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�” offensive coordinator Tim Beck says. “To his credit, he always talks about maintaining the process. Make sure you’re doing the right things. He’s very approachable for our staff and players. They feel a lot of love from him. There’s a lot of respect. They don’t want to let him down. If they have problems, they can talk to him. We have fun as coaches and players. It doesn’t become such a grind.”
Pelini wasn’t having much fun when chewing out Martinez on the sidelines against Texas A&M in 2010 or being hospitalized in September after falling ill during the first half of the Arkansas State game.
Coaching often demands intensity by the truckload, and Pelini knows that well. But entering his sixth year, Pelini sounds like a man in a relaxed, optimistic state.
He takes his kids to school every day. If he can’t do that anymore, he says he’s getting out of the business.
The losses he takes personally — the Wisconsin game is no exception. They stay with you, he says. But he cares more about a complete body of work at Nebraska than hallway adoration.
“I don’t care about the recognition,” Pelini says. “It’s about the kids you’re coaching. I like to compete. I want to win. Most importantly, I want these kids to grow and win.”
Written by Jeremy Fowler for Athlon Sports. This article appeared in Athlon Sports' 2013 Big Ten Preview Edition. Visit our online store to order your copy to get more in-depth analysis on the 2013 Big Ten season.
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Ice makers are the latest target in the left’s ongoing war against the conveniences of modern life. Earlier this month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a report that may condemn this essential household item to the contraband list that already includes functional light bulbs, toilets, washing machines and showerheads.
Those looking for an easy way to cool down their drinks with ice cubes are guilty of increasing their refrigerator’s energy consumption by about 12 to 20 percent. That’s unacceptable to global-warming alarmists at the Department of Energy (DOE) who are hard at work finalizing regulatory standards for the fridge. The proposed changes will increase prices by an estimated $2 billion per year, but DOE justifies this added expense by claiming consumers would save $37 in electricity costs over the lifetime of a typical side-by-side.
Paying more up front to obtain paltry energy savings might appeal to some consumers. Others struggling to make ends meet might not see it as such a bargain. Liberals, however, have no interest in letting the public decide what types of products suit their particular needs. Dishonest bureaucrats impose their one-size-fits-all choice on Americans while simultaneously denying they regulate consumer behavior or ban items like light bulbs, showerheads and refrigerators. “I’m pro-choice on bulbs,” claimed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency Kathleen Hogan in congressional testimony last month. “I really do not believe that the appliance standards end up restricting personal choice.”
Yet the likes of Ms. Hogan pull popular products off store shelves and replace them with inferior - but government-sanctioned - products. They do so by forcing appliance manufacturers to file statements confirming that their products meet every aspect of the regulations, that the products have been tested according to government rules and that the manufacturer “is aware of the penalties” involved. Distributing a product that fails to meet with Ms. Hogan’s approval carries a typical fine of $7,300 per item. That adds up quickly. Last year, DOE accused a company of producing a showerhead that worked a little bit too well. For this “crime,” DOE demanded payment of $1.9 million and destruction of this highly effective product.
That’s the left’s idea of “choice.” Uncle Sam is an unwelcome guest in the home. It’s time for Congress to repeal the nanny-state efficiency standards and allow consumers to select the products that they want to use.
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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Minister for Children and Youth Affairs James Reilly has reiterated the Government has decided not to hold any further referendums during its term of office.
Mr Reilly made the remarks in the wake of calls from Tánaiste Joan Burton and other Labour TDs for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment.
Minister of State for Primary and Social Care Kathleen Lynch earlier said repealing the amendment should be "do-able" after the same-sex marriage referendum was passed.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ms Lynch said changing abortion laws in the Constitution would allow the Government to legislate in a practical and reasonable fashion for women who find themselves in particular circumstances.
She said it is important that the repeal happens so the Government can deal with fatal-foetal abnormalities.
"No-one would have believed when we were drawing up the programme for Government that we would be in the position we are in now in relation to marriage.
"I believe that if you are forceful enough in your conviction, which I think we are, that repeal of the eighth amendment is very do-able.
Responding to the remarks, Mr Reilly said he believed "we have to address this issue around fatal foetal anomalies as a priority, but we have also to address it in a manner that does not deliver abortion-on-demand because I do not believe the Irish people want that."
Earlier, Mr Reilly said during the passage of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill he told the Dáil he had got very clear advice from the Attorney General that, in order to address the issue of fatal foetal anomalies in particular, a referendum would be required.
He added that he would be working strongly for and towards that, but that the current Fine Gael-Labour administration had already decided it would not be holding further referendums.
Asked for his view on access to abortion in Ireland in cases of rape and incest, which Labour favours, Mr Reilly said "these are all issues to be addressed by the Fine Gael party as the (general election) manifesto is being put together and a new government is being formed whenever that might be".
"There are very complex issues here," he said "and there are a lot of diverse views within the political system and within Fine Gael," he added.
The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution was enacted in 1983. It states: "The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right."
It is referred to as Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution and was introduced after a referendum.
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This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
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From the air, the view of Kwajalein Atoll is spectacular. The dozens of coral islands that make up the atoll surrounded by the beautiful blue-green waters of the Pacific Ocean. Eleven of the islands make up the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. "So Reagan test site has several customers. Some customers are commercial space customers. Also we have Missile Defense Agency, US Air Force, and other Army customers," said Col. Rod Stuckey, the Test Site Director.
One thing all the customers for Reagan Test Site deal with is the distance from Redstone Arsenal. The atoll is some 6,800-miles from the base. "Some tests take up to a year and a half of planing. if each customer had to fly out to Kwaj, do coordination and fly back, it would be a tremendous cost to the customer," said the Colonel.
Keeping people from having to make the long flight is one reason the test site is actually operated by the Space and Missile Defense Command at Redstone Arsenal. The tests can be big, expensive and time-consuming. Tests of the ability to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles also require a lot of distance. "We're 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii. For a classic ICBM that has a very long-range, we give them a platform to test those things," said Col. Stuckey.
The scope of the tests is hard to imagine, but then so is living on Kwaj so far from the mainland. "I describe Kwaj to those individuals who've never been there as having Mayberry in the middle of the ocean," said Col. Stuckey. He adds the hardest thing isn't getting people to live on the islands, but rather to come home after they've lived there.
One thing is certain about Kwaj and the people who work there. The Reagan test site has a big job, and it's important for lots of reasons. "What it means is it gives us a pillar to do direct coordination with our customers in order to save money for all Department of Defense assets," said the Colonel. Part of the equation that makes Kwaj important and convenient is the fact that it is run from Redstone, and that saves money. "It's a very big deal in these tight fiscal times, a very big deal," said Reagan Test Site Director, Col. Rod Stuckey.
For the record, the U.S. has had military operations on Kwajalein since 1944 when America capture the Atoll from the Japanese.
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Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement The true site of one of the most decisive battles in English history has been revealed. Bosworth, fought in 1485, which saw the death of Richard III, was believed to have taken place on Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire. But a study of original documents and archaeological survey of the area has now pinpointed a site in fields more than a mile to the south west. A new trail will lead from the current visitor centre to the new location. The battle ended decades of civil war, which is now known as the Wars of the Roses. The boar badge may indicate the site of Richard's last stand
Snowbound fields hide battle site The death of Richard ended the Plantagenet dynasty and ushered in the first Tudor king, Henry VII. The traditional site has a flag at the crest of the hill, a stone to mark the spot where Richard fell and a recently renovated visitors' centre. A long-running debate over the true location of the battle prompted a £1m, four-year project, led by the Battlefields Trust, to be set up. Evidence such as cannon balls - now the largest collection of that date in Europe - and pieces of armour have been used to confirm the site. Cannon balls Of the most recent, and important finds made, was a gilded silver badge in the shape of a boar - Richard's personal emblem. Experts believe this would have been given to one of the doomed king's closest companions and lost in the final stages of the battle. Pete Riley, one of the team which surveyed the area, said: "The main part of this project was to identify where the battle was - and we have done that. The battle ushered in the Tudor dynasty and ended a civil war "Now we have got to understand the evidence we have picked up." The original announcement was made in October but the exact location was kept a secret until now to protect it from treasure hunters. Researchers also believe they have identified the medieval marsh where Richard III was dragged from his horse and killed. Richard McKinder, operations manager for the site, said the visitors' centre will not have to move. "A lot of American battlefields have had to move their interpretation centres because they are actually destroying what they are trying to interpret," he said. "We are within walking distance of the battlefield, therefore they can use us as the main area for interpretation and then go and see the field itself." Leicestershire County Council is now in negotiations with a number of landowners to gain full access to the area.
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Today's question: Drew Brees showed more inconsistency than usual last season, especially when it came to turnovers. Is he showing signs of decline at age 36 or a need to adapt his game in any way? Or is he still as dangerous as ever?
Vaughn McClure, Atlanta Falcons: I think it's only natural to say he's on the decline -- the New Orleans Saints' drafting quarterback Garrett Grayson in the third round speaks to that -- although I would never underestimate the savvy veteran. The fact that Brees threw three interceptions in two losses to the lowly Falcons last season was surprising, although Atlanta was a plus-5 in turnover differential. Brees had six interceptions in his matchups against Tampa Bay, and the Buccaneers were near the bottom of the league in creating turnovers (minus-8). Then Brees loses one of the most dangerous weapons in the NFL when tight end Jimmy Graham was traded to Seattle. Add the loss of deep threat Kenny Stills (traded to Dolphins) and I think Brees could have an even tougher time this season while adjusting to new offensive weapons. He'll really earn his money if he can keep the offense flowing.
David Newton, Carolina Panthers: The New Orleans offense, not Brees, is showing signs of decline. Brees was sacked 29 times, the second-highest total of his career, last season. So his protection wasn't great. That leads to turnovers, even for great quarterbacks. Running back Darren Sproles was traded to Philadelphia during the 2014 offseason, leaving Brees without his best option out of the backfield, particularly on third down. This season, Brees will be without Jimmy Graham, one of the NFL's best tight ends. Brees needs better weapons around him to succeed. And he needs protection. Drafting offensive lineman Andrus Peat in the first round might help. C.J. Spiller could replace Sproles. Give Brees the proper support system and he's still one of the top five quarterbacks in the NFL.
Pat Yasinskas, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: I've heard the rumbles that Brees is in decline, but I'm not buying them at all. That's because the rumbles have been there before but haven't come to fruition. Think back to 2010. That's the year Brees threw 22 interceptions and a lot of people were saying he was washed up. So what did Brees do in 2011? He threw for 5,476 yards and 46 touchdowns (both career bests) while cutting his interception total to 14. I'm not ruling out a similar bounce-back season. That's largely because Brees is so competitive that the talk of decline will fuel him. His supporting cast has changed, and, yes, he's 36. But as long as Brees is with coach Sean Payton, the Saints are going to have a dangerous offense.
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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish journalist Mehmet Altan was released from prison on Wednesday, one of his lawyers said, four months after he was jailed for life on charges of aiding plotters behind a failed military coup.
Slideshow ( 3 images )
Earlier in the day an Istanbul appeals court ordered that he be freed from the city’s Silivri prison.
Altan’s brother Ahmet and four other journalists were also sentenced to life in the same case and remain behind bars.
The Altan brothers were detained in September 2016 as part of a government crackdown following the July 2016 coup attempt against President Tayyip Erdogan.
Mehmet Altan was sentenced in February even though the constitutional court, Turkey’s highest, had previously ruled for his release, saying that his detention amounted to a violation of his rights. A penal court rejected that request and decided to keep him in jail as his trial continued.
“It was an absurd situation and totally unlawful for him not to be released after the Constitutional Court decision,” the lawyer for Altan, who declined to be named, told Reuters earlier.
“Another court, the appeals court, did the right thing and released him now. That’s what should have happened in the first place,” the lawyer said.
Altan’s case underscored deep concern about press freedom in Turkey as well as worries over the independence of the judiciary under Erdogan, who was re-elected on Sunday to a newly empowered executive presidency.
The court ruled that the other five defendants in the Altan case be remanded in jail.
Since the coup attempt, more than 50,000 people have been jailed and 150,000 sacked or suspended from their jobs.
More than 120 journalists have been detained and over 180 media outlets closed on suspicion of links to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed for organizing the abortive attempt to topple the government. He denies any connection with the would-be coup.
Ahmet Altan was charged over comments he made the day before the coup attempt, when he told a television show: “Whatever the developments were that led to military coups in Turkey, by making the same decisions, Erdogan is paving the same path”.
On the same program, Mehmet Altan referred to “another structure” within the government that was closely watching developments to “take its hand out of the bag”.
Turkey’s military has staged a number of coups or interventions in politics in the past.
Prosecutors said that the brothers’ comments were coded messages to Gulen’s followers to take action.
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Government asks for “forgiveness” over killing of more than 1,000 civilians in El Mozote by soldiers during civil war.
El Salvador’s foreign minister said the government ‘recognises the rights of victims’ [AFP]
El Salvador’s leftist government has asked for “forgiveness” over a civil war-era massacre in 1981 in which soldiers executed more than 1,000 civilians, nearly half of them children.
Sunday marks the 30th anniversary of the killings at the small northeastern village of El Mozote, where troops rounded up men, women and children, accused many of collaborating with leftist armed groups, and murdered them in cold blood.
It was among the worst massacres in the country’s bloody 1980-1992 civil war, which still casts a shadow over the Central American nation.
“I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate on behalf of the government of El Salvador our request for forgiveness to the thousands of innocent victims, but especially the victims of the massacre at El Mozote,” Hugo Martinez, the country’s foreign minister, said.
Martinez noted that Mauricio Funes, the country’s first democratically-elected president since the civil war, had already apologised for other violent incidents attributed to the army, state security forces and paramilitary groups.
“This event seeks to honour the memory of hundreds of innocent people who were murdered 30 years ago here in El Mozote and in other nearby hamlets,” he said.
Rights of victims
Martinez said it was important that the government adopt a position “that recognises the rights of victims and does not evade responsibility of the State”.
The December 11-13, 1981 killings were committed by troops of the now-banned Atlacatl Battalion of the army. Their crimes, including torture and rape, left the international community appalled.
A truth commission created by the UN blamed a number of military officials, some of whom were killed in the civil war. UN officials were present at Saturday’s ceremony in El Mozote.
Activists say they are still waiting for justice and hope their case will be taken up by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights based in Costa Rica.
The current president, whose leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front [FMLN] defeated the ruling right-wing party in 2009, has sought to sweep away the demons of El Salvador’s past stemming from its 12-year civil war.
The FMLN is the former coalition of Marxist armed group that battled the government during the war, during which approximately 75,000 people were killed and another 7,000 went missing.
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Curtis Blaydes is quickly becoming one of my favorite fighters.
Not only is “Razor” slicing his way through a stagnant heavyweight division, the 6’4”, 255-pound bruiser says whatever the f—k is on his mind. He’s also not afraid to give credit where credit is due, like in the case of UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic.
Brought in to help the full-time firefighter deal with hulking heavyweights, Blaydes — a collegiate wrestling standout — was able to hold his own on the mats. But when it was time to lace up the gloves and throw hands... well, not so much.
From his conversation with Submission Radio:
“On the feet he destroyed me. I was an amateur, this is back in 2013. I’m one of those guys, I’m not gonna lie to you when someone is better. Like, he was leaps and bounds better than me. He was supposed to be, like, at the time he was going up against Gabriel Gonzaga. So yeah, it would have been weird if they brought me in there and I just started picking him apart. That probably would have been a problem for Stipe. No, he handled me like he was supposed to. But when we wrestled, like I said, pretty back and forth. He would go, (in) I guess an hour practice, he would get two takedowns, I would get two takedowns, or maybe he would get one more, maybe I would get one more.”
A lot has changed over the last five years.
Blaydes, 27, will tangle with top-ranked heavyweight contender Alistair Overeem at the upcoming UFC 225 pay-per-view (PPV) event, locked and loaded for Sat., June 9, 2018 inside United Center in Chicago, Illinois.
The 9-1 (1 NC) “Razor” increased his stock in the 265-pound division by knocking around longtime veteran and global fan favorite Mark Hunt. Turning away the “Super Samoan” was the third straight win for Blaydes and left him ranked No. 5 in the division.
Overeem (43-16, 1 NC), meanwhile, was oh-so-close to a Miocic rematch before running into the thunderous fists of top contender Francis Ngannou. The hulking Dutchman is 5-2 since late 2014 and still very much a factor in the division title hunt.
Will Blaydes 2.0 use the hands he didn't have in 2013 to detonate “Demolition Man?”
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The Tamil Nadu Archeology Department (TNAD) has stated that the ‘cultural deposits’ unearthed at the Keeladi excavation site at the banks of Vaigai in the Sivaganga district can be dated back to 6th century BCE, at least 3 century earlier than previously thought.
As per reports, this is the first time the TNAD has officially announced the date. K Pandiarajan, the minister for Tamil culture and archaeology released an official report on Thursday which stated that the Keeladi Vaigai artefacts can be dated to as far back as 6th century BCE.
Commissioner of Archaeology T. Udayachandran stated that one of the 6 samples collected at the depth of 353 cm which was sent to the US at the Beta Analytic Lab, Miami, Florida for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry dating, has been dated at 580 BC. The report was titled, ‘Keeladi-An Urban Settlement of Sangam Age on the Banks of River Vaigai’. It has been published by the TNAD.
The six samples are dated between 6th century BCE and 1st century BCE. The 61-page report also claimed that the Tamil-Brahmi script is considerably older and the findings at the Keeladi site prove that the second urbanisation of the Vaigai plains happened around the 6th century BCE. The report also states that the people inhabiting these sites had attained literacy and had started writing at around the 6th century BCE.
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The skeletal fragments collected at the site were sent to Pune’s Deccan College Post Graduate Research Institute and they have been found to belong to domestic animals like cow, buffalo, sheep, goat etc. Some fragments of Neelgai, wild boar and peacock have also been found.
Sharp bone tools, pottery, terracotta vessels, hanging stones for yarn, copper needles and other tools found also suggest the society used to spin threads and weave clothes. Cooking vessels and water containers were made out of locally available raw material, said the report.
The graffiti symbols found at the site reportedly bear similarity to the symbols from Indus Valley civilisation. As many as 1000 graffiti marks were reportedly found.
The excavation site is located at around 12 km from Madurai, in the banks of the Vaigai river. While the first three phases of excavation were carried out under the Archeological Survey of India, the fourth phase was done under TNAD. The current report is based on the fourth phase excavation that was done from 2017 to 2018 and had brought out 5820 artefacts. The TNAD is currently carrying out the 5th phase of excavation that had started from June 2019.
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China might be the last place you’d expect to find an American-style football camp. That’s exactly why a pair of former Trojan football players decided to launch one there.
The Student-Athlete Experience (SAE) is the brainchild of Chris Barrett ’07 and Joseph Krassenstein ’15, former USC football players who saw an opportunity to provide a unique experience for Chinese youths: a program combining on-field training with concentrated lessons in English.
“I saw the high demand for English education, and I saw how fast football was growing in China,” Barrett said. Add the huge popularity of soccer and you have a perfect storm: He and Krassenstein expect to find more than a few promising kickers and punters among the campers.
Introducing student-athletes
The program is also unusual in that it focuses on training the youngsters as student-athletes. It’s a concept unheard of in China, where promising athletes progress down a different track from academically focused youths.
The intense SAE program has two weeklong sessions starting July 14. Students will spend half of each day in the classroom and the other half on the field. In the evenings, activities will include motivational speakers and football-related movies.
It’s not just a sports camp; it’s also an academic camp. It’s multifunctional. Joseph Krassenstein
“It’s not just a sports camp; it’s also an academic camp. It’s multifunctional,” Krassenstein said.
By helping improve the participants’ English as well as their football skills, the program makes the students more appealing to American schools they might be interested in attending.
“Something like playing football makes them more well-rounded,” Krassenstein said.
Unique facility
The camp will be held in Foshan, a city of about 7 million in the Guangdong province about 75 miles west of Hong Kong. The site is the Foshan Skyway Centre, one of the few stadiums outside North America dedicated to American football and the only one of its kind in China. The facility includes exercise and weight facilities, a cafeteria, classrooms, a dormitory and an NFL-regulation-sized playing field.
In addition to Barrett and Krassenstein, camp coaches include USC veterans Will Poole, Kevin Thomas Jr. and Mike Williams and former UCLA assistant coach Quincy Avery. USC alum Christina Napolez will handle the classroom duties.
For more information, visit the program’s website at saecamp.com.
More stories about: Football, Globalization
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If you're in a prominent New Brunswick retail district, chances are a CannabisNB store won't be far away.
The provincial Liberal government has announced the addresses for 11 cannabis stores in eight communities.
All 11 will be in high-traffic commercial centres when they open in July 2018.
In total, 20 sites will be open in 15 communities across the province next year. Tenders for the remaining nine sites will be re-issued and the government expects those stores to open in September, according to a news release from the Department of Finance.
"We are pleased to have been able to secure locations for 11 stores in eight communities," Brian Harriman, president and CEO of NB Liquor, said in the release.
"The remaining locations have been re-tendered for the nine areas, allowing for those who did not get a chance to submit the first time around to do so at this time."
The locations
The approved locations include:
Greater Moncton
Choice Properties – 165 Main St.
Mapleton Holdings Inc. – 40 Wyse St.
Perfection Realty – 780 Dieppe Blvd.
Fredericton
Dalin Investments Inc. – 435 Brookside Dr.
Oromocto
Heron Enterprises Inc. – 16 Commerce Dr.
Greater Saint John
Loblaw Properties Ltd. – 168 Rothesay Ave.
·Plazacorp Property Holdings – 944 Fairville Blvd.
Bathurst
Choice Properties – 640 St. Peter Ave.
Miramichi
Plazacorp Properties Inc. – 2540 King George Hwy.
Sussex
Plazacorp Properties Inc. – 138 Main St.
St. Stephen
Cordova Realty, intersection of Route 3 Old Ridge Road and Route 1
The sites are in retail districts, next to grocery stores, malls and big box outlets.
Online sales
Tenders were re-issued for these communities: Fredericton south, the Kennebecasis Valley, Edmundston, Sackville, Shediac, Richibucto, Tracadie, Perth-Andover and Campbellton.
Finance Minister Cathy Rogers said in the release that online sales will be also be available to ensure provincewide distribution and accessibility.
The 20 communities were announced in October. The locations were chosen because of their demographics, income data from the 2016 census, liquor sales transactions and traffic patterns.
The New Brunswick government said it will have NB Liquor set up the network of cannabis stores, which will be tightly controlled, in stand-alone buildings and not near schools.
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These past seven months have really been busy for the PAIN team. In addition to releasing our updates we have been feverishly building the “better mousetrap.” The DOWNTOWN area in PAIN was a huge success for everyone involved! I remember some of my first interviews where I had to explain PAIN to people who haven’t played before. Let me tell you, that wasn’t even remotely easy. Seven months later let me try that again …
PAIN is a game that picks up where other games leave off. In every other game when you are smacked so hard you fall down the game dusts you off, and makes you try again. When you get smacked so hard you fall down it’s time to START playing PAIN! You’ve barely gotten warmed up!
Now you know how to OOCH. Your MONKEYS have been SPANKED. Your FUN WITH EXPLOSIVES skillz are legendary. And MIMES … they get weak in the knees when your PSN Name is whispered. You’re quite the master of disaster.
DOWNTOWN … has so been destroyed.
Now it’s time to hit The Amusement Park for some rest and relaxation right?
WRONG! This Park needs to know your name.
What’s this?
HOT n COLD teddy bears that do the robot? Bouncing CLOWNS that need tossing and smacking? How about a little SHOT CALLIN’ to prove your skillz are better than anyone else around. What kind of Amusement Park is this?
