration, this will be one of its most distinguishing characteristics: West Wing comings and goings without precedent, leaving policies muddled and the entire political world uncertain of whom to deal with aside from the President himself. Kelly used to leave the office every day joking bleakly that he’d never come back. Just in the past few weeks, as Kelly’s fate has hung in limbo, two other key White House advisers have announced their exits: Joe Hagin, a deputy chief of staff and an organizational specialist who brought rare institutional knowledge of how White Houses are supposed to function, from stints working for Reagan and both Bushes; and Marc Short, Trump’s chief legislative liaison and congressional-vote counter, who reportedly told colleagues in June of his plans to leave a job that could become even more crucial if the G.O.P. majorities on Capitol Hill are diminished or wiped out in November. Many others are also reportedly considering leaving, including Dan Scavino, who is one of the last of the Trump’s early campaign advisers still working for the President, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, and her deputy, Raj Shah. On Thursday, the White House formally announced the appointment of a new deputy chief of staff, the former Fox News executive Bill Shine, to oversee communications, making him the sixth person assigned that responsibility.
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The parliament of Montenegro has adopted symbolic resolution supporting country’s integration into NATO. While the alliance will consider extending an invitation from December onward, the opposition is insisting on bringing the matter to referendum.
About two thirds of the Montenegrin Parliament – 50 out of 79 – voted this week in favor of the resolution, supported by the ruling coalition, signaling the country’s readiness to join NATO.
“The attitude of the Parliament towards the Resolution will be an important message to the local and international community. This is the message that the Parliament strongly supports NATO integration,” said the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, Milutin Simovic, as cited by Cafe Del Montenegro news portal.
READ MORE: Pentagon updates plans for war with 'potentially aggressive' Russia – media
The document defined NATO as a guarantor of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country, adding that “This will be an important incentive for the acceleration and successful completion of negotiations on the full membership of Montenegro in[to] the European Union.”
However, those who opposed the resolution insist that it is not up to the parliament to make such historic decision: The majority of the country’s population has opposed NATO membership, and some MPs spoke out to suggest a referendum on the issue of the Euro-Atlantic integration.
“NATO is a serious organization, and I don't think they would want to be in a ridiculous situation in which a country will join NATO with one government, but when the administration changes – suddenly leave the alliance,” leader of one of the main opposition parties, New Serb Democracy (NOVA), Andrija Mandic told Sputnik news agency. “In Montenegro, more than two thirds of the citizens oppose NATO, so it’s necessary that the will of the people is taken into account.”
READ MORE: Russia to boost military presence in Crimea, response to NATO E. Europe expansion
In December, NATO foreign ministers are to hold a meeting, during which they might discuss Montenegro’s membership. The country was granted a Membership Action Plan in 2009, while negotiations on the matter started in 2010.
Meanwhile the White House said on Monday that the US was ready to back a NATO membership invitation for Montenegro in December, provided that the former Yugoslav republic carries on its reforms.
“The vice president [Joe Biden] and prime minister [Milo Djukanovic] agreed that Montenegro's membership in NATO would firmly anchor Montenegro in Euro-Atlantic institutions, promote greater regional stability in the Balkans, and demonstrate the credibility of NATO's Open Door policy,” the White House statement said.
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Building Materials, Tools and Tiles Suppliers
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Our range of products is so great that you will be surprised when you enter our store. The various departments include Tile and Sanware, Building Hardware, Tools, Plumbing, Gardening, Furniture, Solar and Loadshedding Materials. Plus there are more products in the other sections of our store such as Lighting and Chandeliers, Appliances, Homeware, Doors and Windows, and so much more! It truly is a one stop shop for all your building and home renovation needs.
At Elite Trade Centre you will find that we have a Manufacturing division as well. We manufacture roof tiles, steel houses, concrete houses, velt toilets and chicken houses. Generally the steel houses and concrete houses that we manufacture do not come with windows. The reason for that is there are many different window options that you can choose from. Once you’ve chosen the type of windows you want on the zozo, we can add it for you. So come to us and let us know what the requirements are and we will manufacture according to your specifications.
Before you start with your next building development or home renovation project make sure that you come to Elite Trade Centre to find all the building materials you will need to fulfil the job. Our dedicated team will guide you through all the products that you would need and give you advice on what materials could give you better results. If you have any questions about the type of building materials or tools that will help you to do the job best, our helpful and knowledgeable team will be at hand to answer all your questions. After all, Elite Trade Centre has been around since 1986. We know what we’re talking about.
We also offer financing for building projects to assist you with getting things done quickly. Whether you’re tackling a small or a big building project or even a renovation project, our friendly team will be glad to assist you with a payment plan. Just speak to our Credit Department for assistance. Plus we can also help you with the delivery of the materials to your location. We are able to deliver nationwide. That’s right, we may be in the North West but we deliver throughout South Africa. So you can rest assured that we have it all covered when it comes to your building needs.
We invite you to browse the rest of our website to find out more about our range of products. Feel free to contact us for any assistance.
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Here comes another more or less off-topic post on soil science because I realized that the feedback for the last two soil related contents about global soil data and soil atlas was quite surprising. So it seems like that there are some soil scientists or at least digital geographers with an interest in soil science among us.
This post is related to the upcoming YEAR OF SOIL 2015 which was oficially initiated on December 5th, the World Soil Day. In Germany, the upcoming german Soiltype of the year 2015 will be “Pseudogley” after celebrating the so called “Weinbergboden” in 2014.
Linked to the Year of Soil 2015 there are many topics to summarize in this post.
First of all I would like to come back to our topic of digital-geography, mapping and GIS, by showing you the offer of “Le monde diplomatique” for the “Bodenatlas 2015” (unfortunately only in German and for German residents) which will be published on January 8th and can be requestd for 3,90€ incl. shipping by sending an email to [email protected]. I hope you’ll enjoy the maps (here we are again back to topic;)).
Second, many institutions are trying to raise awareness for soils in the next months by publishing soil related issues (like “Le monde diplomatique” does). A swiss newspaper “Tagesanzeiger.ch” published factsheet about 5 different soils which are photographed in a very extraordinary way. I’ll not hesitate to show you these amazing pictures in the following slideshow. The published articles and brief facts about the soils can be found here.
Third: The international year of soils 2015 will bring many activities all over the world like exhibitions, excursions, talks, conferences, discussions and many more. Fortunately the German Ministry of Environment puplished a webmap with all the locations where you can find soil related events in 2015. Feel free to browse the map and visit an event nearby. Here we’re back to topic again (click the map below for forwarding to the website and map).
I think it’s really neccesary to raise awareness of the function and role, soils play in our daily life. Without soils there would be no food, nor wood, nor furniture etc. plus soils are among the biggest carbon sinks on our planet.
I’m going to share some videos if you like to know more about soils.
Don’t miss to check this infograph:
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President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE formally nominated Mark Esper Mark EsperOvernight Defense: Stopgap spending measure awaits Senate vote | Trump nominates former Nunes aide for intelligence community watchdog | Trump extends ban on racial discrimination training to contractors, military Overnight Defense: Pentagon redirects pandemic funding to defense contractors | US planning for full Afghanistan withdrawal by May | Anti-Trump GOP group puts ads in military papers Official: Pentagon has started 'prudent planning' for full Afghanistan withdrawal by May MORE, currently the secretary of the Army, as Defense secretary, according to multiple reports.
The president made the official announcement Friday evening Esper as acting Defense chief earlier this week after Patrick Shanahan Patrick Michael ShanahanHouse Armed Services chairman expresses confidence in Esper amid aircraft carrier coronavirus crisis Boeing pleads for bailout under weight of coronavirus, 737 fallout Esper's chief of staff to depart at end of January MORE stepped down from the role and withdrew his nomination to lead the Pentagon.
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Esper, who was confirmed by the Senate 89-6 in the fall of 2017, is a former infantry officer and previously served as a top executive at the defense contractor Raytheon.
Shanahan served as acting Defense secretary since the beginning of the year, following the departure of James Mattis James Norman MattisBiden courts veterans amid fallout from Trump military controversies Trump says he wanted to take out Syria's Assad but Mattis opposed it Gary Cohn: 'I haven't made up my mind' on vote for president in November MORE.
Trump had said he planned to nominate Shanahan to lead the Pentagon permanently, but never officially sent the nomination to the Senate.
The president announced Tuesday that Shanahan had withdrawn from consideration to lead the Pentagon on a permanent basis because the former Boeing executive wanted to "devote more time to his family."
The announcement came as reports emerged detailing multiple instances of past domestic violence involving Shanahan's family.
The lack of a permanent leader at the Department of Defense comes amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
Iran shot down a U.S. Navy surveillance drone this week, with the two sides disputing where it occurred. Tehran has said the drone was flying over Iranian airspace, while American officials have been adamant the aircraft was in international airspace.
Trump then tweeted Friday morning that the U.S. was "cocked and loaded" to carry out a retaliatory strike against Iran before he pulled back at the last minute upon learning there could be 150 casualties.
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Donald Trump could be the first president to be successfully impeached, according to Professor Ronald L. Feinman. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Donald Trump's presidency is likely to be the second shortest ever, a leading historian and author has claimed.
Professor Ronald L Feinman predicted that the former reality TV star will stay in the top job "between the 31 days of William Henry Harrison in 1841," who died pneumonia and the "199 days of James A. Garfield in 1881," who died 79 days after he was shot by an assassin "after terrible suffering and medical malpractice."
Even if his time in office is "dragged out," Feinman predicted that Trump is unlikely to last the 16 months and 5 days of 12th president Zachary Taylor, who died of a digestive ailment while Head of State in 1850.
The 20th-century American history professor, who recently published a book about the unfortunate fates of US leaders, added that he thought the "Pence Presidency" was inevitable. He was referring to Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, who would take over if Trump was to leave the leadership.
In a blog post, he added that he thought it was likely that Trump will be impeached or forced to resign in a matter of weeks.
Feinman predicts Trump won't last as long as President James A. Garfield, who died 199 days into office. Wikimedia His prediction comes shortly after the White House admitted the President was told several weeks ago that his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had not told the truth about a telephone call with a Russian diplomat.
The news fuelled broader concerns about his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the role his country may have played in helping Trump's election.
Feinman, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, suggested the businessman turned politician is more generally unsuitable for office.
"Many foreign policy professionals are shaking their head at Trump's inappropriate behavior and language every time he speaks in public, or issues a Twitter comment, and his instability and recklessness," he said, citing Trump's decision to hold a security meeting over the North Korean missile test in a public space in earshot of other people as "a sign of his failure to act responsibly."
"The fact that Vice President Mike Pence played a major role in pushing Flynn out is a sign that Pence is already asserting himself with Trump," he said, adding the Vice President often appears uncomfortable with Trump's "freewheeling and careless behavior."
No US president has ever been successfully impeached, although an attempt was made to Bill Clinton but he was acquitted by the Senate.
Richard Nixon also resigned before he could be impeached for serious wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal.
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BOGOTA -- At the start of his first full day in Colombia, Pope Francis urged Colombians to persevere on the path to reconciliation and reject violence despite an unpopular peace deal that has left the country deeply divided.
"There has been too much hatred and vengeance," Francis said in a speech at the country's presidential palace, his first address of the day. "We do not want any type of violence whatsoever to restrict or destroy one more life."
Colombia has recently emerged from a bloody civil war that lasted over 50 years, left 220,000 dead and displaced millions. But the country remains divided over a 2016 deal between the government and the FARC guerrilla group that brought an end to the violence. The deal gave amnesty to 7,000 former FARC guerillas, and some may win seats in Congress. Many Colombians think the deal is far too kind to the rebels.
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Francis urged the crowd of 750 members of Colombia's elite to remain committed to peace despite the unpopularity of the deal.
"The more demanding the path … the greater must be our efforts to acknowledge each other, to heal wounds, to build bridges, to strengthen relationships and support one another," he said.
But Francis told the lawmakers that just laws are needed to resolve the "structural causes of poverty that lead to exclusion and violence." He called inequality "the root of social ills," and said Colombia needs the participation of all members of society -- including the indigenous people and women -- to thrive.
Later in the morning, he told 22,000 young people gathered in front of the Cardinal's Palace that they must be agents of healing through forgiveness.
"Your youthfulness also makes you capable of something very difficult in life: forgiving," he said. "It is remarkable to see how you do not get entangled in old stories, how you watch with surprise when we adults repeat events that divide us simply by being tied to resentments."
Francis will spend the entire day in Bogota, visiting its cathedral and addressing the country's bishops. Later in the afternoon, he will celebrate mass before an expected crowd of over 1 million people.
Large enthusiastic crowds have lined the streets of Bogota to catch a glimpse of the pope in his popemobile, chanting and running alongside it.
This is Francis' 20th trip abroad, and the fifth to his native continent of South America.
In addition to Bogota, the Pope will also visit the city of Villavicencio – where he will lead a prayer for national reconciliation – as well as Medellin and Cartagena, before heading back to Rome on Sunday night.
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ABOVE: NDP Leader Tom Mulcair discusses the values of the NDP and why they seem to be shifting to the right.
OTTAWA – NDP leader Tom Mulcair is signalling he’s following the path of Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath moving his party to the centre for the next federal election.
In an interview about the NDP’s position on the political spectrum on The West Block with Tom Clark, Mulcair suggested he is taking notes from a controversial former British Prime Minister – The Labour Party’s Tony Blair.
“If you look at the history of some of the social democratic parties, if you look at the British labour under Tony Blair, he used to quip that it wasn’t a question of left and right it was a question of what worked and what didn’t,” said Mulcair.
Blair was a polarizing figure in the British labour movement in the 1990s and 2000s. He spent much of his time as prime minister moving the party toward the centre. By the end of his premiership in 2007 people joked he was liked more by the conservatives than his own party.
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Mulcair says that’s what Canadians are looking for.
“I think what Canadians want are people who are realists, who understand for example the importance of our extractive industries and the creation of jobs but they also want to have a government that’s actually going to enforce rules of sustainable development like polluter pay. We can do both.”
In referencing Blair, Mulcair clearly signalled a turn away from the party of Ed Broadbent and Tommy Douglas but said some things will stay the same.
“Our views on Canada’s role in the world are very similar to the traditional views of the NDP. We want a very open approach, we want to work for peace, we want to get Canada back on the world schedule,” said Mulcair. “There’s nothing I’d love more Tom, then to make my first gesture as [prime minister] to be to attend the conference of the parties on Kyoto in Paris in December of 2015.”
“Stephen Harper is fighting against the world and the planet. So we do have to start getting these things right.”
Pushed further by Clark on whether the colour of the NDP’s orange is changing, Mulcair reiterated a “small-l” liberal approach.
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“It’s a pragmatic approach that we’ve been taking, that’s the approach that I took in the leadership race.”
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The European Commission has announced that it is taking Ireland to the European Court of Justice, its highest court, over the country’s failure to recover up $15bn (£11.3bn) in back taxes from tech giant Apple.
Back in August 2016, the commission ordered Apple to shell out the unpaid taxes. It ruled at the time that the company had received illegal state aid.
“More than one year after the commission adopted this decision, Ireland has still not recovered the money, also not in part,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday.
“We of course understand that recovery in certain cases may be more complex than in others, and we are always ready to assist. But member states need to make sufficient progress to restore competition,” she added.
The commission said that the deadline for Ireland to implement its decision on Apple’s tax treatment was 3 January this year.
It said that until the illegal aid is recovered, Apple is benefiting from an “illegal advantage, which is why recovery must happen as quickly as possible”.
The commission also noted that, although Ireland has made progress on the calculation of the exact amount of the illegal aid granted to Apple, it is only planning to conclude its work on the matter by March 2018 at the earliest.
The Irish government reacted to the decision by saying that it was disappointed and that the commission’s action was “wholly unnecessary”.
“We have always been clear that the government is fully committed to ensuring that recovery of the alleged Apple state aid takes place without delay and has committed significant resources to ensuring this is achieved,” the Department of Finance in Dublin said.
“Ireland fully respects the rule of law in the European Union.”
The move on Wednesday underscores the EU’s ramping-up of efforts to crack down on the practices of massive technology companies that are dominating European markets.
In June the commission slapped Google with a record-breaking €2.4bn (£2.1bn) fine for abusing its dominant position in the fiercely competitive and rapidly expanding world of online shopping.
Google said that it “respectfully” disagreed with the decision and in September it said that it was appealing it.
Separately on Wednesday, the EU ordered Amazon to pay back about €250m in taxes stemming from an unfair tax break the company was given by Luxembourg in 2003.
“Luxembourg gave illegal tax benefits to Amazon. As a result, almost three quarters of Amazon’s profits were not taxed,” Ms Vestager said in a statement on that matter.
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or explanations.
However, at the same time, 30% respondents expressed worry that a chat bot might make a mistake, when it came to purchasing or making reservations, and 43% preferred human interaction.
Bias Inheritance
Chat bots can suffer from what is called ‘trainer’s bias’. The bot will be trained to answer questions by a human, and human bias permeating AI is already evident in recruitment. Amazon had to shut down its AI recruitment tool when it was found biased against women.
To prevent this, Danone ran a 1-hour training session with a select group of people, where all were given the task to ask the bot as many questions as possible, while the trainer could enhance the database in real-time.
Read More: When chatbots become more than just machines
If care is not taken, imagine approaching your HR for sick leaves only to be turned down even though you really need them. While some HR personnel might tell you the same thing, at least you can reason and present your case there.
Training Employees
Also, getting people excited about using bots is fine, but they must also be trained so that they are aware that there is no human at the other end.
The DLA conducted a three-day boot camp in March 2018 to bring employees up to speed with the technology they were going to deploy by establishing a culture of experimentation and innovation.
