Remittances to Mexico saw the biggest spike in more than a decade during the month that President-elect Donald Trump Donald TrumpGraham: 'I could not disagree more' with Trump support of Afghanistan troop withdrawal GOP believes Democrats handing them winning 2022 campaign Former GOP operative installed as NSA top lawyer resigns MORE was elected, Reuters reported Monday.

Mexican citizens in the U.S. sent home nearly $2.4 billion in transfers in November, which is a nearly 25 percent increase from the previous year, according to Mexican central bank data released Monday.

Total remittances are projected to reach a record $27 billion in 2016, which is $2 billion more than the previous year. Mexicans sent a total of $24.8 billion in remittances in 2015, overtaking oil income as a source of revenue for the country.

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The jump could be a reaction to Trump’s stunning victory, as the businessman has threatened to block the transfers and has made building a wall on the border with Mexico a centerpiece of his campaign.

Trump has not specified how Mexico would pay for the wall, but he previously suggested his government would impound remittances.

The money that immigrants send to relatives abroad is an important source of income for many families in Mexico, where around half the population lives in poverty, according to Reuters.

Agustin Carstens, Mexico's central bank governor, pointed to a weak exchange rate, more U.S. jobs and concerns over Trump's policies as potential reasons why transfers have increased.

Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos said in a client note that the weak peso and workers who may be "strategically front-loading" transfers to avoid potential future taxes or restrictions may be fueling the remittance surge, according to Reuters.For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browserThe Pittsburgh Steelers will host the Miami Dolphins Sunday afternoon in an AFC Wild Card game and ahead of that contest head coach Mike Tomlin updated the health of his team during his Tuesday press conference.

Tomlin indicated that several players who are dealing with preexisting injuries all have a chance to play against the Dolphins. That list of players includes defensive end Stephon Tuitt (knee), tight end Xavier Grimble (ribs), wide receiver Sammie Coates (hamstring), linebacker Anthony Chickillo (ankle) and safety Robert Golden (ankle). All but Grimble sat out the game this past weekend against the Cleveland Browns.

“All of these guys are in a better position than they were a week ago and were excited about maybe having these guys available to us,” Tomlin said of that list of players. “We won’t change our formula in terms of that availability, they’d have to display an overall readiness at some juncture over the course of the work week. We’ll let that participation and the quality of that participation be our guide in terms of their availability.”

Tight end Ladarius Green (concussion) is still in protocol but making good progress, according to Tomlin.

“Ladarius Green is still in the protocol, although that I will acknowledge that it is progressing rather well,” Tomlin said of the Steelers tight end. “The quality of his participation and the affects of is probably going to be one of the last one or two items that he’s going to have to check off from that perspective. But we won’t short-cut the protocol, we never do. We’ll rely on our medical experts in that area as we always do.”

As for other players currently dealing with injures, Tomlin said Tuesday that cornerback Justin Gilbert (shoulder), linebacker Vince Williams (shoulder) and defensive end Ricardo Mathews (ankle) are still be evaluated.

As for defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, Tomlin said Tuesday that he’s not in concussion protocol. Hargrave left the game against the Browns but was able to return briefly before being shutdown for good.

“Hargrave, I don’t think injury is going to be a factor with him,” Tomlin said.UNTIL fairly recently, it was rare to find Americans who were passionate about both medieval history and contemporary politics. Barring the odd Christian conservative, medievalists tended to lean left: a Marxist grad student, say, mucking around in land ownership patterns to show how past inequalities gave birth to present ones, or an environmentalist activist, perhaps, fascinated with vegetable-dyed handspun clothing. But when Americans invoked historical events in politics, they tended to be more recent—the founding of the republic; the struggle against slavery and segregation; victory over Nazi Germany.

This has changed. Since the September 11th attacks, the American far right has developed a fascination with the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—in particular, with the idea of the West as a united civilisation that was fending off a challenge from the East. The trend has been prodded along by the movement's discovery of its European counterparts, which have used medieval and crusader imagery since the 19th century. This is troubling to many of those who study the Middle Ages for a living.

The embrace of the medieval extends from the alt-right online forum culture that has exploded in the last few years to stodgier old-school racists. Helmeted crusaders cry out the Latin war-cry “Deus vult!” from memes circulated on Reddit and 4Chan. Images of Donald Trump, clad in mail with a cross embroidered on his chest, abound. Anti-Islam journals and websites name themselves after the Frankish king Charles Martel, who fought Muslim armies in the 8th century, or the (slightly post-medieval) Ottoman defeat at Vienna. Jihadists, meanwhile, use images of Muslim cavaliers from movies and videogames to illustrate their own war against a West they believe to be a reincarnated Byzantium. Indeed, much of the far right's attraction to the Middle Ages seems to be driven by a grudging admiration for Islamic State’s fusion of medieval motivation and modern technology.

For Americans who are indifferent to the Middle Ages, or think of it as an unpleasant plague-ridden prelude to the present, this might be of little consequence. But millions of others with mainstream or left-leaning beliefs are attracted to the medieval era—witness the popularity of Renaissance reenactments, or medieval-inspired fantasies like "Game of Thrones". In popularising the Middle Ages, are medievalists feeding a reactionary impulse? Followers of the alt-right would perhaps nod. Humans are natural conservatives who ought to take pride in their history, they might say; ethnic homogeneity is appealing. In an essay that purported to explain the alt-right for readers of Breitbart News, Milo Yiannapoulis, one of its editors, described a good portion of the movement as fuelled by the “conservative instinct,” including a preference for a preference for “homogeneity over diversity.”

Scholars who study the era have taken note. In a recent essay in the popular academic blog “In the Middle” Sierra Lomuto argued that medievalists had “an ethical responsibility to ensure that the knowledge we create and disseminate about the medieval past is not weaponised against people of colour and marginalised communities in our own contemporary world.” Academics are placing a new emphasis on the ways in which medieval societies differed from the homogeneous world imagined by the alt-right. Art historians document the appearances of dark-skinned migrants in northern Europe to show that medieval populations, if not quite as mobile as today, were still pretty mobile. Others focus on the multiethnic Kingdom of Sicily, where Norman kings employed Arab and Jewish administrators, or Christine de Pizan, who wrote treatises on military science in the 15th century, when the field was even more male-dominated than today. Progressives and reactionaries may both be drawn to the Middle Ages out of an affinity for “tradition,” says Shirin Khanmohamadi, a professor of literature at San Francisco State University who teaches a course called the Multicultural Middle Ages. But progressives would find it most interesting to explore "the premodern contribution to 'multiculturalism' and to other modes taken for granted as modern."

Academia's presentation of a nuanced view of the Middle Ages may reach more bookish white supremacists: Derek Black, son of the founder of the website Stormfront, has written about how he broke with his father's racial separatist vision while pursuing a graduate degree in medieval history. It is unlikely to reach those whose view of the era is mostly filtered through movies and videogames. But in pop culture as well, a deromanticised view of the medieval world exists, emphasising the grittiness, riotousness and bawdiness of the medieval city. “Game of Thrones” follows the adventurers of dwarves, eunuchs and other outsiders in lands plunged into ruin by a nobility intent on fighting a dynastic conflict based on the Wars of the Roses; its religious affairs are modelled not on the Crusades but on the internal turmoil in Christendom that preceded the Reformation. The more popular medieval history becomes, the more it may come to be seen not as an endorsement of homogeneity but a refutation, a world in which non-conformity was not debilitating deviance but a desire to strive for something better.Jan. 10, 2017 By Christian Murray

The Department of City Planning, in its quest to upzone the Queens Plaza/Court Square district to make way for affordable housing, is likely to be unveiling its “core study” of the area within the next month.

Public meetings are likely to start being planned by the end of the month as City Planning looks to introduce its “Long Island City Core Neighborhood Planning Study” to the wider community, according to Penny Lee, who works for City Planning and spoke at Community Board 2’s Land Use Committee meeting at the end of December.

The level of detail that the public will see when the LIC Core study is released is unclear. However, what is known is that the core study will eventually morph into the rezoning document that is used by City Planning to kick off the rezoning process. The primary goal of the study is to convince the public that there is a need for an upzoning so the mayor can add affordable housing.

“We are going to first remind people what the study is about … and then we need to get a lot of input to make sure we are doing the right thing and then start talking about possible recommendations,” Lee said at the meeting.

City Planning announced that it was conducting the study in February 2015 and despite many requests at the Community Board 2’s Land Use Committee meetings little information has surfaced since.

At the December meeting, Lee said that City Planning was at the beginning of the process and it would not be releasing a big body of research. She said the research that the stakeholders–such as the property owners–received in February 2015 will be essentially what the public will see next month.

“We have identified a study area, identified existing conditions and goals and objectives and needs and we need to get buy-in on that,” Lee said.

Lisa Deller, chair of CB2’s Land Use Committee, sought greater clarification.

“I always thought you had done all this work and you were going to share it and then we would have an opportunity for input and then there would be recommendations. That is how I saw it?” Deller said.

Deller, reflecting on past Land Use Committee meetings, added: “You were always saying that [DCP] was still doing analysis,” she said, referring to past inquiries of the status of the study.

“We have done a lot of analysis of the existing conditions,” Lee said. “We have a proposed study area, which is both a zoning study area and a broader context study area for infrastructure purposes,” Lee responded.

The study area was outlined two years ago (see map below). The area consists mainly of the district that underwent a significant upzoning in 2001—particularly by the subways. However, there are still small segments—particularly toward Queensbridge Houses– where there is room for additional development, City Planning has said.

City Planning has said that it aims to incorporate an affordable housing requirement as part of the study/rezoning.

“It has to be an upzoning if we are to establish an affordable housing requirement,” Lee said.

City Planning also aims to encourage office use and other mixed-use development in the core study area.

Lee claims that City Planning is still at the beginning of the process.

“We are getting buy in on the study itself, since we have never talked to the public about it before.”HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Police are investigating a deadly shooting involving a homeowner and two robbers in north Houston.Police say a 78-year-old man stepped out of his home to grab his newspaper around 5:30 Monday morning at the 4200 block of N. Main when he was approached by two suspects who robbed him.The suspects tried to get away in a vehicle, but police say the homeowner pulled out his gun and shot at their truck as they were driving off.The suspects crashed the truck at a car wash at Collingsworth and Hardy.One suspect was hit and killed. The other fled the scene. Police say they are not sure if he was shot.Stay with ABC13 for this developing story.This page has found a new homeI fatti oggetto di indagine risalgono all’anno 2014, allorquando i finanzieri della tenenza di Molfetta, nel corso di indagine finalizzata al contrasto dei delitti contro il patrimonio, effettuavano una perquisizione all’interno della sede di una fantomatica sezione I.N.A.P.I. di Molfetta, smascherando un falso funzionario di patronato e sequestrando centinaia di cartelle relative a pratiche di invalidità civile ed indennità di accompagnamento.

I successivi accertamenti, coordinati dalla Procura della Repubblica di Trani, consentivano di appurare come la persona individuata, arrogandosi indebitamente le qualità di funzionario di patronato, avesse frodato numerosi cittadini, costretti, talvolta sotto minaccia, ad erogare contribuzioni in denaro per la gestione e lo sviluppo delle pratiche finalizzate al conseguimento di benefici economici previdenziali.

Insieme al falso funzionario, operavano altri soggetti, tra cui due medici ed un avvocato, che traevano profitto dagli ignari utenti, obbligati a pagare sia per sottoporsi a visite mediche necessarie per il riconoscimento delle prestazioni d’invalidità civile che per l’assistenza, in sede giudiziaria, nelle controversie con l’I.N.P.S..

Per questo, a conclusione della delicata attività investigativa, le Fiamme Gialle di Molfetta hanno denunciato otto persone - il falso funzionario, quattro dipendenti del patronato, due medici e l’avvocato - per associazione a delinquere finalizzata alla truffa ed estorsione, falso e peculato.For nearly a full year, Aaron Rodgers wasn’t himself. From Week 6 of the 2015 season to Week 6 this year, the two-time MVP missed way too many throws in what became a clunky, inefficient Packers offense. But the Rodgers of old — the championship-belt donning, gunslinging football magician with the shit-eating grin — is back. Since Week 12, when Rodgers correctly suggested the Packers could “run the table,” he’s been on an absolute tear.

Following that proclamation, the Packers won six straight, went from a 4–6 record to an NFC North division title, and transformed into one of the scariest teams in the entire playoff field. They’re this year’s “team nobody wants to play,” and it begins and ends with the alien — ahem, human — behind center.

In some years, these postseason upstarts inspire an unfounded fear thanks to an easy late-season schedule or an unsustainable glut of big plays or some other form of luck. But make no mistake: The Giants, and anyone else who draws Green Bay this postseason, should be afraid of Rodgers — very afraid.

The main driver in Rodgers’s return to greatness is his pinpoint accuracy. Through six weeks, Rodgers was completing just 60 percent of his passes, but over his last six games that number jumped to 71 percent. The rest of his game flows from that ability to fit the ball into tight windows, and that’s especially important for Green Bay because the Packers offense isn’t a “scheme players open” type of offense that frequently uses pick plays, bunch formations, and presnap motion to manufacture separation. It’s a West Coast–style, timing-based passing attack that requires Rodgers to trust his receivers to be where they’re supposed to be so he can just throw it to a spot.

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A few years ago, during a throwaway radio interview, Rodgers said something that struck me, so I wrote it down: “It doesn’t matter how tight of coverage the defender is playing. If his back is to me, if I can read his name and can’t see his face mask, we consider that to be open, and I’ll make the throw every time. By the time he turns around and locates the ball, it’s too late. I trust that our guy will have him beat and will come down with it.”

We’ve seen so many of those throws over the past few weeks. Against Seattle in Week 14, Rodgers hit Davante Adams down the sideline when Adams beat DeShawn Shead off the line.

Against the Vikings, he hit Jared Cook on a similar throw:

Then against the Lions this past Sunday, he threw a pass down the sideline to Geronimo Allison, who had run a wheel route to get out in front of his coverage.

These tight-coverage passes, thrown into small windows downfield while a defensive back has his back turned, were the throws Rodgers was missing during his year-long slump. They’d sail long or out of bounds or come up short. Not anymore, though. He’s returned to attacking tight coverage mercilessly, and his deep throw to Jordy Nelson in the final minute of the Packers’ Week 15 win over the Bears is the most mind-melting example. After sliding to his left, he heaved a bomb over the head of trailing cornerback Cre’von LeBlanc, right into Nelson’s outstretched hands to set up the game-winning field goal.

While Rodgers can kill you from the pocket, he also has an elite ability to extend plays and get outside of it to make throws: He ended the year tied with Jameis Winston for most touchdown passes from outside the pocket (13). Against the Texans in Week 13, Rodgers strafed to his right to avoid pressure, eventually finding Randall Cobb in the back of the end zone for a score. Then, against the Seahawks the next week, he made a ridiculous throw on a similar play, running to his right to avoid pressure from the interior before hitting Adams up the sideline for a 66-yard touchdown.

Two of Rodgers’s more incredible plays this year came on impossible escapes out of the pocket. Against the Vikings, he found Nelson in the back of the end zone. Then against the Lions, after eluding the pass rush for over eight seconds, Rodgers found Allison running along the end line.

With plenty of quarterbacks, these plays die when the pressure arrives: They drop their eyes, lose sight of their receivers, and just hope to not get killed. But for Rodgers, they’re not losses or even just gains; they’re touchdowns.

Even if Rodgers doesn’t throw the ball, his athleticism can still be destructive. He converted three big third downs with his feet Sunday against the Lions, pushing his season total of first-down-creating runs to 25, most on the team.

The most impressive part of Rodgers’s game, though, is his masterful command at the line of scrimmage. He owns one of the most effective hard counts in the game, as the varied rhythm and tone of his snap count frequently draw opposing defenses offside and keep them guessing. This year, the pre-snap phase of the Packers offense is firing on all cylinders. Rodgers is one of the best in the world at deciphering coverage and then changing the play on the fly. With barely perceptible hand signals — and in some cases, just a simple glance — he’s able to get his receivers and backs into the right plays that can take advantage of vulnerabilities in the defense.

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Two touchdown passes against the Lions illustrate why this is so key and so devastating. Early in the third quarter, with Green Bay trailing, 14–10, Rodgers works his pre-snap magic to find the vulnerable spot in the Lions defense. When Detroit safety Glover Quin shows blitz during Rodgers’s snap count, the quarterback pulls up, signals a change in the play, and attacks the exact spot that Quin would’ve been in in coverage. As Quin rushes through the line, Rodgers hits Adams on the goal line for a touchdown.

Later, in the fourth quarter, Rodgers does his best puppet-master impression, changing the play to a quick fade on the outside after Detroit shows another interior blitz before the snap. He signals to Adams on the wing and quickly whips the ball toward the pylon, knowing pressure was coming up the gut and no help was coming for corner Nevin Lawson.

Whether it’s with his arm, feet, or brain, this version of Rodgers can beat you in so many ways. He mixes short, quick passes into the flat, with high-velocity throws on slants over the middle, deep bombs down the sideline, and absurd escapes from pressure to make game-changing plays. Any memories of the guy who struggled with timing and accuracy have faded, and Rodgers is back to normal. Unfortunately for the rest of the NFL, normal equals “the most terrifying passer on planet Earth.”CBO has found that repealing Obamacare increases the national debt...unless you don’t repeal all of it.

Congressional Republicans have been playing this shell game since before the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land. From its earliest estimates in 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has always forecast that Obamacare would reduce the national debt. The math has always been straight-forward. The 10-year cost of Obamacare (for Medicaid expansion, insurance subsidies, etc.) has always been less than revenue generated by new taxes imposed by the ACA and the significant savings extracted from Medicare insurers and providers. (See the chart at the top of the page.) That's why CBO in June 2015 explained that repealing Obamacare would add "at least $137 billion or as much as $353 billion" in new deficits over the ensuing decade. As Sarah Kliff summed it up at the time:

"No matter how CBO scores it, Obamacare reduces the deficit."

(It was that inconvenient truth which prompted then House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in 2011 to denounce the agency's supposed "budget gimmickry." Former Speaker and 2012 GOP White House hopeful Newt Gingrich went even further, declaring, "If you are serious about real health reform, you must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies.")

For Republicans, the flip-side is also true. No matter how CBO scores it, repealing Obamacare increases the deficit.

Unless, of course, you don't actually repeal all of Obamacare. If Republicans cancel all of the Affordable Care Act's spending on Americans' health but pocket all or most of its savings, they can put towards something they really care about. Like tax cuts for rich people.

The GOP plans to “raid” the ACA’s Medicare savings to help fund a tax cut windfall for the wealthy.

Using data and forecasts from CBO, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB) this week provided a helpful summary of the math behind various scenarios for the repeal of Obamacare. While eliminating its coverage provisions saves $1.55 trillion over 10 years, the fate of the ACA's funding is more complicated:

Revenue Provisions: About half of the $800 billion of revenue loss from repealing ACA's taxes comes from removing the 0.9 percent Medicare payroll surtax on wages above $200,000 ($150 billion) and the 3.8 percent surtax on investment income above the same threshold ($250 billion). Another quarter of the revenue loss comes from repealing various fees on insurance companies, medical device companies, and drug manufacturers. Repealing the "Cadillac tax" on high-cost insurance plans costs $100 billion over a decade; those costs are slated to grow substantially over time, and repealing the Cadillac tax without a replacement would also remove a key tool in helping to slow overall health care cost growth. Medicare Provisions - Of the $1.10 trillion of costs from repealing the ACA's Medicare (and related) cuts, roughly $450 billion would come from reversing Medicare Advantage cuts and roughly $500 billion would come from ending reductions in the growth of provider payments in fee-for-service Medicare. Our repeal estimates assume that the reductions in Medicare provider payments already implemented under the ACA are retained and repeal only prevents future cuts. If past cuts are also reversed, repeal could cost $200 billion to $250 billion more over a decade.

(It should be noted that doing away with the Obamacare surtax on investment income alone is a major win for the wealthy. Overall, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found "that the top 1 percent of earners would get an average tax cut of $33,000 if Obamacare is repealed -- and those in the top 0.1 percent would get an average tax cut of $197,000" as a result of the repeal of the ACA's tax provisions.)

Recently, the Kaiser Family Foundation documented the Implications of repealing the Affordable Care Act for Medicare spending and beneficiaries. The good news is that the GOP has no intention of giving back all of those savings to private Medicare insurers, hospitals and doctors. And we know this, because Republicans told us so in 2015.

As you may recall, it was a year ago today that President Obama vetoed a congressional budget that included H.R. 3762, also known as the "Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act." When CBO scored H.R. 3762, it told Chairman Enzi that its Obamacare "repeal" provisions would reduce deficits by $474 billion between 2016 and 2025. Conservatives were overjoyed. As shown by Hot Air's Ed Morrissey ("CBO: Obamacare repeal bill would reduce deficits by half a trillion dollars over 10 years") and The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin ("The Congressional Budget Office has found that repealing Obamacare is a big money-saver"), right-wingers were especially excited that they can now pretend that killing the Affordable Care Act will save Uncle Sam money. In a December article titled, "Obamacare Repeal Would Cut Deficit, Boost Growth - CBO," Investor's Business Daily crowed:

A little-noticed report released Friday afternoon by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the Senate bill to repeal most of ObamaCare would cut the deficit by as much as $474 billion, while boosting GDP, investment and capital stock. The findings stand in sharp contrast to promises by President Obama and other Democrats that ObamaCare would accelerate economic growth and lower federal deficits.

But in referring to the repeal of "most of ObamaCare," IBD skipped over what Health Affairs rightly called "the $879 billion footnote." As that magic footnote in the legislation drafted by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) and Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Richard Burr (R-NC) declares:

All provisions of PPACA and HCERA are repealed except for the changes to Medicare." (Emphasis added). [Note: PPACA and HCERA are the two statutory components of the law now known as the ACA -- or Obamacare.] [Emphasis mine.]

That difference, it turns out, makes all the difference. "Saving that single element," HA explained, "turns the CBO's current deficit raising cost projection for repeal from $137 to $353 billion negative to $449 to $665 billion positive."

A critical element of the ACA's financing involves Medicare payment reductions in title 3 of the law to hospitals, insurance companies, home health agencies, and other health care providers (physician payments in Part B were unaffected) to reduce Medicare's rate of spending growth. The resulting savings help to finance the private insurance and Medicaid coverage expansions in ACA titles 1 and 2. In its first 10 years (2011-2020), CBO estimated these title 3 savings at $450 billion; in its recent June estimate, it projects the savings at $879 billion between 2016 and 2025.

The question, then, is this: What will Republicans do with that $879 billion in savings over 10 years (now estimated to be $1.1 trillion between 2018 and 2027)?

If you guessed "fund an Obamacare replacement program," you'd be wrong. Instead, those savings will go to help pay for the GOP's staggering $6 trillion tax cut. In one form or another, that Treasury draining tax cut has been in every Paul Ryan-authored House GOP budget since 2011. In 2012, Mitt Romney appropriated those same Medicare savings for his gigantic tax rate reduction. In 2016, Paul Ryan in his "Better Way" program put those same dollars toward rewards for the very rich. Donald Trump similarly promised them to the gilded class. And while there are certainly differences between Ryan's and Trump's tax plans, especially regarding their treatment of multinational corporations, the The New York Times explained:

There is certainly a significant overlap. Both would cut income tax rates across the board and keep rates low on income from investments, an approach intended to spur savings that effectively guarantees the juiciest cuts for the wealthy. An analysis of Mr. Trump's latest plan by the Tax Policy Center calculated that the top 0.1 percent of the population, those with incomes over $3.7 million in 2016, would receive an average 14 percent reduction, or about $1.1 million. Households in the middle of the scale -- those earning between about $48,000 and $83,000 today -- would get a 1.8 percent tax cut worth on average $1,010, while the poorest fifth of Americans will gain about $110, or 1 percent of their income.

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan have to pay the $6 trillion price tag for millionaires’ tax cuts somehow.

It's bad enough that President-elect Trump and congressional Republicans will make off with Obamacare's Medicare savings to partly offset their windfall for the wealthy. Making matters worse is that in 2016 Paul Ryan, the same Paul Ryan proposing to ration Medicare by turning into an under-funded voucher scheme, has decried the administration's "$800 billion raid of the program," which he summed up this way:

"Obamacare's plan for Medicare was to raid and ration."

If that slander sounds sickeningly familiar, it should. Despite their nefarious uses of those same Medicare dollars saved by Obamacare, Republicans in 2010 and again in 2014 successfully ran against Democrats as supposed "Medicare killers," as this ad attests:

"By voting for ObamaCare, Democrats like Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Begich cut $717 billion from Medicare -- including $154 billion from Medicare Advantage -- which will hurt seniors."

Fear-mongering like that helped the GOP capture the House in 2010 and the Senate four years later. Now, Vice President-elect Mike Pence tells us, "The first order of business is to keep our promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the kind of healthcare reform that will lower the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government." No one in the GOP has the answer to the trillion-dollar question of what that replacement might be and when it will be unveiled.The San Francisco 49ers fired head coach Chip Kelly, marking the end of his tenure after one season.

General manager Trent Baalke was also fired earlier Sunday.

49ers CEO Jed York released the following statement:

I have informed Trent and Chip of my decision to pursue new leadership for our football team. These types of conversations are never easy, especially when they involve people you respect personally and professionally.

Trent gave this organization every ounce of effort he had over the last 12 years and his contributions were integral to the team reaching three straight NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl. I will forever be grateful for his dedication to the 49ers, and his friendship to me and my family. I wish Trent, Beth and their daughters the very best in whatever the future holds for their family.

“Chip has my gratitude for the job he did this year, navigating the team through some adverse circumstances. I look forward to watching his career continue to unfold, and wish him and Jill great success in life.

Despite my feelings for Trent and Chip, I felt the decision to change our football leadership was absolutely necessary. The performance of this team has not lived up to my expectations or those of our fans, and that is truly disappointing. We all expected to see this team progress and develop as the season went on, but unfortunately that did not happen. That is why now is the time to find a new direction for this team.I think Meryl Streep and all of Hollywood need to remember just one thing. Without we the people paying for those movie tickets, their industry will not and can not survive!

Hollywood, Like Government, Has Forgotten Its Place!

If you refuse to watch, yet another, conservative bashing, congratulatory award program showcasing the self-absorbed, ultra rich in Hollywood, then you didn’t miss much by not tuning into the Golden Globes. Although it was tough to decide who was the most inappropriate self-centered idiot of the night, the “snob” award of the evening goes to Meryl Streep. It appears as Ms. Streep along with Hollywood and our government of late, have forgotten their place. “You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press….. Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”- Meryl Streep

I think Meryl Streep and many of the so-called actors in Hollywood are a little full of themselves I think Meryl Streep and many of the so-called actors in Hollywood are a little full of themselves. They have truly gotten a little big for their own britches as well as the ones given to them by the costume department. Do they really believe that if Hollywood stopped acting, the whole world would fall apart and die in pure misery having nothing to bring true meaning into their empty lives without movies like, A Bullet to the Head, Scarface, Django, and The Devil Wears Prada? I think that bigger names than Streep might disagree with the premise that Hollywood is the only source of true art in the world…..Rembrandt, van Gough, Monet, Mozart, Beethoven and yes, even Bruce Lee are probably rolling over in their graves at this very moment. “And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”- Meryl Streep Where has she been the last eight years while Obama has done nothing but demean and disrespect every American who has differences of opinion regarding his policies? Does she not see the irony in this statement? Is she not using her platform to demean and disrespect the president-elect and the American people who voted for him? Does she really believe that the senseless violent movies that come out of Hollywood have not incited their own amount of violence on our streets and in our communities? This is the same hypocrisy that produces videos and tv appearances, ad nauseum, to tell the public that we must support gun control. All while they go to the bank cashing their million dollar checks protected by armed guards while making movies that senselessly kill, maim and destroy through the very gun violence they claim their principles force them to scorn? I guess principles are easily forgotten when money and fame are the alternatives.

You exist for my entertainment “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.”- Meryl Streep Our founding fathers, yet another group of folks rolling over in their graves because of the lies and disregard for their vision by the liberal left. The “principled” press? We all watched as the so-called principled press lied, cheated, deleted and misled the American people during the entire election process and the Obama presidency. Obviously learning nothing from their lack of journalistic practices, we watch today as they continue to misrepresent the truth in order to protect the agenda they are all determined to fulfill. I recently read a letter written by Nigel Bennett, @ncb58 on twitter, that says it best. “You exist for my entertainment. Some of you are great eye candy. Some of you can deliver a line with such conviction that you bring tears to my eyes. Some of you can scare the crap out of me. Others make me laugh. but you all have one thing in common, you only have a place in my world to entertain me. That’s it. You make your living pretending to be someone else. Playing dress up like a 6-year-old. You live in a make-believe world in front of a camera and often when you are away from one too. Your entire existence depends on my patronage. I’ll crank the organ grinder, you dance. I don’t really care where you stand on issues.

You see, you aren’t real. I turn off my TV or shut down my computer and you cease to exist in my world Honestly, your stance matters far less to me than that of my neighbor. You see, you aren’t real. I turn off my TV or shut down my computer and you cease to exist in my world. Once I am done with you, I can put you back in your little box until I want you to entertain me again. I don’t care that you don’t like Mr. Trump. But I bet you looked cute saying it. Get back into your bubble. I’ll let you know when I’m in the mood for something blue and shiny. And am I also supposed to care that you will leave this great country [when] Trump becomes president? Ha. Please don’t forget to close the door behind you. We’d like to reserve your seat for someone who loves this country and really wants to be here. Make me laugh, or cry. Scare me. But realize that the only words of yours that matter are scripted. I might agree with some of you from time to time, but it doesn’t matter. In my world, you exist solely for my entertainment.” I think Meryl Streep and all of Hollywood need to remember just one thing. Without we the people paying for those movie tickets, their industry will not and can not survive! I think that Hollywood, like government, has forgotten its place.



SHOW DISQUS COMMENTSWhile Donald Trump fully embraced Twitter, Instagram and live Facebook videos during the campaign, he is not a fan of email. | Getty Donald Trump's complicated relationship with technology The incoming president has mastered Twitter, but he doesn't do email and rarely uses a computer.

Donald Trump rarely opens his Apple computer. Friends say he doesn’t surf the Web, preferring to read print newspapers, and he keeps stacks of magazines on his desk. Aides say they have never received an email or text message from him.

Trump’s strange analysis this week of the Russian hacking scandal — “computers have complicated lives very greatly” and “nobody knows exactly what is going on” — sounded wildly out of sync with the tech-obsessed culture that Trump has so expertly tapped into through Twitter.

But the comments confirmed what everybody close to him already knew: He’s sort of a Luddite.

Friends, aides and people who have dealt with Trump, who is 70 years old, say he is a reluctant user of technology — a sharp departure from President Barack Obama, who swipes through his iPad between meetings to catch up on the news, modernized the White House’s information technology infrastructure and forced the administration into the social media era.

Trump, by contrast, is known to go far out of his way to avoid the trappings of modern technology. His resistance to even basic means of digital communication, such as email, often frustrated some campaign aides and advisers, two people close to the transition said.

When conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote a column last December that pleased Trump, he wanted to send Erickson an email. So Trump scribbled a note with a black Sharpie and had his assistant make a digital scan of the note and email it to Erickson.

“He’s the only one who’s ever sent me an email like that,” Erickson said, laughing. “He considers email a distraction.”

Erickson added: “He gets his emails printed out, and he reads and annotates them and sends them back as a PDF.” Current and former aides say that is standard practice.

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend, said he knows to send emails to one of Trump’s assistants, who download them for him. Memos can be faxed, he said. But Trump wants to talk by phone, often sitting up into the wee hours dialing business associates or campaign aides.

“Until a couple years ago, there were no computer terminals on some of the desks at the Trump Organization. He doesn’t browse the Web,” Stone said. “Until about four years ago, he was still using bicycle messengers. They were very popular in Manhattan in the 1980s. He is very old school.”

Some Trump supporters are quick to point out that he understands the power of technology and say people should not discount his ability to adapt to whatever he needs to use — if it benefits him personally.

Vanquished foes cite his Twitter feed, which Trump used effectively to communicate his message and drive his campaign, as one reason they lost. Chris Wilson, who led digital efforts for Ted Cruz’s campaign, said the Trump camp seemed to spend less money and had less of a strategy on digital ads, along with paying fewer staffers. But it was all done by Trump, he said.

“He would tweet, and it would be a headline on all three nightly news programs,” said Chris Wilson. “We started calling it the Full Trump. He was a force of nature.”

Stone said Trump is “obsessed with Twitter” and has “great instincts” because he watches TV so much and understands ratings. Matt Braynard, a former digital and data director, said Trump often approved even the smallest of digital messages and wanted to know exactly how the campaign was reaching people online.

“We would sometimes set up events on Facebook or these other platforms and if he had not seen a Facebook post for an event, and we knew it didn’t have a lot of likes, or enough reshares or attendees, we would delete it,” Braynard said.

He added: “He isn't a digital buff, but he knows what tools matter and what they can do for him.”

While Trump fully embraced Twitter, Instagram and live Facebook videos, he is not a fan of email.

Trump told Erickson and others that email is a problem because people waste their day on it and it only opens them up to trouble. He has talked to aides and friends about business executives who were damaged by emails at trials and other politicians, like Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who have brought themselves trouble via email.

During the campaign, Trump frequently talked about Clinton’s server publicly and privately, criticizing her for deleting emails.

His organization was accused of deleting emails in a trial 10 years ago, and a Florida judge was startled that the organization had no emails and questioned the lawyer extensively, according to USA Today, which obtained the transcripts.

“My understanding from speaking to my client is that there are no emails,” Robert Borrello, the lawyer said, according to the transcripts. He didn’t respond to a POLITICO request for comment.

“That one was a tough one to swallow,” said Jeffrey Streitfeld, the judge, now retired, in an interview. “It stuck out in my mind that they didn’t have the emails. It was not an acceptable response, and I made it very clear. I had never seen anything like that.”

Close watchers of Trump say he is downplaying the Russian hacking, which intelligence officials say was done to benefit his campaign, by blaming technology because he knows the cyberattack could be more damaging to him — and he knows exactly how technology works.

“What’s troubling him is the path could come back to his people or people he’s been associated with,” said Wayne Barrett, a longtime Trump biographer. “He knows this is a big deal and could be a big problem for him.”Gregg Krupa

The Detroit News

Detroit — Last season, like this one, inconsistency marked the Red Wings’ disappointing performance. Jeff Blashill accepted his share of the blame.

“Without question, I better have learned,” Blashill said last April, a few days after his first season as head coach ended.

“Now, that’s in every job I’ve had and in every year of every job I’ve had: You better learn and get better.”

This season, the Wings are worse.

A particularly low moment in the first half came after a 4-1 loss to the Coyotes Dec. 13. The Red Wings were unready to play against an inferior team, at home, in a game pregnant with possible points as their playoff fortunes dimmed.

“Well, ultimately, the performance of this team in my responsibility; 100 percent,” Blashill said. “So, I accept tons of responsibility for that.”

Blashill continues to struggle to improve a team that has done far too much losing in the first 40 games.

The Wings are in last place in the Atlantic Division.

Their power play is so weak it is setting a standard for impotence on the road unseen in the NHL in 30 years.

Their playoff chances are so narrow they must reap about 65 percent of the points available in the 42 games remaining to match their 93-points of last season, when they squeaked into the playoffs.

It will require significant improvement.

Yeoman's task awaits

In the first 40 games, they garnered slightly less than half the points.

Amid the maelstrom, Blashill, 43, grapples in his second season with destructive trends dragging down the franchise.

Players who won Stanley Cups are largely gone. Prized free agents have decide to play with other teams. Misjudgments on personnel have hampered “the rebuild on the fly.”

A roster with a good supply of support players lacks top stars.

Blashill is not to blame.

But he should be gauged by whether players improve and play up to their potential.

And, at about the halfway point of the season, those are big issues of concern.

Unless there is a marked improvement in the Red Wings performance by April, there is likely to be a harsh review of Blashill’s first two seasons.

While the ultimate reckoning may be inappropriate, the team’s descent towards the bottom of the NHL standings increasingly will be attributed to him, despite developments plainly beyond his control.

His predecessor, Mike Babcock, pointed to the aging leadership core , before he left for more promising circumstances in Toronto.

Unknown then was that Pavel Datsyuk’s unhappiness would lead to his departure. Attempts to replace him in free agency made reinforcing the defensive corps all the more difficult.

Then, at the start of the first season without Datsyuk, it became clear Niklas Kronwall’s damaged knees would permanently diminish his performance.

Red Wings midseason report: Playoff streak in big trouble

Meanwhile, with the exception of one recent season, the Wings' power play has been in decline, in large part because they have failed to replace Nicklas Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski as quarterbacks, five and six seasons after they retired. Regardless of how many Xs and Os as Blashill or John Torchetti, the assistant in charge of the power play, draw up, until defensemen more routinely help gain the offensive zone and set-up shop with the man advantage, the power play is likely to flail.

In a quest for scoring, Blashill has juggled lines to the point of risking unfamiliarity, if not beyond. But there are fewer goals still. Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar and Riley Sheahan continue to slump.

His attempts to bring along young players like Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou and Ryan Sproul have drawn some criticism from commentators and fans.

Disciplined hand

But Blashill should earn plaudits for some of that work.

Despite the ample struggles of the team and calls to accelerate the development of prospects, Blashill has not lost focus of the need to train the trio to constantly provide the sort of effort — with and without the puck, and in all areas of the ice — that may make them stars, not just players.

All three have felt the sting of reduced playing time when Blashill thought they failed to attend to all of the details of their duties, and they said they understood the process.

In the NHL, it is called coaching.

Blashill’s familiarity with Wings AHL players, having coached in Grand Rapids, is potentially critical. Short of better prospects, arguably his key role is preparing the young players to assume major roles.

“I take responsibility in that, as well,” he said after last season, when Tatar and Nyquist regressed.

“Part of what we want to do here is make sure we’re helping our guys get better and making sure we get better as a team through the course of the year.”

But Nyquist and Tatar are largely failing in their efforts, again, this season, and that makes Blashill’s work with the likes of Dylan Larkin, Mantha, Athanasiou, Sproul, Alexey Marchenko, Xavier Ouellet and Nick Jensen even more important.

One wonders if even Babcock could have gotten more from the current roster, especially with the Red Wings leading the NHL in man-games lost to injury.

But Blashill must secure some improvement. Even if it is only making sure the young guys are fully engaged and playing complete games, his efforts must have an impact.

After last season, Blashill said it is difficult to significantly improve a lineup through free agents and trades.

“From my perspective, we need some of our young players to become elite players in the NHL,” he said. “That is extraordinarily hard to do, and it’s way different than being a good complimentary player.

“And ultimately, some of our young guys are going to have to be that elite, go-to player that ‘Pav’ and ‘Z’ have been here for a long, long time.”

Judging by the first half of the season, it may be all Blashill can do to make sure the young guys are learning the lessons of stars.

The Red Wings sorely need a couple of them.

gregg.krupa@detroitnews.com

twitter.com/greggkrupaHost Jimmy Fallon mocked President-elect Donald Trump Donald TrumpGraham: 'I could not disagree more' with Trump support of Afghanistan troop withdrawal GOP believes Democrats handing them winning 2022 campaign Former GOP operative installed as NSA top lawyer resigns MORE several times during the opening monologue of the 74th annual Golden Globes on Sunday night.

Over the course of four minutes, Fallon compared Trump to the menacing and murderous King Joffrey from “Game of Thrones,” joked about Trump’s difficulty finding inauguration performers and said the ceremony, unlike the U.S. electoral system, still valued the popular vote.

“This is the Golden Globes: One of the few places left where America honors the popular vote,” Fallon said.

Fallon then compared Trump to Joffrey, who was killed previously on the show and was known as one of its most villainous characters.

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“[Game of Thrones] has so many plot twists and shocking moments, a lot of people are wondering what it would be like if King Joffery had lived. Well, in 12 days we’re going to find out,” Fallon said.

Fallon also joked that the results of the award show "were carefully tabulated by the accounting firm Ernst and Young and Putin."

Fallon also pointed to the Meryl Streep film “Florence Foster Jenkins,” a biographical comedy about a terrible opera singer.

"The character has been dubbed the world’s worst opera singer, and even she turned down singing at Donald Trump’s inauguration,” he joked.

Fallon made headlines last year when he invited Trump on his late night talk show and asked to tussle his famous hair.West Ham United are considering other transfer targets after failing in a second bid for Jermain Defoe and again being told by Sunderland that he will not be sold this January window.

West Ham are not, however, bidding for Celtic striker Moussa Dembele having been linked with a £20million move for the 20-year-old who was only signed from Fulham last summer for £500,000 compensation.

West Ham co-chairman David Sullivan told Telegraph Sport: “We have not bid for this player and he’s not a target of ours.”

The Premier League club, who face Manchester City in the FA Cup Third Round on Friday evening, have made no secret of the fact that they are in the market for a striker this month.

A second bid went in – although not one that was significantly higher than their initial offer - but further communication from Sunderland has indicated that they are determined not to sell as they desperately fight against the prospect of relegation..The economic impact of Brexit-induced reductions in migration to the UK

Jonathan Portes, Giuseppe Forte

The various projections of the impact of Brexit on the UK economy that were produced during the referendum campaign omitted the economic impact of changes in migration to the UK. This column presents plausible scenarios for future migration flows and estimates of the likely impacts. The potential negative impact of Brexit-induced reductions in openness to migration on the UK economy could well equal that resulting from Brexit-induced reductions in trade.

Two issues dominated the UK’s Brexit referendum debate: immigration and the economy. During the campaign, there was extensive discussion of the economic impact of Brexit on the UK economy. Detailed projections, under different scenarios for the post-Brexit UK-EU relationship, were produced by HM Treasury (2016), the IMF (2016) and OECD (2016), among others.

However, none of these projections incorporated the economic impact of changes in migration to the UK; they focused on trade and investment. There was little or no analytical justification for this omission (Portes 2016a). In a new paper (Forte and Portes, forthcoming) we try to fill that gap, using a broadly analogous methodology and approach to that used in the trade-based analyses. We analyse the impact of Brexit on migration flows to the UK from the EU, produce scenarios for future flows, and provide plausible, empirically based estimates of the likely impacts.

We estimate the economic determinants of migration to the UK from a number of the largest source countries for economic migration, as proxied by quarterly National Insurance number (NINo) registrations. Both high-level macroeconomic developments (the evolution of GDP in both the UK and source countries, changes in unemployment rates, and the bilateral exchange rate) and the existence of free movement of workers are significant determinants. In particular, our estimates imply that free movement results in an increase over time of almost 500% – that is, by a factor of six.

Coupled with NIESR’s November 2016 economic forecasts [Hacche et al. 2016], our results allow us to produce scenarios for future flows between now and 2020. In a central scenario, we assume that, over the period between now and 2020, the combination of policy changes and the psychological impact of the Brexit vote is equivalent to reversing half of the impact of introducing free movement in the first place. In a more extreme – ‘hard Brexit’ – scenario, we assume the impact is completely reversed.

The resulting falls are quite large; in the central scenario, NINo registrations average about 443,000 over the 2016-20 period, falling to 327,000 by 2020 while in the extreme scenario they average about 350,000 falling to 140,000 by the end of the period. While this may seem implausibly steep, recall that as recently as 2003 NINo registrations for EU nationals totalled about 100,000, even with free movement in place for the EU15.

Figure 1 NINo registrations with free movement coefficient falling to 50% of its original value

Assuming that falls in NINo registrations translate into a fall into net migration on a proportional basis, our scenarios imply that net EU migration to the UK could fall by up to 91,000 on the central scenario, and up to 150,000 on a more extreme scenario. This is comparable to other estimates that employ different methodologies (Vargas-Silva 2016, Migration Watch 2016).

In order to translate these scenarios of the impact of Brexit on migration flows into impacts on economic variables, we use the existing empirical evidence. A recent literature uses cross-country evidence to estimate the impact of migration on growth and productivity in advanced economies. Boubtane et al. (2015) find that migration in general boosts productivity in advanced economies, but by varying amounts; for the UK, the estimated impact is that a 1 percentage point in the migrant share of the working age population leads to a 0.4-0.5% increase in productivity. Jaumotte et al. (2016) find that a 1% increase in the migrant share of the adult population results in an increase in GDP per capita and productivity of approximately 2%. Perhaps surprisingly, the estimated aggregate impact of high- and low-skilled migration are not significantly different (although the distributional implications are). One possible, partial explanation is that low-skilled migration appears to increase labour force participation among native women (a result also found in individual country studies, see Barone and Mocetti 2011). This is one example of the type of complementarity or spillover effect by which migrants working in low-skilled occupations might indirectly increase productivity and output and is likely to be relevant to the UK.

We use these coefficients to estimate the possible impact of falls in EU migration on GDP and GDP per capita growth between now and 2020, compared to a counterfactual where EU migration remains constant. In our central scenario, the impact would be to reduce GDP by between about 0.63% to 1.19%, while GDP per capita would be reduced by between about 0.22% and 0.78%. In the more extreme scenario, the hit to GDP per capita would be up to 1.16%.

Figure 2 Possible impact of falls in EU migration on GDP between now and 2020

In order to facilitate comparison with the estimates produced by the Treasury and others of the long-term impacts of Brexit, we also calculate the impact on GDP per capita out to 2030, assuming that migration remains flat at these reduced levels after 2020. Here the impact on GDP per capita ranges from a fall of 0.92% to 3.38% under the central scenario, and from 1.53% to 5.36% under the extreme scenario. This compares to the Treasury’s central estimate of a reduction in GDP from Brexit of 6%.

Of course, our scenarios for future migration flows are dependent on a number of assumptions relating both to our methodology and to the inherent uncertainties over future policy. Nevertheless, we believe they are useful for illustrative purposes. And while the theoretical basis for the view that reductions in migration will translate into reductions in productivity is (as with trade) clear, and supported by the empirical evidence, using quantitative estimates based on historical cross-country data to construct scenarios for the impact on the UK economy going forward is inevitably speculative.

As with other analyses of the long-term impact of Brexit, these estimates should be viewed as an indication of the sign of the likely impact and of the plausible rough order of magnitude of the possible impacts, rather than a point estimate. Nevertheless, it is striking that the potential negative impact of Brexit-induced reductions in openness to migration on the UK economy is, according to our analysis, of a similar order of magnitude to that resulting from Brexit-induced reductions in trade.

References

Barone, G, and S Mocetti (2011). "With a little help from abroad: The effect of low-skilled immigration on the female labour supply". Labour Economics 18(5), 664-675.

Boubtane, E, J C Dumont and C Rault (2015). “Immigration and Economic Growth in the OECD Countries 1986-2006”. CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5392. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2622005 (accessed on 29/11/2016)

Forte, G and J Portes (2017). “The economic impact of Brexit-induced reductions in migration”. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, forthcoming.

Hacche, G, O Carreras, S Kirby, I Liadze, J Meaning, R Piggot and J Warren (2016). “World Overview”. National Institute Economic Review, November, 238: F9-F16.

HM Treasury (2016), “Analysis of the long term economic impact of EU membership and its alternatives”. CM 9250. ISBN 978-1-4741-3090-5. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-treasury-analysis-the-long-term-economic-impact-of-eu-membership-and-the-alternatives (accessed on 29/11/2016)

International Monetary Fund (2016). “United Kingdom: Selected Issues”. Available at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=43980 (accessed on 29/11/2016)

Jaumotte, F, K Koloskova and S C Saxena (2016). “Impact of migration on income levels in advanced economies”. Spillover Task Force, IMF. Available at: http://www.imf.org/~/media/files/publications/spillovernotes/spillovernote8 (accessed on 29/11/2016)

Kierzenkowski, R et al. (2016). "The Economic Consequences of Brexit: A Taxing Decision". OECD Economic Policy Papers, No. 16, OECD Publishing, Paris.

Migration Watch (2016). “UK immigration policy outside the EU”. Available at http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/371 (accessed on 29/11/2016)

Office for Budget Responsibility (2015). “Fiscal Sustainability Report”. Available at http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/fsr/fiscal-sustainability-report-june-2015/ (accessed on 29/11/2016).

Portes, J (2016a). “The Treasury's Brexit analysis and immigration”. National Institute of Economic and Social Research Blog. Available at http://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/treasurys-brexit-analysis-and-immigration (accessed on 29/11/2016)

Portes, J (2016b), ‘Immigration after Brexit’, National Institute Economic Review, November, 238: R13-R21.

Vargas-Silva, C (2016). “Potential Implications of Admission Criteria for EU Nationals Coming to the UK”. Migration Observatory report, COMPAS, University of Oxford, UK.Thursday, March 23, 2017

Donkey stops a wolf to death and then eats it!

Found on Reddit, this picture of a donkey with a wolf in its mouth was explained by a Redditor thusly:"Here in Northwestern Ontario we have a rather persistent wolf issue, so every farmer with pigs, chickens, cows, sheep, etc has at least one donkey in the pasture to prevent wolves from attacking the herds. Those donkeys don't take any shit from anything"We have no idea how a farmer trains a donkey to catch eat wolves or coyotes but we imagine it's a matter of bludgeoning the furry fellow to death with the heavy legs of the donkey.But as for the wolf putting themselves in the position to be stomped and eaten by the donkey, that's an entirely different question.Now, if someone could kindly figure out how this cow killed and ate a rabbit ...Update: it's been suggest in the comment section, this dead animal may be a coyote, it could well be now that we look at the short face again.Times have never been tougher in the Wild West – the zombie apocalypse has started and you have to protect the innocent while travelling to safer grounds. Grab your guns and send the undead back to hell in this action-packed game! Collect coins and make sure to upgrade your weapons to survive. Hire companions and equip yourself with medkits, ammunition and adrenaline. Can you withstand the attacks and defeat the walking dead?LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Britain will be in the “front seat” to negotiate a new trade deal with the incoming administration of Donald Trump, a top Republican in the United States Senate said, the BBC reported.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said after meeting British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that a trade deal between the two countries would be a priority as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.

Ahead of the Brexit vote, President Barack Obama exhorted Britons to stay in the EU and warned that if they left they would be at “the back of the queue” for a U.S. trade deal.

Corker said Johnson knows “full well” that “there is no way the United Kingdom is going to take a back seat”.

“They will take a front seat and I think it will be our priority to make sure that we deal with them on a trade agreement initially but in all respects in a way that demonstrates the long-term friendship that we’ve had for so long,” Corker was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Trump, while a candidate for the U.S. presidency, hailed Brexit as a “great thing” when visiting Scotland the day after the vote though Britain cannot sign a trade deal until it leaves the EU which under current plans will likely be in 2019.

After visits to see aides in Trump Tower in New York and meet members of Congress in Washington, Johnson said: “Clearly, the Trump administration-to-be has a very exciting agenda of change. One thing that won’t change, though, is the closeness of the relationship between the US and the UK.

“We are America’s principal partner in working for global security and, of course, we are great campaigners for free trade,” Johnson was quoted as saying by the Guardian newspaper.

“We hear that we are first in line to do a great free trade deal with the United States. So, it’s going to be a very exciting year for both our countries,” Johnson said. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Michael Holden)By Andrew Pontbriand

CIA forced Esteban Santiago to fight for ISIS? The man who shot up the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, killing 5, is accused of having mental health issues. However, these types of incidents are becoming more common, which suggests the reality of these events could be more sinister than we are led to believe.

On Friday, carnage erupted at the Ft. Lauderdale airport. Witnesses reported that a man emerged out of the bathroom and started “executing people by shooting them in the back of the head.”

The man was Esteban Santiago, age 26. Santiago is an Army veteran who served in Iraq, and lived in Anchorage Alaska where he worked for a security company, Signal 88.

The shooting itself killed 5 people and injured 8. The facts and evidence reported by the mainstream media is done so in a way that creates a narrative. The narrative that has been created suggests Santiago is just a crazed gunman, with “mental health issues.”

This could very well be the case, as even his family reported he was “changed,” after he returned from his National Guard deployment in Iraq in 2011. “He changed after Iraq. He talked about all the destruction and the killing of children. He had visions all the time,” said Ruiz, speaking in Spanish during the interview [with CNN].

Yet again, there is a common theme presenting itself in the wake of horrific attacks on the innocent public. A theme that points to an “outside influence,” which suggests there could be a more nefarious reason this attack was carried out.

Here are some important facts and questions regarding the shooting and the shooter, Esteban Santiago.

Esteban Santiago joined the Puerto Rico National Guard in December 2007, according to Col. Candis Olmstead of the Alaska Army National Guard, where he also served.

Santiago was deployed to Iraq with the Puerto Rico National Guard from April 2010 to February 2011.



Later on, he had been reportedly gone AWOL “several times.” He then received a general discharge for “unsatisfactory performance.”

There were never any known or reported ties to terrorism, according to the FBI and Homeland Security.

Esteban Santiago, had walked into an Anchorage FBI Field Office, where he appeared uneasy. He reported to the FBI that the CIA was “forcing him to join ISIS .”

.” He later voluntarily checked himself in for a mental health evaluation.

According to court records, Santiago had been charged in a domestic violence case.

Family and friends report Esteban was “patriotic,” but that he had changed after his tour in Iraq.

Getting to the root of this story, we see a picture being painted by the mainstream media. The media has declared Santiago to be a loose cannon, suffering from mental health issues, with a potentially violent history.

This sort of picture conveniently discredits the most important part of this entire story. Esteban Santiago seemed to have been asking for help – as he voluntarily went to the FBI to report that he was being targeted by the CIA, and forced to “join ISIS.”

Of course, an admission or records of the CIA’s involvement in their nefarious, top-secret programs is nearly impossible. Thanks to plausible deniability and a narrative carried by the media that says anyone who speaks about a conspiracy involving government must be crazy, the truth may never be known.

Examining recent history of potentially mind-controlled “shooters.”

When an informed person hears the term, mind control, their first thought is typically the MK Ultra program. MK Ultra, was a CIA mind control program using a variety of tactics, and likely still exists today (although under a different code name).

One of the main goals of the MK Ultra program, was to create the infamous “Manchurian Candidate,” which is the ultimate weapon in a cold war or spy game. Whether abroad, or at home, nefarious groups operating clandestinely could use such an individual to target politicians, diplomats, high-value targets, and as unlikely as it may seem – even the public.

In recent times, names like Aaron Alexis and James Boulware may come to mind.

In 2013, Aaron Alexis walked into a Washington D.C. Navy yard equipped with a rifle. On the stock of the rifle, Aaron Alexis had carved, “my ELF weapon.” Was this a message?

The document below was released by the Newport Police Department, and clearly shows Aaron Alexis made a desperate call for help, as he seemed certain he was being followed and targeted.

Aaron Alexis clearly states that the individuals that were following him were using a “microwave machine,” hence the message he carved into his gun (my ELF weapon). Not surprisingly, the media was quick to discount and discredit Alexis, calling him a conspiracy theorist and someone suffering from mental health issues.

Then, in 2015, a man by the name of James Boulware opened fire at the Dallas Texas Police Department headquarters. When the news broke, I began investigating immediately, and made a report that mentions none other than Aaron Alexis:

Between Esteban Santiago, Aaron Alexis, and James Boulware, just to name a short list, a common theme occurs. Each individual claims to have been either hearing voices, or told or instructed to do something by the CIA or a related intelligence agency. With that being said, the opposite could just as well be true, and each individual could certainly be crazed, unwell, or insane.

The Mainstream Media over the years has developed a hard line and firm stance to demonize and discredit any alternative belief or evidence that suggests a conspiracy has taken place. This one-sided stance on news leads the public down a path of one-sided thinking, and creates an atmosphere of denial that any such agenda or conspiracy could ever exist.

Note: – Click here to read how the CIA developed a ‘heart attack gun.’

The fact of the matter is even if some official came forward on the record and stated that mind control programs have been used to carry out “false flag” attacks, the individual would lose his job, his pension, and would ultimately be called crazy, and face the same scrutiny of the shooters and killers themselves.

This report serves only to question the official story and “evidence” provided by officials and the mainstream media. We invite our readers to question all information and to draw your own conclusions. As more information becomes public in the days and weeks to come, we will continue to investigate.

Andrew Pontbriand is a writer at Distract Media, where this article first appeared, and is Founder of www.thenewmediatimes.com. He is a former writer for websites such as Activist Post and The Anti-Media. Entrepreneur, coin collector, researcher, and American National.After a 10-game winning streak in December, the Philadelphia Flyers tried to break another streak on Saturday afternoon. After losing five games in a row, the Tampa Bay Lightning came to town to try and make that streak for the Flyers six. Both teams are coming off embarrassing losses – the Flyers 5-2 against the Rangers, and the Lightning 6-1 against the Nashville Predators.

The new-look Flyers, complete with Michal Neuvirth in net and Wayne Simmonds demoted to the third line, looked to shake things up.

The first time the Flyers played the Lightning at home this year (November 19), Andrei Vasilevsky shut the door on all 32 Flyers’ shots. When they played the Lightning again four days later, they lost 4-2 due to two quick third period goals by the Lightning after the Flyers had a superb first two periods. The Flyers are looked to avoid a repeat of that outing.

The Lightning were three points behind the Flyers for the last Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference, so this was an integral game for both teams to continue jockeying for playoff positioning. Even if it is only January.

They say that the two-goal lead is one of the worst leads to have in hockey, but luckily that did not prove to be true for the Flyers Saturday as they broke their five-game slump with a big 4-2 win over the Tampa bay lightning. Thanks to a four-goal outburst in the second period, the Flyers were able to buck the losing trend and get back on track. Hopefully.

While the Flyers had most of the puck possession within the first five minutes of the game, the Lightning struck on a quick two-on-one 5:34 into the contest as Nikita Kucherov scored his 19th goal of the season. The Flyers received their first power play opportunity of the game, thanks to Vladislav Namestikov, 10:54 into the first period but failed to capitalize on a few good chances.

At the end of the first period, the Flyers led in shots 14-7 but were down, 1-0. Despite dominating the first period, spending a majority of the period in the Tampa zone, and winning 62% of their faceoffs, Tampa Bay had the lead.

After a rough first period, the Flyers capitalized four times in the second period with goals scored by Travis Konecny, Sean Couturier, Michael Raffl and Radko Gudas on 16 shots in the frame. In the first, they had chances, but nothing was bouncing their way. The second stanza proved to be the exact opposite.

Travis Konecny ties it up! pic.twitter.com/7XjfVXJuot — Nick Piccone (@nickpiccone) January 7, 2017

While the Flyers, who have scored 49 goals in the second period coming into Saturday, routed the Lightning for four, Tampa retaliated with a goal of their own, scored on the power play by Alex Killorn.

After letting a goal in on his second shot on goal, Neuvirth has settled into the cage, posting a .875 save percentage going into the third period.

Two big saves by Neuvirth, but the Lighting are going on the PP. #Flyers #FlyersTalk pic.twitter.com/XbxuNsHzQW — Nick Piccone (@nickpiccone) January 7, 2017

Vasilevsky posted a .750 save percentage in the second frame, allowing the Flyers to take a commanding 4-2 lead into the third period.

The third period did not yield any goals, but there were penalties on both sides of the ice and a scare when the Lightning’s J.T. Brown went down in a heap. Brown was able to skate off the ice under his own will to an applause at the Wells Fargo Center.

In his return, Neuvirth was able to post a .923 save percentage, and, more importantly, help snap the Flyers’ skid. This was the final meeting of the regular season between the teams, with Tampa Bay winning the season series 1-2, but the Flyers were able to distance themselves from them in the playoff hunt.

P.S.: The Orange Mites on Ice team won 2-0 with two fantastic goals from number 10. Good job, kid.In the years after World War II, Japan, whose manufacturing capabilities had been almost completely wiped out by Allied bombing, attempted to rebuild both their economy and their industrial base by producing large quantities of inexpensive goods and exporting them to America and other countries. (The USA was the primary market, however, since it emerged from the war with a robust economy and had no damaged infrastructure to rebuild.) The phrase “Made in Japan” came to symbolize cheap, shoddy goods to Americans, and eventually the rumor arose that Japan had sought to avoid this stigma by deviously renaming one of its towns “Usa” so it could identify its products as being “Made in USA.”

This rumor was almost certainly a tongue-in-cheek joke inspired by someone’s noticing the coincidence of a town in Japan named Usa (and perhaps fueled by American xenophobia or lingering resentment of the Japanese). In fact, the Japanese city of Usa (on the island of Kyushu) was not created by renaming an existing town; it was called Usa long before World War II. As well, nearly every country that imports goods requires them to be marked with the name of their country of origin, not a town or city, and it would have taken some circuitous (and probably expensive) routing to get goods marked “Made in USA” into other countries without anyone’s noticing that they had originated in Japan. America, especially, Japan’s largest market by far, would certainly have noticed the incongruity of goods marked “Made in USA” being imported into the USA.

Of course, the idea that the U.S. Customs Department would simply shrug at Japanese products marked “Made in USA,” despite the confusion they would obviously cause, simply because they were “legitimately” identified as coming from the Japanese city of Usa is just silly. Lest anyone think that U.S. Customs inspectors were lax about enforcing the rules or willing to look the other way, consider the following difficulty Sony experienced with them as late as 1969 when Sony tried to downplay the fact that its products were Japanese in origin:

. . . despite the Japanese flag flying on Fifth Avenue, most consumers, including actual customers, remained unaware that Sony was a Japanese company. Morita [President of Sony Sales] was uneasy about the possibility of a negative reaction, and did what he could to sustain the misapprehension. The required “Made in Japan” label, for example, was positioned on the product as inconspicuously as possible, in the smallest permissible size; and more than once, Sony edged below the minimum, causing U.S. Customs inspectors to turn back shipments.

A notable exception to the USA’s import laws is the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which is allowed to use the “Made in USA” label on their products and export them to the USA duty-free. Legislation was introduced in Congress to close this loophole (also known as the “Saipan Scam“) in 1999, but it died in committee.WESTCHESTER (CBSLA.com) — The man arrested after leading police on a bizarre pursuit from the San Fernando Valley Monday is apparently the same man accused of punching a nanny two years ago and trying to kidnap a boy in Westchester.

On Monday, Los Angeles police started chasing a black Nissan in Sylmar believing the driver had a gun.

For more than an hour, he made strange gestures with his hands and arms during the pursuit, which came to an end in South L.A. where Andron Gazarov, 35, bailed and took off running.

Police shot him with bean bags. He said a prayer, got on his knees and finally surrendered.

Jeff Tompkins, who owns Tompkins Square Bar and Grill in Westchester, said he had no idea that the man behind the wheel was the same guy arrested almost three years ago in front of the taco shop he used to own.