It’s the PAIN ABUSEMENT PARK. This time you can invite your friends to join you. We have online multiplayer capability so you can finally pit your skills against other people on the PLAYSTATION NETWORK. We also support the new PlayStation Trophies. This might be useful to see how awesome your competition is before you challenge them to a PAIN game. There’s a whole lot of content in this Park. For a first preview of the PAIN Amusement Park, head on over to GamesRadar.
I’m very proud of this add-on. A lot of these ideas came from us.. and quite a bit from YOU, our players. If you haven’t been heard, I suggest you get over to www.painps3.com and make your presence known … I already posted a brand new blog about how we came up with this add-on.
See you at the Fun Spot … and keep your “Pimp Hand” strong. You’ll need it.
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This month, for the first time in history, a presidential candidate forum will be held focusing entirely on Native concerns.
At least five Democratic candidates will attend the forum: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT), author Marianne Williamson, Rep. John Delaney (D-MD), and former Housing Secretary Julian Castro.
The forum, which will take place on August 19 and 20 in Sioux City, Iowa, and will discuss healthcare, poverty, voting rights, land protection, the environment, and other issues affecting indigenous communities, according to ThinkProgress who spoke with the Native American voting rights group Four Directions, which is hosting the event.
“The people they are going to be talking to are going to be representing Natives in the seven battleground states where a few thousand votes or few hundred votes are going to be the factor,” O.J. Semans, co-executive director of Four Directions told ThinkProgress. “We’ve made great strides in the past 19 years to get to this point.”
Native Americans face massive hurdles when it comes to voting rights. Some states, such as North Dakota, have imposed voter ID laws that make it extremely difficult for Native Americans to vote. The voter id law in North Dakota demands that voters have ID cards with residential addresses, but many Native Americans do not have fixed addresses.
There are mounds of problems facing Native American communities that have been mostly ignored by the US government. Native Americans face high rates of poverty, low high school graduation rates, an epidemic of violence that has led to thousands of ignored missing or murdered indigenous women, failing infrastructure due to insufficient funding, housing shortages. One of the largest issues is oil and gas companies threat to Native land with their aggressive construction of oil pipeline projects.
Although invitations were sent to all of the presidential candidates, only Democratic candidates have responded and Bernie Sanders is so far the only frontrunner to confirm he will be there. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign told ThinkProgress there are “exploring whether it will be possible for her to attend the forum.”
Some candidates are still “hammering out the details” for their campaigns schedule and haven’t confirmed or declined their attendance. Sen. Cory Booker and Gov. Bill Weld have declined the invitation.
“I will stand with Native Americans in the struggle to protect their treaty and sovereign rights, advance traditional ways of life, and improve the quality of life for Native communities,” reads the Bernie Sanders campaign website. So far only Sanders, Castro, and Williamson have a section on their websites dedicated to policy proposals for indigenous communities, though other presidential hopefuls have expressed a desire to help.
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In a surprising admission from president Trump, two months after his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, which was widely panned by many of his critics for being too disorganized and abrupt, moments ago Trump tweeted that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea because he feels "we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018
Pompeo was scheduled to make his fourth visit to North Korea next week to follow up on a framework agreement Trump reached with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The decision marks a rare admission from Trump that North Korea’s denuclearization is not going as well as hoped.
Trump blamed China, saying that "because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)." This is in line with Trump's complaint from early July in which he said that with respect to the denuclearization process, China "may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade."
...Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018
Trump also said that "Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved" which however in light of the collapse of this week's trade talks, may take a while.
The president concluded by sending his "warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!"
...Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018
After the Singapore summit with Kim, Trump proclaimed that North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat.” It was not immediately clear, if North Korea is again a threat, but in kneejerk reaction, the dollar pushed higher, regaining almost all of its post-Powell losses, the USDJPY dropped, and stocks dipped modestly.
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catchall term for all mental disorders, then, sure, about one-third of all disabled workers have some sort of mental issue.
Paul's spokesman singled out the subcategory "mood disorders" when explaining how Paul reached his conclusion. Other media outlets have similarly placed anxiety under this heading. However, the Social Security Administration told us that category typically includes affective disorders like depression, not anxiety disorders.
Instead, people suffering from "anxiety disorders" -- which include things like post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder -- are included in the "other" category. That category also includes diseases like Tourette syndrome and affects far fewer people than mood disorders, about 3.9 percent.
For the sake of argument, let's follow Paul's faulty logic. Even assuming generously that every single person with a musculoskeletal system problem came in with "back pain," and every person with a "mood disorder" had anxiety, it still only equals 45.4 percent, less than half. Throw in "other" mental disorders, you're still just below 50 percent.
If you categorize anxiety correctly as "other" and add it to all musculoskeletal system problems, you would end up far lower, at 34 percent.
And again, not every person with a musculoskeletal problem has a back problem, and not every person with a mental disorder has anxiety. For Paul to imply as much is either stretching reality or downplaying serious ailments.
There has been an increase in the number of people receiving disability for musculoskeletal system and mental problems. In 1961, the most common ailment for new beneficiaries was heart disease or stroke. Meanwhile, 8 percent of those going on disability received assistance for musculoskeletal system issues.
That’s an interesting and notable statistic, and one worth exploring. NPR published a very extensive report suggesting some older, unskilled workers are going on disability (many with back issues) because the only jobs available to them are physically strenuous.
But that doesn’t wash away Paul’s mischaracterization of the ailments nor his inflation of the numbers.
Our ruling
Paul said, "Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts."
The numbers don’t add up. The two broader disability categories that include back pain ("diseases of the musculoskeletal system") and anxiety disorders ("mental disorders - other") don’t even equal close to 50 percent, let alone those two ailments by themselves.
Paul’s quip might make for a good soundbite, but it’s not rooted in reality. We rate the statement False.
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A federal agency has likely opened an investigation into whether FBI Director James Comey is interfering in the presidential campaign by disclosing new materials related to the federal probe concerning Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonButtigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice Senate GOP sees early Supreme Court vote as political booster shot Poll: 51 percent of voters want to abolish the electoral college MORE’s emails.
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An Office of Special Counsel (OSC) spokesman declined to address whether the office opened an investigation in response to a complaint by Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer. However, a spokesman noted that it generally would.
“It's OSC's longstanding policy not to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” Nick Schwellenbach said in an email to The Hill.
“In general, OSC opens a case after receiving a complaint."
On Friday, months after declaring that the bureau had completed its yearlong probe into the private email system Clinton used while secretary of State, Comey told Capitol Hill lawmakers that the FBI had discovered new emails that might be relevant to the case. The news shook the presidential race less than two weeks before Election Day.
While the Democratic nominee and her allies were particularly upset by the revelation, many Republicans — most of whom had previously criticized the FBI for not recommending an indictment of Clinton — were jubilant.
Questions about the discovery quickly began to mount. Comey’s letter was short on details, and subsequent leaks have suggested that the FBI so far has few details on the newly discovered messages.
Legal scholars on both sides of the aisle have questioned why Comey announced the development, given the apparent lack of information and the surefire impact it would have so close to Election Day.
“The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election,” Painter, who was an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Sunday.
“Such acts could also be prohibited under the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an official position to influence an election,” he added. “That is why the F.B.I. presumably would keep those aspects of an investigation confidential until after the election.”
On Saturday, Painter filed complaints with both the OSC and the Office of Government Ethics about Comey's letter to Congress.
The typical punishment for violations of the Hatch Act, Painter wrote, was loss of one’s job.
A spokesperson with the Office of Government Ethics did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Hill.
The likelihood of an OSC investigation was previously reported by the Guardian
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IT HAS HAPPENED.
RUTGERS HAS LANDED A TOP NEW JERSEY PLAYER.
Cedar Creek (NJ) WR/HB Bo Melton has committed to Rutgers!
He is a 3-star composite recruit but 247's individual rankings have Melton as a 4-star recruit and the third ranked player in New Jersey and 124th in the nation.
Melton's commitment came out of the blue, which makes it even better. What a great thing to see pop up on Twitter on a random Friday night.
Melton is a Rutgers legacy, as his dad played football and his mom played basketball. He is without a doubt one of the top players in the state of New Jersey but is also top-ranked skill player in the state.
In the past, Rutgers has had big issues recruiting South Jersey and they have not had great relationships down there. Melton hails from Cedar Creek, which is all the way down near Atlantic City. This is huge considering the rise in talent coming from the southern part of the Garden State.
This should help Chris Ash open the floodgates for New Jersey recruits and this commitment comes at a huge time, given Rutgers was just named the leader for NJ's top player, Micah Clark. In 5-6 years of following Rutgers recruiting, this is the most excited I've been since Savon Huggins committed all the way back in 2011.
This is truly a new day in Rutgers Football.
Bo Melton (@getbusy__bo) told me:
"Rutgers has really shown, not just to me but to New Jersey athletes, how we can make a big impact." — Tyler Donohue (@TDsTake) April 16, 2016
Bo Melton (@getbusy__bo) on new #RU Ash regime: "Vibes are amazing... It's very competitive now at Rutgers, and that's something to enjoy." — Tyler Donohue (@TDsTake) April 16, 2016
Coach Reactions
Leeettttssss goooooo!!!!! We just got a lot faster. 0 to real quick!#GameChanger #ProgramSetter #RUready Very proud of this young man! ⚔ — Zak Kuhr (@RUcoachK) April 16, 2016
Today was a Great Day!!! ⚔ ⚔ ⚔ — Aaron Henry (@AaronHenry7) April 16, 2016
Boooommmm!!!!
Changing the game forever! Get your mind right! #KnightUp — Drew Mehringer (@DrewMehringer) April 16, 2016
Watch Bo Melton's Highlights
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Sydney FC has announced its list of retained players for the Hyundai A-League 2015/16 season and it includes no fewer than eleven of the team that represented the Sky Blues in the Hyundai A-League 2014/15 Grand Final.
Striker Shane Smeltz and defender Matthew Jurman have both recently signed new two year contracts, while Senegalese internationals Mickael Tavares and Jacques Faty have also extended their deals with the club.
The list also includes the additions of 21 year old new signings Andrew Hoole and Brandon O’Neill.
“I’m delighted we have been able to keep the vast majority of this season’s Grand Final squad together and with a few more additions I think we are building towards a very exciting and successful 2015/16 Hyundai A-League season,” said Head Coach Graham Arnold.
“We’ve seen from our performances against Chelsea and Tottenham that we have some very good players at the club and some highly talented youngsters which is hugely promising for next season.
“We also still have a number of spots available, including one for an international marquee, which bodes well for the future. With an Asian Champions League campaign ahead of us we are going to need to recruit well but I believe we have a fantastic foundation for the year ahead.
“I’d like to thank those players who are leaving us for their service to the club and hope they continue to be successful in their careers.”
Sydney FC would also like to express its thanks and gratitude to the players who leave the club after the conclusion of the Hyundai A-League 2014/15 season and we wish them all the best for the future.
The retained list reads as follows:
2. Sebastian Ryall
5. Matthew Jurman
6. Nikola Petkovic
9. Shane Smeltz
13. Christopher Naumoff
14. Alex Brosque
16. Alex Gersbach
17. Terry Antonis
20. Vedran Janjetovic
22. Ali Abbas
23. Rhyan Grant
25. Aaron Calver
26. Jacques Faty
27. Mickael Tavares
29. George Blackwood
30. Anthony Bouzanis
35. Andrew Hoole
38. Brandon O’Neill
(Please note squad numbers are likely to change for the Hyundai A-League 2015/16 season).
Sydney FC Memberships are coming soon for the 2015/16. If you are a new Member, please register your interest at www.sydneyfc.com/membership/
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tered cigarettes each day, lit up, and her dad handed her the pack. This was in the 1950s before people knew the effects of smoking.
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When she took a drag, instead of coughing, she felt like she’d “died and gone to heaven.” My mom’s parents smoked so often in front of her that she both wanted to do it and knew exactly how. When I see toddlers navigate smartphones as though they were born using them, this story springs to mind. I’ve seen parents hand over iPhones to 2-year-olds to placate them in restaurants, just as mine sometimes plopped me down in front of the TV to keep me occupied. The difference is that I couldn’t bring the TV to the dinner table, or anywhere else. John Hutton, a pediatrician who researches the effects of phone use, has found that roughly 90% of U.S. babies are exposed to screen time before their first birthday and that it’s not uncommon for 2- or 3-month-olds to watch phones. Breaking old habits The human brain continues developing until we’re roughly 25 years old, so teenage behavior can have a significant and lasting impact. Research indicates that the adolescent brain is particularly prone to risk-taking, peer-seeking, and lack of impulse control. Between that and a lifetime of fetishizing screens, is it any wonder that so many teenagers won’t put their phones down?
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My college students describe the disconcerting and disappointing quiet that sets in when they’re at a table in the dining hall or in someone’s dorm room and everyone’s deep into a phone. Phones facilitate an incalculable amount of important interactions for them, especially with friends and family back home. But by the time they’re in college, they can recognize and articulate at least some of what they’re missing when they spend so much time staring at screens. They can assess their own habits and implement some changes if they so choose, but it makes sense that they, having been raised with this techno-magic, would never think of giving it up. A 2-month-old or a 2-year-old, however, can’t do that. Since the frontal cortex of an adolescent brain is still developing, teenagers aren’t fully able to reason or control impulses. Perhaps, most adults can’t either. But since it’s up to today’s adults to shape younger generations, we should be aware of the secondhand effects of our own behavior. Joelle Renstrom is a lecturer of Rhetoric at Boston University. This article is republished from The Conversation.
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�No one admired him for his verbal wit,” says Zwicker. “Certainly his writing is wonderful and clever, but he had practically no verbal presence at all.”
It is actually a bit of a mystery why he was so loathed at the time; Zwicker suggests some of it was probably envy at Dryden’s success, some was legitimate criticism of his style, and some was vague personality stuff. But a lot of this stuff seems like subtext, as if Dryden was attacked because he was Dryden and the reasons given might not have been telling the full story.
Dryden loved the classics; he was easily the most prominent translator and critic of Ovid, Horace, and Virgil, although his translations (like a lot of his own writing) were sort of bombastic and larger-than-life. He was fluent in Latin and worshipped the classics. And English was in a place where it was about to accelerate; it had been paused and now it was un-paused. Dryden’s ideas about what English should be were heavily motivated by Latin and Latinate ideas. It’s believed this is where his preposition thing comes from; in Latin, the preposition, as indicated by the first three letters of the word “preposition,” always comes before the noun. It is assumed that this is what motivated Dryden to make this case.
This is kind of a paradox as well; Dryden worshipped the classics, and was motivated by classical Latin, but was a defiant modernist, maybe even a progressive. He critiqued Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, applauded the newer writers of his own era, invented new forms which he then sought to popularize. But that’s the hold that the classics have: even when you’re trying to push things forward, the classics are always there.
What’s so frustrating about this whole preposition thing is that there doesn’t appear to be an easy answer as to how it became so completely lodged in formal English grammar. There are all these little hints as to why it might have taken hold—it is an easy-to-understand grammarian rule that came about at a time and place when English grammar was rapidly taking form, and it came from the mouth of the biggest literary figure of the time. But like Dryden himself, it’s a hard rule to get ahold of. Of which to get ahold.
*Correction: We originally said that Dryden invented the heroic couplet. He was known for composing them with frequency and flair, but heroic couplets were used centuries earlier, notably by Chaucer. Shakespeare was fond of them, too.
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Research from North Carolina State University will allow the development of energy-efficient LED devices that use ultraviolet (UV) light to kill pathogens such as bacteria and viruses. The technology has a wide array of applications ranging from drinking-water treatment to sterilizing surgical tools.
"UV treatment utilizing LEDs would be more cost-effective, energy efficient and longer lasting," says Dr. Ramón Collazo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research. "Our work would also allow for the development of robust and portable water-treatment technologies for use in developing countries."
LEDs utilize aluminum nitride (AlN) as a semiconductor, because the material can handle a lot of power and create light in a wide spectrum of colors, particularly in the UV range. However, technologies that use AlN LEDs to create UV light have been severely limited because the substrates that served as the foundation for these semiconductors absorbed wavelengths of UV light that are crucial to applications in sterilization and water treatment technologies.
A team of researchers from North Carolina and Japan has developed a solution to the problem. Using computer simulation, they determined that trace carbon atoms in the crystalline structure of the AlN substrate were responsible for absorbing most of the relevant UV light. By eliminating the carbon in the substrate, the team was able to significantly improve the amount of UV light that can pass through the substrate at the desired wavelengths.
"Once we identified the problem, it was relatively easy and inexpensive to address," says Dr. Zlatko Sitar, Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and co-author of the paper.
Commercial technologies incorporating this research are currently being developed by HexaTech Inc., a spin-off company from NC State.
"This is a problem that's been around for more than 30 years, and we were able to solve it by integrating advanced computation, materials synthesis and characterization," says Dr. Doug Irving, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of the paper. "I think we'll see more work in this vein as the Materials Genome Initiative moves forward, and that this approach will accelerate the development of new materials and related technologies."
The paper, "On the origin of the 265 nm absorption band in AlN bulk crystals," is published online in Applied Physics Letters. Co-authors include Benjamin Gaddy, Zachary Bryan, Ronny Kirste and Marc Hoffman from NC State, as well as researchers from HexaTech Inc., Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and the Tokuyama Corporation. The research was supported with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Explore further Researchers create elastic material that changes color in UV light
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Texas beaches aided by drought
Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Texas beaches aided by drought 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
The wicked drought that plagued Texas last year had an upside: cleaner beaches.
With the state in the grips of its driest year on record, less polluted runoff from Houston and other cities poured into coastal waters.
As a result, the number of times Texas beaches were closed or had posted advisories because of high bacteria levels in 2011 dropped by nearly half from the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has prepared the report for 22 years, said Texas' cleaner waters were partly because of the record dry spell. Overall, the state ranked eighth for water quality among the 30 in the survey.
"It is the silver lining of the drought," said Ellis Pickett, a longtime surfer and advocate for the Texas coast.
A high bacteria count in the water at beaches increases the risk of ear infections, skin rashes and stomach illnesses for swimmers.
Texas had one its worst years for water quality in 2010, with 704 instances in which officials closed beaches and posted advisories, largely because of flooding along the Rio Grande.
The number of closings and advisories dropped to 384 last year as Texas dried out. The statewide average rainfall totaled just 14.88 inches for 2011, well below the average of 27.92 inches per year over the last century, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
"Heavy rainfall will exacerbate the problem," said Steve Fleischli, the NRDC's water program director.
The difference from year to year was most apparent at South Padre Island, where flooding in 2009 increased bacteria levels for several days at a time. In the latest report, the popular South Texas beach was one of only 12 nationwide to receive the NRDC's highest rating of five stars.
The chronically dirty beaches in Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County also had cleaner water last year, but still accounted for half of the state's beach closings and advisories.
Galveston County, meanwhile, had 13 beaches, including Apffel Park and Stewart Beach, where water quality improved or remained the same from 2009.
Even with the assist from the drought, the NRDC said local, state and federal officials could do more to limit polluted runoff, including the use of "green infrastructure," such as porous pavement that allows rainwater to seep into the ground rather than enter sewers.
"Green infrastructure stops rain where it falls," Fleischli said, "so it does not run off the streets and bring pollution to the beaches."
[email protected]
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Chinese New Year Fireworks So Dangerous That Only a Few Get to Witness Blacksmiths hurl molten iron in remote part of China for “poor man’s fireworks."
HONG KONG -- For much of the next two weeks, millions of Chinese will welcome in the Year of Monkey, which begins today, with a cavalcade of fireworks lighting up the night’s sky.
In almost every corner of every city or village in Mainland China, families will light their own firecrackers and boxes of fireworks, with the sounds and flashes of explosions lingering each night into the early hours of the morning.
In the village of Nuanquan, however, which sits on the edge of China’s coal country in Western Hebei province and a five-hour drive from Beijing, there is traditional a pyrotechnic display so unique and dangerous that it is still only found here.
A brave blacksmith, wearing only a wide-brim hat and sheepskin vest for protection, hurls molten iron against the old city wall. When the hot liquid metal, with temperatures of over 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit, makes contact with the cold brick, an arc of sparks rains down over the blacksmith like snow.
They call it “DaShuHua” or, literally, “Beating down the tree flowers.”
Nuanquan villagers claim it has been performed for over 500 years by local blacksmiths. It was traditionally only performed once a year on Lantern Festival, which is the 15th day of the New Year and the unofficial climax of the annual two-week-long festivities. Nowadays, there are a few more opportunities to witness it.
ABC News visited Nuanquan a week before the Lunar New Year and met Sui Jianguo, a 14th generation blacksmith. Sui has been performing “DaShuHua” for more than 25 years and shows off his skills on a new nightly cultural show hoping to draw more tourists to the neglected region.
Sui explained to ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff that DaShuHua started out being the “poor man’s fireworks.” In the past, only the wealthy residents of Nuanquan could afford firecrackers to ring in the New Year.
So the town’s blacksmiths, noticing sparks flew out when they poured on their molten iron, tried throwing it in the air against a wall. The result is still on display every year since.
When asked whether he thought DaShuHua was more beautiful than traditional fireworks, Sui simply said, “It certainly is the most unique.”
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Operators ask government for national strategy to encourage more people to use buses
This article is more than 1 year old
This article is more than 1 year old
Bus operators have pledged to buy only ultra-low or zero-emission vehicles from 2025 as they called on the government to outline a national strategy to encourage more people to use buses.
The Confederation of Passenger Transport, which represents most bus operators in the UK including the big five firms – Arriva, FirstGroup, Go Ahead, National Express and Stagecoach – said it wanted lower fares for jobseekers and apprentices, smart ticketing and innovative, sustainable solutions for rural areas, where bus services have been hit particularly hard.
While bus travel remains the most popular form of public transport, passenger numbers in Britain have flatlined after declining central funding led to fewer services and higher fares.
The CPT said that with government help, the bus industry could help to address the climate crisis and was targeting 1bn more passenger journeys by bus by 2030. About 4.4bn journeys a year are made by bus in Britain.
Graham Vidler, the CPT chief executive said: “Buses are already the cleanest form of road transport and have a crucial role to play in tackling environmental issues and helping to meet important targets on improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions.
“With the right support from government to make the transition, the bus industry will buy only ultra-low or zero-emission buses by 2025, reducing CO2 emissions by 500,000 tonnes a year.”
On average, more than 2 million people a day travel to work by bus, and 1 million more to school or college.
Vidler said: “If everyone switched just one car journey a month to bus, there would be 1bn fewer car journeys and a saving of 2m tonnes of CO2 a year.”
Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk
The speed and reliability of bus services have been adversely affected by congestion in urban areas, while cash-strapped councils have withdrawn thousands of subsidised services elsewhere, especially in rural communities.
The Campaign for Better Transport, which last week called on the government to deliver a national bus strategy, welcomed the bus operators’ commitment to greener vehicles. Its chief executive, Darren Shirley, said: “Operators and government now need to work together to deliver for passengers, communities and the economy and to cut carbon emissions.”
The under secretary of state for transport, Baroness Vere, said the government was spending an additional £200m on boosting bus services and funding a range of low-emission technologies across the sector.
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doi:10.3233/JAD-160057
Abstract
Longitudinal Relationships between Caloric Expenditure and Gray Matter in the Cardiovascular Health Studyg
Background: Physical activity (PA) can be neuroprotective and reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In assessing physical activity, caloric expenditure is a proxy marker reflecting the sum total of multiple physical activity types conducted by an individual.
Objective: To assess caloric expenditure, as a proxy marker of PA, as a predictive measure of gray matter (GM) volumes in the normal and cognitively impaired elderly persons.