The agency conducted a contest in November, petitioning ideas for intelligent automation. Ideas for using automation software to increase efficiency and streamline processes poured in.
Total Automation
What if businesses are overrun by bots? For example, in 2017, Wikipedia was facing a bot-on-bot war among its editing bots, which were re-editing their colleagues’ work and removing previous links. In the scenario of a government agency, this would not be a pretty sight.
As Taha Yasseri, who worked on the study at the Oxford Internet Institute told The Guradian, “The fights between bots can be far more persistent than the ones we see between people. Humans usually cool down after a few days, but the bots might continue for years.”
Imagine such a war within an organization like IBM or the Pentagon. They are fast and efficient, but how much trust can we place in automation? Could we ever lose control?
What if the future brought on total automation? They have taken over HR and sales. Could they also replace the sweet receptionist who greets us when we enter or the burly security guard at the gate who says hello every day? In the case of a government spy agency, could they replace the spies?
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Women have protested male guardianship with the hashtag #IAmMyOwnGuardian (Picture: Ms Saffaa/Twitter)
Women in Saudi Arabia are to get more basic freedoms as the king relaxes the country’s controversial guardianship laws.
The KSA continues to be one of the world’s most gender-segregated nations.
Hundreds of thousands injected with vaccine in China despite safety concerns
At present women must live under the supervision of a male guardian, requiring his permission to do things like travel, access education, see doctors, get married or make police complaints.
However, King Salman has just issued an order allowing women to benefit from government services such as education and healthcare without needing their male guardian’s consent.
Although this isn’t an end to the guardianship system altogether, it is a major first step towards emancipation for women in the country.
Saudi women voting for the first time in municipal elections in December 2015 (Picture: AP Photo/Aya Batrawy)
Activist Aziza Al-Yousef was arrested for driving in 2013 (Picture: Getty Images)
According to Maha Akeel, a women’s rights campaigner and director of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, this could mean women are able to study, access hospital treatments, work in the public and private sector, and even represent themselves in court without needing the consent of their guardian.
‘Now at least it opens the door for discussion on the guardian system,’ he added.
‘Women are independent and can take care of themselves.’
Saudi King Salman passed the order relaxing the rules (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
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This comes after years of protests from feminists in Saudi Arabia who have fought for an end to the archaic practice.
Coronavirus news live: 6,874 new cases and Tfl says no change in passenger numbers
In September last year, around 2,500 women in the KSA directly bombarded the King’s office to demand an end to guardianship.
At least 14,000 others signed a petition calling for an end to the highly restrictive law, and an online movement grew under the hashtag #IAmMyOwnGuardian.
The groundbreaking petition was started and then hand-delivered by activist Aziza Al-Yousef, who was arrested in 2013 for deliberately breaking the country’s ban on women driving.
In December 2015, Saudi women were allowed to vote in municipal elections for the first time.
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nothing, then we would not be surprised if they announce Shafiq as president."
• A Brotherhood spokesman, Jihad el-Haddad, said future talks with the generals would have to be conducted with newly formed "national front" it had agreed with more secular figures, the New York Times reports.
In so doing, the Brotherhood is acceding to arguments for greater collaboration and openness that have been for years advanced by its more liberal leaders... He acknowledged... that most Egyptians now believed that the weeklong delay in the announcement had turned the declaration of a president into a bargaining chip in the generals' indirect negotiations with the Brotherhood and its new allies.
• Shafiq supporters gathered in Nasr City on Saturday, ahead of the results chanting against slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood, the al-Jazeera reports. Protesters chanted "Down with the rule of the Supreme Guide".
• A state TV presenter has accused controllers of the station of bias coverage in favour of Shafiq and the military council in a live broadcast, the Egypt Independent reports.
Sherif Abdel Wahab said the director of the programme had ordered coverage of the protests in Nasr city in support of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq, and to ignore the much larger gathering of protesters in Tahrir Square.
• Al-Jazeera has footage of both Shafiq and Morsi rallies ahead of today's announcement.
Its report is a useful summary of the build up to the results.
Syria
• Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the plane that was downed by Syrian was not spying against Syria and was over international waters when it was hit. He said the plane had no "covert mission related to Syria," and it was purely on a training flight to test Turkey's radar capabilities, according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet.
• Turkey's leaders have warned that they will take "necessary" action in response to incident. President, Abdullah Gül, said Turkish and Syrian forces were working together to search for the two missing crew of the F-4 aircraft, which was shot down over the Mediterranean on Friday and that any cover-up would not be possible.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross has condemned the killing of of a Red Crescent volunteer in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor. Bashar al-Youssef, who was shot in his Red Crescent uniform, became the fourth ICRC/Red Crescent volunteer to die since the crisis began. Dr Abdul Rahman al-Attar, the president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, said: "We are shocked by Bashar's death. It is completely unacceptable." It is unclear which side was responsible.
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abdominal portion of the vaginal lining is closed with a purse string suture. [11,12,13].
3b) Peritoneal Pull Through Procedure – Just as in the Davydov Procedure, an abdominal approach to obtain peritoneum and develop Denonvilliers fascia between the rectum and prostate to create a space for the neo-vagina or vaginal reconstruction. Risks include all the risks involved in a penile inversion technique if being done concurrently, as well as: stricture, stenosis, graft failure, lack of lubrication, and risks of abdominal procedure of damage to bowel, bladder, prostate, muscles, nerves, and vessels. Another risk is the lack of literature and long term data on this procedure.
Literature: There is very little information on long term outcomes for MRKH and MTF vaginoplasty procedures.
Conclusion: Surgeons are striving for a vaginoplasty procedure which creates the desired features of a natal vagina. Goals for vaginoplasty procedures: to create a vagina which is natural in appearance, has self-lubrication, minimal upkeep (minimal to no dilation, minimal to no douching), functions for sexual experiences, has erogenous sensation, and has acceptable surgical risk. The peritoneal pull through technique is promising for most of the above features, and offers more possible features than either the penile inversion technique or the sigmoid vaginoplasty.
However, there is a paucity of long-term data for MRKH patients with peritoneal pull through procedures and even less information for the peritoneal pull through procedure for MTF vaginoplasty procedures. Caution in performing the peritoneal pull through procedure until more information is available seems prudent.
At this point, this option may be an option for patients who need salvage vaginal reconstruction whose only option is colon procedure or patients who need more grafting than is available by traditional penile inversion technique: gender non-conforming procedures (ie penile preservation vaginoplasty) or patients with atrophic anatomy (congenital, acquired, women who have been exposed to puberty blockers).
We need to have transparency of follow up for these patients in the interest of future informed consent for our patients.
References:
Dr. Heidi Wittenberg is an experienced Urogynecologist based in San Francisco who offers transgender bottom surgery procedures, including Orchiectomy, Penectomy, Vulvoplasty and Vaginoplasty. Dr. Wittenberg works exclusively with trans patients. To speak with Dr. Wittenberg about gender affirming genital surgery, please contact her office to arrange a consultation.
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Developers who have bought up land along Hamilton's light-rail transit (LRT) line are holding off in fear the $1-billion project won't happen.
That's the analysis from Glen Norton, the city's head of economic development. Plenty of people have bought land along the route, he said. But no one's building on it yet.
No one has pulled out yet, Norton said. "What they've done is slowed down the process."
Norton gave the update as he presented an annual economic development action plan to city council's general issues committee Wednesday.
As usual, he presented a rosy picture. The city has been trying to reduce downtown office vacancies to seven per cent by 2020, and in 2018, Hamilton had a 12.70 per cent vacancy rate downtown.
The city has also been trying to attract a major film studio, and it's talking to multiple companies, he said. Next month, his team will bring a report to city councillors to rezone some Barton/Tiffany land to accommodate a studio. It's already held public meetings.
This new LRT timeline shows a 2024 launch. (City of Hamilton)
It's also on track to expand broadband internet access to rural areas, he said. The city has also attracted a data centre and manufacturing incubation space.
But LRT uncertainty, he said, has developers holding their breath.
Chris Mlinaric is chief financial officer with Vrancor, one of Hamilton's major developers. He backed up Norton's assessment.
"In some cases, yes, this is true," he said in an email.
Vrancor is moving forward with some developments, such as a high rise at Queen and King, because the city needs more hotel and rental space, Mlinaric said. In others, "we are holding off development until the fate of the LRT is determined."
In 2015, the province announced $1 billion to build LRT. It will run alternately down Main and King streets from McMaster University to Eastgate Square. It's due to launch in 2024, and Metrolinx and the city are still aiming for that.
Premier Doug Ford, who took office last June, says he supports the project. The province paused property acquisitions last fall, though, and there's no word when those will resume. It's also uncertain how city council will vote when it comes time to approve a master agreement this year.
Metrolinx has had full-time staff on the project since 2015. It's currently in the request for proposals phase to choose a consortium to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the system.
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For the of their second single, Country Girls present “a special summer I wouldn’t forget brilliantly swaying and shining”. As should be apparent by now, the girls are on a mission to present the retro compositions delivered in the cutest way possible. While the music plays like a flashback request hour (there won’t be a bass drop anytime soon), references to selfie-sticks and emails clues the listener that the Country Girls live in the world of today.
The theme here is strictly pastoral. True to the roots of the group, Country Girls made the long trip to Hokkaido to film “Tamerai Summertime”. The girls seemingly float in pastures, fields bedecked with daisies, and delicate wooded forests. If that sounds like a dream, then pinch yourself: the Country Girls are real.
Do you like the feel of a gentle breeze during the summertime? Well, “Tamerai Summertime” should be your song. I would never imply the song is anything more complicated than that. The arrangement fills itself with natural sounds- no strange whirs are buzzes. Soothing background vocals pad the main vocals with oohs and aahs and sha-la-las. The most electronic thing you’ll hear in the song will be the organ solo at 2:52.
Hokkaido sightseeing
It’s like a nature documentary, really
A favorite outfit for the girls has to be their white dresses crowned with floral tiaras. It’s such a simple thing, but they wear it well, and it matches the pure vibe radiating from the girls.
With not much to the song, it seems “Tamerai Summertime” really serves to showcase the girls. We should look at a few more solo shots.
Really, the song probably should have been a B-side. But, in the current Hello! Project there are no B-sides, only Zuul.
A beautifully composed shot of Country Girls
Some quick choreo
I present to you my arts and crafts project!
Ozeki Mai is certainly a cute thing, isn’t she?
Special thanks to Yamaki Risa, who’s “Sweet & Kiss” is definitely the best.
And, scene
You can buy “Wakatteirunoni Gomen ne / Tamerai Summer Time” at CD Japan
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On November 30 Politico reported that Eric Trump killed two deer during a recent three-day hunt in Turkey.
They found mention of the hunt in Hürriyet Daily News, which reported that “the 32-year-old…Trump killed two deer and paid for the hunting, which came following an invitation from a Turkish businessman.”
https://twitter.com/politico/status/804021684097417220
Politico stressed, “Both Eric and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., were previously investigated for coordinating a Zimbabwe hunting trip in 2011 through an unlicensed company from South Africa.” They linked to a March 2012 Associated Press story which said, “Zimbabwean conservationists…are investigating the legality of a hunting spree in the country by the heirs to U.S. magnate Donald Trump’s fortune after photos showed up online of the brothers posing with dead game animals.”
Politico did not include mention of that fact Eric and Donald Jr. were cleared of any wrongdoing. News 24 quoted Zimbabwe parks authority spokesperson Caroline Washaya-Moyo, who said:
They were accompanied by a professional hunter, and we have done a background check on him and his licence is still valid. Also with the Trump brothers was a ranger from the parks department who was monitoring the hunt. The animals they hunted are available for hunting in Zimbabwe.
A broader statement issued by Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority general director V. Chadenga, and published by Ammoland, made clear Eric and Donald Jr. had done nothing wrong:
I would like to officially respond to the baseless allegations that Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump hunted illegally during their visit to Zimbabwe. First and foremost, there is no “Official Investigation” into the Trump’s activities here as from day one all the requisite documentation was properly handled and the appropriated licenses were obtained which resulted in the issuance of the export paperwork. The only investigation which should occur is that of the “anti-hunting” organizations who are peddling untruths falsely presented as facts.
Politico did not mention the statement from Washaya-Moyo or Chadenga, but understandably so. Journalists do not have much time for basic research or fact-checking when racing to publish the epic scoop that Eric Trump killed two deer in Turkey.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at [email protected].
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It's really hard to find a three dimensional character in it, and you work it as much as you can, but you can't put ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag."
No matter who is playing Spider-Man, and what studio is behind the current adaptation of the mighty Marvel hero, Aunt May always will be designed as a supportive side character – a voice of compassion and reason who’s there to help troubled teen hero Peter Parker figure the right move in a difficult situation. Apparently no one told Sally Field that she’d have a reduced and supportive role in the Amazing Spider-Man movies, however, because when she opened up to talk show guru Howard Stern, she kind of threw her character – and the failed franchise – under the bus. Sally Field, as you may or may not remember, played Peter Parker’s precious Aunt May in twomovies, tending to the needs (and the laundry) of Andrew Garfield’s Spidey. It was a thankless role each time out, to say the least, and Field knows it. On The Howard Stern Show, Sally Field admitted that she only took the part in the massive franchise as a favor to producing partner Laura Ziskin, who died in 2011, and she was frustrated by the one-dimensionality of the part (and the series). Said Field, in a delicious NSFW diss:As fiery as that statement reads on the page, Sally Field really was speaking matter-of-factly when she discussed the difficulty of preparing to play the part. She admitted to Howard Stern that she didn’t put "a great deal" of thought or preparation into the role, and agreed with Stern that the character basically existed to prop up Spider-Man, from time to time. If you recall, Field’s lines in the sequel,, involved doing Peter’s laundry, and then holding down a side job as a nurse… which was completely ignored until we saw Aunt May in a hospital during a power outage. Man, that movie can be a bit of a mess.Here, listen to Sally Field, in context, and hear the disappointment in her voice when trying to explain why she was part of a franchise that flamed out, leading to a reboot in the character’s timeline, sending him back to Marvel in a partnership with Sony:And now that we have a new Spider-Man, we have a new Aunt May. According to reports, Marisa Tomei will play Aunt May to Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. We may see her in Captain America: Civil War. We’ll definitely see her in the solo Spider-Man movie, due in theaters in 2017. I wonder if Sally Field will see it?
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NEW DELHI: Delhi's shame continues. The National Crime Records Bureau's report for 2012, released on Wednesday, iterates through statistics what every woman in the city knows by experience - that it remains the most unsafe for women among 88 important cities of India.
With 5,959 cases of crime against women registered last year, Delhi accounted for a staggering 14.88% of all women-related crimes reported from these 88 cities. No other city even came close to matching Delhi's notorious record.
Bangalore was a distant second, with a share of 6.18% of all crimes against women in urban India. Next came Kolkata (5.66%) and then Mumbai (4.86%).
No crime reveals Delhi's violence towards women better than rape. The number of rapes in the capital last year (706) was more than those reported in four other metros — Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai (484) — put together. The staggeringly high figure can't be explained by the capital's sprawl. For, the female population of Delhi is 75.76 lakh, lower than Mumbai (85.20 lakh) and not much higher than Kolkata (67.93 lakh).
2,160 kidnap cases of girls registered
According to the NCRB figures, Delhi's share of all crimes committed in the country was 2.83%. Among states and UTs, Bengal leads the pack with a share of 12.67%.
As many as 2,160 kidnapping cases in which women or minor girls were the victims, were registered last year in Delhi. There were 134 dowry deaths and 1,985 cases of cruelty to women by husbands or relatives.
Seeking to downplay the numbers, Delhi Police said statistics did not reveal the actual picture. Senior cops said gave a number of reasons for the rise in crime in Delhi over the past decade. They said rapid growth in the city's population, socio-economic imbalances and urban anonymity were encouraging deviant behaviour. They said the city's adverse sex ratio (866/1000) and loosening of social structures were also playing a part in rise of crime.
Among the new initiatives for controlling crimes, the cops said 255 city routes had been identified as being the most frequented by women late in the evening. More than 400 women sub-inspectors and 2,088 women constables were being deployed on these stretches.
Earlier, a document submitted by a Delhi ministry in the assembly had criticized a few rape victims themselves for inadvertently contributing to the low conviction rate in such cases. "Victims sometimes do not support prosecution during trial. At other times, there are compromises made between both parties," the ministry stated.
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Users of credit monitoring site Credit Karma have complained that they were served other people’s account information when they logged in.
Many took to a Reddit thread and complained on Twitter about the apparent security lapse.
“First time logging in it gave me my information, but as soon as I refreshed the screen, it gave me someone else’s info,” said one Reddit user. “Refreshed again and bam! someone else’s info — it’s like roulette.” Another user said they logged in and out several times and each time they had “full access to a different random person’s credit file,” they said.
One user told TechCrunch that after they were served another person’s full credit report, they messaged the user on LinkedIn “to let him know his data was compromised.”
Another user told us this:
The reports are split into two sections: Credit Factors — things like number of accounts, inquiries, utilization; and Credit Reports — personal information like name, address, etc.. The Credit Reports section was my own information, but the Credit Factors section definitely wasn’t. It listed four credit card accounts (I have more like 20 on my report), a missed payment (I’m 100% on time with payments), a Honda auto loan (never had one with Honda), student loan financing (mine are paid off and too old to appear on my report), and cards with an issuer that I have no relationship with (Discover).
Several screenshots seen by TechCrunch show other people’s accounts, including details about their credit card accounts and their current balance.
Another user who was affected said they could read another person’s Credit Factors — including derogatory credit marks — but that the Credit Report tab with that user’s personal information, like names and addresses, was blank.
One user said that the login page was pulled offline for a brief period. “We’ll be right back,” the login page read instead.