“I wouldn’t have put that together. So it’s quite shocking,” Tompkins said.

In February 2014, Gazarov was arrested on suspicion of trying to kidnap a four-year-old boy as he was walking with his nanny in front of T2 Tacos.

According to detectives, Gazarov punched the nanny, grabbed the boy and ran off.

When one of Tompkins’ former employees heard the boy’s screams, “he went running down the street. So he stopped the abductor, and then the child ran back to the nanny,” Tompkins recalled.

At the time, Gazarov faced up to 12 years in prison. So many wonder how he was back on the streets almost three years later and led police on a pursuit.

“Obviously, we’re dealing with an individual that’s very unstable,” Tompkins added.

The LAPD told CBS2’s Rachel Kim that crimes are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. A person’s release depends on their criminal history, whether bail was paid, served his/her time or was on probation.Notice: Requires one of the following virtual reality headsets: HTC Vive or Valve Index. See the VR Support section for more info.

About This Game Marimba VR is a great way for percussionists to practice their instrument at home as well as a fun game in which to relax and play some music. It takes advantage of something amazing about virtual reality - being able to practice something in-game and having that skill translate to the real world."In my own field of education research, for example, teachers have told me how they are frequently confronted by upset parents scared about changes to education, unaware that the changes they have seen on the news only apply to England.Hull have rejected a £3m bid from West Ham for midfielder Robert Snodgrass, according to Sky sources.

Snodgrass, 29, has been one of the top performers at struggling Hull this season and has scored seven goals with two assists.

Losing the Scotland international would obviously be a major blow to the Tigers, who have just named Marco Silva their new manager in the hope that he can mastermind Premier League survival.

Image: New Hull City manager Marco Silva will hope he can retain the services of Robert Snodgrass

However, Sky sources recently reported that Snodgrass had turned down the offer of new Hull contract, alerting several Premier League clubs to his possible availability during the transfer window.

West Ham have been active in the early stages of the transfer window but failed in bids to land strikers Jermain Defoe and Scott Hogan, and it now remains to be seen whether they will up their offer for Snodgrass.

The former Leeds and Norwich midfielder missed most of the 2014/15 campaign and half of the following season due to a serious knee injury.

However, he has been back to his best for the Tigers this season, scoring in the 2-2 home draw against Everton last week with a superb free-kick and also finding the target during Monday's 3-1 defeat at West Brom.Moscow says documents alleging that Russia has compromising information on Donald Trump are a fabrication and a “total bluff.” Russia has never gathered information of this kind on either the US president-elect, or his former rival, Hillary Clinton.

“The Kremlin has no compromising information on Trump. This report does not correspond to reality and is nothing but an absolute fiction,” the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday.

“This is a total bluff, an absolute fabrication, complete nonsense,” he said.

READ MORE: Ain't that a p*sser? #GoldenShowers trends after unverified report of Trump sexcapades

He reiterated that there is no compromising information on Hillary Clinton either, and that the Russian authorities do not accumulate this type of information.

“Of course not. The Kremlin does not collect compromising information. The Kremlin [and] the Russian president are engaged in building relationships with our foreign partners, firstly – in the interests of the Russian Federation, in the interests of the Russian people, secondly – in the interests of global peace, stability and security,” Peskov said.

FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

On Tuesday, CNN published an article stating that US intelligence handed over a two-page synopsis of classified documents, which included claims that Russian operatives have compromising personal and financial information about Trump, to the president-elect and US President Barack Obama.

The information was included as an annex to a classified version of the report prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election, according to CNN.

Buzzfeed picked up the story, publishing the entire dossier purportedly “prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent.”

WikiLeaks has a 100% record of accurate authentication. We do not endorse Buzzfeed's publication of a document which is clearly bogus. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 11, 2017

The most appalling part of the dossier was the claim that Donald Trump has “personal obsessions and sexual perversion,” including graphic sex acts, and a report that the president-elect once had Russian prostitutes urinate on each other in a hotel bed that the Obamas previously shared.

Apart from sex orgies, the dossier also suggests Russian officials offered the Republican real estate magnate lucrative deals in order to win influence over him ahead of the election.

The story exploded on Twitter with the hashtag #GoldenShowers shooting up the trending charts.

Dear MSM,



Not even 4chan takes 4chan seriously. You need an intervention.



Signed,



The entire god damn planet.#GoldenShowers — Julian Wan 🇺🇸 (@juliangwan) January 11, 2017

Later in the day, however, an anonymous member of the chatboard on 4chan posted a refutation of the now infamous “golden showers” story, calling it a hoax and “fanfiction.” He or she claimed that several months ago, the story was sent to Republican political strategist Rick Wilson, who proceeded to send it to the CIA, which then put it in their official classified intelligence report on the election.

Our intelligence literally got trolled by 4chan. And the news media published it. No credibility left. #GoldenShowers — Tennessee GOP (@TEN_GOP) January 11, 2017

While we've witnessed a number of exemplary Media trolls over the past year, 4chan takes the big league trophy. #GoldenShowers — Brittany Pettibone (@BrittPettibone) January 11, 2017

Moscow considers the scandal a clear attempt to damage relations with Washington and the president-elect personally.

“This is an obvious attempt to harm our bilateral relations,” Peskov said.

“Pulp fiction, that’s what it is called in English. Of course, probably the best way to react would be accordingly – with a certain sense of humor."

“Although there is a downside – indeed, there are those who are stirring up the hysteria, who go out of their way to maintain this state of a witch-hunt,” he added.



Kyle Abbott took 39 wickets in 11 Tests for South Africa before joining Hampshire on a four-year deal

South Africa pair Kyle Abbott and Rilee Rossouw have quit international cricket to sign Kolpak deals with Hampshire.

Right-arm seamer Abbott, 29, returns to the county he played for as an overseas signing in 2014 on a four-year deal.

Rossouw, 27, can open or bat lower down the order and has joined Hampshire on a three-year deal.

A tearful Abbott announced his international retirement after South Africa's victory in the second Test against Sri Lanka on Thursday.

"It's been one of the hardest decisions I've had to make through my years of playing cricket," he said. "It's the right decision for me.

"I'd like to thank Cricket South Africa, my team-mates, and my family for the ongoing support through this time," he added. "I would really appreciate the public respecting my decision."

After confirming he signed the deal five months ago, he said: "There were a couple of evenings when I went to sleep thinking, 'have I made the right decision?' but I've always woken up the next morning going, 'actually I have'."

Abbott did not take a wicket in the Proteas' 282-run victory over Sri Lanka in Cape Town, which was his 11th Test appearance, alongside 28 One Day International and 21 Twenty20 international caps.

'He spelt my name wrong'

Cricket South Africa (CSA) has terminated Abbott's national contract by mutual agreement with immediate effect, and are following a similar process for Rossouw.

South Africa coach Russell Domingo also revealed Rossouw had only informed CSA of his decision via an email on Wednesday.

"He spelt my name wrong for starters - he put one 'l' instead of two. So that's where we are. I'm very disappointed in him," said Domingo.

"He toured Australia as the back-up Test batsman, he was the next batsman in. He's played in most of the one dayers and a lot of T20s.

"We said this is a guy who can play at the closest level to AB de Villiers in the one-day teams. We invested massively in him and we're very disappointed in his decision."

Rossouw has played 36 ODIs and 15 T20 internationals, the most recent against Zimbabwe in October, but was yet to play a Test.

Rilee Rossouw hit his third ODI century in victory over Australia in October

Why have they quit international cricket?

Abbott and Rossouw are the latest South African internationals to sign Kolpak deals with English counties in recent months, with Simon Harmer joining Essex,Sussex signing Stiaan van Zyl and Hardus Viljoen moving to Derbyshire.

Explaining his decision, Abbott cited his long-term financial security and uncertainty over his place in the South Africa side since his Test debut in 2013.

"I personally felt over the last four years that I was never far away from being dropped," he said.

"I hope that by showing my commitment over the next four years to Hampshire, I can set up a life after cricket for myself. It's four years of security in a normally very insecure environment."

He denied South Africa's quota system, external-link where the men's team need to field an average of at least six players of colour, including two black Africans, was a factor, adding: "Ever since I've played South African cricket there's always been a quota system or targets - I've never used that as an excuse and I won't use it now."

In a statement Rossouw said: "Deciding to leave South Africa is something I have thought long and hard about and moving to England will give me and my family the long-term career security that I believe is important at this stage of my life."

'A tough decision'

South Africa captain Faf du Plessis expressed his disappointment at Abbott's decision, saying: "I care so much about him and I want him to play well for South Africa.

"I want him to perform on the biggest stage in the world because I feel he's an amazing cricketer and there's no better place to do it than play international cricket.

"We did get together, spoke to Kyle, tried to change his mind, but Kyle's already set up exactly what he wanted to do."

Hampshire director of cricket Giles White, speaking to BBC South Today, said: "We're delighted as Kyle has been with us before and we know a lot about him and he's shown what a fantastic bowler he is on the international stage of late.

"It's obviously been a tough decision for him, he's given it an awful lot of thought. He's a well-considered man and decided that this is the right route to take.

"I think this is a decision individuals make and they weigh-up their options. These two have done that and they've chosen Hampshire as the next phase of their lives and their careers."

Hampshire captain James Vince welcomed the double signing on Twitter

What is a Kolpak contract?

Kolpak contracts are named after Slovak handball player Marius Kolpak, who won a landmark case at the European Court of Justice in 2003.

It allows sportsmen from countries that have associate trade agreements with the European Union, including South Africa, the same right to free movement as EU citizens without being classed as 'foreigners'.

In cricket, such contracts render the player ineligible to represent their country at international level.

Former Australia one-day captain George Bailey will be Hampshire's overseas player for 2017.Get US and UK politics insight with our free daily email briefing straight to your inbox Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice

Jeremy Corbyn has denied saying Labour is not "wedded to the principle of free movement" is a sea change in the party's immigration policy.

He told Good Morning Britain's Piers Morgan his position had not shifted since he said in December it was "very hard to see" how Britain could remain in the EU Single Market without allowing free movement of people.

Mr Corbyn will deliver a speech today which many have seen as a shift in the Leader's message on immigration - but he insisted he was simply placing a priority on Britain's ability to trade freely over overall migrant numbers.

But Mr Morgan suggested it represented a "sea change" in the Labour leader's rhetoric, suggesting young people might wake up this morning and think "hang on a sec, that's not the guy we thought we had."

(Image: Rex Features) (Image: Rex Features)

Mr Corbyn replied: "No. It's not a sea change at all.

"The point I'm making in the speech today is that migrant workers are recruited to undercut and undermine working conditions in this country."

He said employers are bringing in skilled workers from overseas who are willing to work for lower wages and poorer conditions to undercut British workers.

"Employers are tearing up industrial agreements in order to bring in often quite skilled people to undercut the construction industry and other places.

“...Some companies, particularly in the construction industry, are making a fortune out of getting rid of workers in this country on one set of paying conditions and bringing in others to undercut them and that then creates awful tensions in those communities.

“Let’s be very clear, if we didn’t have migrant workers from across Europe in this country the NHS would be in an even deeper crisis than it is at the present time.”

(Image: Rex Features)

When asked whether he voted leave in the EU Referendum, Mr Corbyn said: “No of course I voted remain. You follow too many conspiracy theories.

“I voted for remain but I made and continue to make criticisms of the EU, the way it is trying to impose a free market across Europe, the way it is trying to impose privatisation on some services...”

Host Suzanna Reid asked Mr Corbyn about the Labour party 's poor showing in recent by-elections - specifically coming fourth in the Sleaford by-election.

She said: "In order for you to make any progress you have to be making gains, don't you, beyond the seats you know you can win?"

He said the party had been making gains in some council elections - but added: "I realise that's not a general election, but nevertheless."

(Image: Rex Features)

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel Play now

Ms eid replied: "It's also the argument that Ukip make, of course, and they've only got one MP."

Mr Corbyn said: "I'm not always totally familiar with the spin that Ukip put on it."

Ms Reid said: "Well it's exactly the same spin that you're putting on your election results."

Mr Corbyn said: "Mmm. Ok. Well. The reason I say that is because there are places where we've gained seats.

"There are places where we've gained support. There are councils we've gained control of.

"Yes, of course, I wish those by-election results had been considerably better" - before adding that in three of the four by-elections there had been swings to Labour.

(Image: ITV)

But he admitted: "We obviously have a huge electoral challenge - that I'm up for."

Challenged by Mr Morgan on whether he actually wants to be Prime Minister - because there's a theory he's a "serial protester" that doesn't want real power, he said: "Where do you get these theories from?

"I want to be in government so we can conquer the housing crisis in Britain. I want to be in government so young people get a real chance in life.

"I want to be in Government so that we don't become a country that's one of the most unequal in Britain, if not in the OECD countries, one that actually gives a real chance to everybody."

At the end of the interview, Mr Corbyn's first on the GMB sofa, he was presented with an Arsenal shirt with his name on the back, and bearing the number 10.

(Image: Rex Features)

Piers asked Mr Corbyn what he thought about people saying that he was going to be Britain’s answer to Donald Trump.

Mr Corbyn said: “It’s a more than slightly bizarre manifestation, is it not?

“What Trump managed to do was mobilise a lot of people who were totally naffed off with the way in which the US had gone and I can understand that, and a lot of it was very contradictory because Trump is a sort of super billionaire along with the rest of his cabinet who actually represents a kind of buccaneer capitalism which I totally disagree with in any way.

“He’s somehow managed to present that as something different in the USA. His proposals are bizarre.

"The wall between the US and Mexico for example, deportations of large numbers of people is awful and the language he used during the campaign against Mexicans, muslims and women was absolutely disgraceful.”

The TV appearance comes ahead of a major speech today when Mr Corbyn will set out a positive vision of Brexit Britain.

Mr Corbyn will tell the audience in Peterborough: “Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle.

"But nor can we afford to lose full access to the European markets on which so many British businesses and jobs depend.

“Labour supports fair rules and reasonably managed migration as part of the post-Brexit relationship with the EU.”

In his first speech of 2017, he will add: “A Labour Brexit would take back control over our jobs market, which has been seriously damaged by years of reckless deregulation.

“Labour will ensure all workers have equal rights at work from day one – and require collective bargaining agreements in key sectors, so that workers cannot be undercut.

"That will bring an end to the unscrupulous use of agency labour and bogus self-employment to stop undercutting and to ensure every worker has a secure job with secure pay.”

Mr Corbyn will also insist UK can have a bright future under Brexit and suggest that Labour could even meet Vote Leave’s much maligned £350million-a-week NHS funding injection pledge.

He will say: “Britain can be better off after Brexit. Tory Brexiteers and their UKIP allies promised Brexit would ­guarantee funding for the NHS, to the tune of £350million a week.

"The pledge has been ditched. The British people voted to refinance the NHS – and we will deliver it.”But Mr Cully does not expect the recent rally in iron ore and coal prices to last, and his report contained a sobering view of future investment in Australia's resources sector.

Just six months ago, Mr Cully's team forecast that mining and energy exports would be worth $163.4 billion in fiscal 2017, but stronger than expected prices for iron ore, coking coal and thermal coal in recent months have forced that, and other predictions, to be upgraded.

The biggest factor in the improved outlook was coking coal, which stunned markets by rallying from $US75.30 per tonne in February 2016 to $US308.80 per tonne in November on the back of supply disruptions and improved demand in China.

Most of Australia's coking coal comes from Queensland, and the Queensland government expects the commodity to provide a $1.4 billion boost to revenues in fiscal 2017.

The market or "spot" price for coking coal peaked on November 30 and has since retreated by almost 35 per cent to be fetching $US201.30 per tonne on Friday.

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But while the "spot" price for coking coal has started sliding, some miners are still receiving high prices because they sell their coal at prices that are agreed with steelmakers on a quarterly basis.

Miners selling under the benchmark quarterly contract will receive $US285 per tonne for premium coking coal until March 31.

Mr Cully believes the contract price will average $US186 per tonne in 2017 and $US109 per tonne in 2018. The value of coking coal exports is tipped to reach $39.9 billion in fiscal 2017 and $26.6 billion in 2018.

While coking coal has starred lately, iron ore has been Australia's most valuable commodity export for years, and is tipped to continue its reign in fiscal 2017.

Prices for the bulk commodity have been stronger than expected in recent months on the back of credit-fuelled demand for steel in China, and Mr Cully expects exports of iron ore to be worth $62 billion in the year to June 30, up from his previous forecast of $54 billion.

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Like coal, iron ore prices are expected to slide from current levels around $US76 per tonne, with Mr Cully tipping iron ore will average $US58 per tonne in fiscal 2017 and $US49 per tonne in fiscal 2018.

The forecast is broadly similar to the assumptions by the Turnbull government in its recent mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, in which it assumed iron ore prices would retreat to $US55 per tonne (excluding the cost of shipping) by the September quarter of 2017.

"Unfortunately, the high prices that are expected to bolster Australia's resources and energy export earnings in 2016-17 are not expected to last. The combination of slowing demand growth from China's steel sector and increased global supplies are expected to lower export unit values in 2017-18," said Mr Cully in a foreword to his report.

"However the production phase of the mining boom will continue with export volumes forecast to increase in each of Australia's top five resource and energy commodities in 2017-18."

Liquefied natural gas looks set to take the baton to some degree from iron ore and coal in coming years, with Mr Cully's team predicting that the value of Australian LNG exports will more than double over the two years to June 30, 2018.

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Australian LNG exports were worth $16.5 billion in fiscal 2016, but are tipped to reach $37 billion in fiscal 2018.

The increase in export values is expected to be driven by two major factors: rising export volumes as a number of big Australian LNG projects start producing for the first time, and rising prices for the commodity.

Three LNG projects have started producing over the past year (Gorgon LNG, Australia Pacific LNG and Gladstone LNG), while several more (Wheatstone LNG, Ichthys LNG and Prelude LNG) are expected to come into production over the next 12 to 18 months.

Completion of the various projects prompted a 50 per cent rise in export volumes between September 2015 and September 2016, and Mr Cully expects export volumes to continue rising by 35 per cent per year to reach 67 million tonnes by June 2018.

Despite the strong contribution from commodity exports, federal Treasurer Scott Morrison revealed in December that it was not enough to offset a $30.7 billion loss of revenue over four years from sliding wages growth and weak company profits.Worst. Persuasion. Ever. Someone needs to do an intervention. This is officially embarrassing.

—

Coincidentally, a good way show an audience the changes in healthcare coverage and expenses over time is my startup, WhenHub.com. It’s the best way to create and share visualizations of events over time. If someone builds one, let me know and I’ll publish it on this blog.Kellyanne Conway, a key adviser to Donald Trump who ran his 2016 campaign, defended the president-elect’s behavior by saying that journalists should “look at what’s in his heart.”

CNN “New Day” host Chris Cuomo called out Trump for mocking a disabled New York Times reporter during a 2015 rally. But Conway insisted that’s not what he was doing.

“That is not what he did and he has said that 1,000 times,” she said Monday morning. “Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt?”

Cuomo shot back, “He can say it a million times but look at the video... he’s making a disgusting gesture on video.”

“Why is everything taken at face value?” she asked. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart, you always want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”

The incident from the 2015 rally came up again Sunday night after Meryl Streep lambasted him during her Golden Globes speech.

“The person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back,” she said. “It kind of broke my heart.”

Trump responded to Streep on Twitter, saying, “I never ‘mocked’ a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him ‘groveling’ when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad.”

Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never "mocked" a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him....... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017

"groveling" when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017MOSCOW — A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday denied allegations that the Kremlin has collected compromising information about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, deriding the claim as a “complete fabrication and utter nonsense.”

“This is an evident attempt to harm our bilateral ties,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow. “The Kremlin does not engage in collecting compromising information.”

A U.S. official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that intelligence officials had informed Trump about an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about him. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not allowed to publicly discuss the matter.

After news reports were published about the briefing, Trump tweeted: “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”

Peskov dismissed the report but commented that the allegations could be used to keep American politicians from wanting to improve ties with Russia.

“We should treat it with humor, but there is a sad side to it, too,” he said. “There are people who are whipping up this frenzy, who are doing their best to keep this witch hunt going.”

Peskov described the report as part of efforts to “keep harming the relations, not allow anyone to think about whether this is in the interests of both countries, the interests of the global community and what can be done to move from a total confrontation to a more constructive approach.”According to Sky Sources, Everton have bid £8.5m for Algerian striker Ishak Belfodil.

The Standard Liege forward has found his scoring feet this season since his move from the UAE Arabian Gulf League, but having only signed a one year contract last summer is hot property.

The 24 year old has spent time at both Parma and Inter Milan but failed to make much of an impression in his times at either club.

Now, it appears he has matured into the striker Milan thought he could be when they signed him in 2013.

He represented France at every youth level before pledging allegiance to the country in which he was born, Algeria.

He currently wears number 99 at Liege, which luckily enough for him, is a number not currently occupied at Everton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDtyqbYmXHsIn a fundraising email sent on Friday, Austin Ruse of the Religious Right group C-Fam hyped his group’s work against LGBT and reproductive rights around the globe by declaring that the “sexual revolution” has a higher “body count” than “Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, all tyrants combined.”

Not only do these “enemies” want to “undermine the morals of you, your family, your children, your grandchildren,” he writes, “rapacious westerners” are also going after the developing world with “smiles are their faces and poison in their pockets”:

Are you aware that your enemies never rest? They never sleep? They never tire? They will come back and back with their lies and their schemes to undermine the morals of you, your family, your children, your grandchildren.

C-Fam is here to stop them. We have been here for twenty years and have stopped them every year. They hate us and we rather like that. They should, because we are here to stop their schemes and plans to export the sexual revolution to every family on the face of the earth.

The thing about the sexual revolution is that it is deadly. The body count of the sexual revolution is hundreds of millions, more than those murdered by Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, all tyrants combined.

And do you know what the sexual revolutionaries want? They want more! More abortion. More p*rnography. More comprehensive sexuality education. More masturbation lessons for kids. More lessons in homosexual sex. And all of this in the name of human rights.

The people of the developing world are asking you for help, for your help in defending themselves against the rapacious westerners (Americans, Europeans, Nordics) who come with smiles are their faces and poison in their pockets.Try the new Google Books

Check out the new look and enjoy easier access to your favorite featuresRep. Steve King (R-Iowa) suggested Monday that the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) leaked information about Russia interfering in the U.S. election.

“Russian hackers controlling our election? We 'know' this because the CIA & NSA leaked it, right?” King wrote on Twitter, including a link to a website called Consortiumnews.com.

Russian hackers controlling our election? We "know" this because the CIA & NSA leaked it, right? https://t.co/RJvdSLA4Gf — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 2, 2017

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The link is to a memorandum claiming to be written by former members of the U.S. intelligence community who argue the email disclosures were the result of an internal leak rather than hacking.

Last month, The Washington Post reported that the CIA concluded Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. election to help Donald Trump Donald TrumpGraham: 'I could not disagree more' with Trump support of Afghanistan troop withdrawal GOP believes Democrats handing them winning 2022 campaign Former GOP operative installed as NSA top lawyer resigns MORE win.

The president-elect's transition team responded to the report by slamming the CIA for its intelligence on supposed weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

A joint report released last week by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described how the intelligence community found links between the Russian government and hacks of Democratic groups leading up to Trump's electoral win.

The Obama administration publicly blamed Russia for the hacking campaign in October and announced responsive sanctions on the country last week.

On Monday, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said there is “zero evidence” that Russia influenced the presidential election.

“There is zero evidence that they actually influenced the election,” Spicer told Fox News.shutterstock_540152755.jpg

By Tony May

It's an old story long forgotten and suitable for telling in front of a roaring fire on a long winter's night.

Tony May

The year was 1991 and Harris Wofford, appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Bob Casey to fill the vacancy created by the untimely death of Sen. John Heinz, was running in a special election to keep the seat.

His foe was formidable, former GOP Gov. Dick Thornburgh, who was just off a stint serving as the nation's Attorney General.

olls that summer had Thornburgh up 40 points over the liberal warrior, who had been an ally of Martin Luther King and had helped found the Peace Corps under Jack Kennedy.

Wofford's election gurus, James Carville and Paul Begala, needed a game-changer; they needed a miracle.

They needed a big idea - something that Pennsylvanians of all political stripes could unite behind.

They found their issue in national health care. As they would do with "It's the economy, stupid" in creating a mantra for the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, they put this dictum before the Pennsylvania voters in '91: "The Constitution says if you are charged with a crime, you have a right to a lawyer, you should also have a right to a doctor if you're sick."

Twenty-five years later, we've made progress - of a sort.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nine out of 10 Americans have health care coverage today either through employer-hosted insurance, private coverage, Obamacare or Medicare and Medicaid and other government programs.

It's a vast improvement from 2012 - pre-Affordable Care Act - when an estimated 40 million Americans lacked health coverage.

Why aren't 10 out of 10 Americans protected? And why is Obamacare at risk?

Mainly because we got bogged down in the "how" to provide coverage for the greatest number with the smallest inconvenience to the status quo of the health care system, especially the financial side. The question of health care as a right was forgotten.

But Democrats, particularly, should remember now that they're down on their luck after losing the White House, that Wofford had hit on something: health care as a right.

It's an even deeper right than that of access to legal counsel.

School kids used to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution; it's covered there in the first, 52-word sentence:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union ... provide for the common defense [ and] promote the general welfare ..."

Traditionally, we have seen the "common defense" as protection against the foes foreign and domestic that we can see.

Two centuries ago, we didn't understand much about bacteria and viruses were unknown - but today we recognize health care as a constant state of war against them.

For those uncomfortable as seeing government's role in health care as "common defense," there is the catchall of "promote the general welfare."

When Obamacare was being crafted, pragmatists set aside the issue of health care rights because they were busy compromising and making concessions to hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and the whole range of professionals involved in healthcare delivery.

Instead of blanket coverage for all citizens regardless of race, heritage, ability to pay or station in life we got a patchwork quilt with some pretty sloppy stitching here and there.

Today, Obamacare is in danger. What its creators and its beneficiaries need to remember is what George Washington promulgated in defeating the British: the best defense is often a strong offense.

Health care needs to be discussed as a right, not a simple commercial transaction. At ground zero in the operating theater or in the clinic or where ever medicine is practiced, that's the way it works.

It's one of the reasons why people hold people in the health care delivery chain in such high esteem.

Getting in front of "the doctor," though involves gatekeepers and today, everyone is familiar with the phrase, "May I see your health care insurance card, please?"

Yes, universal health care - most likely a single payer scheme to end all such stuff - would disrupt the status quo.

But no more so than "getting rid of Obamacare on Day One" or Day 100 or whatever. And there will always be room for "Cadillac care" for those of means who think they're being made to wait too long for procedures and appointments.

Right now, the issue of health care access is turned upside down. People act as if they want and need 10 or 20 health care insurers to choose from; that they somehow are healthier because they, theoretically, can choose any doctor in the phone book to treat them; that they don't have to wait weeks for appointments with health care providers now; and, that they don't spend hours out of a day waiting in doctors' offices waiting to be seen for pre-scheduled visits because doctors - good doctors - almost always run late.

Health care is expensive; it's gone up under Obamacare.

But it's likely it would have gone up more without Obamacare because of uncompensated care - what it costs now to provide service to those who cannot pay.

A case can be made that there is lots of waste and duplication built into the current system. After all, we're talking about people's lives.

Better to waste a little money and not harm the patient. But no one can turn on a TV set and watch the bombardment of dozens of commercials every hour promoting one brand name prescription drug or another without the nagging feeling that, somehow, the viewers are paying for those messages promoting cures and nostrums that they can't buy without a doctor's prescription anyway.

Change is coming. The president-elect says so; members of Congress say so. Let's make sure the changes benefit citizens and taxpayers and not the special interests.The following titles are all great films that contain recurring themes of loneliness or isolation. Many films explore these motifs through various means, such as a detachment from society, battling their own psychological demons or quite simply, being stranded in a place far, far away. In several of these films, we will observe how the ‘lonely’ characters will often find themselves thrown together with another, more often than not, of the same perception.

Slow-burning, brooding and emotionally charged, we hope you enjoy our picks on this quite captivating subject. Please note, the following films are listed in chronological order.

1. Wild Strawberries (1957)

Written and directed by the wonderful Ingmar Bergman, Wild Strawberries is not a far cry from most of his other work, in that it deals with thought provoking questions and themes of self-discovery. However, in this quite sublime drama, we are treated to a warmer, more optimistic Bergman and with fantastic results.

Victor Sjostrom plays Isak, a widowed 78 year old professor who is due to make the long journey by car, to receive an award for services to his occupational field. Along the excursion he is forced to confront recurring nightmares and visions, of fractured human relationships from his past. These contests are only heightened, when he is challenged by several encounters with people that are directly related with this anguish. The closer he gets to his lifetime achievement, the nearer he comes to the realisation of how things could have been.

Wild Strawberries is a metaphorically moving and exceptionally nostalgic road trip that in true Bergman fashion is jam packed with symbolism. This is a work of art from a genius director who was in the form of his life.

2. Red Desert (1964)

In Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni’s heart-breaking first colour film, we observe a woman’s sorry struggle with alienation and disorientation. Through brilliant use of colour, Antonioni delivers an emotional and visually stunning setting that channels our protagonist’s psychological anguish.

Monica Vitti plays Giuliana, a young mother whose husband, Ugo, is the manager of a local chemical plant. With an overworked and disengaged husband, Giuliana is starved of the emotional support and attention that she so desperately seeks. With this neglect, Giuliana’s mental state quickly collapses and we witness the crushing despair and depression of our pain-bearer.

A film that will always divide opinion, Red Desert is a slow burning and stylish character-study that one way or another will linger long in the mind.

3. Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski’s first English language film; Repulsion, is a psychological horror made in 1965. Starring Catherine Deneuve, the plot focuses on a young woman’s descent into madness after being left alone in her sister’s apartment. Repulsion is the first instalment in Polanski’s sinister ‘Apartment Trilogy’ and in this viewer’s opinion, the best.

Carole Ledoux (Deneuve) is a manicurist who is currently living with her elder sister in London. Beautiful but socially awkward, Carole would certainly not look out of place on one of Alfred Hitchcock’s feature films. When her sister leaves to go on vacation with her boyfriend, the already distracted Carole begins her downward spiral into insanity, thus exposing the true horror of her demented psyche. Cracks become craters, voices reveal rapists and every sound hides an ill-fated outcome in the delirious mind of this physically and emotionally abandoned young woman.

A claustrophobic and gory tale of sexual repression and isolation, Repulsion is a disturbing and unsettling tour de force that will go down as one of the most influential films of the genre.

4. Le Samourai (1967)

Jean-Pierre Melville’s effortlessly cool crime-drama, Le Samourai, is an example of minimalist perfection at its very best. With leading man, Alain Delon’s character literally brimming with composure and nonchalance, the result is a fusion of stylistic excellence and arresting suspense that makes Le Samourai a subtle yet breathtakingly absorbing masterpiece.

Jef Costello (Delon) is a hit man living in a barren single-room apartment in Paris that contains very little, barring a small bird kept in a cage. Void of emotion or expression, Costello is the personification of the lone wolf, vocally impassive and highly skilled with a poker-face to startle a statue. When the authorities begin to loom and a sophisticated game of cat and mouse develops, we witness an accumulation of the loneliness creep up in a remarkably fascinating conclusion.

Le Samourai is a simple story with a relatively basic plot that will leave you gripped as events unfold. Akin to our subject, Le Samourai is a low-key yet thoroughly engrossing spectacle that is well worth the high praise that it has gathered.

5. Silent Running (1972)

In his directorial debut, Douglas Trumbull brought us the wonderfully underrated and fascinating sci-fi drama, Silent Running.

Bruce Dern brilliantly plays Freeman Lowell, the outsider in a crew aboard a space shuttle that have been tasked with rehabilitating plant life that are preserved in domes attached to space freighters. Despite being trusted with such an important and momentous assignment, Lowell is the only crew member that displays any emotion or interest in their occupation of restoring what remains of our planets plants. However, when the team receive an order to destroy the domes and return home, Lowell faces a monumental decision in what he sees as a sacrifice for the greater good.

Despite being over 40 years old, this film has stood the test of time and still comes across as breathtakingly visionary. A poignant and thoughtful film, Silent Running is definitely sci-fi with a difference.

6. Solaris (1972)

Directed by the great Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972’s Solaris is a Russian sci-fi drama that is recognised as one of the best space films ever made. Another film on this list that contains little action, Solaris excels as a slow-burning psychological drama, with hauntingly stunning visuals, thought provoking scenarios and trademark Tarkovsky long takes.

Solyaris is an ocean-like planet that for years has been orbited by a Russian space station attempting to study this phenomenon. Due to a lack of progress and reports of strange activity, psychologist Kris Kelvin is handed the responsibility of investigating the peculiar goings on aboard the station. As Kris arrives to hostility, he sets off to enquire about these events, only to find himself confronted with these similar situations himself. When confronted by a chilling episode from his past, Kris gets trapped in his own feelings of emotional isolation and loneliness. The question is, are they real?

A complex and philosophically frightening study in confinement and alienation, Solaris is an epic vision by a supremely talented and grandiose director. Whilst probably not his best work, Solaris is still a beautifully insightful and captivating movie that makes a great companion for Kubrick’s own tour de force, ‘2001’.Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

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Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood has revealed that he originally wanted to create the artwork for the band’s latest album ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ with use of a Doctor Who Dalek.

‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ was released by the band in May 2016, with its artwork once again created by Donwood, who has worked with the group since 1994.

Speaking to Creative Review, Donwood explained: “It’s normally about two years to make a Radiohead record. The first things we were talking about were trying to get away from narrative and figurative art, to try and do something that was more to do with chance and happenstance.”

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“I had this idea of a painting Dalek that instead of exterminating people would squirt paint…. But unfortunately our technical skills weren’t up to the job of constructing a Dalek.”

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“So we started messing around with what we could do with the weather and paint, and what happens with large quantities of paint and wind,” he added. The artist started leaving canvases outdoors: “We almost removed human agency from the painting process,” he says, “it was like setting up an experiment and seeing what happened. Some of the canvases were rubbish, so we just painted over them with white and started again. But, by and large we ended up, through a process of editing, with a body of work we were really, really pleased with.”

On working with frontman Thom Yorke, Donwood said: “To sum up crudely, when we’re working together, I do something, then he fucks it up, then I fuck up what he’s done… and we keep doing that until we’re happy with the result. It’s a competition to see who ‘wins’ the painting, which one of us takes possession of it in an artistic way.”

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Donwood also explained why the band decided to erase their social media accounts before announcing their new album: “That was another of those ideas that you have down the pub that turned out to be really much more effective than we thought. Honestly, we did not expect people to go quite so crazy. It worked really well; really it was a way of getting rid of all of what had gone before; it was a practical solution to what seemed to be a complicated problem. Quite a simple solution: just stop everything for a bit.”

“I thought the reaction was weird: ‘Radiohead erases itself from the internet.’ What a strange thing to say, ’cause you can’t. But the reaction was great, it was fantastic, it was really exciting. It was like being some sort of evil Bond villain or something, in some lair, pressing buttons. Actually more like the Mike Myers’ version of an evil Bond villain. It was creatively brilliant fun.”

Meanwhile, Radiohead have been confirmed to headline Coachella Festival 2017.Republicans’ fast-paced plans to confirm Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees were upended Tuesday amid Democratic pressure to slow the schedule as a federal ethics watchdog reviewing nominees’ backgrounds warned that it could take months to probe some of the wealthier picks.

Hearings for Trump’s nominees began Tuesday with consideration of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to serve as attorney general and retired Marine Gen. James Kelly to serve as homeland security secretary.

But the schedule for a packed day of proceedings on Wednesday was revised late Monday, when the Senate health and education panel postponed a hearing on Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for education secretary, until next week. The committee also announced that a scheduled hearing next week with Andrew Puzder, Trump’s choice for labor secretary, might not happen until February because of scheduling conflicts.

The Senate Intelligence Committee also postponed until Thursday a hearing for Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) to serve as CIA director. The panel had originally scheduled Pompeo for Wednesday.

[Sessions emphasizes the primacy of the law over his political views]

(The Washington Post)

As a result, a once-jammed calendar of hearings on Wednesday will feature just three: a second day for Sessions, a Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Rex Tillerson, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, and a Commerce Committee hearing with Elaine L. Chao, the nominee for transportation secretary.

There were no indications Tuesday that any of Trump’s Cabinet choices are at risk of being rejected by the Senate — a rare occurrence — and Republican leaders continued to insist that all of Trump’s choices would be confirmed. But the calendar changes followed days of Republican assurances that hearings would commence quickly and simultaneously.

“We are in the process of having all the hearings as rapidly as we can,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday. “It is still my hope that regardless of the hearing schedule, some of which has been moved slightly, we will be in position to confirm a significant number of the president’s nominees on Day One.”

McConnell said he especially hopes to have most if not all of Trump’s national security team in place on the first day of his presidency.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, explained that the decision to delay some hearings “is really more trying to accommodate the volume that we’re having this week as well as the need to get additional paperwork in. I expect that another week is about as much as you can expect this to be delayed.”

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who will lead Tillerson’s hearing Wednesday as chairman of the foreign relations panel, said he understood some of the Democrats’ concerns.

“On one hand, you don’t want the other side of the aisle to set your schedule, on the other hand you want to be flexible and to try to accommodate,” he said, noting that he scheduled the Tillerson hearing weeks ago in cooperation with Democrats.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) had been pressuring McConnell to reconsider the packed schedule. He never suggested that Trump’s choices would be defeated but rather that Democrats deserve more time to review them more carefully.

On Tuesday, Schumer called McConnell’s plans to delay the hearings “a very good first step.”

“This proposed Cabinet is unlike any other in terms of its wealth, corporate connections and hard-right ideological views, and the American people deserve nothing less than open and deliberate hearings going forward,” Schumer said in a statement. “Democrats will do everything we can to make sure that happens.”

Schumer’s arguments for delay were buoyed last weekend by Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, who complained to senators that his agency was struggling to review the extensive backgrounds of so many wealthy Trump nominees who had never been subjected to public scrutiny.

As of Monday, the OGE had released reports for five top picks subject to hearings this week: Chao, Pompeo, Sessions, Tillerson and defense nominee James Mattis, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled for Thursday. But the agency had not posted reports for the four others: DeVos, Kelly, commerce nominee Wilbur Ross and Ben Carson, tapped to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Full vetting of a presidential nominee’s financial holdings can take “weeks” and “sometimes months” in the case of extremely wealthy individuals, Shaub explained in a letter to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) released Tuesday.

[Ethics office director says proper vetting of ultrawealthy Cabinet nominees can take weeks, months]

Shaub said the length of a review varies, depending on the nominee’s responsiveness to questions, the complexity and extent of his or her financial holdings, and the time it takes the nominee to consider and agree to steps that the OGE identifies as necessary to resolve conflicts.

“It usually takes even the most responsive nominees time to gather the information they are required to produce, particularly if they are wealthy,” Shaub wrote to Murray. “Some nominees also find it difficult to untangle their complex financial investments and employment arrangements quickly, especially if they wish to do so without incurring otherwise avoidable financial losses.”

[Ethics reports lag for Trump nominees]

As part of Schumer’s pressure campaign, he trolled McConnell on social media — posting a doctored version of a 2009 letter McConnell sent to then-Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) complaining about a rushed schedule of confirmation hearings for President Obama’s nominees. In the letter, sent after the first batch of Obama’s picks had been confirmed, McConnell asked Reid to ensure that future hearings would not be held until after ethics and criminal background checks were completed and reviewed by senators.

Schumer opted to make the same argument to McConnell, so he changed “Dear Harry” to “Dear Mitch,” changed the date on the letter and sent it back to the Republican leader Monday afternoon.

DeVos’s hearing, originally scheduled to take place Wednesday morning, has been rescheduled for Jan. 17 at 5 p.m.

Democrats objected loudly to the fact that DeVos’s hearing was scheduled to occur before the OGE could finish her ethics review. But a joint Republican-Democratic statement from the committee announcing the schedule change said that the panel had moved the date “at the request of the Senate leadership to accommodate the Senate schedule.”View this post on Instagram

Índios isolados no estado do Acre. É incrível saber que, em pleno século XXI, temos homens que já foram à lua, porém, existe um povo, que tive a oportunidade de fotografar em terras do Acre, que nunca teve contato com o homem branco ou mesmo com índios de outras etnias ou com um mundo que nao seja o seu. #indiosisolados #acre #projetoindiosbrasileiros #IndiosBrasileiros #indiosbrasileiros #brasil #Brasil #ricardostuckertSongbirds divorce, flee, fail to reproduce due to suburban sprawl

Michelle Ma UW News

Suburban development is forcing some songbirds to divorce, pack up and leave and miss their best chances for successful reproduction.

As forested areas increasingly are converted to suburbs, birds that live on the edge of our urban footprint must find new places to build their nests, breed and raise fledglings. New research published Dec. 28 in the journal PLOS ONE finds that for one group of songbirds — called “avoiders” — urban sprawl is kicking them out of their territory, forcing divorce and stunting their ability to find new mates and reproduce successfully, even after relocating.

“The hidden cost of suburban development for these birds is that we force them to do things that natural selection wouldn’t have them do otherwise,” said lead author John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science in the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

“Because development requires that these birds move, we force them to abandon the places they selected and go elsewhere, which often entails finding new mates when they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Avoider birds are species that are known to decline in response to urbanization, for example when forested areas are removed for developments. In the Pacific Northwest, two avoiders are the Pacific wren and Swainson’s thrush — birds that are generally shy of humans and rely on groundcover and brush such as fallen trees, root balls, shrubs and ferns for breeding.

The manicured yards of many suburban neighborhoods often do away with native habitat, and these species must flee to be able to nest and mate. When they leave, the birds travel uncharacteristically far for breeding adults — about one and a half football fields, on average.

The researchers suspect this forced dispersal is the most damaging aspect of suburban development on birds and the reason why some species decline when forests are replaced with subdivisions. When forced to move, the avoider birds largely failed to reproduce again for at least one year after relocating. The whole transition to a new home and often a new partner might cause a bird to lose half of its breeding years.

“These birds don’t like to move once they have established a territory,” Marzluff said. “But when it comes to having enough food and safety for a nest, and being able to attract a mate, that’s when things get tough. That’s probably when they decide to move.”

In general, monogamous birds will “divorce” their mate and move to a new territory if they have a reason to. Maybe they miss a season to reproduce because of a poor partner, and moving is beneficial because ultimately it increases their reproductive success. But for sensitive species, the opposite is true when movement is forced.

The researchers also studied another category of bird, called “adapters” or “exploiters,” which includes species that tolerate or even thrive around human development. These are the song sparrow, spotted towhee, dark-eyed junco and Bewick’s wren. Sparrows and towhees will live in tandem with humans, often finding suitable breeding grounds in backyards, while Bewick’s wrens will gladly nest in a bird box and juncos even see opportunity in a door-hung Christmas wreath.

The adapter birds also moved around, but mainly of their own accord to improve their chances of breeding successfully, not in response to changing landscapes. As a result, suburban development didn’t appear to impact their ability to reproduce.

The researchers identified and monitored hundreds of individually marked songbirds from six common species found in Seattle-area suburbs. For about 10 years, Marzluff and a number of graduate students tracked bird activity in three types of landscapes: forested preserves, already developed suburban neighborhoods and neighborhoods transitioning from forest to subdivision. By placing bands around the birds’ legs and mapping sightings of mated pairs and nest locations, the researchers were able to tell when a bird relocated, broke up from its mate or stayed put year to year.

This study’s long tenure and focus on multiple species is a first for the field and allowed researchers to compare birds’ behavior across species. It is also one of the only studies to look at how and why birds disperse in the urban ecosystem — and what effect that can have on mating and breeding.

The researchers expect a similar pattern in other cities and suburbs across the U.S., though the species involved will vary depending on region. In other parts of the world where species diversity is much higher — in the tropics, for instance — the effects of urbanization on birds dispersing and some ultimately failing to reproduce could be much greater, Marzluff said. Instead of just one or two territories lost to deforestation, entire colonies that are specific to a small area might be lost.

“To conserve some of these rarer species in an increasingly urban planet is going to require more knowledge of how birds disperse,” Marzluff said. “I expect that as we look more closely, we will find birds that are compromised because of us.”

Other co-authors are Beth Gardner, a UW assistant professor of environmental and forest sciences; and Jack DeLap, David Oleyar and Kara Whittaker, all former UW doctoral students.

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the UW.

###

For more information, contact Marzluff at corvid@uw.edu or 206-616-6883.

More images: https://flic.kr/s/aHskJkWKP2BMW today announced that the company is bringing Microsoft’s Cortana to your car as part of its Connected Car vision. The company plans to integrate a range of digital services into its cars including Amazon Prime, and of course, Cortana.

Cortana on BMW’s cars will be available on the infotainment system which will allow users to carry out almost all the tasks they can do with Cortana on their Windows 10 PC or mobile devices. Drivers will be able to enable Cortana with their voice, just like they can on their PC, Xbox One, HoloLens, and mobile devices.

With Cortana on their car, drivers can check out their schedule, add new reminders, manage their upcoming events, manage their to-do lists, get the latest news on a certain topic, or just hear a random joke from the personal assistant. In a press release, BMW used Cortana to show off how users can reserve a table in a restaurant, stating:

The system being presented at CES 2017 is the in-car application of Microsoft’s Cortana. This means that the voice-controlled capabilities already offered by Microsoft Cortana on a home PC could or smartphone in future also be available on board a BMW. For example, BMW Connected can provide a reminder en-route of an upcoming appointment for which no location has yet been fixed. And Cortana can be used to make a suitable restaurant recommendation and reserve a table.

BMW likely isn’t the only company working on bringing Cortana to its cars. Nissan recently teased a Cortana-related announcement for CES, which we’ll have more info about sometime very soon. Additionally, Microsoft also recently announced that it’s bringing Cortana to Windows 10 IoT which could lead to the arrival of Cortana on a range of different devices in the near future.Before we finally let go of 2016, it’s worth reflecting on what we learned from it. For me, the most striking lesson was the way it demonstrated how the internet has changed democratic politics. While there is no single, overarching explanation for Donald Trump’s election, his ascendancy would have been unthinkable in a pre-internet age, for two reasons.

The first is that much of Trump’s campaign rhetoric would never have got past the editorial “gatekeepers” of an earlier era – the TV network owners and controllers, the editors of powerful print media and the Federal Communications Commission with its “fairness doctrine” (which required holders of broadcast licences to “present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission’s view, honest, equitable and balanced”).

The second reason is that in the pre-internet era, the multitudes of Trump’s vigorous, engaged and angry supporters would have had little option but to fume impotently in whatever local arenas they inhabited. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for them to hook up with millions of like-minded souls to crowdsource their indignation and their enthusiasm for the candidate.

So I think we can say that while the net may not have been a sufficient condition for Trump’s victory, it was definitely a necessary one. Most commentators, hypnotised by Trump’s mastery of Twitter and the prevalence of “fake news” on Facebook, attributed this entirely to social media. But again, this was an overly simplistic view, for it turns out that there was a deep structure underpinning most of what went on in social media and it needed some fairly intensive network analysis to reveal it.

Much of the heavy lifting in this regard was done by Jonathan Albright, an academic at Elon University, a private liberal arts college in North Carolina, who, in a series of remarkable blog posts, explored the vast ecosystem of far-right websites that have been proliferating on the web for years. Professor Albright’s central idea is that journalistic analysis of social media activity (for example, plotting millions of Facebook reactions to a fake news story or hashtag-surfing social media) doesn’t get us very far. What we need to understand is the online infrastructure that feeds the frenzy and that is what he set out to map.

Insurgents intuitively understand the power of simple messages, and are less scrupulous about the stories they tell

What emerges from his work is a fascinating picture of what is effectively a rightwing propaganda machine built from more than 300 fake news sites and containing something like 1.3m hyperlink connections. Albright also mapped the hidden online trackers hosted by these sites. This is similar to the tracking ecosystem behind most commercial websites. But in the rightwing case, these trackers are coming away with information not about consumption preferences but about the possible political or ideological predilections of site visitors.

One’s first reaction to Professor Albright’s maps, after the sharp intake of breath at the scale and intensity of the online activity implied by them, is to ask what would the comparable leftwing ecosystem be like? His tentative answer is that it appears to be significantly smaller and much less interconnected than the “alt-right” ecosystem.

Which is where the really interesting questions begin. Why is the political extreme right so established and dominant on the net? The answer is probably that its members have been effectively excluded from mainstream political discourse for a long time. So the internet, with its intrinsic permissiveness, was, for them, the only available option. (Indeed, it still is.) And they went for it.

Why have they been such effective exploiters of the technology? Among the possible reasons are: the fact that radicals and insurgents intuitively understand the power of simple messages; they are motivated and driven, are less scrupulous about the stories they tell and good at making the facts fit the narrative rather than the other way round. They understand propaganda, in other words.

But their main advantage may be that they have understood the affordances of cyberspace better than most of their liberal opponents, in particular the way in which its undermining of traditional institutions has opened up a world in which people find it easy to discover information that supports rather than challenges their beliefs. In that sense, the far right may have taken on board Hannah Arendt’s observation about the ideal target for totalitarian propaganda being “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists”.

So it was quite a year. Let’s hope that this one is better.The official website for Onihei , the television anime of Shōtarō Ikenami's Onihei Crime Reports in Edo (Onihei Hankachō) novel series, began streaming a commercial for the anime on Thursday.

The video reveals that Amazon Prime Video will exclusively stream the series.

The anime will star:

Kenyuu Horiuchi as Heizō "Onihei" Hasegawa



Romi Park as Omasa, a female spy who loves Heizō



Daisuke Namikawa as Tatsuzō, Heizō's son



Sayaka Senbongi as Ojun, Heizō's daughter



Nobuhiko Okamoto as Chūgo Kimura, a dōshin in the police force for arson and robbery



Kiyomitsu Mizuuchi as Chūsuke Sajima, the head yoriki in the police force for arson and robbery



Kenji Hamada as Yūsuke Sakai, the head dōshin in the police force for arson and robbery



Hidenobu Kiuchi as Yasugorō Koyanagi, a dōshin in the police force for arson and robbery



Shozo Iizuka as Hikojū, an old spy who serves Heizō



Yoshimasa Hosoya as Kumehachi, an ex-thief turned spy



Hideyuki Tanaka as Samanosuke Kishii, Heizō's close friend



Shigeyuki Miya ( Buzzer Beater , Lupin the 3rd: Green vs Red , Blood Lad ) is directing the television anime and also designing the characters. Studio M2, the new studio of Madhouse and MAPPA founder Masao Maruyama, is animating the project. Maruyama is producing, and TMS Entertainment is credited with production. Onihei is the first Ikenami work adapted into anime. Singer Saori Yuki (Kasumin) is performing the theme song "Soshite... Ikinasai" (And... You Must Live).

The historical novel series depicts Heizō Hasegawa, who metes justice on wrongdoers and supervises the crackdown on arsonists and robbers in Japan's Edo period (1603-1868). Maruyama commented that the anime will not just follow the original novel's story, but will show the unique appeal of anime. The 13 television episodes will adapt different stories from the novel series.

The television anime will premiere late at night on January 9 (effectively on January 10) at 2:05 a.m. on TV Tokyo, TV Aichi, and TV Hokkaido. The series will also air on TV Q Kyūshū, TV Setouchi, TV Osaka, and the Jidaigeki Specialty Channel.

A separate original video anime (OVA), titled Onhei ~Sono Otoko, Hasegawa Heizō~ (Onihei: This Man, Heizō Hasegawa), will ship on February 22.

The 40-minute OVA was actually in production before the television anime, although the television anime will premiere first. The OVA sets up the character of Heizō, the man feared by thieves and miscreants as the "Demonic Heizō" during the Edo Period. A young man traces the stories about Heizō from Kumehachi, Hikojū, Omasa, and others who know and admire him. The young man learns about Heizō's early years and how he became a police operative. Miya is also directing the OVA at Studio M2.

Ikenami serialized the story in Bungeishunju's Ōru Yomimono novel magazine from 1967 to 1989, and Bungeishunju published 19 volumes for the main story. Later paperback reprints divide the story into 24 volumes. The serialized novels inspired the first live-action television adaptation in 1969, as well as three subsequent series and a 1995 live-action film.Washington (AFP) – The US Congress certified Friday that Donald Trump won the November election to become the nation’s 45th president, as lawmakers counted and affirmed the votes by the Electoral College.

“Donald Trump of New York has received, for president of the United States, 304 votes,” while his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton received 227 votes, Vice President Joe Biden declared to assembled lawmakers after the counting was complete.

Biden said the official count “shall be deemed sufficient declaration” for Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to take their oaths of office on January 20.

“The Electoral College results are in. Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States,” House Speaker Paul Ryan announced in a tweet shortly afterward.

The count is normally a rubber-stamp event weeks after the electors formally cast their votes. But it was not without drama, as at least three protesters interrupted Biden’s tally announcements before being removed from the chamber.

One of them shouted “one person, one vote” from the visitor’s gallery, an apparent reference to the US election system in which citizens vote indirectly for their choice for president through the Electoral College.

When US voters cast ballots on November 8, they did not directly elect the president but rather 538 electors charged with translating voters’ wishes into reality.

Trump won a clear majority of those electors: 306. Two Republican electors bucked their state tally and voted for someone other than Trump, although the result was not in doubt.

House Democrats interrupted the count multiple times, objecting to electoral vote tallies in different states for several reasons, including “massive voter suppression” and election-related cyber attacks.

Such objections are required by House rules to be made in writing, signed by a House member and a Senate member.

Biden, banging the gavel and calling for order, asked each interrupting lawmaker whether the objections were signed by a senator.

When one congresswoman said her objection had “not yet” been signed by a senator, Biden stood firm.

“Well, it is over,” the vice president said, to loud cheers and applause from Republican lawmakers.By: WCTV Eyewitness News

January 6, 2016

MOULTRIE, Ga. (WCTV) -- A Moultrie police officer has been arrested, accused of assaulting an individual who was being taken into custody.

On Friday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested Moultrie Police Officer Sam Smith on one count of Violation of Oath of Office and one count of Assault under Color of Office.

According to the GBI, on Thursday, officials were called in by Chief Frank Lang of the Moultrie Police Department to investigate excessive use of force allegations against Officer Smith.

The GBI says that Officer Smith is accused of assaulting an individual who was restrained after being taken into custody during an incident on Tuesday.

Officer Smith was arrested and taken to the Colquitt County Jail.

The investigation remains active and ongoing. The GBI and the Moultrie Police Department encourage anyone with information to contact the GBI Region 9 office at (229) 225-4090, or the Moultrie Police Department at (229) 616-7430.Buy the Official DVDBuy the Digital DownloadEducational Screenings

EVERY single piece of plastic that has ever been created since the 19th century is still SOMEWHERE on our planet. So if it never goes away, where does it go?

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Thousands of miles away from civilization, Midway Atoll is in one of the most remote places on earth. And yet its become ground zero for The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, syphoning plastics from three distant continents. In this independent documentary film, journalist/filmmaker Angela Sun travels on a personal journey of discovery to uncover this mysterious phenomenon. Along the way she meets scientists, researchers, influencers, and volunteers who shed light on the effects of our rabid plastic consumption and learns the problem is more insidious than we could have ever imagined.Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.Missing from the list are midseason veterans 'The 100,' 'iZombie' and 'The Originals' as well as all three rookies.

Ahead of its day before press at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour, The CW handed out early renewals to seven veteran series.

Returning for the 2017-18 broadcast season are all four DC Comics shows — The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow — as well as dramedies Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, alongside its longest-running original, Supernatural.

Missing from the list are The 100, iZombie and The Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals, all of which have yet to debut their current seasons. (Reign will end with its upcoming fourth season and The Vampire Diaries also will sign off later this year.) Rookies Frequency and No Tomorrow — freshmen who did not gain back-orders for the first time in network history — as well as forthcoming Archie Comics redo Riverdale also remain in limbo ahead of the network's upfront presentation in May.

"Over the past several seasons, The CW has built a schedule of proven performers, from our lineup of DC superheroes, to critically acclaimed comedies, to sci-fi dramas,” CW president Mark Pedowitz said early Sunday in a statement announcing the news. "Early pickups of these seven series now allow our producers to plan ahead for next season, and gives us a solid base to build on for next season, with original scripted series to roll out all year long."

Arrow will return for its sixth season; Crazy — TV's lowest-rated original but an awards season player for star Rachel Bloom — will return for its third; Jane — also an awards player for lead Gina Rodriguez — will return for its fourth; Greg Berlanti-produced DC fare Legends will return for its third; Flash — The CW's highest-rated original — will return for its fourth; CBS import Supergirl will return for its third (and second on the younger-skewing network); and Supernatural will return for its impressive 13th cycle.

The renewals come as little surprise given the network's stability; this time last year, Pedowitz renewed an impressive 11 series. The roster of holdouts are for all of The CW's midseason fare, with Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals also expected to return next season sans the flagship, sources say. The fate of the bubble shows should not be considered bleak at this time, given that all have yet to launch; The 100 and iZombie remain cult favorites and the network must balance its roster with dramas from co-owners Warner Bros. Television (which produces five of the seven shows renewed Sunday) and CBS Television Studios (behind Crazy and Jane).

Pedowitz has a history of sticking with lower-rated series like Crazy and Jane largely for their status as critical favorites and awards season players. This season, The CW reduced episode orders for both Crazy (from 18 to 13) and Jane (from 22 to 20), leaving many questioning their futures. (Both Rodriguez and Bloom are nominated for best actress in a comedy series at Sunday night's Golden Globes.)

With pilot season about to ramp up, The CW has big-swing reboots of Dynasty, The Lost Boys and Charmed, among other projects, in the works as the network leaves some real estate open for 2017-2018.

Midseason dates for the bubble series follow: Riverdale (Jan. 26), The 100 (Feb. 1), Reign (Feb. 10), The Originals (March 17) and iZombie (April 4).While still a vast field, a huge part of machine learning exists for what may seem to be a relatively narrow subset of problems. These are problems involving visual processing: character recognition, facial recognition, the generation of trippy images dominated by populations of dogslugs, birdlegs, and spidereyes.

This isn't accidental. Image data is unique in its suitability for machine learning tasks. It naturally occurs as multidimensional arrays—tensors, really—of pixel data. It's more at the fringes of machine learning that audio data gets a turn. Part of the problem is that, despite the vast amounts of digital audio data that exists in the world, there is a relative lack of openly accessible computational datasets. There's pretty much just one, actually: the Million Song Dataset, which offers some 280 GB of feature data extracted from 1 million audio tracks. Musicology remains largely old-school.

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A group of computer scientists based at University College London and Queen Mary University wants to change this. To that end, they've developed the Digital Music Lab (DML) system, a large-scale open-source framework for the analysis of musical data that, crucially, allows for the remote analysis of copyrighted materials (read: most music). "Our first installation has access to a collection of over 1.2 million audio recordings from multiple sources across a wide range of musical cultures and styles, of which over 250,000 have been analysed so far, producing over 3TB of features and aggregated data," they write in ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage.

The project started in earnest in 2014 with an initial workshop attended by 48 musicologists of varying technical backgrounds. It was basically a big discussion of the problem laid out above (the lack of computational resources for analyzing music data) and what might be done to solve it. The first part of that was just the dataset itself, which should contain basic metadata about individual samples and information about where they can be accessed. The second is the actual analysis.

This is the hard part. Each individual recording contains millions of data points that need to be analyzed for musical content, with the result being that each one of those recordings requires about as much processor time as the length of the recording.

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"The data are richly structured: there is not just one analysis needed but several different ones, for example, for melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, similarity structure, and so on," the researchers explain. "These create a rich set of relations within and between works and collections that is more complex than, for instance, typical textual data."

You're much better off just playing with the thing than having me paraphrase a technical paper about DML. It has a handy web interface here.

Or watch the demo:Vice President-elect Mike Pence declared to reporters Capitol Hill that the Trump administration’s first order of business will be repealing and replacing Obamacare. Donald Trump is expected to put new policies in place using executive action as soon as possible.

“The first order of business is to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Mike Pence, 57, said to reporters in a press conference on January 4. “And that was our message today, and that will be our message on Capitol Hill. Not just as a promise kept. But because in the course of this election, the American people has a choice.

“And what appeared to many as against all odds, often times with overwhelming opposition, our president-elect took his case to the American people to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the American people voted decisively for a better future for healthcare in this country. And we are determined to give them that.

“[The administration must] remind the American people what they already know about Obamacare, that the promises that were made were broken,” Pence said. He stated that the planned changes will “literally begin on day one.”

Mike Pence: The GOP will keep its promise to repeal Obamacare https://t.co/vv46iMu5Ac pic.twitter.com/7QsJ9HvH84 — CNN (@CNN) January 4, 2017

It’s a lot to take in, especially if you are using Obamacare, but do not panic yet; when the Republicans come up with their Obamacare alternative, they are promising a “orderly transition to a new system.” “We’ve been saying all along, we don’t want to pull the rug out from under people while we’re replacing this law. The point is, in 2017, we don’t want people to be caught with nothing,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, 46. Republicans have yet to produce a new healthcare plan; as Pence said, it was one of President-elect Donald Trump‘s firmest promises on the campaign trail.

HollywoodLifers, do you think Trump will really repeal Obamacare? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.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.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – While a Kansas City firefighter was on duty, two men kicked in his front door and stole his belongings. It happened Saturday morning, as two suspects broke in to the Waldo home all while a camera was rolling. Police are still searching for those two men, who they believe have been targeting other homes in the area.

It began with the ring of the doorbell, the Koehler family dog jumps on her seat to see who’s there. With two kicks, the first suspect enters the home seemingly unaware a camera is watching his every move.

“It’s terrifying.”

Homeowner Ryan Koehler is a Kansas City, Mo. firefighter and was on duty when his phone alerted him there was movement in his living room, his wife got the same text. Through an app, the two watched what was happening in live time.

“I was like, ‘oh, it’s just the dog walking around. That’s when I saw them kick in the door. I literally just started shaking,” Kelsey Koehler said.

“Your heart sinks,” Ryan Koehler said.

The first suspect walked around, before intently heading back to the bedrooms when the other suspect walks in. You can hear them talking about grabbing the TV and walking towards the living room to try and take it off the wall. After taking the TV and other electronics, the two were gone.

“It’s nerve-wracking. Kind of makes you sick to your stomach. When my wife comes home she checks every door, looks under the bed makes sure no one’s here.”

Other homes have been hit in their neighborhood. Police believe it could be the same suspects targeting the area. The couple has filed a police report but with no arrests have been made in the case.