Methods: All subjects in this study were recruited from the Institutional Review Board approved Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), a multisite population-based longitudinal study in persons aged 65 and older. We analyzed a sub-sample of CHS participants 876 subjects (mean age 78.3, 57.5% F, 42.5% M) who had i) energy output assessed as kilocalories (kcal) per week using the standardized Minnesota Leisure-Time Activities questionnaire, ii) cognitive assessments for clinical classification of normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and AD, and iii) volumetric MR imaging of the brain. Voxelbased morphometry modeled the relationship between kcal/week and GM volumes while accounting for standard covariates including head size, age, sex, white matter hyperintensity lesions, MCI or AD status, and site. Multiple comparisons were controlled using a False Discovery Rate of 5 percent.
Results: Higher energy output, from a variety of physical activity types, was associated with larger GM volumes in frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes, as well as hippocampus, thalamus, and basal ganglia. High levels of caloric expenditure moderated neurodegeneration-associated volume loss in the precuneus, posterior cingulate, and cerebellar vermis.
Conclusion: Increasing energy output from a variety of physical activities is related to larger gray matter volumes in the elderly, regardless of cognitive status.
“Longitudinal Relationships between Caloric Expenditure and Gray Matter in the Cardiovascular Health Study” by Raji, Cyrus A.; Merrill, David A.; Eyre, Harris; Mallam, Sravya; Torosyan, Nare; Erickson, Kirk I.; Lopez, Oscar L.; Becker, James T.; Carmichael, Owen T.; Gach, H. Michael; Thompson, Paul M.; Longstreth Jr., W.T.; and Kuller, Lewis H. in Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Published online March 10 2016 doi:10.3233/JAD-160057
Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.
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A sinister caller warned that 'Cologne's main station will soon be in the air' in a bomb threat that forced police to close the transport hub amid heightened tensions following yesterday's Berlin attack.
The entire station was closed after the call at 6.28pm, one of the busiest periods for commuters at a time when thousands are also shopping in the nearby city centre ahead of Christmas.
Police evacuated the entire building, which is the city's main transport hub, prompting major rail delays likely to affect thousands of people who use the station every day.
Scroll down for video
Cologne's main train station was briefly evacuated after a telephone bomb threat today, leaving hundreds stranded outside (pictured)
Police were seen surrounding the station amid hundreds waiting outside when it was closed after a caller warned'soon Cologne's main station will be up in the air'
Both state and federal police rushed to empty the station after the caller told a call handler: 'Cologne's main station will soon be in the air!,' reports German newspaper Bild.
Hundreds were seen waiting outside after being herded out by police officers, who surrounded the building as sniffer dogs went to work trying to hunt out explosives inside.
But police have since announced that the threat was a false alarm, re-opening the station and allowing hundreds of people who were waiting outside back in.
The threat came as Germany remains on high terror alert after the brutal truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin last night that left 12 people dead and around 50 injured.
The call came in hours after authorities announced they would increase the police presence and clear jail cells for New Year's Eve after last year's sex attacks.
In total, 1,222 criminal complaints were investigated last year, more than 512 of them accusations of sexual assaults, crimes that were largely blamed on migrants.
Hundreds were seen waiting outside after being herded out by police officers, who surrounded the building as sniffer dogs went to work trying to hunt out explosives inside
But police have since announced that the threat was a false alarm, re-opening the station and allowing hundreds of people who were waiting outside back in
The shocking numbers fuelled political tensions in Germany last year, heightening opposition to Chancellor Angela Merkel's controversial open-door policy.
The Chancellor is now under fire again after 12 were killed and around 50 injured when a stolen truck careered through a busy market square in Berlin last night.
Some believe it was a terror attack after reports from local media that the driver responsible was a refugee from Pakistan or Afghanistan who entered Germany in February.
In Cologne, there will be 66 prison cells available and they will be able to accommodate up to 100 people at a time, police have said.
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A former police detective in South Africa who published a book exposing members of an alleged elite pedophile ring killed himself just days later, with his family believing that the man’s death was actually murder.
Mark Minnie’s book, The Lost Boys of Bird Island, claims to prove that members of South Africa’s last Apartheid government took children to Bird Island, just off the coast of Port Elizabeth, where they were sexually abused and in some cases killed.
“The book details the corruption within the last Apartheid government of South Africa and implicated officials all the way to the top, including defense minister Magnus Malan and the minister of environmental affairs John Wiley,” reports the Free Thought Project.
Shortly before his death, Minnie revealed that he had been approached by more sources with more damning evidence and that a sequel was in the works.
The book was published on August 5, but just nine days later Minnie was dead, having apparently shot himself in the head.
However, Tersia Dodo, a family member of Minnie, told reporters that Minnie had insisted that if anything happened to him, to treat it as murder.
“He mentioned to us all the time that his life was in danger and if anything did happen to him we must know that it was done to him not by himself,” she said.
“Mark was not a coward, Mark faced life head on,” she added. “There is no ways that I or any of us believed that he would have opted out and that is why I agreed to do this interview to dispel any thoughts and rumors of suicide. He was not the type of man that was cowardly and that would do something like that.”
Dodo said that the suicide note found near Minnie’s body was either a fake or written under duress.
As we document in the video below, while the media obsesses about ‘Pizzagate’ and other dubious conspiracies about high level pedophile rings, the sexual abuse of children and its link to politicians, judges and celebrities is a common theme all over the world.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
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Nonlinear story with multiple endings - Someone framed you and no one gives a rat’s ass about this but you. Turn every stone in this city and find out who did that. The further you investigate the more missing puzzles you’ll find, but be careful. Some things should never be brought to daylight.
- Someone framed you and no one gives a rat’s ass about this but you. Turn every stone in this city and find out who did that. The further you investigate the more missing puzzles you’ll find, but be careful. Some things should never be brought to daylight. The essence of 80’s cop shows - Have you ever dreamed of being one of the heroes of cop movies? Of course you did, like we all. Now you have a chance. Be sexier than Sonny Crocket and tougher than Dirty Harry. And if witty comebacks won’t work, you can always do some old school ass kicking. It’s 80’s after all!
- Have you ever dreamed of being one of the heroes of cop movies? Of course you did, like we all. Now you have a chance. Be sexier than Sonny Crocket and tougher than Dirty Harry. And if witty comebacks won’t work, you can always do some old school ass kicking. It’s 80’s after all! The humour that your mom wouldn’t approve - Be sarcastic. Be gloom. Be whatever you want. There are thousands of things in this world you can laugh at, and even more you shouldn’t, but who cares. It’s jungle out there baby, and sometimes you just need something to release the stress.
New York, more like a beast than a city. Explore it’s darkest corners and uncover its secrets as Jack Kelly, a former detective who has been framed for a murder. Degraded and forgotten by old pals, it’s your last chance to find the truth behind this whole terrible mess. The thing is, your new boss treats you like shit, your wife is a money sucking spawn from hell and the local mafia wants your head on a plate. I guess you could say, that things are complicated down here, in the middle of Brooklyn. Oh, and don't forget about writing tickets, reprimanding pedestrians & such.You're a beat cop after all.
© 2016 11 bit studios S.A., 11 bit studios™, Beat Cop™ and respective logos are trademarks of 11 bit studios S.A. All rights reserved. (Pixel Crow™ and respective logos are trademarks of MIASIK.BIZ Maciej Miąsik. All rights reserved. There are no reviews for this product
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After months of punishing drought, our devastated farmers finally got some relief as the heavens opened in parts of NSW.
Farmers across the state rejoiced as some of the hardest-hit NSW drought regions received a little respite after the first significant rainfall in months.
One Dubbo farmer was filmed rejoicing as he sprinted through the downpour wearing nothing but a hat.
View photos A Dubbo farmer was filmed rejoicing as he sprinted through the downpour wearing nothing but a hat. Source: 7 News More
The nude man appeared ecstatic as he splashed about the field yelling “woohoo” as rain pelted down.
Much of the Northern Tablelands and Central West received rainfall on Saturday, with a low pressure system forecast to deliver a wet start to the week.
Inverell received 16mm between 9am and 9pm on Saturday, while Dubbo recorded almost 10mm.
More rain on the way
There is more rain on the way today with parts of northern New South Wales recording falls of up to 17mm.
The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting up to 20mm for Parkes, where some farmers have been battling to feed livestock and others face the prospect of not harvesting a crop.
View photos Sheep on a farming property 40km outside Coonabarabran in NSW as the drought continues to grip the state. Source: Brook Mitchell/ Getty More
The BOM is also forecasting a wet week for Sydney, with up to 15mm predicted for the city on Sunday.
That rain is expected to continue throughout the week as another cold front emerges from the Tasman Sea.
The rain comes as the Sydney Desalination Plant prepares to kick into action if the city’s water supply drops below 60 per cent. Dam levels sat at 65.2 per cent on Saturday evening.
Southeast Queensland rainfall
Southeast Queensland is also experiencing good rainfall with thunderstorms developing.
Some drought-affected areas in southeast Queensland have received up to 50mm of rain this weekend, the BOM says.
Some Queensland drought-affected areas have received more rainfall this weekend than in months.
Areas east of Charleville, in the state’s south, have received as much as 50mm of rain, while Brisbane has taken 15 to 20mm since Friday.
”Areas west of Roma are quite clear at the moment and they won’t see any further rain. But they have seen that pattern of generally 5 to 20mm,” Bureau of Meteorology’s Lachlan Stoney said on Sunday.
How to help drought-affected farmers
Donations can be made through:
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Syncthing is a cross-platform peer-to-peer file synchronization client/server application written in Go. Similar to BitTorrent Sync, the tool can be used to synchronize files between computers however, unlike BitTorrent Sync, Syncthing is open source:
"Syncthing replaces Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it's transmitted over the Internet".
"Using Syncthing, that control is returned to you".
Syncthing Web GUI
The P2P protocol used by Syncthing, called "Block Exchange Protocol", is open too. Read more about BEP And it's not just Syncthing that's open source.Read more about BEP HERE
Unlike cloud sync tools such as Dropbox, Syncthing transfers the files directly between nodes (other computers on which you've installed Syncthing) which has several advantages: the files don't end up on some cloud server, the transfer speed doesn't depend on third-party servers and also, there are no space restrictions (except, obviously, the HDD space available for those nodes).
synchronize as many folders as you need with different people
responsive web GUI;
cross-platform: Syncthing works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, FreeBSD and Solaris. There's also an unofficial Android port;
Syncthing doesn't require advanced configuration and it should work out of the box, both over LAN and over the Internet;
secure & private:
the data is only stored on your computers, without using a central server;
all communication is secured using TLS;
every node is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate and only nodes you have explicitly allowed can connect to your cluster;
open source app, open protocol.
It's also important to mention that with Syncthing, you can select which nodes you want to share a repository with. So for instance, you can create multiple repositories and enable/disable sharing with some existing nodes on the fly:
Also, Syncthing comes with an option called master repository which, if enabled, protects the files from changes made on other nodes, but the changes made on the current node will be sent to the rest of the cluster.
Note that Syncthing is under constant development and new / improved features are added frequently. For instance, the current release includes a simple file versioning feature but in the future a more advanced file versioning should be added.
Here are a few more Syncthing (web GUI) screenshots:
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At the CryptoCompare & MJAC London Blockchain Summit on Friday, the head of Regulatory relations for Europe, Dan Morgan was part of a regulatory panel discussion in which he was asked several questions and he made numerous comments on Ripple, as you would expect.
During the discussion, Siamak Masnavi from CryptoGlobe asked Morgan what he thought about the regularity Clarity in the various markets that Ripple operates in and if it was true that Asia and Latin America were the main two regions for Ripple’s strongest presence.
In response to this, Morgan stated:
“It's very early days, but we see the biggest appetite in Asian markets, in terms of demand, so remittance demand, whether it is corridors that are under-served because correspondence banking is too costly... So, we feel that there is demand...and regulatory certainty is the third [factor]. Again, we see a number of pockets around Asia where they are further ahead that we are here... Thailand, I talked about. Obviously, Japan is another place. So, you are absolutely right, it is Asia.”
Asian demand
In September this year, Ripple also spoke on the demand in Asia stating:
"The inefficient management of global liquidity has long been a hurdle for cross-border payments in all regions across the world. However, this problem is particularly prominent in the Association of South Eastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, which has been largely underserved by correspondent banking. As a result, cross-border payments into these countries are inefficient and racked with high fees. Neighbouring countries relying on the correspondent banking system have to first convert currency into U.S. dollars, then settle across multiple correspondent banks before finally being exchanged to the currency used at the beneficiary institution. This cumbersome process requires numerous fees, including two sets of foreign exchange. As a result, there is little to no support for the low-value payments that small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and remitters need to make."
This was the day that Ripple announced that Siam Commercial Bank would be among the first financial institutions to use multi-hop, which is a feature of RippleNet:
"With multi-hop, financial institutions can connect directly to SCB, which can settle and payout across the region without exchanging currencies multiple times and adding heavy fees. The result is a seamless payments experience into and out of the ASEAN region. For smaller financial institutions which previously did not have the ability to make payments into ASEAN, multi-hop will democratize access to those countries and make payments easier, regardless of payment size or their financial institution’s pool of liquidity."
What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that it is a "waste of time" to discuss what Republicans say about impeachment because "they are in denial about what has happened in the country."
"I really have a real discomfort level of responding to what Republicans say because they are in denial about what has happened in the country. So if you want to ask me about where we're going on this, I'm happy to respond to that. But I find it a waste of my time and yours to just be talking about what Republicans say.... Let their argument stand, because it's on such quicksand that I don't even want to have it given any more visibility by my dignifying any of their misrepresentations of what they say."
— Nancy Pelosi
The big picture: One of the Republicans' main defenses against impeachment centers on the fact that the military aid for Ukraine — which the Trump administration allegedly withheld in exchange for an investigation into the president's political opponents — was eventually received.
Pelosi told CBS' Margaret Brennan that "of course" there was a link between the aid and the investigations, as EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and top Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor have testified, and that Trump only released the aid after the whistleblower complaint was filed.
that "of course" there was a link between the aid and the investigations, as EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and top Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor have testified, and that Trump only released the aid after the whistleblower complaint was filed. On the question of whether Trump's tweet during former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's testimony was witness intimidation, Pelosi dodged and did not address whether it would be considered for an article of impeachment.
of whether Trump's tweet during former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's testimony was witness intimidation, Pelosi dodged and did not address whether it would be considered for an article of impeachment. She called it a "mistake" and said: "I think part of it is his own insecurity as an imposter. I think he knows full well that he's in that office way over his head, and so he has to diminish everyone else."
Pelosi said there is no timetable for when the impeachment inquiry will wrap up or even whether articles of impeachment will ultimately be voted on. She was unequivocal, however, on the seriousness of the allegations, telling Brennan that "our democracy... is at risk with this president in the White House."
"It's really a sad thing," she added. "What the president did was so much worse than even what Richard Nixon did, but at some point, Richard Nixon cared about the country enough to recognize that this could not continue."
Go deeper:
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A pair of lawmakers on Wednesday introduced bipartisan legislation to create a grant program at the Department of Education to add cybersecurity into career and technical education curriculums.
Reps. Jim Langevin James (Jim) R. LangevinGovernment watchdog recommends creation of White House cyber director position Pandemic underscores demand for career and technical education Rep. Jim Langevin fends off Democratic primary challenge in RI MORE (D-R.I.) and Glenn Thompson Glenn (G.T.) W. ThompsonJudge halts Trump campaign's mail-voting lawsuit against Pennsylvania Will the next coronavirus relief package leave essential workers behind? Sheila Jackson Lee tops colleagues in House floor speaking days over past decade MORE (R-Pa.), who serve as co-chairmen of the Congressional Career and Technical Education Caucus, said their bill would help promote an area of education that they see as lacking.
The grants, which would be capped at $500,000 for each fiscal year, would be awarded on a competitive basis to partnerships between educational institutions and local employers that can show how they will incorporate cybersecurity education addressing critical infrastructure functions, such as the power grid.
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Studies vary on the extent of the cybersecurity labor gap. Some estimate that roughly 300,000 positions in the field remain unfilled over a lack of qualified applicants, and it’s projected that the number could reach 1 million in the future if the gap isn’t addressed.
Langevin, the co-founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said in a statement that workers who handle vital online networks need to have better training, “particularly in safety critical industries where lives can be put in jeopardy by malicious cyber actors.”
“These operators have a strong culture of safety, and we need to make sure emerging cyber threats are included in that culture,” he continued. “They are the first line of defense, and our bill ensures they will have the skills they need to keep us safe.”
And Thompson called it “paramount” to create a workforce “to meet the technical demands our country is facing now – and in the future.”
“By enabling our next generation of learners to have the most sophisticated and comprehensive educational programs out there, we will be better prepared to protect our most critical systems and assets,” he said in a statement.
A report from New America released earlier this year called for the creation of a Cybersecurity Civilian Corps within the Department of Homeland Security.
Top DHS cybersecurity official Jeanette Manfra backed the idea at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event shortly after the proposal was released, adding that the department is considering different options to help generate a more qualified workforce.
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The lightning network has been gaining significant traction in the past year, even though the technology is still in its beta phase it hasn’t stopped Bitcoin enthusiasts from running nodes and transacting with it.
Even though the Mainnet launched a year ago, the network already has more active nodes than prominent Cryptocurrencies like Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), EOS, XRP, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Tron (TRX) and many more. According to 1ML.com, Bitcoin’s lightning network currently has 3963 nodes that have active channels and over 1060 BTC (around $4.25 Million) in network capacity.
Crypto research firm Longhash released an article comparing the number of active nodes in the lightning network with other major Cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, EOS, etc. According to the data, Lightning network has the third highest number of active nodes only after Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Monero (XMR) have 1832, 1535 and 1515 active nodes respectively, which are less than half the number of Lightning nodes.
Even faster Cryptocurrencies like XRP and Stellar have one-third the number of nodes in the Lightning network.
The lightning network is a layer two solution that will enable lower fees, instant transactions, scalability to millions of transactions per second, etc. It is, however, different from Bitcoin’s layer one as it has points of centralization. It acts as a payment layer on top of Bitcoin’s network which is a settlement layer.
The number of nodes is an important metric in Proof of Work Blockchains like Bitcoin and Litecoin as it signifies the level of decentralization in the network. But this may not necessarily true for Blockchains with other consensus mechanisms like EOS and Tron.
Findings from The Block indicate that a few nodes handle significant amounts of lightning network’s capacity. Even though we are still in the early days of layer two solutions, it is still very exciting as these technologies could shape the future of global value exchange.
Disclaimer: Blockmanity is a news portal and does not provide any financial advice. Blockmanity's role is to inform the cryptocurrency and blockchain community about what's going on in this space. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment. Blockmanity won't be responsible for any loss of funds.
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Michael Winter
USA TODAY
Echoing the once-segregated South, a Florida deputy police chief has resigned and an officer has been fired after the FBI reported that both belonged to the Ku Klux Klan
Fruitland Park Deputy Chief David Borst has denied involvement with the notorious white-hooded hate group that emerged after the Civil War and continued to terrorize and murder blacks through the mid-20th century.
The 49-year-old Borst, a department veteran of more than 20 years, was also fire chief for the Lake County city of 5,000, about 40 miles northwest of Orlando. He resigned both posts Thursday after being confronted with the FBI report.
Officer George Hunnewell, who was demoted last year over performance and attitude complaints, was fired Friday by Chief Terry Isaacs.
The state attorney's office is reviewing every arrest made by the officers and giving particular scrutiny to cases involving minorities, Isaacs said.
It the second time in five years that Klansmen have been found in the Fruitland Park Police Department. In 2009, Officer James Elkins resigned after photographs showed him in a white robe and pointy hood, and he later admitted he was a leader of the local KKK.
In the current cases, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement gave Isaacs a summary of an FBI investigation based on information from a confidential source who linked both officers to the Klan. No criminal wrongdoing was found, and the FBI said no other officers were linked to the white supremacists.
Chief Deputy State Attorney Ric Ridgway, whom Isaac contacted for advice, told the Orlando Sentinel that the report contained "a lot of fairly substantial evidence that tends to support" Borst's and Hunnewell's Klan membership.
But he pointed out that it's not illegal to belong to the KKK "even if you are the deputy chief."
"It's not a crime to hate people. It may be despicable, it may be immoral, but it's not a crime," he said.
Because of that, Fruitland Park officials had to decide whether Borst and Hunnewell had violated city standards and ethics.
"We cannot nor will we tolerate any philosophy that is inherently morally corrupt or one that espouses bigotry or any intolerance aimed at any groups or individuals because of their race, religion, ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation," said City Manager Gary La Venia.
Isaacs initially told the Orlando Sentinel on Friday that Borst was resigning for "personal family issues," and he would not address the Klan allegations.
"We are here, we are in place, and I want the public to know this type of conduct will not even be remotely tolerated," Isaacs told News 13.
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Well, this may explain a lot.
Adolf Hitler is remembered for a lot of deplorable acts. As military leader of the Nazi Party and Germany’s dictator, Hitler was responsible for the deaths of six million Jewish people in Europe around the time of World War II in what would become known as the Holocaust. A variety of factors have been attributed to Hitler’s prejudicial and homicidal mindset, including the death of his brother and detachment from his father.
Now it seems that medical records obtained after Hitler was arrested in 1923 tell a different story behind his reign of terror. In the book “Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute,” historians Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie reveal that Hitler suffered from “a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the underside of the penis." Not only did hypospadias leave the Führer with a micropenis, but it also caused him to urinate from a hole on the shaft of his penis as opposed to the tip.
Hitler’s medical woes didn’t end there. Records also showed Hitler had suffered from “right-side cryptorchidism,” or an undescended testicle. The examination that led to Hitler’s genitalia becoming a matter of public record was conducted by Dr. Josef Steiner Brin at The Landsberg Prison in 1923. He served one year at Landsberg after he was found guilty of high treason for his part in the Beer Hall Putsch – a failed military coup that took place inside a beer hall in Munich.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hypospadias is a birth defect in boys that causes the urethra to form abnormally during weeks eight to 14 of pregnancy. Hypospadias can range in severity depending on where the opening of the urethra is located. Subcoronal hypospadias occurs when the opening is located closer to the head of the penis. Midshaft occurs when it’s located along the shaft. Penoscrotal occurs when it’s located where the penis and scrotum meet. Five out of every 1,000 boys in the United States are born with hypospadias.
Since penis size is often tied to self-esteem and confidence issues, it’s very possible Hitler’s micropenis played a role in the never-ending list of mental health issues he is accused of having, including paranoia, anxiety, insomnia, depression, schizophrenia, etc. It could also be related to the copious amounts of illicit drugs Hitler and his soldiers ingested on the way to their defeat at the hands of Allied troops.
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the Mayor how the city would pay for any potential changes, and he said the city would keep the fiscal impact in mind when making any changes.
Key narrative excerpts from the report, shared by the mayor's office:
“The statues on Monument Avenue have been a source of pride and shame for the City’s residents from the time of their installations. As the city has become more ethnically, politically and socioeconomically diverse, tolerance for the monuments’ artistic and cultural meaning has shifted over time. In essence it is a question of whether or not Monument Avenue reflects the citizenry and its values. It is for these reasons the commission was formed and tasked to determine how best to reconcile a particular landscape viewed as both sacred and profane.”
“In the course of the work, it became abundantly clear the majority of the public acknowledges Monument Avenue cannot and should not remain exactly as it is. Change is needed and desired. The public offered many fascinating ideas, and the majority seemed to favor a multi-faceted approach.”
“The sanitizing of textbooks in Virginia persisted well into the late twentieth century. It should be no surprise, then that the Commission heard such opinions in our listening sessions, despite several generations of academic scholarship that have largely corrected the historical record.”
“During the course of the meetings, it became abundantly clear that there were a number of historical inaccuracies being repeated by the public throughout the public meeting process about a number of topics related to the monuments. The Commission drew on the collective historical knowledge and collections of the Commonwealth’s preeminent state historical institutions, resulting in the website “On Monument Avenue” (onmonumentave.com). Likewise, the Commission drew on the collective research and publications of the scholarly community and other documented studies of Confederate memorialization.”