Credit Karma spokesperson Emily Donohue denied there was a data breach, but when asked would not say how many customers were affected.
“What our members experienced this morning was a technical malfunction that has now been fixed. There is no evidence of a data breach,” the statement said.
The company didn’t say for how long customers were experiencing issues.
Credit Karma offers customers free credit score monitoring and reports. The company allows users to check their scores against several major credit agencies, including Equifax, which last month was fined at least $575 million for a 2017 data breach.
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Bitcoin Mobile SIM Card Top-Ups Now Available in 136 Countries
Bitcoin remittance service Sobit has been launched to enable users to charge their prepaid mobile SIM cards using bitcoin. The service supports over 600 operators in 136 countries.
Also read: Rollout of 260,000+ Bitcoin-Accepting Stores in Japan Begins
About Sobit
Sobit was jointly developed by Japan’s leading reward site operator Ceres Inc and the Tokyo-based bitcoin and blockchain venture company Janom LLC.
Ceres has already partnered with other prominent bitcoin companies including Bitflyer, Bitbank, Coincheck, and Breadwallet on other cryptocurrency projects. Janom launched a bitcoin remittance service called Cointip in November 2016 and the company also partnered with Keepkey LLC to obtain exclusive distribution right of Keepkey products in Japan. Ceres Inc recently announced the launch of Sobit:
With Sobit, you can charge your prepaid SIM card using just bitcoin. You don’t need any accounts, credit cards etc. Just a wallet with available bitcoin. Sobit supports prepaid SIM cards from over 600 operators in almost 140 countries.
Using Sobit
Users first enter their phone numbers to use Sobit, even though the system should correctly detect the operator of each phone number most of the time, the company conveyed. Once the right operator is selected, the user can check the rates, choose the desired top-up amount, type in their email address and send bitcoin through the QR code provided or via their bitcoin wallets. The company states:
We will charge your phone as soon as your bitcoin transaction gets one confirmation, which may take up to 10 minutes (it depends mostly on your bitcoin wallet and fee settings).
Users will also get an email confirmation with their order details. While “you should get your top-up immediately,” for some countries or operators, “there may be significant delays, even up to 24 hours,” Sobit cautioned.
Currently, only payments equivalent to $100 maximum per day will be accepted “due to technical reasons,” the company added.
On Sobit’s website, 136 countries are listed. In the U.S., supported operators include Verizon, T-mobile, AT&T, H2O, and Net10. In the UK, they include Orange, T-mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone. In China, they are China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
Would you use Sobit? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Sobit, Ceres
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.
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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef could be “severely damaged” if the government does not completely ban the dumping of dredge waste in the World Heritage-listed waters, a report commissioned by conservation group WWF said Monday.
The Australian government in January ordered a ban on dumping dredge spoil in the marine park as part of a push to stop the United Nations declaring the site in danger.
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But the ban does not include most islands and ports as well as lakes and other waterways that fall outside the marine park but inside the slightly larger World Heritage Area.
Conservationists say dumping waste in reef waters damages it by smothering corals and sea grasses and exposing them to poisons and high levels of nutrients.
The report said port expansions within reef waters, which it noted could see some 51 million cubic metres (1.8 billion cubic feet) of the ocean floor dug up, would have “devastating impacts” on the natural wonder.
The report prepared by the consultancy Dalberg Global Development Advisors said there was no need for coal port expansions along Queensland state’s coast — where the reef is located — as the capacity at existing terminals was unused one-third of the time.
“These coal port expansions could increase the total coal port capacity of the region from 267 to 637 million tonnes per year”, the report added.
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“This would make the total capacity of the Great Barrier Reef’s coal ports just less than the overall capacity of the current largest port in the world: Shanghai, China.”
Australia has come under scrutiny from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization over the reef’s health.
UNESCO threatened to put the reef on its World Heritage in danger list, but delayed taking action until the start of this month to allow Australia to submit a report on how it will protect the bio-diverse site.
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Environment Minister Greg Hunt said his government’s report to UNESCO “clearly demonstrates that the Great Barrier Reef does not warrant being listed as in danger”.
One of the measures implemented by the Queensland government includes the banning of dredging for new or expanded major developments outside priority port areas for a decade.
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“We know the reef is facing challenges but we are making significant progress. There is strong evidence that our efforts are working,” Hunt said in a statement last week.
“The report demonstrates that we have heard the concerns of the (World Heritage) committee and we have comprehensively addressed every one of them. We have also listened to the concerns of the community.”
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A handful of United States senators have finally woken up to the questionable use of cell-site simulators, also known as stingrays.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, 10 Democratic senators and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posed some of the most direct questions about the digital surveillance devices.
The devices are often used covertly by local and federal law enforcement to locate target cellphones and their respective owners. However, stingrays also sweep up cell data of innocent people nearby who have no idea that such collection is taking place. Stingrays can be used to intercept voice calls and text messages as well.
Both manufacturers and law enforcement have been notoriously tight-lipped about precisely how such devices are acquired and implemented. Former federal magistrate judge Brian Owsley (now a law professor at Indiana Tech) has been unsuccessful in his efforts to unseal orders that authorize their use despite intimate familiarity with the legal system. And just last month, local prosecutors in a Baltimore robbery case even dropped key evidence that stemmed from stingray use rather than allow a detective to fully disclose how the device was used.
As the senators write:
We would like to know if your departments, or its components, utilize these devices along the borders and in our states. Accordingly, we request the following information: 1. To what extent does your department use lMSI-catchers (Stingrays, DRTboxes, etc.) or other similar technology? Specifically: a. Which components within your department use such devices? If multiple components use such devices, is there department-wide guidance governing their use? b. Since [fiscal year] 2010, how many times has such technology been deployed, and how many phones were identified or tracked by this technology, including devices used by the targets of the operation as well as non-targets whose information was incidentally
swept up? c. In what types of operations are these devices deployed? What statutory authority permits the use of this surveillance technology? e. Do [the Department of Homeland Security] and/or [Department of Justice] obtain a court order prior to using such devices? If so, do DHS and/or DOJ inform the courts of the number of individuals likely to be impacted; the scope of acquisition; or the specific technology being deployed?
Last month, local judges in Washington State started to realize that when local cops come to them asking for permission to conduct a type of phone surveillance, known as a pen register or trap and trace, they will often use a stingray to get the information desired instead. As a result, the Pierce County judges now require police to specifically state whether they will be using a stingray.
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In a landmark step for animal welfare, Taiwan has outlawed the consumption of dog and cat meat—the first country in Asia to do so.
Anyone who buys or eats the meat can be fined up to $8,200. Back in 1998 Taiwan made it illegal to slaughter dogs and cats and sell their meat, but an underground commercial market persisted. And now Taiwan has now doubled down on punishment: Those who cause deliberate harm to a cat or dog can be fined up to $65,000, and serve two years of jail time—up from a maximum of one year previously.
The consumption of dog meat in East Asian countries has sparked an outcry from the public and animal advocates around the world in recent years, with China’s notorious Lychee and Dog Meat Festival a flashpoint for the fight. The festival, held every June in Yulin, southern China, sees 10,000 dogs killed over a ten-day period. Millions of people have signed petitions calling for the end of the annual event.
Pups Rescued From Dog Meat Farm Need Adoption Watch these dogs' journey from a meat farm in South Korea to freedom.
Taiwan’s action marks significant progress in the fight against killing dogs and cats for food, a centuries-old East Asian tradition still legal in China, South Korea, and the Philippines. Adam Parascandola, Director of Animal Protection and Crisis Response for Humane Society International, believes Taiwan’s decision is evidence that a long-standing cultural practice doesn’t have to be a roadblock to ending a “cruel and outdated eating habit.”
In fact, while the high-profile nature of the dog meat industry would seem to indicate a widespread and deeply embedded cultural practice—Humane Society International estimates that 30 million dogs are killed annually in Asia—most Chinese people actually don’t eat dog meat. According to a 2015 Animals Asia study, less than a quarter of Chinese in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai had consumed dog meat in the previous two years.
South Korea shows a similar trend away from eating dog meat, especially among young people. Nonetheless, the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit animal protection organization, reports that two million dogs are killed in the country annually. As the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics approach, Korea faces increasing pressure to crack down on the industry. In December 2016, authorities called for a gradual end to slaughter practices at Moran Market, in Seoul— the nation’s largest—which sells 80,000 dogs a year. Vendors have so far resisted and are locked in a stalemate with activists and the authorities over the future of the market, which remains in business.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government might expand a ban on larger electronics like laptops in airplane cabins to flights originating from dozens of airports in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the head of Homeland Security said on Wednesday, though an expansion could be avoided if countries agree to improved security procedures.
An illustration picture shows a laptop on the screen of an X-ray security scanner, April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic/Illustration
The U.S. restrictions imposed in March currently cover about 350 flights a week originating from 10 airports, primarily in the Middle East. Extending the ban to all European airports that directly serve U.S. airports would affect nearly 400 flights a day and cover 30 million travelers and pose major logistical challenges, airlines and security officials say.
“We are looking right now at an additional 71 airports,” Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told a House of Representatives panel. “We’re also looking at ways that we think we can mitigate the threat” without expanding the ban.
Kelly said his deputy will attend a conference in Malta next week “to present what we think are the minimum increased security standards... and present those to people to say if you meet these standards we will not ban large electronics.”
The restrictions on laptops announced in March, including on flights originating from airports in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, came amid fears that a concealed bomb could be installed in electronic devices taken aboard aircraft.
Britain quickly followed suit with restrictions on a slightly different set of routes.
Kelly said many countries are working to not be added to the ban list by improving screening to “detect this very sophisticated device.”
He called the danger real. “This is a very serious constant threat to knock down an airplane,” Kelly said.
Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan declined to identify the 71 airports that are under consideration.
Any move to restrict carrying larger electronics to the cargo hold of aircraft has potential safety implications related to past problems with laptop batteries. Kelly said he is reviewing those concerns.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao at a Senate hearing on Wednesday said lithium ion batteries on airplanes can be a problem.
“This is a difficult issue that the administration is grappling with especially from a security point of view,” Chao said.
A laptop fire in a cabin can be detected quickly, versus a device stored in a cargo hold. On May 30, a New York JetBlue Airways Corp flight bound for San Francisco was diverted to Michigan because of a lithium battery fire from a passenger laptop in the airplane cabin.
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Today is Texas Muslim Capital Day, where Muslim Texans celebrate both their faith and the state they live in. One Texas Republican, Rep. Molly White, would rather they choose between those two things. She posted the following Facebook status saying she has instructed her staff to leave an Israeli flag on her desk and ask Muslim visitors to pledge allegiance to America:
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It's a little perplexing why she would place the flag of a foreign country on her desk if she's asking for a pledge to America. In any case, I asked Rep. White – a staunch conservative, and anti-abortionist — if she approves of certain Israeli policies of providing universal healthcare and subsidies for abortion, and its allowance for Sharia courts for its Arab Muslim population:
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Rep. White did not respond to the comment.
One Jewish Texan, Martin Woodward, told White that she is not helping the American Jewish community or Israel by antagonizing Muslims:
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Rep. White didn't reply to Woodward but continues to defend her conduct in a string of other comments.
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Did your sports bra get lost in the wash again? And now you don’t have anything to pair with your favorite leggings for your morning sweat session? (Bra-and-legging coordination is an art form, and this writer won’t be seen in anything other than an exceptionally matched combo.) Well, we have some good news: You can say goodbye to that annoying wardrobe situation for good. The latest celeb-approved activewear trend — sporty jumpsuits — calls for just one sweat-wicking staple.
Hilary Duff was the latest A-lister to toss her leggings aside for the bold (albeit extremely practical) workout essential, which might conjure up thoughts of some female superheroes. The Younger actor opted for a ribbed Nike jumpsuit with a subtle V-neck and thin straps emblazoned with “Just Do It.” Duff styled the sporty one-piece with a chambray button-down that she tied around her waist, yellow-and-black snake-print Nike sneakers, and a Louis Vuitton backpack for a look that was equal parts chic and sporty. (In other words, she can kick butt in a morning boxing class and head straight to a lunch date with friends after.)
View photos SplashNews.com More
Duff isn’t the only star who seems to be a fan of this one-and-done exercise outfit. She joins an impressive celeb backing that includes Alessandra Ambrosio, Emily Ratajkowski, Jennifer Lopez, and Lizzo, who wore an Outdoor Voices unitard for a pre-Grammys hike in the Hollywood Hills looking, if we do say so ourselves, good as hell.
RELATED: Hollywood Heartthrobs Are Wearing This Game-Changing Sneaker Brand
With such a solid celeb fanbase, it’s only a matter of time we mere mortals catch on and follow in the footsteps of in-the-know A-listers. And considering these activewear bodysuits have earned a stamp of approval from some of the most stylish stars in the game, you can rest assured that they’re probably pretty darn good.
Bonus: These pieces aren’t just for the gym. They make for a great year-round base layer, too, and can be teamed with everything from a cozy oversized sweater to a cool leather jacket.
The styling possibilities, not to mention what you can conquer in a day, are endless with these sporty jumpsuits. Shop some of our favorites below.
View photos Nordstrom More
Buy It! The Upside Foxy Catsuit, $159; nordstrom.com
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importantly, he’s 6' 4" and 225 pounds, with long arms. He might not be able to shut down Rob Gronkowski on an island for four quarters, but he has the physical tools to compete with an athletic pass-catcher of Gronk’s mold.
Of signed NFL safeties who play meaningful snaps on defense, only a dozen are at least 6' 2". Only eight weigh at least 225 pounds, and only seven others weigh more than 215. An average tight end runs somewhere around 6' 6", 245, and defenses simply don’t have big enough athletes in the deep middle of the field to compete with these versatile offensive weapons.
The problem will only get worse before it gets better. This year’s draft class is particularly weak at safety. Only four of most experts’ top 20 safety prospects are 6' 2". And none weigh more than 219.
The 6' 2", 225 Iloka was taken in the fifth round in 2012; none of this year’s top safety prospects is taller or as heavy. Matt Sullivan/Getty Images
This athleticism gap between safeties and tight ends helps explain why an overwhelming number of quality tight ends have been drafted after the first round. (Gronkowski in the second; Jimmy Graham, Jordan Reed, Travis Kelce and Jared Cook in the third; Julius Thomas in the fourth; Gary Barnidge in the fifth; and Delanie Walker in the sixth.) If the safeties are limited in their capabilities, then you don’t need to draft a stud tight end in the first round; all you need is a decent tight end in order to create the desired offensive advantages. This frees up more first-round picks to be used on wide receivers. If your passing game is already rich by way of tight ends over safeties, it can keep getting richer by way of receivers over cornerbacks. (And it has. Any NFL coach will tell you that there aren’t enough quality corners to handle all the league’s dynamic wideouts.)
• GRUDEN’S QB CAMP: Emily Kaplan goes behind the scenes at the show that’s must-see for fans and must-visit for the draft’s top quarterbacks
At some point, coaches at all levels will get desperate enough to start grooming bigger, better athletes to play safety. But we’re probably a long way from that day. So congratulations to the Bengals. They got one of the few safeties with a fighting chance against tight ends. All things considered, they got him at a bargain price.
• Question? Comment? Let us know at [email protected]
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A TEENAGED boy who shot and killed eight students and two teachers in Texas had been spurned by one of his victims after making aggressive advances, her mother has told the Los Angeles Times.
Sadie Rodriguez, the mother of Shana Fisher, 16, told the newspaper her daughter rejected four months of aggressive advances from accused shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, at the Santa Fe high school.
Fisher finally stood up to him and embarrassed him in class, the newspaper quoted her mother as writing in a private message to the Times.
“A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like,” she said.
“Shana being the first one.” Rodriguez could not independently be reached for comment.
If true, it would be the second school shooting in recent months driven by such rejection.
In March, a 17-year-old Maryland high school student used his father’s gun to shoot and seriously wound a female student with whom he had been in a recently ended relationship, police said.
As the investigation enters its third day on Sunday, no official motive has been announced for the massacre, the fourth-deadliest mass shooting at a US public school in modern history.
Classmates at Santa Fe High School, with 1460 students, described the accused shooter as a quiet loner who played on the school’s football team.
He wore a black trench coat to school in the Texas heat on Friday and opened fire with a pistol and shotgun.
Multiple news accounts depicted him as taunting his victims as he fired, focusing mostly on the arts class room where Fisher was.
He has provided authorities little information about the shootings, his lawyer Nicholas Poehl said, adding: “Honestly because of his emotional state, I don’t have a lot on that.”
Texas’ governor, Jim Abbott, a Republican, told reporters Pagourtzis obtained firearms from his father, who had likely acquired them legally.
Mr Abbott also said Pagourtzis wanted to commit suicide, citing the suspect’s journals, but did not have the courage to do so.
Pagourtzis’ family said in a statement they were “saddened and dismayed” by the shooting and “as shocked as anyone else” by the events. They said they are co- operating with authorities.
All schools in Santa Fe will be closed Monday and Tuesday, officials said.
Pagourtzis, who police said has confessed to the shooting, was being held without bond Sunday at a jail in Galveston.
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The US Treasury Department yesterday designated an Iranian network that has procured “advanced equipment and materials to print counterfeit Yemeni bank notes potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars” for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Qods Force. One of the four branches of the IRGC, the Qods Force is in charge of external operations. Treasury’s announcement answers an important question about at least one of force’s methods of financing its operations in Yemen.
Last year, the estimated cost of Iran’s Yemen portfolio was $25 million. Even if that amount quadrupled, it would still be a fraction of the estimated $15 billion Iran spends per year in Syria. The advanced counterfeit capability would permit Iran to sustain its operations in Yemen for years. Tehran’s bar for success is low in that war: it just has to continue supporting the Yemeni insurgency and bleed the Saudi-led coalition.