To say they’re feeling uneasy doesn’t even begin to cover it. They say their dog is traumatized and now, with a baby on the way, they’re having trouble feeling safe in their own home.

“It just makes you angry. It’s karma. It’s gonna catch up to you. Eventually you’re gonna knock the door down, and somebody’s gonna be waiting behind that door.”

If those suspects look familiar to you, call the TIPS hotline at (816) 474-TIPS.Preston North End can confirm they have agreed the transfer of Bailey Wright to Bristol City for an undisclosed fee.

Bailey, who made the last of his 205 appearances for the Lilywhites on Monday at Burton Albion, would have been out of contract on 30th June and due to his age would have been able to leave on a free transfer at the end of his current deal.





The club had been attempting to discuss a new contract with the Australian international since last summer, but he had declined to enter into negotiations and indicated his desire to move on.





In the circumstances, the only option left to Preston North End was to allow Bailey to leave if an acceptable transfer fee could be agreed with another interested club and following discussions with the Robins a fee has been agreed.





Preston North End would like to thank Bailey for his years of commitment and effort and wish him the very best for the future.



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Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil - 3.10.2016 Único prefeito de São Paulo a ser eleito em primeiro turno, Doria pretende gerenciar a cidade como uma grande empresa

Nascido e criado em São Paulo, João Agripino da Costa Doria Junior assume posse neste domingo (1º). Aos 59 anos, o também chamado “João trabalhador” foi eleito em primeiro turno em sua primeira candidatura, pelo PSDB. Apadrinhado pelo governador de São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, sua campanha foi focada no fato de não ser político, mas sim gestor e administrador.

LEIA TAMBÉM: João Doria surpreende e é eleito prefeito de São Paulo no primeiro turno

E o apelido de "trabalhador" não veio à toa: João Doria entrou para o mercado desde cedo, já que seu primeiro emprego veio aos 13 anos, quando voltou ao Brasil depois do exílio político de seu pai, Nelson da Costa Doria, ex-deputado cassado durante a ditadura militar (1964-1985).

Formado em jornalismo e publicidade pela FAAP, o prefeito 'não político' já fez de tudo um pouco. De apresentador de reality show a professor universitário e empresário, ao longo de sua carreira, ele provou ter versatilidade - e continua demonstrando ao arriscar a entrada na política neste ano de 2016.

De tudo, porém, seu feito profissional mais notável é a presidência do Grupo Doria, um conglomerado de comunicação e marketing do qual se derivaram seis outras grandes empresas, entre elas uma editora e um empreendimento de eventos. Além disso, ele é presidente e fundador do Grupo de Líderes Empresariais (LIDE), uma das maiores organizações empresariais do Brasil.

Você viu?

Por causa de seu sucesso profissional e financeiro - o empresário declarou quase R$ 180 milhões em bens em 2016 -, João Doria deixou claro durante toda sua campanha que pretende gerir a cidade sem receber nada em troca, doando seu salário de R$ 24,1 mil a instituições de caridade (o que deverá ser comprovado a partir da próxima semana, quando toma posse).

LEIA TAMBÉM: Quem é João Doria, o novo prefeito da cidade de São Paulo

Apesar de acreditar que fará uma boa gestão, independente do resultado encontrado no fim dos quatro anos, Doria diz que não pretende tentar a reeleição ou, muito menos, deixar a prefeitura nas mãos de seu vice, Bruno Covas, para concorrer ao governo do estado em 2018.

Propostas

Um de suas propostas mais conhecidas é o aumento de velocidade das marginais. A proposta divide opiniões porque, para uns, poder chegar mais rapidamente aos lugares é um atrativo, e para outros, a ideia de aumentar o limite não faz sentido, já que a redução de velocidade se provou uma medida efetiva na prevenção de mortes no trânsito.

LEIA TAMBÉM: "Vamos reconduzir São Paulo ao papel que a cidade merece", diz Doria

Outra promessa polêmica feita por sua chapa durante a campanha é a de que Doria irá gerenciar São Paulo como qualquer uma de suas empresas. Para tanto, ele prometeu fazer uma "melhor distribuição dos recursos disponíveis", defendendo por diversas vezes que a privatização de espaços públicos usados para eventos, como o Autódromo de Interlagos e o Pacaembu.When confronted about his numerous conflicts-of-interest, President-elect Donald Trump's business organization likes to tout how he has withdrawn from contracts to address that problem. Despite having a $3 billion company, however, Trump's canceled contracts amount to less than $400,000.

The combined revenue generated by the projects from which Trump has so far withdrawn amounts to only $323,150 for 2015 and the first half of 2016, according to a Bloomberg report on Monday. The report was based on Trump's own financial disclosure forms filed with the Federal Election Commission in May.

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Trump's projects included branding opportunities for building in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil and Georgia. The Argentine project lacked the necessary permits, the Azerbaijani building contained a partner with family ties to that country's government, the Brazilian project was the subject of a criminal probe, and the Georgian project has stalled due to internal political conditions in that former Soviet republic.

The article also noted that because Trump has not released his tax-returns and the structures of the licensing deals aren't public, it's impossible to know the extent of his conflicts, the profitability of those real estate ventures, or whether they could have been realistically expected to earn more money in the future.

"There are such deep-seated conflicts of interest built into this that it takes your breath away," said Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, in an interview with Bloomberg. "This is barely lip service to the notion that you’re doing something about it."

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On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, is planning on introducing legislation on Monday to require Trump to divest his business holdings altogether.She's one of many people arguing that Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause, which prevents officeholders from getting funds from foreign sources. The president-elect has so far refused to do that.Let’s say you receive a Facebook message from a friend with news that your favorite football team is moving to another state. He tells you he read it on a blog you know about. If you’re an average 21st-century American, chances are you’ll believe it, and you won’t even bother to verify it.

When it comes to getting your news, that makes you a lot like a 17th-century Briton. In a paper in the Huntington Library Quarterly, UC Santa Barbara scholar Rachael Scarborough King explores the emergence of the news media nearly four centuries ago and the key role that manuscript newsletters — hand-written correspondence filled with third-party news and tidbits — played before printed newspapers dominated the scene.

“So much of the news we get is being recommended by people we know and it’s sort of a different model of news, of how you access your news and how you authenticate it,” said King, an assistant professor of English. Before the rise of Facebook and other online sources, she noted, “Everyone got their news from this very top-down source. Here it seems like we’re returning to this model of trusting the person who told you the news on a more personal level, or at least shared the news in the case of Facebook.”

When the first broadsheet newspaper, the London Gazette, appeared in 1665, most people got their news from professional, mass-produced manuscript newsletters. Conventional wisdom held that the Gazette marked the end of newsletters and the ascendance of print newspapers. King, however, argues that newsletters remained the dominant media for at least the first century after the Gazette’s publication. Rather than replace newsletters, she said, printed media relied on them for content while newspapers evolved into the objective fact-gathering publications with which we’re familiar.

“Part of what I’m trying to show is that readers at the time really didn’t think of major newsletters as necessarily less public, more private or more secret than printed newspapers,” King explained. “There was more of a back and forth between the two. The newsletters might copy items out of the newspaper. So rather than one being overtaken by the other or one becoming the more outmoded form, what I’m seeing is this more protracted ongoing negotiation between the two in the early years of the newspaper.”

One advantage newsletters had over printed media at the time was the ability to deliver “breaking” news: the people who copied newsletters — up to 500 at a time — could include new items up to the time they were sent to the post office, King noted. “Whereas if you’re printing a newspaper,” she said, “you have to set the type and then print it, so there’s a little more of a lag there.”

After decades of a kind of symbiosis between newsletters and print media, readers eventually settled on newspapers as the medium of choice. “People decided that whatever benefits there might be from being able to update it quickly and being able to personalize it a little bit,” King said, “were outweighed by the benefits of being able to print thousands of copies at once. In the mid- to later-18th century, once newspapers really take off and are being printed in much larger numbers, at that point newsletters can’t really keep up.”

Today, surveys suggest the public’s news consumption looks a lot more like the heyday of the newsletter. According to the Pew Research Center, 38 percent of Americans get their news online, primarily from social media. Is the past prologue?

“I’m not sure I’m able to make any predictions about where the media is going based on this kind of historical parallel, but certainly this shift to so much news being on Facebook and being accessed in more personalized ways has happened really quickly,” King noted. “It has been a moment when people are thinking about how we access news and whether these new media systems are working or whether they’re changing things in negative ways.”https://youtu.be/6VHvaDXsqzo

This week an Israeli embassy official has been caught on camera plotting to “take down” members of the British parliament.

Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev apologised personally to the the Deputy Foreign Minister (Sir Alan Duncan) for an Israeli senior diplomat being caught on camera conspiring against the British democracy...Please log in. To create a new account, enter the name and password you want to use.

If you supplied an email address when you signed up or added a email later, you can have your password reset.When asked by a Fox News reporter in 2010 to comment on leaks, he responded: "I think it's disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something."Article

Si le PSG est toujours intéressé par l'arrière gauche de Wolfsburg Ricardo Rodriguez, le club allemand a mis dernièrement un frein aux négociations avec le club parisien. Le point sur le dossier.

Après avoir rapidement bouclé la venue de Julian Draxler, le PSG espérait durant un temps en faire de même avec l'autre joueur du VfL Wolfsburg qui l'intéresse, l'arrière gauche Ricardo Rodriguez. Pour l'instant, la situation est légèrement paralysée par le léger changement d'attitude du club allemand. Plutôt enclin à laisser partir son joueur suisse de 24 ans il y a quelques jours, le club de Volkswagen a placé les négociations dans une phase de temporisation.

Selon nos informations, le VfL a refusé la dernière offre du PSG pour son joueur à la demande de l'entraîneur Valérien Ismaël. Alors que sa place était menacée, aucun remplaçant ne lui a été trouvé (David Wagner de Huddersfield a notamment refusé le poste) et il a donc conservé sa place à la tête des Loups, le surnom de l'équipe locale. Mieux, il a réussi à obtenir certains garanties et conserver Ricardo Rodriguez en fait notamment partie, lui qui le titularise à chaque match comme arrière central gauche de sa défense à trois.

Pour autant, les portes ne sont pas définitivement fermées concernant un départ du latéral gauche fortement désiré par Unai Emery. En effet, le club de Basse-Saxe cherche un remplaçant à Ricardo Rodriguez et ne compte pas bloquer son joueur, celui-ci se montrant exemplaire dans son attitude. Le Suisse de 24 ans est très sensible à l'intérêt du PSG mais n'est pas disposé à aller au clash pour quitter Wolfsburg comme a pu le faire Draxler durant les derniers mois.

Wolfsburg reprend l'entraînement le 3 janvier prochain et le dossier Ricardo Rodriguez devrait avancer sous peu. Une reprise des négociations entre le PSG et le VfL est notamment prévue concernant le joueur sous contrat jusqu'en juin 2019. Pour l'instant, l'optimisme règne encore dans le dossier malgré le ralentissement des derniers jours mais on reste quand même à l'affût pour d'autres pistes du côté du club parisien.Less than a year ago, Portland Thorns FC selected defender Emily Sonnett from the University of Virginia with the first pick of the 2016 NWSL College Draft.

Sonnett went on to appear in 15 matches for the Thorns, anchoring a defense that conceded a league-fewest 19 goals and earning accolades from both Thorns head coach Mark Parsons and U.S. Women's National Team coach Jill Ellis.

In this year's draft, however, the Thorns currently possess no first round picks.

But the NWSL College Draft can often bring surprises.

In the 2014 edition, the Thorns selected a little-known defender from Georgetown University with the 25th overall pick in the third round who has since gone on to appear in over 60 matches and became a mainstay in last year's league-best defense: Emily Menges.

The talent, in other words, is out there.

Parsons himself recently explained that he is amply prepared for whatever might happen on January 12 at the 2017 NWSL College Draft in Los Angeles (12pm PT, Webstream at ThornsFC.com), whether that means utilizing all of their four picks – 14th, 20th, 27th and 40th overall – or moving up in the draft.

“We have to be prepared,” Parsons told ThornsFC.com in November. “If we're picking number one, who do we pick? If we're picking number seven [or] if we're picking number 29, we have to be ready for everything. The only way to be ready is to know this draft class inside out.”

That's been Parsons' priority since the NWSL offseason officially began in October and it's time-consuming work. It means pouring over game film, speaking daily with college coaches, and constantly revising a master list of players under consideration.

“Forty players could be drafted, so we need a database of 50 players minimum, knowing them inside-out on the soccer field and then getting the best grip [on] their personality, their character off the field,” explained Parsons. “It's a non-stop detailed effort and you have to just prepare for anything.”

As part of that preparation, Parsons traveled to San Jose, Calif. in November to personally scout players during the NCAA Women's College Cup. While Parsons said before the trip that he didn't expect to be surprised, he admitted that watching a player in person could dramatically raise or lower their draft stock.

“It could happen where I've got someone a bit further down the pecking order and then we watch them live and they blow us away; that could happen,” he said. “But no one's going to come from being unknown because we've spent a lot of time on it already.”

The greatest challenge for Parsons, though, is finding the right player to fit into this Portland squad, which is already among the deepest and most talented in the NWSL. While that's admittedly a good problem to have, it's also one that makes finding and drafting the right player that much more difficult and time-consuming.

“The process for drafting a player to the Portland Thorns is so much deeper and longer and more detailed than [anything] I've done before because for a player to come to this club they've got to be a nine out of 10 or a 10 [out of 10] or they've got to have the potential to become a nine or a 10 out of 10,” he said.

That's a high bar to clear for any player, let alone for a young player coming straight out of college. Yet Parsons remains optimistic that he'll find a few talented players in this year's draft, even in the later rounds.

“There are a number of real high-quality [players],” Parsons said. “There's another 20 to 30 players that I could sit here and argue that they could make a team and be a good league player for multiple years. So it's deep; it's deep with players with potential.”

But even with all of his meticulous preparation and advance scouting, Parsons – now entering his fifth season as a head coach in this league – knows that on NWSL draft day, anything and everything can happen.

“I've only been [in the league for] three drafts but all three of them have been wild and crazy and unpredictable.”Calgary Herald Headline News

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We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againSee more posts like this on TumblrANKARA, TURKEY - FEBRUARY 17: A firefighter tries to put out a fire as Turkish army busses burn after an explosion on February 17, 2016 in Ankara, Turkey. At least five people have been killed and 10 injured in an explosion in the Turkish capital of Ankara in what appeared to have been a car bomb attack on a vehicle carrying military personnel. (Photo by Erhan Ortac/Getty Images)

ANKARA, TURKEY - FEBRUARY 17: Smoke billows from the blast site as Turkish army service busses burn after an explosion on February 17, 2016 in Ankara, Turkey. 21 people are believed to have been killed and at least 61 are said to be wounded according to the city's governor Mehmet Kiliclar in what appeared to have been a car bomb attack on a vehicle carrying military personnel in the Turkish capital. (Photo by Defne Karadeniz/Getty Images)

Rescuers carry a victim on a stretcher at the scene of a blast in Ankara on March 13, 2016. At least 27 people were killed and 75 others wounded in a blast in the heart of the Turkish capital Ankara, local media reported, speaking of an attack. Ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion on Kizilay square, a key hub in the city, and television pictures showed burnt-out vehicles including a bus. / AFP / ADEM ALTAN (Photo credit should read ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Turkish security officials work at the explosion site after a bus was struck by a bomb in Istanbul, Tuesday, June 7, 2016.

Turkish special force police officers and ambulances are seen at the site of an armed attack January 1, 2017 in Istanbul. At least two people were killed in an armed attack Saturday on an Istanbul nightclub where people were celebrating the New Year, Turkish television reports said. / AFP / YASIN AKGUL (Photo credit should read YASIN AKGUL/AFP/Getty Images)

Story highlights New Year raid on Istanbul club left at least 39 people dead Latest in a string of deadly attacks, most carried out by Islamist or Kurdish terrorists But Soner Cagaptay says each violent episode leads to arguments over who is to blame, not debate over what can be done to prevent them

(CNN) —

Turkey is so deeply polarized around the powerful persona of its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan that instead of asking why terror attacks are happening and how they can be stopped, the country’s pro- and anti-Erdogan blocks are blaming each other.

This leaves me deeply worried about Turkey and its ability to stymie further terror attacks through the vigor of its institutions and unity of its citizens.

Including last night’s attack on a nightclub in central Istanbul, which killed at least 39 people, by my count Turkey has suffered 33 major terror attacks since summer 2015. These attacks, which have killed more than 730 people, are connected to two terror groups: ISIS and the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

The PKK has a penchant for going after security targets in its attacks. Most recently, on December 11, the group carried out a devastating suicide car bomb attack on a bus carrying police officers in which at least 38 people (both civilians and security officials) were killed, and another 150 wounded.

No one has claimed responsibility for the New Year’s Eve attack in Istanbul, but it would not be surprising that ISIS were behind this attack. For weeks now, Islamists in Turkey had argued that New Year’s Eve celebrations are un-Islamic.

Shocking as it is in a country with a deep-rooted Christian legacy – St. Nicholas himself was born in Turkey in the early Christian era – Islamists have even carried out mock-style executions of Santa Claus in public to protest against New Year’s Eve celebrations, which they confuse with Christmas, and to which they object in their distorted ideology.

It would not be surprising if ISIS or jihadist individuals radicalized by ISIS carried out last night’s heartbreaking New Year’s Eve attack in Istanbul.

Fighting each other, not terrorists

But if the perpetrators of Turkey’s terror are so obvious, why does Turkey seem unable to prevent the tide of terror that it is facing? This is because the Turks are too busy fighting each other, rather than focusing on fighting terror together.

Since coming to power first as prime minister in 2003 and then as president in 2014, Erdogan has won elections on a platform of right-wing populism. He has demonized, targeted, and brutally cracked down on electorates that are not likely to vote for him.

These groups, including leftists, liberals, social democrats, Alevis (who are liberal Muslims), secularists and Kurds, together constitute nearly half of the country’s population.

Erdogan’s strategy has left Turkey deeply polarized. And coupled with Turkey’s economic growth under Erdogan, it has built him a loyal, right wing constituency, including Turkish nationalists, conservatives and Islamists, constituting the other half of the country.

The pro-Erdogan block adores the Turkish leader and thinks that he can do no wrong. At the same time, the anti-Erdogan block loathes him and believes that he can do no right.

This is also the prism through which Turks, unfortunately, view the terror attacks and the rising violence.

How to prevent tide of violence?

Following each attack, instead of discussing the security failures that may have led to the attack and what can and should be done to prevent future attacks, the Turks start blaming each other.

Nor is there ever any discussion on the foreign policy picture behind the attacks, namely that Ankara’s simultaneous wars against ISIS and the PKK ally Party for Democratic Unity (PYD) in Syria appear to be spilling over into the country, with ISIS and the PKK carrying out retaliatory-style attacks because Turkey is making gains against them in Syria.

Instead, Turkey’s polarized landscape shapes the debate in the country in the aftermath of each attack.

If ISIS carries out an attack, anti-Erdogan Turks blame him for not protecting them. And if the PKK carries out an attack, then pro-Erdogan Turks blame the opposition, and so goes the vicious cycle until the next horrible attack.

READ MORE: A bloody end to a grim year

Turkey has strong national security institutions, which have helped it weather previous terror waves, including a full-blown PKK insurgency in the 1990s. The same institutions have also helped the country avert past crises, such as civil war-like fighting on the streets between hard-right and hard-left groups in the 1970s.

But, if the Turks do not engage in an honest conversation on how to prevent the tide of violence facing them this time, I fear even these strong institutions may not be enough to halt the wave of terror and save the country from destruction.

Soner Cagaptay is director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute, and author of “The new Sultan: Erdogan and the crisis of modern Turkey” and “The rise of Turkey: The 21st century’s first Muslim power.” The views expressed are solely those of the author.TAMPA, Fla. -- Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Dirk Koetter said he will bring in competition at the kicking position after a season in which he felt the team's field goal percentage was simply not good enough.

"We've got to have competition at every position," Koetter said Monday. "Nothing's given and if they're not the best player, then I can be pretty certain in saying that they won't be out there."

The Bucs traded back into the second round of the 2016 draft to select kicker Roberto Aguayo out of Florida State with the 59th overall pick. He became the highest-drafted kicker since Mike Nugent went 47th overall to the New York Jets in 2005. The move was widely criticized.

Bucs kicker Roberto Aguayo struggled during his rookie season. Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports

Aguayo's struggles this year were well-documented. He made 22 of 31 field goal attempts his rookie season, which at 71 percent was the lowest among kickers in the NFL. His four field goals from 40-49 yards out were tied for 25th in the league, and he made just 4 of 10 attempts from 40-plus yards. He did have some strong performances, too, including a Week 11 win against the Kansas City Chiefs in which he hit four field goals, earning him NFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors.

"[General manager] Jason [Licht] and I have already talked, and I think it's already proven that we have no problem moving on from a draft choice and playing somebody that wasn't drafted. We did it this year. We did it a year ago," Koetter said.

The Bucs parted ways with tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, a second-round draft pick, in favor of starting Cameron Brate. But Seferian-Jenkins' dismissal wasn't based on performance; it was for off-the-field issues stemming from a drunken driving arrest.

Aguayo, a Groza Award winner and the most accurate kicker in college football history, spoke to ESPN prior to Koetter's announcement. He described his rookie season as an eye-opening experience.

"When you come in as a rookie, you don't think you know it all, but at the same time, you're like, 'I got here. I'll do whatever got me here so I guess I'm good enough,'" Aguayo said. "But in the NFL, it's a different league. You're not in college. You can't get by with what you did in college. It's a different league. You're with the best of the best. Sometimes you think it's easy, and you realize that it's not and you've got to do something better, do something more."

The transition from kicking at Florida State, where he wasn't the sole contributor for points and was surrounded by blue-chip talent, compared to playing for the Bucs, who struggled at times to move the ball offensively, was a huge change.

Aguayo was one of five kickers in the NFL this year not to attempt a field goal from 50 yards out. His longest of the season was from 43 yards, while his longest at Florida State was from 53. Koetter, however, said it wasn't due to a lack of confidence in him.

"They just didn't come up," Koetter said.

"As far as Roberto goes and where we picked him, we were all on board with that," said Koetter. "That's not gonna change. We're never gonna bring that back. That happened. Roberto was our kicker, like any other player, if he's got that Buc jersey on and he's out there on game day, then I'm 100 percent in. With that said, our field goal percentage this year was not good enough. Now that's not the only stat that wasn't good enough, but it wasn't good enough."Remettre le bleu de chauffe. Repartir au combat après une coupure confortable pendant les fêtes de fin d'année. Contrairement à leurs homologues du FCA et du CDJ, les joueurs de La Fontonne retrouvent la compétition ce dimanche (15 h). Rapidement éliminés en coupe de Côte d'Azur, ils n'ont pas eu droit au tour de chauffe le week-end dernier et se replongent donc directement dans le quotidien du championnat. « On s'est bien préparé, assure l'entraîneur Olivier Simonini. On a fait quinze jours très intéressants. Mais il y a toujours une part d'incertitude. »

La Trinité attaque de feu

La trêve hivernale a parfois cette étrange faculté de casser une dynamique née en fin d'année. La préparation peut être intéressante, puis, d'un coup, tout se dérègle. Olivier Simonini en est bien conscient et s'avance méfiant vers ce rendez-vous.

« La Trinité, c'est une équipe que l'on connaît, composée de bons joueurs avec un très bon coach. Le plus gros danger ? Leur secteur offensif ! Ils ont la mentalité de marquer un but de plus que l'adversaire. On s'attend à un match disputé, ouvert. »

Le coach antibois ne se trompe pas au moment de cibler le danger que représente son adversaire. Avec 19 buts marqués, La Trinité pointe au deuxième rang des équipes les plus prolifiques du championnat. En revanche, les joueurs de Mohamed Benhaddou présentent la moins bonne défense de PHA (22 buts encaissés). On devrait donc être proche du match « ouvert » annoncé par Olivier Simonini. L'ASF aimerait forcément profiter de cette rencontre pour conserver sa troisième place au classement. Mais le club n'en fait pas forcément un objectif à court terme, comme le confirme le coach : « On veut surtout engranger un maximum de points. Il faudra être le plus sérieux possible, en nous occupant que de nous. » Enchaîner les victoires semble être la meilleure façon de rester installé parmi les équipes de tête. Mais pour tenter de décrocher un troisième succès de rang, l'AS Fontonne devra faire sans son buteur Calatayud, toujours blessé, ni Martini, suspendu.

À défaut d'avoir terminé 2016 sur une bonne note (défaite face à Pégomas), le FCA a attaqué la nouvelle année pied au plancher. La belle victoire du week-end dernier face à La Victorine (3-0) en coupe a permis au groupe de bien préparer la réception de l'équipe réserve de Grasse, demain à 14 h 30. « Ça amène un peu de confiance pour la suite », reconnaît Bernard Silins, l'un des entraîneurs du FCA. Le problème, c'est que le défi du week-end est du genre relevé. Au menu, le deuxième du championnat. « C'est une rencontre qu'on appréhende, assure l'entraîneur. Ils peuvent faire descendre des joueurs de l'équipe première. » Comme toute équipe réserve, Grasse peut en effet profiter du renfort de certains éléments de son équipe fanion, leader de CFA 2. Privé de plusieurs joueurs, le FCA sait que la mission risque d'être corsée.

De son côté, le CDJ se méfie du duel face à St Sylvestre, qui ressemble fort à un match piège. « Ils sont sur une bonne dynamique » assure Reynald Capelle, l'entraîneur. Leaders du groupe, les Antibois seront attendus lors de la deuxième partie de saison. Premier test de solidité, ce dimanche à 15 heures.

Une vraie déception. Pour son match de reprise, dimanche dernier, le RCA s'est incliné d'un point sur la pelouse de Noves, la lanterne rouge. Une fâcheuse habitude. Solides à domiciles, les Antibois peinent à ramener des points de leurs déplacements. « Pourtant, on fait une bonne entame, peste l'entraîneur Thomas Guilleray. C'est un groupe qui a du mal à gagner à l'extérieur, on est beaucoup moins stables. On manque de discipline. » Il faudra pourtant en retrouver dès dimanche, pour négocier au mieux la réception de Sanary (15 h). Le coach du RCA attend une réaction de ses joueurs, sous peine de s'éloigner des équipes de tête au classement. « Le groupe nous doit un gros match, on espère se refaire la cerise. On est toujours invaincus à domicile, mais on n'a plus le droit à l'erreur. Sanary joue son va-tout, c'est un tournant ! » Sixième avec trente points, le Rugby Club Antibes pourrait doubler son adversaire du jour en cas de victoire. Surtout, les rugbymen gardent la finale régionale dans un coin de la tête. Pour cela, les Antibois doivent terminer devant Menton ou Sanary. Et s'ils avaient la bonne idée de laisser ces deux formations derrière eux…La Liga are planning on taking FIFA to court to stop the World Cup expanding to 48 teams.

A senior source at the Spanish league says they will do everything possible to reverse the FIFA Council's decision to increase the size of the tournament from 32 to 48 teams.

La Liga warned Gianni Infantino before Tuesday's vote that they would take legal action if the FIFA president went ahead with his plans.

Infantino was told that Europe's professional leagues had to be consulted on all decisions which affected professional footballers.

According to La Liga, that consultation did not take place.

Kaveh Solhekol explains how the expanded World Cup will work

The new format which is to be introduced from 2026 will mean the number of players taking part in the tournament will increase by 50 per cent.

The source said: "We are not happy at all. We are providing extra players but we have not been consulted. We are looking at ways in which we can challenge today's decision."by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

Girl Scout's "I Don't Like It" starts off with a laundry list of (potentially) bad ideas... recreational pills, guns, prolonged drug use, and suicide... and that's only the first twenty seconds of the song. The Brooklyn based quartet are getting ready to release their latest EP, +4, on January 20th and we've got the premiere of the album's less than sunny new single.

Even with claims of "nothing but death is ever gonna change me," Girl Scout aren't here to depress you, they're here to remind you that complacency kills. The band's grungy sound has a lot in common a pair of 90s radio staples with a lot more to them than met the eye; the always dark/always impeccable Toadies and the primal simplicity of Local H. This isn't a "fashionable" record and it isn't particularly friendly, but it is undeniably catchy and well... it fills that grungy void that we all need sometimes. Just as guitarist/vocalist Jeremy Zerbe offers the timeless advice "I don't like it, but I'll do it anyway" the song breaks into a rust-colored solo of bent distortion and scraping atonal skronks that keep things cheerfully evil.The government may have spoken too soon when it immediately bragged over the weekend that firecracker injuries this year were the lowest in a decade.

As of Monday, injuries have steadily climbed to 524 cases from an official count of just 350 on New Year’s Eve, the Department of Health (DOH) said.

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The DOH spokesperson, Dr. Eric Tayag, said in his Twitter account that the latest figure on the number of firecracker injuries was still 40 percent lower than the five-year (2011-2015) average; and 40 percent lower compared with the same period last year.

The DOH started counting injuries on Dec. 21 and the count will end on Jan. 5.

Inquirer research showed 384 firecracker-related injuries from Dec. 21, 2015, to Jan. 1, 2016, representing a decrease of just 8.8 percent compared with the same period last year.

In contrast, the government had claimed a 60-percent drop in cases in celebrations this year—the lowest in a decade— with Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Ubial attributing the decline to the public’s fear of President Duterte, who had earlier vowed to harshly punish revelers and ultimately ban the multimillion-peso firecracker industry.

The Aksyon Paputok Injury Reduction 2016 report of the DOH National Epidemiology Center showed that most of the victims were in Manila, followed by Quezon City, Marikina, Navotas, Las Piñas, Pasig and Mandaluyong.

The report noted that majority, or 53 percent, of the injuries were caused by illegal fireworks. One hundred seventy-seven, or 34 percent, of the injuries were caused by piccolo, an illegal firecracker.

Stray bullet

On Monday, Ubial maintained that Emilyn Villanueva, the 15-year-old girl from Malabon City now at the intensive care unit of Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center, suffered injuries from a stray bullet and not from deliberate shooting as claimed by the police.

“If it’s a shooting incident, the trajectory of the bullet that hit the victim would not be like that. We still categorize it as stray bullet from indiscriminate firing because the bullet hit the child on the head at the trajectory of a stray bullet, vertical,” Ubial told the Inquirer.

“In terms of the health indicator, the CT scan that we have, the trajectory of the bullet was really from up going downward,” she stressed, contradicting a police report that classified the shooting as intentional.

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The Philippine National Police said it recorded 23 incidents of indiscriminate firing during the holidays, with at least six of the 19 suspects policemen and a military man.

Among those the PNP identified were PO1 Daniel Castillo of Raxabago Police Station in Manila, PO1 Ronel Pantig, assigned to the Pasig City Police Station, and Cpl. Lovelyson Cutas, a member of the Philippine Marines.

Castillo is now detained at the Manila Police District, Cutas is detained at the Taguig City Police Station while Pantig is still at large.

In Malacañang, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said that President Duterte deferred the signing of an executive order imposing a total ban on firecrackers, as he considered its effects on manufacturers and their employees.

“The President weighs, considers the welfare that would be for the greater good of all,” Andanar said in a statement.

“Although we are very much aware that the President is a strong advocate of the total firecracker ban, there are industries and laborers also that would be affected by this move,” he said.

Firecracker injuries in Central Luzon rose to 130 as of Monday, mostly from Bulacan, Pampanga and Zambales provinces.

The number, however, still represented a 64 percent drop, compared with the same period in 2015 and the first days of 2016, according to the DOH regional epidemiology and surveillance unit.

The Bulacan Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said 58 people were hurt in the New Year revelry in the province, mostly by piccolo.

Firecracker sales still up

In Bocaue town, firecracker sellers reported brisk business in the run-up to New Year’s Eve.

Most firecracker dealers resumed operations in mid-December after the government lifted a stop order issued last October following two fireworks accidents that killed five people.

Herminia Camlian, 46, owner of Minia’s Fireworks in Barangay Binang, said stores were swamped with last-minute orders and could not keep up with demand. –With reports from Marlon Ramos, Julliane Love de Jesus, Carmela Reyes-Estrope and Tonette Orejas

Read NextJEDDAH: Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested Shankar Ponnam , an Indian agricultural engineer, for allegedly offending Islamic sentiments. Ponnam superimposed a picture of the Hindu god Shiva onto a picture of the Holy Kaaba to make it look like he was sitting atop it.The Holy Kaaba is the most sacred place for over one billion Muslims across the globe and is the pivot around which the whole Muslim world rotates.His arrest in Riyadh, announced by the Saudi Interior Ministry on November 20, caused serious concern for the lakhs of Indians employed in Saudi Arabia.Col. Fawaz Al-Maiman, spokesman for Riyadh police, said the Criminal Investigation Department arrested the 40-something Indian expat on charges of blaspheming Islam’s holiest shrine on his Facebook account. The police also claimed that Ponnam admitted to the act.Consequently, a group of Indians attacked Ponnam, recorded him being beaten up and put the video up on social media. It is assumed that the mob too will face punishment under the Anti-Cyber Crime Law for its unlawful actions.The incident was an unpleasant blow to lakhs of Indians in the country and also to the Saudi public, who have appreciated Indian expatriates for their honesty, dedication and loyalty to the country’s customs and tradition.One Indian opined that the country's mission in Saudi Arabia has much to do in the context of its citizen's arrest to ensure such actions do not recur in the host country. Campaigns to reach out to Indian citizens in Saudi need to be organised by the Embassy and Consulate with the support of community volunteers.Public outrage in the case was noteworthy. When the issue began to garner widespread outrage, the accused immediately deleted the controversial picture from social media. But by then the Saudi public was pushing for his arrest and the authorities took strong action against him.Some Arab nations connected the case to the demolition of the Babri Masjid and observed that the offender might be encouraged by the current social and political atmosphere in India.While Ponnam claimed that he was not the one who created the image, it was from him it spread and was consequently, widely shared. Tracing the culprit in this case is considered an achievement of the cyber cell. Blasphemy is a great sin in Islam and results in harsh punishments, including solitary confinement, flogging, and execution.Meia vai assinar contrato de dois anos e meio (Foto: Cesar Greco/Ag.Palmeiras/Divulgação)

A contratação de Cleiton Xavier pelo Vitória, que dependia de apenas alguns detalhes, está sacramentada. O jogador é esperado em Salvador nesta quarta-feira para assinar com o time baiano.



Na negociação, o Rubro-Negro vai emprestar o atacante Yan, uma das promessas da base, para o Palmeiras com valor estipulado. O contrato do meia com o Leão será de dois anos e meio.



Na semana passada, o diretor de futebol do Vitória, Sinval Vieira, já havia revelado que as negociações estavam avançadas. O Rubro-Negro e o Palmeiras tinham chegado a um acordo, mas faltava apenas o acerto entre o Leão e o atleta. Além de Cleiton Xavier, o Vitória espera anunciar mais dois jogadores nos próximos dias. O também meia Gabriel Xavier e o atacante argentino Pisculichi estão próximos de um acerto.



Até o momento, o Vitória confirmou as contratações do zagueiro Fred, do volante Uillian Correia, o lateral Leandro Salino e o meia Dátolo. O zagueiro Alan Costa, o lateral Geferson e o atacante Jena Paul Pineda, que dependem apenas da assinatura do contrato, já iniciaram a pré-temporada em Salvador.



A saída de Cleiton Xavier do Palmeiras é motivada pelo interesse do Verdão de reduzir o elenco. A recomendação da diretoria para 2017 é emprestar ou envolver jogadores pouco utilizados em trocas com clubes do Brasil. No Brasileirão, Xavier foi utilizado pelo técnico Cuca até com certa frequência, mas não conseguiu se manter como titular absoluto.



Clique aqui e veja a lista dos 26 atletas que se apresentaram ao Palmeiras nesta terça-feira e também a relação dos que estão liberados pelo Verdão para negociar com outros clubes.



Yan



Considerado uma das grandes apostas da base do Vitória, Yan chamou atenção em 2015, com apenas 17 anos, quando foi peça decisiva na conquista da Copa do Brasil sub-17 pelo Leão, na condição de artilheiro da equipe. No mesmo ano, agradou ao técnico Vagner Mancini e passou a treinar com o time de cima, inclusive fazendo sua estreia entre os profissionais - ele disputou três partidas pela Série B. O jovem atacante não teve sequência na última temporada e voltou a disputar competições de base. Yan também tem passagens pela Seleção de base.



SAIBA MAIS

Com sete caras novas, Vitória se reapresenta; Marinho não aparece

Fique por dentro das notícias do esporte baiano

Clique aqui e assista a vídeos do Vitória



Atacante Yan foi cedido por empréstimo pelo Vitória para o Palmeiras (Foto: Francisco Galvão/EC Vitória/ Divulgação)Almost an entire year has passed since Shanghai’s education authority announced it would investigate the possibility of equipping the city’s public schools with air-purification equipment. Yet the city’s parents still await a decision.

Anxiety is growing as reports of northern Chinese cities covered in a thick layer of smog flood the news, classes are suspended across the country, and the smog is now heading south. Since Thursday afternoon, Shanghai has suffered high pollution levels, with the city’s meteorological bureau advising people to avoid outdoor activity.

In December 2015, a nongovernmental organization called Blue Sky for Children proposed that the Shanghai education commission allow the city’s public primary schools and kindergartens to install air-purification equipment in classrooms.

While the organization received no direct response, the commission held a press conference later that same month saying a feasibility study had been initiated, with cooperation from the urban-planning, construction, quality-supervision, health, and disease-control departments.

Zhang Lingling, founder of Blue Sky for Children, is tired of waiting. “Winter is the best time of year to make a concerted effort to push the authorities for an answer,” Zhang said. “Otherwise, we have to wait another year. During that time, the authorities and parents will lose passion for pushing forward, especially once the air improves after winter is over.”

Furthermore, Zhang and her team feel their requests are entirely reasonable. “We are not asking the education commission or the schools to finance the purchase of the equipment,” she told Sixth Tone. “We know that’s too much to ask for. At the present stage, we simply hope that they allow this equipment to be brought into classrooms.”

The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission responded to Sixth Tone on Thursday night, saying that the feasibility study is still underway. “We are still evaluating issues like energy consumption, electrical safety, and maintenance requirements. Also, we’re analyzing the connections between the application of air purifiers and the prevention and control of respiratory diseases,” said the commission in an email. It did not provide an estimate for when a final decision might be made.

The problem is not one of resources, but rather of consent, Zhang explained. Parents are happy to donate money to pay for air purifiers that will filter the air in classrooms to reduce pollutants to a healthy level. The obstacle lies with school administrators, who often refuse donations from parents without official permission from local authorities to install new equipment.

Chen Li, the mother of a 5-year-old boy who attends a public kindergarten in Shanghai’s Changning District, said that the parents of more than 20 kids in the class agreed to purchase an air purifier together at the beginning of 2016. But when they presented the plan to the kindergarten, it was immediately rejected, and the parents were not given reasonable explanations.

“They simply said there’s no policy allowing this,” said Chen. “That’s a very annoying excuse, and their attitude makes us wonder if they really care about the health of our children.”

Chen’s case is not unique. In Shanghai, there have been several instances of parents gifting air purifiers to their children’s classrooms — but most offers have been turned down, with schools citing concerns over issues such as electrical safety or unintended health consequences.

The headmaster of a public primary school in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions, told Sixth Tone that schools with large enrollment numbers need a more strategic plan beyond simply buying air purifiers.

She noted that classrooms with more than 40 students need air-purification systems built into the schools’ ventilation systems. “Shutting the windows of a classroom and hoping the indoor air can be purified with a small machine is not a scientific plan,” the headmaster said. “A school that has bigger classes definitely requires a larger project to integrate a fresh-air system into the structure. Without policy and financial support from the education commission, we can never make this happen.”

The school administrator added that she is particularly concerned about the well-being of her youngest students, who are most vulnerable to the health effects of air pollution.

The debate over air quality in schools is not limited to Shanghai. In the northwestern city of Xian, parents have also encountered difficulties convincing schools to accept the air purifiers they donate. In the southwestern city of Chengdu, the local education bureau made it clear that it doesn’t encourage — but also doesn’t forbid — the installation of air purifiers in classrooms.

(Header image: An elementary school student wears a mask outside after school, Shanghai, Dec. 23, 2015. VCG)Compilation of anti-Trump riots

WASHINGTON – Stunning video of anti-Trump riots, both before and after the election, show the modern leftist movement in America has become capable of shocking violence.

But could the left really attempt a violent revolution to overthrow the U.S. government and overturn the American way of life?

Not only could they, but they will try, according to Douglas V. Gibbs, who has appeared as a commentator on Fox News and is a radio talk-show host in Los Angeles.

TRENDING: Reigning Mrs. World arrested after taking tiara from winner in ugly meltdown

And it won't be a liberal revolution. It will be a communist revolution.

That's the prediction Gibbs made in an article published Friday in the Canada Free Press titled, "Democrats Prepare for Violent Revolution."

Examining the evidence, he concludes a revolution attempt is not necessarily imminent, but that it will happen, once various pieces fall into place.

Gibbs declared, "They are in full preparation for social and economic collapse, or a violent revolution."

He cites the website DisruptJ20 and its "Call for a bold mobilization against the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017."

Gibbs quotes Michael Moore explaining, "It is their goal to “block, obstruct, disrupt, and do whatever they can to prevent the onslaught that is going to happen with Donald Trump.”

The group's intense anger and hatred is clear in its statement: "Trump stands for tyranny, greed, and misogyny. He is the champion of neo-nazis and white Nationalists, of the police who kill the Black, Brown and poor on a daily basis, of racist border agents and sadistic prison guards, of the FBI and NSA who tap your phone and read your email."

It is Gibbs' contention that, "The liberal leftists want desperately to sabotage the Trump administration, and possibly overthrow the entire government. For their socialist big government agenda, the ends justifies the means."

Why now?

Because, he explained, "[U]nder Obama, the veil was raised. Why worry about exposure now? They’ve been poking the right-of-center groups in the chest for years, trying to instigate a violent response, and they never got it."

"Now," he continued, "they may be realizing, it is up to them to initiate the violence. It is up to the leftists to finally launch the true coup. Or, at least that is what a lot of people think."

What do YOU think? Is the left planning violent revolution in U.S.? Sound off in the WND Poll!

Evidence that could support his theory is not hard to come by, as the left is becoming increasingly violent.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, leftist riots broke out in cities across the country, the worst perhaps in San Jose, California, and in Chicago.

Protesters vs. Marines in Tampa:



The Washington Post headline on June, 3, blared, "Ugly, bloody scenes in San Jose as protesters attack Trump supporters outside rally."

The paper reported how video caught several people punching Trump supporters with "furious fights spilling from street corner to street corner, often with no police in sight."

The Post said protesters jumped on cars and pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, including one woman trapped in front of a door by a mob while they screamed obscenities at her.

It was later learned that a similar anti-Trump riot in Chicago in March was organized by such well-known leftist groups as ANSWER and La Raza. ANSWER is also sponsoring the inauguration protest.

Austin police fight off protesters:



The violence expanded after the election.

WND reported assassination threats against Trump accompanied the nationwide rioting.

Often-violent anti-Trump protests broke out in cities including Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Seattle, Tampa, Dallas and Oakland, California.

In Chicago, a video showed a mob of young black men beating and dragging through the streets a white man who voted for Trump.

Portland, Oregon police termed a protest a riot after “anarchists" threw objects at officers, vandalized local businesses and damaged cars.

Some 1,000 protesters in Oakland broke store windows, left graffiti on buildings and threw M-80 firecrackers, Molotov cocktails and bottles at police officers, authorities told CNN.

And that's only the beginning, if Gibbs is right.

He suggests the left will inevitably move on to more violence following the election of Trump, because "the realization that the Democrats are losing grip on their transformational agenda in the rest of the country has slammed the leftists square in the face."

Gibbs asserts the leftists "hate any opposition, and are willing to do whatever it takes to either win over their opposition, or silence and eliminate their opposition."

The next step by the left, according to Gibbs, is the stockpiling of arms.

"Now, it’s the liberals who are suddenly worried, and stockpiling food, guns, and emergency supplies," he observed. "Trump’s 2016 win was a wake-up call. Their cheating, lying and violence was not enough to stop the man, and his very unorthodox approach to politics."

Gibbs sees the left's hysteria as now having gone beyond insanity, marking a transition to violent anger.

He believes the hysteria arose because the left they thought they had finally defeated the right permanently with the election of Obama, and that the election of Hillary Clinton would seal the deal.

"They only needed, now, to disarm the crazy right-wing bastards," wrote Gibbs. "Then, with a faint whimper, the last of the opposition to the liberal left agenda would be gone."

It seemed to them a near-certainty, but when it all came crashing down on Nov. 8, it was a disorienting "shock to the system. Nobody on the left side of the aisle expected that Trump had a snowball’s chance in Hell to win the 2016 Election. All of their skewed poll numbers said Hillary was going to win."

Gibbs portrayed the left as in a state similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.

The left, as he sees it, is having trouble adjusting to a reality they can't tolerate. So now, they are buying guns as well as preparing for resistance.

Even though the caricature of a leftist may preach tolerance, "peace, love and understanding," Gibbs sees the left as having been primed for a darker sort of political activism.

"Violence has become a norm," he observed. "The younger generation has been taught so well to go off into violent fits with ease that we have been even seeing their violence erupt at various shopping malls during the Christmas season."

And that's because, "Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press is fine as long as you agree with the liberal left. Disagreement with leftism is so upsetting that on college campuses they need safe zones to protect themselves from being offended by conservative thoughts or words."

Gibbs maintains the ambition of the left is nothing new and that it has always been revolution. The change is that it may be moving into a violent phase.

"It’s a communist uprising, in truth," he bluntly asserted.

"It’s what they’ve been working towards since before any of us were born. The real coup, however, began in 2008, after a century long reeducation of society".

"Yet," he continued, "to their surprise, they somehow lost the White House in 2016. So, when the political angle doesn’t work, that is when tyranny reaches into their bag of violent tricks."

Gibbs contends, "like all communist uprisings, it will all begin as something good and meaningful. It will be launched as a peaceful protest."

But, "Darkness always first appears as an angel of light."

He believes, once the forces of violence on the left have captured enough momentum, the eventual trigger for their attempted revolution will be a major crisis that throws the nation into turmoil, such as an economic collapse or, even more likely, he thinks, a devastating terrorist attack.

"Is all of this we’ve discussed here enough for the liberal left to set off some kind of a violent revolution?" asks Gibbs in summation.

"Yes. But, they won’t. Not yet, anyway."Powered by Frostbite, FIFA 17 transforms the way you play, compete, and emotionally connect with the game. FIFA 17 immerses you in authentic football experiences by leveraging the sophistication of a new game engine, while introducing you to football players full of depth and emotion, and takin...

Powered by Frostbite, FIFA 17 transforms the way you play, compete, and emotionally connect with ...Despite sounding like the most egregious contradiction in physics, hot water appears to freeze faster than cold water under certain circumstances. The phenomenon can be traced back to Aristotle himself, but after centuries of experiments demonstrating this phenomenon, no one's been able to explain it.

Now physicists are pointing to strange properties of hydrogen bonds as the solution to one of the oldest mysteries in physics - but others are claiming the so-called Mpemba effect doesn't even exist at all.

For a bit of background into the Mpemba effect, this phenomenon has been confounding physicists since Aristotle first noticed it more than 2,000 years ago.

After similar accounts from the likes of Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the possibility of hot water freezing faster than cold water finally gained widespread acceptance in the 1960s, thanks to a Tanzanian schoolboy who noticed the effect when making ice cream.

Erasto Mpemba and his schoolmates often made ice cream by boiling milk and mixing it with sugar, and letting it cool before placing it in the freezer.

One day, Mpemba grew impatient, and instead of letting his mix cool before placing it in the freezer, he put his still-boiling milk in anyway, and hoped for the best.

To everyone's surprise, his ice cream set quicker than his peers', and in 1969, Mpemba teamed up with a physics professor to publish a paper describing the apparent phenomenon.

But there's a big problem with the Mpemba effect. While it's been more or less accepted as fact, physicists can't agree on how exactly it works, because how can hot water hit freezing point faster than cold water, when cold water already has a massive head-start?

There's also the lingering problem of replication.

Attempts to replicate the Mpemba effect in a foolproof, consistent manner have failed, but there's enough inconsistent evidence out there to prevent it from being debunked altogether.

Back in 2012, the Royal Society of Chemistry ran a competition asking scientists to explain the phenomenon, and despite receiving some 22,000 papers from all over the world, none of the explanations were convincing enough on their own to draw widespread consensus.

As Signe Dean reported for us last year:

"The most commonly proposed hypothesis ... is that hot water evaporates more quickly, losing mass and therefore needing to lose less heat in order to freeze. However, scientists have also demonstrated the Mpemba effect with closed containers where evaporation doesn't take place. Another theoretical speculation is that water develops convection currents and temperature gradients as it cools. A rapidly cooling glass of hot water will have greater temperature differences throughout, and lose heat more quickly from the surface, whereas a uniformly cool glass of water has less of a temperature difference, and there's less convection to accelerate the process. But this idea has not been entirely verified either."

So after centuries of experiments, we're still looking for answers.

Now researchers from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Nanjing University in China think they might have a solution - strange properties of bonds formed between hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules could be the key to explaining the elusive Mpemba effect.

Simulations of water molecule clusters revealed that the strength of hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) in a given water molecule depends on the arrangements of neighbouring water molecules.

"As water is heated, weaker bonds break, and groups of molecules form into fragments that can realign to form the crystalline structure of ice, serving as a starting point for the freezing process," Emily Conover reports for Science News.

"For cold water to rearrange in this way, weak hydrogen bonds first have to be broken."

In other words, we find a higher percentage of strong hydrogen bonds in warm water than cold, because the weaker ones were broken as the temperatures increased.

As the team concludes in their paper:

"The analysis ... leads us to propose a molecular explanation for the Mpemba effect. In warm water, the weaker H-bonds with predominantly electrostatic contributions are broken, and smaller water clusters with ... strong H-bonding arrangements exist that accelerate the nucleation process that leads to the hexagonal lattice of solid ice. Therefore, water freezes faster than cold water in which the transformation from a randomly-arranged water clusters costs time and energy."

But as with all the explanations that have come before this one, we're going to need to see more proof before we can know for sure that this - or a combination of factors - is truly at play in the Mpemba effect.

While some put the replication problem down to several factors coming together in different ways to achieve the phenomenon - including convection, evaporation, and supercooling - and the fact that freezing is a gradual, not instantaneous, process, others say the Mpemba effect is nothing more than an incredibly persistent myth.

Another recent paper by a team from Imperial College London monitored the time it took for hot and cold water samples to drop to freezing point (0 degrees Celsius).

"No matter what we did, we could not observe anything akin to the Mpemba effect," one of the researchers, Henry Burridge, told Science News.

So what's actually going on here? We'll have to wait and see which conclusion - if any - bears out with further research, but one thing's for sure when it comes to water - it's still surprising us, even after all these years.

The hydrogen bonds paper has been published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, and the debunking paper has been published in Scientific Reports.4 years ago

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DUHOK – Ezidi advocacy organization, Yazda, has condemned the closure of its headquarters in Duhok province by Kurdish security forces, saying that it has all the required permits granted by the government to carry out its advocacy work.

“On Monday evening, January 2, our organization headquarters in Duhok was shut down by security forces [Asayish],” Yazda said in a statement released on Wednesday (January 4).

“We have been listed as an organization by the United States, Sweden and Britain. We have operated according to the law and have neither done business nor political related work.”

Yazda has been providing humanitarian assistance and psychological support since 2014 to the Ezidi community in northern Iraq, a vulnerable minority that was targeted by Islamic State (ISIS) militants who attempted to carry out a genocide on the ethno-religious group.

Thousands of Ezidi men, women and children are believed to still be in ISIS captivity.

The Ezidi rights organization said the closure of its headquarters came after an accusation from the Kurdistan Region’s Department of NGOs claiming that Yazda was not abiding by KRG rules for NGO work in the region and for expiration of a work permit.

In the statement Yazda said it had renewed its operating permit on November 28, 2016, and is calling for an investigation into the organization’s closure. NGO staff said they were given no warning about the closure and that Kurdish security services put locks on the headquarter doors to prevent re-entry.

The closure of the prominent NGO has gained the attention of Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said the move has sent a “shudder” through the country’s humanitarian community.

“The KRG’s decision to shut down an NGO – for unspecified reasons and at a time of growing humanitarian need – has quickly sent a shudder through Iraq’s humanitarian community,” senior Iraq researcher at HRW, Belkis Wille, wrote on Tuesday (January 3) on the global organization’s website.

Nadia Murad, an Ezidi who survived ISIS atrocities and is now working as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations also spoke out about the closure, urging the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to allow Yazda’s work to continue in a tweet she wrote on Tuesday.

“I call on the @KurdistanRegion to reopen @Yazdaorg vital work without any delay. Its [sic] shame to close the Org that supports my campaign,” the tweet read.

The Ezidis, thought to number several hundred thousand in Iraq before they came under attack by ISIS, are mostly Kurdish speakers whose ancient religion has elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam.

More than 2,400 Ezidis have been rescued from ISIS, according to some estimates, while as many as 3,800 remain in captivity.

ISIS militants overran the largely Ezidi district of Sinjar in the summer of 2014 as part of their rampage across Iraq and Syria.

(NRT)XI Questions With… Boston City FC

Foxborough, Massachusetts is about a 45 minute drive from downtown Boston. The Revolution represent New England in Major League Soccer, but some fans in the region’s urban centers like Boston, Providence and Hartford might find it more convenient to attend matches of a team a little closer to home. Boston City FC was founded by owner Renato Valentim and decorated Brazilian international footballer Palhinha to offer fans in the city another option to take in high quality soccer.

Boston City FC plays in the NPSL’s Atlantic Conference, where its 2017 opponents will include Hartford City FC, the Rhode Island Reds, Brooklyn Italians and the Kingston Stockade. 2016 was Boston’s first year in the league, and it got off to a strong start. Boston finished second in its conference to the defending NPSL national champions, New York Cosmos B, and advanced to the NPSL playoffs. The club’s 2016 roster demonstrated ambition, including veterans of MLS and NASL Michael Bustamante (New York Red Bulls) and Ronaldo Vieira (Ft Lauderdale Strikers) as well as several players who played professionally in South America.

The founding intention of Boston City FC is to build a soccer club for the community of Boston. They are off to a good start, with a supporters group in the Ironsides Crew and fans attending from across the spectrum of the city’s diverse ethnic communities. Peter Wilt cited Boston as one of four MLS markets (along with Dallas, Denver and his own effort in Chicago) where another professional club could start up in a more central downtown location and thrive. Where Boston City FC goes from here will depend on the US soccer landscape going forward. The uncertain status of NASL and USL has made any talks with investors about a step up a moot point at this time. For the time being, Boston City FC seeks to grow its club in the the NPSL, a platform that has served as a great incubator in Detroit, Nashville and other cities, while making its mark in the U.S. Open Cup like local amateur club Southie FC did this past year.

Midfield Press was able to connect with Managing Director Craig Tornberg of Boston City FC to discuss the club’s past, present and future.

1. How and why was the club founded?

Boston City FC was founded out of a shared passion by owner Renato Valentim and President & Head Coach Palhinha. Both lived and breathed soccer in their native Brazil and in Palhinha’s case, he became a star with Sao Paulo, Cruzeiro and the famed Brazil national team in the 1990s.

It is that same passion that resonates through our players on the pitch and our supporters, who have all come together to believe in the project we are building here in Boston City FC.

2. What venue does the team currently play in?

We will play in 2017 at Malden Catholic High School, just north of downtown Boston, where we enjoyed a successful 2016 NPSL season. The close proximity to the city means we are well served by the local subway system, known here as the T and then once fans arrive at the Malden T stop, our transportation partner Malden Trans shuttles them via a free bus service to our home venue, and back again afterwards. Our supporters have also found a bar nearby, within walking distance, where they meet before matches. We have plans for expansion of our home facility in the future.

The walk from our locker rooms to the pitch is a little further than at some venues (but not as far as some we experienced away from home), so to turn that into something fun, we use our Boston City FC-branded bus to drive players to the pitch and they sing and chant and get fired up before kickoff. We’re always looking for something off the wall that we can do.

3. What does attendance look like a typical match? What was your best attended match and the circumstances around it (including the attendance #s)?

Our opening match against the then NPSL reigning-champion New York Cosmos B drew almost 1,000 supporters, 927 to be exact, even though we had very little time to promote first game in terms of when we had staff in place to address that need. It also rained throughout the day. We were delighted to have 250 season ticket commitments in year one and obviously plan to build on that.

Boston is a very crowded marketplace in terms of leisure activities, whether it is sports, going to the beach or Cape Cod, or the countless things that attract millions of tourists to the area, so we work hard to make Boston City a viable option on that list.

4. What does the supporter culture look like?

We have great fans who believe in our mission. There is a wonderful convergence of cultures, which is typical of the Boston area. On one hand, we have fans who sit in the stands who form the bulk of the attendance and at one match last season a Brazilian samba band just struck up and started playing and people sang along with songs they knew. Then we have a supporters’ group, The Ironsides Crew, who prefer to stand on the other side of the pitch in their own section where they are very vocal and quite humorous with their comments. They are our hardcore fans and travel in good numbers to our away matches and attend our social functions. They created their own player of the year award and initiated a donation we made to the Greater Boston Food Bank with proceeds from a friendly match.

We are embracing a culture that listens to the wishes and preferences of our supporters. The players race to celebrate on the sideline with the Ironsides Crew at the end of matches and we’ve had a couple of occasions when a player leaped up into the stands to celebrate. We don’t plan that, it just happens.

5. Boston is an interesting soccer market because the New England Revolution of MLS are quite a bit out of town in Foxborough. You see Peter Wilt attempting to start a NASL team in the city of Chicago since the Fire are located in the suburbs. Like Chicago and maybe Dallas, Boston is a large market without MLS team near its urban core. Do you think that Boston could support an NASL or USL team?

This is a soccer-rich community. Massachusetts has one of the biggest youth soccer programs with 200,000 kids playing, and the biggest adult soccer program with more than 6,000 players in a single league, the wonderfully-named Over The Hill League. Our owner Renato Valentim still plays, in the over-40s section. So, we clearly feel the region can support multiple teams.

It is admirable to see the growth the New England Revolution have enjoyed during the past 20 years and that is down to this interest in soccer within the state. I’ve witnessed it firsthand.

Here in Massachusetts, the Western Mass Pioneers are a great example of a community club that has thrived and is consistently competitive. Last season we saw Southie FC make headlines in the US Open Cup and there are more clubs like these making their mark

So clearly, there is room for clubs that focus on the community, like ours, to be successful at whatever level best suits their long-term goals.

6. What is the long term vision for the team?

It is difficult to determine where we will be in five to ten years because the landscape of soccer at the highest levels changes considerably. MLS originally planned to have 16 teams, but is now focused on almost twice that number. The NASL and USL are going through total makeovers and who knows where the promotion-relegation movement will lead.

So we can really only focus on what our program calls for, which is to be a community team, representative of our supporters and grow that base through passion and youth soccer. We strive to entertain our fans and continue to appeal to them which, from the feedback we got back after our first year, we’ve managed to do well so far.

7. What does the current investor profile look like?

The club was founded, as we stated, by Renato Valentim and Palhinha, but we see our investor profile as being the fans who have found a home and a voice within Boston City FC.

8. Have you spoken with potential investors about moving the team up to USL or NASL?

We have ongoing discussions, but as I mentioned, we are affected by the changing US soccer landscape. We regularly receive calls from people who represent teams, leagues, players, international clubs and many of those end as soon as the call ends, while others might promise something down the road. Right now we are enjoying playing in the NPSL, the biggest league in the country with more than 80 clubs and are proud to be a part of that group.

9. Would the current venue hold up if you moved to USL/NASL or would you need to find a new home? If so, are there existing stadiums you could use in your area or would the investors need to build a new one?

We continue in discussions about expanding our stadium profile to ultimately place our fans in the best environment to experience our product.

10. We have recently seen informative write ups on the financial and operational aspects of successfully running a lower league team by the owners of the Kingston Stockade (NPSL) and Minneapolis City SC (PLA) in an effort to “open source” a soccer success formula to communities around the country. Boston City FC also debuted in NPSL this past year – what are some of the most important lessons you learned and what advice would you give to folks looking to start a similar club in their home town?

Dennis Crowley, owner of the Kingston Stockade in our division, has been fantastic in how he has been able to shine light on how he began the who process of starting a club. The one ‘cautionary’ note is that clubs in the NPSL take different approaches to suit their market. Making noise as a club in a metropolitan market with multiple successful sport teams will certainly be different than what is required in a much smaller market. While both can be quite successful they will clearly require very different strategies.

So, the advice we would have is to recognize your specific market, determine what type of cub you want to nurture and be prepared to invest heavily if you’re going to run it as a first-class organization.

The number of teams that have disappeared from leagues at this level and even just in this region during the past few years indicate that it is not quite as easy as many believe.

11. What else should the readers of Midfield Press know about your club?

Quite simply that, as we like to say, we are Boston City FC: Of the people, By the people, For the people!

More On Boston City FC:Bulgar Soldja



Topic: First AIR-DROPPED Bomb In 1912, during the Balkan War, Bulgarian Air Force pilot Christo Toprakchiev suggested the use of airplanes to drop "bombs" (as grenades were called in Bulgarian army at this time) on Turkish positions. Captain Simeon Petrov developed the idea and created several prototypes by adapting different types of grenades and increasing their payload. On 16 October 1912 the observer Prodan Toprakchiev droppIn 1912, during the Balkan War, Bulgarian Air Force pilot Christo Toprakchiev suggested the use of airplanes to drop "bombs" (as grenades were called in Bulgarian army at this time) on Turkish positions. Captain Simeon Petrov developed the idea and created several prototypes by adapting different types of grenades and increasing their payload. On 16 October 1912 the observer Prodan Toprakchiev dropped 2 of those bombs at the Turkish railway station of Karaagac (near the besieged Edirne) from an Albatros F.II airplane piloted by Radul Milkov. This was the first use of an airplane as a bomber.In 1912, during the Balkan War, Bulgarian Air Force pilot Christo Toprakchiev suggested the use of airplanes to drop "bombs" (as grenades were called in Bulgarian army at this time) on Turkish positions. Captain Simeon Petrov developed the idea and created several prototypes by adapting different types of grenades and increasing their payload. On 16 October 1912 the observer Prodan Toprakchiev dropped 2 of those bombs at the Turkish railway station of Karaagac (near the besieged Edirne) from an Albatros F.II airplane piloted by Radul Milkov. This was the first use of an airplane as a bomber.After number of tests Simeon Petrov created the final design, with improved aerodynamics, an X shaped tail and impact detonator. This version was widely used by the Bulgarian Air Force during the siege of Edrine. Later copy of the plans was sold to Germany and the bomb, codenamed "Chathaldza" ("Чаталджа") remained in mass prduction until the end of World War I.