“We hope that the history presented here and on the Commission’s Website “On Monument Avenue” provides citizens with a common base of knowledge for discussing Monument Avenue and other examples of Confederate memorialization in the City of Richmond. The history also supports telling the story of the avenue in a variety of styles of interpretation and creating a robust dialog with the monuments. What the history cannot do is provide a definitive answer to the question of whether the monuments are appropriate as a representation of the city and its residents.”
The report also contains an Appendix that includes a number of source documents that may be helpful, including:
The Mayor’s initial remarks establishing the commission (Appendix A)
State laws governing Confederate Memorials (Appendix B)
City of Richmond Attorney Legal Opinion on the Monuments (Appendix C)
Data on Public Engagement
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to something like a player marking “8 swamps, 9 islands” in a U/W deck. You now have the ability to say “well, that should obviously be 8 plains” and let it go. If there’s any chance of ambiguity (say 8 swamps, 9 islands, 1 plains in a UWb deck), you should apply the penalty as normal.
If you back up a Communication Policy Violation, just back it up to the point at which the bad information was acted upon, not all the way back to the original question.
Thanks to the many, many people who wrote in to point out that we had inconsistent rules for replacing lost cards and replacing marked cards. We no longer do. Similarly, thanks to the other legion who wrote in about “simple backups” versus “small backups”.
We all spent the weekend gleefully violating the MTR, which told us that we were not allowed to use Zendikar Expeditions during the prerelease. That’s all covered now. Speaking of gleefully violating things, the existence of all the prerelease promos technically meant you could run the new Ulamog in Legacy last weekend (but only the promo version!) We’ve revamped the criteria for Legacy and Vintage to avoid such silliness in the future. Being a promo makes no difference any more; Vintage and Legacy cards are now defined by their existence in a released set… plus the book promos. The sharp-eyed amongst you will notice two tremendously important things: that Mana Crypt is double-banned in Legacy (it remains on the banlist to be clear, even though the card is not legal in the format) and that the 1996 World Champion card is now banned in Vintage. We felt that was a better solution than power-level errata.
The appendix covering the Rules Enforcement Level of various programs is now in the MTR. Which is really where it should have been all along.
And that’s a wrap! It’s a lot to ingest, but if you go study the new DEC rules, you’ll be covered for most of what you need to know this time around. Thanks to everyone who sent in ideas and suggestions. We couldn’t do it without all of you, but shout-outs to Matthew Johnson, Sean Hunt, Antonio Jose Rodriguez Jimenez, Jeff Morrow, Matteo Callegari, Daniel Kitachewsky, Will Anderson and Bryan Prillaman. Especially Bryan, whose Annotated IPG team has to put up with all these shenanigans.
I look forward to hearing how these changes work in practice and hopefully the Oath of the Gatewatch policy update will involve a minimum of swearing.
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In the first nine months of 2017, the Swedish migration board has reported 2,875 serious incidents against their staff including threats of rape and assault, and threats to set fire to their offices.
Particularly worrying for the female employees of the migration board, which handles all the country’s asylum claims, has been the number of sexual harassment incidents from migrants. So far, there have been 15 cases of sexual harassment including one in which a migrant threatened to rape a female employee, Aftonbladet reports.
Maria Johansson, working environment specialist at the Swedish Migration Board, said the incidents “can be anything including an inappropriate comment related to a sexual act. This is not a common problem with us, but it is serious when it happens.”
Threats often come via email and over the telephone, with one female employee being verbally abused over the telephone when a migrant yelled, “What do you doing you fucking pussy?!” before hanging up.
A case in Södermanland during the summer saw a female employee followed by a migrant man as she was going outside for fresh air. She decided to ignore him and look at her mobile phone but he started kissing her hand and then trying to kiss her on the lips before she pushed him off.
In central Norrland, an aggressive migrant showed up at a migration board office and when security guards confronted him he not only threatened to kill them but turned to a female guard and told her he would find her address and rape her. The asylum seeker was later arrested and convicted for uttering threats.
Another female officer in the Stockhold area reported being followed on public transport. Although she asked the man to stop following her, he continued to harass her and told her that he knew she worked at the migration board.
“He threatened to throw me in front of the train,” the woman said.
When the train arrived, he reiterated that he wanted to accompany her home before he disappeared.
The migration office worker added: “I felt uneasy when I went to work the next day.”
Another report from an employee claimed that a migrant had called her at the migration board office 166 times in the span of only an hour and made threats against her.
Threats against employees or volunteers working with migrants can sometimes lead to brutal crimes. Over the past two years, several women working with asylum seekers have been killed by them.
The most known case in Sweden was that of asylum centre worker Alexandra Mezher who was killed by a Somalian man who lied about being underage.
In Germany asylum shelter volunteer Maria Ladenburger was raped and killed by an Afghan migrant who also admitted he lied about being underage.
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June 29 (UPI) -- Total defense expenditures by NATO members in Europe and Canada are projected to rise in 2017, according to a report released by NATO on Thursday.
The report indicates a boost of 4.3 percent in overall spending by non-U.S. NATO members, marking the sharpest rise in years.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Thursday that the new money represents "a significant increase," and that "European Allies and Canada spent almost $46 billion more on defense" since 2014.
"We are moving in the right direction when it comes to burden-sharing and defense spending," he added.
NATO defense spending is expected to total $915 billion in 2017 in constant 2010 prices and exchange rates, with the U.S. accounting for $616 billion of that total. The U.S. spends nearly twice as much on defense as the rest of NATO combined.
NATO membership guidelines set a target of each member to spend at least 2 percent of national GDP in defense. Out of 29 members, only six meet this level of expenditure, with Romania recently becoming the sixth. Out of the four largest economies in NATO, only the United States at 3.6 percent and Britain at 2.1 percent meet the target, though both nation's total defense spending has dropped since 2014. France and Germany spend 1.8 percent and 1.2 percent.
The disparity in both total spending and percentage of GDP has drawn criticism from officials in the last several U.S. presidential administrations, and it has been a focus of President Donald Trump. Trump has accused Europe of relying too heavily on the U.S., saying it must pay more for mutual defense.
RELATED European country orders Harris tactical radios
At a news conference with the President of Romania this month, Trump praised Romania for its spending increases and added that "we hope our other NATO allies will follow Romania's lead on meeting their financial obligations and paying their fair share for the cost of defense."
"Other countries are starting to realize that it's time to pay up, and they're doing that. Very proud of that fact," Trump said.
NATO spending levels, particularly in Europe, has become more relevant in recent years in light of increased Russian military assertiveness and instability in the Middle East. NATO expenditures have been in a long decline since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of the U.S. surge in spending following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Even U.S. defense expenditures has been in decline since 2011, something both House and Senate Armed Services Committees and President Trump have pledged to change with higher defense budgets. Overall trends in NATO Europe spending since 2014 seem to pointing in the same direction.
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PASADENA, CA (November 10, 2016) – Parsons is pleased to announce that the Smart Power Infrastructure Demonstration for Energy Reliability and Security (SPIDERS) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) has received a 2016 Federal Energy and Water Management Award. SPIDERS was a collaborative effort by the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and Department of Homeland Security to develop innovative microgrid solutions to improve the energy security of critical assets at U.S. military bases. Parsons, as a subcontractor and lead, provided key support through all phases of the project.
“SPIDERS is an important step toward greater energy efficiency and the security of our nation’s energy assets,” stated Tom Roell, Parsons Vice Chairman and Group President. “I am proud of our teams’ contributions to this project, which will help to ensure a continuous energy supply to our military bases.”
The SPIDERS project successfully demonstrated the capability to develop cybersecure, energy-efficient microgrids to meet the energy needs of U.S. military bases. The benefits include increased resilience to cyber attacks, severe weather, and other threats to the commercial power grid. In addition, through the integration of renewable power sources, the microgrids created greater energy efficiency and reduced the bases’ carbon footprints.
In three phases ending in November 2015, the SPIDERS JCTD deployed microgrids at three U.S. military bases in Hawaii and Colorado. Each phase expanded the scope and complexity of the demonstration: During Phase I, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, HI, the project synchronized existing backup power supplies with a photovoltaic array to increase the availability of electricity to a single facility. During Phase II, at Fort Carson, CO, the SPIDERS smart grid integrated existing power supplies with renewable energy sources (including photovoltaic arrays, stationary energy storage, and bidirectional electric vehicle charging) and added cybersecurity systems. Phase III, conducted at Camp Smith, HI, was the first basewide demonstration of a microgrid capable of providing long-term power using onsite industrial-quality generating equipment integrated with renewable energy sources (solar and stationary energy storage). This final phase also demonstrated the ability to generate up to $1 million in cost savings through ancillary services to the local utility.
Parsons played a key role throughout the SPIDERS JCTD, providing design and construction support during Phase I, cybersecurity design support during Phases II and III, and network design support during Phase III. The corporation has delivered energy solutions to customers in federal, regional, and local government and private industry for more than 60 years. It has delivered cybersecurity solutions for more than 30 years.
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President Barack Obama is demanding yet more tax increases, shortly after using his clout to win Senate approval of $620 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years.
“Tonight’s agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans,” he said in a 2:30 a.m. “victory” statement, following the Senate vote in the wee hours of New Year’s Day.
“The agreement leaves substantial scope for reducing tax expenditures for high-income households,” during any future debates over tax and reform of entitlement programs, the administration said in second “fact sheet” statement, released at 11:22 a.m.
The House has yet to approve the Obama-Senate deal, which stops scheduled “fiscal cliff” tax increases for all Americans except the most successful investors and entrepreneurs.
Obama will demand the extra taxes during a much-expected debate over national tax reform, said the fact sheet, titled “The Tax Agreement: A Victory for Middle-Class Families & the Economy.”
Republican leaders and free-market groups are pressing for tax reform that could boost investment in the economy, and partially offset expected curbs on fast-growing federal spending.
During Obama’s two terms, his spending policies are expected to balloon the federal government’s debt by $10 trillion, to roughly $20 trillion.
If interest rates rise to five percent, interest payments on $20 trillion would reach $1 trillion per year in 2016, or roughly one third of all federal tax revenue in 2012.
The White House victory statements suggested it would participate in entitlement reforms and in a revamp of the income tax code that would reform “corporate taxes to broaden the base and cut the rate to make America more competitive.”
The administration’s demand for “reducing tax expenditures” is progressive shorthand for extending tax laws to incomes and investments not covered by current taxes.
Although vague, it could include demands for new taxes on middle-class mainstays like charitable giving, home mortgages, and income from investments, and further extend the power or influence of government officials and political progressives over Americans’ personal and business preferences.
But Obama and other progressives likely will not seek to “reduce tax expenditures” on activities backed by their favored special-interest groups.
Those sectors include green-tech investments, donations to liberal political causes, income from municipal bonds, tuition payments to universities and profits from Hollywood productions, all of which now are fully or partially exempted from routine business and personal taxes.
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Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate says he’s not terribly concerned about bad actors manipulating votes in Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses on Monday, but he is concerned about misinformation efforts through social media.
“I want the voters to be concerned, but not terrified,” Pate said Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Pate spoke at an election security exercise hosted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency.
DEMOCRACY 2020 DIGEST: SANDERS PROFITS FROM AD IN IOWA THAT ATTACKS HIM
“If you ask Iowans, they’ll tell you they have total confidence in their system, paper ballots and local people running the caucus sites,” Pate said.
But he pointed to social media posts that might be pushing misinformation about simple things such as polling times or locations for the caucuses.
“If you see something weird on social media... Please don’t just take things at face value, do a little homework,” he said.
The meeting was attended by federal officials, as well as state and local election officials from across the country.
According to organizers, the purpose of the event is for participants to discuss and explore the potential impact on voter confidence, operations and the integrity of elections “through tabletop simulation of a realistic scenario.”
“It’s pretty consistent,” Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs said about recent activity in cybersecurity. “A push in the disinformation space, they’re trying to undermine voter confidence.”
Krebs said that Russia is a culprit, “but not the only one.”
Federal officials say they are coordinating with social media companies on the subject of election disinformation.
“These relationships have improved in recent years,” Krebs said.
The federal government is also working to improve coordination with states and local municipalities.
“We have to make it easier to work with the federal government, they don’t need six agencies knocking on their door,” Krebs said.
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Department of Homeland Security officials also said that they issued guidance to their government and private sector partners in the wake of the U.S. airstrike that took out the top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani.
These officials said the federal government, as well as state and local officials, are much better prepared for the 2020 presidential elections than they were four years ago. However, they acknowledged concern about the way the United States' adversaries are evolving their strategies.
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Macaques lose protected species status, COA says
By Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter
The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday decided to remove Formosan rock macaques and seven other species from its list of protected species, while adding 17 species to it.
The council’s Forestry Bureau yesterday convened a five-hour meeting with experts to discuss the classification of wildlife, with the protection status of macaques being one of the most heatedly debated issues.
Among the 17 species being added to the list are the Taiwan rosefinch, the long-tailed pigeon and the Formosan yuhina, the bureau said.
GENERAL WILDLIFE
Eight formerly protected species, including the macaques, the Formosan Reeve’s muntjac and the masked palm civet have been reclassified as general wildlife, it said.
“The decision has nothing to do with agricultural losses [caused by animals], which is another issue,” bureau Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) said, adding that the living conditions and distribution of wildlife are the bureau’s main concerns.
The bureau would also initiate monitoring plans for those species, Lin added.
A study in 2000 suggested that there were between 250,000 and 300,000 macaques, while other evidence suggests that their number has been growing steadily, said National Tunghai University Department of Life Sciences professor Lin Liang-kong (林良恭), who attended the meeting.
However, a more comprehensive survey about the species’ living conditions is needed, he added.
FARM RAIDS
While many farmers have complained about monkey raids, only a few of them have harmed the animals, because they think the macaques look like humans, Lin Liang-kong said, adding that experts have been helping farmers install electric fences around their farms to keep out wild animals.
People who hunt protected animals could face a prison term of between six months and five years or a fine between NT$200,000 and NT$1 million (US$6,577 and US$32,891) for breaching the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), bureau Conservation Division Director Hsia Jung-sheng (夏榮生) said.
People who hunt non-protected animals could face a fine of between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000 under the act, she said.
The bureau needs to finish related paperwork before it can formally announce the changed protection statuses of wildlife, Hsia added.
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THIS summer the city’s Department of Transportation inaugurates a new bike-share program. People who live and work in New York will be able to travel quickly and cheaply between many neighborhoods. This is major. It will make New Yorkers rethink their city and rewrite the mental maps we use to decide what is convenient, what is possible. Parks, restaurants and friends who once seemed beyond plausible commuting distance on public transportation will seem a lot closer. The possibilities aren’t limitless, but the change will be pretty impressive.
I’ve used a bike to get around New York for decades. There’s an exhilaration you get from self-propelled transportation — skateboarding, in-line skating and walking as well as biking; New York has good public transportation, but you just don’t get the kind of rush I’m talking about on a bus or subway train. I got hooked on biking because it’s a pleasure, not because biking lowers my carbon footprint, improves my health or brings me into contact with different parts of the city and new adventures. But it does all these things, too — and sometimes makes us a little self-satisfied for it; still, the reward is emotional gratification, which trumps reason, as it often does.
More than 200 cities around the world have bike-share programs. We’re not the first, but ours will be one of the largest systems. The program will start with 420 stations spread through the lower half of Manhattan, Long Island City and much of western Brooklyn; eventually more than 10,000 bikes will be available. It will cost just under $10 for a day’s rental. The charge includes unlimited rides during a 24-hour period, as long as each ride is under 30 minutes. So, for example, I could ride from Chelsea to the Lower East Side, from there to food shopping, later to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and after that, home. This system is not geared for leisurely rides up to the George Washington Bridge or to Coney Island. This is for getting around.
I’ve used bike-sharing programs in London, Ottawa, Washington, Toronto, Barcelona, Milan and Paris. In London, where they introduced a public bike program two years ago, I could enjoy a night out without having to worry about catching the last tube home or finding a no longer readily available black cab. In Paris, the Vélib program has more than 20,000 bikes and extends all the way to the city’s borders. Significantly, the banlieues, the low-income housing projects that surround that city, aren’t included, so the system reinforces a kind of economic discrimination, but maybe more coverage is coming.
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Ignatii (Bryanchaninov), St. The Concept of Heresy and Schism. Moscow, 1996.
- - -. Collected works. 6 vols. The Rule of Faith: Moscow, 2004.
- - -. Works. 4 vols. St. Petersburg, 1905.
Hierotheos (Vlakhos), Metr. Orthodox Psychotherapy. A Patristic Course on Healing of the Soul. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 2006.
John Climacus, St. The Ladder. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 2006.
Isaac of Syria, St. On Divine Mysteries and spiritual life. Oleg Abyshko: St. Petersburg, 2006.
- - -. Homilies on Spirituality and Asceticism. Trans. Paisios (Velichkovsky). Moscow, 1854.
Kuraev, А. The Challenge of Ecumenism. Russian Orthodox Church: Moscow, 2003.
- - -. Tradition, Dogma, Ritual. Brotherhood of St. Tikhon: Moscow, 1995.
Losev, А. F. Essays on Antique Symbolism and Mythology. Moscow, 1930.
- - -. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. Moscow 1991.
Macarius of Egypt, St. Spiritual Talks, Epistles, and Homilies. The Rule of Faith: Moscow, 2002.
Nicodemos of Holy Mountain. Unseen Warfare. Gift: Moscow, 2007.
Nikon (Vorobyev), Abbot. To us is Left Repentance. Sretensky Monastery: Moscow, 2005.
Osipov, А. I. The Path of the Mind is Search of Truth. Sretensky Monastery: Moscow, 2003.
Pecherin, V. S. Notes from Beyond the Grave. Moscow, 1989.
Rozanov, V. Near the Church Walls. Moscow, 1995.
- - -. Religion and Culture. Moscow, 1990.
- - -. Among the artists. Moscow, 1991.
Roshko, V. «Letters to Fr. Alexander Меn’». Messenger RCM 165 (1992).
Uspensky, L. А. «On the Path to Unity?» Philosophy of Russian Religious Art in 16-20th centuries. An Anthology. Ed. N. Gavrushina. Progress: Moscow, 1993. 350-74.
Theophan the Recluse, St. Collection of Letters. Moscow, 1994.
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Headed to Tennessee a decade from now? If you’re a Hubber, you might consider demoting Graceland. Star Wars geek extraordinaire, Chris Lee, is building a full scale replica of the Millennium Falcon an hour outside Nashville. And who doesn’t love the “fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy?”
In Star Wars, Han Solo won the Falcon—a freighter with a “few special modifications”—in a game of Sabacc with Lando Calrissian. He used it to smuggle goods, transport a young Luke Skywalker, and fight the ultimate battle between good and evil. The ship is, of course, legendary on the silver screen. And now it’ll emerge from the depths of space and time in Tennessee.
Lee’s replica will be 114 feet long (50% the length of a Boeing 747) and 81.5 feet across. The frame will consist of steel, plywood, and fiberglass and will be as close to spec as possible—quad laser cannons to dejarik table.
To accomplish this feat, the team painstakingly rendered and reconciled detailed blueprints. No trivial matter—Hollywood doesn’t generally concern itself with reality. A prime challenge, for example, was that the exterior and interior dimensions didn’t match in the original blueprints.
The project may strike you as slightly Quixotic. And it may be. To finish it, Lee’s team needs all the help they can get—funding, building, assembling. They’re crowd sourcing expertise and labor and selling t-shirts to support the effort. Folks from England, to Norway, to New Zealand have contributed.
In all likelihood the ship won’t be complete for at least 5-7 years. But when (and if) that golden day comes, the Millennium Falcon will land in a clearing on an 88 acre parcel of land in the Tennessee countryside. The Falcon will be visible from several vantage points around the property. And from space too. In fact, Lee is counting on a Google Maps screen capture upon completion.
Is this geekdom gone wild? Yes, yes it is. But there’s more than simply the desire to build the biggest, baddest sci-fi model of all time. Lee hopes to found a maker camp for kids. Campers will come from across the empire and learn to weld and wire just like Anakin. And maybe even contribute a component or two to the Falcon herself. If you can’t wait five years to see the final product, see here for the Full Scale Millennium Falcon Project’s 3D animated tours of the Falcon’s interior and exterior:
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Summer winds are coming with the MLB All-Star game about to gear up and we have a number of exciting things for MLB The Show to celebrate! In case you missed out last week, we dropped the price $20 MSRP on not only the Standard Edition, but also the Digital Deluxe! Here’s how you can get MLB The Show 17 now:
Edition US MSRP CAN MSRP Standard Edition 39.99 49.99 Digital Deluxe Edition 79.99 99.99
Even though the season’s already started, there’s still time to jump into this most realistic baseball game on consoles and build the team of your dreams. For those who may be intimidated to jump into Diamond Dynasty mid-season, fear not – starting today we’ll be replacing the MVP edition with our new All-Star Edition ($49.99 USD MSRP, $59.99 CAN MSRP), which includes all of the contents from the MVP edition as well as the Diamond Dynasty Jump Start Pack. The All-Star Edition contains over $150 in value, which includes:
Game
5,000 Stubs
Gold Season Starter Pack (includes Mission Starter for Gold Item)
1 Sponsor Pack
10 Standard Packs
31 PS4 Themes
Diamond Dynasty Jump Start Pack
The Jump Star Pack contains $20 of in-game content and includes:
1 All-Star Flashback or Legend
2 guaranteed Mission Starter Players 1 guaranteed Gold Flashback or Legend that opens up a Mission for a Diamond player reward 1 guaranteed Silver Flashback or Legend that opens up a Mission for a Gold player reward
22 guaranteed Silver players
Stay tuned to MLB The Show as we make it out to Miami this weekend for more baseball fun. And to keep the party going beyond the All-Star Game festivities, we’ll be hosting The Show Showdown, the ultimate double elimination, blind draft competition on Wednesday July 12 starting at 12PM PST. We’ll have a few of the best members from our community duking it out playing head-to-head in Battle Royale for the coveted MLB The Show Home Base Console Case. You might remember Tyler from The Show Show earlier this year — he’ll be returning to co-host this livestream competition.
Join us on Twitch this coming Wednesday for The Show Showdown and find out who of our contestants will end up on top and sent home with the coveted MLB The Show Home Base Console Case. And don’t forget to grab your copy of MLB The Show 17 (now at a lower price) today!
Follow MLB The Show on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to keep up with the latest news or visit theshownation.com to join the community.
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Beijing has successfully tested a new long-range ballistic missile capable of engaging any potential target worldwide. The rocket takes just 30 minutes to cover its maximum 12,000km range and can deliver multiple strikes on any nuclear-capable state.
The launch of China’s Dongfeng-41 (East Wind, DF-41) missile was registered by the US satellite tracking system in real time, the Washington Free Beacon reports, although the location of the launch was not immediately revealed. The launch was made from a new road-mobile platform, and is reportedly the seventh test-firing of the DF-41.
Read more
American experts estimate the DF-41 to be an 80-ton, three-stage solid-fuel missile capable of carrying between six and 10 nuclear warheads.
The test was made with a DF-41 missile armed with two independently targetable reentry vehicles.
“As with previous MIRV tests, the PLA has used a small number of reentry vehicles to mask the real capability of the DF-41, which is estimated to be able to loft up to 10 warheads,” the WFB cited China military affairs analyst Rick Fisher as saying.
China allegedly tested its deadliest nuclear missile on April 13 – about the time when the People’s Liberation Army's high-ranking Gen. Fan Changlong headed a group of military commanders to inspect construction work at a man-made island in the Spratly Islands group. The exact date of the visit was not officially announced.
The test reportedly took place three days before US Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, operating in the South China Sea close to the disputed Spratly Islands claimed by Beijing.