The US has sanctioned two Iranian nationals and four German and Iran-based companies. Reza Heidari, 40, used two German front companies to “deceive European suppliers, circumvent export restrictions, and acquire advanced printing machinery, security printing machinery, and raw materials” to support the Qods Force’s counterfeit capabilities. As of late 2016, he has been the managing director of Iran-based Rayan Printing. Heidari coordinated with Mahmoud Seif, in his 50s, who has been involved with the logistics of importing the material to Iran. Seif is the managing director of Tejarat Almas Mobin, the parent company of Rayan Printing. He previously ran guns for the Qods Force, according to Treasury.
The individuals and companies are designated for terrorism pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, as well as for acting as agents of the IRGC pursuant to the Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulation. As a result, they are added to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN); anyone that does business with these entities is at risk of fines and being blocked from the US financial system.
The Qods Force is designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, an authority applied to the IRGC in its entirety last month.
Update: the IRGC has four branches; the earlier version had stated five.
Amir Toumaj is a independent analyst and contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
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The expanding exchange of people, ideas and money is a result of policy changes over the past few years in Washington and Havana that have opened up travel and giving for Cubans and Cuban-Americans. After decades of being cut off by politics, the airport here is always crammed with Cuban-Americans coming to see family and lugging in gifts, just as it is now more common to see Cuban artists, academics and dissidents in Florida or New York, often mingling with the established Cuban-American elite.
“The broad trend is Cubans’, regardless of their politics or ideology, coming here to visit, live and work, and go back and forth,” said Julia E. Sweig, the director for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s an organic dynamic in which the elite are participating.”
For many families, the transition from keeping Cuba at a distance to pulling it close has taken time and multigenerational discussion. When Kevin O’Brien and some of his cousins decided a few years ago to take charge of the long-dormant Bacardi Family Foundation, they agreed to focus much of their support on Cuba, returning to a version of an old family custom: Relatives pool money together and distribute it to a chosen cause or person.
Not everyone gives; there are about 500 Bacardis now, and disagreements over the homeland are common, said Mr. O’Brien, the foundation’s president. But since reactivating the foundation in 2012, the Bacardis have raised $28,000 for water filters after Hurricane Sandy and financed efforts to encourage creative expression, with art, photography and music.
Cuban officials seem tolerant, to a point. Eager to improve their weak economy, they welcome the money but fear its power, said one artist supported by the foundation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. He added that while Cuba’s leaders had become more welcoming — no longer calling exiles gusanos, or worms — they were still distrustful, determined to keep Cuban-American influence from becoming an immediate challenge to the state.
For now, experts say that seems unlikely. The organized money going to Cuba, beyond an estimated $2.6 billion in family remittances, mostly from the United States, remains relatively small. A lot of it is still funneled into the Catholic Church, one of the few institutions allowed to play a role in civil society. The Order of Malta provided 800,000 meals for the elderly in Cuba last year with around $250,000 in donations, mostly from Cuban-Americans in Miami. The Cuban police nonetheless interrogated some of the old women being fed.
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SIRNAK, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— Turkish military helicopter crashed Wednesday near Turkey’s border with Iraqi Kurdistan, killing all 13 personnel on board, the military said.
The crash occurred in the border province of Sirnak, where Turkish troops are engaged in operations against Kurdish militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK.
But a military statement said the crash appeared to be accidental, with initial information indicating that the AS 532 Cougar had hit a high-voltage transmission line shortly after taking off from a base in Sirnak’s Senoba region.
The military didn’t provide information on the victims. The private DHA news agency, however, said the helicopter was carrying a delegation, headed by a major-general, which was inspecting the Senoba region. Other media reports said there were six other officers on board.
The helicopter crashed at 8:55 p.m., the military said, adding that an investigation was underway.
Defense Minister Fikri Isik and other government ministers immediately left the capital, Ankara, for Sirnak, DHA reported.
In April 2017, a Turkish police helicopter with 12 people on board has crashed in the Kurdish region in eastern Turkey.
According to PKK’s balance sheet of war published in January 2017, one F-16 and 3 helicopters have been destroyed by the Kurdish rebels in 2016.
Three Turkish soldiers were killed on Wednesday in clashes with Kurdish militants in the southeastern Kurdish province of Diyarbakir in Turkish Kurdistan, security sources said.
Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing Kurdish civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.
In March 2017, the Turkish security forces accused by UN of committing serious abuses during operations against Kurdish militants in the nation’s southeast.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, AP | Ekurd.net
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It's a preview of just how badly things could go in 2020: the Kentucky gubernatorial race was narrowly decided for the Democratic candidate Andy Beshear, but the monumentally unpopular Trumpist incumbent Matt Bevin will not concede, and instead, he is repeating the Trumpist lie that "voter fraud" caused him to lose his office.
Supercharging this lie are obvious fake Twitter accounts, like the now-suspended @Overlordkraken1 account, which posted hours after the polls closed with "just shredded a box of Republican mail-in ballots" and "Bye-Bye Bevin." Though the account only had 19 followers and though it was swiftly shuttered, a screenshot of the tweet was retweeted by a botnet army, and then far-right commentators started to cite it as evidence of electoral fraud.
The disinformation campaign has also featured bot armies retweeting claims of "rigged elections" and "voter intimidation" (blamed on George Soros, of course!). Mainstream Republican commentators have hinted that the voting machines in Kentucky were hacked (the Republican Senate majority, led by Mitch McConnell, has consistently blocked funding to secure electronic voting machines).
The online campaign has been joined by a robocall campaign that urges people to "report suspected electoral fraud." Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said, "Beyond the routine calls that we field, up to and on Election Day, there are no irregularities that would substantiate a 5,000-vote difference margin that now separates unofficially Governor-elect Beshear with Governor Bevin."
Data compiled by VineSight, a start-up that detects disinformation on social media, showed that many of the accounts that tweeted the screenshot of @Overlordkraken1's ballot-shredding claim appeared to be bots. Their tweets, in turn, were spread by other bots. Of the more than 3,800 accounts that VineSight detected tweeting the screenshot, at least 2,350 appeared to be bots, based on an analysis of the accounts' activities, including how quickly and how often they tweet. One was an account that went by the handle @ConservaMomUSA and had both human and bot characteristics. @ConservaMomUSA's post about the ballot shredding was retweeted about 1,300 times, and nearly 60 percent of that traffic was from bots, VineSight found.
Close Election in Kentucky Was Ripe for Twitter, and an Omen for 2020 [Matthew Rosenberg and Nick Corasaniti/MSN-NYT]
(Image: GNOME icon artists and Krzysztof Franek, CC BY-SA, modified)
(via /.)
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It might be a century since the Great War that killed some 40 million people ended, but wars continue to rage across the world as US President Donald Trump threatens to rain "fire and fury" on his adversaries.
As an insight into how artists have responded to the ravages of a nightmare global conflict, "Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One," an exhibition opening June 5 at London's Tate Britain, comes at a particularly germane time.
Read more: Global conflict continues to rise, index shows
Exploring the immediate impact of the "war to end all wars" on British, German and French art, "Aftermath" showcases over 150 works by artists including George Grosz, Hannah Höch, Pablo Picasso, Otto Dix, Christopher R.W. Nevinson and Käthe Kollwitz, among many others.
This tumultuous postwar period intersected with the emergence of such radical new styles as dada and surrealism, which informed responses to the nature of war, the culture of remembrance and postwar rebuilding.
'Torn, naked and scarred and riddled'
Sometimes controversial paintings captured not the victorious march of great patriotic fighters, but the brutality of trench warfare and the loss of dignity for faceless soldiers caught up in senseless industrial slaughter. Some of the artists had served on the Western or Eastern Front, including English painter Paul Nash, whose watercolors expressed a "torn, naked and scarred and riddled" landscape.
Read more: How artists captured the splendor and misery of the Weimar Republic
In the postwar years, Dada photomontage artists like Hannah Höch parodied the corrupt elites that now spoke of peace, while her colleagues like Grosz and Dix focused on the maimed and disabled veterans and the desperate prostitutes who followed in their wake, all forever marked by war.
Höch's photomontage, Dada Rundschau, parodied the leaders who advocate both war and peace
Other works tackle mourning and remembrance, with artists like Käthe Kollwitz, Andre Mare and William Orpen commissioned to produce sculptural and painted works to memorialize and commemorate the conflict. However, Orpen's To the Unknown British Soldier in France refused to glorify heads of state at Versailles and was rejected, with the artist instead committed to representing the "the ragged unemployed soldier and the dead."
Click through the picture gallery above to see some of the key "Aftermath" works reflecting the horrors of World War I.
'Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One' runs June 5 through September 23, 2018 at London's Tate Britain.
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For the Mexican government, few things are as sensitive as an American pointing out lost territory. When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton likened Mexico’s drug trafficking last year to an insurgency, “where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country,” Mexican lawmakers responded with fierce condemnation.
The tensions only worsened after Carlos Pascual, the American ambassador, questioned Mexico’s crime-fighting abilities in diplomatic cables, quoting a former high-ranking Mexican official who “expressed a real concern with ‘losing’ certain regions” of the country to cartels. Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, was so infuriated by that cable and others that he insisted on pushing out Mr. Pascual, who resigned last month.
And yet, despite promises of help, the families and residents here say they have seen little progress in Tamaulipas. Instead, they have witnessed squabbling between top officials — Tamaulipas is governed by political rivals to the president’s party — and lackluster enforcement.
Mr. Román, the father of two missing sons, complained that government checkpoints were always in the same place and easy for criminals to avoid. Alfonso Ortega, whose brother Martín disappeared a year ago on his way to Matamoros, described a galling lack of urgency.
“The government is not moving,” Mr. Ortega said. “It’s not doing anything.”
The authorities believe the Zetas are behind the murders in San Fernando, though they have only theories about the motives: kidnappings for ransom, perhaps, or attempts at forced recruitment.
Regardless, experts say the trouble in Tamaulipas stems partly from the gang’s history. Its leaders started out as enforcers, so when they split with their former patrons in the Gulf Cartel a few years ago, the Zetas could not rely on historic ties with drug suppliers or traffickers. To thrive and expand, they branched out to other crimes, including extortion, migrant smuggling and the siphoning of oil and gas from pipelines in the area.
Image Workers unloaded a body, found in a mass grave, from a refrigerated truck last week at the morgue in Matamoros, Mexico. Credit... Alexandre Meneghini/Associated Press
Many of the gang’s early leaders served in the Mexican military, and they have used their experience to create a level of intimidation that outmatches most rivals’. No local newspaper dares to print the photos the government has issued for the 17 suspects in the latest San Fernando killings.
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Story highlights At least 10.2 million viewers tune in Sunday to season 4 premiere
That's up from 7.9 million at the start of "Downton's" season three
PBS executive says the show has become a post-holiday tradition
The "Downton Abbey" phenomenon just keeps getting bigger.
Sunday's season four premiere of the upstairs-downstairs drama on PBS surpassed the comparable ratings for every previous episode. According to Nielsen data, at least 10.2 million viewers tuned in live (or within a few hours via digital video recorders) on Sunday night, up from 7.9 million at the start of season three and 8.2 million at the end of it.
This was more than a "personal best" for "Downton." The season four premiere outperformed every other drama on Sunday night, too. CBS's "The Good Wife," for instance, had 9.2 million viewers; ABC's "Revenge" had 6.7 million. (All these totals will increase once several days of digital video recorder viewership is factored in.)
PBS isn't rated like a traditional network because it doesn't carry traditional commercials.
But even last season's "Downton" premiere was described as one of the highest-rated events in the history of the public broadcasting network; analysts said PBS hadn't seen numbers this high since the premiere of the "Civil War" documentary series in 1990. An apples-to-apples comparison is impossible because of changes in ratings methodology. But the season four premiere affirms that "Downton" is making history for the network.
JUST WATCHED Sneak peek of 'Downton Abbey' season 4 Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Sneak peek of 'Downton Abbey' season 4 04:24
Season four, of course, debuted several months ago in the United Kingdom. PBS has received no small amount of criticism for its decision to delay the episodes in the United States, and the network's executives are aware that some fans get a sneak peek by finding the episodes illegally on the Internet. But they say the sky-high ratings two seasons in a row are proof that their scheduling strategy is a wise one.
Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, said in a statement on Monday, "I'm so pleased that millions of viewers have returned to 'Downton Abbey' on their local PBS stations for what has become a post-holiday tradition."
Rebecca Eaton, the executive producer of "Masterpiece," added, "Julian Fellowes has written every word of all four seasons of 'Downton,' and I toss him a huge bouquet on behalf of his American fans."
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Leonardo DiCaprio Meets With Donald Trump to Discuss Environmental Issues The actor met the president-elect at Trump Tower.
-- Political types aren't the only ones descending on Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan for a meeting with the president-elect and his transition team.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump met with Hollywood heavyweight Leonardo DiCaprio and Terry Tamminen, the chief executive officer of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which "is dedicated to the long-term health and well-being of all Earth’s inhabitants," according to the foundation's mission statement.
"Today, we presented the president-elect and his advisers with a framework -– which LDF developed in consultation with leading voices in the fields of economics and environmentalism -– that details how to unleash a major economic revival across the United States that is centered on investments in sustainable infrastructure," Tamminen said in a statement.
Tamminen said the meeting "focused on how [to] create millions of secure, American jobs in the construction and operation of commercial and residential clean, renewable energy generation."
The meeting -- which was not announced ahead of time by the transition team -- also included a discussion about the polarizing issue of climate change.
"Climate change is bigger than politics, and the disastrous effects on our planet and our civilization will continue regardless of what party holds majorities in Congress or occupies the White House," Tamminen said.
And is seems that the trio will continue their dialogue. "The president-elect expressed his desire for a follow-up meeting in January, and we look forward to continuing the conversation with the incoming administration as we work to stop the dangerous march of climate change, while putting millions of people to work at the same time," Tamminen said.
DiCaprio also met with Ivanka Trump and couple other Trump advisers while at Trump Tower, a source with knowledge of the meeting said.
On Wednesday afternoon, former NYPD detective and 2017 New York City mayoral candidate Bo Dietl tweeted a photo of DiCaprio and Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital and a member of Trump's transition team, as well as others, dining together.
Earlier this week, ABC News confirmed DiCaprio recently met with Ivanka Trump and gave her a copy of his documentary "Before the Flood."
The meeting occurred on the heels of Donald Trump's Monday meeting with former Vice President and environmental activist Al Gore.
The meeting also comes on the same day a senior Trump adviser said Trump has selected Oklahoma State Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt is a strong critic of the EPA, and his nomination drew swift criticism from some prominent Democrats and environmental groups.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Just over a year after buying First Utility, Royal Dutch Shell has rebranded the British household energy supplier and is switching all its customers to renewable electricity as the oil and gas giant seeks to expand its low-carbon business.
A logo of Royal Dutch Shell is seen at Gastech, the world's biggest expo for the gas industry, in Chiba, Japan, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai
The move by the Anglo-Dutch company poses a challenge for Britain’s long-standing retail power suppliers whose profit margins have come under growing pressure due to intense competition and the regulator’s price cap.
First Utility, which has around 710,000 energy customers, has been rebranded as Shell Energy and joins a handful of energy brands such as Bulb and Octopus Energy that offer all customers 100 percent renewable electricity.
Shell hopes to attract more users by offering Shell Energy customers a 3 percent discount on fuel at its large network of petrol stations. It will also offer discounts for electric vehicle charging.
All of Shell Energy’s electricity will come from renewable sources such as wind, solar and biofuels it said.
Britain’s retail energy market is still dominated by the “big six” suppliers - Centrica’s British Gas, Iberdrola’s Scottish Power, E.ON, EDF Energy, SSE and Innogy’s npower.
None of the big six today offer 100 percent renewable energy as standard to all customers. Shell Energy will continue supplying natural gas to its customers.
“We are building on the disruptive nature of First Utility to give customers something better. We know that renewable electricity is important to them and we are delivering,” Shell Energy Chief Executive Officer Colin Crooks said in a statement.
Shell completed the acquisition of First Utility in February 2018 for around $200 million.
It plans to invest $1-$2 billion per year, around 5 percent of its total spending, on renewables and low-carbon businesses as it bets on a rapid growth in demand as the world battles climate change.
Britain imposed a household energy price cap on standard tariffs, but the regulator has allowed a 10 percent price hike from April due to rising wholesale costs.
All of the big six energy suppliers have announced rises in line with the cap and First Utility is also set to increase its standard variable tariff by an average of 117 pounds ($155) a year, or around 10 percent from April.
However First Utility said fewer than 20 percent of its customers were on the standard tariff.
First Utility also has around 40,000 broadband customers.
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The 22-year-old rookie finished his career at UCLA with a streak just as long, 41 consecutive field goal attempts from 35 yards or less. Signed by the Texans in May as a college free agent, Fairbairn says Houston reminds him of his native Hawaii.
"I love it," Fairbairn said. "The weather is very extreme compared to Hawaii but very similar in the way where it can hot and rainy at the same time. So it feels right at home for me."
The familiarity doesn't end with the weather. Fairbairn has also landed with good friend and former Bruin Xavier Su'a-Filo. The two were teammates at UCLA in 2012 and 2013. Fairbairn has leaned on the third-year offensive lineman during his transition to the NFL.
"He's a big role model of mine," Fairbairn said. "Ever since I was at UCLA, he's always taken me under his wing and treated me like a brother, along with all the guys on this team, so I really appreciate his company."
On Sunday at Levi's Stadium, Fairbairn kicked his first NFL field goal, a 45-yarder, in the third quarter. He also kicked the extra point after the Texans final touchdown of the game to extend Houston's lead to 24-13 over the 49ers.