The weight of the bomb was 6 kilograms. On impact it created a crater 4-5 meter wide and about 1 meter deep.



Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_air-dropped_bomb"



After number of tests Simeon Petrov created the final design, with improved aerodynamics, an X shaped tail and impact detonator. This version was widely used by the Bulgarian Air Force during the siege of Edrine. Later copy of the plans was sold to Germany and the bomb, codenamed "Chathaldza" ("Чаталджа") remained in mass prduction until the end of World War I.



The weight of the bomb was 6 kilograms. On impact it created a crater 4-5 meter wide and about 1 meter deep.



Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_air-dropped_bomb"



ed 2 of those bombs at the Turkish railway station of Karaagac (near the besieged Edirne) from an Albatros F.II airplane piloted by Radul Milkov. This was the first use of an airplane as a bomber.After number of tests Simeon Petrov created the final design, with improved aerodynamics, an X shaped tail and impact detonator. This version was widely used by the Bulgarian Air Force during the siege of Edrine. Later copy of the plans was sold to Germany and the bomb, codenamed "Chathaldza" ("Чаталджа") remained in mass prduction until the end of World War I.



The weight of the bomb was 6 kilograms. On impact it created a crater 4-5 meter wide and about 1 meter deep.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_air-dropped_bombHere’s a simple question we’d like you to answer before you read further: Which of the nine maps below best describes what you think of as the heartland?

To help you get started: Do big cities belong in the heartland? (If not, choose a map with “holes” in it.) Does the heartland rigidly follow state lines? Does it venture south into Texas, or east into Pennsylvania? Choose one of the maps below.

Thanks for your vote!

The heartland is, by definition, somewhere central. But where the center begins and ends — what it encompasses and excludes — is harder to say. Here’s how your answer compares with those of other Times readers:

What the maps actually show, and what other Times readers thought

Illinois? Definitely the heartland. The South Side of Chicago? Not so clear. Philadelphia? Too close to the coast. But coal country, 120 miles inland, may be. Cumberland County, Tenn., is in the South, not the Midwest. But is it also in the heartland? What about Detroit, with its demographics and politics that little resemble rural Iowa? Or the Standing Rock Indian Reservation straddling the Dakotas?

The word captures an idea that is more expansive than the Midwest, harder to map than Appalachia, more evocative than the Great Plains. But now we are searching for its boundaries, after an election that pundits proclaimed cast the heartland against the rest of America.

“It’s much more a state of mind than an actual place,” suggests the historian William Cronon (who teaches in Madison, Wis., which is surely the heartland, unless your heartland omits liberal college towns). “It describes a deep set of beliefs about places that somehow authentically stand for America.”

In that sense, the word is not purely about geography. It’s a value judgment. “Who’s authentically from the middle? Who’s from implicitly the heart? Who represents the core?” Mr. Cronon said. Any of those questions could have a dual meaning. Who’s mainstream? Whose traditions are “traditional”? Who claims the political center? “There’s a slippage here,” Mr. Cronon said.

To pin down this elusive place, we used data from the presidential election, the census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics – even data about television preferences from Facebook – to map the many meanings of the word, if we’re really being honest about what we mean. This map is our point of departure:

The heartland as a synonym for “the Midwest”

of Times readers chose this option. Which states are in the Midwest, according to the United States Census and a survey of self-described Midwesterners Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

That’s roughly the Midwest, a contiguous though still contested place. The black line captures the region as the Census Bureau defines it. The shaded states beyond add data from 1,357 respondents who said they identified “a lot” or “some” as Midwesterners in a survey for FiveThirtyEight. Even Midwesterners can’t agree on what’s in the Midwest.

The idea of the heartland is closely linked to the Midwest, although the earliest use of “heartland” in this sense had nothing to do with America. Halford Mackinder, a British geographer, coined the word in 1904 to refer to the heart of the Eurasian land mass: a strategic center of industry, natural resources and power. Whoever controlled that region, Mr. Mackinder argued, could control the world (a theory the Germans adopted during World War II).

Postwar, the language came to apply to the middle of America, too, not just for its centrality, but also its national importance. “In this classic European Mackinder sense, this is where the industrial heartland of the country was,” said Jon Lauck, a Midwestern historian and an adviser to Senator John Thune, a South Dakota Republican. “This is where they brought all those bombers out of Willow Run to bomb Hitler and Japan,” he said, referring to the manufacturing complex in Michigan. “This is where all the railroads met. This is where all the coal and iron ore came from.”

It’s where the grain was grown and the cars were built. The region has since lost some of that might, with deindustrialization and the depopulation of family farms. But Mr. Lauck argues that the heartland and the Midwest remain synonymous, in large part because of this history.

The heartland as “far from the coasts”

of Times readers chose this option. Minimum number of counties you'd have to drive through to reach the coast Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

The heartland can also be defined by what it’s not — the coasts. And in many ways its cultural values have been framed in opposition to that Other America. “The suspicion persists,” wrote the English professor and critic Barry Gross in 1977, “that what goes on at either coast is the extreme, the perverse and bizarre, the grotesque and the Gothic, unreal and worse, unAmerican.”

The center of the country is the normal against which the coasts are abnormal, or merely peripheral. The above map defines the heartland by this relationship to the coasts, counting inland by county from the ocean on both sides.

But where the interior lies has shifted historically, and it has long been the hardest part of the country to map precisely because it lacks the clear natural boundaries of the coasts. “The West” was once west of the Appalachian Mountains. Today’s Illinois once sat in the “Northwest Territory.” The “middle” moved as white settlers and cartographers did. And this process of revision still hasn’t halted.

“These things aren’t absolute,” said James Akerman, the curator of maps at the Newberry Library in Chicago, describing how we conceive of “region” in America. “And the electorate is showing these things change constantly.”

The heartland as “America’s breadbasket”

of Times readers chose this option. Farmland as a percentage of all land Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

Look through newspaper articles, and references to the American “heartland” proliferate in the 1980s with stories about the struggles of the middle part of the country. Toby Higbie, a U.C.L.A. historian who has traced the word’s use over time, pegs its growing prominence to the farm crisis of the 1980s and the economic shifts that began to turn parts of the Midwest into the “Rust Belt.”

“To me, the very ideological or cultural formulation that people are using – whether they’re aware of it or not – comes out of that moment of confronting globalization,” Mr. Higbie said. “And it’s a reaction to that, to sort of say: ‘We are the authentic, quintessential American location. And we want to reinvest in that.’ ”

To the extent that the heartland conjures an America of wheat fields and barns in graceful decay — two images prominent in political ads — it’s capturing the geography mapped above. That picture, which encompasses much of the Great Plains, shows a swath of land down the center of the country, from the Dakotas to Texas, east into Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and south along the Mississippi River. It also includes California’s Central Valley, which produces about a quarter of the nation’s food.

Add in Manufacturing America, and you pull in more of the Great Lakes states, farther east into Pennsylvania and across much more of the rural South:

The heartland as “home to American manufacturing”

of Times readers chose this option. Manufacturing as a percentage of all jobs in 2015 Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

It’s notable, though, Mr. Higbie adds, that stock images of heartland America tend to turn up few faces of color, whether on the farm or in nostalgic manufacturing. When people use the term, he suspects, they’re often envisioning a white version of the Midwest without its most diverse pockets, circumscribing Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis, and its Native American reservations.

Map America by at least part of its European heritage (German Americans are the nation’s largest ethnic group, at about 46 million), and you get a patchy Midwest that looks more like this:

The heartland as German-settled America

of Times readers chose this option. Share of population reporting only German ancestry Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

By that definition, the heartland becomes much harder to map than the Midwest. It’s not just the borders that are in dispute, but the redactions as well. Is the heartland really the middle of America minus the minorities? Or the middle, rural parts only? Or the middle, in an election year, discounting its islands of blue?

Expand the heritage map to include what are today the whitest parts of the country, and you get this:

The heartland as predominantly white America

of Times readers chose this option. Where whites make up at least 85 percent of the population Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

That map overlaps significantly with the places where Donald J. Trump fared well this fall (and excludes those Midwestern cities where he did poorly). And, in fact, in its loosest definition postelection, the heartland has been used to describe virtually anywhere in America that tilted toward the Republican candidate.

Breitbart, the site formerly run by Mr. Trump’s campaign chief executive and adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, declared in a viral headline and misleading map after the election that Trump won a “7.5 million-vote popular landslide” in the heartland. The contorted math behind that figure counted Trump’s margin in 3,084 of 3,141 American counties, excluding big urban centers like New York and Los Angeles — a convenient way of defining nearly all of the country’s land area (if not all of its people) as heartland.

In that context, the word heartland was used to suggest that Mr. Trump won the popular vote in authentic America — or, put another way, the true American vote. Taken to this extreme, the word loses all geographic meaning; it no longer even describes the interior. This is what the heartland looks like as Trump’s America:

The heartland as “Trump’s America”

of Times readers chose this option. Where Donald J. Trump won more than 50 percent of the vote Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

That last map recalls a 1969 book by the Republican strategist Kevin Phillips, “The Emerging Republican Majority.” In it, he predicted Republican success from a new coalition of the interior “heartland” — “the land of Methodist church suppers, mile-high mining camps, county fairs, steamboats, round the bend, cattle drives, waving wheat” — with suburbia, the South and the Sun Belt.

“His heartland strategy only works if you close your eyes and imagine any urban space or place with significant people of color as not part of the heartland,” Mr. Higbie said. Geographically, that definition falls apart. Politically, Mr. Higbie says, it was genius, tying to the Republican Party deeply rooted ideas about “real” America. “You take a regional name, detach it from the actual physical region,” Mr. Higbie said, “and move it around the country selectively to the places that match your electoral strategy.”

That is essentially what Breitbart did.

These maps highlight how the heartland is usually about more than geography — whether it’s also about demographics, economics, ideology or history. And so we close with a couple of maps that seek, in the end, to define this place through cultural ties. The first brings us most closely back to Mr. Lauck’s Midwest:

The heartland as sports fandom

of Times readers chose this option. Share of baseball fans ‘liking’ a team in the American League or National League Central Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

There’s no box to check on the census for which team you root for, but millions of fans make their preferences public on Facebook. In 2014 we mapped the borders of baseball fandom, and the map above uses the same data with a small twist. It shows where the league’s “Central” divisions – that is, the American League Central and National League Central – hold the most regional sway.

That picture neatly reflects much of the Midwest without need for state borders and creeps over the state lines, as with Pennsylvania, where the Midwest grows hazy. It offers the cleanest, most compact idea of the heartland of any map shown here. As with the others, it reveals a place that is whiter and more Republican than the country as a whole.

Of course, the heartland is about more than baseball, should you believe in the heartland at all. But seemingly trivial maps — think too of soda vs. pop in our dialects — can capture much more complex differences among us. With that in mind, here is the map we at The Upshot believe comes closest to capturing what many people mean by the heartland in this hyper-partisan moment:

The heartland as a cultural taste test

of Times readers chose this option. Where people “like” television shows like “Duck Dynasty,” “N.C.I.S.” and “The Voice” most distinctly Trump Clinton White Black Hispanic Asian Other

With thanks to our colleague Josh Katz, that’s a map of where people are most likely to prefer television shows like “Duck Dynasty,” “N.C.I.S.” and “The Voice” most distinctly. It’s messier than the Midwest. It clips out major metro areas. It pulls in a big stretch of the Great Plains and some of the South, unifying through cultural taste places that are variously rural, red and for the most part interior. Maine, admittedly, is something of an anomaly.This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. The opinions and information provided on this site are original editorial content of Sneaker News.



Updated April 24th, 2017: The Supreme x Nike Air More Uptempo “Suptempo” releases in three colorways on April 27th, 2017 for $180.

Supreme fans have a lot to be excited about for 2017. After the groundbreaking news about a collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Supreme will be in cahoots with Nike once more to design the Air More Uptempo, the classic mid-90s basketball shoe that came back in full force last year. While we don’t have any images to share, the design of the “Suptempo” will feature the signature “AIR” detail on the upper be replaced with “SUP”. It’s possible that multiple colorways will be involved, as Supreme and Nike typically drop more than one colorway option for all their collaborations. Stay tuned for a first look and release date update for the Supreme Uptempos.On Saturday, the Raiders will play their first playoff game since their Super Bowl XXXVII loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the 2002 season. It could also be their last as the Oakland Raiders as they continue their attempt to relocate to Las Vegas.

Earlier this season, it was reported that the team filed three trademarks for "Las Vegas Raiders." Meanwhile, Nevada has approved $750 million for a new stadium.

Raiders owner Mark Davis has pledged $500 million toward the project, and according to a report from the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee, the stadium would cost a total of $1.9 billion.

While this is a far from concluded move, the renderings of the stadium, via MANICA Architecture, do portray a flashy, eye-catching stadium.

Take a look below.WASHINGTON — Republicans hope to repeal major parts of the Affordable Care Act using an expedited procedure known as budget reconciliation.

The process is sometimes called arcane, but it has been used often in the past 35 years to write some of the nation’s most important laws. “Reconciliation is probably the most potent budget enforcement tool available to Congress for a large portion of the budget,” the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, has said.

Here is a primer.

Q. What is the budget reconciliation process?

A. It is a way for Congress to speed action on legislation that changes taxes or spending, especially spending for entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Although conceived primarily as a way to reduce federal budget deficits, it has also been used to cut taxes and to create programs that increase spending — changes that can raise deficits.

In the Senate, a reconciliation bill can ordinarily be passed with a simple majority. For other bills, a 60-vote majority is often needed to limit debate and move to a final vote.Vi vengono in mente lotterie i cui vincitori siano costretti a ritirare il premio? No, e allora è meglio partire da qui, quando si parla del reddito di base appena introdotto in Finlandia in via sperimentale su duemila persone. Questi cittadini finlandesi negli articoli nostrani vengono etichettati come dei “fortunati” destinati a un biennio di felicità a causa di un reddito garantito (di 560 euro mensile) che arriverà loro senza alcuna condizionalità, cioè rimarrà anche se nel frattempo avranno trovato un impiego. In realtà le cose non stanno proprio così: chi sarà selezionato sarà un disoccupato che dovrà rinunciare a parte dei precedenti benefici sociali, a partire dal sussidio di disoccupazione (il reddito di base sarà detratto dal totale). Per questo i beneficiari non potranno rifiutare: con un’accettazione volontaria ci sarebbe una distorsione nel confronto con il gruppo di controllo, ossia con le persone che continueranno a ricevere i normali sussidi. Il fatto è che, come dimostra un report dettagliato della Kela, l’ente nazionale per l’assicurazione sociale, che curerà il test, per alcune tipologie di persone il beneficio di un eventuale reddito di base potrebbe essere limitato o praticamente nullo. È il caso di una madre single con figli (a certe condizioni di reddito e di sussidi).

A essere pignoli, durante la sperimentazione il rischio è limitato: la Costituzione tutela i cittadini da indebolimenti della situazione economica in casi come questi e, a causa di un “bug” del sistema dovuto alla fretta di partire, i redditi di base erogati saranno esentasse. Tuttavia, un dato rimane: i sistemi che prevedono redditi di base nelle intenzioni sono alternativi alle forme tradizionali di welfare. Tanto più in un’Europa che già, con il 7% della popolazione mondiale e il 20% del Pil, vede il 50% della spesa globale per il welfare. Nelle simulazioni della Kela, se in Finlandia si decidesse di seguire la strada più radicale – un reddito di base universale per tutti i maggiorenni – la sostituzione delle attuali forme di supporto sarebbe praticamente totale (la tabella in fondo all’articolo rende l’idea). Con un reddito di base limitato ai disoccupati e più ridotto negli importi, soluzione effettivamente adottata per la sperimentazione, l’assistenza tradizionale rimane, anche se assottigliata.

Basta questo per mandare in tilt i punti di riferimento politici tradizionali sulla lotta alla diseguaglianza. In Finlandia il reddito di base è una nuova bandiera del Partito di Centro Finlandese (liberale e di centro-destra) e in particolare del primo ministro Juha Sipilä. Per il governo non è tanto o non solo una misura di lotta alla povertà, in un Paese che ha già strumenti di welfare molto robusti (sussidi di disoccupazione, sussidi per la casa, sussidi per i figli eccetera). È, piuttosto, un modo per tagliare la burocrazia e per ridurre i disincentivi alla ricerca di lavoro e alla creazione di nuovo lavoro. Con gli attuali sussidi, è il ragionamento, chi è disoccupato è poco incentivato a trovare un impiego (perché perderebbe il sussidio, pari in media alla metà dei salari medi) e ancor meno a creare una nuova impresa. Il nuovo reddito di base, invece, rimarrebbe anche in caso di un nuovo lavoro trovato o creato e sarebbe quindi meno distorsivo. Vale la pena ricordare che alcune misure di sostegno al reddito di tipo automatico, come la tassazione negativa, hanno le radici nel pensiero degli economisti liberali Milton Friedman e Juliet Rhys-Williams. E che fu il repubblicano Richard Nixon uno dei primi politici a prospettare un piano, poi ritirato, per un reddito minimo che sostituisse le precenti forme di welfare.CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State is responsible for an attack on a security checkpoint in Egypt’s North Sinai province that killed at least eight people on Monday, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Tuesday.

“A surprise attack launched by Islamic State fighters on a checkpoint west of Arish city in North Sinai followed the detonation of a car bomb parked by an Islamic State fighter,” Amaq reported."If the Nokia 6 performs well in China then it's highly likely we will see a new international variant of the handset sometime in 2017. We'll be keeping our eyes on the certification websites in the coming months looking for a variant with more connectivity options like GSM, LTE, and CDMA that will make the device compatible with networks worldwide."by

Prof. Vijay Prashad is one of the most impressive scholars today. His recent anthology Communist Histories Volume 1 gathers together a series of essays by historians from across the globe that creates a new vision of Indian history and a Communist Party that was simultaneously aligned with the Soviet Union and a populist mass movement. I sat down for an interview with Prof. Prashad wherein we discussed this new volume and what it can teach activists today. The audio version of this interview is available online and may be used with permission and attribution.

AS: Vijay, you have written this new volume of histories of Communism in India. Can you describe the genesis and the intention going forward with this project?

VP: Well, the book project started about three or four years ago when we had a panel of basically Communist historians at the Historical Materialism conference in Delhi. This must have been in 2013. And our panel was very well-received because most of the panelists, Elizabeth Armstrong, Suchetana Chattopadhyay and Archana Prasad, had done original, empirical work on the history of Indian Communism and it was quite a powerful panel. So what was interesting about that panel and the discussion that this group of us had, we sat out on the lawn at Jawaharlal Nehru University after the panel saying ‘you know, we’ve got to do something about this’. What we discussed was two particular problems.

The first was a problem of how, just in India itself, the Communist movement was being written out of the narrative of Indian history. In other words, people were, in good faith perhaps, writing history books about the Indian working class, Indian peasantry, et cetera, and at no point did Communists make an entry, not even to be criticized. They were essentially being whitewashed from history. And we thought that was irresponsible. We wanted to, as it were, bring them back into the story. The first motive was principally historiographical, you know, it was honesty, like, let’s bring them back into the story.

The second issue was, I think, in a sense more fundamental and this is the issue about politics. Over the last two or so decades, there’s been an increase in thinking among the Left, liberals, intellectuals in the direction of so-called spontaneity. In other words that uprisings happen spontaneously, people are frustrated, angry, then they spontaneously rise up. And what they don’t require is preparation, or what we used to call leadership. Leadership is another word for preparation. In other words, in times when the tempo for struggle is not very high, you prepare populations by conducting acts of courage-building, confidence-building, respect for each other. That’s what the preparation is about and it requires leadership.

So this aspect of political struggle, leadership or preparation, has been largely denigrated. I consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation. And of course I understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity. But in this period of the neoliberalism of the Left, spontaneity has, in a sense, overshadowed preparation. So if you don’t consider preparation to be important, why should you put it into the historical record?

So in other words there are several studies done of peasant uprisings where the first chapter might be ‘conditions in that area’ and so the conditions are bad, and then the second chapter is a kind of conjectural event, somebody’s shot and then there’s an uprising. But there’s no consideration, no chapter on preparation. And interestingly, if you write preparation out of history, leadership and preparation, the building of confidence among people who are exploited, you’ve actually methodologically written out the Communists because, when an uprising takes place, you don’t necessarily see red flags everywhere. You see all kinds of anarchic forms of rebellion, but the moment of preparation is when the Communists and other kinds of political forces play a roll. So this denigration of preparation actually closes the door on writing the history of Communism and so when we want to bring this history back, we’re also contesting this political method which suggests there’s no room for preparation, you simply merely wait for people to rise up.

To take the Arab Spring for instance, the way that history is written, you have the conditions of that region, there’s a huge buzz, and then one particular person, Muhammad Bouazizi burns himself, immolates himself in Tunisia, and that…sparks the uprising. What again disappears is the patient work conducted, for instance, in Egypt by the textiles workers union in Muhalla which played a crucial role of a very patient, confidence-building work among youth done by the four Palestinian groups inside Egypt. You know, they played a very significant role in creating the uprising in Egypt. But if you again, if you denigrate the process of preparation, then you loose the history of all these people and that’s what we really want to recover.

AS: So one thing that strikes me about this project is it has a ripple effect that could impact American activism and particularly the Black Lives Matter movement because I can’t tell you how many times over the last several years I’ve read editorials in mainstream newspapers constantly browbeating about Martin Luther King [Jr.] and this angelic vision of his praxis that is really rooted in what we could call the Richard Attenborough vision of Indian history because there’s this idea that his praxis came from this idealized vision of Gandhi. What are your thoughts on that?

VP: Well…there are two things that you said that are very important.

One is let’s take the King story first. You know, part of this lionization of the Great Man, King, Gandhi, even Malcolm X…minimizes the work that it takes to produce a movement. Lionization, as used, rightly or wrongly, has a great leader appear and by dint of their rhetoric or oratory, people will rise up and follow them. I recommend strongly an interesting rebuttal of this approach but, again, she wrote this book around an individual to make this rebuttal, and that’s Barbara Ramsey’s ver very good, strong biography of Ella Baker because Ella Baker was an organizer, and that book by Barbara Ramsey is an organizer’s biography… Those who were knee-deep in building popular confidence. What was their participation in a movement like? They are often the people who are written out of history. The elevators of history, these are exactly the people we are trying to recover. Who are these people?

So this lionization of the king figure, I mean King deserves all the accolades he gets, but the lionization of the King, or the making King the spark, the beginning and end of the movement, the alpha and omega of the movement, buries people like Ella Baker and the roll they played in actually building popular confidence in localities. So when somebody like King would come and visit a city, there were local organizers who gave people confidence to fill the room. It wasn’t by celebrity that people came to fill the room, it was dangerous to come and hear King, so you needed…the kind of infrastructure of local confidence. That’s the organizer, so I think it’s a very important point. This is also writing against lionization.

You mentioned Black Lives Matter. Now again, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or Occupy, in the American political discussion, there’s a tendency to assume that people sort of arrive politically, that there are these gatherings and there’s no agenda, there’s no leadership, this always an assumption of the media, then they browbeat, saying ‘where are the leaders, why don’t they have an agenda?’ Well, actually underneath each of these…there are networks, there…is this infrastructure of confidence-building. There are organizers who are involved, many of them have been organizers for decades and have great experience in knowing how to build a movement.

And so there is again in the media a writing out of this very crucial work that gets done to produce a movement. If you look at the leadership of Black Lives Matter, they didn’t come from nowhere. They came from queer movements, they came from feminist movements, they came from socialist traditions, they come from a wide variety of confidence-building dynamics and so I think that this argument we are making, admittedly, initially it was merely about Indian historiography, I think it is a bigger critique of the ‘neoliberalism of the Left’.

AS: With those things in mind, tell me about Being ‘Naren Bhattacharji’.

VP: The first essay is by Suchetana Chattopadhyay, who’s a historian at Jadavpur University in Calcutta, and Suchetana wrote a book earlier about one of the founders of the Indian Communist movement. His name is Muzaffar Ahmad. And it’s a terrific book because it’s not really just about Muzaffar Ahmad, who was a writer, an activist, a…very brave and brilliant man.

But it was a story about the city of Calcutta, it was a story about how Communists out of strangeness emerge. What I mean is that to be a Communist or to be somebody who believes in the future is a curious thing. So you have to live with people around you, you have to be with the people. At the same time, you believe things that are askance of reality. You have different ideas of gender relations, you have different ideas of social freedoms, and I think she captures that contradiction quite brilliantly and I think all people of the Left experience this. We go among the people, we live among the people, and yet we are slightly alienated from the people because we believe in certain things that are not commonplace.

There was an American poet, Muriel Rukheiser, who had a beautiful line. She said “We are exiles from the future”. We come from the future, essentially, because we have all these ideas about gender equality, sexual freedom, and these are not shared by the working class, the peasantry among whom we work. So I think she captured that beautifully.

In this essay, she took up the other important founder of Indian Communism who is M.N. Roy. And M.N. Roy is quite an interesting character because Roy, of course, ends up in Mexico eventually and becomes the founder of the Mexican Communist Party and then Roy goes to Moscow where he very famously debates Lenin on the question of the colonial/national standpoint in the Second Communist International meeting. But what Suchetana does is she writes about the early M.N. Roy, before he became M.N. Roy his birth name is Naren and Naren’s story of becoming a Left wing person is very interesting. How this essentially bourgeois nationalist radicalizes himself.

And why I was interested in opening the book with her essay is I think it’s important for people to see how iconic figures like M.N. Roy were not always M.N. Roy. I mean people who become important activists, they also struggle with the process of discovery. Years ago I wrote about Martin Luther King’s discovery when he was a college student and went and worked to pick tobacco in the outskirts of Hartford, Connecticut and he writes these letters to his mother, struggling with what he should do with his life. I think for people to read these stories of how people struggle to become organizers, political people, is I think quite inspiring and I think that first essay is very brilliant in that.

AS: Let’s talk about The ‘Colonial Conference’ and Dilemma of the Comintern’s Colonial Work, 1928-29.

VP: So Fredrik Petersson has got to be one of the most promising young historians of the Communist International. This is a person who has I think control of about fifteen languages…really quite brilliant, has understood the Communist International papers which are a treasure trove of material to build a story of how to understand early Communism. And what Fredrik writes about in this essay is a conference that the Comintern was enthusiastic to hold…

You see, in the early years, they understood very well that the possibility of a breakthrough revolution in Western Europe was diminishing after the defeat of the uprising in Germany, after the defeat of uprisings in other countries, and one of them of course being Hungary, where there was a successful red republic for a short period of time. And as they came to the understanding that the breakthrough in Europe was not going to happen, there was quite a considerable amount of discussion about the so-called weakest link of them all, which were the colonies. And Lenin had written about this earlier and so the Communist International was interested in getting more robust work done in the colonies.

Unfortunately the only way to do that was through the colonial countries. In other words, to get to India, they had to go through the British Communist Party because their access to India was very weak. The Indian Communist Party had been founded in 1920 in Tashkent outside India and the reason is they had a hard time because of strong repression of the British government, hard time building a movement inside India. So this essay is about the attempt inside the Communist International creating a colonial conference among mainly Western European countries, the great colonizing countries, among their Left parties, to gather together and strategize how best to push for some kind of political work in the colonies. And sadly as Fredrik shows that conference never took place and the reasons for that are quite interesting. A lot of it has to do with just the internal politics in the Comintern. Why I like this essay, it’s for anybody who believes that the world of ideas dominates in history.

You see often it’s not ideas, it’s inertia, it’s bureaucratism, it’s all the other things that sometimes come in the way of a good idea.

AS: Let’s talk now about Cuba and the Red International, 1934.

VP: Margaret Stevens is a very, very good historian, teaches in New Jersey, I don’t know if you’ll recall but she was one of the founders of the Iraq Veterans Against the War… Margaret has written a dissertation, this chapter comes out of the dissertation, which is essentially bringing to life the role of the Left…across the Americas, in the Caribbean, or the United States and the linkage between the north and the south.

And what she shows in this chapter in particular is the way in which, remember, I said that the Communist International often, to get to the colonies, had to go through the colonial power’s Left party. So in this case the Communist International was in touch with the CPUSA, the Communist Party of the United States, to engage in Cuba. And the chapter is about an uprising in Cuba, the creation of a commune, Commune 18, inside Cuba, which was inspired and led by a Cuban Communist and the conflict between the kind of ‘red international’ in North America, the Cubans and Moscow.

And she I think very nicely…brings alive that world of the uprising, the leadership, the kind of struggles between them and, in a sense, how faulty leadership played a role in not being able to push the movement and at the same time the exaggerated sense of the power of the people at that time…was also at fault, meaning that sometimes people might rise up but they might rise up too early. The island wasn’t prepared for an uprising.

But it’s an interesting essay because it shows you that there are prehistories of the Cuban revolution of 1959 which are rooted in the Communist movement. One of the ways in which we understand Cuba is that there’s a kind of nationalist revolt in 1959, Castro comes to America, the Americans snub him, and then he turns to the Soviet Union. But what this essay shows you is that there are essentially older histories of Communist rebellion inside Cuba that perhaps contributed in a great way to the revolution.

AS: So let’s talk now about Indian Peasant Women’s Activism in a Hot Cold War.

VP: Now this is one of the essays that was presented at the Historical Materialism conference in Delhi in 2013. And this is another interesting essay… Elizabeth Armstrong had written a book about the All-India Women’s Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA)…which is one of the largest women’s groups in the world, there are 13 million members, and it’s a Communist women’s group in India today. It was an interesting book about the organizational theory of AIDWA.

The idea was that, how is it that in the time of neoliberalism, when all around the world movements are suffering, this group has essentially doubled its membership? So she has been interested in the question of organization and the organizational space between theory and practice. So this is a step backwards, looking at the pre-history of AIDWA.

And here she does a couple of things.

One is she looks at the creation of..pan-Indian women’s political organizations like the All-Indian Women’s Congress, which was a nationalist women’s organization, and alongside that the emergence of Communist women’s groups, first within the All-Indian Women’s Congress and then outside it. And what is interesting is, see, India is largely even today, about 70% of India lives in rural areas, then it was overwhelmingly a rural country, which meant that no mass organization could essentially bypass the question of the peasantry. And interestingly, what the bourgeois women’s groups in India wanted to do in the nationalist period is to have the peasant women essentially follow them… They would be the leaders and the peasant women would be the masses.

What the Communists had to engage with is they wanted to organize the peasant women and make them essentially have power over the movements to create democratic movements. And so this is a history of that struggle between the bourgeois women’s movements and the Communist women’s movements and what essentially is the fulcrum of the essay is in 1943 there was a famine in which perhaps as many as 3 million Indians died in order to feed British troops essentially and the Indian women Communists became some of the leaders in organizing relief against the famine.

And it’s in the experience of working in a famine that they developed the skills to create the Indian Women’s Communist Front, which continues to play an important role, and essentially then is the precursor to the All-India Women’s Democratic Women’s Association… One of the interesting theoretical things that comes out of the chapter is how this experience of building confidence among the masses transformed the very understanding that these Communist women had of politics. They didn’t come there with a pre-written script, it was the experiences that produced an understanding of how to organize, in other words, organizing is always a relationship between the person who arrives and says ‘Let’s meet together’ and the person who comes to the meeting.

There is no passiveness, it is genuinely done, and I think this essay shows very well how there was an active engagement between the organizers and those who themselves became organizers in the process.

AS: So from there let’s talk about The Lost International in the Transformation of Chinese Socialism.

VP: One of the underlying themes of this first volume, because hopefully we’ll have more volumes, is internationalism and the role of internationalism in the Left movement, even in small localities, even if you’re in the middle of a peasant’s struggle, what differentiates a Communist organizer from others is that they have an internationalist perspective.

So Lin Chun, who’s a highly-regarded scholar of China, writes about global capitalism, has written very, very good books on Chinese politics and labor, tackles a sensitive question, which is the question of what happens to Chinese socialism, or rather its internationalism, when its understanding of socialism begins to alter. So what she argues is that from the 1930’s, of course especially from 1949, till the 1990’s, Chinese socialism…had a deeply internationalist agenda. And that internationalist agenda of course can be, it doesn’t always work in a way that one might like, but it was nonetheless internationalist, by which I mean…the Chinese did after all decide that the Soviet Union was a greater threat than the United States and decided to come to terms with the United States when Nixon visits China. It should be understood as a problematic direction that its internationalism went in but nonetheless it was internationalist.

And then she suggests that with the change of economic policy, the political internationalism of China begins to shift and it has a different understanding of its international role. So it’s an interesting chapter, a suggestive chapter…because it suggests that after the slow decline of American unipolarity, as China begins to enter the world stage, what is its international consciousness? And she suggests that its international consciousness is almost entirely removed from that of the high point of Chinese Communism. And I found that a very interesting kind of argument.

So even though it is not as locally-grounded, granular as some of the other chapters in the volume, it’s very thoughtful and I wanted to have something anyway from China.

AS: From here let’s talk about The Warli Movement and its Living Histories.

VP: When we released the volume in Mumbai, in Bombay, just a few weeks ago, one of the people who came to speak on the book Comrade Dhangar, who’s 88 years old and he spoke eloquently about the history of the Warli uprising and then his role in the Warli uprising. The Warli uprising was a major adivasi, or indigenous uprising, in western India against the new Indian government, against the land and forest policy of the new Indian government. And it was seeded and led by important Communist leaders, including Godavari Parulekar, and what the historian Archana Prasad has done is Archana went interviewed people like Comrade Dhangar and others who lived as children at that time but then also struggled right through the century with the commitments of the Warli uprising. And what she found, she first gives a very good assessment of the Warli uprising but what she found was that the initial people, like Godavari Parulekar, when they came in to prepare for an uprising, they also produced a new generation of leaders among the Warlis themselves. And it’s this generation that takes up the cudgel for the next couple of decades.

So it’s an important story because it writes against the assumption that outsides come in, Communists come in, they seed something, and then they continue to lead it. What she shows is that it’s not like there are Communists and then Warlis because within a few years the Warlis become Communists. And they become leaders in their region and that has decades-long effect through families, through community. The other thing she finds is because the Warli region has a living history of struggle against the Indian government’s land and forest policy, they have a living memory of the uprising. In other places that she looks at, where there is no history of struggle after an uprising, the living memory dies.

I thought this was a very interesting point. In other words, let’s assume that there are two places in a country, Place One and Place Two both have major rebellions in the 1930’s. Place One has not only the rebellion in the thirties but it continues to have a history of struggle. Place Two does not have a history of struggle after the rebellion. So what Archana would suggest, what she’s found is, where there is a living memory of struggle, they have a living memory of the rebellion. Where there’s no struggle afterward the rebellion is forgotten. I thought this should be useful for historians where we assume, for instance, that there were places where there was no struggle.

Let’s take American history, you go up to the states in…places like Nebraska or Wyoming and we assume that Wyoming has always been Dick Cheney country. But in fact merely because in the last several decades there’s been no populist or Left uprisings there doesn’t mean that there’s no great history of populist people’s uprisings in places like Wyoming because if you go back and look at it, some of those states had very great farmers movements, cattlemen’s movements. Some of them of course are drenched with a history of massacring Native Americans but some of them also have linkages to the [Industrial] Workers of the World, which had roots in some of these states. So that lack of a living history, Archana suggests, means that you forget these pasts and the reason your forget these pasts is that neither state historiography nor professional bourgeois historiography is going to keep alive that memory.

AS: In closing I just wanted to talk briefly what you’ve described as this ‘neoliberalism of the Left’ and emphasis of spontaneity. C.L.R. James moved towards a position that emphasized spontaneous action in some regards, is that correct?

VP: I’m not that sure. I read a number of James but I read mainly, Andrew, honestly the early James. I know his Black Jacobins very well and of course Beyond the Boundary is one of my favorite books on cricket but I don’t really know the later James.

AS: You just mentioned the I.W.W., the Wobblies, and one of the things that I’ve found by looking at the book Towards a Soviet America by William Z. Foster is, he was originally a member of the I.W.W. during its heyday and he brought to that brought to that book and to his vision of Communism taking root in America a sort of dual power vision that came from the I.W.W. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that sort of logic?

VP: This is…important and I think we at some point should have a long discussion of some kind about this. In the early period of Left struggles, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there were many different trajectories for the struggle, whether you call it ‘syndicalism’ or ‘anarchism’ or, at the time, ‘social democracy’, eventually ‘Communism’, these were different theories of struggle. But all of them shared a basic understanding that the people…experience exploitation, they experience oppression, but they’re not prepared to rise up.

And the reason they’re not prepared to rise up are two-fold: one is they may not have the confidence to rise up, in other words, that there are cultures that produce different kinds of attitudes, whether it’s religion, fatalism, sense of fear, repression, the culture of God and the police minimizes confidence in people.

So one is the role, whether you were an anarchist at the time or you were a Communist, you believe that you must go amongst the people and raise up their confidence. The other one, where there was a disagreement in some sections, was over the use of violence.

You see, one strand…of anarchism believed that you needed to use essentially homeopathic doses of terror by assassinating people, et cetera, the so-called ‘propaganda of the deed’, and that this propaganda of the deed would rouse people up, give them confidence to rise up. Another section believed ‘No, it was not by seeing something happen that people get confidence, but it’s by acting’, in other words, the movements must go among the people and produce small struggles, bigger struggles, to give people greater and greater confidence.

This was a real political debate in the earlier part of the twentieth century and in India, for instance, one of the great iconic figures of our movement is Bhagat Singh, who believed in the propaganda of the deed. When he went to prison Bhagat Singh wrote a pamphlet called Why I Am An Atheist and in this pamphlet he had a very interesting synthesis of the two approaches.

He said in that ‘For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential. In times of great necessity, violence is indispensable’. In other words, when you are threatened, when your life is threatened, you have to fight back. But to build a mass movement, nonviolence is indispensable. That was Bhagat Singh’s synthesis of the two, he didn’t say one is better, he said…there’s a different use for different strategies. Why I’m saying all this is that debate at the time was a rich debate because what everybody shared was the idea that you cannot have politics without building mass-movements.

Now today, why I say ‘neoliberalism of the Left’ is that the idea of building mass movements, and with an emphasis on the word ‘building’, the idea of building, preparing mass movements, is not very much there. We would like to participate in manifestations, in Occupies and things like that. We would like to be involved in a march. But we don’t actually see the very hard work that goes to build confidence towards those events. And we don’t have a shared discussion.

So, when anarchists are having a debate, they’re having a debate about tactics, ‘Should you do this?’, ‘Should you do that?’ The question isn’t ‘Should you do this?’, ‘Should you do that?’, the primary question is how do you build confidence among the masses of people who experience hierarchies, who experience exploitation, who experience oppression. The principle question should not be a narcissism of tactics, ‘What’s the correct tactic?’ The principle question should be ‘How do you build popular confidence?’

And in the previous generations, that was a shared understanding. Today that is not a shared understanding.

AS: Are there any other points you would like to bring up in closing about this volume?

VP: Well, the one thing I would like to say…is that the book is published by LeftWord Books, we are a small Marxist publishing house in Delhi, and our goal essentially is to become a very good and important publishing house in the English language and also in Indian languages. That’s our goal. And our books are available through e-books so we very much recommend that people go to the website, LeftWord.com, have a look, read our books, review our books, fight with us, the last thing a Marxist publisher would like to experience is being ignored. We want people to take us seriously, we don’t necessarily want anybody to agree with us, but please don’t ignore us!Since 1907, the Newark Warehouse Company Building, also known as the Central Graphic Arts Building, has stood near Newark Penn Station and the Prudential Center at 98-126 Edison Place, at the southwestern corner of McCarter Highway/Route 21, in the city’s East Ward. The building, located in the Downtown Core District Redevelopment Area, has largely been vacant in recent years, with the exception of a small gallery inside that hosted this year’s Ironbound Multicultural Festival. Previously, the building was used for commercial purposes by companies like Iron Mountain and Central Paper Company.

In 2014, a company registered out of ParkFast-owner Edison Properties acquired the building for $7 million from the North Caldwell-based Berkowitz Company, according to NJ Parcels.

Last year, two banners were posted outside of the building advertising that six floors of mixed-use space were available for use by arts and entertainment venues, restaurants, retail stores, and business offices. Then, earlier this year, Edison Properties created a website describing its plans for the property, claiming that “we are bringing all of these entities under one roof to foster a healthy, urban vibe in Newark and help the city attract young professionals looking for a ‘cooler’ alternative to Hoboken and Jersey City – with better transportation options”. The website has since been taken down.





Now, we are seeing the first sign of progress on the project from the developer, Newark Warehouse Redeveloper Company, LLC. The company has applied to the Newark Central Planning Board for preliminary and final site plan approval to rehabilitate the building and expand it into a seven-story 456,059 square foot building to be used for office, retail, and commercial purposes, according to a legal notice. The developer is requesting variances in regards to having insufficient street trees and excessive lighting levels, according to board records. Leonard D. Savino P.E. of Parsippany-based Langan Engineering and Environmental Services is registered as the project architect and engineer.

A video posted in October claims that a garden roof deck and a two-story atrium entrance on Edison Place are also planned, and a real estate listing from Newmark Grubb Knight Frank states that office spaces should be available in April 2018.





This is not the first time that redevelopment has been proposed for the building. According to The New York Times, the building’s interior was supposed to be converted into a 1,000-car parking garage and four stories of office space were supposed to be built on top as part of the One Penn Center proposal in 1989.

Today’s Newark Warehouse Company Building is surrounded by private parking lots, but that will change upon completion of the Triangle Park project. When completed, occupants of the building will have a 22-acre urban park at their doorstep, which will include a footbridge over the train tracks, connecting the area with the Ironbound neighborhood.





City spokesperson Cheryl McCants told Jersey Digs that “Triangle Park is still in the early developmental stages”, and that “the City and Newark Community EDC [Economic Development Corporation] are prepping for stakeholder meetings, planning and naming sessions and working on conceptual designs”.

Upon completion of Triangle Park and the Newark Warehouse Company Building project, this underutilized corner of New Jersey’s largest city will likely be bustling with residents, commuters, and tourists, transforming blocks of vacant property into the region’s newest attraction.The news of Sunday’s truck-ramming attack in Jerusalem that left four Israelis dead and 17 injured has sparked outbursts of jubilation among Palestinian terrorist groups.

Hamas welcomed the attack, saying the carnage is a “natural reaction” to the “crimes of the occupation,” and what the terrorist group claimed was the infringement on the “Palestinians’ rights” and their holy sites.

Fawzi Barhoum, the movement’s spokesperson, lauded the attack as a “courageous act in defense of the holy sites and especially Al Aqsa mosque.”

He added that the attack proves that the “Jerusalem intifada [a series of attacks on Israelis that started in October 2015] continues to defend our lands and holy sites, and the Israeli oppression and aggression won’t be able to stop it. The oppression will only increase the determination of the Palestinian people to continue its heroic resistance in all its forms.”

The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad also welcomed the attack, and said in a statement that the deadly truck-ramming represented “a natural reaction to the crimes of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.”

The pro-Hamas journalist Adham Abu Slamiyeh tweeted a picture of Palestinians handing out sweets, with the following caption: “The sweets of the attack are in. Allah bless the men of Jabel Mukaber [the perpetrator’s home neighborhood] that helped us redeem the spirit of Jerusalem.”

Twitter user Ahmad Qanita wrote: “Allahu akbar, these pictures make me want more. They remind us of [Hamas explosives expert Yahya] Ayash’s attacks, just as we smell his perfumed memory,” referring to the 21st anniversary of Yahya’s elimination by Israel, which Hamas marked earlier this week.

الله أكبر ،، صور بتفتح النفس..

صور تذكرنا بعمليات #يحيى_عياش ونحن نتنسم ذكراه العطرة

(صور من عملية القدس قبل قليل)#انتفاضة_القدس pic.twitter.com/ve3BVwHKSm — أحمد قنيطة #غزة (@a2qanita_1) January 8, 2017

Hussein Shaweesh also evoked Ayash’s memory: “Jews, the children of Ayash are back and the Jerusalem attack is the best proof.”

أبناء العياش عادوا يا ابناء اليهودية

وخير دليل #عملية_القدس#انتفاضة_القدس — حسين الشاويش #غزة (@HshShaweesh) January 8, 2017

“Here is the Jerusalem intifada, Jerusalem the crown jewel of cities demonstrates its determination to fight against the invaders,” the Jordanian-Palestinian analyst Yasser Zaatreh tweeted. “The attack today proves that the intifada continues despite the cruel oppression of the enemy and the collaboration of our brothers.”

هي انتفاضة القدس، وفي زهرة المدائن يتجلى الإصرار على رفض الغزاة. عملية اليوم تؤكد أن الانتفاضة متواصلة، رغم شراسة قمع العدو وتآمر الشقيق. — ياسر الزعاترة (@YZaatreh) January 8, 2017

“Allah, harm the sons of Zion and show them the wonders of your might,” Mohammed Yehya tweeted.

5 قتلى وأكثر من 15 اصابة بينهم حالات حرجة جميعهم جنود في عملية #القدس البطولية

اللهم أثخن في بني صهيون وأرنا فيهم عجيب قدرتك#انتفاضة_القدس — محمد يحيى #غزة (@mhmdyjber) January 8, 2017

Ramadan wrote: “In Jerusalem the hero rose up and exacted revenge, the Jerusalem intifada will continue until the return and liberation of the land.”A federal judge ruled Saturday that a New Jersey town broke the law by requiring more parking spaces for a mosque than for other places of worship.

The planning board of Bernards Township, N.J., denied plans to build a mosque due to concerns that there were not enough parking spaces, arguing that mosques needed more parking than churches or synagogues due to different times of worship.

After nearly four years of hearings, the Islamic Society sued the township in March 2016. U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp declared Saturday that the town’s actions violated the Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act.

Parking requirements have been previously used against the building of mosques, and the Islamic Society’s lawyer Adeel Mangi reportedly said, “(t)his truly is a landmark ruling with national impact.”

In court, the township insisted that the issue was not a religious one, but a concern over parking, with the township’s attorney saying in court, “it’s based simply on the parking needs of the applicant.”

Judge Schipp, however, disagreed, and ruled that the parking requirements gave the town board “unbridled and unconstitutional discretion.”

Follow Justin on TwitterWhy did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.As Rory McIlroy has grown closer to Tiger Woods, he has figured out one important thing: It’s not worth it.

McIlroy, who is no stranger to tabloid controversies, has had a closeup look at the chilling effect being in the spotlight has had on Woods’ life.

“I’ve seen it first-hand. I’ve seen what his life is like in Florida,” McIlroy told the Irish Times in a lengthy Q&A.

“I’ve played golf with him and said: ‘What are you doing tonight? Do you want to come and have dinner with us?’ And he can’t. He just can’t. And for me that’s unfathomable. I could not live like that.”

Woods had one of the most publicized falls from grace in sports history. His personal life was left in shambles after his then-wife Elin Norgren chased him out of their house with a golf club and he crashed his car trying to escape her wrath. The wrath, of course, was the result of Woods’ sex scandal that rocked the sports world for years to come.

Where was McIlroy at the time of Woods’ 2009 accident?

“The European Tour season had just finished and I was spending December at home in Northern Ireland,” McIlroy told the paper. “The first thing [we heard] was: ‘Tiger Woods has been in a car accident.’ I thought: ‘Holy s–t! Has he been injured?’ And then as things started to come out we got the bigger picture.”

Woods never regained his spot as the unbeatable figure on top of the sport — he has not won a major since the 2008 US Open — as McIlroy and other young players chewed away at Woods’ invincibility.

The Northern Irishman’s own personal life later became public when he dumped fiancée Caroline Wozniacki in a telephone call. But, he says, the scrutiny he faced does not compare to what Woods has endured.

“If someone was to say, ‘You can have 14 majors and 70 wins, but have to deal with that, or nine majors and 40 wins and stay somewhat the same as you are,’ I’d take the second option all day,” McIlroy said.

The two have formed a close bond in recent years as McIlroy has climbed to the top of the sport and Woods has crashed down dealing with back injuries. Woods finally returned to tournament play last month, and is scheduled to play at Riviera in mid-February.

see also Where Tiger Woods goes now after mixed-bag return Phase One of Tiger Woods’ comeback was completed successfully on...

“He’s an intriguing character because you could spend two hours in his company and see four different sides to him,” McIlroy said. “When he’s comfortable and he trusts you — and his trust [sensitivity] is way [higher] than mine — he’s great. He’s thoughtful.

“He’s smart. He reads. He can’t sleep, so that’s all he does — he reads stuff and educates himself on everything. But he struggles to sleep, which I think is an effect of overtraining, so I tell him to calm down sometimes. He’d be texting me at four o’clock in the morning: ‘Up lifting. What are you doing?’”

McIlroy said not everyone enjoys Woods’ late-night texting habit, specifically his fiancée Erica Stoll.

“Erica actually got pissed off with it,” McIlroy said. “He was texting me in the middle of the night, and I was like, ‘Tiger is in the gym.’”Napoli non è una città qualsiasi, non è neanche una semplice città, è qualcosa di più.

Napoli è uno stile di vita, un modus operandi.

Napoli è la città che ha combattuto, combatte e combatterà con l’immagine spregevole con cui molti la ritraggono fermandosi al suo lato peggiore, forse il più radicato ma sicuramente quello meno visibile ad un outsider: la camorra.

Napoli è la città che molti italiani associano alla spazzatura dimenticando totalmente quel mare di bellezza che Lei ha da offrire.

Napoli è la città dei presepi di San Gregorio armeno, la città del Vesuvio e di Posillipo ma è soprattutto la città dell’accoglienza così fragorosa da essere quasi imbarazzante, è la città di un popolo – i napoletani – che dopo averti conosciuto non ti molla più: ti rispettano, ti cercano, ti amano.

Napoli è la bellezza dell’Italia non un motivo di vergogna, è la città che meglio rappresenta l’iconica vita italiana che nell’immaginario dei non italiani è vespe piaggio e costiere mozzafiato; è Italia, è italiana e racchiude in sé lo spirito di un paese; l’orgoglio e la forza di un popolo che è stato grande e vorrebbe tornare ad esserlo.

Napoli è il napoletano urlato per strada, è tutti i “uaaaa” dei suoi abitanti, è quella canzone neomelodica che sfugge dal finestrino di un auto in corsa; è la capacità di adattarsi ad ogni situazione tirandone fuori il meglio, è il ristorante improvvisato in un garage e le bancarelle che vendono spudoratamente imitazioni di ogni prodotto esistente.

Napoli è quel motorino con il guidatore senza casco e il clima tiepido anche a fine novembre, è il profumo di pizza che si libra nell’aria in ogni via.

Napoli è tanto cibo squisito, è millemila trigliceridi a pasto e tante, tante risate; è quell’angolino super pittoresco di Marechiaro, è le vie acciottolate dei Decumani, è la gente che ti risponde per strada anche se non stai parlando con loro e si rivolge a te come se fossi il suo migliore amico; è inviti a cena non appena si instaura confidenza con qualcuno, è sentirsi a casa in ogni momento.

Napoli è in quella fede calcistica così forte e radicata nel cuore dei tifosi da appassionare pure me che di calcio non ne capisco nulla e mi hanno appassionata così tanto che la prossima volta che tornerò andrò allo stadio (Diego aspettaci!!!!).

Napoli è amore: un insieme di pregi e difetti che la rendono unica e indimenticabile.

Napoli è una città meravigliosa con un’anima possente e io non vedo l’ora di incontrarla ancora.

Per approfondire: 10 cose da fare-vedere-mangiare a Napoli.A state judge heard arguments on Wednesday on whether chimpanzees can be considered persons with some legal rights, as advocates seeking to free two chimps in captivity on Long Island asserted they were “autonomous beings” and compared their plight to that of human slaves.

“They are the kinds of beings who can remember the past and plan ahead for the future,” Steven M. Wise of the Nonhuman Rights Project told the court, “which is one of the reasons imprisoning a chimp is at least as bad and maybe worse than imprisoning a person.”

The unusual hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan concerned the fate of Hercules and Leo, two 8-year-old chimpanzees being studied by a researcher at Stony Brook University. The Nonhuman Rights Project has sued to have them released, trying to use the time-honored writ of habeas corpus, a cornerstone of American law that allows a person to challenge unlawful imprisonment.

But what is a person under the law? That was the focus of arguments before Justice Barbara Jaffe. Mr. Wise contended that chimpanzees are enough like humans that they should have a right to “bodily liberty,” even if other rights, like voting or freedom of religion, are beyond them.About ety3rd: How to Raise a Geek

Virginia-based author of several ebooks, some of them free (the BSG prequels).This Tumblr is all about cool things. Toys, videos, posters and more. The fact that they can be shared with your kids is just a bonus.My Books:Lords of Kobol - Book One:...The first offenders have been jailed under the new powers, which were introduced to tackle the menace of so-called legal highs – with more cases currently progressing through the criminal justice system.

Police are also continuing to tackle retailers. Since 26 May 2016, when the act came into force, they have stopped 332 shops across the UK from selling the substances, formerly referred to as “legal highs”, and 31 headshops have closed down.

Minister for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism Sarah Newton said:

We banned new psychoactive substances because they are not safe, they can devastate lives and we will not tolerate them in this country. I am pleased to see the police making full use of the new powers, arresting dealers and ensuring they are punished with prison sentences which reflect the seriousness of this crime. At the same time as supporting law enforcement in tackling the supply of illegal drugs, we are also taking action to prevent the harms caused by their use – from educating young people about the risks to helping dependent individuals through treatment.

In 2015 alone, new psychoactive substances were involved in 204 deaths in the UK, an increase of 25% from 163 deaths in 2014.

National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Psychoactive Substances, Commander Simon Bray, said:

The Psychoactive Substances Act fundamentally changed the way the police tackle the supply and distribution of these dangerous drugs. Across the country officers are using the full range of powers to enforce the law and the figures released today highlight their commitment to reducing the availability of these harmful substances. I am confident that together, with education, local authorities and other enforcement agencies, we can continue to disrupt the supply and accessibility of these drugs and prevent the damage they can cause.

The Psychoactive Substances Act has so far seen 4 people sent to prison, with other cases still being progressed through the criminal justice system.

William Cook, 29, of Fernan Dell, Crownhill, was caught in possession of hundreds of canisters of nitrous oxide and balloons at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Milton Keynes in July 2016.

He was sentenced to 42 months in prison for possession with intent to supply in September.

Penalties for offenders and powers for law enforcement include:Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of “actors” involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years.

The classified document, which officials said is over 50 pages, was delivered to President Obama on Thursday, and it is expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by the nation’s top spy officials, including Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Given the president-elect’s skepticism about the intelligence community — particularly its conclusions about Russia — the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the tenor of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged.

[Top U.S. intelligence official testifies on Russian interference in election ]

“The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did,” a senior U.S. official said.

U.S. officials declined to say whether the intercepted communications were cited in the classified version of the report commissioned by Obama, and they emphasized that although the messages were seen as strong indicators of Moscow’s intent and clear preference for Trump, they were not regarded as conclusive evidence of Russian intelligence agencies’ efforts to achieve that outcome.

“There are a variety of different exhibits that make the case, different factors that have provided the intelligence community with high confidence” that Russia sought in part to help elect Trump, said a second senior U.S. official who has reviewed intelligence findings on Russia’s cyber operations.

Officials emphasized that “signals intelligence,” as such communication is known, is treated by analysts with caution because statements can be taken out of context and sophisticated adversaries including the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation.

U.S. officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having “directed” cyber operations to disrupt the U.S. election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

The new report incorporates material from previous assessments and assembles in a single document details of cyber operations dating back to 2008. Still, U.S. officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week.

Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 election and the question of how the United States should respond have become bitterly polarizing issues in Washington, sowing discord among Republicans on Capitol Hill, complicating the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, and exacerbating an increasingly toxic relationship between the president-elect and U.S. spy services.

Senior lawmakers have called for a full investigation of the Russian hacking. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Clapper said that Moscow’s cyber assault on the election went beyond interference and into “activism.”

At Thursday’s hearing, Clapper said that U.S. spy agencies “stand actually more resolutely” behind conclusions they reached last year on Russia’s determination to undermine the U.S. election. He also appeared to take aim at Trump’s social media sniping at U.S. intelligence services, saying that “there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement.”

Obama last week announced a series of measures designed to punish Russia, actions he characterized as “a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests.” Obama moved to impose economic sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies, expelled dozens of alleged Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, and shuttered two compounds that for decades had purportedly served as retreats for Russian diplomats but were described by the administration as locations for espionage activities.

Meanwhile, Trump continued his string of Twitter attacks, accusing U.S. intelligence agencies — with the word “intelligence” set off in quotation marks — of delaying a planned briefing on Russia and the election, a charge that U.S. officials disputed. He also appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has denied that his organization got the hacked emails from Russia, over U.S. spy agencies, which think that WikiLeaks got the material through middlemen with ties to the Kremlin.

[How Julian Assange evolved from pariah to paragon]

Trump appeared to retreat on Thursday, accusing the “dishonest media” of misrepresenting his comments about Assange. “The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence,’ ” he said, “when in fact I am a big fan!”

U.S. officials said the captured messages, whose existence has not previously been disclosed, added to the confidence level at the CIA and other agencies that Putin’s goals went beyond seeking to undermine confidence in America’s election machinery and ultimately were aimed at tilting a fiercely contested presidential race toward a candidate seen as more in line with Moscow’s foreign policy goals.

Even so, the messages also revealed that top officials in Russia anticipated that Clinton would win and did not expect their effort to achieve its goal.

Russian officials “were as surprised as the rest of the world,” said the second U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

“In this case, you do learn things after the fact based on how they feel about it,” the first official said, adding that the intercepts added to the intelligence community’s “shifting level of confidence.”

The intercepts also echoed some public comments in Moscow. “Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him,” Putin said at a news conference last month, adding with a wry smile, “except for you and me.”

U.S. intelligence officials think that Putin has for years held a grudge against Clinton, whom he accused of fomenting demonstrations in Moscow in 2011 and 2012 that embarrassed Putin and rattled the former KGB operative’s confidence in his grip on power.

Russia’s elite spy services have for years used cyberespionage capabilities to gather information on U.S. policymakers and political candidates — as the United States does on Russia. But Moscow’s decision to dump thousands of stolen emails into public view on WikiLeaks was seen as a provocative departure from the traditional lanes of espionage, U.S. officials said.

Clapper on Thursday said there is a difference between “an act of espionage, which we conduct, as well, and other nations do, versus an attack.”

U.S. officials said that Russia’s goals appear to have shifted over time. Moscow’s initial hacking operations targeted almost every major candidate, including Trump’s Republican primary rivals, as part of a fairly typical clandestine collection program.

Russia’s initial objective may have been merely to meddle and undermine the legitimacy of an assumed Clinton victory. But as Trump captured the GOP nomination and showed that he could remain competitive with Clinton, Russia’s aims became more ambitious, officials said. The final months of the race saw a steady stream of leaked emails that damaged Clinton’s candidacy, without any corresponding release to embarrass Trump.

Russia also used social media and “fake news” platforms as an “accelerant” to try to boost Trump and undermine Clinton, the second official said.

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Read more:

Putin to Democratic Party: You lost, get over it

U.S. intelligence officials say Russian hacks ‘prioritized’ Democrats

Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interferenceThe media is “cheering on Democrats” and doesn’t give President-elect Donald Trump the respect he’s due, says incoming White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

“There’s some positive aspects here and there, but largely it still continues to not treat him with the respect that he deserves,” Spicer told The Hill.

“I think for a lot of folks inside the beltway, and inside pundit-world, they don’t fully appreciate the understanding that he has of where the American people are,” Spicer added. “They continue to mock him in ways, when it frankly just shows the lack of understanding of that they have of where the American people are and what they think.”

A longtime spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Spicer seared the press for “cheering on Democrats.”

“There are countless examples of the media engaging — overtly or covertly — cheering on Democrats and there’s no accountability. But it’s also not even frowned upon,” Spicer said.

Once seen as awarding then-candidate Trump with wall-to-wall coverage, the media became increasingly adversarial toward Trump’s campaign. In the months leading up to Election Day, the GOP nominee said as much, describing the media as “disgusting and corrupt.”

“I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process. People get it!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It is not “freedom of the press” when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!”

If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20% — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2016

I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process. People get it! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2016

It is not "freedom of the press" when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2016

Trump’s frustration with and distrust of the media was validated when emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, revealed collusion between reporters covering the campaign and Clinton camp.

Weeks after his victory, Trump met with heads of the same media organizations whose reporters were conspiring with Democrats to attack Trump.

Now, just weeks before the Trump administration is set to establish its agenda, Spicer says they will be in daily communication with the media. “It will be a daily something. When I say ‘something,’ maybe it’s a gaggle, maybe it’s an on-camera briefing,” Spicer said.

“Maybe we solicit talk radio and regional newspapers to submit questions — because they can’t afford to be in Washington — but they still have a question. Maybe we just let the American people submit questions that we read off as well,” he continued.

Spicer, who will lead the communication team for the Trump White House, said the President-elect’s use of Twitter is no worry for the people who elected Trump:

I think this is nonsense. I really do. Because at the end of the day the American people want more than anything else is results. And success. And he’s delivering already. And I think the American people — the people who have their jobs because of his actions — the taxpayers who have watched him save tax dollars, are appreciative, and I’m not too sure they’re concerned with the means by which he achieves that.

Trump will not hesitate to hold the media accountable for its coverage of his administration, he said. “Journalists and everyone in America has a constitutional right to express themselves or write what they want to write,” Spicer said.

“He equally has a right to make sure that the record is set straight, the facts are known, and that people can’t just take potshots without being held accountable.”

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudsonThank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Sign Up Log In Purchase a Subscription

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Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.Metro Trains Melbourne has been charged with breaching its rail safety obligations over the death of an 18-year old man who fell between a moving train and a platform in 2014.

The state's rail safety watchdog, Transport Safety Victoria, announced on Wednesday that it had charged Metro over two serious safety breaches; failing to keep its rail infrastructure in a safe condition and failing to ensure the safety of its trains.

Mitchell Callaghan, 18, died after he fell between a moving train and platform at Heyington station in 2014.

Metro faces millions of dollars in fines if found guilty of the charges, which will be heard in court.