Xi warns Obama against threatening China’s sovereignty & national interests https://t.co/xxIjvyOTgCpic.twitter.com/vhlBbWMPtZ — RT (@RT_com) April 1, 2016
The first information about the third generation Chinese ballistic missile – which according to the WFB is capable of reaching any location within the US – emerged in the American media in July 2014.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Chinese military staged its previous DF-41 ballistic missile test launch on December 5, 2015, when a missile was launched from a container mounted on a special railroad car.
“China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads,” the WFB cited Adm. Cecil Haney of the US Strategic Command as saying on January 22 of this year.
In 2015, Kanwa Asian Defence magazine claimed that Beijing might add the DF-41 to its nuclear inventory as early as 2016.
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CARLSBAD, Calif., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MegaFans (Mobile eSports Gaming Fanatics), a San Diego-area-based mobile eSports platform and gaming company has raised $1 million (USD) in pre-seed funding; $500K in private placement and a $500K line of credit through a private lender. The funds are being used to expand and scale MegaFans' footprint and user base, continue developing their eSports platform, add new games and tournaments to feed the fast-growing, global mobile gaming market.
MegaFans Leaderboard
MegaFans' veteran team has been working on the mobile gaming industry's problems, such as retention, monetization and the lifetime value of mobile gamers, since the company's inception. eSports solve for these problems by offering a more competitive and social gaming experience, along with prizes and cash pools that create an attraction of their own to certain players. However, eSports has its own issue in the more casual, mobile gaming environment. Getting players to move over to a pay-to-play model only produces about 2%-10% of active paying users, leaving approximately 90% un-monetized in this channel. MegaFans solved for that using a unique model, combining existing best practices from other areas of the eGaming industry.
MegaFans has been developing and testing their novel approach to the eSports industry since 2017 and currently owns 15 game titles, offering tournaments and events available to the 2.5 billion daily active users playing mobile games around the world. "Anyone, anywhere, anytime can play to win," stated Jeffrey Donnelley, founder and CEO. "Our platform offers free to play and pay to play games with the capability to target and cater to them by geographic, demographic and psycho-graphic behavior – It's a powerful approach that is appropriate from a business perspective, for this [mobile eSports] niche."
MegaFans Inc. is a mobile eSports gaming platform company that created a fully integrated, turnkey software solution for mobile games, enabling them to offer competitive eSports tournaments to their audiences, which increases retention and monetization through a richer, more inclusive experience for 2.5 billion gamers globally.
Media Contact:
Jeffrey Donnelley
+1 (760) 889-3187
[email protected]
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-term solution for Ebola, including rollout of the STRIVE (Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine against Ebola) trial Strengthening surveillance and response capacities in surrounding, at-risk countries, and working with international partners to establish exit and entry risk assessment procedures at borders
In the United States Reducing the likelihood of spread of Ebola through travel, including working with federal and state health officials to establish entry risk assessment procedures Establishing entry screening and monitoring of all travelers entering the U.S. from Ebola-affected areas Assisting state health departments in responding to domestic Ebola concerns Establishing trained and ready hospitals in the United States capable of safely caring for possible Ebola patients Forming CDC Rapid Ebola Preparedness (REP) response teams that could provide assistance within 24 hours to a health care facility managing a patient with Ebola. Identifying and distributing to state and local public health laboratories a laboratory assay that could reliably detect infection with the Ebola virus strain circulating in West Africa, and working with the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories to rapidly introduce and validate the assay in public health laboratories across the United States
At CDC Modeling, in real time, predictions for the course of the epidemic that helped galvanize international support and generated estimates on various topics related to the response in West Africa and the risk for importation of cases into the United States Providing logistics support for the most ambitious CDC deployment in history Supporting laboratory needs at CDC’s Atlanta headquarters and transferring CDC laboratory expertise to the field Creating risk communication materials designed to help change behavior, decrease rates of transmission, and confront stigma, in West Africa and the United States
“This outbreak highlighted how much more we have to learn about Ebola, and it demonstrated that all countries are connected. An outbreak in one country is not just a national emergency, but a global one. This supplement’s detailed review of the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic and CDC’s response, with many partners, shows the importance of preparedness. It is vital that countries are ready to quickly detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, and the international community is committed to increasing that readiness through the Global Health Security Agenda,” Dr. Frieden said. “Through our newly established country offices in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, CDC will continue to help West Africa prevent an outbreak of this magnitude from happening again.”
The full MMWR Supplement on the response to the 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease epidemic and related information on the individual chapters available at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/ind2016_su.html.
###
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICESexternal icon
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The enterprise is one area where Google is committing vast resources in order to gain a foothold in the lucrative market occupied by Amazon and Microsoft. Google Cloud’s latest efforts to attract customers are centered around security with 20 feature announcements today.
Google Cloud Platform
Back in 2016, Alphabet’s Jigsaw incubator expanded its Project Shield DDoS protection service to any news site. Google Cloud is now announcing Cloud Armor to provide similar protections for cloud applications. This service is built off the same technology and global infrastructure that protects Search, Gmail, and YouTube from similar attacks.
In January, G Suite added a new security center with a unified dashboard, analytics, and recommendations. Today, Google is adding a similar tool to manage the risks associated with storing data in the cloud. The Cloud Security Command Center includes the ability to “view and monitor an inventory of your cloud assets, scan storage systems for sensitive data, detect common web vulnerabilities and review access rights to your critical resources.”
This dashboard covers various Google Cloud Platform services like App Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Datastore. It can integrate with third-party security tools, as well as Google’s, to find cross-site-scripting, Flash injection, and other vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile, to help allay fears of Google accessing customer data, Cloud is adding an audit log of “authorized administrative accesses by Google Support and Engineering, as well as justifications for those accesses” called Access Transparency.
On the business front, Google Cloud has received U.S. certification so that federal, state, and location governments can use it services. This FedRAMP Rev. 4 Provisional Authorization to Operate rating applies to Google’s entire infrastructure, so that the company did not have to set aside an isolated data center or government-specific cloud.
G Suite
For consumers, G Suite is adding advanced anti-phishing capabilities based on machine learning models that can quickly identify attacks. New default-on protections include flagging emails from untrusted senders that attach suspicious attachments, warning against email spoofing, and the ability to scan images and expand shortened URLs for malicious indicators and links.
The security center is adding new charts, health analysis, and the ability to organize the dashboard.
Meanwhile, Team Drives for large organization can better protect highly sensitive content through new controls like limiting file access privileges and Information Rights Management (IRM) to “prevent users from printing, downloading and copying files.”
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:
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By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief
The Chairman of Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), Man Hee Lee, a Korean War veteran, has advocated peace education among youths across the globe.
He made the call at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for ‘Peace Culture City Project’ created to develop a culture of peace through cultural exchanges and peace education, in Romania, according to a statement by Jackie Kim, of the organisation’s Public relations Department.
The United Nations Economic and Social Council UN ECOSOC-affiliated global peace organizatio is said has been campaigning for peace culture and cessation of wars, worldwide.
As for the role of individuals in working for peace, “Let us leave peace and better culture for future generations as a higher state of culture through exchange of culture of peace,” he added.
Chairman Lee stressed that the world could experience a faster pace of development of all people, irrespective of race and faith if we all work for peace.
“All mankind desires peace, nobody wants war. So, if we become one, we will be able to achieve peace. HWPL exists for youth. I hope all will youths will join in peace activities of the IPYG and leave peace as a legacy for our future generations,” he added.
“We have all shared our experience during a period of huge political, economic, culture, and scientific, technological transformation. We hope that this working experience will contribute to your future in the next period of big transformation ahead of you,” said Hon. Emil Constantinescu, the former president of Romania.
“Tîrgu Mureş City is a multicultural and historic city. HWPL is working to raise awareness of the world in culture, civilization, and history through continuous and constructive peace education and cultural exchange. Through this MOU, we hope that Tîrgu Mureş City and HWPL will be able to make each other’s culture more beautiful through “A Culture of Peace – the City project,” said Mayor Dorin Florea.
In a related development, Lee urged European leaders to work towards a sustainable peace in the Korean Peninsula and the global community.
His words, “More than anything else, a peaceful world without war would be the greatest legacy to hand down to our children. If a single country achieves peace, it does not mean the world has become peaceful. Peace has to be realized in the entire world. If each person walks in the path towards peace, peace will be accomplished in the global community.”
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the end, we’re looking for a strong visual, creative and mechanical identity for each of our heroes. We want them to feel different from one other, and be memorable enough to stand out in a crowd.’
Regarding unique characters, Darkest Dungeon has them in spades. While ‘normal’ RPGs tend toward the standard knight, rogue, healer, mage combo, Darkest Dungeon sports Heroes such as the Leper, the Abomination, and the Grave Robber. Over time, you’ll come to love your twisted little party as bad roll after bad roll inflicts them with disease and crippling mental trauma – until, eventually, they are too great a liability to keep around, good for nothing more than suicidal supply runs.
It’s refreshing when a game offers a thematic style of play that is – wait for it – a natural result of the game’s systems. You aren’t told to treat new or useless characters like disposable drones to fuel your main party’s later expeditions, but as you learn of Darkest Dungeon’s cruel, merciless nature, you become cruel and merciless.
Despite this, a lot of people complain about games that are ‘too difficult’ – Darkest Dungeon, in particular, has received some flak for its random nature, but that’s the point. The game isn’t about constructing an unbeatable team that can crush dungeons with ease, but just barely sustaining yourself against tides of bad luck and character deaths. I think there’s a lot to be said about generic assumptions stopping people from enjoying great games, but instead, I’ll let Chris explain why Darkest Dungeon needs to be punishing.
‘It feels good to succeed when the odds are stacked against you! From the outset, Darkest Dungeon has always been about subverting the power fantasy that exists in many RPGs. When the game itself is the player’s chief antagonist, beating it can feel incredible. The lower the lows, the higher the highs – and the more memorable the experience!’
I finished by asking Chris for any hints about the future. What is Red Hook doing now? Is a Darkest Dungeon 2 on the horizon?
‘We’ve just shipped a smaller DLC – “The Shieldbreaker” – which introduces a new hero to the roster. Most of our team is now focused on a new, somewhat larger DLC, while a couple of us have started to break ground on our next game. No details to share just yet, but it’s an exciting time at Red Hook!’
Darkest Dungeon is available on Steam, PS4, PS Vita, and the Nintendo Switch.
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Barcelona puts women's team in economy while men fly up front Published duration 26 July 2018
image copyright Barcelona FC image caption A photo from the plane showed both teams together in business class - before the women returned to economy
The first mixed-sex tour in Barcelona football club's history has run afoul of women's team fans - after it emerged only the men flew in business class.
The club posted glossy promotional video of the men's and women's teams boarding their US-bound plane together.
But on board, after a photo op, the women were nowhere to be seen in the rest of the video.
Photos posted to the female players' Instagram accounts, however, showed their team flying in economy.
The division was spotted by eagle-eyed supporters of the women's team, who asked why the men - some of whom were from the "B team" as top-rated players were resting after the World Cup - got preferential treatment.
One fan-run account which tweeted extensively about the topic, @BarcaWomen, suggested that if there were not enough seats, the most senior players from both teams should have been allocated business class seating.
But the female players themselves came out in defence of their club.
Alexia Putellas told Spanish news outlet Mundo Deportivo that the women's team had been added to the tour at a later date - and that the club had "to organise everything practically at the last minute".
Barcelona said there simply were not enough business class seats on the plane once the women's team joined the tour - and that it had allocated two to three seats each for every female player in economy class for their comfort.
The incident is a potential embarrassment for the football club, which has been promoting its dedication to women's football and this historic joint tour.
Ahead of the first game of the US tour, the two teams trained together at facilities in Portland, sharing "space and prominence", as Barcelona put it.
"It's something that reaffirms Barca's commitment to women's football," Putellas told Mundo Deportivo.
"Barca is a great club and the tours are also great, travelling with the first team and being at the same facilities is synonymous with a good level."
The teams are on their US tour in Portland from 24 to 26 July, before moving on to Los Angeles between 27 and 29 July.
El Mundo reports that Barcelona has made sure there are enough first-class seats for all the players of both sexes on that flight.
The men's team are set to play Tottenham in the International Champion's Cup, while the women compete against SoCal FC in the Women's Premier Soccer League.
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Ben Gittany, the man who vandalised the beloved George Michael mural in Sydney’s inner-west during the postal survey, was convicted of malicious damage on Friday.
The mural, nicknamed ‘Saint George’, was painted by artist Scott Marsh in January last year and became a lightning rod on the ‘Christian Lives Matter’ Facebook page during the postal survey last year, Gay Star News reported.
Acting on the belief that the image of George Michael as a saint was disrespecting his religion, Gittany was filmed covering the mural in black paint in November just days after the postal survey results were announced.
A petition supporting Gittany’s actions circulated at the time, garnering over 34,000 signatures.
Magistrate Carolyn Huntsman dismissed Gittany’s religious beliefs as grounds for his actions, however, and found him guilty of malicious damage.
“We live in a pluralist society,” Huntsman told the court. “Art is a tangible thing.”
Australian icon Pauline Pantsdown – aka Simon Hunt – was present at the court on Friday, and tweeted out his gratitude over the ruling.
“A big day in Newtown Court today with the magistrate acknowledging a pluralistic society; acknowledging queer community & art; & making it clear that “religious beliefs” are no excuse for smashing shit up,” he said.
Residents in the area have reportedly received death threats since the vandalism.
“This mural was never about attacking religion – it was about honoring our friend and community icon,” one resident said.
“The mural framed him as a saint because he is a saint for us.”
A day after the ruling, Pantsdown noted that the Facebook group that helped inspire Gittany to damage the mural has not reacted well to the outcome of the case.
Multiple death threats by members of extremist anti-gay group “Christian Lives Matter” against magistrate who convicted who convicted Ben Gittany yesterday for malicious damage to Newtown’s St #GeorgeMichael mural. A small sample here, all are being passed to NSW police. pic.twitter.com/t9yoe8XdW4 — Pauline Pantsdown (@PPantsdown) July 28, 2018
The crew of queers who showed up to court in t-shirts bearing an image of the mural retired to The Courthouse Hotel for a beer following the ruling.
The George Michael mural was also vandalised during the postal survey period, with residents finding it pelted with eggs and vandalised with graffiti in October.
Gittany is due to be sentenced in September.
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Amina Al Filali was raped and then court-ordered to marry the man responsible for the crime. Five months later, she committed suicide by ingesting rat poison to avoid a life with her rapist who also repeatedly beat her. The 16-year-old's death has inspired a petition that has reached nearly 500,000 signatures to change Morocco's constitution and protests have erupted in the capital in support.
Since 2004, the government has promised to change the law and focus on violence against women, and an update to the country's Family Code included raising the marriage age from 15 to 18 and making it illegal for minors to be forced into marriage. However, old loopholes exist, and Article 475 is one of them.
"We thought the new Family Code would unite us, that it would give us back our rights and protect us, but no one is there to encourage it or implement it," says a young woman in a student-produced video on the rights of women in Morocco.
According to AJStream, "Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code in French says that the 'kidnapper'—a term that can refer to an attacker or rapist—of a minor cannot be prosecuted if he marries his victim. The Arabic version refers to the one who “kidnaps or deceives’’ a minor. In both the French and Arabic wording, the Article justifies the minor’s marriage and the 'kidnapper's acquittal."
On Saturday, hundreds of women and women's rights activists marched in Rabat in support of changing the penal code and staged a sit-in at the parliament. President of the Democratic League for Women's Rights (LDDF) Fouzia Assouli told the BBC, "In Morocco, the law protects public morality but not the individual."
Twitter and Facebook have also played a large role in the movement to support Amina and condemn the system that made her situation totally legal. A Facebook group has been set up, and the hashtag #RIPAmina is flowing at about 20 tweets a minute, with tweets in French, Arabic and English merging together.
Like many conservative Islamist countries in North Africa, Moroccan society dictates that a rape victim's shame falls on her and her family. Dishonor is a serious offense for an unmarried virgin, and marrying a rapist eases the cultural problems brought on the family. But this is also something young women are aiming to change in their country.
Moroccan communications minister Mustapha el-Khalfi told Al Jazeera, "We can't ignore what happened, one of the things we are looking for is to toughen the sentence for rape. We are also looking to creating a debate on the cultural and social aspects to create a comprehensive reform."
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Video by Jessica Leibowitz/Gothamist
The first thing you need to know about Samson is that Samson isn't fat. Samson is a naturally large cat with a lot of fur and a lot of length (he's four feet long!). The purebred Maine coon is four years old and weighs around 28 pounds, according to his owner Jonathan Zurbel, who claims he is the "largest cat in the city." (Do you have a larger cat? Email us!)
Zurbel says he adopted the cat from his brother, and the two now live in Williamsburg, where we recently visited them. Samson (whose Instagram handle is @catstradamus) has spent the last week or two getting frequent visits from the press, which is a-okay with his owner, who earlier this week posted the following on his own Instagram page:
"Finally my cat went viral! It took a lot of work because the pet scene on IG is very competitive, everyone thinks they have the cutest pet. All the cat blogs were ignoring me until the story broke, then everyone got onboard. It's important to always stay the course when you are pushing something on the Internet. It takes time, hard work and consistency with some clever strategies."
Oh dear. Samson is in good hands, however, and his human loves him very much. While we were scheduling a time to meet him, both his vet (whom he gets frequent checks from) and Zurbel were careful to make sure they weren't stressing the cat out, and had us come to his home instead of sending Samson out for a shoot.
Samson is also well-fed, getting six cans of wet food a day, and dry food on top of that! In the two-and-a-half years since Zurbel has had him, Samson has gained over 10 pounds, and he's probably going to grow a little more (Maine coons grow until age five).
Currently Zurbel is hoping to put together a calendar that features Samson being held by different models.
#CatTips : Humans make great pillows A photo posted by SAMSON AKA CATSTRADAMUS (@catstradamus) on Aug 13, 2016 at 9:27pm PDT
And here's Samson with his vet at Off The Leash:
@offleashvet tryna hold me, I'm a lotta cat #more2love A photo posted by SAMSON AKA CATSTRADAMUS (@catstradamus) on Aug 18, 2016 at 12:22pm PDT
N.B.: While this doesn't appear to be the case with Samson, please don't adopt animals for the sake of virality.
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the best for the people I represent and serve—compromise on something short of that. That’s where I want to get to, and it’s important that people know where I want to get to: a single-payer system that delivers much better health care for all Texans and does so at a much lower cost. Some people have used the fact that it’s unlikely we will get there in this current administration as a reason for not saying where they want to get to, but if that were the case then I shouldn’t say that I want to get to comprehensive immigration reform or any number of things. I think its important for people to know where we want to get to. But if we can’t get there now—and I’m not giving up on us getting there, but if we can’t get there now—I am very open to the compromises that may be necessary to get something better than what we have. If there was some way that we could expand Medicaid in Texas, for example; we were one of the states that chose not to. I’d be a fool not to look at that, and it would be fine with me if that were an idea from President Trump himself, or from Governor Abbott. If it’s gonna help more Texans than the Affordable Care Act and drive down costs and improve outcomes, absolutely, I’m gonna take a look at it.
(O’Rourke has not co-sponsored Michigan Rep. John Conyers’ Medicare-for-all bill in the House, nor has he endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer proposal in the Senate, but he reiterated to the Texas Observer in September that he was supportive of the idea and in the process of writing his own bill.)
On how often he’s talked with Cruz:
Two conversations. One conversation in a group setting around the government shutdown—this was in 2013—and then from that I asked if I could follow up and meet with him and talk with him about some concerns I had. That’s been the extent of it. Now, that’s me personally; our office may have reached out to his office on things—Hey, would you want to sponsor this, or, Here’s an issue that we’re concerned with. I’ve had, frankly, a much more productive relationship with [Texas’s other Republican senator] John Cornyn, with whom I’ve introduced legislation, whom I have called when I’ve got a concern about, you know, the Muslim ban or the wall or US–Mexico relations in general.
This interview has been edited in parts and condensed for clarity.
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launch. However, it does already have an Expansion Pass on sale for $20. That pass comes with a Deadpool costume that’s available at launch, as well as three upcoming DLC packs that (allegedly) won’t be sold separately. The first will arrive in Fall 2019, the second some later time in 2019, and the third in 2020; according to the official description they will include new “playable characters, modes, and additional story” from the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Marvel Knights. Additional free DLC characters like Cyclops and Colossus are also planned. Loading The first DLC pack will focus on Marvel Knights and add Blade, Moon Knight, Punisher, and Morbius as playable characters. While we don’t really know any other specifics, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3’s structure is set up in the form of chapters that each revolve around a specific hero group or area, with characters tied to that setting unlocking as you progress. Adding something like a new Fantastic Four-themed chapter where you unlock that team (potentially alongside some more Trials) could be a nice way to refresh what I liked so much about the base campaign. It has promise, but we’ll of course have to see what those DLC packs actually entail before we can determine if they are worth it.
Those rewards are usually Ability Orbs used to rank up moves, XP Cubes to level up characters, or alternate outfits - though the outfits are a massive missed opportunity as they are slow to unlock and have so far been limited to a single, uninspired recolor for each hero’s default costume, like taking the red stripes of of Captain America’s suit. You can even unlock a few extra playable characters here like Elektra, which I imagine is to keep things fresh in the post-game – you won’t unlock new ones anymore just by playing through the campaign again, even on Superior difficulty.
The massive skill tree and extensive amount of number-crunching upgrades available feel like they were designed for all these post-game tasks. There is fun to be had in trying to craft that perfect team build as you take on the hardest content Ultimate Alliance 3 has to offer - I enjoyed doing a bit of that myself for some of the tougher bosses and trickier Trials - it’s just hard to see the results of that work, especially on your first playthrough. Instead, the spice is found in the variety between heroes, not how those heroes change… because they don’t, they just get bigger numbers. And while I’m certainly still interested in diving back into some of those harder challenges, I don’t exactly know how long “harder” alone will keep me hooked.
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balance just right. “He spends time with mechanics,” he says. “But it’s how you communicate. It’s not necessary to say OK, we go now every evening for a lunch or dinner. Coming in every morning, greeting the mechanics, saying thank you after the race - he knows how to deal with this.”
Ferrari is a dream for many drivers, but few successfully deal with the pressure of such an opportunity. Vettel is not one of them. In fact, Horner reckons it has only enhanced him. “He’s a much more rounded driver. He was still very young when he won those four world championships. Having a few character building years at Ferrari have made him more rounded. He’s very good under pressure. He’s very much a rock within that team. If he gets a sniff of a chance after the summer break, he’ll be very difficult to beat.” Vettel’s weakness is his tendency to let the red mist to descend when on track. There was the outburst directed at FIA F1 Race Director Charlie Whiting during the 2016 Mexican Grand Prix. Then there was his clash with Hamilton when behind the Safety Car in Baku last year. On other occasions, he’s made mistakes such as the attempted pass on Bottas at the restart in Baku this year, which cost him the win. Theissen admits there have been “probably more mistakes than expected at this stage of his career” but he says that is because of the “intensity of the fight”. Tost, meanwhile, believes all champions have this trait. “You must drive on the limit, sometimes maybe a bit over the limit, otherwise he would not have achieved his success,” he says. “Every sport is the same. If you want to achieve something great, if you want to climb to the top of the mountain, you have to risk something. Sometimes it doesn’t work, other times it will work. Remember how many crashes Michael [Schumacher] had? Remember back [Ayrton] Senna, how many crashes he had. Also Hamilton crashed sometimes. This is what makes the difference between the top drivers and other drivers.” And Vettel is pretty happy with the way he goes racing. "Your approach has to change on the fly so clearly you know what you have to do after so many years and so many races, but still every race and every day is different so you have to react on the fly and trust your preparation but also trust your instincts," he says. "Sometimes you’re right and sometimes you’re not. That is what happens in life."