Fairbairn is currently in a tight competition with nine-year veteran Nick Novak for the Texans placekicking duties. The two have worked together all offseason and in training camp, but ultimately only one can win the starting job.
"He (Fairbairn) made a fairly long field goal and he kicked an extra point and so I thought he did a pretty decent job," head coach Bill O'Brien said Monday. "He had a couple directional kickoffs that were okay. The first one of the game I think he probably had a few butterflies and didn't kick that as well as he wanted to but it ended up being okay. The coverage worked out okay. So there's some things to improve upon like there always are with young kickers and young players. But I thought for his first outing it was pretty solid."
In high school, Fairbairn played both soccer and football but knew his future was in kicking. He was a kicker and punter for Punahou School in Honolulu for head coach Kale Ane, whom he credits for teaching him his technique and the mental side of the game.
Both have served him well.
While Fairbairn doesn't have the NFL experience to back up his name just yet, it's something he works on every day until his opportunity comes.
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In a world where some fiat currency systems are failing, as seen by the financial collapse in Venezuela and now Turkey, our reliance on centralised currency is being questioned more than ever. As the traditional systems that have been in place for so long continue to falter, the world looks for a viable alternative and many have found that alternative in decentralised money, or cryptocurrency. The benefits of a decentralised approach to currency include the resistance that it affords to inflation or deflation, which is attributed to its limited supply, which then echoes the properties of gold or land as insulation against devaluation. This particular attribute becomes increasingly important for citizens of countries that have fiat currencies that are destabilised.
TREOS is a direct reference to the ‘decentralised money’ that will power a new economy. In the future, the term ‘TREOS’ will become synonymous with cryptocurrency and Virtual Financial Assets (VFAs), their payment methods, their ecosystem, and their general use as both a utility and a store of value. Today, however, TREOS introduces itself incrementally, using proof-of-concept stages and coordinated, multi-directional implementations throughout the financial sector, both online and offline.
The TREOS economy and ecosystem have been designed to operate upon concepts of universal consensus, anchored to the stable price of gold, which effectively removes volatility from the cryptocurrency market — one of the biggest existing obstacles to cryptocurrency mass adoption. TREOS is on track for compatibility with the legislative development of the VFA sector and designed for ultimate compatibility with regulatory frameworks, auditing requirements, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) legislation, and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, and so TREOS is positioned for mass adoption in line with global policy implementations. Furthermore, TREOS believes passionately that all blockchain technologies should be regulated primarily by the people they serve, and we are advocates of fair and transparent policy development that retains the rights of the people to prosper and contribute within a democratic and ethical global economy. There is a race happening for ownership of the blockchain, and TREOS ensures that our new, digital economy will be owned and guided by the people who give it its value.
The public will first encounter TREOS as an online marketplace platform, fuelled by its proof-of-concept network token, TREOS Origin (TRO). The marketplace at treos.io is built and ready for market, and it joins together buyers, sellers, affiliates, bounty hunters, business owners, partners, advertisers, and cryptocurrency users in a shared ecosystem that provides empowerment, transparency, democracy, security, and freedom to prosper. The platform is our premier product, and is the ultimate use case for the penetration of decentralised money into the legacy online ecosystem.
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China has warned the UK against interfering when it comes to Hong Kong, telling London that the affairs of its former colony belong to Beijing. The remarks come after a UK report expressed concerns about the “integrity” of Hong Kong law enforcement.
Speaking at a daily press briefing in response to the half-year report on Hong Kong released by the British government on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang warned that “Hong Kong is China’s domestic affair. Foreign countries have no right to interfere.”
Read more
“We demand that Britain be discreet with its words and stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs,” Geng added, stating that Beijing is “resolutely opposed” to Britain’s report, and that it does not accept its “improper comments” and “unfounded criticism” of China.
Hong Kong’s government also rejected the report, reiterating that foreign governments should not interfere in its affairs.
In the report, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he had specific concerns about the “integrity of Hong Kong’s law enforcement.”
He cited the case of Lee Bo and four other Hong Kong booksellers who specialized in gossipy books about China’s leaders, including its president. While such books are banned on the mainland, they are legal in Hong Kong. Despite that, the five went missing and were later found to be detained by China.
Referring to the case, Johnson said it was a serious breach of the “one country, two systems” arrangement under which Hong Kong returned to China in 1997.
China has denied any wrongdoing in the case, and Geng stressed that the “one country, two systems” policy has made remarkable achievements, noting Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.
READ MORE: Hong Kong police clash with illegal street vendors (VIDEO)
The spokesperson also insisted that Beijing has strictly followed the Constitution and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, Xinhua reported.
Hong Kong first became a British colony in 1842. It was occupied by Japan during World War II, until the UK resumed control in 1945. Negotiations between Britain and China resulted in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which laid the path for the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong 13 years later.
The UK report by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office was the 39th in a series of reports published in six-monthly intervals, and covers January to June 2016. The reports began following the transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
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In the words of Kansas State University researcher Raymond "Bob" Rowland, his latest work is helping to eradicate a devastating swine disease.
The disease is caused by the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS, virus. The virus costs the U.S. pork industry more than $600 million in losses every year.
In his latest study, Rowland, professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, has created a way to protect offspring from the PRRS virus during pregnancy. He has found that mothers without the CD163 protein are resistant to the PRRS virus and give birth to healthy, normal piglets. The work appears in Nature's Scientific Reports.
"We have created a protective shell against the PRRS virus during the reproductive phase of production," Rowland said. "The offspring does not become infected during pregnancy and is born a healthy piglet. During this critical phase of production, we have essentially ended a disease."
The PRRS virus causes disease in two forms: a respiratory form that weakens young pigs' ability to breathe and a more severe reproductive form that causes mass deaths in pigs during late pregnancy.
"The reproductive form not only has a tremendous economic impact, but also a psychological impact on people who work with pigs," said Rowland, who has spent more than 20 years studying the PRRS virus. "When we look at ways to control this disease, it really begins with reproduction. We want to keep this disease out of the reproductive process and we have found a way to do that."
To address the devastating reproductive form of the virus, Rowland collaborated with Randall Prather, a professor at the University of Missouri, and a team to develop PRRS-resistant pigs. Using CRISPR/Cas9 technology, the researchers found that pigs without the CD163 protein showed no signs or evidence of being infected with the PRRS virus. CD163 is the receptor for the virus.
The research can save swine producers millions of dollars because pigs are protected from the PRRS virus during the critical reproductive process, Rowland said. But because offspring are born normal, they may still be susceptible to the disease later in life.
"This is one tool that we can use," Rowland said. "It doesn't mean that we can give up on vaccines or diagnostics, but it does create more opportunities for other tools to become more effective. Because this pig is born healthy, it will respond better to a vaccine or a diagnostic test. We are enhancing other aspects of disease control as well."
Rowland will present the research for the first time at the 2017 North American PRRS Symposium from Dec. 1-3 in Chicago.
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you something to eat.
As we make our way to the gate, that nagging anxiety suddenly springs back into my mind.
Me: Ma’am? Miss Lorelei?
She halts her addled gait and puts her hand back on my shoulder.
Lorelei: What is it?
Me: Montal… he got here a bit before us?
Lorelei: He did.
Me: And is he, well… do you think he’ll make it?
Lorelei: Make it where, child?
Me: You know, like… will he survive?
She unleashes a laugh that brightens every nook of the soaked environment. It’s a hearty laugh borne from the diaphragm.
Lorelei: Oh, heavens. That’s hard to say.
Me: Well, do you think–
Lorelei: But if I had to bet, I’d put my money on him being very dead. Very soon.
She beams over me as though she’d just told me the most heartwarming secret of life. I… don’t even know what to say. I know I’m standing here. Completely still. But this impedes her not. She applies a gentle pull on my shoulder and motions inside the enclave.
Lorelei: I think you need a cookie.
Kamini and I walk beside her. It doesn’t feel as though there’s really any alternative. But I’m… numb. I’m walking. But I can’t feel my legs. Or any other part of me for that matter. It’s like I’m being controlled by something outside me. As I step into the village for the first time, she leans over and whispers in my ear.
Lorelei: But here’s the good news. If he does survive, the Montal you previously knew will have some new – and very… interesting – abilities.
The three of us just keep strolling along. I think I’m going to be sick. I think I also need a cookie.
he first thing I noticed was the drums. Thought it was a trick of the rain pounding on my hood, on my shoulders, on every sodden step of this wretched trail. The first few times it struck my ear, I mistakenly nabbed it as far-off thunder. I even found myself thinking that it somehow came from the emberstools themselves.
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Theresa May's decision to call a snap general election has backfired spectacularly, with the Tories losing their majority in House of Commons to a Labour surge that saw Jeremy Corbyn stage one of the most astonishing comebacks ever seen in a UK election.
May went to the country in the belief she could take advantage of Corbyn's dire poll ratings to win an enormous parliamentary majority and secure her position as prime minister for the next five years. Instead, she appears to have committed one of the most unnecessarily self-destructive acts in British electoral history.
With 649/650 seats declared, the Tories are the largest party in parliament but short of the working majority of 17 seats they won under David Cameron in the 2015 general election. This throws their ability to form a new government into chaos, just days before Brexit negotiations are due to begin.
May visited Buckingham Palace today and upon her return to Downing Street said she would form a government, albeit with the help of "friends and allies" in Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party.
"I will form a government," May said, "a government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this uncertain time."
But her future as prime minister is now in severe doubt, with one Conservative MP claiming to BuzzFeed News that foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who dropped out of the leadership race after the Brexit vote, is already considering his options as a potential replacement. However, according to the BBC, May has no intention of resigning.
The prime minister first indicted she wanted to stay on to lead a minority Tory government, after being re-elected in Maidenhead, saying: "At this time, more than anything else, this country needs a period of stability. And if, as the indications have shown, if this is correct, that the Conservative party has won the most seats and probably the most votes, then it will be incumbent upon us to ensure that we have that period of stability, and that is exactly what we will do."
Anna Soubry, a pro-Remain Tory MP who only just held on to her seat, was the first Conservative to publicly say that May should go. Describing the Tory campaign as "pretty dreadful", Soubry told the BBC the result was "bad" and that May should "consider her position".
Labour and the Liberal Democrats said they would not be willing to form a coalition, leaving a Conservative minority administration as the most likely outcome of the election. However, this raises the prospect of another general election being called in the near future if no stable government can be formed.
Corbyn called for May to resign and "make way for a government that's truly representative" and that rejects austerity politics.
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A team of researchers from the Universities of Queensland and Sydney, Australia, has performed the first comprehensive characterization of a polypeptidic ant venom, that of the giant red bull ant (Myrmecia gulosa), revealing toxins that stimulate the human nervous system to cause pain. The results are published in the journal Science Advances.
“Venoms of bees and wasps had been a subject of research for some decades, but there had been little research on ant venom,” said study senior author Dr. Eivind Undheim, a scientist in the Centre for Advance Imaging at the University of Queensland.
“Ants are found on every inhabited continent on Earth, and many of us are familiar with the sting their venom can produce.”
“But, despite the ubiquity of ants, analyzing their venom has been neglected by researchers, likely due to ants’ relatively small size and venom yield, and also to the widespread misconception that they produce a simple acidic venom.”
Dr. Undheim and colleagues found that the venom of the giant red bull ant, an Australian species with a notoriously painful sting, is composed of a suite of peptide toxins, and that these are closely related to those found in the venoms of bees and wasps.
“This discovery suggests these toxins evolved from a common ancestor gene found across the Aculeata, or ‘stinging wasps’ part of the Hymenoptera order, which includes ants, bees, wasps and sawflies,” Dr. Undheim said.
“Revealing the chemistry behind animal stings could improve understanding of pain physiology and contribute to the development of new pain treatments,” added study first author Dr. Samuel Robinson, a researcher at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Centre for Advance Imaging at the University of Queensland.
“Venoms are complex mixtures of molecules that animals use to subjugate prey and defend themselves against predators.”
“Defensive stings in particular are usually intensely painful, and contain toxins that directly target our pain-sensing neurons.”
“That means we can use animal venoms to study the human nervous system and learn more about how pain travels through the body and how to develop compounds that block it.”
_____
Samuel D. Robinson et al. 2018. A comprehensive portrait of the venom of the giant red bull ant, Myrmecia gulosa, reveals a hyperdiverse hymenopteran toxin gene family. Science Advances 4 (9): eaau4640; doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aau4640
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This article is from the archive of our partner.
News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch's reaction to a Google TV presentations is the best explanation yet of why we won't be seeing truly integrated Internet TV any time soon. On Saturday, Murdoch took to his new Twitter account to vent about how much he hates Google: "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying." Like many who saw the tweet, we thought that he was weighing in on SOPA, but, according to Forbes' Jeff Bercovici, it turns out he was actually recoiling in horror at seeing the web's streaming piped into a TV. Bercovici's sources said the tweet came after a Google TV presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show and he learned that search results for movie titles would include sites that offer pirated versions, just like regular Google.
The notion of the rules of the freewheeling web moving onto your TV set in your living room is a nightmare scenario for corporate media who depend on your cable box being a gateway to their content. Though cable operators and content producers bicker over carriage fees from time to time, it's a comfy, codependent relationship. The worst thing for both sides would be for TV viewers to "cut the cord," not necessarily because they'd want to pay less (though, that's certainly a fear, too) but because the handful of companies that decide what comes onto your TV screen would lose control. And nothing could demonstrate how real this threat is than connecting Google's search to a TV screen. As Bercovici tells the tale:
Murdoch asked what would happen if he were to search for a particular blockbuster film, and the presenter explained that the results would be the same ones you’d find in any Google search. Including links to content-pirating sites? Murdoch pressed. Yes, unless those sites have already been removed from search results in response to takedown requests, the presenter confirmed.
Like Murdoch, cable companies have had this attitude since TVs started getting fancy. "The big fear for cable companies is that consumers are going to start realizing that they can get a lot of this content online for free, or pay less in any case, and they're going to start cutting the cord, as they say," a Gartner analyst told NPR in 2010. And when Google first announced its set back in the fall of 2010, Hollywood foresaw this scary future, eventually blocking cable access from Google TV. That attitude has stuck ever since. Instead, we have gotten the half-baked streaming box solution, which puts some, but not all, of the Internet on TVs -- just how the cable companies like it.
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If you want read a good overview, John Gruber at Daring Fireball does it best. For examples of the new camera in action, Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch has great examples of Night Mode and other new camera features. For even more camera coverage check out Nilay Patel at The Verge. If reading long articles isn’t your bag, Joanna Stern at WSJ continues to have some of the best tech review videos around. If you want a long in-depth video discussing all things iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro, Rene Ritchie’s YouTube channel is where you should look.
I agree with nearly everything these reviewers say, especially Joanna Stern’s bottom line recommendation of the iPhone 11 (non-pro) or the iPhone XR. I currently own an iPhone XR and it really is a fantastic phone. It misses out on the battery life and camera improvements of the 11 and 11 Pro models, but retains nearly all the other features of home-button-less iPhone design Apple has been pushing since the X was released in 2017. I personally would never want to go back to having a home button. Once you get used to FaceID and the gesture navigation, the home button seems like an anachronism. It really is that good.
The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are best thought of as the 3rd version of the iPhone X. Just like how Apple went from iPhone 6 to 6S to 7, the X, XS and 11 can be seen as a series. The iPhone 6 introduced a new industrial design. The 6S focused on performance improvements. The iPhone 7 focused on new finishes and the camera, especially with the introduction of the dual cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus. The same story played out with the iPhone X line. The original X in 2017 was a new design (and price) in the lineup. The XS focused on performance and refinement. Clunky naming aside, the iPhone 11 is following the same strategy as the iPhone 7. Camera improvements, new finishes and other nice-to-haves, but nothing as earth shattering as a new design like the iPhone 6 or X were.
This focus on refinement might lead some people to see theses phones as boring or iterative - they’re not wrong. But modern smartphone design is mostly a solved problem. Most phones are going to look like a rectangular slab for the foreseeable future. Sure, foldable phones, AR glasses and other innovations may be on the horizon, but I would argue they are not here yet. Foldables come with big compromises, even if their potential is exciting. AR glasses may be just around the corner, but they aren’t here yet. The iPhone 11 Pro is.
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They were the first ones to have us open for them, and now I’m working with them on their fourth record.
Besides community, how do you think being in New York changed the band?
PW: That first year that I was in the band [in 2007], we were such hustlers. Once we decided to take the band seriously, all three of us were working so hard and booking our own tours. There was a certain grind that I don’t know would have happened anywhere else.
CP: It affected us more in terms of motivation than musically, but it definitely fed the sense of mania in the music, too. When Aaron and I were living in Colorado, I was part of a small DIY noise scene there—we were in a place that was so calm and wholesome, you would really seek out violence in the music. I remember going to shows with the hopes that there would be something really physical about it—even just moshing—because in a place so spread out, that’s what you look for in a scene. But then in New York I was so physically overwhelmed by the crowds in the subways and just how much it takes out of you that I started listening to new age music and really soft pop. You would have thought moving to a city like this would make you make harsher music, but actually it did the opposite.
At the same time, New York is a place where you can have so many identities. You know how some trees have those ear mushrooms that just grow off, and you could live on one of those mushrooms and not realize that there was stacks and stacks of others? That’s how I describe music scenes in New York. That’s one of the trippiest things about living here—just how many parallel universes there are that you can be completely unaware of. That definitely fanned the flames of our collage-y tendencies. I think if we lived in a place like Paris or London or Berlin, we’d feel more like we needed to define ourselves with a monolithic sound.
Can you think of a New York moment that changed the music Chairlift was making?