The charges stem from an incident on February 22, 2014, in which 18-year-old Mitchell Callaghan tried to board a city-bound train at Heyington station in Toorak, on the Glen Waverley line.PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A knock out and beat down, Joseph Fusco says, came at the hands of an Uber driver who didn’t want to drive him from Philadelphia to Cherry Hill.

” I’m in shock. I have blood all over me and I’m not really sure how I’m on the ground,” Fusco said. “Knowing I was going out, I was depending on that for a ride back to my house.”

On December 22, he went to a holiday party with co-workers at Cavanaugh’s in University City. At 11:00 p.m., he called it a night and arranged for an Uber driver to meet him at Market Street.

Philadelphia Airport Authorities On High Alert Following Deadly Fort Lauderdale Shooting

Per Uber standards, Fusco put his destination in the ride request, but the driver didn’t find out until the passenger was in the car. The driver, whose identity we are concealing pending possible charges, told Fusco that he wasn’t going to New Jersey and when he argued, things got violent.

Fusco said the driver “opened up my door and grabbed me by the collar and ripped me out of the vehicle and the next thing I know, I’m unconscious.”

Penn Police, who took the report, showed Fusco surveillance video.

“Your head’s on the street and you can visibly see the person stomp you and then repetitively kick you and then walk back to his vehicle with no regard,” Fusco says he was told by police.

Nicole Fusco got a text that night that her husband was on the way to the hospital. She immediately dropped off their newborn baby to go see him.

“It was hard to see,” Nicole said. “It was just blood everywhere on his face. I didn’t know exactly what his injuries were because there was so much blood.”

Fusco suffered a broken nose, broken cheek bone and lost his front teeth and adding insult to injury, the driver charged him $9.

On Thursday, his attorney filed a complaint in federal court saying Uber shares a responsibility for the attack and that’s it’s negligent in screening drivers and fraudulently promises a safe ride.

“Uber is marketing toward college students, people who are leaving sporting events, people who have consumed alcohol and those people are vulnerable,” said Fusco’s attorney. “If they’re intoxicated, they’re expecting a safe ride home.”

South Jersey Woman Describes Deadly Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting

“I’m lucky I got to go home. I’m lucky I got to see my son. I’m lucky I get to see my wife. It could have ended real bad,” Fusco said.

Penn Police will not comment on the active investigation and denied our request to see the video of the attack. An Uber spokeswoman told Eyewitness News “no comment,” as well, but did say the driver was kicked out of Uber the day after the incident.The BBC have today released promotional pictures for the second episode of the new series of Sherlock. Adapted from the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the series is written by Doctor Who supremos Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the irregular detective alongside Martin Freeman as his trusted friend and confidant Doctor John Watson. Following the climatic ending of the third series, Sherlock continues on BBC One on Sunday the 8th of January and is on from 8:30 – 10:00pm. Promotional pictures for the second episode and its synopsis can be found below:

In episode two of this new series, written by Steven Moffat, Sherlock faces perhaps the most chilling enemy of his long career: the powerful and seemingly unassailable Culverton Smith – a man with a very dark secret indeed.

Benedict Cumberbatch returns as Sherlock Holmes, with Martin Freeman as John Watson, Mark Gatiss as Mycroft, Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade, Una Stubbs as Mrs Hudson, Amanda Abbington as Mary Watson, Louise Brealey as Molly Hooper and Toby Jones as Culverton Smith.

With thanks to BBC MediaThis item is here to gather feedback from the potential customers and begin building a community. If you like this project, feel free to rate it or favorite it. The voting here serves only to give the developer data and reactions and doesn't work toward getting the game distributed on Steam.

Greenlight is being retired. For more information on how to submit games to steam, refer to . For more information on how to submit games to steam, refer to this blog post

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Arcane MapperFour months after a fueling accident led to the loss of a Falcon 9 rocket and its satellite payload, SpaceX said Monday morning that it has concluded an investigation into the incident and submitted its findings to the Federal Aviation Administration. The company also announced a target date of January 8th for a return to flight.

The SpaceX investigation, in concert with the FAA, US Air Force, NASA, and the National Transportation Safety Board, concluded that one of three composite overwrapped pressure vessels, or COPVs, inside the rocket's second stage liquid oxygen tank failed. "Specifically, the investigation team concluded the failure was likely due to the accumulation of oxygen between the COPV liner and overwrap in a void or a buckle in the liner, leading to ignition and the subsequent failure of the COPV," the company stated in an update.

COPVs are used in rocketry to contain high pressure fluids and offer a substantial weight savings over all-metal tank designs. In a general sense, a composite simply means a matrix of carbon fibers contained within a resin, which is then wrapped over a pressure barrier. The Falcon 9 rocket uses COPVs that consist of a carbon wrap over an aluminum liner to store cold helium, which in turn is used to maintain tank pressure.

"The recovered COPVs showed buckles in their liners," SpaceX said Monday in its update. "Although buckles were not shown to burst a COPV on their own, investigators concluded that super chilled liquid oxygen can pool in these buckles under the overwrap. When pressurized, oxygen pooled in this buckle can become trapped; in turn, breaking fibers or friction can ignite the oxygen in the overwrap, causing the COPV to fail. In addition, investigators determined that the loading temperature of the helium was cold enough to create solid oxygen, which exacerbates the possibility of oxygen becoming trapped as well as the likelihood of friction ignition."

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The investigation identified several "credible causes" for this failure, all of which can be avoided in the short term by changing the COPV configuration to allow for the loading of warmer helium, and returning helium loading procedures to a "prior flight proven configuration." Presumably this means prior to December 2015, when the company began using supercooled liquid oxygen and kerosene fuels to increase the performance of its rocket, known as the Falcon 9 Full Thrust vehicle. Since the accident did not involve the rocket fuels themselves, Ars understands that the new procedures will not substantially affect the performance gains of the full thrust Falcon 9 for upcoming launches.

In the long term, SpaceX said it will apply a permanent fix to this problem by implementing design changes to the COPVs that should prevent buckles altogether. These changes are expected to be in place before human launches on the Falcon 9 under NASA's commercial crew program, which could begin some time in 2018.

Although SpaceX has submitted its findings to the FAA, the federal body still must clear the company's rocket before it begins flying again. Nevertheless, the company said it will target a launch on Sunday, January 8, from Vandenberg Air Force Base's Space Launch Complex 4E, where final preparations are under way for the launch of several Iridium NEXT satellites.The following script is from “The Rum War,” which aired on Jan. 1, 2017. Sharyn Alfonsi is the correspondent. Rome Hartman, producer.

The relationship between Cuba and the United States was stuck in pretty much the same bad place for half a century. But things have been changing at a dizzying pace in the last couple of years.

President Obama started the thaw in the relationship by re-establishing diplomatic relations and easing restrictions on travel. Now President-elect Trump is threatening to undo all those moves. And Fidel Castro, who spent 50 years poking his thumb in the eye of every American president, has died.

El Floridita CBS News

Whatever happens, there’s already a war underway that has the U.S. and Cuba on the rocks. It’s a war over rum, specifically, over two different versions of Havana Club rum and it’s as bitter as the Cold War ever was.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at El Floridita in Old Havana, and we and lots of other visitors to Cuba are filing in and filling up at the bar that calls itself the “Cradle of the Daiquiri.” Head bartender Alejandro Bolívar needs to double up on rum bottles just to keep up with demand.

Sharyn Alfonsi: How many bottles do you go through a day? Any idea?

Alejandro Bolívar: So it’s at-- it’s between 60 and 80-- 80 bottles per day.

Sharyn Alfonsi: That’s a lotta daiquiris.

Alejandro Bolívar: Yeah. Plenty of empty bottles.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Oh my gosh. Is this just from today?

Bartender Alejandro Bolívar pours rum drinks at El Floridita. CBS News

Alejandro Bolívar: Yeah. Today, yeah.

All those bottles were filled with Havana Club rum, produced by a 50-50 joint venture between the Cuban government and the French beverage giant Pernod Ricard, which sent Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne to Cuba to run the business. We met him in a place that’s rarely open to outsiders: a warehouse stacked to the ceiling with oak barrels full of rum.

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: We built a very great success with Havana Club. When we started the partnership in 1993 we sold five million bottles a year. Today, we sell 50 million bottles a year.

50 million bottles, 11 million of them sold here in Cuba. The tourists drinking Havana Club are obvious, but we went looking down the side streets, and found locals drinking it too…at domino games and dance halls and discos…and sipping it along Havana’s seafront promenade, the Malecón.

To distill and age all that rum, the Cuban government and Pernod Ricard rely on Asbel Morales, Havana Club’s master rum-maker. He loves talking about rum, but he says to really understand it, you have to drink it.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Es muy bueno.

Asbel Morales: Muy Bueno.

“The first sip will impact you the most,” he said, “and make you anxious for a second.”

Sharyn Alfonsi and Asbel Morales, Havana Club’s master rum-maker for the Cuban government and French beverage giant Pernod Ricard. CBS News

Sharyn Alfonsi: I am anxious to continue the second sip.

And the third, and the fourth, and the Cohiba cigar that he says pairs perfectly with this Havana Club. As we drank and smoked, Morales told me “Cubans are born with a “rum gene.”

And to be real Havana Club rum, he said, it must be made from Cuban sugarcane and aged in the hot and sticky Cuban climate.

Here’s where it gets confusing: this is another bottle of Havana Club rum. Exact same name – but you can see right here this one is made in Puerto Rico. And it’s made by Bacardi.

Sharyn Alfonsi: How in the world can you say Havana Club when you’re making it in Puerto Rico?

Rick Wilson: I-- just the way that you say I’m calling it Arizona Iced Tea and I’m not making it in Arizona.

Bottles of Havana Club rum made by Bacardi. CBS News

Rick Wilson is an executive at Bacardi, originally a Cuban company, and now the largest privately held liquor business in the world.

Rick Wilson: The true Havana Club made with the recipe of the original founders is the Havana Club that Bacardi is making and selling here in the United States.

Bacardi bought that original recipe from the family of this woman, Amparo Arachabala.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And it was one of the wealthiest families in Cuba before the revolution?

Amparo Arachabala: Yes. Definitely. Definitely.

The Arechabala fortune was built on sugar, and shipping, and rum…Havana Club Rum. Like hundreds of other Cuban companies, theirs was confiscated shortly after Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.

Amparo Arechabala: They took over the company on December 31st, 1959.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And do you remember that day?

Amparo Arechabala: I remember that day vividly. My husband came home. He went to work early and then he came home and he says, “They’ve thrown us out. It’s over.”

Sharyn Alfonsi: It’s over, he said.

Amparo Arechabala: He said, “It’s over.”

All of their assets gone, Amparo and her husband Ramon were ordered to leave Cuba with only the clothes on their backs.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And how much money did you have in your pockets?

Amparo Arechabala: Absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What was it like when you got on the plane?

Amparo Arechabala: Everybody in the entire plane was crying. And I remember I looked out the window as we were taking off and I say to my husband, “Take a good look because you’re not gonna see it again.”

In Cuba, the Arechabalas and Bacardi had been competitors, each making and selling popular brands of rum. But when the revolution came, Rick Wilson says Bacardi had an advantage.

Rick Wilson: Bacardi, unlike most other Cuban families and companies, had assets outside of Cuba.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Is that the reason they were able to survive?

Rick Wilson: Yes. Because we could continue to produce and sell our product. Unlike the Arechabalas. The Arechabalas, everything they had was in Cuba. Everything.

Everything except the recipe for Havana Club rum. The Arechabalas eventually sold it to their old rival Bacardi, which makes this version at its distillery in Puerto Rico.

They did it to compete with this version made by the Cuban government and their partner Pernod Ricard. That set off the longest bar fight ever.

It has been fought both in the courts, where the latest lawsuit is pending, and the marketplace, between two of the world’s largest liquor companies. Pernod Ricard produces Absolut vodka, Chivas Regal scotch, Beefeater gin. Bacardi makes Grey Goose Vodka, Dewar’s Scotch, And Bombay Sapphire Gin.

And now they both make Havana Club rum, and they both try to claim the moral high ground.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And it wasn’t that Pernod Ricard had just stepped up and they looked to be competitors to you.

Rick Wilson: No. We don’t mind competition from Pernod Ricard or anyone else. Pernod Ricard, though, did and is partnering with the Cuban government who has confiscated the assets of a family. No compensation paid.

Sharyn Alfonsi: It’s hard to believe that a company like Bacardi is just making a moral argument. That it’s just about…

Rick Wilson: We’re-- we’re not. We’re makin’ a moral and a legal argument.

Sharyn Alfonsi: OK. And the legal argument is?

Rick Wilson: Um, theft. I mean it comes down -- it’s stolen property. That’s what it comes down to.

Sharyn Alfonsi: The Bacardi family will say that this Havana Club is stolen property.

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: Well, you see the place. We are here in our distillery. It was built in 2007.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And none of these facilities were used—before the revolution?

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: None of these facilities were used before the revolution, no.

And Asbel Morales dismisses the argument that the Havana Club rum he produces for Pernod Ricard in Cuba is not the real thing because it’s not made from the original Arechabala family recipe.

“The recipe remains in this land,” he said. “It is here in this climate, the culture.”

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: It’s very simple. To make a Cuban rum, you need to make it in Cuba. You know, it doesn’t-- take more than that. You cannot make Cuban rum in Puerto Rico.

And the Arechabalas cannot, he insists, claim to own the Havana Club brand decades after abandoning it.

Sharyn Alfonsi: How do you feel that they used that word about the family, saying they abandoned the brand?

Amparo Arechabala: They can say whatever they want. They can say that we abandoned. We didn’t abandon anything. They threw us out.

The Castro government did that. The French company Pernod Recard came along much later, and turned the Cuban Havana Club into a global brand and an icon of Cuban culture. We found the logo everywhere we went in Cuba: on every glass in every bar…on taxi drivers and parking attendants…on the chairs we did our interviews in…and at the tourist market, on artwork and tote bags and T-shirts, right alongside other symbols of Cuba.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you sell more Che T-shirts or more Havana Club T-shirts?

Man: Same.

Sharyn Alfonsi: About the same

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: When we sell a bottle of Havana Club in France, in England, or in Chile, we not only sell the liquid, we sell the soul of the country.

The one place in the world they can’t sell their Havana Club at the moment is the United States, because of the trade embargo on Cuban products that has been in place since 1962.

But there is a way for Americans to have the Cuban version; President Obama recently lifted limits on how much rum and cigars tourists can bring home from Cuba.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Will you be bringing rum home with you?

Woman: Yes. Lots of rum. We stocked up. Now we just need another case to bring it back in.

The makers of Cuban Havana Club aren’t satisfied with just sending suitcases full of rum home with tourists. They want to ship containers full when the trade embargo is lifted.

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: In Cuba-- we know how to be patient. Look, all the rum sitting around us, all these barrels. It’s years and years of aging. Years and year of work, of—dedication. We know that one day, we’ll be able to sell our rum, Havana Club, the true Cuban rum made in Cuba, and that the U.S. consumer will have the chance-- the opportunity to enjoy it.

Consumers in the U.S. drink 40 percent of the world’s rum, which explains why they’re stacking barrels sky-high in Cuba in preparation.

Sharyn Alfonsi: This is all ready to go?

Jérôme Cottin-Bizonne: This is all ready to go.

For now, though, the trade embargo continues, and so does the court fight over who has the right to use the Havana Club name. On the streets of Havana, there’s no disagreement on that point. We took a few bottles of Bacardi’s version there to sample reaction.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you drink rum?

Players: Si!

Sharyn Alfonsi: Have you ever seen this before?

These men we found playing dominos on an old Havana side street were more than happy to try it…

Man: Similar.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Similar.

“It’s good,” he said, “but the Cuban is better quality.”

Ernesto Iznaga: Color is different, the stamp is different. This is the real Havana Club. The symbol.

In a bar called Sloppy Joe’s, manager Ernesto Iznaga wanted no part of Bacardi’s Havana Club.

Sharyn Alfonsi: You don’t even wanna try it.

Ernesto Iznaga: No.

Sharyn Alfonsi: You can just have a sip. You don’t have to drink the whole bottle.

Ernesto Iznaga: No.

Sharyn Alfonsi: No?

Ernesto Iznaga: Sorry.

These are the front lines: two bottling lines in two countries. Each one producing Havana Club rum. Each claiming that its version is the only real and authentic one. Not so far apart in miles, but worlds apart in the rum war.Hey FGC.

We’re excited to announce the Shoryuken.com and Evo have become part of a new joint partnership of Sony Interactive Entertainment and RTS. You can find out more about this announcement at evo.gg. For now, we’re suspending the site while we work through what this new partnership means for the future of SRK.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.WASHINGTON — The FBI struck back at the Democratic National Committee on Thursday, accusing it of denying federal investigators access to its computer systems and hamstringing its investigation into the infiltration of DNC servers by Russia-backed hackers.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information,” a senior law enforcement official told BuzzFeed News in a statement. “These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”

The DNC said the FBI had never asked for access to their hacked servers, BuzzFeed News reported on Wednesday.

A DNC source familiar with the investigation tried to downplay that report on Thursday, hours before the FBI statement was issued. The fact that the FBI didn’t have direct access to the servers was not “significant,” the source said.

“I just don’t think that that’s really material or an important thing,” the source continued. “They had what they needed. There are always haters out here.”

The DNC source also brushed off the idea that it was the DNC that refused to let FBI access the server. When BuzzFeed News attempted to reach the official after the FBI statement came out, he declined to comment.



The warring statements are the latest twists in an extraordinary standoff between the Democrats and federal investigators that reached a fever pitch over the bureau’s probe into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server. That investigation saw FBI Director James Comey break long-standing tradition against potentially influencing elections, issuing a public letter to Congress 10 days before the election announcing potential new evidence in the case. The review ended with the FBI maintaining its July conclusion that Clinton should not face criminal charges, a fact that was declared only two days before polls opened. The timing fueled speculation over Clinton’s potential wrongdoing and tipped the scales in Trump’s favor, Democrats say.

The FBI announced it was investigating the hack of the DNC’s servers in July, after a third-party computer security firm, Crowdstrike, said it had evidence of Kremlin-backed hackers infiltrating its system. That hack — which federal officials have formally attributed to Russian hackers cleared by senior Russian officials — and subsequent release of stolen emails was part of a broader effort by Russia to influence the US election and push Donald Trump into the White House, according to FBI and CIA analysis.

President-elect Donald Trump, who has expressed skepticism that Russia was behind the DNC hack, tweeted on Thursday that the DNC “would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia……”

There, in hidden village of Old Man’s Chin, the mothkin gather around the dry well at the center of town, look to the stars of the southern sky, and begin the midnight sermon. They praise those distant, flickering speckles of white for the light they provide—distant, and safe, yet bright enough to bring the world into focus. They praise, too, the messages written in the sky: Each star a word, each constellation a parable.

Red Jack finds his parables elsewhere: In his own history. And now, on this holy night of possibility, he gathers together the visitors from Velas so that he may tell them one.

Hosted by Austin Walker ( @austin_walker

Jack de Quidt ( @notquitereal ), Janine Hawkins ( @bleatingheart

FeaturingKeith J Carberry ( @keithjcarberry and Andrew Lee Swan ( @swandre3000

Ali Acampora ( @ali_west) Produced by

Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot)

Episode description by Austin Walker



Music by Jack de Quidt

A transcription is available for this episode here.



A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!The Donghae Line began operating today, bringing the number of lines on Busan’s metro system to six.

The new commuter railway is the first stage of a metro connection between Busan and Ulsan, and stretches from Bujeon Station to Ilgwang (Gijang-gun). The line is 28.5km long and stops at 14 stations, including transfer points at Geoje (Line 3), Busan Nat’l Univ. of Edu (Line 1) and Bexco (Line 2).

The route is similar to Seoul’s Line 1 in that it shares its track with the national rail network – the first of its type outside of the Seoul Capital Area. This means that standard train passengers can also transfer to the line at stations such as Gijang, Sinhaeundae and Bexco to reach their destinations faster. You may remember that we talked about the line just over three years ago when the old section of the Donghaenambu Line was closed and replaced with the current one, resulting in the loss of the old Haeundae Station.

While the Donghae Line will make travel more convenient for residents of Gijang and commuters in the south-east of Busan, passengers will need to take note that the trains operate every 15 minutes during the peak times of 7am – 9am and 6pm – 8pm. Outside of those times the services only operate every 30 minutes, meaning anyone using the line will need to check schedules if they don’t want to risk a long wait. The timetable is available in excel format from the Korail website here (Korean).

The trains have four carriages, and a total of 96 services operate on weekdays, with just 88 services during the weekend. Of course, as its part of metro system fares are standard, and you can transfer from other lines and buses with your transport card. It’s hoped that the regional rail will stimulate development in neighboring cities and reduce traffic congestion.

The next phase of the line from Ilgwang to Taehwagang (formerly Ulsan) is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2018. Once the line is open, the connection between the two cities will be 65.7km long with 22 stations.Imagine having to take out the trash only twice a month, or knowing what parking spots are available before arriving at your destination and swiftly paying for them via your mobile phone.

The term “smart cities” conjures up images of futuresque, Minority Report-style communities in which every car is autonomous, advertisements recognize and follow you wherever you go, and police officers fly around on jetpacks. But a lot of smart innovations are more subtle than that—and are already working in major US cities.

Trash bins in some airports and streets compost themselves, street lights monitor traffic and parking, and sensors prevent sewers from overflowing into rivers during floods. This kind of “smart” technology, in which basic infrastructure like water, power, transportation, and sanitation is connected to the internet, is being piloted in the US in places like Boston, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; San Francisco, California; and South Bend, Indiana.

The average citizen in those cities may not have noticed the effects because they aren’t as flashy as something like driverless cars, which are now on the road in Pittsburgh and other places. Unlike Uber’s experiment in autonomously shuttling passengers in the Steel City, which has earned quite a bit of public and press attention without offering Pittsburgh much else in return, few residents think about how un-sexy traffic signals may be improving congestion on those same roadways. They’re just happy to get around faster.

Cities don’t need to implement every connected solution to be considered “smart.” The technology works best when it’s used to solve specific, existing infrastructure issues, says Dan Correa, senior advisor for innovation policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Correa worked on the Obama administration’s Smart Cities Initiative, which launched last year to provide federal funding for infrastructure and other innovations in US cities.

When heavy rains fell in South Bend, for example, wastewater would overflow into the waterways and back up into residents’ basements. South Bend was faced with the prospect of overhauling its pipes and treatment plants. Instead, it paired up in 2012 with researchers from the University of Notre Dame, who, with the support of IBM, developed a network of sensors and smart valves that could detect when water levels were rising and divert flows elsewhere. The smart system in South Bend cost $6 million, compared to the $120 million the infrastructure overhaul would have cost, Correa says. IBM corroborated those figures in a 2013 Harvard Business Review story.

“The goal of our efforts is to help citizen communities overcome barriers to use technology for real benefit,” says Correa, who also praised another project, the Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, which awarded $50 million to Columbus, Ohio, to adopt a connected transportation system. “That requires a detailed understanding at the local level… And we’re beginning to see a return on investment immediately.”

Other burgeoning smart innovations being tested include technology that can better predict where fires may start and alert inspectors or first responders, structural monitoring of roads, bridges, and tunnels so that authorities know when they need repair, and smart lighting and other technology that can alleviate traffic congestion.

Verizon recently acquired Sensity Systems, a startup that uses LED light controls equipped with sensors or cameras that can monitor weather, traffic, parking, or safety conditions. It can also dim or brighten the lights for energy efficiency or public safety (lights could be turned up at night on crime-ridden street corners, as an example). The telco is also piloting various smart solutions in Boston, where it’s laying fiber-optic cables, and in Charlotte, North Carolina; Bedford Park, Illinois; Spokane, Washington; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

At the intersection of Mass Avenue and Beacon Street in Boston, Verizon is reportedly collecting data on how often bicycles roam outside of bike lanes and how frequently vehicles operate illegally in the intersection or double-park in the area. That information can help the city plan better to improve traffic conditions.

Verizon hopes these efforts will provide new growth as the US wireless market hits saturation. It wants not just to install smart infrastructure, but manage it for a fee, providing parking management, light controls, or video monitoring systems to malls and other businesses, or to government entities. Verizon has invested in a number of other ”Internet of Things” startups, including Telogis and Fleetmatics, which both make connected car technologies, and LQD WiFi, which builds street-ready connected kiosks. Verizon also launched a platform called ThingSpace earlier this year to help connected device makers develop and deploy new technologies using its APIs.

AT&T, Samsung, Oracle, IBM have similarly invested in smart city initiatives.

Still, many US cities rank behind those in countries such as Japan and Singapore when it comes to deploying smart infrastructure.

It’s unclear how much support this type of infrastructure will receive from the incoming administration. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to work with lawmakers to boost infrastructure investment by $1 trillion over ten years, through tax incentives for private investments and public-private partnerships, he said in his proposal for his first hundred days (pdf) in office.A RISING star of Labour has been axed after appearing in court over child sex offences.

Moray councillor Sean Morton, 35, faces four charges including "distributing or showing" indecent images of kids.

3 Labour leader Kezia Dugdale with councillor Sean Morton

Stunned Labour bosses, who only found out about the charges after being told by The Scottish Sun, said: "Sean Morton has been suspended with immediate effect."

Popular councillor and general election candidate Sean Morton appeared in court on Christmas Eve accused of a string of offences.

Details of the case emerged as the party launched their manifesto ahead of May’s council elections, when Morton, 35, was expected to stand again.

But last night a Labour source said: “The party was totally unaware of this until we were contacted by The Scottish Sun.”

Insiders told how Morton, the party's Moray spokesman on youth services and education, was considered a rising star in party ranks.

He is pals with a host of senior politicians and staffers, and is part of the centrist movement behind boss Kezia Dugdale.

He was among Labour members who flew to the United States in July 2016 to help with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in New Hampshire.

Scottish boss Ms Dugdale was also in the US at the time, but at the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia.

Morton, whose mum Louise, 54, is involved with Moray Labour, has posted snaps of himself and figures including Ms Dugdale, Mrs Clinton and her daughter Chelsea.

A source said: “This will come as a huge shock to people within the party.”

Morton, of Lhanbryde, finished third as candidate in both the 2015 Westminster election and last year’s Holyrood poll.

3 Sean Morton with Hillary Clinton

He made no plea or declaration as he faced four charges concerning obscene images in a private appearance at Elgin Sherif Court.

One charge relates to taking, permitting to be taken, or making indecent images of a child.

A second concerns possession of such photos, while a third relates to “distributing or showing” pics.

The final charge relates to Morton allegedly being in possession of “extreme pornography”.

No details have been made public but the offence surrounds images of “extreme acts” such as taking or threatening a person’s life, someone being severely injured, rape, or sexual activity between a person and an animal.

The councillor — who declares himself a volunteer at bodies including Victim Support — was elected in 2012 to the Fochabers, Lhanbryde and Spey Coast ward, after working as a parliamentary researcher.

3 Sean Morton appeared in court on Christmas Eve

On the day he appeared in court — he posted on social media: “There have been moments of unbelievable highs and devastating lows this year — for me personally and for many of you.

“But the sun rises in the morning, however dark the night. It always will. And another Christmas comes around.

“May your family and friends bring you all the love and kindness in 2017 that mine brought me in 2016.”

The Crown Office confirmed Morton appeared on petition and was committed for further examination and bailed.

No date for his next appearance has been set.

Morton last night vowed to clear his name.

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He said: “I don’t know what this is based on and I will fight these allegations with everything I have.

“I’ll go on fighting for the people I represent as a councillor and I will fight to win again in May.”

Last night, Morton posted a snap of himself on Twitter, apparently in Portugal, saying it was his “last full day” on holiday.

He added: “Got to be honest - looking forward to getting back to work!”

chris.musson@the-sun.co.uk

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Scottish Sun Online? Email us at scottishsundigital@news.co.uk or call 0141 420 5266Afghan-born Jamshid Piruz (pictured) was allowed to enter the UK unchallenged despite being a convicted murderer

A convicted murderer from Holland was able to walk through Britain’s porous borders without any checks and went on to attack two police officers with a claw-hammer.

Afghan-born Jamshid Piruz was allowed to enter the UK unchallenged despite being sentenced to 12 years in jail for slaughtering his female tenant in cold-blood after watching a Taliban beheading video.

Fury erupted after it emerged that the jobless 34-year-old was the latest in a string of foreign criminals to commit horrific offences in Britain after exploiting EU free movement rules.

MPs condemned the shocking lack of checks on offenders from the EU which left gaping holes in UK border controls.

European countries have no obligation to alert the UK about convictions of murderers or sex offenders, meaning many are able to travel to the UK unhindered.

Outraged critics blasted the embattled Home Office for allowing the scandal, by failing to ensure the authorities were notified about EU convicts before they set foot on our shores.

Politicians have called for Home Secretary Amber Rudd to introduce a tougher US-style warning system to flag up whether any traveller has a conviction as they attempt to enter Britain.

Failure to control the country’s borders – and the number of serious criminals arriving here – was a major reason why millions of people voted for Britain to leave the Brussels bloc last June.

Piruz, who was a permanent Dutch resident, will be sentenced on Friday after pleading guilty to an appalling hammer attack on PC Jessica Chick and PC Stewart Young, of Sussex Police, on January 7 last year.

PC Young was taken to hospital with head injuries but later recovered.

The officers were later praised in Parliament by ministers for their bravery.

Piruz had been in the UK a matter of days when he launched a frenzied assault on two police officers as they investigated a burglary in Crawley, West Sussex

Piruz had been in the UK a matter of days when he launched the frenzied assault on the officers as they investigated a burglary in Crawley, West Sussex.

Days earlier he had assaulted a member of staff at Gatwick Airport – but was released onto the streets by local magistrates.

Piruz got into Britain despite being a convicted murderer in Holland. In June 2006, he murdered his Chinese female tenant by cutting off her head at a house in Almere, a city close to Amsterdam.

Court documents in Holland said he was ‘inspired by Taliban movies in which beheadings were seen’.

It is staggering that someone could assault staff at Gatwick and then a couple of days later attack two police officers.

The files said he locked his victim in her room, snatched her mobile phone, then cut her throat.

They said he acted ‘intentionally and with premeditation’.

Rejecting his plea of insanity, Dutch judges concluded: ‘The killing of the victim was not the result of an instantaneous violent emotion, but a decision to do so.’

Piruz was convicted of murder in August 2007 and sentenced to 12 years’ behind bars.

He was released in 2014, after serving seven years. As a permanent Dutch resident, the killer was allowed to travel freely across the EU.

Last night WED Tory MP Henry Smith, who represents Crawley, said: ‘The country has got to have tougher border controls. Clearly, being a member of the EU did not protect us on this occasion.

‘A very dangerous individual was allowed to travel here without us having prior knowledge that he’d committed murder in the Netherlands.

‘It is staggering that someone could assault staff at Gatwick and then a couple of days later attack two police officers.

‘Why was the information that he was a violent offender not available to us from our EU partners?

‘Why was the information that he was a violent offender not available to us from our EU partners?

‘This is an appalling example of the kind of people who are getting into the country undetected.’

Piruz pleaded guilty at Hove to two counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, burglary and affray.

Two counts of attempted burglary and one of threatening with an offensive weapon will lie on file.

Simon Blackford, defending, said there was a ‘long gap’ between the murder and the latest offences.

He said: ‘This offence was committed at a time of stress for my client. He was in a foreign country. He seems to have been vulnerable. He seems to have been hallucinating.

‘He was very confused by the vehicles driving on a different side of the road than he was used to.’

Politicians have called for Home Secretary Amber Rudd to introduce a tougher US-style warning system to flag up whether any traveller has a conviction

When EU nationals arrive at the border, their passport details are checked against a ‘watchlist’ of suspected terrorists and foreign criminals compiled by the border agency.

But unless an offender is high profile, is known to have committed crimes in several countries, or is on the Interpol wanted list, the system is unlikely to be aware of their previous convictions – leaving a gaping hole in our border controls.

Except in the most extreme circumstances, Brussels does not force member states to share information on known criminals who might be planning to travel.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland flag up potential dangermen to the UK so they can be put on a watchlist and turned away at the port or airport.

But if countries do not warn the UK that a dangerous offender is on the way – and some do not even keep information of convictions for their own internal use – there is little we can do to stop them slipping through the net.

Even if a new arrival does have a known conviction, they cannot automatically be picked up and refused entry.

Normally, a person can be excluded from the UK only if they pose ‘a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat’ to society and the public.

This is an appalling example of the kind of people who are getting into the country undetected.

This means that it is not enough for an EU citizen to have a serious criminal conviction – if it is some time in the past, the UK may fall foul of Brussels directives if they refuse to allow that person into the country.

In a bid to tighten up Britain’s borders, the Government has finally negotiated access to the Second Generation Schengen Information System, known as ‘SIS II’, which has details of 250,000 wanted or missing people.

But the system, used by 28 countries, will only issue alerts about the most dangerous on-the-run criminals as well as suspected jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq, missing people and stolen goods.Bob Bradley has denied that players called him Ronald Reagan behind his back during the American’s ill-fated spell in charge of Swansea City.

The 58-year-old former USA national team coach lasted just 85 days as manager of the Premier League club before he was sacked by the club’s American owners, Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan, on 27 December.

Bradley, who took eight points from 11 matches, was reportedly given the nickname by insiders, who felt he was old-fashioned in his methods – a throwback to the 1980s when Reagan was US president.

But in an interview with the Times, Bradley said: “Trust me on this, not one of those players knows who Ronald Reagan is.”

The former Derby County manager and Bayern Munich assistant Paul Clement was appointed Swansea’s new head coach on Tuesday, overseeing their crucial win at Crystal Palace on Tuesday. But Bradley warned the club’s problems run deep.

“There is a real trust issue between the supporters and the people involved in the change of ownership,” he said. “That has to improve. The other aspect is the team. When you take over a team and you’re in that part of the table – just like when I took over from Francesco [Guidolin] – it’s for a reason. The reason is that the team needs to be improved.”

Bradley, the first American to manage in the Premier League, felt the Swansea squad lacked a winning mentality and are short of fighters. He added: “Part of what I said [to the board] was that we needed more winners, more fighters, more guys that come in every day desperate to improve. I think in the last 18 months or so, as different players have left, the club hasn’t been able to replace some players with others at the same level.

“When a team goes through a tough period, you need people you can count on, people who are strong, people who will stand up for the team. It takes that kind of strength to get back on track. I was very direct in those conversations and at some level I think that came back to hurt me.”When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they'll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer. Our Privacy Notice explains more about how we use your data, and your rights. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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In September the Norwegian government announced plans to grant the police an additional £10million to forcibly remove failed asylum seekers by the end of 2017.

The grant came after police were tasked with removing 9,000 migrants by the end of 2016 as the country deals with the deepening crisis.

State Secretary Fabian Stang confirmed on Friday the number of deportations were at the highest number ever, up five per cent from figures in 2015, when the crisis began.

Mr Stang, who is secretary for Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug, told NRK: “This is a figure that shows that there have been many who do not have a legitimate claim to asylum who have stayed here and failed to leave the country, and that’s why it is necessary for the police to do the work they have done throughout the year.”Marketing Permissions

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By clicking "Subscribe", you agree to the Terms of Servive and Privacy Policy.CONCORD, Mass. (AP) -- A Massachusetts man has been charged with repeatedly tossing banana peels onto his neighbors' property in what prosecutors are calling racially motivated acts of vandalism.



Police say surveillance footage captured 49-year-old Robert Ivarson, of Lexington, throwing the peels onto a neighboring family's driveway on three consecutive mornings.



The neighbors, who are black, reported seeing up to 40 peels outside their home over the past year.



Prosecutors say Ivarson has "clear anger issues" and a "troubled history of violent offenses."



WBZ-TV reports Ivarson's attorney on Tuesday told a judge his client has never had physical or verbal contact with the family.



Ivarson has pleaded not guilty to violating his neighbors' civil rights and criminal harassment. He was ordered jailed on $10,000 bail.



He's due in court next month.Look: 'If You Get Me Wet, I Can't Promise I Won't Accidentally Drown You,' Lahren's Old Tweets Have People Saying, 'I Miss The Old Tomi' She wasn't always a conservative troll.Health Pulse Chicago - Your source for actionable, exclusive and inside news and data on the health care industry. Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 a.m.Out of this World

8GDU, the leading consumer drone manufacturer focusing on power and portability, today officially launched a new line of interchangeable camera gimbals for different needs and specific uses. Not only was GDU (then named ProDrone) the first manufacturer to releases a folding drone, but now the company continues its drone pioneering by being the first to create new modular gimbals. For the first time, modularity becomes the top market differentiator and creates an industry where one drone can be easily customised to fit the needs of the vast majority of users, including professional photographers/videographers and commercial industrial users. Also being launched is the new GDU Byrd Premium 2.0 with an increased integrated video transmission distance of 2000 meters.

The Universal Flying Platform and all the new gimbals will be showcased at booth #25417 in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. A special showcase for media and dealers will be presented at the booth on January 5th at 10:45 AM to show the new gimbals in action for the first time. In addition, a senior spokesperson from Qualcomm will be in attendance to discuss Qualcomm’s new collaboration with GDU on future drone developments.

The new line of products will be available for purchase from dealers and the GDU Amazon store starting Q1 2017. The Byrd Universal Flying Platform camera gimbal line consist of the following:

Byrd X ILDC Gimbal – the DSLR and mirrorless universal gimbal. Power on/off, define angle, picture capture and zooming capability. Initially offered at $169.00.

Byrd X 10 Times Zoom Camera Gimbal – the 4K, 10X zoom camera and gimbal. Ten-times zooming camera with small size and simple operation that shoots remote and close sceneries with the function of one-button automatic focus, manual zooming, 10X optic zooming and 2X digital zooming. Initially offered at $999.00.

Byrd X Stretching Gimbal – the first one-key stretching gimbal. It can automatically stretch when the drone takes off, and automatically pack up when returning. It can freely shoot without obstructing any angle. The stretching gimbal can carry all the same type of GDU gimbal/camera options. Initially offered at $499.00.

Byrd X Infrared Camera (Resolution: 640*480) – the GDU developed infrared camera can measure heat accurately, even under little to no light, to recover an accurate image analysis. As the flying temperature monitor control standard, it has been widely applied in the industrial and consumer field; such as agricultural management, outdoor exploration, fire hazard monitoring, search & rescue, and so on. Initially offered at $5,299.00.

Byrd Premium 2.0 – an upgrade to the revolutionary Byrd Premium platform with an increased integrated video transmission distance of 2000 meters. $1049

“GDU has truly changed the game with this new line of camera gimbals,” stated Nicolia Wiles, GDU Director of Digital. “No longer will drone users need to purchase multiple drones to complete different jobs – from aerial photography and videography to construction monitoring to search and rescue – the new Byrd Universal Flying Platform can handle everything.”

For more information on where to purchase and product specs, visit www.gdu-tech.com.Why would you like to report this image?

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Ian Thibodeau

The Detroit News

The Ranger and Bronco will return to the Ford stable.

The Ranger will come back to North America in 2019, and the Bronco will be back the following year in 2020.

Both will be produced at the Michigan Assembly Plant, with production on the Ranger starting in late 2018. Ford did not specify when production on the Bronco would start.

Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford, said Monday it's the right time to bring back those vehicles, despite factors like fuel prices that might affect sales in the future.

"There's clearly customer demand for it," he said. "It is the right time, I'm very excited by it... It will be a true, tough Bronco. A real off-road vehicle."

Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of The Americas, echoed Ford during the official announcement, saying customers have called for the vehicles.

“We’ve heard our customers loud and clear. They want a new generation of vehicles that are incredibly capable, yet fun to drive,” said Hinrichs. “Ranger is for truck buyers who want an affordable, functional, rugged and maneuverable pickup that’s Built Ford Tough. Bronco will be a no-compromise midsize 4x4 utility for thrill seekers who want to venture way beyond the city.”

Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds executive director of industry analysis, said Ford picked the right shot by bringing back the trucks.

"Sales of trucks and SUVs show no signs of slowing, and by reviving nameplates that customers are familiar with, they have the chance to differentiate themselves in a category that's becoming increasingly crowded," she said. "The fact that the company also recently announced new details about their EV and mobility strategy shows Ford's commitment to meeting the needs of the entire market."

Ford discontinued the Ranger, a small truck, in 2011, but newer versions are sold in 180 markets around the world. They currently are built in Argentina, South Africa, Thailand and Nigeria.

The Bronco, which drew national attention as the getaway vehicle for O.J. Simpson, was discontinued in 1996 after being built for 30 years at Ford’s plant in Wayne. Its successor, the Expedition, was also built in Wayne before moving to Kentucky Truck. Ford showed a Bronco concept at the 2004 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Ford said he's not concerned one of the new models will steal sales from the other.

"I think the best thing is when you cannibalize yourself," he said. "I'd rather do it than have someone else do it."

Ford, Hinrichs and Mark Fields, Ford president and CEO, spent a majority of Monday's press event highlighting Ford's work in mobility, autonomy and electric vehicles.

Ford said the market for electric vehicles is continuing to grow around the world.

"You don't know the conditions into which these vehicles are going to be launched into the marketplace," he said. "You have to take the long view in terms of where the world is going."

Fields and Ford envisioned a city in which their products work with infrastructure in different cities to make life easier for commuters.

"Think of it as a transportation operating system that’s controlled by the city – but that we can bring assets to," Fields said.

Ahead of its Monday auto show reveal, the automaker announced Sunday a refreshed F-150 that it will bring to market.

The new pickup ditches the three-bar grille that has been Ford’s signature design for over a decade, and brings a diesel engine to the light-duty truck lineup (previously offered only in heavy duty) for the first time in its nearly 70-year history.

Ford crested the 800,000 sales bar for the first time since 2005, leading truck market sales with the F-150 and its new for 2016 F-250 Super Duty brother. The Ford beat out its biggest competitor — the Chevy Silverado by over 250,000 units sold, and it beat General Motors’ Silverado/GMC Sierra twins by about 24,000.

The 2018 F-150 is due in showrooms in the fall 2017, but the diesel version won’t be available until the summer 2018. Built in England by Ford, the diesel will deliver impressive towing ability and is the same oil-burner found in Land Rover’s SUVs.

The F-150 will be the first light-duty truck to get pre-collision assist with pedestrian detection as well as adaptive cruise control which can come to a complete stop – then accelerate again. The 2018 model will also have an available Wi-Fi hot spot that can accommodate up to 10 devices. The F-150 will come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone compatibility.

In addition to the seven new grille choices, the 2018 F-150 will sport six new wheel options (from 17- to-22 inch) and more interior color and material choices. All these options across five model trims – XL, XLT, Lariat, King Ranch and Platinum – make for hundreds of potential pick configurations.

While 2018 F-150 pricing won’t be released until later this year, it won’t differ much from the current model which starts at $28,025 for a base XL and tops out at over $64,000 in Platinum trim with all the goodies. The F-150 is built in Dearborn, Louisville, Kentucky, and Kansas City, Missouri.

For complete coverage of the Detroit auto show go to detroitnews.com/autos/auto-show

ithibodeau@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @Ian_Thibodeau– Legger vi den europeiske definisjonen til grunn, så er dette antallet barn i Norge som vokser opp med fattige foreldre, sier Ivar Stokkereit i UNICEF Norge.

Han har fulgt med på trenden lenge.

– Det vi i UNICEF Norge har etterlyst lenge, er at man gjør noe med fattigdommen i seg selv. Vi har pekt på en konkret mulighet, og det er å øke på barnetrygden.

Samme barnetrygd i 20 år

Barnetrygden har stått stille på det samme beløpet siden 1996. Det medfører at familiene der barnetrygd har vært en viktig inntektskilde, har fått redusert sin realinntekt betydelig de siste årene. SSB gjorde allerede i 2014, på oppdrag fra UNICEF Norge, en utregning over hvor høy barnefattigdom Norge ville hatt dersom man hadde økt barnetrygden med inntektsveksten.

– Det vi fant var at vi ville hatt 27 prosent færre fattige barn enn i dag. Dette viser jo at det er mulig å gjøre noe med fattigdommen om man viser politisk vilje. Det krever at politikerne har en helt annen målsetting enn i dag, mener Stokkereit.

Trenger flere tiltak

Regjeringen lanserte en strategi mot barnefattigdom i 2015, men denne tar ikke tyren ved hornene, mener Stokkereit.

– Handlingsplanen inneholdt mange gode tiltak, som å tilby aktiviteter til alle, men ikke fattigdom som sådan.

Strategien kommer med viktige tiltak, og gir for eksempel mer tilskudd til idrettslag som lar barn delta gratis, og midler til barnehagesatsing for barn av fattige foreldre, noe som betyr mye for barn, men som ikke gjør noe med selve fattigdommen i seg selv.

Nå etterlyser Stokkereit politikere som tør å komme opp med alternative tiltak mot barnefattigdom, heller enn å fokusere på arbeidslinja, som har vært svaret det siste tiåret.

– I denne perioden har antallet barn som vokser opp i fattigdom, økt betydelig, presiserer han.

Følg Dagsavisen på Facebook og Twitter!

Lite langsiktige tiltak

Stokkereit får støtte fra Tale Skybak i Redd Barna:

– Det er viktig med disse «her og nå»-tiltakene, for barn lever jo her og nå, men for å bekjempe fattigdom, må man gjøre langsiktige tiltak. Vi er opptatt av det faktum at tallene på fattigdom øker. Dette må vi ta på alvor. Det er bra man gjør tiltak for barna som nå i jula, men det handler også om strukturelle tiltak for å få vekk fattigdom, sier hun.

Økt pågang hos Røde Kors

Røde Kors er en av arrangørene som tilbyr en rekke tiltak i jula. De har arrangert både ferieopphold og mer enn 265 aktiviteter for barn rundt om i landet, for å skape en god juleferie. De har merket seg den økte fattigdommen i form av økt pågang til deres aktiviteter.

– Vi opplever dette i takt med at vi ser at forskjellene øker mellom de som får være med, og de som ikke får det. Norge har hatt en velstandsvekst der stadig flere har blitt rike, og det er noen som står igjen. Særlig i jula er vi opptatt av at de som faller utenfor skal få være med, sier Kristina Rickfelt i Røde Kors.

Sprengt kapasitet

Over 13.000 barn har vært med på ulike aktiviteter i regi av Røde Kors i løpet av høytida som ligger bak oss.

Nå opplever Røde Kors at kapasiteten er sprengt.

– Vi har hatt over 7000 påmeldinger til våre ferieopphold i løpet av året. Vi har arrangert 74 opphold totalt, men har måttet gi avslag på nesten halvparten, sier Rickfelt.

– Til tross for tiltak, ser vi at vi trenger at det skjer mer. Frivilligheten kan ikke bekjempe den økte fattigdommen, men vi har aktiviteter som demper konsekvensen av opplevd utenforskap.

Handler om politisk vilje

Stokkereit i UNICEF Norge er opptatt av å sikre at barn fortsatt har tilgang til fritidsaktiviteter, og at idrettslag tar dette på alvor, og at det ikke må gå på kompromiss med det å iverksette andre langsiktige tiltak.

– Man må redusere det økonomiske presset som foreldre møter på i forbindelse med skole og fritidsaktiviteter og bursdager. Man må se på hvordan man kan inkludere mest mulig. Offentlige myndigheter må gjøre mest mulig her, sier han.

– Det at det har vært så stor økning i barnefattigdom, og at vi ser at det for 16 år siden er en betydelig forskjell fra i dag, illustrerer bare at det handler kun om politisk vilje når det gjelder å tørre å satse på barna.

Problematisk måleverktøy

UNICEF og OECD bruker ulike målinger for å definere fattigdom, noe som gjør det vanskelig å finne presise tall. UNICEF bruker en EU-definisjon for måling av fattigdom, der fattigdom er definert som familier som tjener mindre enn 60 prosent av medianinntekten over en lengre periode. Samtidig bruker OECD en annen måling. Ivar Stokkereit i UNICEF Norge mener det er problematisk.

– Norske politikere har ikke tatt noen vurdering på hvilke definisjonstyper vi skal bruke. For å finne så presise tall som mulig på fattigdom i Norge, må man være klar på hvilken måling vi skal bruke, sier han.

Krangler om barnetrygd

Mens SVs Karin Andersen er enig i at barnetrygden må økes for å hindre økt fattigdom, vil Høyres Kristin Vinje fjerne hele ordningen.

– Det er ikke merkelig at det er økt barnefattigdom når man så systematisk gir millioner av kroner til de aller rikeste, og tar fra noen av de barnefamiliene som sliter mest – nettopp de som er uføre og med veldig lav trygd, sier Karin Andersen i Sosialistisk Venstreparti (SV).

Hun er kjent for sin innsats for fattigdomsbekjempelse, og mener det er helt essensielt at barnetrygden må økes for å bekjempe fattigdom.

– Barnetrygden må økes, særlig for dem som er aleneforsørgere og dem som har mange barn. Vi må også gjenopprette barnetillegget for uføre som regjeringen har kuttet, sier hun.

Vil fjerne ordningen

Kristin Vinje (H) i kirke-, utdannings- og forskningskomiteen på Stortinget har på sin side tatt til orde for å fjerne hele trygden og heller bruke pengene på gratis barnehage og skolefritidsordning (SFO) for alle.

– Vi må finne ut hvordan det virker for å kunne hjelpe de som trenger det aller mest. Regjeringen har utnevnt et offentlig utvalg som skal se nærmere på alle ordningene rettet mot barnefamilier til våren.

– Nå argumenterer UNICEF for at økt barnetrygd nettopp kan være løsningen på økt fattigdom?

– Jeg er ikke sikker på om det er en riktig antakelse. Det er lite målrettet tiltak for å imøtegå fattigdom. Barnetrygd er kostbart, fordi det er en universell ordning for alle med barn. Derfor har heller ikke barnetrygden blitt økt de siste 25 årene. Det er ikke sikkert at du treffer de som trenger det mest, samtidig som du pøser ut penger til de som kanskje ikke trenger det.

– Får like mye

– Koster det ikke mye å ha barn, uansett om du er fattig eller tilhører middelklassen?

– Jo, men har man gratis barnehage- og SFO-tilbud, får familiene totalt sett like mye økonomisk støtte som i dag, men man fordeler støtten slik at økonomien for småbarnsfamilier blir betydelig bedre i den tida familien er i etableringsfasen. Slik oppnår vi å beholde en universell ordning, samtidig som vi kan øke støtten til målrettede tiltak til de familiene som sliter mest. Og så kan man spørre hvorfor SV som satt i regjering i åtte år ikke gjorde noe med barnetrygden, sier Vinje."Konuk Yazarımız, Nurettin Özdoğan, NRT Gold kurucusu olup, dijital pazarlama üzerine danışmanlık yapmaktadır."

“Sosyal medya”zaferimizin anahtarıydı."

Resmi olarak 20 Ocak’ta görevinin başına geçecek olan Donald Trump’ın CBS TV’de seçim başarısının sırrını anlatırken cümleye bu şekilde başlamıştı. 8 Kasım’dan önce anket şirketlerin ve siyasi analistlerin büyük bir çoğunluğu Hillary Clinton’un kazanacağını kesin gözle bakarken, Trump’ın dijitaldeki etkinliğini araştıran bir online araştırma şirketi verilere bakarak Trump’ın kazanabileceğini söylüyordu.

Ezy Insights’ın verilerine gore başta Facebook olmak üzere, birçok sosyal medya ve dijital kanalda Donald Trump’ın etkileşimi rakibine göre çok daha fazlaydı. Kampanya boyunca başta sosyal medya olmak üzere dijital kanalları çok iyi kullanmıştı Trump. Seçimlere kadar bu konu özellikle dijital pazarlama sektörü tarafından çok konuşuldu. Trump seçimi kazanınca önce damadı Jared Kushner, sonra Trump özellikle dijital ekiplerine defalarca teşekkür ettiler.

Peki, ne yaptılar, nasıl bir ekiple yaptılar ve bunu nasıl ölçtüler?

Ekip

Kampanya boyunca dijitali yöneten merkezi 200 kişilik bir ekip vardı. Bu ekibin büyük bir kısmı Trump’ın kampanya ofislerinde yer alırken, bir kısmı da Trump’la birlikte seçim gezilerinde hareket ediyordu.

Bu ekibin başında 3 beyin insan bulunuyordu, bütün stratejiler bu 3 kişi tarafından belirlenip, alt kadrolara sistematik bir şekilde aktarılıyordu. Her eyaletten sorumlu dijital kampanya sorumluları olup, kampanyanın takibi yapan merkezi bir strateji ve ölçüm ekibi bulunuyordu.

Bütün ekibin başında stratejiyi belirleyen 3 insanı size tanıtalım. Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon ve Daniele Scavino.

Trump’ın dahi damadı: Jared Kushner

“Jared Kushner 2016 Başkanlık seçimlerinin en büyük süpriziydi.” Bu söz Google eski CEO’su Eric Schmidt’in. Trump’ın kızı Ivanka’nın eşi, Kushner dijital pazarlamadaki eforu sadece Eric Schmidt’i değil Silikon Vadisi’ndeki birçok dijital fikir liderini etkilemişti.

Facebook’un ilk yatırımcısı Peter Thiel bunlardan birisi. Thiel, seçimlerden hemen sonra şunu demişti: “Bu başkanlık kampanyasını bir startup’a benzetirsek, Trump CEO ise, Kushner mükemmel bir COO idi.”

Kampanya CEO’su: Steve Bannon

Trump, Başkan seçildikten sonra Steve Bannon’u Başdanışmanlık görevine getirdi. Harvard mezunu Bannon, Amerika’nın en çok takip edilen haber portallarından biri olan breitbart.com’un kurucusu.

Radikal üslubu ve breitbart.com’un medya sektöründeki hızlı büyümesi Donald Trump’un dikkatini çekiyor ve Steve Bannon’la tanışmak istiyor. Hikaye öyle başlıyor.

Kampanyanın Sosyal Medya Direktörü: Daniele Scavino

Daniele Scavino, 20’li yaşlarda Trump’ın “Çırak” adlı yarışma programında keşfedilip kendisine iş teklifi yapılmış. 2003’ten beri Trump’ın şirketlerinde çalışan Scavino, kampanya boyunca, istisnasız hergün Trump’la 20 saat vakit geçirerek, onun Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat ve Youtube hesaplarını yönetmiş.

Neler yaptılar?

Bütün sosyal medya ve dijital kampanya stratejisini bu 3 isim kurgulasa da, Silikon Vadisi’nden de destek almış Trump’ın ekibi. Başta Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Twitter olmak üzere hemen hemen bütün mecraları etkin kullanmışlar. 30 milyon takipci kitlesini etkileşime girdirerek bütün Amerikan seçmen kitlesine ulaştılar. Bütün yaptıkları aksiyonun hedefi öncelikle 10 bin kişiye ulaşmak olmuş. 10 bin kişiye ulaşıp onların etkileşimini aldıklarında Trump’un mesajlarının viral etkisiyle büyüdüklerini tespit etmişler.

Gerek takipci kitlesini büyütüp gerekse de kampanya için fon toplamak için ayrı stratejiler kurgulandı. İnternet üzerinden toplanan fonların hemen hemen hepsi dijtale harcandığını söylüyor Trump’ın damadı Kushner. Trump’ın bütün seyahatları Youtube üzerinden canlı yayınlandı. Her Youtube canlı yayını özellikle bulunduğu eyalete özel mesajlarla donatılarak bölgeye özel pazarlama yapılarak, o bölgedeki halkın etkileşimlerini aldılar.

50 farklı seçmen tipi çıkartılarak, farklı söylemlerle kişiselleştiriilmiş pazarlama yapmışlar. Sentimental analiz araçları kullanarak, mesajları optimize ettiler. Her mecra için farklı bütçe kullanarak, etkileşim ve pozitif söyleme gore kendilerine özel bir KPI belirlemişler, bu KPI’ları eyaletlere gore sıralayarak her eyaletteki sosyal medya takımlarını kendi aralarında yarıştırdılar.

Sosyal medyadaki Trump’ın düşüncelerine daha yatkın fikir liderleriyle özel olarak ilgilenen bir takım oluşturdular. Bu takım sosyal medya fikir liderlerine özel iletişim yaptılar, herşeyden önce ilk elden haberleri onlara ilettiler. Onların ellerine bolca kurşun verdiler. Bu da etkileşimi ve Trump’a güveni arttırdı.

Jared Kushner ve Steve Bannon bütün ekibi maillerle ve whatsapp gruplarındaki mesajlarla motive ederken, bütün ekibin Trump nasılsa öyle gösterilmesi sıkı sıkı tembih etti, zira sosyal medyada samimiyetsizliğin ve yalanın çok çabuk anlaşılacağını Silikon Vadisi’ndeki arkadaşlarından öğrenmişlerdi.

Bu da Trump’ın ne kadar negatif bir algısı olsa da Hillary Clinton’a gore daha sahici ve samimi algısını sosyal medya sayesinde yerleştirmişti insanların gözünde.

650 milyon dolar harcandı

Newyork Beşinci Cadde’nin simge yapı olan Trump Towers’da bulunan 40 kişilik sosyal medya ölçüm ekibi dünyanın en iyi sosyal medya analitik araçlarını kullanarak etkileşimi an be an takip ettiler. Trump’ın damadı ve kampanyanın gizli kahramanı Jared Kushner’in vaktinin en çok geçtiği yer burasıydı, yapılan her yeni haberin, her sansasyonel gelişmenin etkisini burada ölçüyordu.

Bu birim sadece Trump’ı değil, rakipleri Hillary Clinton’un da etkileşimini hesaplıyordu. Hillary Clinton’un sosyal medyadaki sentimental analizini anlık hesaplayarak, strateji ekibine geri bildirim veriyordu. Hillary Clinton’un her hamlesine karşı, sosyal medyada karşı bir hamle yapıyorlardı. Hem fikirsel hem de bütçesel senaryoları kurgulayan bir ekip vardı. Hatta Jared Kushner bir röportajında, bütün kampanya boyunca, dijitale harcanan her cent’i ve geri dönüş oranını takip ettiklerini söyledi.

Bu açıklama süpriz değildi. Zira Trump 650 milyon USD kampanyaya para harcarken, Hillary Clinton bu bütçenin 2 katına yakın bir para yani 1.2 milyar USD harcamıştı.Sir Brian Leveson has "no enthusiasm" to chair the second part of his public inquiry into the press, the former Culture Secretary has claimed.

John Whittingdale, who left the cabinet in July, said the judge has told him that he does not wish proceed with part two of the Leveson Inquiry.

The Conservative MP said the Government will "take stock" over whether the second phase, which was intended to investigate corrupt dealings between the press and the police, is still necessary.New: The "Begin Rust" book

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NOTE This content originally appeared on School of Haskell.

I've run into this issue myself, and seen others hit it too. Let's start off with some very simple code:

# !/ usr / bin / env stack -- stack --resolver lts-7.14 --install-ghc runghc sayHi :: Maybe String -> IO () sayHi mname = case mname of Nothing -> return () Just name -> putStrLn $ " Hello, " ++ name main :: IO () main = sayHi $ Just " Alice "

There's nothing amazing about this code, it's pretty straight-forward pattern matching Haskell. And at some point, many Haskellers end up deciding that they don't like the explicit pattern matching, and instead want to use a combinator. So the code above might get turned into one of the following:

# !/ usr / bin / env stack -- stack --resolver lts-7.14 --install-ghc runghc import Data.Foldable ( forM_ ) hiHelper :: String -> IO () hiHelper name = putStrLn $ " Hello, " ++ name sayHi1 :: Maybe String -> IO () sayHi1 = maybe (return () ) hiHelper sayHi2 :: Maybe String -> IO () sayHi2 = mapM_ hiHelper main :: IO () main = do sayHi1 $ Just " Alice " sayHi2 $ Just " Bob " -- or often times this: forM_ ( Just " Charlie " ) hiHelper

The theory is that all three approaches ( maybe , mapM_ , and forM_ ) will end up being identical. We can fairly conclusively state that forM_ will be the exact same thing as mapM_ , since it's just mapM_ flipped. So the question is: will the maybe and mapM_ approaches do the same thing? In this case, the answer is yes, but let's spice it up a bit more. First, the maybe version:

# !/ usr / bin / env stack -- stack --resolver lts-7.14 --install-ghc exec -- ghc -with-rtsopts -s import Control.Monad ( when ) uncons :: [ a ] -> Maybe ( a , [ a ]) uncons [] = Nothing uncons (x : xs) = Just (x, xs) printChars :: Int -> [ Char ] -> IO () printChars idx str = maybe (return () ) ( \ (c, str') -> do when (idx `mod` 100000 == 0 ) $ putStrLn $ " Character # " ++ show idx ++ " : " ++ show c printChars (idx + 1 ) str') (uncons str) main :: IO () main = printChars 1 $ replicate 5000000 ' x '

You can compile and run this by saving to a Main.hs file and running stack Main.hs && ./Main . On my system, it prints out the following memory statistics, which from the maximum residency you can see runs in constant space:

2,200,270,200 bytes allocated in the heap 788,296 bytes copied during GC 44,384 bytes maximum residency (2 sample(s)) 24,528 bytes maximum slop 1 MB total memory in use (0 MB lost due to fragmentation)

While constant space is good, the usage of maybe makes this a bit ugly. This is a common time to use forM_ to syntactically clean things up. So let's give that a shot:

# !/ usr / bin / env stack -- stack --resolver lts-7.14 --install-ghc exec -- ghc -with-rtsopts -s import Control.Monad ( when , forM_ ) uncons :: [ a ] -> Maybe ( a , [ a ]) uncons [] = Nothing uncons (x : xs) = Just (x, xs) printChars :: Int -> [ Char ] -> IO () printChars idx str = forM_ (uncons str) $ \ (c, str') -> do when (idx `mod` 100000 == 0 ) $ putStrLn $ " Character # " ++ show idx ++ " : " ++ show c printChars (idx + 1 ) str' main :: IO () main = printChars 1 $ replicate 5000000 ' x '

The code is arguablycleaner and easier to follow. However, when I run it, I get the following memory stats:

3,443,468,248 bytes allocated in the heap 632,375,152 bytes copied during GC 132,575,648 bytes maximum residency (11 sample(s)) 2,348,288 bytes maximum slop 331 MB total memory in use (0 MB lost due to fragmentation)

Notice how max residency has balooned up from 42kb to 132mb! And if you increase the size of the generated list, that number grows. In other words: we have linear memory usage instead of constant, clearer something we want to avoid.

The issue is that the implementation of mapM_ in Data.Foldable is not tail recursive, at least for the case of Maybe . As a result, each recursive call ends up accumulating a bunch of "do nothing" actions to perform after completing the recursive call, which all remain resident in memory until the entire list is traversed.