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When the cool kids talk about interesting log data, no one seems to want to talk about nginx. Web servers are the workhorses of the internet, reliable and battle-hardened, but the logs are standard and never have anything of the interesting application metadata anyway.
But wait! Web logs are also often one of the easiest, broadest sources of data for systems at a high level—and are killer for answering questions like “Oops—I forgot to instrument my new feature, how much is its corresponding endpoint actually being hit?” or “Uh… how many req/sec is this service serving, really?”
There’s an almost infinite number of possible customizations given enough time and patience, but here are a couple quick wins we’ve found particularly essential:
Request time (docs): Did you know that nginx can calculate start-to-finish times per request, right out of the box? Don’t leave the house without this one, folks: just add $request_time anywhere in your log_format directive.
(docs): Did you know that nginx can calculate start-to-finish times per request, right out of the box? Don’t leave the house without this one, folks: just add anywhere in your directive. Upstream response headers (docs): Tuck useful metadata from your application into your HTTP response headers, and tell nginx to pull X-Whatever-You-Want out into your logs.
Voilà! User IDs, database timers, and server metadata—right alongside high-level, granular data surrounding each request.
Let’s take a look at what that can tell us about a service:
With just request_time and a header value generalizing the shape of the endpoint path (e.g. /products/foobarbaz → /products/:prod ), we can see—incredibly quickly—which endpoints (not specific URLs!) are the slowest, or the most numerous, or causing the most load on my server.
Guess what else we can do with nginx?
Oops! you’ll have to wait for the next installment.
The sky’s the limit when it comes to slicing this birds’-eye view of your web traffic by arbitrary app metadata: ID the users seeing the most 404s, or graph load by availability zone, hostname, or database cluster! Read more about working with response headers here or sign up to give it a whirl today 🙂
Note: we talk about upstream response headers as a way to get normalized endpoint shapes, but our nginx connector can do that for you, too!
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sung in rhythm by a military father who performatively spoke a language of shining Black masculinity with his body. Performance-composition as a cultural rhetorical practice affords me the opportunity to interrogate prevailing epistemologies, canons, and linear rhetorical traditions that are used to sanction curriculums and shape education policies and political agendas.
Andre Jones:
When a brother hears performance-rhetoric immediately a brother thinks of how “stiff” White people sometimes be (the emphasis on mimicking it) and thinks about the “cool pose” associated with young Black men (the emphasis on avoiding it). Both reflect cool, calm, and collectedness when faced with adversity, but they ain’t tantamount: the cool pose marks terrorism, indifference, anti-intellectualism. In pop culture, the cool pose is unsophistication rather than a serious, very real way of existing for Black people; one that if harnessed, respected, demonstrated more, could usher in a new era of re/presenting. Think of Obama’s dusting dirt off his shoulder—POTUS performing collectedness a la Jay-Z..
David F. Green Jr.:
Performance is never merely a set of rehearsed acts, but a way of achieving competence through repetition and embodied action. I find this to be true with regards to the study of writing and rhetoric specifically; thus, whether we openly acknowledge this or not, written or oratorical performances are always attempts to refashion or remix sedimented assumptions about identity and language competence provided by the communities we are born into or step into. Moreover, the decisions we make to demonstrate our respective competencies to those same communities are in many ways shaped by what we come to believe about rhetoric either explicitly or intuitively. From a pedagogical perspective this understanding of rhetoric and performance becomes a valuable way of acknowledging that texts, experiences, and writing are always given meaning according to time, place, and context, and that this requires an attentiveness to the way developing writers come to view and produce meaning through shared performances, by those who value the progressive possibilities of rhetoric and writing instruction.
Douglas S. Kern:
Performance rhetoric is an encounter of action or inaction—the way one might perform their silence, arms crossed, to elicit discomfort or embody resistance. It’s pursuit vs. obstacle. We employ performance rhetoric to achieve whatever ends we seek. When you’re talking to your mother, don’t ya act a certain way? The waiter down the street, don’t he act a certain way when he’s bringing you your food? The performative act gives birth to or fosters the essential discourses which pop up all around us (both academic and beyond).
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In addition to presenting, the AirSwap team will be hosting a dinner and meeting with CES attendees from around the world. If you’re attending, please reach out to us to find time to meet in person.
Join us for the AirSwap AMA
The AirSwap AMA begins Today at 10am EST through 2pm EST. The entire AirSwap team invites you to ask about our team, products, plans, and the market making elements of our AirSwap platform. Specifically, our most recent blogpost discusses in detail the various reasons a market maker would choose to trade on decentralized global marketplace over centralized exchanges and why makers, retail and institutional traders will find trading on AirSwap favorable over other DEXs. Join the discussion on Reddit.
Operations
AirSwap is a company registered in Hong Kong and we plan to begin our operations there in early 2018. We are building teams in both Hong Kong and Brooklyn, giving us the ability to build both a strong presence throughout Asia and maintain a local connection to the crypto and financial communities in New York.
We held our first set of meetings to iron out a preliminary budget for 2018. Once these conversations are finalized, we will be able to publish more widely with the community.
On another side of the world, AirSwap joint venture partner, ConsenSys, launched a new office in London last month. We’ll be working with this office for various enterprise engagements. You can read more about the launch.
Events
Don presenting the roadmap for the next 6 months at the Ethereum Meet Up in LA on November 7th:
Link at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas:
Nissa in London at the ConsenSys office launch:
Oved and Novo at the Galaxy offices in Soho in NYC:
Upcoming Events and Travel
We will be leading a Webinar for institutional investors hosted by Cornerstone Capital on Monday December 11 at 2pm EST, you can join by signing up here to secure your spot.
We will be in Hong Kong December 11 to 13 and in Singapore 14 to 15, and hosting the Ethereum meetup in Singapore on December 14 at PayPal Innovation Labs.
Team
We have added five incredible new members to the team since our token launch on October 10, 2017 and will share details about our new members in early 2018.
We are actively recruiting bright minds who are passionate about the power of decentralization to join our team. You are invited to view open positions here. If you don’t see a role that fits your skills, but think you would be a great fit with AirSwap, please email us at [email protected].
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The past year has seen a big jump in artificial approaches to learning. For instance, the Cornell led Tell Me Dave project use human volunteers to ‘train’ the machine using a game interface.
A team from Georgia Tech, by contrast, used a traditional expert systems style approach to train IBM’s Watson to get better at answering specific queries.
Researchers at Maryland University meanwhile trained their robots by showing them YouTube videos of humans performing certain tasks that the machines were subsequently able to pick up.
Meanwhile a team from the University of New York are looking to explore how humans learn, and whether the approach can be utilized when building learning robots.
Raising expectations
Whilst these developments are undoubtedly impressive, there is a sense that they represent some of the low hanging fruit in the pursuit of artificial intelligence.
After all, many tasks simply require large databases and detailed rules to make sense of that data. Understanding and interpreting things like stories is much more complex.
A recent project led by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany aims to construct a database that is capable of making sense of stories.
It does this by being able to successfully answer questions posed it about the story.
An understanding of narrative
To achieve this, the team are trawling through Wikipedia to create plot synopses of around 300 movies. These synopses are then linked with the movies themselves, each and every frame of them.
Of course, this information provides a degree of descriptive information, but doesn’t do so well at providing a contextual perspective of why something happened.
They attempted to fill in this gap by trawling databases such as the described video text supplied to blind people that aims to give ‘viewers’ this context.
Last, but not least, a team of human annotators read over these synopses and formulated questions about the paragraphs they read, together with an answer to that question, and the piece of text that helped them to answer it.
This database of 7,000 questions was then used to train the algorithms. Suffice to say, the questions are all ones that a human would find pretty easy to answer (providing they’ve seen the film!), but for a robot, they remain a challenge.
The first iterations are a pretty resounding failure, but the team hope that over time the machine will become smarter at reading the stories, and their subtexts.
It will also provide the industry with a good insight into how large the training database needs to be for a relatively challenging task such as this.
The database they’re working on will be available for free online, so check it out and see what you think.
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Rory MacDonald threw a bucket of cold water on Bellator’s welterweight title fight Saturday night, just seconds after it happened.
The top 170-pound fighter, who should be in line for a title fight next, slammed the performances of Douglas Lima and Lorenz Larkin at Bellator NYC at Madison Square Garden. Lima ended up winning a unanimous decision against the very tough UFC veteran. But MacDonald wanted to see more.
“I was really underwhelmed,” MacDonald said on the broadcast. “I was expecting a good fight. I had a lot of excitement going into this fight. Larkin is an excellent fighter. If these guys think they’re keeping a belt fighting like that against me, it’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna take these guys out. They’re just gonna be another body in the grave.”
After the win, Lima told MacDonald to “come get it” and said that MacDonald has been in tough fights in the past, but won’t know a real tough fight until he steps in the cage with him.
“The Red King” is likely to get that shot against Lima, one of Bellator’s best fighters historically, sometime in the fall. MacDonald, 27, won his Bellator debut against Paul Daley by second-round submission in May. The Canadian owns wins over current UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley, as well as Nate Diaz, BJ Penn and Demian Maia.
Speaking to Mike Goldberg and Josh Thomson on the desk, MacDonald explained that he’s done fighting cautiously and wants to let his true ability come out.
“This is the next chapter in my career,” MacDonald said. “I’m not playing games anymore. i’m coming forward, I’m doing my style now. I’m not playing games. I’m not point fighting anymore. I’m there to take you out. I’m hunting you down, and I’m gonna bury you and that’s it.”
MacDonald (19-4) came close to beating Robbie Lawler at UFC 189 in 2015, a fight that many believe is one of the best in UFC history. MacDonald lost his next bout to Stephen Thompson and then departed the UFC as a free agent for Bellator.
Now, he is angling for that promotion’s welterweight title. And he believes it could be around his waist soon if Lima fights the way he did Saturday night.
“That was not up to par, that’s for sure,” MacDonald said.
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REDDING, Calif. — A rare fire tornado that raged during this summer’s deadly Carr Fire in Northern California was created by a combination of scorching weather, erratic winds and an ice-topped cloud that towered miles into the atmosphere, according to a study announced Wednesday.
The churning funnel of smoke and flame killed a firefighter as it exploded in what already was a vast and devastating wildfire in July on the edge of Redding, about 250 miles north of San Francisco.
The wildfire claimed eight lives and destroyed more than 1,000 homes before it was contained on Aug. 30.
The study in the Geophysical Research Letters journal used satellite and radar data to suggest how a monstrous “firenado” the size of three football fields developed on July 26.
It said the firenado was formed in much the same way as a regular tornado, which differs from the “fire whirls” that are formed only by heat from a wildfire.
The only other documented case of such a “firenado” was during the 2003 Canberra fires in Australia, according to the study.
A key factor was the development of a cloud generated by the fire itself that was ice-topped and grew quickly, doubling in length in just 15 minutes. It reached as high as 39,000 feet, according to the study, which was published on Nov. 21.
The development of that pyrocumulonimbus cloud “helped stretch the underlying column of air, concentrating the rotation near the surface” and causing tornado-strength winds that reached 143 mph, according to the study.
“This paints a clear picture of the sequence of events leading to the vortex development and intensification,” said Neil Lareau of the University of Nevada, Reno, who co-authored the paper.
Other factors included record high temperatures, low humidity and a “near-surface cyclonic wind shear zone,” according to the study. A wind shear occurs when the wind speed or direction suddenly changes, so that the wind actually is blowing in two opposite directions.
The wind shear near the ground set up the spin that developed the fire tornado plume, Lareau said.
“These observations may help forecasters and scientists identify – and potentially warn – for future destructive fire-generated vortices,” according to the study.
Lareau is an assistant professor in the Physics Department of the College of Science. The article was co-authored by Nicholas Nausler of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, and John Abatzoglou from the Department of Geography at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.
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Today, Wikileaks published a database of all of the data leaked from Sony Pictures in last year's hack, comprising 173,132 emails and 30,287 separate documents. The documents contain private legal opinions as well as sensitive conversations between executives, many of which were the subject of reports in the wake of the hack. "This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a statement. "It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there."
"This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation."
The data in question had already been obtained by a number of journalists, but it was not widely available to the public and technical issues made it unwieldy for casual searches. The data was initially released through torrent files, but the release was intermittent and the torrents have long since dropped off the web. The emails also arrived as server-side Outlook files, requiring significant unpacking before they could be browsed. Wikileaks' new database does away with many of those problems, with easy search of both documents and emails.
It also raises many of the same ethical questions that publications grappled with surrounding the leaks. Sony Pictures executive Amy Pascal was fired in the wake of the leaks, due in large part to a published argument with Scott Rudin over Aaron Sorkin's upcoming Steve Jobs film. At the same time, many of the emails brought important news stories to light, including the MPAA's ongoing campaign against Google, a campaign the group referred to as "Project Goliath." The emails relating to Goliath have never been published in their entirety, but they are now available to be viewed here. The data also revealed details of Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton's activities on the Snapchat board, including the company's brief interest in launching a music label.
At the same time, the motives behind the Sony Pictures hack have made many uncomfortable with the publication of the data. North Korea is widely believed to have been responsible for the attack, as retaliation for Sony Pictures' release of The Interview. President Obama called the attack an effort to "intimidate US businesses and artists exercising their right of freedom of speech" and placed sanctions on North Korea in the wake of the attack.
Sony Pictures has already condemned the new archive in a statement obtained by the LA Times. "The attackers used the dissemination of stolen information to try to harm SPE and its employees, and now WikiLeaks regrettably is assisting them in that effort," a spokesperson told the paper. "We vehemently disagree with WikiLeaks’ assertion that this material belongs in the public domain and will continue to fight for the safety, security, and privacy of our company and its more than 6,000 employees."
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We Are One Mind: Perspectives from Emerging Indigenous Leaders On the Arctic Policy Framework
Somba K’e, Denendeh (February 8, 2018) – Dene Nahjo is proud to release ‘We Are One Mind – Perspectives from Emerging Indigenous Leaders on the Arctic Policy Framework’, developed in partnership with Qanak in Nunavut and Our Voices in the Yukon.
We Are One Mind addresses a way forward for Canada’s Arctic Policy Framework by stating:
*Northern peoples and its communities need to be at the heart of any new framework;
*Social innovation, research and policy development must be led by northerners;
*Land, culture, arts and language are vital for healthy communities and economies;
*Indigenous self-determination is required for a mutually beneficial relationship between the North and South.
“This report is a reminder to governments and policy makers that the future and well-being of the North and its peoples require the involvement and leadership of Indigenous peoples,” said Deneze Nakehk’o, Dene Nahjo Founding Member. “Indigenous peoples have never ceded nor surrendered their nationhood to the Crown and we continue to be the guardians of our lands and communities.”
Dene Nahjo, Qanak and Our Voices are Indigenous leadership collectives in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. The three groups were generously supported by the Gordon Foundation to develop We Are One Mind.
“Dene Nahjo is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Indigenous people from the Yukon and Nunavut to develop policy recommendations that address our shared goals and interests,” said Mandee McDonald, Dene Nahjo Founding Member and Managing Director. “Though our cultures are diverse, and the challenges we face are unique, our aspirations for the north fundamentally align.”
We Are One Mind is not only a report but an example of how future Indigenous leadership can work together and with southern institutions.
We Are One Mind will be available on the Dene Nahjo blog at denenahjo.com/blog on 8 Thursday 2018, and Dene Nahjo will host a public event in Yellowknife, NT at the end of February to share the document.
– 30 –
Media Contacts:
Deneze Nakehk’o
Dene Nahjo Founding Member
C:867.446.3633
[email protected]
Mandee McDonald
Dene Nahjo Founding Member & Managing Director
C: 867.444.3363
[email protected]
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Two new studies show that current groundwater use has reached unsustainable levels, a “tipping point’ that threatens to undermine regional water security.
The new studies, published in Water Resource Research, indicate that upwards of 35% of the world’s 37 largest aquifers are in a state of “significant distress,” and are being depleted by human activity quicker than they can be naturally recharged. Scientists aren’t entirely sure how much groundwater remains within these basins, which means a sizable portion of our planet’s inhabitants are consuming this finite resource without a clear sense as to when it might run out.
Click to emiggen. A larger version of this map can be found here.
“What happens when a highly stressed aquifer is located in a region with socioeconomic or political tensions that can’t supplement declining water supplies fast enough?” asked UCI doctoral student Alexandra Richey in a NASA-JPL statement. “We’re trying to raise red flags now to pinpoint where active management today could protect future lives and livelihoods.”
Richey, who was the lead author on both studies, says that climate change and population growth will only exacerbate the problem. And as the current situation in California attests, the burden placed on groundwater during times of drought can be intense.
The first study, which took gravity measurements taken by NASA’s twin GRACE satellites, shows that eight of the big groundwater basins are “overstressed,” with no natural replenishment to offset usage. Five aquifers are classified as “extremely” or “highly” stressed owing to various rates of recharge.
Unsurprisingly, the driest regions in the world are home to the most overburdened aquifers. The three most stressed basins are the Arabian Aquifer System (a source of water to 60-million people), the Indus Basin aquifer of northwestern India and Pakistan, and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in North Africa. California’s Central Valley was designed as highly stressed.
In the second study, the researchers conclude that the amount of useable water left in these reservoirs is unknown.
“We don’t actually know how much is stored in each of these aquifers,” says Richey. “Estimates of remaining storage might vary from decades to millennia. In a water-scarce society, we can no longer tolerate this level of uncertainty, especially since groundwater is disappearing so rapidly.”
You can find the studies here and here, both of which were published in the science journal Water Resources Research.
[ NASA JPL ]
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expression in religion, patriotism, family, and community, and now, increasingly, find expression in identity politics and climate anxiety.
Is rational human rights advocacy compelling enough to channel such energy? If it were, America’s identitarians would turn their focus to the truly tyrannical regimes around the world.
Is rational environmentalism compelling enough on its own? If it were, children would be marching for clean fossil fuel and nuclear power, and Bjorn Lomborg, not Greta Thunberg, would be speaking to enraptured crowds.
In his earlier book, The Strange Death of Europe, Murray suggests that those forces still extant in Western societies that resist the derangement syndromes of our time—the secular and the religious—put aside their differences and unite to save their civilization. That’s an interesting idea not only because it might enable a critical mass of resistance to arise, but because it represents a new synthesis of Western culture that might help defuse the mutual resentment of Right and Left.
In the new book, Murray goes further, and discusses how the derangement syndromes of our time have “created a world in which forgiveness has become almost impossible.” In his conclusion, he proposes a series of solutions. Cynics may consider these mere bromides, but when it comes to repairing our polarized society, even bromides are in short supply these days. Murray’s ideas are worth repeating.
In response to the narrative of oppression, Murray’s first idea is to ask repeatedly “compared to what?” America’s flawed legacy nonetheless looks pretty good when compared to pretty much any other society, past or present, anywhere on earth. Murray resists the implicit wisdom of the Left, which always ascribes the moral high ground to the victim. There is simply no basis to assume the underdog is always morally superior.
Murray asks his readers to imagine what’s next if identity politics are pursued to their logical conclusion. This same thought experiment might apply to climate change policies. Imagine what it would be like to live in a nation where every Green New Deal fantasy became reality.
Finally, Murray urges us to depoliticize our lives. When politics saturates everything, including comedy, sports, fine art, music, and even cuisine, derangement syndromes are perpetually reinforced.
Nurturing a culture of forgiveness might not be enough by itself to melt away the derangement syndromes of our time. On the other hand, if forgiveness culture were truly to inform the tone of a durable new alliance between religious and secular conservatives, it might be irresistible. It could become the latest iteration of America’s unprecedented ability to assimilate.
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It's not as easy to tell now, thanks to minuscule build-ups of pollutants that are making the prototype kilogram heavier
Age: 217.
Appearance: It's not about what it looks like; it's about what it weighs.
And how much does it weigh? It weighs a kilogram.
And how much is that? A thousand grams.
And how much does a gram weigh? Originally, exactly as much as "a volume of water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre, at the temperature of melting ice".
I don't find that terribly helpful. Not many did. That's why, in 1889, the mass of the kilogram was redefined as being equal to the IPK.
Which is what, pray tell? The International Prototype Kilogram – a 39 millimetre-high, platinum-iridium alloy cylinder, stored in a vault at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres, France.
And it weighs a kilogram? It doesn't just weigh a kilogram; it is the kilogram – the standard against which all other kilogram weights are measured.
Sounds like a pretty straightforward system. There's only one problem – the kilogram is getting heavier.
Pardon? It is estimated that a build up of pollutants may have added tens of micrograms to the IPK over the years.
What are they measuring it against? A bag of rice? There are 40 official IPK replicas around the world, and they all appear to be gaining weight at different rates. The divergence, even at such small levels, could be a problem.
Is there a solution? Researchers at the University of Newcastle have tried exposing similar surfaces to UV radiation, removing carbonaceous contamination and theoretically returning the metal to its original weight.
Who cares? Whatever the IPK weighs, it's the kilogram. But so many other units of measurement depend on it. If the kilogram changes, so must the newton; if the newton changes, so must the joule. That's why there are plans to define the kilogram not by a prototype, but in terms of fundamental physical constants.
Do say: "Please can I have some apples equivalent to 84,446,8893 × 83⅓ atoms of carbon-12, give or take?"
Don't say: "What's that in pounds, mate? Don't make me do the maths."
• This article was amended on 7 January 2013. In the original, a superscript number failed to show up, meaning that the number in the penultimate paragraph was rather less than it should have been. This has been corrected.
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By taking advantage of unknown vulnerabilities, hackers could have hacked into people’s computers just by having them join a chat room in the popular virtual reality applications Steam VR and VRChat.
Security researchers Alex Radocea and Philip Pettersson found vulnerabilities in three different virtual reality platforms that would have allowed hackers to take over the target’s computer, as the researchers explained in a talk at the Recon hacking conference in Montreal last week. The vulnerabilities were in VRChat, the virtual home feature of Valve's Steam VR, and High Fidelity, an open-source platform for virtual reality.
The researchers said they reported the vulnerabilities to the VR developers, which fixed them. But these bugs show that VR developers have a lot of work to do to secure their users.
“When you get hacked in virtual reality you can definitely feel that yourself. The attacker has complete access to your senses,” Pettersson said in a phone call. “He can see through your eyes—the headsets have cameras. He can hear what you're saying—they have microphones. He can project images into your retina. He can modify this virtual world in any way he wants.”
Have a tip about a data breach or a security incident? You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at [email protected], or email [email protected]
Petterson and Radocea said that the VRChat and Steam VR vulnerabilities were particularly dangerous.
By embedding an exploit in a chat room, all a hacker had to do was invite people to it to take over their computers. At that point, the hacker could turn on their webcams, microphones, or manipulate what they see within their VR headset. Hackers could have even made this into a worm, a self-spreading VR malware that infected anyone who entered a chat room, and then invited all their friends to enter the malicious chat room—potentially reaching all VRChat or Steam VR users, just like the infamous MySpace worm did in 2005.
“[Hackers could] create a program that invites all of their friends into the room and once they get infected, it also invites all their contacts into the room,” Radocea said.
The researchers made a demo video showing how a hack like this would look like.
VRChat, Valve, and High Fidelity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Radocea and Petterson said their research serves as a warning to VR makers to step up their security game and make sure their platforms are not easily exploitable.
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Colic in infants may be early sign of migraine headache
Could colic — bouts of frequent, inconsolable crying during an infant's first months of life — be an early symptom of a migraine? A study out today is the latest to suggest that the two common pain conditions may be connected.
According to the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, children diagnosed with migraine headaches were more likely to have experienced colic as infants (72.6%) than those who did not have migraine (26.5%).
And the increased odds existed for the two major migraine subtypes, as well: migraines preceded or accompanied by an "aura" — sensory warning symptoms such as flashes of light or blind spots (69.7%) and migraine without aura (73.9%). This association was not found for children with tension-type headaches (35%).