PW: I went to see Das Racist for the first time, at Galapagos [in Brooklyn], and heard them play that song “Combination Pizza Hut Taco Bell,” and I was like, “You guys gotta come over to my studio this weekend and record it.” I had never worked with rappers before, so I went and bought an MPC and spent the next day learning how to make beats. And that became a huge part of my production—just from that one show.
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Sarah Silverman routinely triggers controversy with her sometimes "disturbing" jokes about everything from rape to the Holocaust to abortion. But now the comedian's personal observations about depression have put her at the center of a serious debate about motherhood. During an interview on the TV show The Conversation with Amanda DeCadenet, Silverman spoke candidly about her battle with depression, and said that she was forgoing childbirth because she didn't want to pass her psychological problems on to a son or daughter. Here, a brief guide to Silverman's comments and the issues they raised:
What exactly did Silverman say?
She was talking about the pressure she feels to have children now that she's in her 40s. Even her gynecologist suggested that she freeze her eggs in case she decides to have children later in life. But Silverman, who has openly discussed her psychological troubles in her act and in her book The Bedwetter, said that while she might adopt some day, she has decided not to have biological children. "I don't want kids," she said. "I know that I have this depression and that it's in my family. Every family has their stuff but, for me, I just don't feel strong enough to see that in a child."
Do depressed adults have depressed children?
Researchers have found a genetic link between severe depression and genetics. Ten percent of Americans will experience "major depression" at some point in their lives, and women are twice as likely than men to suffer from it. People who have a parent or sibling with major depression are two or three times more likely than the average person to develop depression, according to a report by the Stanford Medical School. And the risk of depression is four or five times higher than normal if the person's mother, father, brother, or sister has had recurring bouts with depression. If depressed parents adopt, kids don't risk "catching it" from them.
Is it irresponsible for depressed parents to have children?
That's a question "a surprising number of people struggle with," says Lindsay Cross at Mommyish. A lot of people have illnesses that run in their families — depression, yes, but also things like alcoholism — that we can't bear to think we might pass on to our kids. Since I struggle with moderate depression issues, says Anna Breslaw at Jezebel, Silverman's candor "made me seriously consider whether it was my responsibility not to have children. On the other hand, the final stop on this train of thought is the intersection of Eugenics Street and Gattaca Boulevard." Is that really where parenting should be headed?
Sources: Crushable, Jezebel, Mommyish, Stanford Medical School
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SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Exactly one year ago, Leah Kirpalani opened the Shop/Good boutique inside One Paseo's retail center.
She never thought she'd now be running the business from her living room.
"We miss the space so much, we can't wait to all be back in there," Kirpalani says.
But that is the life for her and thousands of business owners and their employees amid coronavirus restrictions.
Shop/Good ended its spa services and is now selling its nontoxic skin care products online. In all, revenue is down 50 to 60 percent as Kirpalani awaits a federal stimulus loan.
"We're really holding onto what the state and federal government has communicated," she said. "The longer this goes on, the more scary that it gets."
How long this goes remains a key question of this era, and one economists are diving into.
A new forecast from the San Diego Association of Governments says the longer the disruption lasts, the bigger the recession will be coming out of it.
"It could be long, it could be short, it could be deep, it could be not deep," said Ray Major, SANDAG's chief economist.
Major says the agency looked at about 40 different scenarios. He's now predicting a moderate recession with the economy taking one to two years to get back to pre-coronavirus activity.
SANDAG is projecting two most likely scenarios:
The restrictions lift in May, with a loss of $10.1 billion in taxable retail sales to the region. A moderate recession ensues, with the economy getting back to pre-coronavirus activity projected levels by July 2021. The economy hit is harder under this projection at the outset, with a $13.4 billion loss in taxable sales in May, growing to a $15.9 billion loss in June, when the restrictions are lifted. A moderate recession ensues, but this time it takes until July 2022 to get back to pre-coronavirus level activity.
SANDAG says the situation is fluid and that it will update its forecasting model as new information comes available.
Either way, the consumer will be the wild card.
"Will restaurants be able to just open up and everybody will be sitting next to each other? Will they have to minimize number of tables that they have there?" Major said. "Will people go to retailers wearing masks and just be okay with that, or do we still have to queue up in front of the store to get in?"
All of that will impact spending, at places like Shop/Good, and beyond.
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By Express News Service
CHENNAI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) took some time. But eventually, it did decide that the IPL should not be held at the moment, considering the alarming spread of the coronavirus.
In a statement released on Friday afternoon, the BCCI said that the T20 gala has been postponed till April 15 as a precautionary measure. It was scheduled to start on March 29.
“The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has decided to suspend IPL 2020 till 15th April 2020, as a precautionary measure against the ongoing Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) situation.
"The BCCI is concerned and sensitive about all its stakeholders, and public health in general, and it is taking all necessary steps to ensure that, all people related to IPL including fans have a safe cricketing experience,” read the statement signed by BCCI secretary Jay Shah.
“The BCCI will work closely with the Government of India along with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and all other relevant Central and State Government departments in this regard,” added the statement.
With sports events across the globe getting cancelled or postponed and the disease making its presence felt in India, the BCCI had been criticised for dillydallying. It had called a meeting of the IPL Governing Council in Mumbai on Saturday to discuss the matter.
However, with the central government clamping down on visas for persons travelling to India and instructing a ban on public gatherings at stadiums, the cricket board had to take the decision a day before that meeting.
Even though the BCCI was okay with the idea of having matches behind closed doors without spectators, the franchises were not willing to play without their foreign recruits, who have been barred from travelling to India until April 15.
Those who would have been able to enter India on ‘employment’ visa, would have to be quarantined for two weeks.
The BCCI seems to have taken into account these factors before announcing the decision to put the IPL on hold.
The nine cities to host matches this season are Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Guwahati.
At least in four of these places, coronavirus cases have been detected with Bengaluru recording the first death in the country caused by this.
The IPL involves the participation of foreigners in several roles. Other than players and coaches, there are commentators, technical and management staff and even media from other countries.
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Rabies is among the most terrifying viruses to get. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “once clinical signs of rabies appear, the disease is nearly always fatal.” (Really: there have been fewer than 10 documented cases of survival once symptoms appear.) Luckily for us—and our pets—Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine that can stop things from getting to that point.
The first time the vaccine was ever administered to a human being–on this day in 1885–was by Pasteur himself. Knowing that the disease was otherwise fatal, both doctor and patient (or, rather, patient’s mother) were willing to risk whatever harm might come from the injection, which had only been tested on dogs.
As TIME recounted in 1939:
One hot July morning in 1885, feverish little Joseph Meister was dragged by his frantic mother through the streets of Paris in search of an unknown scientist who, according to rumors, could prevent rabies. For nine-year-old Joseph had been bitten in 14 places by a huge, mad dog and in a desperate attempt to cheat death, his mother had fled from their home town in Alsace to Paris. Early in the afternoon Mme Meister met a young physician in a hospital. “You mean Pasteur,” he said. “I’ll take you there.” Bacteriologist Louis Pasteur, who kept kennels of mad dogs in a crowded little laboratory and was hounded by medical criticism, had never tried his rabies vaccine on a human being before. But moved by the tears of Mme Meister, he finally took the boy to the Hotel-Dieu, had him injected with material from the spinal cord of a rabbit that had died from rabies. For three weeks Pasteur watched anxiously at the boy’s bedside. To his overwhelming joy, the boy recovered.
By that fall, when his nation’s Academy of Sciences acknowledged the success, “hundreds of persons who had been bitten by mad dogs rushed to his laboratory.”
As for Meister? He ended up working as a janitor at the Pasteur Institute. There, TIME reported, Meister regaled visitors with tales of his time as the pioneering doctor’s patient: “I shall see always Pasteur’s good face focused on me,” he told them. He committed suicide in 1940, shortly after Germany invaded France—though, contrary to a prevalent myth, there is no evidence that he did so because he would rather die than allow the Nazis into the Institute.
Write to Lily Rothman at [email protected].
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Marc Anthony, left, and Pitbull perform at the 39th Annual American Music Awards. Jeb Bush would like to bring Pitbull to a baseball game, maybe
In the all-important Pitbull presidential primary, Jeb Bush apparently is looking to make a move.
Asked by TMZ if he could take anyone — dead or alive — to a baseball game, the former Florida governor picked two men: a former Republican president and Mr. Worldwide.
“I’d bring Teddy Roosevelt because I’d love to talk to him about his …” said Bush before trailing off while signing autographs Thursday in downtown Washington.
“The reason you like baseball is that you can have a conversation with people,” Bush said. “Might want to have Pitbull, too.”
One of Bush’s likely opponents, Sen. Marco Rubio, is said to be tight with the 34-year-old, Miami-born rapper. Rubio, who, according to BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins, is “on a first-name basis” with Pitbull and has described him as a “ friend” in interviews.
In November 2012, Rubio even tweeted some unsolicited advice for his pal:
@Pitbull makes party music not message music.Always been place for that in #HipHop.As he gets older he will have more 2 say about life. — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 19, 2012
“His songs are all party songs,” Rubio elaborated in a December 2012 interview with GQ, when asked whether Pitbull’s raps were “too cheesy.”
“There’s no message for him, compared to like an Eminem,” Rubio said. “But look, there’s always been a role for that in American music. There’s always been a party person, but he’s a young guy. You know, maybe as he gets older, he’ll reflect in his music more as time goes on. I mean, he’s not Tupac. He’s not gonna be writing poetry.”
For his part, Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Pérez, has not endorsed a candidate.
“I’m not here to be part of any political party,” Pitbull said in a statement to BuzzFeed in February. “I’m here to bring political parties to my party because they can’t, they won’t, they never will, stop the Pitbull party, Dale!”
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The following report by Egri Nök was published earlier today at Vlad Tepes in a slightly different form.
Germany: Top Islamic Lobbyist Makes Revealing Tweet
by Egri Nök
A top Islamic lobbyist in Germany is boasting about his excellent connections to the German establishment in a series of tweets.
He isn’t just an ordinary guest on the party convention of Merkel’s CDU that is taking place today:
“We are guests of honor on all conventions of our democratic parties in Germany, and on the #cdupt [CDU party convention 2018]” (source: Aiman Mazyek on Twitter, Feb. 26, 10:09 AM CET)
The clause “all conventions of democratic parties” appears to be a dig at the Islam-critic partyAfD (Alternative für Deutschland), who do not invite Islamic lobbyists to their conventions. Mr. Mazyek seems to imply here that only a non-democratic party would not have him as a guest of honor.
The AfD now come second strongest in opinion polls in Germany, while the two established, and traditionally largest parties, Merkel’s CDU and the SPD, have seen their historic lows in the recent elections.
Nevertheless, they have been in negotiations for weeks now to form another ‘Grand Coalition’ government for the next four years, while the AfD is the strongest opposition party in the Bundestag.
SPD and CDU’s mutual government declaration of last week included the statement of intent to fight “anti-Islamic sentiments”, a first-time German government declaration.
Aiman Mazyek is chair of the ZMD, Council of Muslims in Germany, a frequent talk show guest, and not just the German mainstream media’s darling:
Aiman Mazyek, Angela Merkel and Social Democrat chief Sigmar Gabriel at a 2015 Aiman Mazyek, Angela Merkel and Social Democrat chief Sigmar Gabriel at a 2015 “vigil” in Berlin in response another Islamic terror attack.
His organization ZMD was founded as recent as 1994, their name mimicking the long-established ZJD, Council of Jews in Germany.
Organizationally, Mr. Mazyek’s ZMD is an umbrella organization for Islamic groups in Germany, including a thinly-veiled German branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some researchers deem the ZMD as a whole a covert Muslim Brotherhood organization. The Muslim Brotherhood is banned as a terrorist organization in Germany.
Another tweet by Mr. Mazyek earlier indicates what to expect from the new German government:
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A Wimauma woman was arrested early Friday morning after her parents found a "significant" amount of pipe bombs in her bedroom, the sheriff announced.
Investigators said the parents of 27-year-old Michelle Louise Kolts called them after the discovery. The sheriff's office bomb squad responded and found two dozen pipe bombs, smokeless pistol powder, fused material, 23 different knives, two hatchets, nunchucks, two BB pellet-type rifles, six BB pellet-type handguns, and dozens of books and DVDs about murder, mass killings, bomb-making and domestic terrorism.
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said each pipe bomb contained nails, metallic pellets, or a combination of both.
"It would've taken less than 60 seconds per device to add the powder-infused material she already possessed to detonate each bomb. If used, these bombs could've caused catastrophic damage and harm to hundreds, even thousands of people," he said during a press conference.
Chronister said deputies found her at her job, and she returned home. They said she admitted to making the pipe bombs and planned to use them to hurt people. She didn't specify how and where she wanted to detonate them, the sheriff added.
"We're not aware of any type of hit list," he said. "Her statements are very generic."
The only other time deputies responded to the Wimauma home was in August 2018, after an online printing company alerted them that Kolts requested several manifests on anarchists and making bombs.
"She became consumed with the Columbine and Oklahoma killings," Chronister explained. "At that time, she wasn't diagnosed with any type of mental health diagnosis at the time. She stated, at that time, her intentions were not to harm anyone. Her parents said she was a little on the autism spectrum."
He said in 2018, deputies felt comfortable that she wasn't a harm to herself or others.
"Fast forward a year later," Chronister said, "thank God these parents called us. I could only imagine how difficult it is to call anyone in... but a loved one or family member? You can appreciate the fact that they had the courage to call us."
He said while the case is alarming, he didn't want to "demonize another individual struggling with mental health." He said it's still important to report suspicious activities.
"Who knows the amount of harm that could've been done, had these parents not found the courage to call the sheriff's office and seek help," the sheriff said. "If you see something suspicious, please say something. They called 911 immediately."
Watch the full press conference below:
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WELLINGTON (Reuters) - South Pacific island nations are scouring shipping records for vessels with links to North Korea after Fiji said it had identified 20 falsely flagged ships it suspects the isolated regime is using to evade United Nations sanctions.
Fiji, along with Interpol and the Singapore-based regional shipping regulator Tokyo MoU, are investigating the vessels for links to North Korea, a spokesman for the country’s Maritime Safety Authority (MSAF) told Reuters on Friday. Interpol and Tokyo MoU did not immediately respond to requests for comment on their investigations.
The 18 members of the Pacific Islands Forum this month agreed to launch an audit of every ship registered in the Pacific to search for any links to North Korea.
New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee said Pacific countries, including his own, were concerned North Korea was using falsely flagged cargo ships as one avenue to trade goods in spite of sanctions.
“What we do know is that declared North Korean GDP (gross domestic product) is not big enough to support the nuclear program that they’re running so there has to be significant black market or offbook revenue going into the country,” Brownlee told Reuters in a phone interview this week.
The move came as the UN on Monday ramped up sanctions on North Korea, including tightening up oversight of vessels on the high seas. Authorities will now be allowed to check suspected vessels for prohibited cargo with the authority of the flag country.
UN sanctions introduced in August banned North Korean exports of seafood as part of efforts to curtail the regime’s access to foreign funds.
North Korea had been expected to earn an estimated $295 million from seafood in 2017, one U.N. diplomat said.
In Fiji’s case, the North Korean-linked ships had adopted the island nation’s flag without formally registering, the MSAF said.
It was not known in what way the possibly more-than 20 vessels were linked to North Korea or what their suspected activities or locations were. The MSAF declined to provide details due to the ongoing investigation.
In addition to the fraudulent use of flags, Pacific governments were concerned North Korean vessels could be quietly registering in nations that allow international ships to use their flags.
“If it’s not clear why they’re on that register, in other words, they’re not regular callers into Pacific ports, then further investigation is needed to untangle the ship owner,” said Brownlee.
The review would take place over the next couple of months, Brownlee said, and Australia and New Zealand would provide intelligence to help the small island nations check any North Korean connections.
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The ultimate dead end of libertarian ideology
Let’s examine some of the claims made by NSA leaker Edward Snowden in his Q&A session (stage-managed by demagogue Glenn Greenwald) this morning, shall we? Edward Snowden Q and A: NSA Whistleblower Answers Your Questions
SNOWDEN: First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime.
This, my friends, is what is known as complete, utter bullshit. The US government did not “openly declare” Snowden guilty of anything. It’s a pure paranoid fantasy.
Congress hasn’t declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we’re not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police?
How insanely naïve does a person have to be to believe that governments should only try to gather intelligence from other governments in time of war? Seriously? This is the deep thinker who’s going to reveal the truth to us all?
All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.
Yes, that’s right — Edward Snowden says the US government is plotting to murder him. Another self-aggrandizing paranoid fantasy, and an especially vicious one.
As for the grandiose claims that he’s an agent of TRUTH, practically every troll who’s ever registered a sock puppet at LGF says the same thing.
I can’t take much more of this over-privileged ultra-libertarian BS, but here’s one more quote — Snowden explaining why there’s a discrepancy of about $80,000 in his claims about his Booz Allen salary:
I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my “career high” salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I’ve been paid.
Right. And the dog ate his homework, too.
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Dr. Drew Pinsky, the host of radio call-in program Loveline, is leaving the show on April 28 after 30 years as its regular host.
The 57-year-old board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist known as Dr. Drew wants to focus on other projects, including his current stints on HLN, the radio show Dr. Drew Midday Live with Mike Catherwood on 790-KABC Los Angeles and his Adam and Dr. Drew Podcast, which will expand to five days a week.
"I am not leaving radio,” he says in a statement. “The Loveline brand is still strong and perhaps we will bring it back some day. But for now, this version is ending and I will be focusing on all of my other projects. It has been a privilege to have served the listeners and share deeply in personal stories. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity."