Fortunately, solving this issue is pretty easy: write a tail-recursive version of forM_ for Maybe :

# !/ usr / bin / env stack -- stack --resolver lts-7.14 --install-ghc exec -- ghc -with-rtsopts -s import Control.Monad ( when ) uncons :: [ a ] -> Maybe ( a , [ a ]) uncons [] = Nothing uncons (x : xs) = Just (x, xs) forM_Maybe :: Monad m => Maybe a -> ( a -> m () ) -> m () forM_Maybe Nothing _ = return () forM_Maybe ( Just x) f = f x printChars :: Int -> [ Char ] -> IO () printChars idx str = forM_Maybe (uncons str) $ \ (c, str') -> do when (idx `mod` 100000 == 0 ) $ putStrLn $ " Character # " ++ show idx ++ " : " ++ show c printChars (idx + 1 ) str' main :: IO () main = printChars 1 $ replicate 5000000 ' x '

This implementation once again runs in constant memory.

There's one slight difference in the type of forM_Maybe and forM_ specialized to Maybe . The former takes a second argument of type a -> m () , while the latter takes a second argument of type a -> m b . This difference is unfortunately necessary; if we try to get back the original type signature, we have to add an extra action to wipe out the return value, which again reintroduces the memory leak:

forM_Maybe :: Monad m => Maybe a -> ( a -> m b ) -> m () forM_Maybe Nothing _ = return () forM_Maybe ( Just x) f = f x >> return ()

Try swapping in this implementation into the above program, and once again you'll get your memory leak.

mono-traversable

Back in 2014, I raised this same issue about the mono-traversable library, and ultimately decided to change the type signature of the omapM_ function to the non-overflowing demonstrated above. You can see that this in fact works:

# !/ usr / bin / env stack -- stack --resolver lts-7.14 --install-ghc exec --package mono-traversable -- ghc -with-rtsopts -s import Control.Monad ( when ) import Data.MonoTraversable ( oforM_ ) uncons :: [ a ] -> Maybe ( a , [ a ]) uncons [] = Nothing uncons (x : xs) = Just (x, xs) printChars :: Int -> [ Char ] -> IO () printChars idx str = oforM_ (uncons str) $ \ (c, str') -> do when (idx `mod` 100000 == 0 ) $ putStrLn $ " Character # " ++ show idx ++ " : " ++ show c printChars (idx + 1 ) str' main :: IO () main = printChars 1 $ replicate 5000000 ' x '

As we'd hope, this runs in constant memory.

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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.A Maryland man opened fire inside his house and barricaded himself during an hours-long standoff with police Sunday after an argument over a grilled cheese sandwich, authorities said.

Daniel Brian Blackwell, 55, fired multiple rounds through his basement floor about 5 p.m., prompting his wife and three teenaged children to call police and flee the house, Baltimore County Police said in a news release. His family members were unharmed, but Blackwell was taken to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries after peacefully surrendering to police at the end of a three-hour standoff, authorities said.

Blackwell’s wife told responding officers that her husband had shot at her through the basement floor “after he became angry when she took a bite out of his grilled cheese sandwich,” police said. “She said the first shot was fired as she was in the kitchen making dinner. At that point, she went down to the basement to check on her husband, found him surrounded by guns and ammunition and went back upstairs,” the police news release said. “Soon after, the wife heard three more gunshots, the projectiles of which came through the kitchen floor near where she was standing.”

Police found 15 firearms inside the house. Blackwell, who is not legally allowed to own guns because of prior assault convictions, was taken into custody and charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and various firearms violations, according to authorities.

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Offline See all 7 collections (some may be hidden) 471 Unique Visitors 384 Current Subscribers 9 Current FavoritesMagician David Blaine thought he was going to die when one of his most famous stunts went horribly wrong.

The 43-year-old magician's gun trick turned sour while performing his new show Beyond Magic MGM Arena in in Las Vegas, in front of 20,000 people.

The main event in his show was to catch a bullet in a metal cup held between a mouthguard, a stunt which he first attempted in 2010, The Sun reports.

David Blaine put the mouthguard in his mouth, it later shattered. Source: ABC US

Blaine had revamped the trick to pull the trigger on himself. However during the stunt the cup slipped out of the grooves of the mouthguard.

The magician held a rope attached to the rifle and a laser was used to point to the spot where the bullet would hit.

This was the metal cup that had was meant to catch the bullet. Source: ABC US

Blaine tugged on the rope and his mouthguard shattered in the process. Source: ABC US

He tugged on the rope and his mouthguard shattered, leaving him with a lacerated throat.

Blaine said he thought he was dead at that point.

“When the bullet struck the cup, there was a high-pitched ringing in my ears and I felt an impact on the back of my throat," he said.

“I was sure the bullet went right through my head and that I was dead.

Blaine thought was going to die during the stunt-gone-wrong. Source: ABC US

“Suddenly I became aware of the pain and it brought me back. At that moment I realised that the mouthguard had shattered again, and I was alive.”

Doctors later revealed Blaine had a lacerated throat.

Despite the stunt failure, he said he still had plans to try it again during his world tour.



Today’s report from the Fabian Society makes for grim reading for the rump of the Labour Party which still cares about winning elections. The title, Stuck – How Labour is too weak to win, and too strong to die, gives a taste of how the Fabians view Labour’s electoral prospects.

Most starkly, the report foresees Labour falling below 200 seats on its current performance in the polls – even before taking into account the possibility that the Party will underperform compared to polling, as it tends to do. Their calculation would see 39 Labour MPs lose their seats.

It isn’t a perfect forecast, of course. They’ve come to their number by applying a uniform swing to every constituency, which doesn’t happen in real life. So in reality some marginal MPs could hang on and others with larger majorities could lose their seats. But even as a sketch estimate it’s a stark reminder to the PLP that their leader threatens to march them straight to the door of the Jobcentre.

It’s worth looking at the 39 MPs who have the smallest majority over the Conservatives. Some on this at-risk list are long-serving parliamentarians (Joan Ryan, David Winnick, Paul Flynn), others are supposedly rising stars (Rosena Allin-Khan, Tulip Siddiq) and there’s even a shadow cabinet member (Cat Smith):

1. City of Chester – Chris Matheson

2. Ealing Central and Acton – Rupa Huq

3. Brentford and Isleworth – Ruth Cadbury

4. Halifax – Holly Lynch

5. Wirral West – Margaret Greenwood

6. Ilford North – Wes Streeting

7. Newcastle-under-Lyme – Paul Farrelly

8. Barrow and Furness – John Woodcock

9. Wolverhampton South West – Rob Marris

10. Hampstead and Kilburn – Tulip Siddiq

11. Enfield North – Joan Ryan

12. Hove – Peter Kyle

13. Dewsbury – Paula Sherriff

14. Lancaster and Fleetwood – Cat Smith

15. Derbyshire North East – Natascha Engel

16. Harrow West – Gareth Thomas

17. Bridgend – Madeleine Moon

18. Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East – Tom Blenkinsop

19. Westminster North – Karen Buck

20. Walsall North – David Winnick

21. Tooting – Rosena Allin-Khan

22. Wrexham – Ian Lucas

23. Birmingham Northfield – Richard Burden

24. Wakefield – Mary Creagh

25. Gedling – Vernon Coaker

26. Eltham – Clive Efford

27. Copeland – Jamie Reed (resigned)

28. Stoke-on-Trent South – Robert Flello

29. Birmingham Edgbaston – Gisela Stuart

30. Clwyd South – Susan Jones

31. Coventry South – Jim Cunningham

32. Darlington – Jenny Chapman

33. Delyn – David Hanson

34. Blackpool South – Gordon Marsden

35. Alyn and Deeside – Mark Tami

36. Scunthorpe – Nic Dakin

37. Bristol East – Kerry McCarthy

38. Newport West – Paul Flynn

39. Southampton Test – Alan Whitehead

The profile of the seats involved is quite striking. Some have been held by Labour for decades, and many are in the classic Midlands and Northern heartlands where Labour found itself on the wrong side of the referendum. Precisely the kind of seats, in fact, which you could list under Nick Timothy’s Erdington Conservatism – and many of them located in the areas where CCHQ is recruiting campaign managers. The presence of Copeland on the list is a reminer that the forthcoming by-election is going to be a fascinating test of the state of play. A peppering of Welsh seats would also follow the recent trend of Tory advances there.

The usual caveats about national swing models must of course apply – in some places local factors or personal votes will be at play, and most importantly we don’t yet know how the Leave/Remain dynamic might shift votes between the parties – an unknown further complicated by UKIP and the Lib Dems racing to redefine themselves after the referendum.

The most obvious potential disparity is in the presence of a series of London seats on the above list. The Fabians themselves say that Labour remains strong “in urban pockets”, Labour’s activists are disproportionately in the capital, and Richmond Park suggests that some Londoners are willing to swing to a Continuity Remain candidate, so perhaps it would be an error to assume the London seats are as vulnerable as a national swing might suggest.

If they were removed, though, that would imply that a Labour overperformance in London might be masking an even worse underperformance elsewhere. If so, here are the ten next seats on the Lab/Con marginals list – and look how many of them fit the profile of Leave-voting, traditional working class electorates.

40. Chorley – Lindsay Hoyle

41. Bishop Auckland – Helen Goodman

42. Coventry North West – Geoffrey Robinson

43. Bolton North East – David Crausby

44. Hyndburn – Graham Jones

45. Bury South – Ivan Lewis

46. Wirral South – Alison McGovern

47. Dudley North – Ian Austin

48. Mansfield – Alan Meale

49. Batley and Spen – Tracy Brabin

50. Workington – Sue HaymanThe past week has supplied quite a few videos immortalizing conflicts around New Eden. This is a round up of a few of those battles:

31/12 Free for all in Kourmonen

To usher in the new year, 4 fleets clashed in Kourmonen, the Bleak Lands. The fight, which occurred on the Huola gate, saw a Tempest battleship fleet engage several other gangs including a mixed shield cruiser fleet, a Rattlesnake battleship fleet and a Confessor tactical destroyer fleet.

Battle report can be found here.

1/1 Major Battle in F4R2-Q

Cinematic View of the Battle #1

Cinematic View of the Battle #2

F4R2-Q in Catch saw the first major offensive in the war over the region between Stain Wagon (SW) coalition to Stain Fraggin’ (SF) coalition. The former, supported by Goonswarm Federation [CONDI] attempted to destroy 2 Fortizar citadels belonging to member alliances of the latter, namely Circle-Of-Two [CO2] and Test Alliance Please Ignore [TEST]. The subsequent fight saw 4,000 pilots fight for 9 hours straight over the fate of the citadels.

Full article can be found here.

1/1 Adversity. versus Guardians of the Galaxy versus Brave Collective

DO6H-Q in Fade saw an Adversity. [AVRSE] Armageddon Navy Issue battleship fleet engage a Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) coalition Ferox battlecruiser fleet on the U-INPD gate, with Brave Collective [BRAVE] bringing a Maller cruiser fleet as a third party. The three clashed on the gate, with the fight continuing later on in E-9ORY.

Battle report for DO6H-Q can be found here, and E-9ORY here.

2/1 Did he say Jump and Lazerhawks versus WAFFLES.

Bosboger in Heimatar saw a tower defense mounted by Did he say Jump [JMP-N] and Lazerhawks [LZHX] with a Machariel battleship fleet, facing a similar fleet by WAFFLES. [N0MAD]. The two sides clashed in a close range brawl on the tower.

Full article can be found here.

4/1 The-Culture and Northern Coalition. versus LowSechnaya Sholupen, Red Menace coalition and Stain Wagon coalition

PNQY-Y in Fountain saw a final timer for a Fortizar citadel belonging to LowSechnaya Sholupen [-LSH-]. The attackers, The-Culture [-T C-] fielded a Rattlesnake fleet, supported by a Northern Coalition. [NC] Proteus strategic cruiser fleet engaged LowSechnaya Sholupen in the system, who had formed a joint Tempest battleship fleet with Red Menace (RMC) coalition and was supported itself by a SW Gila cruiser fleet. The two sides clashed on the RP2-OQ gate before moving the battle to the citadel itself.

Battle report can be found here.

5/1 Did he say Jump versus WAFFLES.

Siseide in Heimatar saw Did he say Jump defend an Azbel engineering complex from WAFFLES. Did he say Jump brought a Rattlesnake fleet, while WAFFLES. had a Machariel fleet. Both sides fielded capitals in their battle, meeting on the Azbel itself.

Battle report can be found here.

—-

Salivan Harddin is a member of V0LTA, WE FORM V0LTA, and covers battles across New EdenAMETHI: A man allegedly hacked to death 10 of his family members and then committed suicide in Mahona locality of Amethi, police said on Tuesday.45-year-old Jamaluddin first fed pesticide to 12 family members and later hacked to death 10 of them. He then hanged himself, Superintendent of Police, Santosh Kumar Singh said.All the 11, including Jamaluddin, died on the spot. His wife, the lone survivor, has been admitted to a hospital in Jagdishpur . The police are waiting for her to regain consciousness to ask her about the sequence of events.An ordinance preempting the state’s authority in oil and gas development through sanctioning of civil disobedience and non-violent protests will go in front of Lafayette’s City Council for a vote later this month.

Drafted by the anti-fracking group East Boulder County United, the “Climate Bill of Rights and Protections” ordinance marks the latest call by Lafayette to denounce fracking regulations in favor of local self-governance.

“We have been left with no alternative,” Councilwoman Merrily Mazza said. “We gave up hope that the state and federal environmental agencies would protect us, or that the courts would put the rights of real people over the rights of the corporate person.

“We gave up hope that those who actually govern care about what happens to the people and the natural environment of our community.”

The provision to legalize non-violent direct action protests — such acts can include sit-ins, strikes, workplace occupations or blockades — would target drilling activity and allow protesters unprecedented immunity from arrest or detainment.

A similar bill passed last year in Grant Township, Penn., the country’s first and only case, offers Lafayette leaders the sole successful legal precedent.

The ordinance adopted in Grant Township allows non-residents who join direct action protests protection under the measure as well, Grant Township Supervisor Stacy Long said Thursday. Despite the town’s landmark ruling last summer, the decision has yet to be tested in court.

“In terms of success,” Long said, “we haven’t had to use that direct action yet, but we’re prepared.”

As for Lafayette, Mazza said it’s time for council to step in.

“Now, we have to do what people in communities historically do when they come to grips with the failure of their own governments to help them,” Mazza said. “They have to revoke their consent to be governed and take steps to govern themselves; and that’s what we’re doing with this ordinance.”

The bill’s far-reaching implications would almost immediately strain the limits placed on the city’s home rule authority, however.

“The question that arises is whether it’s of local concern or of statewide concern,” City Attorney David Williamson said Thursday. “Matters of oil and gas development are of statewide concern. I think there’s a lot of vagueness in those terms and that gives rise to problems.”

Williams said that most, if not all, of the bill’s language would most likely be “unenforceable” and in violation of the constitution and charter.

Attempts to subvert state regulatory interests with oil and gas development in recent years have tied Boulder County cities into long and expensive litigation.

In late 2013, 60 percent of Lafayette voters voted yes for a home-rule charter amendment to establish a Community Bill of Rights that, among other things, banned fracking and other underground extraction.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, or COGA, sued the town to overturn the measure a month later, prompting a class-action suit seven months later by Anna Griffen and Cliff Willmeng, of East Boulder County United.

A Boulder District Court judge tossed out the charter amendment just months following the vote.

More recently, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down Longmont’s voter-approved fracking ban last summer, ruling that the local prohibition interferes with state regulations and the state’s interest in oil and gas development.

Efforts to ward off the encroaching wells along Boulder County’s outskirts have seen an uptick over the last few years; calls from residents to extend fracking moratoriums and stunt development growing louder as nearly 2000 possible oil and gas wells dot the county.

“A lot of the civil rights victories in our country were really unprecedented,” Gustavo Reyna, Lafayette mayor pro-tem, said. “I realize this is unprecedented. The question of whether we have an unalienable right to air, water and health, is perhaps an unprecedented and unchallenged concept, but the principle is there.

“At some point, we the people have to say this is unjust and we won’t stand for it any longer,” he said.

Representatives from COGA were not available for comment Thursday.

Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn— In video on Twitter posted Tuesday by a student at Rolesville High School, a Rolesville police officer is visible picking up a female student and slamming her to the floor.

The girl in the video is Jasmine Darwin, who said she was trying to break up a fight between her sister and another student when the officer came from behind and slammed her to the ground.

Darwin said, in the moment, she hadn't fully grasped what had happened.

"Every time I look at it, its embarrassing," Darwin said of the video. "I didn't even realize it happened. Like, I was in shock."

Rolesville police chief Bobby Langston said the fight occurred in the school cafeteria at about 7:10 a.m.

Darwin's mother, Desiree Harrison, said she was called to the school about her other daughter, but had no clue what had happened to Darwin until after she got home. Harrison said she feels the officer's actions were excessive.

"When I'm looking at this video, I'm like 'oh my god, this cannot be happening to my child' because I was just up at the school and they didn't even tell me what happened to her," Harrison said. "They were so busy trying to get rid of the one who was in a fight but didn't even say something about the one that was not involved in anything."

According to Rolesville Mayor Frank Eagles, the officer seen on the video is Rolesville High School resource officer Ruben De Los Santos. De Los Santos, who is a member of the Rolesville Police Department and has been a resource officer at the school for four years, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Langston said the State Bureau of Investigation has been called in to review the incident and asked for public patience while the incident is investigated.

Harrison said she took her daughter to the hospital, where she was told she has a concussion. Harrison said she will keep her daughter home from school Wednesday.

"That's not how you handle a child. She's only 100 pounds. He could've killed her," Harrison said.

After the video was posted to Twitter, students were quick to tag the Wake County Public School System and ask for a response.

Lisa Luten, a spokeswoman for the school system, said, "We are aware of the video. We are working with the Rolesville Police Department to gather all of the details around this incident to ensure that we take the appropriate action."

@ahunnaaa_ Thank you for sharing this with us. We are working with Rolesville Police Department to investigate. — Wake County Schools (@WCPSS) January 3, 2017

Rolesville High School principal Dhedra Lassiter released a statement on the school's website saying "I, like many of you, am deeply concerned about what I saw in the video."

"The safety of our students is always our first priority. Our school district works with many dedicated officers who protect out students," Lassiter said. "It is vital that our children have a positive relationship with these law enforcement officials. Those relationships are built on mutual respect."

Lassiter said that a unified agreement with local law enforcement agencies that provide training for school resource officers will be reviewed by the district and law enforcement agencies as part of the investigation.

Eagles said body camera footage of the incident exists. Langston would not go into detail about possible video that shows what happened before Darwin was thrown to the ground.New England Patriots at New York Jets in NFL Week 12

Brandon Marshall catches a touchdown pass in the second quarter as the New York Jets host the New England Patriots in NFL action at MetLife Stadium. 11/27/16 East Rutherford, N.J. (John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

FLORHAM PARK -- The Jets are going to have a decision to make regarding Brandon Marshall. Specifically, do they want him back next year?

As he cleaned out his locker the day after the season officially came to a close, Marshall indicated he'd be willing to take less money to stay at One Jets Drive.

Well, to an extent.

"I know what I'm worth," Marshall said. "I think this team knows what I'm worth as far as the organization. But it's not about the money. I'm good. I just want to win. That's all I want to do is win.

"I'll play for free. My bills are paid."

Marshall, who will turn 33 in March, has one year left on his very team-friendly contract. The Jets hold all the cards. If on the team, he'll possess a cap hit of $7.5 million. If released, the Jets can alleviate all of it.

If Marshall was still playing at the level he was in 2015 -- he caught 109 passes for 1,502 yards and 14 touchdowns -- and the Jets readying for a playoff run, the decision would be a no-brainer. But things have changed coming off 2016, and heading into 2017.

Marshall caught just 59 passes for 788 yards and three touchdowns this past year. He dealt with injuries (sprained MCL, injured 5th metatarsal). The Jets don't look ready for a playoff run next season, but set for a complete rebuild.

Moving on from Marshall to recoup additional salary cap space and get younger makes as much sense, if not more, than keeping him.

"I would love to be back," Marshall said. "There is a business side to it. But, for me, I would love to be back.

"I'm extremely confident I'm still an elite receiver. I still demand double coverage. I still demand a lot of attention ... I think I'm still at the level I can demand that kind of respect and that kind of coverage. The numbers weren't there [this year].

"That's new for me. This is a year where most receivers can hang their hat on. Not me. The bar is set high and it's unacceptable."

Of course, there are a few off-the-field issues the Jets will consider with Marshall. There was ongoing tension with defensive end Sheldon Richardson throughout the year, which bubble to the surface Week 3 against the Chiefs, and Week 16 against the Patriots.

A report this week stated Marshall's behavior after games, and his attempt at motivational speeches during losses, irked some of his teammates. Several players complained Monday of chemistry issues and a fractured locker room. Cornerback Darrelle Revis said the Jets had a "dark cloud" over them throughout the year.

Marshall, while not the reason for all issues, was the center of several.

"For me, with Brandon, I always make sure that I hear the message rather than the delivery of the message," receiver Quincy Enunwa said Monday. "It's not easy for everybody. When I sit down and I talk to him and I listen to what he's saying, I know why he does what he does, and he says what he says.

"It's frustration. You go through 10-plus years, and you don't make the playoffs [as Marshall has]. It's not like he doesn't know what he's talking about when he says it. There were times when what he was saying wasn't coming across the way other people wanted it to -- and when we're losing, it's hard."

All of this doesn't look good for Marshall, who could be let go for non-football reasons.

In the past, Marshall has said the Jets would be the last team he plays for after having previous stints with the Broncos, Dolphins and Bears. If released, the wideout said he'd retire.

When asked Monday if that's still the case, Marshall wasn't as straightforward.

"I have options," said Marshall, who co-hosts Showtime's Inside the NFL. "I have television. That's always good. I'm glad I took that serious a couple of years ago.

"I'm not in a panic. I have options.""

Connor Hughes may be reached at chughes@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Connor_J_Hughes. Find NJ.com Jets on Facebook.Two of the best-known labor economists in the US, Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger, recently published a study of the rise of so-called alternative work arrangements.

Here is what they found:

The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements – defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers – rose from 10.1 percent [of all employed workers] in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015.

That is a huge jump, especially since the percentage of workers with alternative work arrangements barely budged over the period February 1995 to February 2005; it was only 9.3 in 1995.

But their most startling finding is the following:

A striking implication of these estimates is that all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements. Total employment according to the CPS increased by 9.1 million (6.5 percent) over the decade, from 140.4 million in February 2005 to 149.4 in November 2015. The increase in the share of workers in alternative work arrangements from 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015 implies that the number of workers employed in alternative arrangement increased by 9.4 million (66.5 percent), from 14.2 million in February 2005 to 23.6 million in November 2015. Thus, these figures imply that employment in traditional jobs (standard employment arrangements) slightly declined by 0.4 million (0.3 percent) from 126.2 million in February 2005 to 125.8 million in November 2015.

Take a moment to let that sink in—and think about what that tells us about the operation of the US economy and the future for working people. Employment in so-called traditional jobs is actually shrinking. The only types of jobs that have been growing in net terms are ones in which workers have little or no security and minimal social benefits.

Figure 2 from their study shows the percentage of workers in different industries that have alternative employment arrangements. The share has grown substantially over the last ten years in almost all of them. In Construction, Professional and Business Services, and Other Services (excluding Public Services) approximately one quarter of all workers are employed using alternative work arrangements.

The study

Because the Bureau of Labor Statistics has not updated its Contingent Work Survey (CWS), the authors contracted with the RAND institute to do their own study. Thus, Rand expanded its own American Life Panel (ALP) surveys in October and November 2015 to include questions similar to those asked in the CWS. They surveys only collected information about the surveyed individual’s main job. And, to maintain compatibility with the CWS surveys, day laborers were not included in the results. Finally, the authors only included information from individuals who had worked in the survey reference week.

People were said to be employed under alternative work arrangements if they were “independent contractors,” “on-call workers,” “temporary help agency workers,” or “workers provided by contract firms. The authors defined these terms as follows:

“Independent Contractors” are individuals who report they obtain customers on their own to provide a product or service as an independent contractor, independent consultant, or freelance worker. “On-Call Workers” report having certain days or hours in which they are not at work but are on standby until called to work. “Temporary Help Agency Workers” are paid by a temporary help agency. “Workers Provided by Contract Firms” are individuals who worked for a company that contracted out their services during the reference week.

The results in more detail

All four categories of nonstandard work recorded increases:

Independent contractors continue to be the largest group (8.9 percent in 2015), but the share of workers in the three other categories more than doubled from 3.2 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent in 2015. The fastest growing category of nonstandard work involves contracted workers. The percentage of workers who report that they worked for a company that contracted out their services in the preceding week rose from 0.6 percent in 2005 to 3.1 percent in 2015.

Table 4 shows the percentage of workers in different categories that are employed for their main job in one of the four nonstandard work arrangements. The relevant comparisons over time are with the two CPS studies and the Alternative Weighted results from the Rand study.

Here are some of the main findings:

There is a clear age gradient that has grown stronger, with older workers more likely to have nonstandard employment than younger workers. In 2015, 6.4 percent of those aged 16 to 24 were employed in an alternative work arrangement, while 14.3 percent of those aged 25-54 and 23.9 percent of those aged 55-74 had nonstandard work arrangements.

The percentage of women with nonstandard work arrangements grew dramatically from 2005 to 2015, from 8.3 percent to 17 percent. Women are now more likely to be employed under these conditions than men.

Workers in all educational levels experienced a jump in nonstandard work, with the increase greatest for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. “Occupational groups experiencing particularly large increases in the nonstandard work from 2005 to 2015 include computer and mathematical, community and social services, education, health care, legal, protective services, personal care, and transportation jobs.”

The authors also tested to determine “whether alternative work is growing in higher or lower wage sectors of the labor market.” They found that “workers with attributes and jobs that are associated with higher wages are more likely to have their services contracted out than are those with attributes and jobs that are associated with lower wages. Indeed, the lowest predicted quintile-wage group did not experience a rise in contract work.”

The take-away

The take-away is pretty clear. Corporate profits and income inequality have grown in large part because US firms have successfully taken advantage of the weak state of unions and labor organizing more generally, to transform work relations. Increasingly workers, regardless of their educational level, find themselves forced to take jobs with few if any benefits and no long-term or ongoing relationship with their employer. Only a rejuvenated labor movement, one able to build strong democratic unions and press for radically new economic policies will be able to reverse existing trends.Swedish Media outlet, Expressen GT, is reporting that Minnesota United is close to a deal that will send 25-year-old Finnish midfielder, Rasmus Schüller, to the Twin Cities.

Avslöjar: BK Häcken på väg att sälja Rasmus Schüller till Minnesota United i MLS. Förhandlingar pågår. #sillyseasonhttps://t.co/xzcRgyU7SJ — Daniel Kristofferson (@DKristoffersson) January 10, 2017

The midfielder is currently with BK Häcken in the Allsvenskan where they finished 10th in the table this past season. According to the reports above, the signing could be done within a week, but nothing is clear. When the Swedish outlet reached out for comment, the sporting director for BK Häcken was not willing to answer.

According to transfermarkt.com, Schüller is a central midfield player that can play in either a more advanced position or a more defensive central midfield role. The move comes on the heels of reports that United are on track to sign Vadim Demidov, who was most recently in the Norwegian leagues.

Schüller has made over 100 appearances for his clubs through his time in Finland and then in Sweden, and he has been capped 14 times by the Finnish National Team since 2013. We will bring you more information as we receive it.

Fun little factoid: According to Wikipedia, Schüller studied law at the University of Helsinki.Tee-hee.

I was still chewing the ark shell when the needlefish hit my plate. The needlefish sat there for longer than the chef's recommended few seconds. My adrenaline spiked. A fine sweat mist formed on my forehead. Terrible thoughts started sneaking out from their dark caves. I was just barely half-way through. My nerves had killed my appetite, and if I swallowed this ark shell, I was certain that I was going to puke it and nine other pieces of world-class sushi all over the counter of the greatest sushi chef in the world and make international headlines.

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I was in a full-on fight-or-flight panic. I didn't know what to do, but I knew that I couldn't stop eating. This was the most expensive meal that I was ever going to eat. An eighth of our entire honeymoon's budget was invested into this one lunch. And then there was Yoshikazu and the 90-year-old sushi master, who were visibly annoyed that my pace had brought his well-oiled machine to a grinding halt. I couldn't disrespect their craft. I couldn't embarrass us. Nothing in the world would've made me happier than to quit right there, but I couldn't. I couldn't and it was killing me.

I realize, to some of you, none of this seems too disrespectful. But I assure you, right then I may as well have been shitting on Jiro's cutting board. If Jiro has a hatred of stupid Americans who are only eating there because they watched his documentary on Netflix while in their underwear eating Little Debbie snack cakes on a Saturday afternoon, I was 1000 percent contributing to the calcification of that hatred as I struggled to swallow a piece of sushi only a little bigger than an Advil.

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I finally got the ark shell down. And I somehow managed to get the needlefish down, too. And then came the boiled prawn. It's meaty. So meaty Jiro's son had to split it in two pieces. For a second, I delighted in the thought that he might divide the halves between my wife and me. I was just about to tell him to give my wife the bigger piece, because, first and foremost, I'm an incredible gentleman who only happened to have a steamy geyser of vomit ready to spew from every hole in his head, when both pieces landed on my plate.Have you ever wondered why new drugs that you see reported in the papers never seem to become available, or if they do, it’s manyFentanyl deaths: 4 of 5 are males, mostly young

Every media article or broadcast I have seen that purports to show the "Face of Fentanyl" has been a profile of a female. Let me know if I have missed something.

Article content

An informed reader has revealed that four of five fentanyl deaths in B.C. have been males, mostly young.

What are we to make of this deadly gender disparity?

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Fentanyl deaths: 4 of 5 are males, mostly young Back to video

Researcher Kerry McCowan obtained the female-male breakdown for the past five years from the B.C. Coroner’s office. He put together the graphic above to illustrate this unknown aspect of the fentanyl crisis, which has killed 374 British Columbians in the first 10 months of this year alone.

I have not read or viewed every one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of news stories written and broadcast about the fentanyl epidemic in B.C. I have, however, seen scores of them.

And although I might have missed something, not one story I have seen has mentioned the gender imbalance. (Readers are encouraged to correct me if I’m wrong.)

I’m curious about this lack of interest in gender..

At first I thought the information on gender breakdown on fentanyl deaths was just hard to obtain from the B.C. government.In Bitcoin Classic the block size is no longer limited by rules set by software developers. It is set by you, the person running the software.

This article explains how this works.

Picking the perfect Blocksize

In Bitcoin transactions are gathered in blocks which are structured in a chain. The reason we use a chain is because of the main innovation of Bitcoin which combines it with Proof of Work to have a global consensus about the transactions that are accepted.

The size of this block has never been relevant to this process and we can see that over the lifetime of Bitcoin the size of blocks has grown based solely on the requirements of the network.

Miners have always been the ones to decide on the block size, and they have always done this in a coordinated fashion. This is a natural consequence of the rather elegant (economic) design of Bitcoin.

Miners earn more fee-based income when they produce bigger blocks.

Miners take more risk of their blocks being orphaned with bigger blocks.

Miners want to avoid emptying the memory pool every block as that removes a total need for users to pay fees.

Miners want to make sure the mempool does not become backlogged because users that do not see their transactions confirmed will get disappointed and find other means to do payments. Which hurts the price and in effect hurts the miners income.

The genius of this balance has the natural consequence that blocks will not be made too big or too small, their size will be based on the amount of paying users and the state of technology. To get the most profit out of the system the miners will have to find a market-equilibrium for the block size. This market equilibrium also happens to be the best for owners and merchants of Bitcoin.

What does Classic do?

Bitcoin Classic has removed the 1 MB centrally planned maximum block size limits from its software and gives tools to the miners and users to protect themselves from malicious actors at the same time. We call that the accept limit .

Classic will accept blocks produced by all other current implementations of node software, including Core, Unlimited, etc. Blocks produced by Classic will be accepted by all other softwares, including Core, if less than 1 MB and by Unlimited and others but not by Core if blocks created are 1 MB or larger.

Classic will put the user-selected (or default) block size limit in the coinbase message in the form "EB3.7" where the number is the amount of megabytes per block this node accepts.

How do I configure this on my Classic node?

The main change is that a Bitcoin Classic node can now be configured manually to have any block size limit.

First there is the new blocksizeacceptlimit config setting that allows a user to limit blocks by size they will accept from the network. For instance if the user would set blocksizeacceptlimit=4.2 this states that any block over 4.2MB is rejected as too large.

The existing config option blockmaxsize is unchanged and this is the option that miners set to determine the maximum block size they would create.

Way forward

Classic has been in conversation with miners and other Bitcoin companies for some time and the way forward to breaking the 1 MB limit is clearly one where we move the control over the blocksize out of the hands of the software developers and make it a market-set property. That is the most healthy solution going forward.

How this is going to be done is an on-going conversation. It is very optimistic to know that people are in fact talking about how to solve this and in general agreement that it needs solving. Classic is there to make suggestions only, not to dictate policy or make decisions on which solution to pick.

Some things are for certain, a block size increase will happen and the planning and details will be made very public when they have been decided.

Either way, Classic will be part of the movement.Your hero is marked as unfinished. People will not be able to upvote / downvote

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See the concept as other people would see it here Please also check if the save was ok by viewing the hero concept.Fun and versatile

The Multistrada 950 is the ideal motorcycle for experiencing and enjoying the beauty of travelling every day thanks to the mix of Ducati riding pleasure and versatility that make it perfect for every use. The low weight, reduced seat height (840 mm) and 19” front wheel ensure agility and ease of riding, while advanced technology ensures maximum safety and comfort in all conditions.

For the 2021 Model year, the Multistrada 950 S introduces the new “GP White” livery inspired by the MotoGP racing bike, which joins the classic Ducati Red version.

Based on a colour scheme that alternates between white and grey while maintaining the distinctive Ducati touch with some red accents on the frame and in the graphics on the alloy rims, this new version adds a sporty flair to the 950 S Multistrada, making elegance, flow and balance of the lines one of its strengths.U.S. stocks have rallied since the election, but it's time for investors to start thinking about getting out, possibly timed for President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, Morgan Stanley said. "We are worried that there is arrogance in telling people that they should be worried, but to stay bullish for now," Morgan Stanley said in a note dated Tuesday. "Part of us thinks we should just sell the inauguration. After all, what incrementally positive and exciting outcomes could be produced in the first few weeks after that?" The U.S. banking giant's research arm noted that it had remained optimistic on U.S. equities for several years, even as it expected low earnings growth and some valuation-multiple expansion. But now, it expects "material" earnings growth and multiple contraction.

The rally since Trump's surprise win has been sizeable. has gained around 9 percent, to a hair's breadth from the 20,000 mark. The S&P 500 is up around 6 percent, tapping record highs. "To us, it is WHEN, not IF we should fade this recent reflation trade," it said. Morgan Stanley set its base-case target for the S&P 500 at 2300 at end-2017, marking 16.2 times its 2018 earnings forecast, compared with Tuesday's close at 2257.83. The bank said pointed to a lack of policy visibility ahead for its middling view. "We can't help but think that the Republican sweep has created a more uncertain and volatile outlook for the economy and corporate earnings growth," it said, citing risks from a more hawkish Federal Reserve, China's economic slowdown, a much stronger dollar and European political uncertainty. Analysts have broadly cited an unprecedented level of policy uncertainty heading into a Trump administration, not simply on what campaign promises would actually be pursued and which will prove to be merely aggressive rhetoric, but also what could pass through Congress.

Matthew Lloyd | Getty Images

Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail included promises of tax cuts for individuals and companies as well as substantial infrastructure projects, which appeared set to boost the government's deficit spending. Morgan Stanley said there was clearly a lot of earnings uncertainty ahead, but it still forecast that the S&P 500 earnings would be about 18 percent higher in 2018 than in 2016. But it noted that the biggest driver of that increase – more than 50 percent of it -- would come from Trump's promised corporate tax cut to 20 percent from 35 percent. Another 30 percent of the earnings rise over the next two years would likely come from fiscal stimulus and nearly 27 percent from acceleration in share buybacks, it added. The figures add up to more than 100 percent as other factors, such as and higher interest-rate costs, will hurt earnings. "Any tax-related gridlock will be bad for markets," it said in the note. Additionally, Morgan Stanley noted a risk that companies could "compete away" any tax benefits by passing the benefits to consumers, such as by lowering prices, rather than to shareholders. Based on its expectation that the time to fade the U.S. stock rally was nearing, Morgan Stanley changed its sector recommendations for its portfolio.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.A little over a week ago, we published the prelude to this series. The title used the word, “broken” and some people lost their minds. While the thought of yet another “will Brian Kelly win consistently as the head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish” type post sounds like a great idea (it’s not though), this series is going to be under the assumption that Brian Kelly will be coaching the Irish in 2017 and 2018. If we weren’t going under that assumption, this post should just be called: “Fire Everyone.”

Let’s be a little more creative than that.

We will break this down into four parts; Offense, Defense, Special Teams, and Culture. There could have been a fifth part that was dedicated to recruiting, but instead, recruiting will be incorporated into the four parts- as it always is. Today we start with the all-encompassing part... culture. This can be defined many different ways, and I’m positive that this post will not hit all of the culture points, but it should touch on most of the really important stuff.

What is the culture of a program?

Quite simply, the culture of a program is the way in which a program operates. How it does things, when it does things, and what priorities it makes. It’s very simple and yet extremely complex. Nick Saban like to describe it as a “process” while many other coaches say it’s “how you go about your business.” The tricky part, is that this isn’t just about players and coaches, it’s also about school administrators, program support staff, and even to a certain degree... students and fans. The even trickier part is that just because something works at one school it doesn’t mean that it will work elsewhere, and in this case, Notre Dame.

Academics are first.

Whenever Notre Dame starts to struggle on the football field, one of the many first reactions is that they just don’t have the “athlete’s” to compete. When that gets suggested, the first part about Notre Dame’s supposed lack of athletes is that they are unable to offer many of the best high school players due to high academic standards for admission. Many fans hold the belief that if the Irish were to lower their standards, they would get better players. They hold this belief and wish it to become reality.

The truth is, that Notre Dame’s academic requirements for football players is considerably lower than what is perceived. Take a look at the top 300 recruits each year and check out who Notre Dame offers. They absolutely are unable to offer a few kids, and some are just missing out in one degree or another (core classes). It’s not as bleak as one may think.

If you want some cold hard truth in your face, it is MUCH MUCH harder to gain admittance to Stanford as a football player than to do the same at Notre Dame. And as many people have pointed out, Stanford seems to be the model that Notre Dame should follow (even though they have still been unable to play for a national title in these golden years).

So what is the academic issue, and how can it be fixed?

Just as it is harder to get into Stanford playing football than it is to get into Notre Dame, the course load is easier while a player attends Stanford as compared to Notre Dame. I may get some of the details a little wrong here, but basically, football players are still required to carry a full course load at Notre Dame during the semester that they play ball. Have you ever wondered why the Irish always seem to play like crap around midterms? It’s because these guys are getting the proper rest and sleep that an athlete needs to compete at a high level. This year, ironically enough, midterms fell on Stanford week.

I remember players like DeShone Kizer talking about sleeping only a few hours a night that week. ARE WE INSANE? I know the goal is to have the football players have as much of the same experience as the student body- but we ask so much more from them.

I suggest that instead of lowering academic standards to get into Notre Dame, the University simply allows them to have a lighter load in the fall. Look, these guys are there in the summer taking classes and chipping away at their course requirements to graduate in 4 years- except a lot of guys are graduating in less than 4 years. This load is too heavy once you start weighing it against the rest of the country. This simple fix of allowing at least one course less than what they require now in the fall semester would not only help during that awful week of midterms, but down the stretch in November as the season beats them up mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I can’t help but wonder if the load was a bit lighter, would the academic issues that have plagued the Irish in recent years even have happened?

Shopping down a different aisle.

I actually loathe that term. It’s used by Kelly to say that he has to recruit different players because of the academics, but as I stated before, it’s not like the aisle is bare. With that said, one of the great things about Notre Dame and one of its biggest selling points is the “4 for 40” mantra. You go to Notre Dame for four years to make the next forty years of your life great.

It’s a fantastic slogan, and one of the more unique ways to recruit a player (and his parents). However, there is an unintended downside that we can’t fix- nor should we. Some of these guys really are at Notre Dame to learn. GASP!

Mike Frank first turned me onto this concept years ago. Players that are going to Alabama and Florida State and USC are HUNGRY for football. It’s all they got in their life to improve their situation (this actually isn’t true at all, but it’s the reality that they make in their minds and drives them to be the absolute best they can be on the field). Notre Dame players have a sense of entitlement. Not the entitlement that you put in a negative light, but the one that they have that says, “I will leave Notre Dame with a degree and the keys to do anything that I want in my life and will be successful.”

It’s great and all- it really is, but it does allow for them to not make football as much of a priority as other players at top programs do across the country. Steve Elmer is a great example. Here’s a kid that has started since his freshman year, and after his junior year, he decides that he wants to pursue other things and get started on his career in life. Would a 3 year starter at Alabama not play his senior year because he wants to be a political consultant? No, he leaves after his junior year for the NFL. Elmer isn’t alone as other players such as Corey Robinson, Sean Cwynar, Tori Hunter, and others have done the same. There is more to life for these guys than football.

That’s awesome, and it makes for a great story, but it’s not the best thing for a football program. This part will never change, but we still need to address it because it causes issues on the field.

The Weight Room

No, I’m not talking about the actual room, I’m talking about what the players actually do in that room. Look, I’m not qualified enough to speak intelligently on all the ins and outs of a strength and conditioning program that coincides with the nutritional program. I am qualified to say that whatever they are doing- isn’t working come November.

Players are losing a ton of weight and look extremely winded. Add that to a long list of injuries these past few years, and something has to change. It sounds like Kelly is going to make that change this year, although nothing official has come out yet.

One of the more disturbing things is hearing players say that guys just don’t want to be in the weight room, and perhaps weight room discipline is a problem. YIKES! A weight room should be like a sanctuary for these guys, and a strong work ethic in there goes a long ways on the field. None of these guys are Bo Jackson... weight room training matters, and it has to be amended.

5th year?

Another complaint that Irish fans have about the program is the perceived lack of development with its “5th year program.” They have a point. Is there any doubt that Romeo Okwara should have been redshirted his freshman year (you know, seeing as he was only 16 when he got to Notre Dame). Without a doubt, Okwara comes back to ND as a 5th year in 2016 instead of having a great rookie year with the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent. It’s mistakes like these that really hurt a program, and when it’s a position of great need such as the defensive line- it’s almost fatal.

Notre Dame can’t protect its young freshman with junior college transfers to pick up the slack for a year or two, but they can be smarter about who they use and where they use them. A freshman defensive lineman has no business being on special teams unless he is in a rotation on the line itself.

Notre Dame also loses some guys to the graduate transfer rule. At Notre Dame, a player must get into a grad school to play a fifth year. I’m uncertain as to how many decided to transfer because of this rule, but I’d venture to say that there have been a few over the years.

I can’t help but think that Notre Dame’s accelerated graduation plan helps moves these guys out quicker. Also... Notre Dame has had a lot of players head to the league over the past 7 years (more than they were putting in) and that could have some effect. Basically, the staff has to come up with better ways to identify those that could use a year to adjust to college and then develop them over the course of their time at ND. The development part is what seems to be lacking the most.

Other odds and ends the program could help change for the better.

Develop more accountability with the coaches and the players. Ownership... have some.

Have less generals and more lieutenants. Even after DeShone Kizer declared for the NFL Draft, Notre Dame still has 6 captains going into spring ball. That includes a walk-on and Quenton Nelson (the second OL). That number should be no higher than 4. Manufacturing leadership is more detrimental than manufacturing fun.

(the second OL). That number should be no higher than 4. Manufacturing leadership is more detrimental than manufacturing fun. Forget “sticking the dagger” into an opponent. Notre Dame has to break out a full Blood Eagle. Brian Kelly has had more than his fair share of close games at Notre Dame. A large majority of those were against lesser opponents. The Irish have to start laying waste to teams and send a message to both the country and their own team.

Either bury the Shamrock Series altogether, or make it more than just a fashion show super promo for Notre Dame and Under Armour. My personal feelings on the Shamrock Series aside, the game has to matter for it to matter. It needs to be grander than the venue. Go play a top 10 team on the road and win the damn thing.

The bleeding heart UND loyalists will probably curse me for saying this, but stop singing and swaying to the Alma Mater. If we are looking for a team that plays with more attitude, heart, grit, and borderline recklessness... reigning them in to sway and sing a slow song is a buzz kill- especially after a loss. We’re not talking about a long-standing tradition here.

A pep rally should be held, but stop making this such a public display of marketing. These should be for students.

I have no hard stance against the new (2011) player walk, but anything that preceded that South Florida catastrophe should be up for consideration for a line item veto.

Odds and ends that we spend too much time discussing.

Here are some things related to the whole culture thing that we obsess over a bit too much and either has no chance of changing, or has less impact than what is perceived.

Uniforms.

Jumbotron.

Fieldturf.

Ticket prices.

New Irish Guard rules (which are THE WORST).

Piped in music.

Culture is shaped by things or events that directly impact the program on the field- not the fluff. Fluff is an amazing side dish though, and can really highlight and complement the main course.

Cast not your stone... we are almost finished.

I undoubtedly have forgotten something here despite the great length of this article. My bad. This isn’t an indictment of me, nor is it an indictment against you. When it comes to a subject as abstract as “the culture of a program” there are far too many variables to list in one setting, and I doubt every person would have the same type of list. And that’s okay.

I’ll leave you with this thought... good coach or bad coach, the head coach will always do something different to help change the program for the better according to who they are. Even coaches that win a lot of games have been questioned about how they do things or why certain traditions are started, forgotten, or changed. It’s the best coaches that are the ones that are willing to change their own ways to better the program. In some ways, Brian Kelly is doing some of that right now. How much it helps in the long run remains to be seen.

(*Next up in Part 2 will be about the offense where we can dig into some nuts and bolts. Look for that next week.*)A US army veteran who said the government was controlling his mind has shot dead five people in a baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida.

Authorities have identified the suspected shooter as Esteban Santiago, 26, from Anchorage, Alaska.

He is in custody and is being questioned by the FBI and detectives.

"We're looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle," said FBI agent George Piro.

Santiago served in Iraq with the National Guard before being demoted and discharged last year for poor performance.

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Image: Esteban Santiago has been named as the suspect in the Fort Lauderdale shooting

Relatives said he had a history of mental health problems and had recently been getting psychological treatment.

Santiago had reportedly walked into the FBI office in Anchorage in November to say that the US government was controlling his mind and making him watch Islamic State videos.

He had been questioned by agents before police took him for a mental health evaluation, but Mr Piro said he had not seemed intent on hurting anyone.

On Friday, he arrived at Ft Lauderdale just before 1pm local time (6pm UK time) on a flight from Minnesota, police said.

Reportedly dressed in a Star Wars T-shirt, he took a 9mm semi-automatic handgun from his checked luggage and began firing at people.

Image: A young woman runs behind a police officer

Broward County commissioner Chip LaMarca said on Facebook: "He claimed his bag and took the gun from baggage and went into the bathroom to load it. Came out shooting people in baggage claim."

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary, said he was at the airport and "everyone was running" when shots were fired.

Panicked travellers hid in toilet cubicles, while others ran out of the terminal onto the tarmac and crouched behind vehicles.

Mark Lea told MSNBC: "People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs.

"He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Iraq war veteran opened fire at airport

Bruce Hogan was at the baggage carousel when he heard four or five bangs and saw people drop to the ground.

"The guy must have been standing over me at one point, I could smell the gunpowder," he said.

A woman next to him attempted to get up and was shot in the head, he added.

As well as the five dead, eight others were injured.

Image: Emergency services were called to the scene just before 1pm local time

Santiago was taken away by police after throwing his gun down and lying spread-eagle on the ground, according to a witness.

Florida governor Rick Scott told reporters the shooting was "a senseless act of evil".

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was closed indefinitely, but reopened on Saturday morning.

Flying with guns in the US is legal as long as they are kept in a locked hard-sided container as checked baggage only, under TSA rules. Ammunition is not allowed in cabin baggage but is allowed in checked baggage.Being a horror fan isn't easy. You fall in love with a no-bullshit, nightmare-inducing killer, then the next thing you know he's in Manhattan, going to hell, or bumbling around in space. It was probably never John Carpenter's intention to have the ultimate opponent of Michael Myers be Mr. Break Ya Neck, either. But that's the nature of being a horror fan: If it's a good enough monster, you will have to bear the pain known as "sequels."

That's why the fun of horror franchises doesn't lie in the simple "Well, TECHNICALLY Hellraiser 4 is a SEQUEL to Hellraiser 9." It lies in seeing how all of them connect. I'm not talking about all of the films in one series ... I mean ALL of them. Yes, it is insane to try to rationalize all the plot holes and inconsistencies found from film to film. Doing it means that you have almost zero empathy for the logic users of the world. But you could at least connect them all with a common theme and come out with a sense of closure for some of these horror series that ended abruptly or rebooted without any real conclusion.

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Where It All Began

What started off as an innocent Easter egg in the first Nightmare On Elm Street (there is a scene wherein Nancy watches the Evil Dead with the expression of someone sitting through a VCR autopsy) ...Every Scottish schoolchild learns their country lost its independence not on the fields of Flodden or Culloden but on the shores of the Caribbean, in the doomed “Darien adventure” of 1698. That attempt to found a trading colony, near the present day Panama Canal, consumed 20 per cent of Scotland’s gross national product. The scheme’s total failure bankrupted most of the middle and ruling classes, who had thrown their savings into it in an act of passionate nationalism. The price of bailing them out was the 1707 Act of Union with England, in which brave hearts were overruled by saner heads.

Like most historical catastrophism this is a gross oversimplification. Few states fail for one reason alone, while what looks like the last straw is usually just a straw in the wind. Still, this tale gives the Scots a healthier perspective than the rest of Britain and Ireland. It teaches them that nations need not come and go on a tide of blood.

Fiasco

Nobody is suggesting that Stormont’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme is a Darien moment, beyond the cranks who predict partition’s demise every day. But RHI points to the possibility, perhaps the probability, that a fiasco of this nature is how Northern Ireland will eventually meet its fate.

Most attempts to comprehend the momentous changes underway in UK politics warn of a threat to the peace process, implying the start of a war process. After the Troubles, it is understandable to fear the North’s political settlement ending with a bang but this blinds us to the prospect of it ending with a twang – of some final strain being placed on an overloaded system, which simply stops.

In financial and administrative terms, RHI is hardly an unprecedented failure. Its loss is currently estimated at £490 million (€577m), spread over 20 years. Comparable sums have been squandered on other Stormont schemes and projects since devolution, with official reports revealing similar levels of incompetence. The annual loss from RHI, at just under £25 million (€29m), is mundane by Stormont standards. A more expensive scandal involving paramilitary funding was rumbling away before the heating story broke.

Yet that makes the outrage at this scandal all the more striking.

In 2014, the Northern Ireland Audit Office revealed that a new hospital in Fermanagh will rack up £488 million (€574m) in interest payments over 30 years due to the ludicrous way it was financed. Despite the almost identical sums to RHI and the far more emotive topic of direct waste to the National Health Service, this was met with little more than a shrug.

So if RHI is not the final straw, it is at least a straw in a gathering wind. How long can this continue, especially in the absence of any credible replacement government or form of government?

The assumption up to now has been “indefinitely”. Cost and incompetence have not been seen as existential factors for Northern Ireland. With a third of the region’s income received as subsidy, two Darien adventures a year are built into the system. It might not take much to expose this as a vulnerable sort of robustness.

Catastrophism

There must be a context of fragility for catastrophism to have any meaning. The Republic’s epitaph was not being written during the bailouts of the past few years. The latest writer of Northern Ireland’s epitaph is Kevin Meagher, once an advisor to a Labour northern secretary and now editor of the Labour Uncut website. His book A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable and why it will come about presents all the arguments familiar in Ireland to a British audience but his promotional interviews have been more interesting.

Meagher has zeroed in on the RHI affair as typical of something that would infuriate British politicians and taxpayers, if only it came to their attention.

Appearing on Pat Kenny’s Newstalk programme two weeks ago, he speculated that an English “city deal” devolution is a mechanism by which this could happen, as powerful mayors eye up Northern Ireland’s £10 billion subsidy and the arbitrary funding formula behind it.

There may be a strong element of wishful thinking about this, as the British Labour Party sees those mayoralties as a refuge from its Jeremy Corbyn catastrophe.

Nevertheless, Meagher is on the right track. The snapping of a rubber band inside the Heath Robinson contraption of the union seems much likelier to herald its demise than the bomb everyone seems to be subconsciously braced for, and much more imminent than the demographic changes nationalism has been waiting on forever.

In the interview Kenny did not pick up on this – all he had to add to Meagher’s comments was that you cannot be British “unless you are on the island of Britain”.

Well of course you can. What you cannot do is predict when you will suddenly be a Scotsman in Panama.Abstract: This article presents a perspective of Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) and presents an argument against some interpretation and practices of LSP that some people have/follow.

The Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) is an object-oriented design principle that puts some restrictions on the classes that inherit other classes or implement some interfaces. It is one of the five SOLID principles that aim to make the code easier to maintain and extend in the future.

In simple terms, LSP says that derived classes should keep promises made by base classes. This also applies to interfaces, and it means that classes that implement some interface, should keep the promises made by that interface.

This article is published from the DNC Magazine for .NET Developers and Architects. Download this magazine from here [Zip PDF] or Subscribe to this magazine for FREE and download all previous and current editions

In more formal terms, this is called a contract. And in order not to violate LSP, classes must make sure that they abide by the contract (that they have with their consumers) which they inherited from the base class or the interface.

One definition of LSP is that “Subtypes must be substitutable for their base types”. It is not clear though what “substitutable” means exactly.

Some people say that this means that if some class, say ClassA, depends on IService; then you should be able to inject any class that implements IService into ClassA without breaking the application. And if this is not the case, i.e. one of the implementations of IService would break the application if it was injected into ClassA, then they would consider that this implementation is not actually an “IService” and thus they would create a new interface for it.

In this article, I am going to argue that this is not the case (or at least that it shouldn’t be the case), and that we should look at LSP in terms of contracts only.

Although the examples I provide in this article are for interfaces, a similar discussion can be made for base classes.

Liskov Substitution Principle - An example

Let’s start with an example. Let’s say we have a web site that allows users to back up their files by uploading them to the server. It allows them also to download the files later if they want to. Let’s assume that the requirements state that textual files should be saved to a database so that their content can be indexed and later queried. Other files should be saved to the file system. Now let’s say that we decided to design such system like this:

The following figure is a UML diagram for the involved types:

And the following graph shows the object graph that is composed in the Composition Root:

And here is how it is composed in code (with the C# language):

var fileManagementController = new FileManagementController( new FileStoreRouter( fileStoreForNonTextualFiles: new FileSystemStore(folderPath), fileStoreForTextualFiles: new DatabaseStore(connectionString)));

The FileManagementController class is an ASP.NET controller. It receives requests to upload files via the UploadFile() method. The FileManagementController has a dependency on IFileStore (via constructor injection) and it simply uses such dependency to store the file (by invoking the StoreFile method). The FileManagementController does not care how the file store works. As far as it is concerned, its job ends by giving the file to the IFileStore dependency. In the Composition Root, the FileManagementController is injected with a FileStoreRouter. This class receives two IFileStore implementations in the constructor; fileStoreForTextualFiles and fileStoreForNonTextualFiles. The responsibility of this class is to decide whether the file is a textual file and to route method invocations to the correct IFileStore.

The FileManagementController class also receives requests to download files that were previously uploaded, this is done through the DownloadFile() method.

In the Composition Root, into FileStoreRouter, an instance of FileSystemStore is injected for fileStoreForNonTextualFiles, and an instance of DatabaseStore is injected for fileStoreForTextualFiles.

Now, it is clear that if we swap FileSystemStore and DatabaseStore, i.e., we inject FileSystemStore for fileStoreForTextualFiles and DatabaseStore for fileStoreForNonTextualFiles, we break the application because the requirements state that textual files should go to the database, not the file system.

Now, the question is: do these classes, i.e., FileSystemStore and DatabaseStore violate the Liskov Substitution Principle? Should we create IFileSystemStore and IDatabaseStore and make FileStoreRouter depend on these two interfaces instead?

I am arguing that the FileSystemStore and DatabaseStore classes do not violate LSP.

Contracts

Let’s think about the IFileStore contract.

The contract of the IFileStore interface has not been formally defined, so let’s try to define it here based on what makes sense.

The implementer of the interface is obliged to:

Receive the file upon the invocation of StoreFile and store it somewhere, it doesn’t matter where.

Return the file content later if the GetFileContent method was invoked given a name of a file that was stored previously.

In case the file does not exist, the GetFileContent method is expected to throw a FileNotFoundException exception.

Accept a filename that has a length that is less or equal to 250 characters and that contains alphanumeric characters or the dot character.

Accept a file content that is of size less or equal to 10MB.

The consumer of the interface is obliged to:

Not pass a file name whose length exceeds 250 characters or that contains characters that are not alphanumeric and that are not the dot character.

Not pass null values.

That’s it. That is our definition of the IFileStore contract.

An implementation of the IFileStore interface violates the LSP if it violates any of the conditions of the contract. For example, if one implementation does not accept an alphanumeric filename that has a length of 200 characters, then it violates LSP.

Simple and Complex Contracts

Some contracts have more conditions than others in terms of number and complexity. For example, some contract conditions require that we invoke methods in a certain order. This is called temporal coupling. Others might require that the parameters that we pass have certain constraints. The contract for IFileStore has such a condition. Other conditions require that we ask the dependency some question before we invoke some method to see if we can invoke it. An example of such contract is the contract for the ICollection<T> interface in the .NET framework; it contains a property called IsReadOnly that we can use to determine if we are allowed to invoke methods that change the content of the collection.

It follows logically that the more conditions a contract has in terms of number and complexity, the easier it is for an implementer of the contract interface to violate LSP. Simply put, there would be more ways in which it could violate LSP.

The Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) and the Interface Segregation Principle (ISP)

Two other principles of SOLID design are the SRP and the ISP. The SRP simply states that a class should do one thing only and thus has only one reason to change. ISP states that a client should not be forced to depend on methods that it does not use.

If we apply the ISP, the result would probably be more interfaces that contain lesser methods. And if we apply the SRP, the result would be more classes that contain lesser methods. In summary, applying these two principles will make our contracts simpler (since the interfaces are smaller) and will generate more classes that each abide to a simpler contract. So, applying these principle makes it easier for us not to violate the LSP.

We can apply these principles to the classes and interfaces in the example above. In our example, the ISP is not violated because the FileManagementController depends on both of the methods of IFileStore. However, we could argue that the SRP is violated by having a single controller process both upload and download requests. We can split it into two controllers; UploadController and DownloadController. Now, each one of these controllers require only a single method from the IFileStore interface. Now, they do violate the ISP.

To not violate the ISP, we can split the IFileStore interface into two interfaces: IFileStoreWriter and IFileStoreReader. We also split each class into two; one for reading and one for writing. Here is how the types would look like:

Please note that this UML diagram does not show all of the types that are related to the IFileStoreReader interface for reasons of brevity. These skipped types are the FileStoreReaderRouter, FileSystemStoreReader and DatabaseStoreReader classes.

The original contract stated that the GetFileContent() method should return the content of a file that was previously stored using the StoreFile() method. Now, after we split it into two contracts, no individual class or interface has such responsibility since no class or interface has the two methods together. Where did this responsibility go?

The Composition Root

Applying these SOLID principles, we are making our individual classes and interfaces simpler. Instead of having few big classes that have big responsibilities and know much about the system, we are having small and simple classes that have smaller responsibilities and that know less about the system. We are having more contracts that each have lesser conditions.

Where is this responsibility going? Where is this knowledge of the system going?

To the Composition Root.

The Composition Root is the place in an application where we wire all our classes together to create the object graph that constitutes the application. After we apply the SRP and the ISP, the responsibility of the Composition Root is much higher.

Before applying these principles, the Composition Root had only a few big puzzle pieces to put together. Now, it has a lot of smaller puzzle pieces that it needs to put together.

In our example, the Composition Root is responsible for making sure that the IFileStoreReader implementation that is injected into the DownloadController, can return the content of files uploaded by using the IFileStoreWriter implementation injected into the UploadController.

Before splitting IFileStore into these two interfaces, the Composition Root had no such responsibility. The IFileStore implementation had this responsibility then.

Although it is harder to break the LSP now, we can still break the application by composing our object graph in an incorrect way. E.g., by injecting some implementation of some interface into the wrong place.

But now, the responsibility of not breaking the application is where it should be; the entity that constitutes the application, i.e., the Composition Root.

To summarize the responsibilities:

Individual classes have the responsibility to abide by the implementer part of the contracts they implement (usually a single contract if we apply the SOLID principles)

Individual classes have the responsibility to abide by the consumer part of the contracts of the dependencies that they have.

The Composition Root has the responsibility of creating the individual objects and wiring them correctly so that the application does what it is supposed to do. This is not an easy thing to do because individual classes are highly composable and we can easily compose them in a way that does not match the application’s requirement.

The Null Object Pattern

One pattern that is related to the argument of this article is the Null Object Pattern. With this pattern, we create an implementation of a specific interface that actually does nothing. There are many uses for such a pattern. For example, sometimes when we want to modify the application to turn off a specific feature. Instead of changing the code in the consuming class, we simply inject a Null Object to it.

For example, in the case of our IFileStoreWriter, we could create a NullFileStoreWriter that does nothing when the StoreFile method is invoked.

Imagine what would happen if we inject this implementation into every place where IFileStoreWriter is expected. This will most probably break the application. Does the Null Object Pattern violate LSP?

Summary:

When we apply SOLID principles, the SRP and the ISP in particular, we get a large number of classes and contracts. Such configuration means that we have a set of highly composable components that we initially compose in a particular way but that can be easily composed in a different way to meet new requirements.

Such composition happens in the Composition Root. In this article, I argued that the Composition Root has a bigger responsibility of not breaking the application and thus individual classes need only care about not violating the contracts they deal with in order not to violate the LSP.

This article has been editorially reviewed by Suprotim Agarwal.