Researchers analyzed health records and questionnaires completed by parents for 208 children ages 6 to 18 who were diagnosed as having migraines and compared them with information on 471 kids and teens who were not. A comparison group of 120 children diagnosed with tension headaches also was studied.
A study published last year found that mothers who suffer from migraines are more than twice as likely to have babies with colic than mothers without a history of migraines.
Often thought of as a disorder of adulthood, migraine is "one of the most common causes of primary headaches in children," according to the article, written by Silvia Romanello of the APHP-Hospital Robert Debré, Paris, and colleagues.
An accompanying editorial notes that the prevalence of migraine headache by age groups is 1% to 3% from ages 3 to 7; 4% to 11% from ages 7 to 11; and 8% to 23% from ages 11 to 15 years old. Colic occurs in about 16% to 20% of infants.
Much more than a headache, a migraine is a "brain condition that can produce a variety of neurological symptoms," ranging from nausea and vomiting to sensitivity to light, sound, touch and smell, to dizziness and extreme fatigue, says Andrew Charles, a professor of neurology and director of the Headache Research and Treatment Program at UCLA School of Medicine. He was not involved in the new study.
"We've assumed for some time that colic was a gastrointestinal phenomenon, but in fact, that may not necessarily be true," says Charles. "That's one of the things that may surprise people about this study. It points out the possibility that this may be more of a brain issue than a gut issue."
Brain chemicals that are also shared by the gastrointestinal tract may be involved, but the actual mechanism at work "remains quite a mystery," he says.
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CHIYODA, Japan — This morning, on the 73rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Emperor Akihito admitted in a public comment that the Japanese sneak attack that brought the United States into World War Two was “kind of a dick move.”
“We are taking the time to express Our regret for a wrong committed over 70 years ago,” the Emperor began. “This week, after seeing a news report about a Pearl Harbor veteran ceremony, We thought to ourself, ‘Man, that was kind of a dick move, We should probably make an expression that acknowledges that.'”
The emperor said he used the American slang to make his message more heartfelt and appealing to his US audience, according to a Japanese political analyst.
“Really, what the hell were we thinking? That was a really weird time for us,” Akihito added.
Akihito made the stunning remarks during a speech at the Yasukuni Shrine, a controversial Shinto site which commemorates the names of Japanese soldiers killed in service to the Empire. Among the names are those of war criminals hanged by international tribunal.
“We would also like to note that that this announcement has absolutely nothing to do with an upcoming $10 billion arms deal with the United States for new Aegis guided missile destroyers,” Akihito added at the end of his remarks.
The announcement stunned onlookers and infuriated governments across the region, especially China, whose people suffered some of the worst atrocities at the hands of the Japanese Empire during the war, including the infamous Rape of Nanking, where over 100,000 women were forced into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers and an estimated 300,000 citizens were killed.
Although Akihito apologized for the Nanking incident in 1995, he refused to issue a written statement. Many Japanese history books still refer to that conflict as the War of Western Aggression.
While US officials praised the announcement, many on social media have criticized the emperor for not going further and condemning his country’s role in the creation and distribution of Hello Kitty, Pokemon, tentacle porn, and ridiculous game shows.
“This is complete bullshit,” said Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping in an official statement after hearing about the incident. “If he keeps this shit up the People’s Republic of China will make the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like firecrackers. Hypothetically, of course.”
At press time analysts noted that throughout the entire speech Akihito didn’t ever actually use the words “sorry,” “apologize” or even “our bad,” for the 1941 attack.
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The automatic graphic switching capabilities in the new 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros are accomplished with a solution created entirely by Apple, and do not rely on Nvidia's established Optimus technology.
An Nvidia spokesperson confirmed to AppleInsider Tuesday that Apple's new high-end MacBook Pros include an automatic graphics switching solution that is the Mac maker's own creation. Nvidia had no input on Apple's solution and would not comment on the utilized technology.
Earlier this year, Nvidia introduced a new technology called Optimus, which is designed two work alongside Nehalem notebook designs — like the Core i5 and Core i7 — that include Intel's integrated graphics processor, as well as a discrete Nvidia graphics chip. The feature chooses the best of the two processors for running a given application. While the end result is similar, Apple's automatic graphics switching solution is not Optimus, Nvidia said.
This switching is accomplished on-the-fly with no input from users. Apple also offers users the option to switch solely to discrete graphics and turn off the automatic switching.
The top-tier MacBook Pros include the Nvidia GeForce 330M graphics processor, which is more than twice as fast as the low-end 320M found exclusively in the new 13-inch model. The 330M, however, is not an exclusive GPU, as it has been found in competing PCs that have already come to market.
Apple on Tuesday introduced its new line of MacBook Pros, with the 15- and 17-inch models sporting the proprietary graphics switching capabilities. The feature dynamically switches between the 330M for peak performance, and the integrated Intel HD Graphics for more energy efficient operation. Apple said the tightly integrated software and hardware solution allows battery life of 8 to 9 hours on the new MacBook Pros.
It was in October 2008 that Apple jettisoned Intel's supporting chipsets from its MacBook line, and opted instead for the better performance offered by Nvidia's GPUs. MacBook Pros received similar treatment, with the addition of a secondary, more powerful Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics processor for higher performance operations.
Apple had to rely on graphics switching capabilities in its new notebooks introduced Tuesday because the new Arrandale processors feature the major northbridge chipset memory controller components built in. The architectural changes through Arrandale and an ongoing lawsuit that has forced Nvidia to halt the development of future chipsets have required PC manufacturers like Apple to rely on proprietary Intel chipsets and their integrated graphics processors. Apple's automated switching solution provides use of both the Intel integrated graphics processing power, as well as Nvidia's 330M GPU.
Apple has touted that the 330M is the "fastest graphics ever" found in a Mac notebook. The high-end discrete graphics processor is available only in the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro models.
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Universally loathed EPA chief Scott Pruitt is a man who seems to appreciate the finer things in life. When he writes, he reaches for the finest pen that taxpayer dollars can buy, because his noble fingers would apparently never deign to touch a plebian ballpoint. When he travels, he mostly books first-class flights, since the guy can't be subjected to the terrors of less-than-ample leg room and angry citizens yelling about how he's wrecked the world.
And when his hands are chapped and dry, a quick squirt of Jergens just won't do. No—the only lotion good enough to moisturize the flesh of the well-known climate change denier is a certain fancy cream from the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, apparently.
According to the Washington Post, Pruitt has reportedly used his 24-hour security detail for a variety of personal errands, like taking him on a quest "in search of a favorite moisturizing lotion."
The quest reportedly involved ferrying him around town to various Ritz-Carlton hotels, hoping to track down the beloved lotion, which, spoiler alert, you can also find online. He also allegedly asked security team members on multiple occasions to get his dry cleaning from him. Picking up clothes and searching for fancy balms isn't exactly the standard role for Pruitt's exorbitant security staff, which cost nearly $3.5 million in taxpayer dollars last year. But Pruitt has a history of finding, uh, creative tasks for the people around him to help him with.
Earlier this week, news broke that Pruitt had sent his aides on a series of personal errands for him, and asked them to do everything from buy a used mattress from Trump International Hotel to set up a meeting so his wife could lock down her own Chick-fil-A franchise.
All arguments about Pruitt's repeated misuse of staff as his own personal minions and go-fers aside, these new lotion revelations raise some serious questions. Namely, what is so great about the Ritz-Carlton's official moisturizer? Is it truly superior to all other lotions, or does Pruitt just long to smell like "ylang ylang, jasmine, and uplifting bergamot" so much that it was worth the long search?
Also, couldn't someone just have called around to the nearby Ritz-Carlton hotels and checked if they had the lotion in stock before trucking all the way over there? Maybe Pruitt was just doing his part to drive around and help keep climate change rolling since the guy thinks that global warming might actually be a good thing.
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Image by Screenshot Taking the obligation seriously
Rabbi Zev Leff never set out to be a viral star — he just wanted to get in some Torah study.
But the Haredi rabbi of Moshav Matityahu, located near the Israeli city of Modiin, became an accidental sensation when a stadium camera caught him studying at the Israel-Scotland game in Glasgow.
Rav Leff was apparently visiting his daughter, Rebbetzin Sarah Bodenheim, and accompanied members of her family to the game. In a clip that has torn through the Orthodox world, the Sky News camera panned to Leff’s family just after Israel scored its first goal. Leff, snug in a coat, scarf, and kippah, is buried in a thick tome with a weathered looking cover. The title is not legible, though YNetnews posits that it’s Gemara.
“I think he missed the goal,” one of the commentators laments, as Leff is seen buried in text. The camera stays squarely on the Rabbi, who is immobile except for his eyeballs, seemingly unaware of the commotion around him. Next to him, people who appear to be his wife, daughter, and grandchildren, watch the game.
“Must be a good read,” another commentator chuckles.
Must be.
Leff eventually looks up, penetrating the camera with a glance that says, “I will never, ever be shamed over my holy study, no, not even by charming Scottish sports commentators.”
When you’ve got football at 7, but Maariv at 8 #SCOISR pic.twitter.com/Y3opdikoDj— Daniel Jacobs (@DanielHarry311) November 20, 2018
It is, without doubt, the most charming thing on the Internet right now.
“If for one second there would be no one learning Torah anywhere in the world,” Rav Leff said in a lecture called “Torah Learning Is Everything” in 2015, “The world would cease to exist.”
Just goes to show — anyone can study text, spend time with family, take in culture, and achieve viral fame, all at once.
That’s some size of match program for the Scotland game. #SCOISR pic.twitter.com/FxdfOC9m0E— The Tap Bag Show (@TheTapBagShow) November 20, 2018
Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
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Wild geese change routes to cope with climate change Published duration 2 September 2019 Related Topics Climate change
image copyright Getty Images image caption Barnacle geese respond to climate change
Barnacle geese are choosing new feeding sites to cope with climate change, according to Scottish researchers.
A team from St Andrews University, along with Norwegian, Dutch and British colleagues, found that the birds were flying further north in the Arctic.
The study is one of the first to provide hard evidence that wild animals are inventing new ways to cope with changing habitats.
The findings are based on 45 years of observations by experts.
The teams found that the migratory birds, which traditionally fuelled up, or staged, just South of the Arctic circle in Norway now mainly staged in northern Norway far above the Arctic circle.
Shifting patterns'make sense'
Individual geese changed to a new route with other geese learning the new habit from each other, according to the findings.
The researchers added that barnacle geese had shifted their migratory route on their journey from the UK to their breeding grounds on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, within the last 25 years.
image copyright Getty Images image caption Geese are starting to search for new habitats
Dr Thomas Oudman of the school of biology at St Andrews, said: "It makes sense that the birds went even further north, because where snow used to be very common there at the time of their arrival in Norway, these days it is often freshly green there: the most nutritious stage.
"What surprised us is that it is mainly the young geese who have shifted. The youngsters are responding to a trend they could not have experienced during their short life."
Adult geese are also increasingly shifting north, although they often return to the traditional areas in their old age.
Dr Oudman added: "These patterns point at a complex social system, which enables the geese to rapidly colonise newly available areas."
Contrary to most other migratory birds, barnacle geese flourish even while their natural habitat is rapidly changing.
Barnacle geese are able to adapt to climate change due to the availability of alternative places with sufficient food at the right time, and without the threat of disturbance from humans or other dangerous animals.
The availability of alternative habitats may also help other animals to adapt to climate change.
Animal species which are less sociable or explore less may take much longer to discover such places.
The conclusions are based on analysis of 45 years of observations by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, St Andrews University, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, BirdLife Norway and the British Waterfowl and Wetlands Trust.
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An Interview – Exploring the work involved in establishing climbing routes
Sure we all love to climb and naturally have a general appreciation for the party that established the line we have such fond memories of sending. But have you ever wondered how those climbing routes got there? We took a second to chit chat with “Magic Ed”, one of the men responsible for a significant number of routes in the limestone sport climbing paradise of El Potrero Chico, Mexico.
Our Convo with “Magic Ed”…
Are routes in El Potrero Chico established from the ground up?
While most of the single pitch routes were put in top down by traversing over from the anchors on a previously established route, the majority of the muti-pitch routes (with a couple of exceptions) were put in ground up. A couple of guys are strong enough to free climb, hold onto a 5.11 crimp and drill and place a bolt but most of us are aid climbing, using hooks and the occasional piece of gear and an occasional free move.
What is involved in putting up a route at the Potrero with respect to vegetation clearing, trundling, etc? There is a lot of vegetation on limestone and presumably this must be cleared while putting in a route. How does one do this?
On the way up I’ll use pruning shears to clip the sharp ends off the cactus so I can get through. Once the pitch is bolted, I hang a static rope on it and spend a lot of time cleaning. I use a crow bar, a pruning saw, a variety of gardening tools and brushes. On the bottom pitches of Yankee Clipper the roots from the cactus were so thick I used a blow torch and burned them out. Of course, it’s also important to close the area being cleaned, including having people below with radios keeping onlookers away.
How is funding raised for future bolting in the Potrero? Where can donations be directed to?
I raise $ for bolting new routes through the sale of my guidebook and with the airport shuttle. Climbers will also often donate bolts and hangers or extra $. I’m going to be adding a paypal button to my website for donations.
For more information on donating some of that hard earned beer money to bolting at El Potrero Chico, please swing on over to Magic Ed’s website.
Interested in reading more about climbing in El Potrero Chico? Check out our detailed trip reports outlining selected ‘classics’ as well as our How-To-Travel-Guide with everything you need to know to get your butt on over to El Potrero Chico.
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Over the past week, various observers have caught onto numerical impossibilities in the vote totals being reported by various Wisconsin precincts in the 2016 presidential election, all of them suspiciously in Donald Trump’s favor. Accordingly, various precincts have since voluntarily revised their vote totals for Trump downward, to the point that he’s now credited with five thousand fewer votes than he supposedly originally had. With a statewide recount about to get underway, officials in Wisconsin are scrambling to explain away the mounting evidence of precinct-level rigging on Trump’s behalf. The latest excuse: a “modem error.”
When online observers first noticed that precincts in the same Wisconsin county were each reporting more votes for president than total votes, a local official tried to explain it away (source: ABC News affiliate) by blaming it on human arithmetic error. But even as that resulted in more than a thousand votes coming off the board for Trump, other precincts also began revising their numbers. The result: nearly five thousand of Trump’s supposed votes simply vanished, because they never existed to begin with. With the pressure mounting, the excuses are now growing more far fetched.
One frustrated Twitter user contacted the Wisconsin Elections Commission demanding answers. The reply came from “public information officer” Reid Magney, and he tried to pass of the Trump vote-padding on a “modem not working correctly.” Apparently we’re now supposed to believe that a modem (one of those internet boxes from the nineties that made all the beeping noises) went crazy on election night and began giving extra votes to Trump, a screen cap of which we’ve posted below:
image credit: @tiersoflove | Twitter
So now we have various Wisconsin election officials trying to float conflicting and increasingly absurd excuses as to how Donald Trump’s vote total was padded with a thousand extra imaginary votes here and a thousand extra imaginary votes there. First it was someone who couldn’t add, and now it’s a rogue modem, all giving Trump extra votes under the table. In total, nearly five thousand of those padded votes have already been voluntarily taken off the board in Wisconsin, as the impending recount is about to uncover how deep and wide the vote-padding for Trump truly went.
Personal note from Bill Palmer: I want to thank everyone who has contributed to Palmer Report this week. We’re looking to improve our overall website design, find ways to bring you even more great content, and take Donald Trump down. If you’re struggling during these challenging financial times, then please keep your money for yourself. But if you’re able to invest in Palmer Report’s editorial efforts, please do so here:
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New entrants, from left, Lennox Skipper, 5, Sophie Mason, 5, and Dori Dehar, 5, receive their education starter packs from Ngati Apa on Wednesday.
An iwi has launched a new project to make sure children starting primary school have the right stationery on their first day.
Top of the South iwi Ngati Apa ki te Ra To has funded free education starter packs for their 5-year-olds, and gave away the first three on Wednesday.
Marlborough woman Emma-Jaye King said the initiative made the process of her son Lennox starting school much less stressful.
"I think it's awesome. It's a great way to encourage them in a new beginning."
READ MORE:
* Ngati Apa ki te Ra To launches online television channel
* Ngati Apa ki te Ra To offers literacy and numeracy programme for adults
* Marlborough iwi make joint submission on recreational fishing park
The education starter packs included a back pack, a book folder, school books, pens and pencils, but varied depending on the stationery list issued by the pupil's school.
Iwi trustee and education committee member Margaret Bond said the packs were a great way to show the children their iwi supported them in their education.
"For some families, finding the money for the stationery and other resources their children are required to have can be difficult, so this is another way that the iwi can help all our kids feel proud about who they are and where they are from, and take away any worries about the expense."
Warehouse Stationery helped to create the packs, using their database of stationery lists for every school in the country.
Parents could spend about $60 on stationery for their child, though the list varied from school to school.
Iwi communication and engagement manager Kirk MacGibbon said he hoped the branded back packs would give the children a way to recognise each other at school.
"They'll see the bags, and they'll know they're both from Ngati Apa, and they'll connect."
About 40 Ngati Apa children were expected to start school this year, from Seddon to Waikawa, MacGibbon said.
Iwi could pick up their packs by dropping into the Seymour St office, or iwi members living outside Marlborough could contact the trust to have one sent, he said.
The trust's education committee was considering extending the project to intermediate and high school students, MacGibbon said.
It already granted funding towards tertiary fees for iwi members, with $20,000 granted last year.
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Egypt's General Prosecution announced on Monday that it began to investigate officially into the events that led two men to jump from a train while it was moving leading to the death of one of them as they did not have a ticket in Nile Delta.
The prosecution also announced that it began its investigations with the conductor involved in the incident.
Egypt's Railways authority issued a statement about the incident with more details about it. According to the Railways authority, during the trip of train "934" from Alexandria to Luxor on 28 October 2019, the conductor of the train demanded two passengers of "paying tickets but they refused".
The statement added that while the train began to reduce its speed at a Gharbia governorate train station due to some malfunctions in the signal system in that train station, the two men jumped while the train was on the move which led to the death of one them and the injury of the other.
The two men were transferred to Tanta general hospital, the statement read.
The statement added that the two passengers were street vendors.
The statement of the Railways authority quoted Egypt's minister of transportation Kamel El-Wazir saying that he would not allow any negligence in the rights of any Egyptian citizens and that he was keen of the lives of all citizens.
The minister added that the current investigations would lead to the truth upon which the proper procedures would be taken.
According to news report, the man killed in the incident is identified as 23-years-old Mohamed Eid who came from Shubra El-Khaima, Qaliubiya while the other man is identified only as 25-years-old.
Videos of the incident go viral
The incident went viral in Egypt on Monday on social media as alleged videos filmed inside the train after the incident showing the passengers speaking about it hit the internet.
One of the video shot by a mobile phone, an old man was seen speaking about the incident to the police hotline and about how the conductor told the two men either to pay or leave the train.
In another video shot by a mobile phone, an unidentified man appears speaking on how the conductor forced two people to jump from the train while moving because they did not have tickets nor the fine.
A third video also shot by a mobile photo, the same man appeared speaking a number of people including reportedly a police officer at a train station repeating in the previous video while identifying the conductor who appeared to be detained.
Egyptian newspapers shared the videos reporting the incident at first as a "Conductor forces children to jump from train while moving leading to the death of one of them" before more details about the victims and their personal details appeared.
Short link:
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)
Various security fixes
To support unicode-range descriptor for webfonts, font matching under Linux now uses the same font matching code as other platforms
Use a SHA-256 signing certificate for Windows builds, to meet new signing requirements
Removed support for the RC4 decipher
Firefox will no longer trust the Equifax Secure Certificate Authority 1024-bit root certificate or the UTN – DATACorp SGC to validate secure website certificates
Stricter validation of web fonts
On-screen keyboard support temporarily turned off for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
Right click on a logged object in the console to store it as a global variable on the page
Visual tools for Animation: View/Edit CSS animation keyframe rules directly in the inspector, Visually modify the cubic-bezier curve that drives the way animations progress through time, Discover and scrub through all CSS animations and transitions playing on the page
Visual tools for Layout and Styles: Display rulers along the viewport to verify size and position and use the measurement tool to easily detect spacing and alignment problems, Use CSS filters to preview and create real-time effects like drop-shadows, sepia, etc.
New memory tool for inspecting the memory heap
Service Workers API
Built-in JSON reader to intuitively view, search, copy and save data without extensions
Jump to function definitions in the debugger with Cmd-Click
WebSocket Debugging API and add-on
The rule view now displays styles using their authored text, and edits in the rule view are now linked to the style editor
If you’re a web developer, more details are available for you here: Firefox 44 for developers.
Android
Firefox 44 now supports the Android print service. If you need to print a document on the go, you now have yet another way to do so from your Android phone or tablet.
Here’s the full Firefox 44 for Android changelog:
Use Android print service to enable cloud printing
Prompt user before opening Intent URIs in a Private Browsing tab
Show search history suggestions
Web-based Firefox Accounts page
Added support for launching URIs with mms: protocol
Users can now choose a homepage to display on startup instead of the Top Sites panel
Removed support for the RC4 decipher
Firefox will no longer trust the Equifax Secure Certificate Authority 1024-bit root certificate or the UTN – DATACorp SGC to validate secure website certificates
Improved tabs tray on phones
Mozilla typically releases new Firefox versions every six weeks, and we thus expect Firefox 45 to arrive before mid-March.
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brothel.
Photo by Daniele Giacometti/VICE News
According to the latest government report on sex trafficking in Mexico, dated 2014, there are 47 identified criminal groups involved in the business, with leaders in Central America, Mexico, and the United States, and bars and discos around the northern frontier.
Daniela is not sure if any of the clients knew she was a slave, but she believes some had their suspicions. She says sometimes it was clear they noticed her bruises — even though she was not beaten in the face, and the cubicles were dark — but they turned away. And appealing for help was out of the question, she says, though sometimes she tried to communicate her desperation with her eyes.
Daniela won't give the details of how she eventually escaped, got the chip out of her foot, and fled to safety. She will only say that somebody risked their life to help her. "They got me out of the place, they paid my transport to Mexico City," is all she will say. "If I say more they will kill that person, and I would never forgive myself."
She has good reason to fear for her savior's life. Violence continues unabated in Tamaulipas even after the end of the war between the Gulf and the Zetas, which has now been replaced by a multiplicity of battles between many different factions of both cartels.
Daniela also won't talk about the details of how she ended up telling her story to federal investigators in Mexico City. Initially, she says, they sent her back to Nicaragua, but her case was revived after the Mexican NGO Unidos contra la Trata, which works on sex trafficking came knocking on her door.
The activists persuaded her to get in contact with a special prosecutor for sex crimes. Her hope, she says, is that the investigation will lead to raids freeing women she thinks are still captive and helpless.
Daniela says that her family filed a missing person's report in Nicaragua when she disappeared. They also went to the local television station, and put up posters. Then they gave her up for dead. She, like most Central Americans who go missing in Mexico, wouldn't even have appeared on the Mexican register of 28,000 disappeared.
Daniela recalls her mother's incredulity when she called from a police station in the Mexican capital. She began to believe her only when the conversation turned to old memories, like the dress she'd made her daughter for her 15th birthday that was too long.
"Daughter, you are alive," Daniela remembers her mother cried when the penny finally dropped. "Yes, I'm here, Mom, I'm here."
Alan Hernandez contributed to this report.
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On July 10, resisting feudal forces, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation (CPIML) along with Dalit families occupied land in Angara village in the Indian State of Bihar. The land was allotted to 98 poor Dalit families (the oppressed caste in the Indian caste system, considered the ‘untouchables’) by the Patna High Court in 2008. In the order, the court had granted four acres and 53 decimal (1 acre equals 100 decimal) of government land to Dalit families.