Dr. Drew Sings the National Anthem, Operatic-Style, at L.A. Kings Game: Watch
Pinsky had been doling out sex advice to callers since 1984 when he first appeared on Los Angeles rock station KROQ as part of a segment called "Ask A Surgeon." Later called Loveline, the show was syndicated nationally in 1995 when Adam Carolla joined as co-host. Its regular slot is Sunday through Thursday from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. Sunday through Thursday.
An MTV version of Loveline aired from 1996 to 2000 and spawned a book, The Dr. Drew and Adam Book: A Survival Guide to Life and Love, released in 1998.
Rihanna's 'Work' Was Radio's Most-Heard Song in Its First Day
A common feature of Loveline were celebrity guests, who would join the conversation live and answer questions posed by listeners. They included actors, musicians and reality TV personalities like Slash, Courtney Love, Perry Farrell, Eliza Dushku and members of Blink-182, among many others.
Pinksy broke the news on KROQ's Kevin & Bean Show on Thursday, April 21, to which he phones in regularly. It's unclear whether the show will continue with another host, but according to people in the know, there are no plans to continue at this time.
The doctor's broadcast career also includes the TV shows Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Sober House and Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew. In 2009, he released the book The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America, published by HarperCollins. Pinsky will also conitnue to host MTV's Teen Mom reunion specials.
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United Airlines attracted widespread ridicule Monday after news outlets published videos of airport police violently dragging a passenger from an overbooked flight.
United needed four passengers to give up their seats but was unable to get enough volunteers to take $800 to get off the plane, Audra Bridges, a passenger who posted one video of the incident, told the Louisville Courier-Journal. Airline staff said they would select four passengers at random, but one man refused to leave his seat after he was selected, prompting the airline to call airport police, Bridges said.
United might have been able to avoid all of this by making its passengers aware of the law. Federal regulations require airlines to pay cash ― lots of it ― to people they bump from flights against their wishes. (They can also cut a check, which is nearly as good.) If bumping a passenger from a domestic flight delays that passenger by more than two hours, the airline has to pay the passenger 400 percent of the fare to the passenger’s destination or first stopover, up to a maximum of $1,350. (The infographic at the end of this post explains the few exceptions to this rule.) Here’s the relevant section of the Code of Federal Regulations:
LII
Multiple investigations, however, have found that airlines rarely pay passengers the full amount to which they’re entitled. In many cases, this is because the airlines ask for and get volunteers who are willing to accept less money, or even airline miles, for their inconvenience. Airlines are also supposed to tell passengers at risk of being bumped from overbooked flights how much money they will get if they’re involuntarily bumped, but it’s not clear how often they do that.
In this case, United offered passengers $800, but didn’t get enough volunteers. One reason might be that some of the passengers on the flight in question ― a Sunday evening nonstop from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky ― were probably entitled to more than that. A one-way ticket from Chicago to Louisville on United next Sunday would run you about $221 ― meaning that, if bumped and delayed more than two hours, you’d be entitled to $884.
Some passengers likely paid even more to be on the flight, and would be entitled to more compensation. And surely the cost to United of offering passengers more money ― even the full $1,350 ― would have been far less than the negative PR from this episode. The logical thing to do would’ve been to offer more.
Here’s an infographic on all this. (It’s slightly outdated, because the compensation maximum has gone up to $1,350 from $1,300.)
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New Delhi, July 11
Young Indian players, including Mohali-based Ananya Kamboj, performed impressively at the fifth season of Football for Friendship 2017 Programme that concluded successfully in St. Petersburg.
The June 27-July 2 programme brought together young football players and young writers aged 12 years from 64 countries.
The young footballers were united in 8 International Teams of Friendship, and were accompanied by young journalists who were selected to report on the Football for Friendship events.
India joined the programme for the first time and was represented by Mumbai’s Sujal Kahar and Ananya who were selected as the young footballer and young journalist respectively.
Ananya was a part of the young journalist’s team, which covered all key events on equal terms with the adult reporters.
The Class VIII student from Vivek High School, Mohali, was shortlisted as the F4F Young Journalist from India following a writing contest conducted by Mission XI Million programme of the FIFA U-17 World Cup India 2017 that has a vision of making football the sport of choice among the youth by bringing football to 11 million kids.
In St. Petersburg, Ananya was one of the winners the “Friendship …” contest with an illustration capturing a key activity of the Football for Friendship Programme — players’ hands bearing the iconic friendship bracelet interlinked in friendship.
She also placed second for an article she wrote on “International Day of Football and Friendship”.
Apart from these accolades, Ananya contributed five articles including a poem for the daily F4F Newsletter and also anchored the Football for Friendship video digest.
Sujal, a goal-keeper from Mumbai, was shortlisted as the F4F Young Ambassador from over 2500 kids by Just for Kicks, a school intervention programme working towards developing life skills amongst children belonging to lower income families by incorporating football training in their school curriculum.
Sujal played in the Yellow Team of Friendship, alongside young players from Pakistan, Iceland, South Korea, South Africa, Slovenia, Armenia and Venezuela.
The Yellow Team was just a game shy of reaching the finals, losing 3-4 to eventual winners the Orange team in a tightly contested semi-final encounter.
From the streets of Mumbai to St. Petersburg, the journey has bought about a positive transformation for Sujal, instilling in him the confidence to address a crowd of over 1000 people, as one of the key note speakers for the closing ceremony of the programme. “I am glad I got to be a part of the programme and had the chance to make new friends from different countries,” said Sujal. — IANS
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The PGA of Quebec announced a partnership with PING Canada and Boutiques Pro Golf (BPG) for the 2019 season. They will become sponsors of the Education Series: PING and BPG Championship. The Education Series is a unique event where PGA of Quebec professionals enjoy a unique experience through education in the morning followed by a tournament in the afternoon. The PING and BPG Championship will be the second stop of the Education Series, and will take place on July 29 at the Whitlock Golf Club.
“We at PING Canada are proud to support the PGA of Quebec professionals. The PING brand represents quality, innovation and excellence and partnering with the PGA brand in Quebec is something that we have wanted to do for many years. The PING and BPG Championship – Education Series event on July 29th, at Whitlock Golf Club, is a great opportunity for PING to contribute to the education of the golf professional and also support their passion for playing the game. ‘’said Dave Wilson, General Manager, at PING Canada.
Boutique Pro Golf is thrilled to be supporting the PGA of Quebec and its members. It is a natural fit for our organizations to collaborate since BPG members must be part of the PGA of Canada. BPG also has the education of PGA professionals and its members as a priority. We are also proud to be partnering with PING Canada on this event; the Education Series: PING and BPG Championship. Providing business education along with club fitting, golf instruction and sales makes perfect sense, and following it by a professional tournament, really encompasses what it is to be a PGA Professional, ” announced Martin Boucher, Executive Director of Boutique Pro Golf
“I would like to thank PING Canada and Boutiques Pro Golf for supporting the PGA of Quebec and its nearly 400 members. Their involvement in the Education Series: PING and BPG Championship will make this event a great success, in addition to contributing to the development of PGA professionals in Quebec. We value their support and hope this is the beginning of a long and strong relationship,” announced Dominic Racine, Executive Director of the PGA of Quebec.
In addition, great news for the PGA of Quebec pros, the winner of the PING and BPG Championship will receive an exemption in the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada event, the Mackenzie Investments Open, which will take place from September 2 to 8 at Elmridge Country Club. The PING and BPG Championship is an official event on the PGA of Quebec Tour Ranking presented by Coors Light. For all the information related to the tournament, visit pgaquebec.com.
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ly.
"Hiro," Yasuto said as he began to go through a field medic checklist. "We will not go any further with this if you tell me the truth, okay? How long has the mass been there?" He then began checking things with a pen on the checklist.
"Since the second time I piloted," Hiro replied, causing Yasuto to write the info down.
"Are you mad?" Goro was angry at Yasuto's suggestion. "We can't keep this a secret!"
"Yes, we can," he firmly told him. "Patient privacy laws give any and all parasites the right to refuse medical information disclosure to any non-medical or non-security personnel. If he doesn't want to tell anyone else, and I determine his life is not in immediate danger, he has every right to keep it a secret."
Goro shut himself up and bit his tongue to prevent himself from giving the older parasite a harsh reply, and had to sit and watch as Yasuto treated him.
After about 15 minutes of assessment, Yasuto wrapped up the checklist. "Okay, from my assessment, it appears that the blue mass causes dehydration and not much else." He then zippered up Hiro's shirt. "As long as you drink extra water, you should be fine for now. However, if more effects start to appear, I'm afraid I will have to report it, Hiro."
"I understand your concerns," Hiro replied before he drank a glass of cold ice water. After he downed it, he turned to Goro. "See? It's fine."
"It just doesn't sit right with me," he replied, still uncomfortable with the idea of Hiro piloting with Zero Two due to the blue mass. "I understand you have the right, but it doesn't sit well with me that you're exercising it. Keeping it hidden from us, even Ichigo?"
Hiro then stood up and looked at Goro with a smile. "Goro, I'm sorry." As he walked out of the room, Yasuto began to pack his medical supplies away in his jump bag. All Goto could do as the door close was mutter to himself, "That idiot..."
Yasuto showed him a plastic pill bottle that contained a small sample of the blue mass Hiro had. "While he wasn't paying attention, I took this from the mass. I'm gonna send it to Dr. Franxx and see what the hell this is. If it comes back as cancerous, I'm reporting it."
"Good," Goro replied to him before he sighed and wiped his forehead. "Fucking hell, Hiro..."
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The college students living in the frat house ultimately fled to different living quarters, even as they were trying to wind up their academic work for the semester. "Our brothers are obviously concerned with their personal safety and the safety of the house,” fraternity president Stephen Scipione told the student newspaper. Meanwhile, people were shouting "rapist" at fraternity members on campus. Men in Phi Kappa Psi were presumably questioned by police in the course of their investigation. Alumni from the frat asked themselves if the institution to which they once belonged had morphed into a venue for gang rape and felt stigma for their bygone association. Parents of members were stressed and upset too, whether because they felt their sons were being unfairly maligned or worried that they'd joined a fraternity that conducts gang rapes as a matter of course.
The fact that Phi Kappa Psi's membership was falsely accused of this crime does not mean that most rape accusations are false–the opposite is true–or that there isn't a need to reduce the number of rapes and sexual assaults that happen on college campuses, even granting that some activists overstate the number of victims.
It should be possible to push for reforms that would reduce the too-high number of rape victims while advocating against rushes to judgment in individual cases. All credible rape accusations should be investigated. Before the results are in the accuser should have the private support of friends and various resources. But nothing is gained when angry mobs with no particular knowledge of a case gather en masse to shout epithets at people who weren't even accused as individuals.
In Charlottesville, young men were attacked by folks so certain about their guilt that they hurled objects through their windows and threatened their safety. Yet even now that they've been exonerated, there is little acknowledgment that the boys were wronged or sense that the people who wronged them should apologize. Why? Even if their antagonists had good intentions, the young men look to be innocent of the gang-rape accusation in the Rolling Stone story—and that's what matters.
UVA's student newspaper is an exception. Its editorial on Phi Kappa Psi's reinstatement noted that many sexual assaults at UVA go uninvestigated or unpunished, and that there is reason to believe more protections are needed on campus. "What we can be certain of is this," the student editorial continued. "There is no justice in a case which accuses a party that did not commit the crime in question. Phi Kappa Psi was undeservingly condemned and threatened by a community which did not wait until the facts of the case were investigated to issue judgment. But due process must work for both parties—accused and complainant. The community is only made safer if the correct offender is apprehended."
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ザ・クロマニヨンズの真島昌利、ヒックスヴィルの真城めぐみ・中森泰弘からなるバンド「ましまろ」のファーストシングル『ガランとしてる』の詳細が発表された。ゲスト・ミュージシャンにOKAMOTO’Sのハマ・オカモト(Ba)、黒猫チェルシーの岡本啓佑(Dr)が参加しており、世代を超えたサウンドを楽しむことができる。表題曲“ガランとしてる”のほかに、真島がリードヴォーカルを取る楽曲や、バディ・ホリーの“ハートビート”に日本語詞カバーなどが収録される。なお、この作品はアナログも同時に発売されるのだが、CDと曲順が異なり、12インチ・45回転というこだわりも詰め込まれている。リリースの詳細は以下の通り。●リリース詳細『ガランとしてる』2015年5月13日CD：BVCL-643 ￥1,389+税収録曲:1.ガランとしてる2.公園3.しおからとんぼ4.ハートビート完全生産限定 12inchアナログ盤： BVJL13 ￥1,667+税収録曲:Side-A1.ガランとしてる2.ハートビートSide-B3.公園4.しおからとんぼ
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e., the annoying, loud beep of an alarm.
You choose between a wireless or hard-wired network for the window and door sensor, plus the motion detector.
Unless it is really out of your budget, always go with a wireless network. You'll never have to worry about someone cutting your security wires or similar. You do want to ensure you use a secure password or code for your home wireless security system.
Other top-notch offers from ADT:
Fire and monoxide sensors.
Video surveillance available for you to watch at home or on the go with your smartphone.
ADT Pulse allows you to monitor not only home security, but also heating and lighting from your smartphone, laptop or tablet.
LifeShield home security systems
LifeShield is another home security service provider. They're just as trusted as ADT, yet with the bonus of being roughly half the price.
Dependent on your location, you can expect to spend anywhere between $30 and $45 for the monthly service. If you don't do it yourself, then this does not include installation fees. LifeShield does not have an activation fee. They do offer free equipment.
LifeShield is a younger company, born in 2004 by an engineer. They feature all the same high-tech home security packages as ADT. Where they stand out, though, is with their kits tailored for specific lifestyles.
For instance, if you're a pet lover, LifeShield has a kit for you. Similarly they have specialized features for seniors and military families.
Here are some additional home security products and features from LifeShield:
Utilize broadband Internet or cell for monitoring, giving you complete wireless, remote access.
Wireless video monitoring and home security cameras.
Sync monitoring with your Kindle tablet device.
Fire and monoxide sensors.
Environmental sensors that alert you of say flooding or similar.
A kit for renters, which most home security providers do not have.
A do-it-yourself alarm system.
Now, not all of LifeShield's home security systems include the above, but the list does give you an idea of what is possible.
You can install LifeShield's alarm system yourself within an hour. Or if you purchase a DIY home security kit from a store, you can also follow the kit instructions and install the system.
In either case, home security service providers can answer any question you have and take care of installation for you. Now is the time to upgrade your home and purchase a home security system. Click here to receive free installation estimates from quality contractors now.
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Every week, I tally the numbers and listen to the buzz to bring you the best of last week's open source news and stories on Opensource.com. This week: December 8 - 12, 2014.
Top 5 articles
#5. OpenMotics improves home automation
OpenMotics is an open source home automation hardware and software system that offers features like switching lights and outputs, multi-zone heating and cooling, power measurements, and automated actions. Frederick Ryckbosch is a backend developer for OpenMotics and explains that installation, configuration, and price are where home automation typically falls down. He shows us how OpenMotics set out to fix it.
#4. Open source for sensitive email
Olivier Thierry of Zimbra says that open source software is the answer for government agencies or business entities relying on secure email. He names "power in numbers," "trust," and "leverage" as the three key components of open source software that allows for high levels of security and privacy in email.
#3. Do you need programming skills to learn Linux?
A few months ago I took the Introduction to Linux course offered through edX. It's an 18 chapter course with lots of reading, some videos, and a casual level of testing your knowledge. My main goal in taking the course was to get a better, high level understanding of Linux. I installed Linux on my Chromebook too. See what it was like to test out Linux for the first time and dive deeper into the command line. If you're a coder, developer, or have been in tech for years—you may recall those days yourself. It's been a fun adventure and I look forward to learning more about Linux!
P.S. On this subject, this week we published a neat interview I did with Elaine Marino of LadyCoders Productions, on whether or not marketing professionals should learn to code.
#2. Making your IT infrastructure boring with Ansible
Michael DeHann of Ansible gives a short talk at Red Hat Tower in Raleigh, prior to the All Things Open conference this year, on why Ansible was created. Pretty much: He wants sysadmin to spend less time doing the monotonous stuff and more time on creative and interesting things for the project they work for.
#1. Tinkering with the Raspberry Pi A+
Luis Ibanez, our Community Moderator with an open hardware fascination, opens up another Raspberry Pi board from Adafruit and tinkers around. He compares it to the Raspberry Pi B+ and brings up Coder on it as well, like he did with the B+ a couple of weeks ago.
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Monster Hunter Generations is a wonderful continuation of monster hunter, incorperating plenty of new and old elements to the game, serving to the hardcore fans but still keeping it simple enough to actually serve as one of the best introductory games to the series. The game runs well, and while the controls continue to be a tad obscure, you adapt to them, in time. The difficulty, in my opinion, is in the perfect sweet spot where even if you encounder something accidentally underleveled, theres still a chance you can take them on, but itll be plenty hard to do so. In terms of changes from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate; introductory cinematics for monsters where unfortunatly simplicated, so they arent as immersful. All the core weapons and their moves have been retained, but you may loose or gain some combos depending on what Hunter Art Style you use. (Using "guild" style, you can retain all controls/combos from mh4 while still being able to use hunter arts). All of the starting areas are very diverse, introducing you to hot/cool drinks almost immediatly. I found myself making things on the fly in the middle of a mission significantly more than I have in past titles. The prowler mode, albeit silly, is still immensly usefull, and packed pretty well with content. Whats best is that they are not restricted to any kinds of missions; you can play the entire game with just your palicos/cats. And if you get the right armors and skills, they can actually be more powerful than your actual hunter. It helps that they have tools that dont break for gathering materials like bugs and ores, helping the grinding proccess immensly. They also arent affected by heat/cold enviornments so you can freely learn the area or monsters without having to worry about any of that. I usually play solo for most of my playthrough, but having someone to play with online is also a load of fun. The friend in question is also a college student with terrible internet connection, but it worked out rather flawlessly in his experience. As for the features on the New 3DS; I hear the texture wuality is static between 3ds and n3ds, which is a bummer, but having the "c-stick" to control your camera is a lifesaver. Better yet, the zl and zr buttons actually DO SOMETHING so thats wonderful. I have them set to my hunter arts so I hardly have to use the touch screen at all unless Im signaling or something. To any monster hunter fans; you know already you'll love this game. To those looking to get a fresh start into the series, you're in good hands.