C# and .NET have been around for a very long time, but their constant growth means there’s always more to learn. We at DotNetCurry are very excited to announce The Absolutely Awesome Book on C# and .NET. This is a 500 pages concise technical eBook available in PDF, ePub (iPad), and Mobi (Kindle). Organized around concepts, this Book aims to provide a concise, yet solid foundation in C# and .NET, covering C# 6.0, C# 7.0 and .NET Core, with chapters on the latest .NET Core 3.0, .NET Standard and C# 8.0 (final release) too. Use these concepts to deepen your existing knowledge of C# and .NET, to have a solid grasp of the latest in C# and .NET OR to crack your next .NET Interview. Click here to Explore the Table of Contents or Download Sample Chapters!Selected customers with prepaid and postpaid connections will get free 3GB data every month till December 31, 2017 Selected customers with prepaid and postpaid connections will get free 3GB data every month till December 31, 2017

Airtel has announced a special offer today under which it will be offering free data (worth Rs 9,000) for 12 months to customers who switch to Airtel 4G. The 12 months offer is available to any customer with a 4G mobile handset, and who is currently not on the Airtel network. Any customer, including existing Airtel customers, upgrading to a new 4G handset can also avail this offer. The offer will be available to customers across India starting January 4 and will close on February 28, 2017.

WATCH VIDEO | Find Out What Airtel Offers New Users

Under this offer, selected customers with prepaid and postpaid connections will get free 3GB data every month till December 31, 2017, with the benefits over and above the pack/plan benefits.

For prepaid users, 3GB of free data will be added to their monthly quota of 1GB on a Rs 345 recharge (pack pricing may vary in different circles), making for a total of 4GB of data a month. The pack will also offer free calls (Local + STD). The first time free 3GB data benefit can be availed through MyAirtel app and data benefits on subsequent recharges will be instant. The pack benefits will be valid for 28 days and can be availed for a maximum of 13 recharges till December 31, 2017.

For Airtel postpaid users, free 3 GB data per month with be available on all MyPlan Infinity Plans. The 3GB data is in addition to regular plan Infinity plan benefits, which already include free voice calling (Local + STD), free SMS and subscriptions to Wynk Music and Wynk Movies. Postpaid customers can claim this additional data through their MyAirtel App.

For instance, the Rs 549 Infinity plan will now offer unlimited free calling plus 6 GB data (3GB regular data + 3GB free data) per month along with other pack benefits to customers under this offer.

Commenting on the newly launched offer, Ajai Puri, Director – Market Operations, Bharti Airtel, said, “We are inviting customers to experience 4G through the year on India’s fastest network. We are seeing increasing penetration of 4G handsets across the country and believe that this attractive offer will provide an opportunity to more and more customers to enjoy high speed broadband on their devices with Airtel.”Chicago plans to replace 270,000 streetlights in the city with LED bulbs, but some experts say that might not be such a bright idea.



While LED lights are energy efficient, cheaper and brighter, some residents and experts are worried about the possibility of health risks, light pollution and reduced visibility of the night sky.

To help address those concerns, the city recently extended the public comment period about the new LED lights to Monday, Jan. 9, 2017.

WBEZ’s Monica Eng joins Morning Shift to explore how something as seemingly innocuous as street lights can impact residents’ health and well-being.

Why is Chicago changing its street lights?

Monica Eng: A lot of cities across the nation are changing them because LEDs are really energy-efficient and our old, high-powered sodium lights aren’t. And we’re going to have this master control center where we can see which lights are out and which lights are fine. We can dim them. And the city says that a lot of time is spent just getting complaints from citizens; this way they say they’ll know from a central level when the lights are out.

How long has it been since Chicago changed its lights?

Eng: By most accounts it’s been about 50 years with these high-powered sodium lights. We will be keeping this ‘cobra-head’ look of Chicago lights, but it’s just the actual lights inside (that) will become LEDs. (The new lights) will be more recessed. They sort of pop out now. (The new lights) will be more inside.

If the new lights are more efficient and more controllable, what’s the problem?

Eng: Over the years there’s been a growing body of science looking at blue light and its effects on our sleep, even on the effects of certain cancer drugs to be effective for people. And this growing body of science shows that blue light exposure at night is not good for our health; it can disrupt our circadian rhythms, it can do all sorts of things that they’re learning [about] day to day.

And did you know Chicago was voted by some studies as the most light-polluted city in the world through satellite imaging? A lot of star watchers say this is a great opportunity to finally tell our children, “Look up. Stars.” So that’s an issue too.

How long does someone need to be exposed to blue light before negative effects set in?

Eng: Well, the big studies have been done on night workers and the different health conditions they suffer, they believe, because of that exposure at night. But you’re right, a lot of us don’t walk around looking up at the street lights at night. What people are worried about is something called “light trespass,” where it actually goes inside your bedroom window, even if you have the blinds down or if you have a curtain.

How has the city responded, outside of extending the comment period to Jan. 9?

Eng: They also said, “Hey look, we saw this American Medical Association recommendation that came out this summer advocating 3,000 Kelvins or less, and guess what, our proposal is for 3,000 Kelvins or less.” I talked to Rose Jordan, who is a consultant to the city on this, and she said if light bleeds into people’s windows, she said we can dim it and we can also retrofit it with some shielding right down to the ground where it should go. And there are pros and cons to that. They say that if we reduce the Kelvins we might not have the crispness that would allow for - what some people say - greater visibility or safety.

There is this [question]: “Will brighter streets mean safer streets?” The jury’s still out on that.

Where can citizens preview the new LED street lights?

Eng:

There’s seven sites out there where you can see what these are going to look like.

Chicago Smart Lighting Neighborhood Demonstration Flyer by Chicago Public Media on Scribd

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the ‘play’ button above to listen to the entire interview.

GOLDEN ERA OF FORMULA ONE

"Since its inception, the world of Grand Prix racing has been shaped by ever-changing technical regulations, governing engine capacity and configuration.



Embracing advances in available materials and manufacturing technology, the pinnacle of this high-performance engineering is undoubtedly the V12 engine. Made in Italy and hand-crafted for racing by legendary engine masters like Colombo, Lamperdi, Alfieri and Forghieri, these evocative power-plants were commissioned by Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati in the quest to produce the ultimate, championship-winning engine.



Espresso Veloce pays tribute to the golden era of formula one with a flagship 18ct gold masterpiece limited to 10 pieces for the world."In 1994, Intel acknowledged a bug in its Pentium processor that produced incorrect results in some rare circumstances. Intel calculated that the average user would hit this bug once every 27,000 years. Consumers reacted quite negatively to this news, and Intel was eventually forced to recall processors worth some 500 million USD.

Ever since computers were invented we have marveled their perfection. Machines are good at what human’s aren’t: reproducibly repeating billions and billions of calculations, never once making a mistake. We have come to embrace this expectation as a fundamentally held belief: machines are flawless. Intel violated this expectation through its now infamous FDIV bug, and it reaped customers’ wrath for it.

AI is about to do what Intel failed to do in 1994: reshape our expectations in computers.

The past of computers belongs to software and software is deterministic. If you send data through a program, there is a certain output we expect, and we can reason over why that output was produced, or why not.

AI is inherently non-deterministic. One of the strength of AI is that it allows us to solve problems we simply don’t know how to write algorithms for. For decades researchers struggled to write algorithms that recognize handwriting, for example. The advent of modern machine learning solved this problem without actually solving it. We still have no clue how to design an algorithm that recognizes handwriting, but we successfully used machine learning to create models that do so.

The caveat is that AI recognizes handwriting probabilistically. Even a perfectly well shaped letter or number may at any time be completely misread by a model. Well trained models are mostly right, most the time, and well … sometimes randomly wrong.

And thats not a bug. Its simply a fundamental property of AI as a probabilistic data-driven system. The key strength of AI is that it can produce often correct results for data it has never seen before. And this key strength is also its key weakness. There is simply no guarantee that the results will be correct for any particular input. At best we can make probabilistic predictions regarding accuracy.

So are consumers going to revolt against AI making mistakes the way they revolted against the FDIV bug 20 years ago? I don’t think so. The more “human-level” problems (voice recognition, image recognition) AI solves, the easier it becomes for us humans to relate to machines making mistakes. We make similar mistakes ourselves, after all. If Siri misunderstands my voice command in a noisy environment, its hard to get upset about that. Humans sometimes also have to ask again if there is a lot of background noise. Machines solving problems that humans naturally solve and sometimes fail at on a daily basis will help us adapt to this new world where machines make mistakes. To use psychology terminology, its a lot easier to have empathy for AI than for an algorithm.Xbox One game clips, screenshots, Twitch, gifs & more Gamer DVR is the best place to find all of your gaming content from Xbox One (Xbox DVR) game clips, Twitch clips and streams, screenshots, achievements, gifs, and more. We plan to expand to Playstation, Switch, PC, and Mobile in the near future! Edit your clips, create gifs, upload to YouTube & Twitter, and more.

Help Us Grow Enjoy our services and wish to help out? Become a Pro Supporter or Ad Free member and take your Gamer DVR content to the next level. Help cover our server and development costs and gain access to exclusive features and content. Find Out MoreSmith & Wesson Corp. unveiled its new M&P M2.0 today, an improved design that features upgrades to the trigger, grip, frame and finish.

The new M&P M2.0 pistol features a “fine-tuned, crisper trigger pull that has a tactile and audible reset," a feature many users of the original design have longed for over the last decade. One of the key criticisms of the M&P’s trigger is that it’s much more difficult to sense it reset compared to the Glock trigger.

Smith & Wesson’s newest striker-fire, semi-automatic polymer pistol includes an aggressively-textured grip and four interchangeable palm swell inserts for optimal hand-fit and trigger reach.

“When you pick up this pistol, the first thing you’ll notice is an extraordinary grip that feels great in the hand – and that’s just the beginning. From the grip, to the new aggressive texture, to the crisp trigger and audible reset, this pistol feels and fires like a next-generation model should – and more,” Matt Buckingham, president of the Firearms Division, said in a press release.

“This is clearly one of the most advanced production pistols on the market today, and we believe it is the pistol that consumers have been waiting for.”

M&P M2.0 pistol features new front cocking serrations and Armornite-hardened nitride durable corrosion resistant finish on barrel and slide. The Flat Dark Earth versions feature a Cerakote FDE finish over Armornite.

The sights are tactical, white 3-dot steel sights for quick target acquisition. Like the current M&P line, it includes an ambidextrous slide stop, reversible magazine release, and optional ambidextrous thumb safety.

The new pistol features the simple M&P take-down lever and sear deactivation lever for safe take-down without having to pull the trigger.

The 9mm and .40 S&W versions come with a 1 in 10 inch twist barrel; the .45-caliber version has a 1 in 15 inch twist barrel.

The M&P M2.0 pistol base model retails for $599. It’s available in matte black or Flat Dark Earth finishes and includes two magazines, a limited lifetime warranty, and a lifetime service policy.April 2021 Bike of the Month Doug Rickertsen of Huntington Beach with his 1971 Honda SL125



Make: Honda

Model: SL125

Year: 1971

Country of Origin: Japan

Engine: 125cc Single 4 stroke

Transmission: 5 speed

Owner: Doug Rickertsen

City: Huntington Beach



1971 Honda SL125



Congratulations to Doug Rickertsen of Huntington Beach for winning Bike of the Month with his 1971 Honda SL125. Doug won a plaque provided by Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorneys.



Doug has owned this Honda for more than 30 years. He finished the six month restoration last month just in time to bring it to our March meet and win second place.



The engine cases we cleaned up with Vapor Blasting by Parts Reborn, www.PartsReborn.com in Orange, CA. Owner Steve Armstrong has attended our meets.



Many of the parts along with the paint were done by Marble Motors, www.MarblesMotors.com in Texas. Doug said the paint work was done in Indiana.



Doug told me that the SL125 was Honda's answer to the popular Yamaha 125 AT1 that came out in 1969. The SL125 was built for four years.



Thank you Doug for bringing your Honda out for all of us to see. See all the photos in our April Gallery.



Vintage Bike OC meet. Qualifying motorcycles must be 30 years old or older. Former Bike of the Month winning bikes are not eligible to win again. Anyone attending the meet is eligible to enter a qualifying bike in the contest and vote for their favorite bike. The winning bike is chosen by a popular vote and is featured on the Home page for one month and in this feature article. The Bike of the Month articles are permanent content on the site.



Type the numbers in to the box

You must enter the numbers you see.For Inglis and his colleagues at RepublicEN, though, the cabinet picks causing other greens to lose sleep have been welcome additions.

“If Rex Tillerson led Exxon Mobil away from the disputation of climate science, perhaps he can lead the Administration away from disputation too,” Inglis says, and he takes Tillerson's support for a carbon tax as an encouraging sign. When it comes to climate action, Inglis adds, the “environmental left”—encompassing everyone from Al Gore to anti-fracking activists—have been steering the conversation about climate change for too long. It’s time to “let ExxonMobil drive,” he says.

Inglis might seem out of step with the climate movement’s increasingly anti-corporate bent, defined by efforts like fossil-fuel divestment and the battle against the Dakota Access pipeline. But members of the eco-right see little contradiction between fossil-fuel companies’ bottom-lines and a low-carbon future.

Like other members of the eco-right, Inglis believes that efficient markets are the ultimate problem solver, and he has a general skepticism about all but the most basic of regulations. “The essence of [the eco-right] is all about internalizing negative externalities,” Inglis says, referencing the hidden expenses of carbon’s seepage into the atmosphere. He says that polluters are “socializing their soot and climate costs.” By making them pay and stripping out all energy subsidies, the thinking goes, firms will shift their business models accordingly, weeding out wasteful fuels, making the Paris Agreement and Obama’s Clean Power Plan superfluous.

“Our view of the Clean Power Plan is that it’s precisely the worst way to deal with climate change,” Inglis explains. UN agreements and regulatory pushes, Inglis argues, represent the kind of policies which keep conservatives out of the conversation on climate, because they are both too complicated and too confrontational. “I think the path in is mostly through the business community, where unlikely partners could really step forward and say, ‘There’s a free enterprise solution to this. Don’t give us regulations. Don’t try to tell us how to run our business. Just internalize the negative externality and we will deal with it,’” he says.

The holy grail of Inglis’s brand of eco-conservatism is a “revenue-neutral, border-adjustable” carbon tax. This kind of pricing mechanism offers a more elegant solution to the eco-right than the patchwork of regulations involved in Obama’s landmark climate rule, wherein each state arrives at its own plan.

Greens across the political spectrum have long backed versions of a carbon tax as part of a broader slate of emissions-cutting policies, some proposals for which would see dividends given out directly to taxpayers or put toward investments in clean energy. What’s unique about the eco-right position on the tax is their view that it should act as the centerpiece of a climate plan, as opposed to one component among many market-based and regulatory measures. In contrast, when Bernie Sanders and his “environmental left” ilk advocate for pricing carbon, they tend also to favor putting hard limits on polluters’ ability to spit greenhouse gases into the air.“People just went flying,” said Donette Smith, 55, who was sitting in the train’s second car.

Ms. Gerzog, who was on the first car and whose arm was injured, sat in a waiting room at Brooklyn Hospital Center hours after the crash, her left arm in a sling. “I was on the bottom of the pile,” she said.

When the train came to rest, she said her car was tilted at upward angle. “We couldn’t get off because the train was all raised up by the door, up from the platform,” she said.

She said she sat inside the damaged car and waited for emergency medical workers to take her out.

Many passengers described the station filling with smoke after the crash. Most were able to walk off the train, though others were taken away in stretchers and wheelchairs. Some wore neck braces and others were bleeding, passengers said. A few limped or clutched at their arms as they tried to get their bearings after the crash.

“The impact was bad,” said Tracie Brown, 44, a passenger who was treated for neck and back injuries at Brooklyn Hospital Center. “But the worst part was the panic of not knowing what happened.”

Officials said that 106 people had been taken to hospitals, including Brooklyn Hospital Center, Kings County Hospital Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Ms. Foster, who had an aching back, was among those treated at Brooklyn Hospital Center.

“I just thank God there were no fatalities,” she said.

Thomas F. Prendergast, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the Long Island Rail Road, said officials did not know why the train failed to stop where it was supposed to.Die Sympathien Donald Trumps für Wikileaks und sein Feldzug gegen die CIA belasten seine Präsidentschaft, bevor sie überhaupt begonnen hat. Heute unternehmen die Geheimdienste einen neuen Anlauf, ihn zu überzeugen.

Am Freitag wollen die Geheimdienste einen neuen Anlauf unternehmen, den künftigen US-Präsidenten von ihren Erkenntnissen über russische Hackerattacken zu überzeugen. (Foto: Reuters) Donald Trump

Washington Wie schnell sich Feindbilder verändern können: Es ist nicht lange her, da wurde Wikileaks-Gründer Julian Assange in konservativen US-Kreisen als Hochverräter verdammt. Donald Trump nannte das Enthüllungsportal „verabscheuenswert“ und forderte „die Todesstrafe oder so was“. Heute – als künftiger US-Präsident – führt Trump Wikileaks als verlässliche Informationsquelle an. Mit der Veröffentlichung von belastenden E-Mails aus dem Umfeld von Hillary Clinton scheint sich Assange rehabilitiert zu haben.

Trump hat sich inzwischen andere Gegner gesucht. Auf Twitter führt er einen Kleinkrieg gegen die Geheimdienste, die ihm schon sehr bald unterstellt sein werden, allen voran die CIA. Die US-Spione haben keinen Zweifel daran, dass es die Russen waren, die Assange das Datenmaterial für seine Anti-Clinton-Kampagne geliefert haben. Trump sieht in dieser Einschätzung den Versuch, seinen Wahlsieg zu delegitimieren. Er streitet die russische Einflussnahme ab, Assange dient ihm als Kronzeuge.A couple of years ago, when Coldplay’s Chris Martin was going through a divorce from the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and feeling down, a friend gave him a book to lift his spirits. It was a collection of poetry by Jalaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet, translated by Coleman Barks. “It kind of changed my life,” Martin said later, in an interview. A track from Coldplay’s most recent album features Barks reciting one of the poems: “This being human is a guest house / Every morning a new arrival / A joy, a depression, a meanness, / some momentary awareness comes / as an unexpected visitor.”

A seventeenth-century illustration for Rumi’s epic poem “Masnavi.” Rumi is often called a mystic, a saint, an enlightened man. He is less frequently described as a Muslim. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM

Rumi has helped the spiritual journeys of other celebrities—Madonna, Tilda Swinton—some of whom similarly incorporated his work into theirs. Aphorisms attributed to Rumi circulate daily on social media, offering motivation. “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever get polished,” one of them goes. Or, “Every moment I shape my destiny with a chisel. I am a carpenter of my own soul.” Barks’s translations, in particular, are shared widely on the Internet; they are also the ones that line American bookstore shelves and are recited at weddings. Rumi is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States. He is typically referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man. Curiously, however, although he was a lifelong scholar of the Koran and Islam, he is less frequently described as a Muslim.

The words that Martin featured on his album come from Rumi’s “Masnavi,” a six-book epic poem that he wrote toward the end of his life. Its fifty thousand lines are mostly in Persian, but they are riddled with Arabic excerpts from Muslim scripture; the book frequently alludes to Koranic anecdotes that offer moral lessons. (The work, which some scholars consider unfinished, has been nicknamed the Persian Koran.) Fatemeh Keshavarz, a professor of Persian studies at the University of Maryland, told me that Rumi probably had the Koran memorized, given how often he drew from it in his poetry. Rumi himself described the “Masnavi” as “the roots of the roots of the roots of religion”—meaning Islam—“and the explainer of the Koran.” And yet little trace of the religion exists in the translations that sell so well in the United States. “The Rumi that people love is very beautiful in English, and the price you pay is to cut the culture and religion,” Jawid Mojaddedi, a scholar of early Sufism at Rutgers, told me recently.

Rumi was born in the early thirteenth century, in what is now Afghanistan. He later settled in Konya, in present-day Turkey, with his family. His father was a preacher and religious scholar, and he introduced Rumi to Sufism. Rumi continued his theological education in Syria, where he studied the more traditional legal codes of Sunni Islam, and later returned to Konya as a seminary teacher. It was there that he met an elder traveller, Shams-i-Tabriz, who became his mentor. The nature of the intimate friendship between the two is much debated, but Shams, everyone agrees, had a lasting influence on Rumi’s religious practice and his poetry. In a new biography of Rumi, “Rumi’s Secret,” Brad Gooch describes how Shams pushed Rumi to question his scriptural education, debating Koranic passages with him and emphasizing the idea of devotion as finding oneness with God. Rumi would come to blend the intuitive love for God that he found in Sufism with the legal codes of Sunni Islam and the mystical thought he learned from Shams.

This unusual tapestry of influences set Rumi apart from many of his contemporaries, Keshavarz told me. Still, Rumi built a large following in cosmopolitan Konya, incorporating Sufis, Muslim literalists and theologians, Christians, and Jews, as well as the local Sunni Seljuk rulers. In “Rumi’s Secret,” Gooch helpfully chronicles the political events and religious education that influenced Rumi. “Rumi was born into a religious family and followed the proscribed rules of daily prayer and fasting throughout his entire life,” Gooch writes. Even in Gooch’s book, though, there is a tension between these facts and the desire to conclude that Rumi, in some sense, transcended his background—that, as Gooch puts it, he “made claims for a ‘religion of love’ that went beyond all organized faiths.” What can get lost in such readings is the extent to which Rumi’s Muslim teaching shaped even those ideas. As Mojadeddi notes, the Koran acknowledges Christians and Jews as “people of the book,” offering a starting point toward universalism. “The universality that many revere in Rumi today comes from his Muslim context.”

The erasure of Islam from Rumi’s poetry started long before Coldplay got involved. Omid Safi, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Duke University, says that it was in the Victorian period that readers in the West began to uncouple mystical poetry from its Islamic roots. Translators and theologians of the time could not reconcile their ideas about a “desert religion,” with its unusual moral and legal codes, and the work of poets like Rumi and Hafez. The explanation they settled on, Safi told me, was “that these people are mystical not because of Islam but in spite of it.” This was a time when Muslims were singled out for legal discrimination—a law from 1790 curtailed the number of Muslims who could come into the United States, and a century later the U.S. Supreme Court described the “intense hostility of the people of Moslem faith to all other sects, and particularly to Christians.” In 1898, in the introduction to his translation of the “Masnavi,” Sir James Redhouse wrote, “The Masnavi addresses those who leave the world, try to know and be with God, efface their selves and devote themselves to spiritual contemplation.” For those in the West, Rumi and Islam were separated.

In the twentieth century, a succession of prominent translators—among them R. A. Nicholson, A. J. Arberry, and Annemarie Schimmel—strengthened Rumi’s presence in the English-language canon. But it’s Barks who vastly expanded Rumi’s readership. He is not a translator so much as an interpreter: he does not read or write Persian. Instead, he transforms nineteenth-century translations into American verse.

It’s verse of a very particular kind. Barks was born in 1937 and grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He received his Ph.D. in English literature and published his first book of poetry, “The Juice,” in 1971. The first time he heard of Rumi was later that decade, when another poet, Robert Bly, handed him a copy of translations by Arberry and told him that they had to be “released from their cages”—that is, put into American free verse. (Bly, who has published poetry in The New Yorker for more than thirty years—and whose book “Iron John: A Book About Men,” from 1990, greatly informed the modern men’s movement—later translated some of Rumi’s poems himself.) Barks had never studied Islamic literature. But soon afterward, he told me recently, over the phone from his home in Georgia, he had a dream. In the dream, he was sleeping on a cliff near a river. A stranger appeared in a circle of light and said, “I love you.” Barks had not seen this man before, but he met him the following year, at a Sufi order near Philadelphia. The man was the order’s leader. Barks began spending his afternoons studying and rephrasing the Victorian translations that Bly had given him. Since then, he has published more than a dozen Rumi books.

In our conversation, Barks described Rumi’s poetry as “the mystery of opening the heart,” a thing that, he told me, “you can’t say in language.” In order to get at that inexpressible thing, he has taken some liberties with Rumi’s work. For one thing, he has minimized references to Islam. Consider the famous poem “Like This.” Arberry translates one of its lines, rather faithfully, as “Whoever asks you about the Houris, show (your) face (and say) ‘Like this.’ ” Houris are virgins promised in Paradise in Islam. Barks avoids even the literal translation of that word; in his version, the line becomes, “If anyone asks you how the perfect satisfaction of all our sexual wanting will look, lift your face and say, Like this.” The religious context is gone. And yet, elsewhere in the same poem, Barks keeps references to Jesus and Joseph. When I asked him about this, he told me that he couldn’t recall if he had made a deliberate choice to remove Islamic references. “I was brought up Presbyterian,” he said. “I used to memorize Bible verses, and I know the New Testament more than I know the Koran.” He added, “The Koran is hard to read.”

Like many others, Omid Safi credits Barks with introducing Rumi to millions of readers in the United States; in morphing Rumi into American verse, Barks has dedicated considerable time and love to the poet’s works and life. And there are other versions of Rumi that are even further removed from the original—such as the New Age books by Deepak Chopra and Daniel Ladinsky which are marketed and sold as Rumi but bear little resemblance to the poet’s writing. Chopra, an author of spiritual works and an alternative-medicine enthusiast, admits that his poems are not Rumi’s words. Rather, as he writes in the introduction to “The Love Poems of Rumi,” they are “ ‘moods’ we have captured as certain phrases radiated from the original Farsi, giving life to a new creation but retaining the essence of its source.”

Discussing these New Age “translations,” Safi said, “I see a type of ‘spiritual colonialism’ at work here: bypassing, erasing, and occupying a spiritual landscape that has been lived and breathed and internalized by Muslims from Bosnia and Istanbul to Konya and Iran to Central and South Asia.” Extracting the spiritual from the religious context has deep reverberations. Islam is regularly diagnosed as a “cancer,” including by General Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national-security adviser, and, even today, policymakers suggest that non-Western and nonwhite groups have not contributed to civilization.

For his part, Barks sees religion as secondary to the essence of Rumi. “Religion is such a point of contention for the world,” he told me. “I got my truth and you got your truth—this is just absurd. We’re all in this together and I’m trying to open my heart, and Rumi’s poetry helps with that.” One might detect in this philosophy something of Rumi’s own approach to poetry: Rumi often amended texts from the Koran so that they would fit the lyrical rhyme and meter of the Persian verse. But while Rumi’s Persian readers would recognize the tactic, most American readers are unaware of the Islamic blueprint. Safi has compared reading Rumi without the Koran to reading Milton without the Bible: even if Rumi was heterodox, it’s important to recognize that he was heterodox in a Muslim context—and that Islamic culture, centuries ago, had room for such heterodoxy. Rumi’s works are not just layered with religion; they represent the historical dynamism within Islamic scholarship.

Rumi used the Koran, Hadiths, and religion in an explorative way, often challenging conventional readings. One of Barks’s popular renditions goes like this: “Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. / I will meet you there.” The original version makes no mention of “rightdoing” or “wrongdoing.” The words Rumi wrote were iman (“religion”) and kufr (“infidelity”). Imagine, then, a Muslim scholar saying that the basis of faith lies not in religious code but in an elevated space of compassion and love. What we, and perhaps many Muslim clerics, might consider radical today is an interpretation that Rumi put forward more than seven hundred years ago.

Such readings were not entirely unique back then. Rumi’s works reflected a broader push and pull between religious spirituality and institutionalized faith—though with a wit that was unmatched. “Historically speaking, no text has shaped the imagination of Muslims—other than the Koran—as the poetry of Rumi and Hafez,” Safi said. This is why Rumi’s voluminous writings, produced at a time when scribes had to copy works by hand, have survived.

“Language isn’t just a means of communication,” the writer and translator Sinan Antoon has said. “It’s a reservoir of memory, tradition, and heritage.” As conduits between two cultures, translators take on an inherently political project. They must figure out how to make, for instance, a thirteenth-century Persian poet comprehensible to a contemporary American audience. But they have a responsibility to remain true to the original work—an act that, in the case of Rumi, would help readers to recognize that a professor of Sharia could also write some of the world’s mostly widely read love poetry.

Jawid Mojaddedi is now in the midst of a years-long project to translate all six books of the “Masnavi.” Three of them have been published; the fourth is due out this spring. His translations acknowledge the Islamic and Koranic texts in the original by using italics to denote whenever Rumi switches to Arabic. His books are also riddled with footnotes. Reading them requires some effort, and perhaps a desire to see beyond one’s preconceptions. That, after all, is the point of translation: to understand the foreign. As Keshavarz put it, translation is a reminder that “everything has a form, everything has culture and history. A Muslim can be like that, too.”Saiba mais

Todos os conteúdos publicados no Nexo têm assinatura de seus autores. Para saber mais sobre eles e o processo de edição dos conteúdos do jornal, consulte as páginas Nossa equipe e Padrões editoriais. Percebeu um erro no conteúdo? Entre em contato. O Nexo faz parte do Trust Project.Two suicide bombs targeted a minibus in west Kabul on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 80, Afghan officials said.

A suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle toward the minibus as it neared the Afghan parliament building and then detonated the explosives, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

A second explosion occurred moments later, after people rushed to help the victims of the first blast, Sediqqi said.

Wahidullah Majroh, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said many of the wounded and the bodies of the dead had arrived at hospitals, “and we are working to identify the victims.”

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The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a brief statement that the target was “Afghan intelligence forces.”

Hasib Sediqi, spokesman for the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, denied that the agency was the target. The compound near the blast used to belong to the agency but now is a parliament facility, he said.

Abdul Hakim, who lives near the bombing site, said he saw a scene of chaos.

“I ran outside with my brother and saw several vehicles taking the injured,” said Hakim, 20. “I saw more than 40 people, including security forces, were killed and injured.”

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Ghulam Faroq Naziri, a lawmaker from Herat province in western Afghanistan, said another member of parliament from that province, Rahima Jami, was wounded, the Associated Press reported.

Separately, five people were killed and 12 injured when an explosion struck a guesthouse belonging to the governor of the southern province of Kandahar.

Kandahar Gov. Humayun Azizi and the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Kabul, Juma Kaabi, were wounded in the blast, said the governor’s spokesman, Samim Khpalwak. The deputy governor, Abdul Ali Shamsi, was among those killed, police said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for that attack.

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Faizy is a special correspondent.

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UPDATES:

11 a.m.: This article was updated with details on victims of the Kandahar explosion.

8:50 a.m.: This article was updated with a separate blast in Kandahar province.

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8:25 a.m.: This article was updated with the new toll of dead and wounded.

6:25 a.m.: This article was updated throughout with staff reporting, including a death toll.

5:54 a.m.: This article was updated with reports of injuries.

This article was originally published at 5:25 a.m.A plan to quadruple its Canadian presence to 40 stores has hit a snag for Whole Foods Market which confirms it will not proceed with planned store openings in Calgary and Edmonton.

The gigantic American natural and organic foods supermarket chain says on its website it has a total of 12 Canadian stores: five each in the Vancouver and Toronto areas, one in Ottawa and a new store that opened in Victoria in November.

"Whole Foods Market is committed to expanding in Canada with two stores in development, but we will not be moving forward with the Calgary or Edmonton store locations," wrote spokeswoman Beth Krauss in a one-sentence email late last week.

In a followup email Monday, she said the two stores in development are in Toronto and North Vancouver, both slated for 2017 openings, but did not respond to a request to explain why the Alberta stores aren't going ahead or clarify longer range expansion plans.

Two years ago, CEO John Mackey told reporters at a Montreal conference the chain would eventually grow to 40 Canadian locations from 10, without giving a specific timeline. He said the chain was then actively looking for a Montreal location.

Whole Foods announced in February 2015 it would open a 42,000-square-foot location in south Edmonton by the fall of 2016, along with a new store in Calgary by the summer of 2017. It said each store would create an estimated 150 jobs.

Artist conceptions of Northland Village Mall, which was to include Calgary's first Whole Foods market. The chain is no longer expanding to Calgary or Edmonton. (Dialog Design/City of Calgary)

In September, a Whole Foods spokeswoman confirmed published reports that the chain had terminated a lease deal for a store in Calgary's Northland Village Mall due to "timing challenges" but said the company remained committed to expanding in Canada with four stores in development.

Maureen Atkinson, a partner with retail consultancy J.C. Williams Group in Toronto, said Whole Foods' financial results have been slowed by competition throughout North America as grocery competitors including Loblaws and Walmart introduce organic food sections whose offerings are often lower priced.

"I don't think formally they've made any announcement that they're not going to continue to expand in Canada but my guess is they will be very careful about where they do that and more selective ... than maybe two years ago," Atkinson said.

She added the low value of the Canadian dollar versus the greenback makes it difficult for U.S. firms to justify expansions in Canada because the payoff will come in "75-cent dollars."

Stores need 'critical mass' of affluent shoppers

Kevin Grier, a retail analyst based in Guelph, Ont., said the poor Alberta economy, hit hard by low oil prices, likely also played a role in Whole Foods decision.

"An upscale store like that needs a critical mass of affluent, confident shoppers and the fact they are cancelling or postponing stores tells me it's indicative of the market there," he said.

He added Canadians love of grocery flyers and bargains — and the fact Statistics Canada reported average grocery prices actually fell in 2016 — would also discourage the American company.

On its website, Whole Foods says it has 467 stores, all in the U.S. except for the 12 Canadian stores and nine in the U.K. It started out with one store at its home base of Austin, Texas, in 1980.

In a regulatory filing for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Whole Foods said its international stores contributed three per cent of its overall annual sales revenue of $15.7 billion U.S.

On a conference call in November, CEO Mackey said the company had adopted a plan to cut operating expenses by $300 million U.S. per year to deal with an "increasingly competitive marketplace."

He also reported the company had opened its first three "value format" stores, called 365 by Whole Foods Market, in the U.S. and would be opening more there.Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (24)Mr Trump said he could not talk about what he had heard in last week's intelligence agency briefing but said there had been "many witnesses" there and that it would be a "tremendous blot" on the reputation of intelligence agencies if they had been responsible for leaking the details.Enter the characters you see below

Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies.One person was seriously injured when a suicide bomber aged around 10 blew herself up in a New Year's Eve attack in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, witnesses and aid workers told AFP Sunday.

The girl approached a crowd buying noodles from a food vendor in the Customs area of the city around 9:30 pm on Saturday and detonated her explosives, they said.

Although no one has claimed responsibility the attack bore the hallmark of Boko Haram Islamists who are notorious for using suicide bombers, mostly women and young girls, in attacking civilian targets.

"The girl walked towards the crowd but she blew up before she could reach her target," said witness Grema Usman who lives in the area.

"She died instantly, while one person was seriously hurt after after he was hit by shrapnel."

"(Judging) from her corpse the girl was around 10 years old," Usman said.

An aid worker involved in the evacuation of the body gave a similar estimate of the bomber's age.

"The girl was clearly not more than 10 and this could have made her too nervous, making her to detonate the explosives prematurely," the aid worker suggested.

Borno state police spokesman Victor Isuku, meanwhile, said a second female suicide bomber was caught and lynched by an angry mob. Her bomb was safely detonated by security forces, he said.

In December two girls aged between seven and eight detonated explosives in suicide attacks on market in the city, injuring 19 people.

Authorities blamed the attack on Boko Haram, whose seven-year insurgency has killed 20,000 people and displaced 2.6 million others. The conflict has spilled into Nigeria's northern neighbours.

Saturday's attack came a week after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said the jihadist group had been routed from Sambisa forest, its last stronghold in Borno state.Tuesday on FADE to BLACK: Erin Montgomery joins us for the first time on F2B and tonight we are going to talk about her life of contact and what it means for the future of our planet.A tourist visiting from Vietnam has been left bloodied and bruised after he was assaulted in a traffic incident in Sydney.

Thien Nguyen was driving to a picnic with his girlfriend in Brighton Le Sands on Friday when a man in a white Mercedes four-wheel-drive took offence to his driving.

Mr Nguyen said he had stopped his car when he heard his girlfriend apologising before his car door swung open and he received several punches to his face, Nine News reported.

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Thien Nguyen has been left bloodied and bruised after he was assaulted in a traffic incident in Sydney

'I was just sitting in the car waiting for the lights to turn green, and I hear my girlfriend saying "sorry, sorry",' Mr Nguyen said.

'And the door got opened and I came out of the car and he started hitting me repeatedly.

Mr Nguyen suffered a chipped tooth, stitches to his cheek and a bloodied nose in the short but violent attack.

The young man was taken to St George Hospital for treatment but was released a short time later.

The driver of the Mercedes four-wheel-drive is known to police. He fled the scene before briefly returning in another vehicle and then leaving again.

Mr Nguyen suffered a chipped tooth, stitches to his cheek and a bloodied nose in the short but violent attack

Thien Nguyen was driving to a picnic with his girlfriend (pictured) in Brighton Le Sands on Friday when a man in a white Mercedes four-wheel-drive took offence to his drivingZURICH (Reuters) - A court has rejected a lawsuit against FIFA brought by labour unions which said it had failed to use its influence to ensure fair treatment for people working on 2022 World Cup facilities in Qatar, the world soccer body said on Friday.

Raindrops flow down on a logo in front of FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland June 8, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

FIFA said in a statement it welcomed the decision by the Commercial Court of Zurich in the case which concerned its “alleged wrongful conduct and liability for human rights violations.”

The court could not immediately be reached for comment and FIFA did not give further details on the case itself.

The suit was filed by Bangladesh Free Trade Union Congress, backed by the Dutch union FNV, on behalf of a Bangladeshi man who says he was exploited in Qatar.

It called on FIFA to force Qatar to adopt “minimum labour standards” for migrant workers preparing for the tournament, including at least the right to quit a job or leave the country.

The Gulf state has faced criticism of its treatment of foreign workers from Amnesty International, the Building and Wood Workers’ International organisation and others.

Doha has previously denied exploiting workers and says it is implementing labour reforms.

Under Qatar’s “kafala” system, foreign workers must get their employer’s consent to change jobs or leave the country.

The Qatar government passed a new law last month and said the reforms would make it easier for migrant workers to change jobs and leave the country, but human rights organisations said the changes would not end abuse or exploitation.

FIFA said it took labour conditions in Qatar “very seriously.”

“FIFA monitors the situation very closely and ... will continue to urge the Qatari authorities to ensure safe and decent working conditions for construction workers,” it said.GODAHL, Minn. — For 122 years, the Godahl Store has been the gathering spot and general store for this tiny farming community straddling Brown and Watonwan counties.

At the end of the day Saturday, the store will close its doors for good, succumbing to inevitable economics.

“The operations of the store have been subsidized by community fundraising for years,” said Carlie Olson, who lives near Godahl and whose husband is on the board that oversees the store’s operations.

Built in 1894, it is the oldest consumer cooperative general store still operating in Minnesota and the third oldest in the United States.

Olson said because of the low volume of merchandise sold, vendors would no longer deliver milk, household cleaners, nonperishable food and other staples to the rural outpost, leaving board members and supporters to buy things in other communities to stock the store.

“There’s been a ton of support in the way of fundraising, but it reached a point where it couldn’t be sustained,” Olson said.

The store, officially called the Nelson and Albin Cooperative and Mercantile Association, has always been much more than a store, and Olson and others hope to preserve the building as a community center.

“It’s always been a community gathering place. There is a group of men that come for coffee every day, there’s teams that play baseball and softball in Godahl that come in and are tied to it. It has a lot of historical significance to the farmers in the area.”

Godahl has around 20 residents in its borders, but the larger farming area around it, and nearby towns of Hanska and St. James, have always embraced the enclave, which also features a well-used baseball/softball field complex and playgrounds.

Gary Sturm, mayor of St. James, said the area has always been proud of the community. Related Articles Walter Mondale remembered. What U.S. and Minnesota leaders are saying

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“They have a great ball field up there that’s used a lot. They take a lot of pride in their community, which is understandable,” Sturm said. “It’s unfortunate the store’s closing. They’ve tried so hard for so long to keep it open.”

Godahl is perhaps best known for its annual Godahl Labor Day celebration, which for 60 years has drawn large crowds for the parade and other events.

Olson said that next month the board will hold a community meeting to get ideas on how to proceed. She said some are hoping a nonprofit can be set up and funding secured to maintain the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. She said the hope is it can still be opened at times and used as a community center.

The ownership of the building, however, is a bit ambiguous. It was owned by the co-op members in the area. But Olson said there are no longer any shareholders or certificate holders.

“They were all forfeited years ago when there was no profit,” she said.

With no clear ownership, the board will make decisions on moving forward, but Olson said it will be driven by area residents’ wishes at the community meeting.

“Everyone who attends has a right to vote and the board decisions will be based on what the people want,” she said.

Taking its name from Nelson and Albin townships that Godahl straddles, the Nelson and Albin Cooperative Mercantile Association was established in 1894. With bylaws written in Norwegian and shares available at $20, the association contracted with 10 men to construct the store opposite the Godahl creamery. Related Articles Tribune Publishing green-lights plan to be acquired by Alden Global Capital

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In 1895 a warehouse was added to store hardware like nails and fencing, and the following year the main building was expanded with an addition wrapping around the north side and rear.

In 1905 the store installed one of the first telephones in the area, and later housed a branch of the Watonwan County Library.

The exterior was modified in 1916. The building’s false-front facade and small south addition were likely added at this time.This Group was created for people who love to create maps and missions on the GEM 2 Engine.Cross-dressing a young boy is emotional and psychological child abuse and should be stopped, not celebrated on the cover of magazines like National Geographic.

The National Geographic staff chose a cover story of nine-year-old-boy who says he’s a girl for the January 2017 special issue, entitled “Gender Revolution.” Transgenderism is today’s popular social delusion which, contrary to the publicity surrounding it, affects a miniscule portion of the population.

Young Avery Jackson, whether deliberately or not, is an LGBTQ activist whose image is being used to promote transgender politics and raise money for a transgender house in Kansas. Now National Geographic is participating in the activism by spreading the progressive ideology of fluid genders and providing an easy rallying point for future LGBTQ fundraising campaigns.

The activists’ theory of gender fluidity, or gender spectrum, suggests that God-designated genders of male and female indicated by biology is too limiting. Their theory separates gender from sex and says that gender is determined by how people feel or think, not by the objective evidence of body parts, chromosomes, and other distinct biological markers.

Why is the boy’s picture so disturbing to me? Because, like Avery Jackson, I was a cross-dressing boy at the age of nine. I can tell you that crossdressing a young boy is emotional and psychological child abuse and should be stopped, not celebrated on the cover of magazines. I started wearing female clothing at the age of four. My grandma encouraged me by providing clothing and affirmation over a prolonged period. I was sure I wanted to become a female.

Eventually, I did become a female transgender. I was approved and underwent the full range of hormone therapy and surgeries and legally changed my identity. I lived life as a female, Laura Jensen, for eight years. All too late I realized transgenderism was all “B.S.”—a surgical masquerade to superficially project a change of gender. Like others who elect to live the transgender life, I painfully discovered it was only a temporary fix to deeper pain.

Sexing Up Lies that Lead Children Astray

A cover photo is visually exciting and can persuade young people that male and female gender models are not fixed, when they are. Photos like the one on the cover of National Geographic can encourage a child to question his or her gender and sex and act out accordingly.

Not all boys who cross-dress will develop gender confusion, but disturbing to me is how easily gender distress can become an unwanted reality for unsuspecting children when changing gender is encouraged, nurtured, and celebrated seemingly everywhere. Encouraging boys to cross-dress can encourage various disturbing behaviors and anxieties, such as sexual fetishes and gender confusion.

Young people are told transgender feelings are permanent, immutable, physically deep-seated in the brain, and can never change. That’s simply not true. Anyone past age 25 knows that even very strong feelings can change.

During my time of gender distress, I consulted with the leading gender experts to find relief. I was told that the only way I would ever find peace was to change my gender. Yet me and many other former transgenders have discovered the truth: the peace that comes from changing genders is temporary. Feelings change. At some point, which may take years, reality penetrates the fog and living as a superficial female no longer “feels” right. I hear from transgender people who write, “I feel duped. How can I undo this and return to living in my birth gender?”

Real Journalism and Science Investigates Dissent

If National Geographic truly wanted to explore the complexities of gender change, they would have included stories of people who discovered that living the transgender life was an empty promise. A case in point is that of Alexis (born Robert) Arquette, a transgender pioneer and actor who died last September at the age of 47. Arquette’s decision to stop living as a woman was done silently. A posthumous Hollywood Reporter article tells of Arquette’s struggles:

In 2013, amid increasing health complications, Alexis began presenting herself as a man again, telling Ibrahim [a close friend] that ‘gender is bullshit.’ That ‘putting on a dress doesn’t biologically change anything. Nor does a sex-change.’ She said that ‘sex-reassignment is physically impossible. All you can do is adopt these superficial characteristics but the biology will never change.’

Dr. Richard B. Corradi, a professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, calls transgenderism a “Contagion of Mass Delusion” similar to the hysterias of the 1980s and ‘90s, “junk science” that reinforced hysterical, false stories of satanic ritual abuse and recovered memories.

The very people who should know better have bought into the hysteria. Just as ‘mental health professionals’ a generation ago supported the child abuse delusions, and even participated in prosecuting the unjustly accused, so too have they fueled the fire of the transgender delusion.

National Geographic should know better than to buy into these kinds of hysterias. Susan Goldberg, the editorial director of National Geographic Partners and editor-in-chief of the magazine, is recklessly using the magazine and this child to promote gender questioning and the theory of gender as a spectrum. The magazine cover is designed to change minds and influence gender transition.

National Geographic gives no balanced discussion, magazine cover shot, or special edition for the many people who have been harmed by gender transition when the change failed to resolve our much deeper psychological issues. No mention is made of those who detransitioned, regretted changing genders, or died. The magazine makes no exploration of the many underlying illnesses that can cause the desire to change gender, and the fact that treating these illnesses can alleviate the feelings of gender confusion.

Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man

Goldberg told NBC Out, NBC’s digital portal targeted at LGBT people, that “We wanted to look at how traditional gender roles play out all over the world, but also look into gender as a spectrum.” The young boy’s picture on the cover should spark a national discussion about Goldberg and National Geographic.

In answer to the question “Why did you focus on children—and put one on the cover?” National Geographic staff responded:

The worst thing about being a girl is that you just can’t do things that boys can do,” Tomee War Bonnett, a nine-year-old living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, told us. This sentiment was expressed by girls worldwide—using different words and in different languages, but bound by the same constraints. We put Avery on the cover because she symbolized a lot of the complex and current conversation occurring around gender.

Let me see if I am understanding correctly. Girls worldwide expressed that the worst thing about being a girl is not being allowed to do the things boys do, and National Geographic decided that a boy who thinks he is a girl is the appropriate symbol of this conversation. It requires amazing mental gymnastics to arrive at this conclusion. Avery, a boy, symbolizes none of the complex conversation about gender constraints girls have expressed worldwide. Using him to illustrate the concerns of biological females is a slap in the face, again elevating male concerns and profiles over theirs.

The Nat Geo staff has conflated the issue of females feeling constrained by being female with a completely unrelated topic: the transgender population experiencing severe distress with gender identity. These are hardly the same issues and definitely don’t have the same impact: females number about 50 percent of the population, while people who identify as transgender number a scarce 0.3 percent of the world’s population, at best.

In tandem with the magazine issue, National Geographic produced a two-hour documentary also called “Gender Revolution,” featuring trans kids and their parents. It completely abandons any pretense of covering male-female gender inequality. Like the special issue of the magazine, the “documentary” is an indoctrination for the activist transgender point of view. It endorses cross-gender affirmation and transition for children to the exclusion of any other less-invasive treatment.

This Is Child Abuse

Studies have shown that childhood gender dysphoria does not inevitably continue into adulthood. An overwhelming 77 to 94 percent of gender dysphoric children do not become adults with gender dysphoria. Given this, it’s social, medical, and psychological malpractice to push young children to lop off or sew on body parts and take highly charged cross-sex hormones that can further destabilize their prepubescent bodies and minds, especially when they are highly likely to regret what grown adults pushed them into before they were able to sort through such life-altering decisions.

It’s distressing to me as a former transgender to see the lopsided media coverage, even outright promotion, presented by what formerly had been a respected, apolitical publication. Imagery has a powerful influence on the minds of children and young adults. Just like the infamous Vanity Fair cover of Olympian Bruce Jenner in women’s clothing, this cover and documentary will cause gender questioning in susceptible individuals and lead them into further heartbreak. I know from my own experience and the experiences of those who write me that gender change is a temporary reprieve that makes authentic healing even more difficult later.

It’s distressing to see male and female binary genders being debased and replaced by gender transition and “gender spectrum,” because I know first-hand that restoration from gender distress begins with acknowledging the truth of biology: only male and female exist, and no one can change from one to the other, no matter how strong the feelings are.Kayak seats are an essential part of the comfort and mobility of a kayak and their value is sometimes greatly underestimated. If the kayak seat you use doesn’t fit you, is made of low-quality materials, or the construction isn’t very well made, there is no cockpit big enough and comfortable enough to save you. You will have issues, and serious ones, and you will make kayaking, which should be enjoyable, a pain and struggle. Here we have put together a guide that will help you choose the perfect and most comfortable seat for you as well as help you learn what really goes into making the If the kayak seat you use doesn’t fit you, is made of low-quality materials, or the construction isn’t very well made, there is no cockpit big enough and comfortable enough to save you. You will have issues, and serious ones, and you will make kayaking, which should be enjoyable, a pain and struggle. Here we have put together a guide that will help you choose the perfect and most comfortable seat for you as well as help you learn what really goes into making the best kayak seat.

Kayakerguide is providing kayak recommendations using research from only the best hand chosen sources and veteran kayak testers who refuse to display only but the best in kayaking choice and journalism. Let us know what you think so far and sign up to be notified when we publish a new guide or article.

1. YakGear SMR Manta Ray Deluxe



Best Overall

When it comes to kayak seats, the YakGear SMR Manta Ray Deluxe is certainly among the better options out there. Even though it’s not a stiff and sturdy construction, when properly set up it provides plenty of support in various situations. Check Price on Amazon To begin with, the back is 19 inches tall and 1 inch thick. This gives you quite a lot of support and is one of the most comfortable backs on a kayak seat out there, especially if you’re looking for a seat for longer paddle adventures. The bottom of the seat is shorter at 15 inches, but is also thicker – you’re looking at 1-1/2 inch EVA foam. This does add a bit of extra support, and rounds out a very comfortable seat. The size is also a pretty nice middle ground for various sized paddlers.

As far as attachment goes, you will need a Pad Eye Kit, but once you have that, you’re looking at a quickly removable seat that’s a breeze to install. There are also two D-rings built-in the back, to attach accessories, as well as water gutters at the bottom to channel the water away. It’s a great seat all around.

2. Welugnal Universal Kayak Seat



Runner Up

Most of the kayak seats you can buy aftermarket boast with the thick padding and complex panels and whatnot. However, not everyone actually needs all of that, and instead, sometimes you would be much better off if you were to just get a thin seat that provides plenty of support, attaches really easily, and can be removed in less than a minute. Check Price on Amazon Make no mistake, the Welugnal seat is very comfortable. It does have decent padding on both the seat and the backrest, and it grips your body rather well when you attach it. However, the padding is not thick, but instead, high quality. The result is the same – you get a comfortable seat that provides plenty of support and comfort for even longer adventures.

You’re also getting rather durable hardware which is corrosion resistant, and holds up to daily wear and tear pretty well thanks to the materials of choice. And the best thing about it? You can install (or remove) it in less than a minute whenever you need it. It’s honestly a great choice, and it comes with a rather attractive price tag, too.

3. KERCO Angler-X



Most Comfortable

While most of the aftermarket kayak seats you’ll come across are pretty universal, the KERCO Angler-X is obviously tailor made for people who tend to use their kayaks for fishing. That’s not to say it’s not good for conventional paddling, but it is made with anglers in mind. Check Price on Amazon The high backrest is very well made, and the padding is divided in a way that provides support for your back without it being too stiff or uncomfortable. This is thanks to the Dura-Foam that’s used as padding, as well as the nylon fabric that surrounds it. Overall, this is definitely a good seat for anglers who tend to move around their kayak quite a bit.

To make things even better, the bottom of the seat has a contoured, padded seat surface that will keep the seat in place even when you move around. Few other seats do this, and they instead resort to the attachment instead. This is a nice addition, and one you won’t find on many other kayaks. The straps themselves do a pretty great job actually, and they hold the seat in place rather well.

Overall, the Angler-X is an excellent pick for just about any user, but if you’re one of those people who has a fishing kayak and wants a nice aftermarket seat for their fishing adventures, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better pick than the KERCO Angler-X.

4. Leader Accessories Deluxe



Best Design

One major problem you’ll come across with many kayak seats is the lack of storage. While some higher end brands like Hobie will give you storage below the seat, it’s actually a nice idea to have some kind of storage area included with your seat. Check Price on Amazon It’s obvious that Leader Accessories heard this, because their Deluxe padded seat comes with a storage bag that you attach to the back – and this is, quite frankly, a quite underestimated feature.

We’ll come back to the bag in a minute, let’s discuss the seat itself first. The high back is very well made, and we have to say it’s one of the most comfortable backs on an aftermarket kayak seat you’ll come across. The padding is EVA foam, which is durable and maintains its shape and stiffness over time, and the panels themselves are very well thought out in terms of size and positioning. Then there’s the 210D polyester exterior, which is pretty resistant to wear and tear and should keep the seat in a great shape for quite some time.

The hooks are pretty high quality, and so are the straps, which means the attachment and adjustment mechanism won’t stop working after a month. Oh, and the bag is one of the best things about the Deluxe. It clips to the back of the seat, and it sits pretty high so it doesn’t interfere with your kayak. It’s got plenty of space inside so you can store your essentials and have them within reach. Brilliant!

5. Pactrade Marine Adjustable Deluxe Seat



Most Versatile

Another option that comes with a bag, the Pactrade Marine Adjustable Deluxe Seat is an excellent choice, and one that your wallet will thank you for. At a pretty reasonable price, you get a seat that screams premium, is built very well, and gives you a bit of extra storage to play with. Check Price on Amazon The back is pretty high, and the padding is EVA foam and a PE plate. This ensures that not only the seat will remain sturdy, but you will also be as comfortable as it gets with a kayak seat. The neoprene and 600D polyester on the outside ensure durability, and daily wear and tear won’t destroy this seat in a month of paddling.

At the bottom you have a non-slip, contoured surface that won’t move around the kayak, and the straps help keep the seat in place. To put it bluntly, this seat won’t move around your kayak, even if you do, which is an excellent things to know.

Last but not least, the bag attaches to the back, rather high, and gives you plenty of room to store a few of your essentials and keep them within reach.

6. Ocean Kayak Comfort Plus



Most Sturdy

Ocean Kayak is a very well known and quite respected brand in the world of kayaks, and they also have a range of seats for you to choose from, too. And while the seats could be fitted to other kayaks, they’re most at home when mounted to one of their own. Check Price on Amazon The Comfort Zone back is actually rather high, but it also has side grips that hold your body pretty well. You get decent (albeit not too thick) padding, and overall the comfort of the back is excellent. The seat padding does come with a bit of extra padding when compared to most of the other seats on the market currently. This does give you a more comfortable experience, which is nice.

Furthermore, the entire seat has a tough nylon construction, which is extremely durable. And for those of you who worry about sweating issues, there’s a ventilation system that will keep you as a paddler cool and dry.

Installation and adjustment is pretty easy, and you can fine tune the seat to make sure it’s comfortable for you and your body type. And with a pretty reasonable price, there’s basically no reason not to get it.

7. Surf To Summit GTS Sport



Best Adventure

The last option we’re looking at is the Surf To Summit GTS sport, a seat that’s designed to be as comfortable as possible for smaller paddlers, something at which it actually excels. It comes with a lower back support and a small pouch, and is definitely one of the most comfortable seats for smaller paddlers out there. Check Price on Amazon As we mentioned, the back is pretty low at only 12.5 inches tall. However, it goes quite a bit to the sides and still provides plenty of body support. The thick EVA foam padding is incredibly comfortable, and the panels are divided in a way that channels water well and keeps you cool instead of sweaty.

The 600D fabric that’s used throughout the seat is very durable and is one of those things you just don’t have to worry about – it will last you a good while and you don’t have to ‘baby’ it all the time. The adjustment system is pretty easy, and works with a variety of kayaks.

Add to this the compact pouch you have at the back, that allows you to store a smartphone or your wallet and keys, and you’re looking at an excellent kayak seat.

8. Crack of Dawn Apex 1 Deluxe Kayak Seat



Most Durable Material

One of the most endearing features of this Kayak seating is that it is made up of ultra-durable material. Check Price on Amazon Proper back support is mandatory while you are Kayaking either in a lake or stream. The all-new Crack of Dawn Apex 1 comes with 19 inches of back support. You can even strap it in 8 different ways. Impeccable cushioning of this kayak seating also offers you genuine aid in sitting without facing any difficulties. Besides, the proper contouring of this seat will keep it in one place even when you are making brisk movements while rowing the kayak.

The Crack of Dawn Apex 1 is considered as one of the thickest kayaking seats that weigh only around 2.7 pounds. Thus, you do not have to worry about unnecessarily increasing the weight of the kayak. Due to simplistic design, you can install this seat in 15 seconds in a Kayak.

One of the most endearing features of this Kayak seating is that it is made up of ultra-durable material. Thus, you can use it roughly as it and it will withstand even extreme environmental conditions. The material even offers proper ventilation, now you do not have to deal with foul smells as well as do not have to clean it frequently.

This product is not only made up of premium material, but it comes in pocket-economic pricing. Thus, you do not have to think twice before purchasing it. The Crack of Dawn Apex 1 is constructed in such a manner that you will get enough spacing beneath it, allowing you to store essential items.

9. Harmony Gear Standard Sit-on-top Seat



Also for Tandem

One of the most fascinating features of Harmony Gear Standard Sit-on-top Seat is its ergonomic design pattern. Check Price on Amazon Who doesn’t like to carry extra tools or equipment during a kayaking session? There is nothing more endearing when you get additional space beneath the kayak seating. The all-new Harmony Gear Standard Sit-on-top Seat is designed with sheer perfection and you get a chance to carry essential accessories right underneath it.

The skid resistive, nylon cover will offer you additional stability while you are kayaking in a lake. To offer you additional support, this kayak seating comes with attaching clips. As compared to several other materials, nylon is more durable and it is easier to clean. Thus, you do not have to deal with frequent maintenance or repairs.

One of the most fascinating features of Harmony Gear Standard Sit-on-top Seat is its ergonomic design pattern. Now you can row kayak for hours without suffering from any bodily pain. In addition to this, you can easily adjust the back band’s position, and for that, there is no need to take the seating out of the kayak. Thus, paddlers of different height can easily sit on this seating.

To protect the kayak seating from moisture, anti-corrosive material is used for its construction. With the use of thick padding, you will get extra back support even when you are participating in water sport activities. This product is ultra-light in weight, offering you ease in storing and installing it in your kayak. Lastly, you will also get an authentic after-sales service and sort out any queries relating to the product.

10. Vbestlife Padded Kayak Seat



Best Stability

The Vbestlife Padded Kayak Seat comes with 2 rear as well as 2 front straps, offering commendable stability. Check Price on Amazon In case you are planning to purchase your first Kayak seat, then this is the best product that you can get. Along with thick and supportive padding, the Vbestlife Kayak Seat comes with proper back support. Further, the ergonomic design of the seat will help you to sit back in a relaxed manner for a considerable time.

The cushions present in the seating allow thorough water drainage. Thus, you can easily clean off the accessory after use. You do want to bring along several essential tools during the kayaking expedition. Well, thanks to the detachable zipper storage bags those are attached to the mainframe of the seating.

No one likes the seat to get misbalance while the kayak is either in still-water or in a stream. The Vbestlife Padded Kayak Seat comes with 2 rear as well as 2 front straps, offering commendable stability. Besides, the connecting straps are made up of marine-grade brass. Thus, they are rustproof and you do not have to worry about frequent replacements.

This seating is made up of neoprene fabric, making it weatherproof and it is a breathable material. When you use a breathable material as Kayak seating, then there is no need to worry about cleaning the product frequently. This is so because the breathability of the material won’t allow bacteria and fungus to thrive on the surface. The neoprene material is also skin-friendly, now you do not have to worry about rashes or allergic reactions.

Materials

A kayaks seats material is an important factor in stringing together its structure by providing comfort, breath-ability and durability. The material a kayak seat is made of is essential in providing a high quality seat that will last and keep you happy on the water.

Neoprene Fabric (4.5/5)

This is a type of synthetic rubber that is created through a process called polymerization of chloroprene. The material has good stability and flexibility in different temperatures and is usually sold in a rubber or latex form its most popular applications are, knee braces, fan belts and laptop sleeves.



Molded Foam/ Layered (4/5)

This is a product created from different soft foam compounds usually a general category for other types of foams it is created from a process called direct injection expanded foam molding. Once the process is done a nice soft molded foam is created in the form you wish.



EVA Foam (4/5)

EVA also known as Ethylene Vinyl Acetate is a foam that's used in different forms of padding such as hockey pads and boxing and martial arts gloves. It is a lightweight foam with strong and durable properties.



Polyester (5/5)

Polyester is a fabric that is extremely small its defined as "long-chain polymers composed chemically of 85% weight of ester and a dihydric alcohol and terephalic acid" These fabrics are extremely strong and are usually used for making outdoor clothes for extremely harsh climates. **Though not used to create the entire kayak seat this is usually layered over.



Tekpad® Fluid Gel Airflow 3D (5/5)

This ones a bit of a mystery to us, the fluid gel is in reference to a gel padded seat. This one is a material directly from the creators at Skwoosh, is has been said to be one of the more comfortable seat materials on the market.

How do you choose a good kayak seat? Even though there are some kayaks that come with their own seats and practically no way of modifying them, most of them actually give you the freedom of buying another seat and switching it in. That is completely up to the manufacturer of the kayak, but advanced paddlers and people who know what they’re looking for will make sure to have this as an option, mostly because the original seat doesn’t really fit them that well, or they want a higher performance one.

Comfort

This is hands down the most important thing. If a seat isn’t comfortable, don’t buy it, it’s as simple as that. Comfort depends on a number of factors, and you should keep all of them in mind when purchasing. You can also try to see if you can test-drive a seat before purchasing it, as there are some dealers that have demo days where you can test their equipment.



This is important because no matter how comfortable a seat may look, you will never know unless you try it. When looking at the comfort, make sure that you feel good for a long period of time this can be difficult to gauge on the first sitting, and always look for additional lumbar support – you can never have too much of it.