The families, hailing from Piro block in the Angara village of Bhojpur district, resorted to land occupation as the government was delaying the land allotment allegedly in collusion with the local feudal and upper caste forces.
“The reason why the CPIML felt the need to take the law in its hands is because the nexus between landlords and the officials within the State government has denied these poor families their due rights for almost a decade. These families have now obtained some portion of the prescribed land which was allowed to them long ago in 2008 by the court.,” CPIML State committee member, Sanjay, told Peoples Dispatch.
“We decided that the community will make makeshift camps until the paperwork is finalized. If the authorities take any measures to remove them from their rightful land, we are ready to fight back for justice,” he added.
The occupation comes after the local administration called for negotiations in the face of intensfying land rights assertions by Dalit families and members of the CPIML. The block officers, the deputy superintendent of police and the station head officer met with the leaders of CPIML on the issue, but the talks failed due to the government’s alleged delaying tactics.
“What the State government failed to achieve in providing justice to these Dalit families for over a decade, we achieved within a month. This indicates that to solve these issues you only need resolve and clear mindset of standing with the marginalized,” Sanjay said.
According to the 2008 report of the Bandopadhyay Land Reforms Commission appointed by the Bihar Government, over 2.1 million acres of delimited land in the State have been illegally captured by zamindars (feudal landlords). More than half the agriculture in the State is done on the basis of sharecropping. According to a survey by an NGO, there are 5 million families in the State who have no homestead land (large agricultural land) and about 1.8 million families who have been settled on raiyyati (cultivable land in an estate but not private land) and government lands for decades but have not been given occupation papers for those plots of land.
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The new iteration of the Evoque looks a lot like last year's, it has all the same general stylings that one has come to expect from Range Rover's line of compact luxury SUVs, including the iconic coupe-like roofline. The 2020 model however includes a bunch of new gadgets like LED head and tail lights and flush-folding door handles.
The interior has been redesigned to improve legroom (thanks to a slightly longer wheelbase) so that tall folks aren't constantly banging their knees and increase the trunk's overall storage space. Instead of leather, you'll find a host of more environmentally conscious materials such as Kvadrat wool and Dinamica suede on the seats along with recycled plastics and natural material accents by Eucalyptus Textile and Ultrafabrics. As much as 73 pounds of every 2020 Evoque comes from recycled materials.
But don't let the natural materials fool you. The 2020 Evoque's interior also features an InControl Touch Pro Duo infotainment system, the InControl remote mobile app, 16-point adjustable seats, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration, and an optional 4G hotspot (which also allows for wireless, OTA software updates). It's also the first Range Rover to offer "Smart Settings" an AI assist system that learns and remembers each driver's seat, music and climate preferences, resetting them whenever you get into the vehicle.
You'll find a host of new features under the hood as well, including a 48-volt (296HP) mild-hybrid powertrain working alongside the 246HP Ingenium four-cylinder gasoline engine. When braking at speeds under 11 mph, the engine is programmed to turn off and allow the regenerative system to harvest energy from the slowing vehicle which can then be used to assist in its subsequent acceleration.
The new Evoque also boasts technologies that we first saw on Range Rovers Discovery Vision concept vehicle. ClearSight Ground View, for example, is based on the Vision's "transparent bonnet" idea. It uses cameras in the front grille and sideview mirrors to give the driver an 180-degree view of what's under the front end of the Evoque. Remember folks, always check your undercarriage for cats and other furry stowaways during the winter months.
What's more, the rear facing camera above the back window doesn't push its video feed to the console-mounted 12.3-inch infotainment system. Instead it sends it directly to the rearview mirror, which is actually an HD video screen.
We still don't have word on pricing or availability on the new Evoque. Those details are being revealed at the Chicago Auto Show in February.
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I'm in a bit of a grumpy mood today, so I'm going to tee off on theism/religion and some of the laughable things that come out of the mouths of their participants. This is going to get bumpy, you've been warned.
“We can agree to disagree.”
It's true, we can agree to not see eye-to-eye on this subject, but don't think for one minute that this puts both of our arguments on equal footing; one argument is clearly not as logical or reasonable as the other. Don't get it twisted, the theist world view is founded on myths that shouldn't survive elementary school, so if we agree to disagree don't mistake it as a nod of respect for your views or argument. The idea of gods is idiotic at best, and destructive to humanity at worst. I'll respect the person, but I steadfastly refuse to respect their cult, or their creepy beliefs. They get only a cold tolerance based on my respect for the freedom of religion, don't count on conversational tolerance if you start yammering about magic men in the sky and how real they are.
“God X is immaterial, and outside space and time.”
I don't have to waste time pointing out how silly this belief is, the theist does all that work for me. But as soon as they assert their god is undetectable, the opposition wins. Removing all the criteria we use to validate a claim doesn't somehow magically make it true, since we now have no way to determine it's existence we have to disregard its possibility of being true. The theist will literally argue their god into non-existence all the while thinking they're pulling a fast one – I don't think so scooter, try again.
“But it's true for me!”
If the god exists only inside your head – only inside your consciousness – then fine, have at it. But when you say it exists outside of your imagination, if you say it's actually true, that becomes a whole new ball game. If you want to say your god is real, that it exists in the outside world, you adopt a burden of proof to demonstrate your claim as being true, just like everyone else. Can't muster the proof? Tough shit, try again when you can. It's arrogant and childish to think the world outside your mind has any obligation to fit your demands – reality has zero responsibility to change itself to fit your idea of what it should be. If the burden of proof is too much for theists to handle, then they need to go stand in the back of the room with the rest of the cultists.
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This Ferrari supercar from the early 2000’s really did share a steering wheel with a Honda Civic Type R.
Spend $200,000 dollars on an exotic car two decades ago and you’d expect every single thing you touch be bespoke, expensive, and above and beyond anything on the market of the time. Not so when it came to some exotics. Earlier today (Jan. 19,2019) I came across a piece of pub trivia about Ferraris that blew my mind. The infamous Ferrari 550, successor to the Rad Testarossa, had the same steering wheel as a much lesser Honda Civic Type R of the same year.
Want some proof? Compare these two interiors for yourself below.
Here’s the 550’s interior.
And here’s the Honda Civic Type R’s interior.
Notice any similarities? That’s right, the steering wheels are exactly the same, well, except for the logos in the center.
Here they are side-by-side.
What’s even more hilarious is if you go on the eBay and search for either steering wheel, you’ll come up with some drastically different prices between the two despite the steering wheels being entirely the same.
Here’s a 550 steering wheel that sold well over a thousand.
And here’s a Civic Type R steering wheel that you can get for a quarter of the price.
The steering wheel is made by Momo, a design company that supplies the OEM and aftermarket with parts and accessories that goes back to 1964. Headquartered in Milan, Italy, it would make sense for Ferrari to choose a Momo steering wheel. In all likelihood, it was Honda who wanted to copy the best when it came to racing gear and took their supply parts bin inspiration from Ferrari.
One’s a hot hatch that doesn’t even crack 200 HP sent to the front wheels and the other is a fire-breathing grand tourer with a honking V12 that, in 1996, made 485 HP in all its naturally aspirated goodness.
A good steering wheel is a good steering wheel no matter what car it’s in. Around the turn of the century, cars were still analog machines with technology slowly creeping its way into the interior here and there. The most complicated buttons you’d see on a wheel operated the cruise control if anything.
Today, this sort of parts bin swapping probably wouldn’t fly but for one brief moment in the late 90s and early 00’s, a hot econobox and a Ferrari had the same parts.
Source: Honda-Tech
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ABOUT HBO SPORTS
Over the past three decades, HBO Sports has earned a reputation as one of sports television’s most prolific storytellers. From compelling documentaries to unscripted reality programming to world championship boxing to magazine-style studio shows, HBO Sports has been a trailblazer. The department has earned 11 prestigious George F. Peabody Awards for production excellence in long-form programming and introduced a host of innovations and enhancements to increase subscriber satisfaction. Since 1991, HBO Sports has also earned 135 Sports Emmy® Awards and has been recognized with four duPont-Columbia University Awards for excellence in broadcast journalism.
ABOUT BILL SIMMONS MEDIA GROUP
Bill Simmons Media Group was founded in 2015 and immediately launched the multimedia company The Ringer. The Ringer consists of a website (theringer.com), Newsletter, Podcast Network (25 and growing), Social Media network, and scripted and non-scripted video production, including Ringer Films. The Ringer and HBO have collaborated on various productions, including “After the Thrones,” “Any Given Wednesday” and the feature-length documentary “Andre the Giant.” Bill Simmons received three Sports Emmy® Awards and a Creative Arts Emmy® while serving for six years (2009–2015) as an executive producer of original film productions under ESPN’s Peabody Award-winning “30 for 30” banner, and was a co-creator of the “30 for 30” series. His book on basketball, “The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy,” was a New York Times bestseller.
ABOUT THE NBA
The NBA is a global sports and media business built around four professional sports leagues: the National Basketball Association, the Women’s National Basketball Association, the NBA G League and the NBA 2K League. The NBA has established a major international presence with games and programming in 215 countries and territories in 50 languages, and merchandise for sale in more than 125,000 stores in 100 countries on six continents. NBA rosters at the start of the 2017–18 season featured 108 international players from a record 42 countries and territories. NBA Digital’s assets include NBA TV, NBA.com, the NBA App and NBA League Pass. The NBA has created one of the largest social media communities in the world, with 1.5 billion likes and followers globally across all league, team, and player platforms. Through NBA Cares, the league addresses important social issues by working with internationally recognized youth-serving organizations that support education, youth and family development, and health-related causes. The 2018 NBA Finals presented by YouTube TV begins Thursday, May 31.
Follow @HBOPR for more news and information.
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Busting the Myth of the “Scofflaw Cyclist”
According to a certain perspective that seems to hold sway among local newspaper columnists, bicyclists are reckless daredevils who flout the road rules that everyone else faithfully upholds. But the results of a massive survey published in the Journal of Transport and Land Use point to a different conclusion — everyone breaks traffic laws, and there’s nothing extraordinary about how people behave on bikes.
Researcher Wesley Marshall and his team surveyed 18,000 people online about their compliance with traffic laws when they are driving, biking, or walking. Most respondents — 14,000 — were based in the United States, with the remainder concentrated in Australia, Canada, and Europe.
They found that people admit to breaking the rules of the road at roughly the same (very high) rate, regardless of how they’re getting around.
“Bicyclists, perhaps despite popular conception, really don’t break the rules at any greater rate than any other modes: pedestrians or drivers,” said Aaron Johnson, one of the authors. “When there’s a disregard for the rules it tends to come from efforts to negotiate infrastructure that really wasn’t built for them.”
Only participants who said they bike were surveyed about cycling behavior and only those who said they drive were questioned about motorist behavior. Most participants identified as all of the above — drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians — said Johnson.
The study was conducted by “snowball sampling,” where surveys are passed along among social networks by word of mouth or through media. Though the survey was not random, the sample was big enough that researchers think the findings are reliable.
Among people who drive, nearly 100 percent said they exceed the speed limit, text behind the wheel, or break other laws; 98 percent of people who walk admitted to disregarding pedestrian signals; 96 percent of people who bike said they disregard stop signs and traffic lights.
But reasons for breaking the rules differed. People were most likely to say they broke a rule while driving or walking to save time, while people who bike were most likely to cite personal safety (by riding on the sidewalk rather than a busy street, for example) or saving energy.
The survey also examined geographical differences among American respondents. Cyclists in cities with higher rates of cycling, for instance, were more likely to say they follow rules. Interestingly, the survey did not find the presence of bike lanes to be a significant factor in cyclists’ reported observance of traffic laws. And intersection density — often considered a proxy for walkability — was associated with higher rates of rule breaking. The authors say these factors deserve additional study.
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While speaking with reporters as he left the White House, Trump blew up all of his administration’s excuses for the FBI firings and revoking Brennan’s security clearance by admitting that he is doing all of this to discredit Robert Mueller.
Video:
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Trump said:
Look, I say it, I say it again, that whole situation is a rigged witch-hunt, a totally rigged they could be looking at all the people that got fired by them, all of the people that got fired. They should be looking at Bruce Orr and his wife Nelly for dealing with Russians. They should be looking at Steele, all these FBI guys who got fired and demoted. It’s a really weird — it’s not us. It’s a rigged witch-hunt. I’ve said it for a long time.
I think Bruce Orr is a disgrace. I suspect I’ll be taking it away quickly. I think he’s a disgrace. For him to be in the justice department, doing what he did, that’s a disgrace. That is disqualifying for Mueller, and Mr. Mueller has a lot of conflicts also directly yourself. You know that. Mr. Mueller is highly conflicted. In fact, Comey is like his best friend, as you go into conflict after conflict. Sadly, Mueller is conflicted as well. Let him write his report. There’s no collusion, if he was doing an honest report, he would write it on the other side. Take a look at what they did, including colluding with the Russians. The other side.
Trump is trying to discredit Mueller
The revoking of security clearances and the firing of FBI agents who were associated with the Russia investigation isn’t about good government or “cleaning up” the FBI. The motive is as the president just said, an effort to discredit Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation. What is interesting is that Trump said so let him write his report, which indicates that he may understand that he can’t fire Mueller.
The strategic shift among Trump and his lawyers to attacking Mueller suggests that they have turned their focus from firing Mueller to discrediting his final report. Trump is setting up an impeachment defense, and the centerpiece of that defense involves firing FBI agents to argue that entire Russia investigation was corrupt.
Trump admitted that all he cares about is saving his own skin, and any excuse otherwise from this White House is a lie.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Follow Jason Easley on Facebook.
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be about Ukraine supporting his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBloomberg rolls out M ad buy to boost Biden in Florida Hillicon Valley: Productivity, fatigue, cybersecurity emerge as top concerns amid pandemic | Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board | Google to temporarily bar election ads after polls close Trump pledges to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, designate KKK a terrorist group in pitch to Black voters MORE.
“It seemed logical to me that in an attempt to counter the narrative about Russian support for the Trump administration in the 2016 election... that it would be useful to shift that narrative by shifting it to Ukraine as being in support of the Clintons,” she testified, stating that she believed this would help the president “balance out” the collusion narrative.
Both Croft and Anderson also raised concerns about the role played in Ukraine by Rudy Giuliani Rudy GiulianiThe Hill's Campaign Report: GOP set to ask SCOTUS to limit mail-in voting CIA found Putin 'probably directing' campaign against Biden: report Democrats fear Russia interference could spoil bid to retake Senate MORE, the president’s personal lawyer.
Anderson testified those concerns were shared by other top diplomats, including Volker and former national security adviser John Bolton John BoltonJudge appears skeptical of Bolton's defense of publishing book without White House approval Maximum pressure is keeping US troops in Iraq and Syria Woodward book trails Bolton, Mary Trump in first-week sales MORE. Anderson said officials feared the president's personal lawyer was spreading a negative narrative about Ukraine and possibly create a "false perception" in Trump's mind that Kyiv is not an ally, which could risk hurting their relationship.
“Mr. Giuliani tweeted that there were enemies around — enemies of the President around Zelensky. And we took it to be problematic for improving our relationship if he was still spreading that message,” Anderson testified.
Croft also recalled thanking her boss for keeping her “out of that mess,” as it related to Giuliani’s Ukraine policy.
“A couple times he mentioned sort of a need to get this Giuliani line of effort, sort of, off the table, so we can get on with the business of our actual policy. Those weren't his exact words, but that would have been the spirit of” his remarks, she testified.
The release of the Croft and Anderson transcripts came on the same day Democrats also released the transcript of Laura Cooper, a top Department of Defense official who testified about what her dismay over the aid being withheld.
The transcript rollouts also come on the same week that Democrats are expected to hold their first series of open impeachment hearings, starting Wednesday with the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, William Taylor, and top State Department official George Kent.
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The mayor of the Mexican border city of Tijuana declared a humanitarian crisis on Thursday and slammed his federal government’s response. The mayor said the government failed to provide adequate aid for the migrant caravan that flooded into the beleaguered city as reported. by local media.
Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum Buenrostro declared a humanitarian crisis in response to the more than 5,000 migrants who arrived in the city as part of the caravan attempting to seek asylum in the United States, according to local media reports. Additional migrants are expected to arrive daily.
“I am not going to compromise Tijuana’s public services,” said Mayor Gastélum Buenrostro. The mayor vowed not to bankrupt his city to care for the thousands of migrants. The mayor called on international groups like the United Nations to assist with the migrant crisis in the absence of a response from the federal government of Mexico.
The declaration of a humanitarian crisis by the mayor came on the same day that a group of approximately 150-200 migrants broke free from the larger group and began to march to El Chaparral vehicle border crossing. The group intended on requesting asylum upon reaching the U.S. border as reported by local media. This group, which had been primarily housed at the Unidad Deportiva Benito Juarez sports complex, was stopped by federal police on the bridge approximately 500 feet from the U.S. border. Officials converted the sports complex to a temporary shelter. The group then peacefully voiced their complaints and returned back to the makeshift shelter which is now at full capacity.
Tijuana mayor Gastélum Buenrostro has been sharply criticized by the local media and, at the same time, praised by citizens of Tijuana on social media for his hardline approach in handling the migrant crisis. According to local media reports, the mayor was observed wearing a red hat that read, “Make Tijuana Great Again” — a reference to President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign slogan.
Meanwhile, government authorities in nearby Mexicali announced that 15 buses escorted by federal police arrived between late Wednesday and early Thursday morning. The convoy arrived with a total of 750 migrants of primarily from Honduras as reported by local media. On early Friday morning, an additional 400 migrants arrived in Mexicali. Media reports indicate that 300 migrants decided to leave Mexicali on foot and head towards Tijuana which is approximately 113 miles to the west.
Breitbart News reported on the movement of the caravan through Mexico into Tijuana and the arrival of additional caravans. Approximately one week ago, Breitbart Texas reported on Mexican protesters who took to the streets to protest the growing influx of Central American migrants who arrived in the border city of Tijuana.
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The Justice Department is said to be investigating possible violations of insider trading laws by top executives at credit reporting firm Equifax.
Bloomberg reported on Monday that investigators are examining stock sales made by three top executives at the company before Equifax disclosed a data breach in which hackers accessed the Social Security numbers and other personal information of as many as 143 million U.S. consumers.
Equifax has been under intense scrutiny for nearly two weeks since disclosing the breach, which went unnoticed for more than a month before it was discovered at the end of July.
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Bloomberg was first to report earlier this month that three Equifax executives — Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, President of U.S. Information Solutions Joseph Loughran and President of Workforce Solutions Rodolfo Ploder — sold stock in the company totaling nearly $2 million in the days after the breach was discovered on July 29. These sales are now said to be under criminal scrutiny.
The Equifax probe is reportedly being handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta, where the credit reporting firm is based. In a statement, a representative for the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Georgia said that it is working with the FBI in its criminal investigation into the breach and the "resulting theft of personal information," but declined to comment further. The FBI previously said that it was "tracking" the Equifax breach.
The company has said that the executives did not know about the breach at the time they made the sales. Nevertheless, the development has prompted scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with a bipartisan pair of lawmakers pressing the company for information on when top executives were notified of the breach.
Last week, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp Mary (Heidi) Kathryn HeitkampCentrists, progressives rally around Harris pick for VP 70 former senators propose bipartisan caucus for incumbents Susan Collins set to play pivotal role in impeachment drama MORE (D-N.D.) said that if the circumstances surrounding the share sales were true, then “somebody needs to go to jail.”
Hanley Chew, a privacy and data security lawyer at Fenwick & West, said last week that the stock sales could trigger a criminal investigation.
“If it turns out that they did have knowledge of the breach and they sold prior to disclosure of the breach not as part of their regular, predetermined trading plan, then we’re looking at potential insider trading lawsuits and potential law enforcement investigation,” Chew told The Hill.
The company has weathered sustained criticism for the breach, which has also triggered an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. Late Friday, Equifax announced that its chief information officer and chief security officer were resigning amid the backlash.
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-centered to cupped bloom form, blooms in flushes, flowers drop off cleanly, long stem for cut flowers
What to Look for in a Rose
Here are a few things to look for in a healthy rosebush:
Always check the root system to make sure it looks healthy. If the root system has been cut back drastically or it’s a poor graft, it may not survive.
Check for insect damage or signs that the plant may be diseased. Look at any petals that have bloomed, and check the stems carefully.
Remember that you get what you pay for. $9.99 roses in plastic bags may appeal to your budget, but chances are good those roses aren’t very hardy.
If your local nursery has a disappointing selection, you can shop online to find healthy plants for your garden. Most companies will ship bare root roses to your door in 24-48 hours. You can also find a wider selection of roses online.
How to Care for Roses
Some people think roses are finicky, but more than likely these are gardeners who just didn’t know how to take care of roses or bought the wrong cultivar. With proper care, roses are easy to grow and maintain.
Always talk to someone from your local nursery or your local chapter of American Rose Society about the best care for the rosebush you choose, and read any information provided on your plant. Plant tags will often include how much sun a plant needs, along with other basic plant requirements.
Not all roses are disease resistant and some may only be resistant to certain types of problems. Make sure you know what kind of disease or local insects your roses may be susceptible to. Watch for signs of mold, rust, mildew or black spot disease and try to prevent them if you know your rose is susceptible. Use Safer® Brand’s Rose & Flower Insect Killer to keep your rosebush bug free.
Research if your rose is the type that needs deadheading. Deadheading is the process of cutting off or snapping spent blooms to trick the plant into producing new blooms. Deadhead at an angle away from the node and slightly above it.
Not every rose requires deadheading or constant pruning. Flower Carpet roses are considered ‘self-cleaning’ and only need to be cut back before winter.
Do your roses have black spot? Read our guide on how to get rid of black spot on roses.
No matter which type of rose you choose to grow, you can be sure these classic flowers will bring color and beauty to your garden for as long as they live. The tenderness and love you give your plants will show in every bloom!
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HERAT: A team of robot-designing girls in Afghanistan is trying to build a low-cost medical ventilator from car parts, as health authorities look to boost critical-care capabilities for Covid-19 patients in the impoverished country.
If the teenagers succeed and can get government approval for their prototype, they say it could be replicated for as little as US$300, where normally ventilators sell for around US$30,000.
“The team is working with local health specialists, as well as experts from Harvard University, to produce the prototype based on a design by Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” said Roya Mahboob, who runs an Afghan tech company and sponsors the team of five girls, aged 14-17.
They are part of a bigger group of high-achieving high school girls known as the “Afghan Dreamers”, from the western city of Herat, where coronavirus is on the rise after thousands of people returned from neighbouring Iran as it experienced a spike in cases.
The girls made headlines in 2017 after being denied visas to take part in a robotics competition in Washington — before President Donald Trump intervened and they were allowed to travel.
They are taking engine and battery parts from a Toyota Corolla — ubiquitous on the streets of Afghanistan — to produce a prototype they started designing after the Herat governor called for more ventilators as coronavirus cases rose.
Central to the ventilator is a self-inflating plastic sac known as an Ambu bag that medical staff use to help patients breathe. The girls’ prototype uses a mechanical system to operate the bag automatically and accurately.
“The complicated part is how to adjust the timing and pressure of pumping, as different patients require different volume and pressure of air based on their age and the severity of their condition,” Somaya Farooqi, the team’s 17-year-old captain, told AFP.
With a population of 35 million, Afghanistan only has about 300 ventilators.
Wahidullah Mayar, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s health ministry, said officials have asked specialists and engineers to help the team.
“We appreciate and encourage these hardworking girls, our sisters, for their efforts to produce ventilators,” Mayar said.
Any ventilator prototype would have to be approved by the World Health Organization and the Afghan health ministry before the team could start producing more devices, Mayar said.
As of Wednesday, Afghan officials had reported at least 784 coronavirus cases and 24 deaths across the country. The true number of cases is feared to be much higher, as only limited testing kits are available.
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