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," and similarly many people consider Rod Brooks the "bad boy of robotics." Rod thinks wild ideas that other people don't think of and won't accept, and he pushes for those ideas because he doesn't see a limit to what man can do. My role models are people with a lot of attitude. I think that because of this, my work has a lot of attitude. No one has tried to build prosthetics to be as realistic as what I'm making, and I like that my work is very different. Q: Do you consider yourself a role model? Matsuoka: I hope that I am. I believe that society will only advance if people learn from the previous generations and then try to become better than them. I want to be a role model for young scientists and for my children so that they can see what I strived for and change the world more than I have. The MacArthur Fellowship was never about money to me. People focus on the prize and ask, "Well, what are you going to use this money on?" It's not about that, but rather about the attention I can now bring to neurobotics and the opportunity I have to encourage more women to enter into the sciences. I want to continue the work people have done to make it more socially acceptable for young girls to pursue their dreams. Q: Do you think women in particular have to push themselves like you did in order to succeed in science? Matsuoka: I think that currently in the fields of science and engineering, women have to be pretty tough just to be taken seriously. They have to be very competitive, manage their time extremely well, and be the type of people that constantly push themselves to the limit. I feel that one reason I pushed myself so hard growing up and in school was because I wanted to prove myself not only as Yoky, but as a woman. Q: How would you make it easier for girls to pursue math and science? Matsuoka: What I really would like to do, starting at kindergarten and going through high school, is to change the image of math and science. I would like to show them the big picture, that these fields can be used to help people, because I think everyone can relate to that. I think "cool" in high school is whatever you do that gains you acceptance. It's the acceptance that comes from listening to the right kind of music, having the right kind of hairstyle, wearing the right kind of makeup, and so on. I would like for people to eventually think that the more science you do, the cooler you are by the high-school definition. If we give young girls or anyone else a sense of purpose for what they are doing, they will become more interested in doing it well.
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for. Ideally we would like to see full support for all Version 3.0 emoji, including skin tone modifiers, and multi-person groupings. After all, a platform can't possibly do better than full support for the current version of the Standard. That would be madness! Have you heard the Nietzsche quote:
There is always some madness in technology. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Nietzsche was talking about love, but isn't it just as true of tech? 😉 (Winking face, U+1F609 )
It turns out you can do "better" than 100% support, that is depending on your definition of better. Let's say that you can do more than 100% support. This isn't a unique concept in technology, or even web design and development. For example, implementators doing more than 100% support for CSS led to vendor prefixes. Somehow more than 100% always seems good at first, but tends to lead to problems. It's a little like how spending more than 100% of the money you have starts out as a solution to a problem, but tends to eventually lead to more problems 😦 (Frowning face with open mouth, U+1F626).
What does more than 100% support look like in the context of emoji?
First, let's agree that simply calling something an emoji does not make it an emoji. You may remember (or not) Pepsi's global PepsiMoji campaign. A PepsiMoji is not an emoji, it's an image. We won't concern ourselves with gimmicky marketing ploys like that. There are still a couple of ways platforms are exceeding 100% support:
* Using Zero Width Joiners to create non-standard symbols by combining standard emoji. * Rolling out proposed emoji before they are officially released.
An example of the former are Microsoft's somewhat silly (IMO) Ninja Cat emoji, which I discuss in the section on Windows' emoji support. But cat-inspired OS mascots are not the only place we see this sort of unofficial emoji sequence. More practical uses have to do with multi-person groupings and diversity, i.e. gender and skin tones.
The Unicode Consortium has this to say about multi-person groupings in UTR51, the Unicode Version 3.0 Technical Report.
Emoji for multi-person groupings present some special challenges:
Gender combinations. Some multi-person groupings explicitly indicate gender: MAN AND WOMAN HOLDING HANDS, TWO MEN HOLDING HANDS, TWO WOMEN HOLDING HANDS. Others do not: KISS, COUPLE W
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MONTREAL – At the end of the 2016 campaign, the reigns of the Montreal Alouettes offence looked to be in the hands of rookie quarterback Vernon Adams Jr.
Adams Jr. made four starts for the Als in 2016, including the last three games of the regular season, throwing for 575 yards and four touchdowns – three of those majors and 257 yards coming in his team’s season finale against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Week 20.
After Kevin Glenn was sent packing to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Rakeem Cato had a tough time controlling Montreal’s offence after Glenn’s departure, Adams Jr. was given the opportunity to show newly-named Head Coach Jacques Chapdelaine, and the rest of the Alouettes organization, exactly what he had to offer under centre.
But an off-season move, one that brought veteran Darian Durant into the fold, put the 24-year-old on the back-burner – at least for now.
“I feel a quarterback’s maturity, if you really look at the stats, is about 26/27 (years old),” General Manager Kavis Reed told James Cybulski and Davis Sanchez of The Waggle Podcast. “The game starts to slow down for them a bit at about 28/29 and that’s when you start to see the upper echelon guys. “The Dak Prescott’s of the world are few and far between.
“When you have young guys like Vernon, who’s really transitioned into the professional ranks, you have to make certain you have an environment that’s conducive to their growth. We know that Vernon is an extremely talented individual but we don’t have enough evidence to say that he is yet ready to assume that next step.”
When the 2017 season gets under way, Adams will wait patiently for his turn to lead the Alouettes’ offence once again, whenever that may be. In the meantime, he’ll have the chance to watch and learn from the 11-year CFL vet, who signed a three-year deal on Thursday.
“Now there are many other things (to consider),” Reed said when asked of Adams Jr.’s impressive end to 2016. “The grind of a full season and how can a player handle that or the mental preparation? How does he handle adversity? How does he handle ridicule and criticism? Darian will serve Vernon well in that regard.”
For the full interview with Kavis Reed, and the rest of The Waggle podcast, click here or stream below.
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A SIXTH paedophile jailed over his role in the sexual abuse of a West Australian girl has received the highest sentence aside from her father, who pimped her out to the others.
Ryan Trevor Clegg, 43, wiped away tears as he was sentenced yesterday in the WA District Court to 12 years and nine months behind bars after admitting he repeatedly raped the 11-year-old girl as her father watched.
Clegg pleaded guilty to 15 charges, including sexually penetrating and indecently recording the girl, who was also raped by her father and abused by other men dubbed by the media as the Evil 8.
His abuse of the girl also included taking photographs and videos of her wearing lingerie in a motel room.
Clegg separately took indecent photographs of a five-year-old girl. He also shared images on an online chat forum, and police found more than 42,000 images and videos of other child exploitation material on Clegg’s computer hard drives.
The court heard Clegg said in an online chat about the 11-year-old girl that: “She grizzles but sometimes I think she does like it. I’m gentle with her.”
The girl told police she tried to push Clegg away but she was not strong enough.
Judge Bruce Goetze said Clegg was aware of her age and showed a complete disregard for her, using her as a sexual object, but accepted he had some remorse.
Clegg must serve at least 10 years and nine months behind bars before he can be eligible for parole.
He sparked outrage last year when it emerged he was living close to a school and childcare centre, and he was then taken into custody.
Clegg’s case led to legislative amendments being proposed to make securing bail tougher for serious sex offenders before sentencing, but the changes cannot pass until after the state election.
The father, who cannot be named, was sentenced last year to 22-and-a-half years in jail after admitting raping his daughter and arranging for her to engage sexually with six other men. He has lodged an appeal.
Photographer Benjamin Simon Clarke was previously jailed for three years over his involvement in the girl’s abuse, while former pastor and father-of-two, Dawid Volmer, was jailed for 10-and-a-half years.
Nicholas Adam Beer was sentenced to seven years behind bars, while Troy Phillip Milbourne was jailed for five years and three months.
Alfred John Impicciatore has pleaded not guilty and will stand trial later this year.
An eighth man originally connected to the group did not abuse the girl.
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import to mount remote system
tlsclient: add -o option to establish connection over a file, free the AuthInfo structure to avoid leaking secrets
tlssrv: p9any authentication support using TLS-PSK cipher suits
tlssrv: add -A flag to skip changing user after authentication (usefull for aan)
upas/smtpd: remove unused lastsender logic
webfs: faster shutdown using postnote()
manual pages, documentation, misc
fortunes:./configure CFLAGS=“-I$HOME/source/harvey/ape/amd64/include -I$HOME/source/harvey/ape/include -mno-red-zone -ffreestanding -fno-builtin -nostdlib -trigraphs -D_SUSV2_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -D_LIMITS_EXTENSION -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_BSD_EXTENSION -DHAVE_SOCK_OPTS -DHARVEY -DPlan9” LDFLAGS=“-static $HOME/source/harvey/ape/amd64/lib/crt1.o $HOME/source/harvey/ape/amd64/lib/crti.o $HOME/source/harvey/ape/amd64/lib/crtn.o -L$HOME/source/harvey/ape/amd64/lib -L$HOME/source/harvey/amd64/lib” LIBS=“-lbsd -lap -lc” LIBM=“” –prefix=$HOME/source/harvey/ape/ports –host=x86_64-linux-gnu –build=x86_64-harvey –enable-shared=no
/lib/keyboard: add more crucial symbols
glenda’s default profile: remove /n/other mount, done by /lib/namespace
authsrv(2): document _asgetpakkey(), authpak_hash(), authpak_new(), authpak_finish()
authsrv(6): fix arrows
salsa(2): some formating fixes; fix source reference
rcpu(1): add
[0] http://okturing.com/src/3486/body
[1] https://code.9front.org/hg/plan9front/rev/65abc13ef7a1
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The Bank of England’s first plastic banknote, the new Winston Churchill fiver, will be unveiled at Blenheim Palace, the wartime leader’s ancestral home, on Thursday.
It forms part of the Bank’s switch to polymer banknotes, which will end 320 years of paper money. The Churchill fiver, which goes into circulation in September, will be the first of a series of new plastic notes, followed by the Jane Austen £10 next year and the JMW Turner £20 by 2020.
Manufactured from a transparent plastic film and coated with an ink layer, polymer banknotes are seen as cleaner, more durable and more secure than paper. The material allows the inclusion of clear “windows” to protect against counterfeits.
They are also more environmentally friendly than paper because they can last up to two-and-a-half times longer, according to the Bank of England. It claims that the durability will offset the higher production costs and save an estimated £100m.
The Bank’s laboratory tests showed polymer banknotes only begin to shrink and melt at 120C, so they are expected to survive a washing machine spin cycle – although they could be damaged by a hot iron.
The move to polymer notes will land shops and banks with a bill of up to £236m, it has been estimated, because ATMs, vending machines and self-service machines will need to be recalibrated to take the new plastic notes, which are 15% smaller than the current notes. Some older ATMs will need to be replaced.
More than 30 countries already use polymer notes, including New Zealand, Canada, Fiji, Mauritius and Mexico. They were first introduced by Australia, in 1988.
All you need to know about the new fiver …
The Churchill fiver will replace the current £5 note featuring prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. News in 2013 that she would be replaced with the former prime minister sparked an outcry as it meant that, apart from the Queen, there would be no female figures on British banknotes. A few months later the Bank announced that writer Jane Austen would be the next face of the £10 note.
Churchill will be pictured alongside a view of Westminster with Big Ben showing 3 o’clock – the approximate time on 13 May 1940 when Churchill declared in a speech: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
• This article was amended on 3 June 2016. An earlier version said that Winston Churchill will be the first statesman to feature on British banknotes. The Duke of Wellington appeared on £5 notes from 1971 to 1991.
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Queen Elizabeth II complained that President Donald Trump's helicopter left scorch marks on the lawn at Buckingham Palace in June, according to a new report in The Sunday Times.
Trump's presidential helicopter, Marine One, reportedly burned the grass upon landing at Buckingham Palace two times in the same day during his visit to the UK.
The Queen complained about the grass damage to another state leader, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a source close to Morrison told The Times.
The source said that Morrison "went straight to the palace to see the Queen, who led him out to the gardens and said: "Come and look at my lawn. It's ruined."
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump is known for making an entrance everywhere he goes — but he left the wrong impression when his helicopter scorched the lawn at Buckingham Palace in June, according to a new report in The Sunday Times.
Trump had traveled to the United Kingdom for an official state visit to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day on June 6.
Trump's presidential helicopter, Marine One, reportedly burned the grass upon landing at Buckingham Palace two times in the same day.
Queen Elizabeth II complained about the grass damage to another state leader, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a source close to Morrison told The Times.
The source said that when Morrison, who also traveled to the UK for the D-Day anniversary, arrived in London, he "went straight to the palace to see the Queen, who led him out to the gardens and said: 'Come and look at my lawn. It's ruined.'"
Read more: The queen just took a subtle jab at Trump's attacks on US allies while standing next to the president
The Times described the lawn outside Buckingham Palace as "the centrepiece of the Queen's annual garden parties" and said the helicopter left both "scorch marks" and divots in the grass when it landed.
The outlet also said the Queen had taken measures to protect her lawns from helicopter damage, including denying a request from President Barack Obama to land six helicopters on the lawn of Windsor Castle in 2016.
Trump has twice visited England during his presidency and appears to greatly admire the Queen.
"If you think of it, for so many years she has represented her country, she has really never made a mistake," Trump said last year. "You don't see, like, anything embarrassing. She is just an incredible woman."
But during his July 2018 visit to the country, he was accused of violating royal protocol when meeting the Queen at Windsor Castle by walking in front of her, shaking her hand instead of bowing, and turning his back to her.
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/2. Given Apple's excellent upgrade adoption rate - this'll a very significant factor to go HTTP/2 in 2015.
Having just tested in the new Xcode, I can tell you that iOS supports HTTP/2, not just in Safari but also in apps. — Cory Benfield (@Lukasaoz) June 10, 2015
Serve PHP via HTTP/2 with H2O and HHVM today
I've been following HTTP/2 and specifically the H2O project from late 2014. In the first stable versions you could run PHP by proxying it to the built-in web server available in PHP since 5.4. This works, but it's meant for development, not production use. From version 1.3 H2O has had support for FastCGI, which allows you to run PHP (and HHVM) in very much the same way as you would with Apache or Nginx.
If you want to do some experimentation with your PHP applications on HTTP/2 here is roughly the setup procedure I went through:
Run H2O
Install some browser that supports HTTP/2 such as the Firefox Developer Edition
Tail your log and visit your site
If you've got something along the lines of this in your log you're serving HTTP/2:
xx.xx.xx.xx - - [22/Jun/2015:21:12:21 +0200] "GET / HTTP/2" 200 2341 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/43.0.2357.81 Safari/537.36 OPR/30.0.1835.59
This setup is not recommended for serious use, but for learning, testing and preparing of HTTP/2 becoming mainstream it's great. If you're reading this on HTTPS, then you're just being... served with Bolt on this setup.
Later I'll look into tools for benchmarking HTTP/2 servers. In the meanwhile I suggest you read up on how to optimize asset delivery for HTTP/2. It's also worth noting that HTTP/2 is independent of CMSes like Drupal.
Special thanks to Kazuho Oku for providing me this shiny toy to play (and learn) with! :)
Written by Jani Tarvainen on Monday June 22, 2015
Permalink - Tags: http, web, wordpress, drupal, php, http2, symfony, hhvm, php-fpm, h2o, nginx, apache
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With one good eye and a messy divorce that hit him hard financially, Antonio Margarito is reportedly planning a boxing comeback at age 35, following a retirement last year that seemed to be in his best interests, health-wise.
From Edgar Gonzalez:
Rumor is that his divorce with Michelle, who is currently pregnant by a family friend, has become a nightmare, granting Michelle a multi-million settlement forcing the "Tijuana Tornado" to sell several of his assets. With Margarito's new baby with his new girl, Lorena Vidales, he wants to take on a big-money fight to help him financially.
The Mexican fighter hasn't been in the ring since his December 2011 rematch loss to Miguel Cotto, which came by stoppage after 10 rounds, as the doctor ruled he could not continue with his previously injured eye swollen shut.
Margarito (38-8, 27 KO) hasn't really looked good in any fight since beating Cotto in 2008, a fight that has been seriously questioned since Margarito and ex-trainer Javier Capetillo were caught with illegal substances in their hand wraps prior to Margarito's 2009 loss to Shane Mosley. Since then, Margarito has gone 1-2, beating Roberto Garcia in Mexico before returning to the States for losses to Manny Pacquiao and Cotto.
So who can Margarito fight for big money? Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, I guess, but I don't know that there's any interest in that. Canelo Alvarez, too, but again, would anyone want to see that? Cotto is still worth money, but the same question applies again. A rematch with Mosley? No money in it.
Of course, I don't know what Margarito is considering a "big paycheck" right now.
The Pacquiao fight irreversibly harmed whatever future career Margarito had left, as the "Tijuana Tornado" took a vicious beating that left his right eye badly damaged, making it an easy target for Cotto, and it would seem for any fighter who ever fights him again. The eye is noticeably damaged and the surgery to repair the injuries has left it with a sort of "wandering" or "lazy" effect.
If Margarito does return, he may find it hard to pass medical exams in states like Nevada or even New York, which licensed him last time out, but did so with a lot of drama entirely because of the injury. An eye injury is nothing to play with, but boxing is the way that Margarito makes money. It's not a new story in the sport, and I doubt many will be surprised by this news.
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