Padding and cushioning

The second important factor when deciding on the best kayak seat will undoubtedly be the padding, as well as cushioning. These are both key factors when discussing comfort and performance due to several reasons.



First, enough padding will keep you warm and not allow your legs to freeze, and there’s also some comfort here as well. Second, a well-cushioned seat will make you feel comfortable. However, not only the amount of cushioning is important, but the positioning as well.



It won’t do any good if the cushioning is in the wrong place and doesn’t provide comfort where it’s needed.

Kayak Seat Stability

This is also a crucial factor, especially for kayak anglers. A good seat should offer stability and not allow you to wiggle around in the cockpit as this will be a performance hit and will also increase your chances of flipping over, more so if you’re in whitewater rapids. Stability gets even more important when you’re using your kayak for fishing. Having a seat that will allow you to sit comfortably and not affect your focus on casting and fishing is ideal as even the smallest instability could lead you to end up in the water.

Durability and quality

This might affect you if you use your kayak often, or if you’d rather buy one seat and forget it as long as it fits you. Most of the seats you will find are built with durability in mind, but there are some strange ones here and there that might lose their performance or completely fall apart after using them for extended periods of time.



Therefore, if you consider yourself a frequent paddler, you should have durability and quality of build as some of the more important factors in consideration, as they may quite literally make or break a kayak seat for you, and let’s face it, who wants to go out and have to buy a new one every other month?

Storage

Even though many people don’t really need this since their kayak already comes with quick access storage, having extra storage in your kayak is never a bad thing. Keep in mind, however, that due to the size of the kayak seat itself, what you will get in terms of additional storage is not much, but it should be enough to let you store your essentials. This is also very useful if you’re fishing, as you can keep things you need quickly here, such as bait.

Price

Possibly the deciding factor for many, price is something that you won’t be able to neglect. An average price for a decent kayak seat should be around $60. However, if that is outside of your budget, there are also several more basic options that can be bought for less, and if you can afford a more expensive one, you will undoubtedly find higher levels of ergonomics in the more expensive seats. A basic rule of thumb would be that you get what you pay for, but when debating kayak seats, there is usually something available for everyone, at different price points.

What To Avoid When Buying A Kayak Seat?

Even though not that obvious, a bad seat can lead to a myriad of problems, here are a few things to keep your eye out when buying:

Avoiding Physical pain, pain has taken away a few potential kayakers and beginners without them knowing that the true problem here was usually a poorly designed or cheap seat.

The comfort a seat offers is going to vary, and it depends a lot on things such as the material thats used to make the seat, the construction of the seat itself, as well as the padding of the seat. We recommend you use a heavy duty material and seat padding that's not too thin to make sure you get a high level of support.

Avoiding Overheating and Sweating, there are some materials that can cause you to sweat a lot because of their lack of breath-ability, and there are some that are simply uncomfortable because they don’t stretch enough, or they stretch too much, or they’re too hard on your skin. A material that's not right for you could drive you crazy over time if your a daily kayaker, this is why its important to make sure you pay that little extra for a seat that is a bit more padded and uses a higher quality build.

Avoid Bad construction can also be a deal-breaker, as a seat that is too stiff will most likely be uncomfortable for most kayakers, and the problem persists with seats that are too soft and wobbly. Another issue we have seen brought up by kayakers is uncomfortable cushion construction with grooves that just don't match up with you and may dig into you over time.

The last on the list, bad padding, is another big factor. Lack of padding on both the bottom and back will mean that you’re basically sitting in the kayak’s body, and not on your seat, which isn’t comfortable by any means, especially if you’re going over whitewater rapids. Make sure you can gauge the thickness of the padding and if its gel the sensitivity on the gel in relation to your weight.

Reputable Seat Brands to Keep An Eye Out For

As with almost anything that you can buy, there are certain brands that stand out for a particular reason. For kayak seats, the brands mentioned below either offer amazing comfort and performance, or offer a number of features at a low price, but there are certainly reasons why they made this list. If you’ve decided that you truly want an aftermarket kayak seat, but you aren’t sure which brand to go for, this list would be a good starting point.

1. Ocean Kayak

Ocean Kayak is a brand that actually comes with a large range of products. They have everything, from complete kayaks, to accessories such as seats, hatch kits, rudder kits, clothing, paddles, life jackets, you name it. They offer products at various price ranges, each with its advantages and disadvantages. A good example from them would be the Comfort Plus seat back, which is designed for sit-on-top kayaks.

As its name suggests, the seat provides excellent comfort with the padded back. The nylon cloth construction is also there to guarantee durability even after longer usage. There are 4-way mounting straps which are adjustable and let you adjust how you sit in the saddle, for maximum comfort. There’s also a reflective logo with high visibility, as a safety measure.

2. Malibu Kayaks

Malibu Kayaks have been around since 1999, and they’re in the game to design and offer high-quality kayaks and accessories, which are also affordable in order to satisfy both hardcore enthusiasts, and recreational paddlers too. Their best offer is the Spider Angler seat, which is especially built for anglers and makes sure that you feel better and more comfortable while fishing.

It’s designed so it can be used on sit-on-top kayaks to maximize your pleasure while fishing. The high back, combined with a thick padding, will ensure that you’re comfortable no matter how long you’re in the water. There is also a rear gear bag, that allows you to store some small essentials, as well as built-in rod holders and tool holders. Also, not to be forgotten, there are D-rings that let you attach additional gear to it.

3. Surf to Summit

Surf to Summit specialize in kayaking gear, and not complete kayaks, as well as gear for other sports. Their inspiration to build seats came from the fact that back when they started, kayakers used to sit on a block of foam, and that was if they were lucky. They offer plenty of choice, both for sit-on-top kayaks and closed-cockpit ones as well. Their seats are made for touring, kayak fishing, whitewater rapids or recreational paddling – they have something for everyone.

Their most popular options are the GTS series’ Sport and Elite, which are both made for sit-on-top kayaks. The Sport is the smaller of the two, but both have advanced contouring which ensure that you’re as comfortable as possible, and provide enough lumbar support for anyone. The construction is also made with durability in mind, especially at high stress points.

4. Skwoosh

Skwoosh is another company that offers seats for plenty of things, such as kayaks, motorcycles, office chair accessories, car seat accessories etc. Their technology relies on a patented, medically proven gel, which is then combined with high-tech fabrics. Every product of theirs has welded seams, non-skid bottoms, as well as a lightweight, fold-able, low-profile design.

Their best offer is the Big Catch High Back seat, which comes with unrivaled lumbar support and cushioning. The seat uses technologies that ensure it’s cool, comfortable, and firm, and all at levels that give you superior pressure alleviation and comfort. There are also modifiable side wings that give more back support, and will go well with your body shape for a comfortable experience. The reinforced fiberglass battens will give you more stability and enhanced performance.

5. Kerco

One more brand that doesn’t really stick to kayaks, but instead offers seats for them (as well as some other accessories for other categories), also has several models that are made to suit a variety of people and a variety of environments. A perfect example is the simply called Kerco Sit-On-Top Kayak seat back, which is designed for sit-on-top kayaks, and made to offer support and comfort during long paddle trips. The cushion is made with molded foam, and has a nylon exterior, which provides a plus, durable seat that will last you for years. You also get ample back support, relieving you of any back pain and strain while you’re out on the water.



Benefits of a good kayak seat

Even though the benefits should be quite obvious, there are actually a lot of variables to a good seat. If you’re a paddler, by now you know that the kayak you use should fit you first, and then anyone else that may be using it, this may sound selfish but your going to be the one using it. There is an exception to this rule, and that's when you have a tandem kayak – in which case you need to be considerate of the other paddler. A kayak’s comfort is a combination of multiple things, including your size, the cockpit size, and the seat you’re using. Your size isn’t something that you can change, and the cockpit size is most likely already decided on. However the kayak seat is a variable that can be changed for maximum benefit.

Comfort

By now you’ve probably concluded that comfort is the primary thing that a seat offers. This may not make much difference to someone who doesn’t spend too much time in their kayak, but for advanced paddlers and those who want to go for hours, this becomes very important. Being uncomfortable in your kayak has much more of an impact than you’d think.

Support

The other important thing about kayak seats is the support they’re able to offer. A well-made, high quality seat will give you excellent lumbar support, which is very important if you want to avoid back issues, both now and in the future, and let the lower back do its job, pain-free. Lumbar support will target the lower back, at the point where your spine curves inward in a natural way. A good seat will provide an adequate support cushion, and help maintain the curve of your back, as well as the muscles that are surrounding it.

This is crucial, especially for paddlers that sit for long periods of time, on a regular basis, because the human body isn’t actually designed for long periods of sitting. If, however, a seat fails to provide this kind of support, it doesn’t only damage your back muscles, but the spine as well.

Read More on the dangers of bad lumbar support

Lower lumbar damage can lead to stiffness and pain, which isn’t something any of us would like to deal with, especially when you take into consideration the fact that this can lead to much more serious issues, such as walking difficulties, and even paralysis in the worst case. Taking care of this isn’t something that should be avoided. It is rather like regular healthy habits such as quitting smoking, or brushing your teeth – you can never start too soon. If you’re a younger, more agile person, this might not be much of a problem at the moment, but it will definitely be in the future, and it isn’t something you’d like to be having issues with. To better understand why this is so important while kayaking, you need to know what happens when you’re paddling. The traditional paddling technique is based on rotation of the torso which is initiated from your hips. This is a motion that is impossible to perform if you’re leaned towards the back, and can be best done if you’re sitting straight, or even better, leaning forward slightly.

This combination of leaning and continuously, repetitively rotating, puts a lot of stress on the lower part of your spine, which is also known as the lumbar spine. This happens due to the fact that it has to support your body, even when you’re rotating. To make matters even worse, while your lumbar spine is constantly rotating, your legs compress it against your seat’s backrest. This is actually how your paddling effort is transmitted from the paddle, through the body, and to the kayak, in order to propel it forward through the water. This force, which is by no means inconsiderable, is constantly applied to the lower spine, and that by itself is a pretty vulnerable area as it has no other bones to either support it or protect it. This is exactly why having a seat that reduces as much stress as possible from those areas, and provides enough support.

Yes, you’ve heard that right. Performance isn’t all about the body of the kayak, or the paddle you’re using. The seat has quite an impact on this as well, because even if your technique is good, and the paddle and kayak are great, your performance will suffer a loss if your paddling strength isn’t transferred to the kayak’s body entirely. This can be due to a seat being too soft, be it in the construction or the materials used.

A well-thought-out seat, and a well-made one, will allow you to transfer your strength from the water to the kayak with minimal loss, which is very important if you want to achieve higher speeds and maintain them.

Another big performance factor is being able to move the kayak with your body. This is especially important in whitewater rapids, where you have a smaller kayak with a tight fit, and you need to use your hips and legs to maneuver it. Having a seat that doesn’t do its job in this situation will lead to a drop in performance, and you might even hurt yourself unintentionally. Due to this, it’s very important that your seat has enough stiffness for strength transfer, and not too much, for comfort.

Final Words

When you consider everything, getting the best kayak seat is by no means a simple task. There are plenty of variables to consider, and most, if not all, can make or break your kayaking experience. By far the most important thing is comfort, and this can lead to more issues if not addressed in time. This should be your primary criteria when you’re buying a seat, and one you should never neglect in order to get a cheaper, or a seat with more storage.

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Fenwick in Leicester is to close, it was announced on Thursday morning.

The store, in the Market Street area of the city, is part of the Fenwick chain of department stores.

A spokesman said the traditional city centre retail area, that is a key part of Leicester's history, has seen much of its once thriving footfall diverted to Highcross and Fosse Park "which are served by modern, purpose-built car parks".

The company said that other areas in the city, such as Gallowtree Gate and Granby Street, have been affected in the same way. It added that the rise of online shopping had also affected trade for all retailers on the high street. The shop, acquired in 1962, is to close in the coming months.

A Fenwick spokesman said: "Together, these factors have meant the store has been unable to perform in line with expectations, despite the best efforts of the Leicester store management and employees.

"Fenwick will now begin a consultation period with its employees. During this time the store will continue trading as normal under the leadership of David Illingworth."

Mark Fenwick, said: "This has been a very difficult decision for us, as we have been committed to serving the people of Leicester for over 50 years, but the challenging trading environment and gradual loss of footfall, has made it impossible for us to find a way forward that enables the business to trade successfully. Looking after our Leicester employees and customers will now be a top priority."

Store Director David Illingworth added: "I want to take this opportunity to thank our outstanding members of staff, many of whom I've had the pleasure of working with for over 20 years.

"The situation we find ourselves in is in no way a reflection of their commitment and I will now be focusing all of my energy on ensuring they are fully supported throughout the consultation process." The Mercury does not yet know how many employees are affected by the closure, but will provide updates as soon as we have them.Apple says that, on January 1, its App Store saw $240 million in sales: its most-ever on any single day. But that’s just a tiny fraction of what iOS developers apparently earned in 2016.

Last year, developers with apps in the App Store earned “over $20 billion,” according to Apple. That’s a 40 percent uptick over 2015; developers have made over $60 billion since the App Store launched in 2008. December 2016 alone saw $3 billion in App Store sales. If you believe the company, last year was its best-ever in terms of App Store revenue.

Of course, we should temper Apple’s message just a touch. Super Mario Run launched in December, and Apple reports the Nintendo game earned 40 million downloads in the first four days. If half of those users made the $9.99 in-app purchase to play the full game, there’s $200 million in one fell swoop – and that’s just the first week.

Earlier in 2016, Pokemon Go commanded a similarly massive number of downloads and in-app purchases. Though the game’s creator, Niantic Labs, never announced how many had tried to “catch ‘em all” (in the Pokemon franchise’s parlance), analytics firm SensorTower said the game had over 15 million users shortly after launch.

It’s hard to know how much revenue Pokemon Go drove, but its model encourages multiple in-app purchases (IAP). While Super Mario Run’s single $9.99 upgrade is polarizing, Pokemon Go offers IAPs up to $99.99.

Curiously, Apple says the App Store now boasts over 2.2 million unique apps, up 20 percent over the year prior. That’s an interesting footnote because Apple recently culled the App Store of non-functional and rule-breaking apps. It’s not clear how many apps were removed, but there are/were a lot of ‘zombie’ apps in the App Store.

As part of that grand total, it seems Apple is also counting iMessage apps. While an argument can be made that a simple sticker pack is little more than a collection of images, it’s still designated an app. Either way, Apple says there are now over 21,000 of those types of ‘apps.’

Another big revenue driver are subscriptions, which is available across 25 app categories. Apple notes Netflix, HBO Now, Line, Tinder and MLB At Bat as the most popular subscription apps, saying 2016 saw $2.7 billion in subscription revenue – a 74 percent uptick over 2015.The UFC has canceled its second show of 2017.

A scheduled March 3 event in Las Vegas has been scrapped, according to the promotion. No specific reason for the decision was announced. The event, which did not have any fights attached to it yet, was slated to air on UFC Fight Pass the night before UFC 209.

Late last year, the UFC scrapped a Jan. 21 event in Anaheim, Calif., as well. The event, UFC 208, was moved to Brooklyn, NY on Feb. 11.

Since 2012, the promotion has been forced to cancel six previously announced events.Humble Bundle has been offering its monthly mystery bundles for over a year now, but the upcoming one might easily be the best one yet.

Humble Monthly is Humble's Loot Crate-esque subscription service where you get a mystery pack of games (redeemable on Steam) on the first Friday of the month. One of the games is always announced ahead of time, and for February, it's XCOM 2.

New subscribers can receive the game immediately by signing up now, while existing subscribers can choose to pay early to also obtain immediate access. Humble Monthly costs $12, which is substantially less than XCOM 2. Steam still sells it for for $60 and has never offered it for less than $30.

That makes the upcoming bundle a great deal regardless of what else you may get. For reference, the just-debuted January bundle came with Project Cars, Mother Russia Bleeds, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Neon Chrome, Jotun, Hopiko, and Kimmy. As a bonus that's been added since Humble Monthly first debuted, subscribers also receive 10 percent off on the Humble Store.

Those new to the service have until February 3 to sign up to receive the bundle with XCOM 2.The shooting of a man in Belfast on Friday has been described as a "cowardly act of violence".

The 21-year-old was attacked in in a paramilitary-style shooting at around 10pm in the Ardmonagh Parade area.Ottawa Fury FC has made significant headway during this offseason, having yet stepped onto the field for a USL match. With Head Coach Paul Dalglish and the team securing some solid signings from front to back and the organization forming a substantial partnership with Major League Soccer’s Montreal Impact, the Fury’s 2017 USL debut already looks to be a promising one.

“It kind of bridges the two cities between Montreal and Ottawa,” Dalglish said of the newfound partnership. “It’s huge for us. It’s a respectful partnership where we have our own identity in that we are an independent team. Our main goal is to win, first and foremost. We’re going to help each other on and off the field, to try and learn from each other and build the market of soccer in our part of Canada.”

Fury President John Pugh, during the 2016 USL Winter Summit, called the affiliation a “perfect match” for both clubs.

“The affiliation agreement allows us to do what we want – be an independent club, sign players that we want to sign – but also bring in a small number of their players to boost our roster,” Pugh said. “They will benefit greatly from playing with players of the caliber that we’ve signed for our team. It’s a win-win for everyone.”In an interview with French media Sunday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he welcomed conservative French presidential candidate François Fillon’s policies on terrorism.

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“[Fillon’s] priority to defy the terrorists and not meddling in the affairs of other countries are welcome,” he told RTL radio, LCP TV and France Info radio reporters.

“But we have to be cautious, because we have learned in this region during the last few years [is] that many officials would say something and do the opposite,” Assad said. “I wouldn’t say that Mr Fillon would do this, I hope not… but we have to wait and see, because there is no contact. But so far, what he says, if that will be implemented, that would be very good.”

Polls predict that Fillon, who has said France needs a closer relationship with Russia, Assad’s top ally, to resolve the Syrian civil war, is likely to win the second round of May’s presidential election against far right leader Marine Le Pen.

‘On the path to victory’

Assad said that his forces are on the road to victory after recapturing the key city of Aleppo last month.

"We do not consider that (retaking Aleppo from the rebels) as a victory because victory will be when we have eliminated all the terrorists," Assad said. "But it is a critical moment in this war because we are on the path to victory."

It was his first interview with French media since the December 22 recapture of the rebel-held east of the city, which had been under siege for months.

Rebel forces, who seized east Aleppo in 2012, agreed to withdraw after a month-long army offensive that drove them from more than 90 percent of their former territory.

The loss of east Aleppo was the biggest blow to Syria's rebel movement in the nearly six-year conflict, which has killed more than 310,000 people.

‘Every war is bad’

Asked about heavy bombing raids that ravaged the city and claimed large numbers of civilian lives, Assad said: "Every war is bad."

"But you have to liberate, and this is the price sometimes," he added, "In the end, the people are liberated from the terrorists."

Earlier Sunday in Damascus, Assad told visiting French lawmakers that he was "optimistic" about new peace talks planned for later this month in Kazakhstan.

The talks in Astana are being organised by regime allies Russia and Iran and rebel backer Turkey, following the imposition on December 30 of a fragile Syria-wide ceasefire.

French lawmaker Thierry Mariani said Assad also declared himself willing to negotiate with nearly 100 rebel groups fighting against his government, excluding jihadist organisations.

Assad said his government was ready to negotiate on "everything".

Asked if the government was ready to discuss his position as president, Assad said "yes but my position is linked to the constitution".

"If they want to discuss this point they must discuss the constitution," he said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

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The Ice Queen is probably my favourite summon in Final Fantasy, i wasn’t a huge fan of FFXIII’s Shiva, but only because of the whole transformers thing they had going on. But FFXV definitely did a good job on her, I loved the Ifrit scenario with her.

I am a little bit gutted on how little you really get to see the Astrals in FFXV. Throughout the 50+ hours I put in the game, I only managed to summon maybe 5 times? But wow, it was worth seeing those cutscenes, absolutely amazing!I recently switched from using Todoist as my main GTD system to using the three Google services Google Keep, Google Calendar and Inbox by Gmail together as one service for my GTD system and workflow.

So below you can see the things I really like with my new GTD workflow and what I miss from Todoist.

What I like with using Google Keep, Inbox by Gmail and Google Calendar for my GTD:

I like that the Reminders you add in Google Keep, Inbox by Gmail and Google Calendar are merged in Inbox and Calendar. Very useful.

I like that the Google services are available on all my devices. Including my Chromebook and MacBook Air.

I like the tight integration between the apps and the Chrome web browser. Even on iOS.

I like the way you can use Google Keep as a better Evernote. Adding incremental notes to the same note. Directly from the Chrome browser button.

I like that you can easily set a reminder on a Google Keep note that shows up in both Google Calendar and Inbox by Gmail.

I love that it creates automated lists of Reminders in Google Calendar based on the same time. So if I create two or more reminders at the same time, Calendar creates a list with all the reminders of that time. So when I’m clicking on that list all the reminders opens in one list and I can mark them as done one by one.

I really like how Inbox by Gmail handles tasks and todos. You can easily add reminders for specific emails, you can create completely new tasks, you can easily defer tasks, you can review all the tasks that you have marked as done, and you can easily see all the Someday/Maybe tasks and you get a great overview of all your tasks and todo’s in nice looking lists.

It’s so easy to create notes and reminders from basically anywhere on your Android phone. And they all shows up in Inbox by Gmail and Google Calendar. And you can do voice based notes that automatically transcribes to text if you want, you can scribble notes and you can do list-based notes easily.

The new Goals feature in Google Calendar works great and looks beautiful in your calendar. It automatically learns the best day and time to do a task you have set.

What I miss from my earlier workflow based on Todoist

Apple Watch apps and Complications. I still use an Apple Watch because it’s nothing wrong with it and I own one. It’s connected to an iPhone SE that I have always with me in a wallet case only so that I can use my Apple Watch. One of the best things with Todoist is the excellent Apple Watch app and its complications. You can easily manage your tasks completely from the watch. Add new ones, move them and mark them as done. Very useful. I wish you could do the same on the Apple Watch with Google Keep, Inbox by Gmail and Google Calendar too.

I also miss the excellent Karma system that Todoist has. It really helps to be more productive. It pushes you to be more effective.

Otherwise, I don’t miss anything at all really. Everything works so much better with my new GTD workflow. I am so much more effective and productive. My mind feels a lot more harmonic and relieved.

You can read more about my new GTD workflow and why here:

Google Keep has taken over my Task Management and GTD

My Productive Day with Task Management and GTD

Here is a vlog where I talk about my new GTD workflow:Last updated on .From the section Football

Brazilian midfielder Oscar arrived in Shanghai this week

China's chief sports governing body has announced plans to cap the big spending of Chinese Super League clubs.

The league's current pre-season transfer window is set to break records in the wake of Oscar's £60m move to Shanghai SIPG from Chelsea and Shanghai Shenhua's £40m capture of Carlos Tevez.

The Argentina striker has reportedly signed a deal worth £310,000 a week.

A spokesperson for China's General Administration of Sport said clubs in the country were "burning money".

The spending was also described as "a grave phenomenon" in a question and answer session on the organisation's official website external-link on Thursday.

The spokesperson added that the government body would "strengthen examination and supervision of clubs' financial affairs, progressively control clubs' expenditures on first-team players and ensure favourable financial conditions".

In December, Cristiano Ronaldo's agent Jorge Mendes claimed the player was offered an £85m annual salary after an unnamed Chinese club approached Real Madrid with a £250m bid.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger and Chelsea counterpart Antonio Conte are among the leading figures to have expressed concern about players being lured to China because of the financial benefits.

The 2017 Chinese Super League campaign begins in March and finishes in November.

Take part in our Premier League Predictor game, which allows you to create leagues with friends.Disclosure statement

Angélique Cangini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.A massive ice block nearly 100 times the area of Manhattan is poised to break off Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf, scientists reported on Friday.

A slow-progressing rift suddenly grew by 18 kilometres at the end of December, leaving the finger-shaped chunk -- 350 metres thick -- connected along only a small fraction of its length.

The rift has also widened, from less than 160 feet in 2011, to nearly 500 metres today.

“If it doesn’t go in the next few months, I’ll be amazed,” said Adrian Luckman, a professor at Swansea University in Wales, and leader of Britain’s Project Midas, which tracks changes in West Antarctic ice formations.

By itself, the soon-to-be iceberg will not add to sea levels, the likely consequence of ice sheet disintegration that most worries scientists.

The real danger is from inland glaciers, held in place by the floating, cliff-like ice shelves that straddle land and sea.

The fragile West Antarctic ice sheet -- where Larsen C is located -- holds enough frozen water to raise global oceans by at least four metres (13 feet).

Recent studies have suggested that climate change may already have condemned large chunks of it to disintegration, though whether on a time scale of centuries or millennia is not known.

The breaking off, or calving, of ice shelves is a natural process, but global warming is thought to have accelerated the process.

Warming ocean water erodes their underbelly, while rising air temperatures weaken them from above.

The nearby Larsen A ice shelf collapsed in 1995, and Larsen B dramatically broke up seven years later.

A combination of aerial photographs taken in February and March 2002 of parts of the Larsen B shelf in the Antarctic show different aspects of the final stages of the collapse. (Clockwise from top L) The pictures show the shelf breaking up near Foca Nunatak, a rift in the ice sheet near Cape Desengano, a cascade of water from melting ice nearly 30 meters high along the front of the shelf, and the new front edge of the shelf breaking up near Cape Foyn. (Reuters File )

The ice block currently separating from Larsen C contains about 10 percent of its mass, and would be among the 10 largest break-offs ever recorded, Luckman said.

If all the ice held back by Larsen C entered the sea, it would lift global oceans by about 10 centimetres (four inches).

“We are convinced -- although others are not -- that the remaining ice shelf will be less stable than the present one,” Luckman said in a statement.

Oceans in recent decades have absorbed much of the excess heat generated by climate change, which has lifted average global air temperatures by one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The world’s nations have undertaken in the Paris Agreement, inked in the French capital in December 2015, to cap global warming at “well under” two degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial era levels.Welcome to Miami – F1 Set For A Second US Race In 2022Monchi: "No le he dicho al presidente nada de irme ni voy a pagar cláusulas" "Es verdad que hemos hablado cosas a nivel interno pero sigo pensando en no cambiar lo que funciona", señala José Castro

Roberto Arrocha SEGUIR Actualizado: 10/01/2017 18:48h Guardar Enviar noticia por correo electrónico Tu nombre * Tu correo electrónico * Su correo electrónico *

Monchi, director general deportivo del Sevilla FC, fue cuestionado sobre la posibilidad de que hubiera comunicado al presidente del club de Nervión, José Castro, su marcha al término del mercado de enero. Monchi fue contundente al negar esta vía y se expresaba así: "No es cierto pero ya ayer tanto el presidente como yo ya dijimos que es un tema que llevaríamos a nivel interno. Mi idea la sabe el presidente y el club. Yo no he afirmado eso ni por asomo. Ahora mismo estoy tremendamente centrado en el mercado invernal. Somos el equipo que más movimientos hemos hecho. Seguimos trabajando para reforzar al equipo y esa debería ser la noticia sobre Monchi. Pediría que dejáramos en segundo lugar circunstancias que ya contestamos. No me gustaría estar todos los días desmintiendo circunstancias que no afectan al presente, que es lo que nos ocupa ahora".

Y continuaba Monchi haciendo una reflexión: "Si las noticias generan intranquilidad entre los aficionados no puedo hacer nada. Lo que tengo que hacer es lo que he hecho los 29 años que llevo en el club, dedicarle todo el tiempo de mi vida. Lo único que me quita el sueño es poder reforzar la plantilla de cara a los ilusionantes objetivos que tenemos en el futuro. De ahí no salgo. Pediría que dejáramos en segundo plano el tema y que nos centráramos en criticar o elogiar el trabajo hecho. No va a cambiar nada que estemos todos los días hablando porque estaré centrado al 120 por ciento en el día a día del club, que es lo que me preocupa realmente".

Como volvía a ser preguntado, Monchi insistía: "Es reiterativo darle más vueltas al tema. No vamos a encontrar nada que sume. Estoy al cien por cien volcado en lo que tenemos entre manos. No fui a San Sebastián porque estaba pendiente del tema Jovetic. Me hubiera gustado que hubiera una cámara grabando en mi casa. Eso lo diría todo. Mi perro no habla pero se asustaba de los saltos que daba. Lo pido a nivel personal, no tener que estar todo el día aguantando el aluvión de comentarios en torno a algo que no sabemos si va a pasar. No creamos una opinión de algo que después no va a tener vuelta atrás. Si luego me quedo encantado todo este daño que se ha hecho a la figura de Monchi como persona sería difícil de recuperar. A nivel personal os pediría que dejemos un poquito el tema. No hay más, lo llevamos a nivel personal y no tiene mucho más juego. Es una petición que hago".

Hasta que se lanzó a descartarlo rotundamente: "No tengo acuerdo con nadie, sólo con este señor (Castro) para seguir en el día a día del club. No le he dicho al presidente nada de irme ni voy a pagar cláusulas. Si algún día me voy lo de la cláusula no va en mi forma de ser".

José Castro, presidente del Sevilla FC, se manifestaba en la misma línea que Monchi: "Yo le veo trabajando igual que siempre, al máximo nivel. Acertando enormemente como casi siempre. Estoy todos los días en el club y todos los días está y le veo trabajar. Nadie mejor que yo tiene conciencia de lo que hace cada día. Es verdad que se han hablado cosas a nivel interno pero sigo pensando en no cambiar las cosas que están bien. Sigo intentando que continúe muchos años en el Sevilla. El tiempo dirá lo que tenga que ocurrir. Pero no es bueno que estemos todos los días hablando del tema Monchi. No me ha dicho que se quiere ir dentro de un mes o dos, ni hay un equipo al que se quiera ir. Hay que dejarlo trabajar en la misma sintonía para que el equipo crezca lo que queremos. Que siga en esa línea para tener un equipo más grande y alcanzar objetivos más importantes. Nosotros somos pobres en relación a los grandes de Europa y España y tenemos que utilizar la imaginación para lograr los mejores jugadores al mejor precio posible y es lo que hace Monchi".Ulta Beauty shared a sneak peek of Urban Decay’s new Nocturnal collection and it’s gorgeous

Window shopping a rainbow’s worth of makeup shades can be one of the most visually satisfying activities! Ulta Beauty shared a sneak peek into Urban Decay’s new Nocturnal palette, which includes 12 luxurious shades of eyeshadow (for every possible mood) and four brand new Vice lipstick shades. Now you can kick off 2017 with a full arsenal of moonlit makeup looks to properly express the glamorous insomniac living inside of you.

If you’re going to regularly dance your way into the early morning hours, this collection will only amplify your sleepless persona! You’ll have endless options to don one of the many generous shades provided in the Nocturnal Shadowbox.

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Also, the name Nocturnal Shadowbox definitely sounds like a villainous creature from a lost Harry Potter book.

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Maybe when you apply it to your eyelids you gain bat-like flying abilities.

The Nocturnal Collection will be available exclusively through Ulta Beauty starting January 15th! So you have time to gather your dollars and set your eyes on what you want the most. You can snag the collection in Ulta stores starting January 22nd!

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The four new shades of Urban Decay’s new Vice lipsticks include: Lawbreaker (a light chocolate brown), Nonsense (a soft pink), Fireball (a creamsicle orange), and Backstab (a rich raspberry).

Now you have yet another desire to keep you up at night, staring out the window longingly as you wait for these colors to drop.Republican leadership officials in the House acknowledge the possibility of “cascading effects” if the cost-sharing payments, which have totaled an estimated $13 billion, are suddenly stopped. Insurers that receive the subsidies in exchange for paying out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and co-pays for eligible consumers could race to drop coverage since they would be losing money. Over all, the loss of the subsidies could destabilize the entire program and cause a lack of confidence that leads other insurers to seek a quick exit as well.

Anticipating that the Trump administration might not be inclined to mount a vigorous fight against the House Republicans given the president-elect’s dim view of the health care law, a team of lawyers this month sought to intervene in the case on behalf of two participants in the health care program. In their request, the lawyers predicted that a deal between House Republicans and the new administration to dismiss or settle the case “will produce devastating consequences for the individuals who receive these reductions, as well as for the nation’s health insurance and health care systems generally.”

No matter what happens, House Republicans say, they want to prevail on two overarching concepts: the congressional power of the purse, and the right of Congress to sue the executive branch if it violates the Constitution regarding that spending power.

House Republicans contend that Congress never appropriated the money for the subsidies, as required by the Constitution. In the suit, which was initially championed by John A. Boehner, the House speaker at the time, and later in House committee reports, Republicans asserted that the administration, desperate for the funding, had required the Treasury Department to provide it despite widespread internal skepticism that the spending was proper. The White House said that the spending was a permanent part of the law passed in 2010, and that no annual appropriation was required — even though the administration initially sought one.

Just as important to House Republicans, Judge Collyer found that Congress had the standing to sue the White House on this issue — a ruling that many legal experts said was flawed — and they want that precedent to be set to restore congressional leverage over the executive branch.

But on spending power and standing, the Trump administration may come under pressure from advocates of presidential authority to fight the House no matter their shared views on health care, since those precedents could have broad repercussions.

It is a complicated set of dynamics illustrating how a quick legal victory for the House in the Trump era might come with costs that Republicans never anticipated when they took on the Obama White House.Mauricio Pochettino has earned a reputation as a fine tactician, and this was a very impressive strategic performance by the Tottenham Hotspur coach against Antonio Conte’s 3-4-3 system – the first time anyone has truly outwitted Chelsea in that shape.

Since Conte switched to 3-4-3 after a 3-0 defeat against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in September, Chelsea had won all 13 league matches, and had been so utterly dominant that opposition managers have found themselves terrified of playing their regular system for fear of being torn apart. The problem, though, is that no one had actually worked out which alternative shape to deploy either, and the most dramatic change in system from an opposition coach – Ronald Koeman sending out his Everton side in a 3-4-3 formation, matching Chelsea across the pitch – resulted in Conte’s most comprehensive Premier League victory, 5-0. Pochettino’s decision to use a 3-4-3 of his own, therefore, was a very brave move – although the 4-1 weekend win over Watford in that shape proved very useful preparation.

Throughout much of the first half, it was obvious Spurs had sought to match Chelsea’s system, and the two sides effectively cancelled out one another. Neither side was capable of finding midfielders in space: Mousa Dembélé and Victor Wanyama were up against N’Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matic in a particularly feisty central battleground, while Danny Rose was tracked by Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso nullified Kyle Walker. In a 3-4-3 versus 3-4-3 battle, the midfield quartets were locked together closely.

Tottenham dominated possession, however, and there was a difference in how the teams pressed. Chelsea’s three forwards pressed sporadically, but Pedro Rodríguez and Eden Hazard often dropped back to keep Chelsea compact, allowing Spurs’ centre‑backs time on the ball. The left-sided centre‑back Jan Vertonghen, in particular, looked to bring the ball forward from defence and the majority of Spurs’ promising attacks in the first half came down that flank. Rose’s incredible pace and stamina became increasingly obvious, forcing both Pedro and Moses into clumsy tackles, while Dembele found space by drifting left and going on one of his typical, mazy slaloms between opposition defenders.

Pedro and Hazard offered surprisingly little counter-attacking threat, partly because Wanyama and Dembélé protected the defence well. Chelsea’s most memorable counter-attack was launched by Diego Costa through the centre of the pitch, which resulted in an almighty squabble between him and Pedro when the latter made a poor run. Hazard, so often the catalyst for Chelsea’s best attacking play this season, was quiet by his standards and the away side’s most promising approach was playing through-balls for Costa, who had a running battle with the linesman’s offside flag.

Tottenham pressed more intensely and forced Chelsea’s defenders to play longer, often unsuccessful passes from the back. Their two attacking midfielders, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli, played important roles and tended to drift inside into central positions. Without possession they pushed inside to help press Chelsea’s central midfielders, which often left the Chelsea wing-back on the far side unattended, and with possession they took up clever positions, which contributed to Alli’s opener. Eriksen was always drifting between the lines, while Alli is in fine goalscoring form and at times played more like a second striker. It was not entirely surprising, then, that Spurs’ goal came from Eriksen finding a pocket of space and dinking a perfect cross on to the head of the onrushing Alli, who looped a header past Thibaut Courtois. That, in first-half stoppage time, was the first shot on target of this contest, summarising a game when both teams seemed determined to stop the other.

Chelsea started the second half strongly, enjoying longer spells of pressure – although this allowed Tottenham more counter-attacking opportunities, and it took less than 10 minutes of for them to double their lead. The second goal was a carbon copy of the opener – after Eriksen exchanged passes with Walker, he again curled a perfect cross into the path of Alli, making a near-identical run, to head home once again. Chelsea, clearly, had not learned their lesson – and while their defence has been absolutely superb in recent months, Cesar Azpilicueta’s lack of height means he’s somewhat vulnerable to powerful far‑post runs to meet deep crosses.

Alli was the hero, but the real matchwinner here was Eriksen. In a fast-paced contest based around pressing, physicality and a clear clash of similar systems, the Dane was the only pure playmaker on show, and the only performer playing the game at a more reserved tempo, varying his position intelligently to find space away from his direct opponent. Indeed, it may have been crucial that Gary Cahill was booked for clumsily rugby‑tackling Eriksen on 38 minutes – having previously shut him down extremely quickly, suddenly the centre‑back was reluctant to move out from defence, and Eriksen found freedom. He took full advantage with two delicious assists.Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during the 14th edition of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), an annual gathering of the Indian diaspora in Bangalore, India. (Photo: AP)

Bengaluru: Castigating the opponents of demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said those terming the government's move as 'anti-people' were the "political worshippers" of graft and black money which were making the economy, polity and society hollow.

"Friends you know we have undertaken a big responsibility in fighting black money and corruption... Black money and corruption have gradually made our polity, economy, society and the country hollow.

"It is unfortunate that there are some political worshippers (rajnaitik pujari) of black money who term our actions against it as anti-people," Modi said at the 14th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention in Bengaluru.

"It is very saddening to see some black money supporters maligning the moves against corruption," he said while thanking the Indian diaspora for supporting the government's steps against corruption and black money.

Emphasising the role played by overseas Indians in the country's development, the Prime Minister said they have made an "invaluable contribution" to the Indian economy by investing over 69 billion US dollars.

"For me, FDI has two definitions -- one is 'Foreign Direct Investment' and the other is 'First Develop India'," he said, asserting that "I can say with full confidence that 21st century belong to India."If there is one outstanding theme which is common to the campaign rhetoric of Narendra Modi in the run-up to the historic 16th general election and the language of governance of two-and-a-half years of Prime Minister Modi’s regime, it is indeed the fight against corruption.

This campaign has been ratcheted up in the past few months, first with the amnesty scheme for black money (wealth on which the due tax has not been paid), the big-bang demonetization of Rs1,000 and Rs500 denomination currency notes and the ongoing crackdown on those who so successfully abused the banking system in the past 50 days to launder their stash of black money.

It is a theme which has always resonated with the public—not just with Modi, but even the movement against corruption led by social activist Anna Hazare (which eventually spawned the Aam Aadmi Party); and, if we were to go back further, then V.P. Singh’s brief anti-graft fight in the 1980s. The patience with which the public dealt with the dislocation—including temporary loss of jobs—caused by demonetization in their stride suggests enthusiasm in the fight against corruption has not waned.

It is therefore safe to assume that Modi will make corruption the recurrent theme of 2017. His speech to deliver the weekend offering—a New Year gift for Bharat—left no one in doubt of his intentions. “Corruption, black money and counterfeit notes had become so rampant in India’s social fabric that even honest people were brought to their knees," he said.

Implicitly, he is arguing that the capture by corruption has largely benefited elite India at the expense of Bharat. From the tone of this government’s past two budgets and the sops announced on Saturday, it is apparent that alongside the fight against corruption, Modi will also be attempting a rebalancing towards Bharat—and the Union budget is likely to reflect this.

For good or bad reasons, Modi has linked the narrative of fighting corruption to every major policy initiative his government is undertaking (and in some instances being stalled by the opposition). By arguing that it is the singular reason for failed aspirations, Modi has touched a raw nerve in Indian society.

And he has, at the cost of making even some of his own party people uncomfortable, turned the corruption lens on the structural fault lines in politics which encourages the creation of black money. “Political parties, political leaders and electoral funding figure prominently in any debate on corruption and black money. The time has now come that all political leaders and parties respect the feelings of the nation’s honest citizens, and understand the anger of the people," he said on Saturday.

This is generating considerable social capital for Modi to push for an expansion of the formal economy—which by its very nature, unlike in the informal sector, entails adherence to rules and benefits (another matter that they are routinely flouted). Whether it be the push for financial inclusion (opening of Jan Dhan bank accounts) or loans bankrolled by MUDRA for the small and micro sector enterprise or implementation of a goods and services tax or ramping up of the digital economy, a desired end outcome is the expansion of the formal economy.

And as a clever politician, he is subtly tweaking the message from targeting the corrupt to rewarding the honest—once again feeding the aspiration quotient. Understandable, given that there is only so much mileage you can get by beating up your predecessor, Congress, for wrongdoing. At some stage, people are bound to start asking “Isme mera kya?" or what is there in this for me?

The PM’s address on Saturday formalized this recalibration.

“In this fight against corruption and black money, it is natural to debate the fate of the dishonest. What punishment will they get? The law will take its own course, with its full force," he said, before adding, “But the priority of the government now is how to help the honest, protect them, and ease their difficulty. How can honesty gain more prestige?"

Yet, he is still very much on the message: anti-corruption.

Anil Padmanabhan is executive editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics.

His Twitter handle is @capitalcalculus

Comments are welcome at anil.p@livemint.com

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Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Olds represents a model once made famous in the movie Get Shorty. This one’s painted more for Star Trek, however transmission troubles mean it’s not ready for a staring role yet. Maybe its price will prove the big break it needs.

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One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Or perhaps one French man’s poisson is another man’s… well, I don’t know, my French is pretty rusty. At any rate, one man thought yesterday’s 1996 Nissan 240SX was well worth its customizations, which included a ‘Cuda-aping body kit from Rocket Bunny and a rebuilt V8 out of an Infiniti Q45. Fully 80% of you on the other hand—both men and women—felt its price was pure poison, dropping it in a Crack Pipe loss to get 2017 off to a big start.

Did you watch the two-part The Grand Tour special last weekend, and if so, did you like the bit about (SPOILER ALERT) James May using his DustBuster to clean his Beach Buggy in the middle of the freaking sand-filled desert?

This 1995 Oldsmobile Silhouette isn’t that DustBuster, despite it’s obvious and uncanny resemblance to the handy foe of woolly boogers everywhere. While not in fact related to The Grand Tour in any fashion, this old Olds does have a couple of movie tie-ins to its credit. First off is its place in the pantheon of movie trivia history as a running joke throughout the comedy Get Shorty that the Silhouette is the “Cadillac of minivans.” That’s got to be worth some mileage as fodder for discussion in the car pool.

Of course, perhaps even more interesting is the fact that this Olds, which already bears a striking resemblance to something in which you might search for Klingons circling Uranus, is now adorned with Star Fleet Command paint and badging. And Moon discs too! Yes, this is nerd-dom set to warp-factor 11.

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First, for those of you too young to remember Get Shorty, Star Trek that wasn’t shite, or even Oldsmobile at all, a bit of history. The Silhouette was Olds’ version of GM’s U-platform vans, which also encompassed the Chevy Lumina APV and Pontiac Trans Sport, and which were the General’s answer to Lee Iacocca’s Chrysler people movers.

Like the contemporary Pontiac Fiero and Saturn lines, the U-vans were constructed with an innovative steel space frame clothed in dent and rust-resistant composite plastic panels. Underpinning all that was a FWD platform with a transverse V6 engine and an automatic transmission. Like Bizarro World Clark Kent, pretty standard stuff under the funky bodywork.

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It’s that tranny that proves the fly in the ointment with this Silhouette, as it has apparently gone tits-up. It should be a pretty standard 4T60-E four-speed which was shared with damn-near every mid-sized front-driver GM built in the mid-‘90s so replacing it should be pretty much plug and play..

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On the plus side, the truck has new shocks and springs, brakes and bearings and a bit of work to bring the engine up to snuff. The interior looks intact, with seven seats worth of burgundy leather and a sliding door that is electric.

Other pluses include a clean title, modest 125,000 mileage, current tags, and the ability to go where no man has gone before. And what would it cost to drive… er, tow this marvelous movie machine home? Well, the seller says $400 if you’re willing to cash & carry, or for an extra $100 he’ll deliver it within 25 miles of his Bay Area ZIP. Hell, that’s better than AAA!

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What’s your take on this Olds shuttle craft and that meager price? Is that a fair deal—considering the additional cost of a new gearbox—to get your cosplay on? Or, is this movie tie-in van priced to be a box office dud?

You decide!

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San Francisco Bay Area Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

H/T to CheapBastard for the hookup!

Help me out with NPOCP. Click here to send a me a fixed-price tip, and remember to include your Kinja handle.Ask most people around Leinster House what they think of Simon Harris, and the same adjectives usually flow: clever, ambitious, hardworking and competent.

The flow is consistently halted, however, by the caveat that the Minster for Health, who turned 30 last October, has yet to prove his mettle.

The past week saw Harris apologise for a record-breaking 612 people on trolleys in hospitals across the country, the worst instalment yet of the annual post-Christmas crises.

A week of grappling with the same problem that dogged your predecessors does not prove your mettle, but it was the first time Harris, now in his second term as a TD for Wicklow, was placed in a position that brings public opprobrium. The earnest prefect had a problem on his hands.

His rise had thus far been smooth, and he was marked out as a favourite of Enda Kenny’s since the start. As the youngest deputy on his first day in the Dáil in February 2011, he echoed George Bernard Shaw’s letter to Michael Collins’s sister, Joanna, after Collins’s assassination in 1922. In a speech to nominate Kenny for his first term as taoiseach, Harris urged the House to hang out its brightest colours.

In 2014, he became junior finance minister to Michael Noonan and, upon the formation of this Government, was appointed Minister for Health.

Failed attempt

Suggestions Kenny wanted to promote another leadership rival to Varadkar, Simon Coveney and Frances Fitzgerald – a levelling of the field that would allow Kenny to remain in office for longer – are consistently heard, too.

When the rise is so rapid, envy will soon follow and Harris is not liked by all in the parliamentary party. Some will feel a certain schadenfreude at his discomfort this week.

He is spoken of as an outside bet to succeed Kenny, but he probably knows he is still too young to step into leadership at the next time of asking. He is close to Frances Fitzgerald, who is likely to stand and would expect his support.

Harris could yet decide to run, however, to lay down a marker for the future and manoeuvre himself for a more senior role around the Cabinet table.

He certainly sees himself as a future leader and TDs detect something of wariness between Harris and Varadkar, his predecessor in the Department of Health.

This week will not change any of the above, but Harris has now felt the sharp political end of a broken health system.

Mistake

Dr Michael Harty, the Clare GP and TD who chairs the Oireachtas health committee, praised Harris generally but said it was a mistake to say the situation was unpredictable.

“It was entirely predictable,” Dr Harty said. He describes Harris as “more empathetic” than his two immediate successors in the health ministry.

“He is very approachable; he is willing to take on new ideas.”

A Fianna Fáil source said Harris has “to get the officials in the department to work with him and not against him”.

“He thought that by being low-key he was being clever. [There are] so many broken promises in health so he just wants to steady the ship, but doctors, nurses and consultants are as political as anybody. And it will be a year of discontent.”

Perhaps realising that politics does not stop at the gates of Leinster House and Government Buildings, Harris sent a letter this week to Tony O’Brien, the director general of the HSE, asking him to consider removing underperforming hospital managers. There will always be failures in a broken health system and blame to be apportioned.

Gets support

And the health system is unquestionably broken, but the same problems persist. Getting consultants to work longer and more unsociable hours, thus allowing more work to be done in hospitals, has been on the agenda for years.

Harris is awaiting the outcome of hearings of a Dáil committee on the future of the health system, which is due to come up with a cross-party consensus on how to proceed for the next decade, to produce a way forward.

That may be wishful thinking, since reaching political consensus on such an emotive issue will not be easy.

Even if – and it’s a big if – there is political agreement, driving through reform will take years and a huge amount of personal political capital.

It would prove Harris’s political mettle, but the adjectives that will attach to him at the end will undoubtedly be different.

The question is whether Harris wants to stay in the Department of Health for those battles, or escape as others have in the past.About

a Fan Webcomic by C-Puff.

Updates Saturdays. Comic is tagged with #Comic and asks are tagged #asks. #Masterpost for all pagesA Japanese insurance company reportedly is replacing 34 workers with an artificial intelligence system, and industry analysts say the same could start happening in the U.S. this year.

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Company, a 94-year-old company based in Tokyo, is getting ready to replace human workers with an IBM Watson artificial intelligence-based system, ABC News in Australia reported.

A spokesperson for Fukoku Life could not be reached and IBM did not respond to a request for comment, but ABC News said that 34 employees will lose their jobs by the end of March, when the Watson system takes over handling insurance payouts by culling hospital records, patient medical histories and injury data.

The final payments will still be handled by human workers.

The report also stated that the company expects to increase productivity by 30%, while saving $1.65 million on employee salaries. Fukoku Life will spend $2.36 million to install the system and about $177,000 in annual maintenance costs, meaning the new system should pay for itself in less than two years, ABC News said.

The report is likely to continue to validate fears that robots and A.I. are putting people out of work.

With A.I. systems making steady advancements that enable them to increasingly learn on their own, make decisions and understand human behavior, companies are widely expected to use the technology to sidestep human workers and get work done without needing to pay salaries and provide health care or vacation time.

By 2021, intelligent systems and robots may take up to 6% of U.S. jobs, according to Forrester Research.

Smart systems, chat bots and humanoid robots could take over jobs that range from hotel employees and customer service reps to truck and taxi drivers.

A year ago, the World Economic Forum, a Geneva, Switzerland-based organization focused on analyzing and improving the state of the world, reported that the next tech revolution, which includes A.I. and robotics, could mean the loss of 7 million jobs over the next few years.

The forum also stated that at the same time, 2 million jobs would be created in the fields of computer science, engineering and math. It's also expected that technology will create new jobs that will replace the ones that smart systems are taking.

Human workers may also increasingly work alongside smart systems. For example, a worker might have a smart assistant that finds information needed for a project before the worker realizes he or she needs it.

However, the concerns today are over jobs that are lost because of A.I.

"It's certainly something workers who work with large volumes of data will be concerned about," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research. "There's no question that A.I. systems, like IBM's Watson, can analyze and interpret data faster and more accurately than people. We are in the digital era, where the currency of business is speed, and A.I.s can make decisions faster than people with massive amounts of data."

With A.I. systems like Watson, data workers, such as those at an insurance company like Fukoku Mutual Life, could be at risk.

Kerravala said he also expects to see smart systems replacing American workers possibly as soon as this year.

Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, agreed that some U.S. jobs will be lost to A.I., but she said there's plenty of room for employees to grow in their jobs alongside smart systems.

"This is something that workers will have to be concerned with," Hurwitz said. "However, machines cannot operate in isolation from human judgment. The best use of these analytics systems is to work in collaboration with those that have advanced knowledge of their area and can be supported by smart systems."

Technology has been replacing jobs held by people for decades, the analysts noted. It's not unique to artificial intelligence.

The use of A.I. is another technology revolution that will change the kinds of jobs that are available, said Dan Olds, an analyst with Orion Research.

"As A.I. systems become more sophisticated and less expensive, workers worldwide are going to see some of their functions being replaced by them, or they're going to more likely find themselves working with A.I. systems in their jobs," he said. "This will mean that they'll need to be open to working with A.I. and building a productive relationship with it."Lots of colorful vegetables and salsa make this cheesy panini prettier than any grilled cheese you've ever seen. The small amount of Cheddar cheese in this sandwich goes a long way because it is shredded and sharp. Serve with a mixed salad and you've got a delightful lunch or light supper. If you happen to have a panini maker, go ahead and skip Step 3 and grill the panini according to the manufacturer's directions.One last bit about the Rose Bowl and then we can turn toward Tampa and hoops. But I can't move on without mentioning it:

Penn State fans, you got the true Big Ten Pasadena experience this time in all its gory Technicolor detail. By that, I mean you were initiated into the conference brotherhood of heartbreak at the hands of USC.

It's a birthright for anyone at Michigan or Ohio State, losing an excruciating game to the Trojans at the world's most enchanting athletic venue. There is no more bittersweet experience in sports than attending a Rose Bowl, gazing agape at the vividness of the beauty all around you. The colors all seem richer even when it's cloudy, the air like velvet even when it's chilly.

The Rose Bowl

Then your team makes a valiant effort, you think victory is at hand and at the very end it's snatched away by the Evil Empire in cardinal and gold. Ask anyone in Ann Arbor or Columbus. This is a rerun they've lived through over and over.

As a kid back in the 1960s and '70s, I watched Woody Hayes take four different teams into the Rose Bowl to meet USC. Two of those ended in just such a painful manner. Then, when I was an OSU undergrad, yet another narrow defeat at the very end in the post-1979 game. Michigan folks can tick off the Pasadena losses to USC: 1969, 1976, 1978, 1989, 2003, 2005.

Northwestern (1995) fans of a certain age know the feeling, too. And though they never play at the Rose Bowl, Notre Dame folks know all about it.

Like some of the OSU and Michigan defeats, I don't think Penn State's post-2008 loss qualifies because it was never in doubt. Which is sort of a prerequisite for real agony and the unique pain yet to come.

And what's that nadir moment? The sound of the Trojan band in their war-helmeted outfits piping up when their triumph is clear. And I don't mean the little ditty they play the whole game after defensive stops like Florida State's tomahawk chop tune. Or the Fight On song they strike up after touchdowns (both in the video below).

I mean their victory march. Just hearing it brings on dark memories from my childhood, recollections I keep in the back of the mind's bottom drawer with moving days and dying pets. It's the dirge from a recurring nightmare.

USC's band only plays the song when they know they've won. It's called Conquest and the reason it sounds like the soundtrack out of a 20th Century Fox epic from the '40s is that's exactly where it came from. It's their version of Red Auerbach's victory cigar and the I Believe chant begun by Navy midshipmen.

It's worse, though. Because it drips with a special arrogance. And as much as you hate it, you know it's a great piece of music.

The conductor uses as his baton a gilded gladius, the stubby sword of ancient Greek and Roman foot soldiers, stabbing it in the air with the marching cadence. In the back of your mind you know this is the band that played Tusk behind Fleetwood Mac. It's the band that crossed over into the record industry and show business.

All the while the damn horse is prancing around. He's not just a horse, of course. He has to be white. Like Dr. Evil's cat.

But you know what the very worst part is? You take in the whole scene in despondence, the USC fans mimicking the trumpet flourishes with their "Oh-oo-oh-ooooo" and the incomparable Song Girls in their white sweaters calmly punching the air with a V for victory in all their confident perfection. And you allow yourself the fleeting thought:

If you'd been born into their tribe and their golden land, you'd love being one of them.

That's the worst part! That's the part that drives you nuts. Because you'll have to think about this loss for nine months. You're flying home the next day. Winter has only begun.

Meanwhile, they'll be in California. And they'll probably forget about it tomorrow when they leave work early for the beach.

God, I hate that song.The ambassador of United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan has been wounded in a bomb blast in the city of Kandahar that also killed at least nine people. The blast took place during a meeting between senior officials and diplomats from the UAE embassy, wounded 17 others, including the provincial governor.

UAE Foreign ministry said “following the heinous terrorist attack on the guesthouse of the Kandahar governor which resulted in the injury of his excellency Juma Mohammed Abdullah al-Kaabi, UAE ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and a number of Emirati diplomats”.

Earlier, two suicide blasts near Afghanistan’s parliament in Kabul killed at least 30 people and wounded 80, in an attack claimed by the Taliban.Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f343434%2f77abd93a-891a-422d-8a75-792813cb607d

Polar bears will disappear from the Arctic if the U.S. and other nations don't drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions soon, U.S. wildlife officials warned this week.

The bears' sea-ice habitat is steadily shrinking due to human-driven global warming. That makes curbing emissions the "single most important action" to protect the species, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said in a new report.

SEE ALSO: Portland's polar bear plays in the first snow of the season

"Make no mistake; without decisive action to address Arctic warming, the long-term fate of this species is uncertain," Greg Siekaniec, the FWS's Alaska regional director, said Monday in a news release.

The federal report is the latest piece of bad news for polar bears. A separate study last week found that toxic pollutants moving into the Arctic from outside the region are accumulating in mother bears' breast milk and getting passed on to their cubs.

Two months, too cute.

Image: Tierpark Berlin/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

The report also arrives at a particularly uncertain time for U.S. climate and energy policy.

President-elect Donald Trump and many of his cabinet nominees reject the mainstream scientific consensus that humans are driving climate change. For example, Trump's pick for the Environmental Protection Agency — the department responsible for regulating carbon emissions — has vowed to gut many of the EPA's climate policies.

Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice is plummeting, hitting record lows.

Most recently, in October and November 2016, the area of the Arctic covered by sea ice was the lowest on record for those months since record-keeping began in 1979, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center.

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A polar bear at Russia's Royev Ruchei Zoo in Krasnoayrsk casts its vote for Donald Trump.

Image: Sputnik via AP

Polar bears were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2008 due to the continued loss of their sea-ice habitat. The species depends on the floating ice as platforms for hunting seals, their primary source of food.

The FWS is required under the act to produce a report — called a conservation management plan — that describes what actions are needed for the species to recover and avoid extinction.

Around 26,000 polar bears currently make up 19 subpopulations in parts of five countries: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Greenland. The FWS report mainly focuses on two subpopulations off the coast of Alaska, in the southern Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

While the global polar bear population hasn't yet shown a precipitous decline, certain subpopulations have started to drop, including in the southern Beaufort Sea. The number of bears there has dropped about 40 percent in the last decade, from 1,500 bears in 2006 to about 900 today, according to the report.

"If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current rates throughout the 21st century, polar bears will likely disappear from much of their present-day range," the agency warned.

A polar bear dries off after taking a swim in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska.

Image: Brian Battaile/U.S. Geological Survey via AP

Along with curbing emissions, the FWS's conservation plan also calls for reducing human-bear conflicts, protecting the dens of pregnant polar bears and minimizing the risk of contamination from oil spills.

For some environmental groups, however, the report doesn't go far enough.

The Center for Biological Diversity said the recovery plan was "weak" and should have required the U.S. to make the large-scale emissions reductions needed to save the species.

"This recovery plan is just too risky for the polar bear,” Shaye Wolf, the center's climate science director, said in a statement.

"Recovery plans work, but only if they truly address the threats to species. Sadly that simply isn't the case with this polar bear plan."

His campaign slogan translated as "For a more humane saus-iety, not a dog's life!" - and it seemed to work, as he gained 4.5% of the vote. He went on to compete in the 2002 presidential elections, but lost out to Jacques Chirac.Amid growing outrage on both sides of the aisle surrounding the United Nations, legislation to get the U.S. government out of the UN and evict the scandal-plagued global body from the United States has been re-introduced in the new Congress. If approved, H.R.193, better known as the “American Sovereignty Restoration Act,” would end U.S. participation in and funding of the widely ridiculed “dictators club” while protecting American sovereignty under the Constitution. Support for the effort is spreading like wildfire.

As in past years, the measure to defend the rights and self-government of the American people from escalating UN attacks will undoubtedly face intense opposition from entrenched globalists and the “swamp” establishment. However, analysts and lawmakers believe the bill stands its best ever chance of becoming law this session — especially under the anti-globalist, anti-establishment Trump administration and a Congress that remains incensed at a recent anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution targeting Jews in East Jerusalem and other areas.

On the campaign trail, Trump, whose campaign was equated with ISIS by a top UN bureaucrat, lambasted the UN, saying it was “not a friend of freedom” or the United States. He also vowed to “cancel” key UN agreements in office, including the illegitimate “climate” regime concocted in Paris in 2015. “When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don’t. They cause problems,” President-elect Trump declared following the controversial UN vote condemning Israeli settlements. “So, if it lives up to the potential, it’s a great thing, and if it doesn’t, it’s a waste of time and money.”

Globalists appear to be taking Trump’s rhetoric very seriously. “Global Governance” director Stewart Patrick with the establishment Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), for example, warned recently that the UN was set to get “hammered” in the years ahead by the hostile administration and GOP-controlled Congress. The CFR’s Patrick, who responded to the systematic rape of children by UN “peace” troops by demanding more power for the UN, called for the UN to try to dupe Trump into believing that he could use the dictators club to “get things done.”

H.R.193 was re-introduced in the 115th Congress on January 3, the first day of the new Congress, by Representative Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and a coalition of liberty-minded lawmakers. While the full text of the legislation is not yet available online, sources on Capitol Hill confirmed that the bill was the same as H.R. 1205 of the 114th Congress, also known as the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. The new bill is currently going under the header, “To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.”

If approved, the legislation would repeal the UN Participation Act of 1945, which authorized U.S. involvement, and shutter the U.S. government’s mission to the outfit. It would also “terminate all membership by the United States in the United Nations, and in any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations.” That specifically includes UNESCO, which President Ronald Reagan withdrew from, along with the World Health Organization, the UN Environment Program (UNEP), the UN’s dictator-controlled “Human Rights Council,” and more. It would end all U.S. involvement in all UN conventions and agreements, too.

The proposed law, introduced in numerous Congresses in recent decades, would also end all funding to the UN and all of its agencies — with the estimated savings to taxpayers reaching as high as $10 billion per year, and potentially even more. The legislation prohibits all U.S. military involvement in UN “peacekeeping” schemes, too, creating a ban on U.S. troops serving under UN command.

Finally, following generations of espionage and subversion aimed at the United States conducted by hostile foreign regimes under the guise of UN “diplomacy,” the bill would evict the UN and its spy- and dictator-infested headquarters from U.S. soil. It would also ban any use of American government facilities by the global outfit, while stripping UN bureaucrats and dignitaries of the diplomatic immunity that has become synonymous among critics with the total impunity and lawlessness that pervades the organization.

In a statement announcing the bill in the last Congress, chief sponsor Representative Rogers explained the reasons why he and many of his constituents in East Alabama wanted to end U.S. government participation in the UN immediately. “The U.N. continues to prove it’s an inefficient bureaucracy and a complete waste of American tax dollars,” the congressman said, echoing widespread concerns about the international outfit expressed across America and worldwide.

Beyond just being a waste, it is also a threat to U.S. interests, sovereignty, allies, and liberties, the Alabama Republican warned. “Why should the American taxpayer bankroll an international organization that works against America’s interests around the world?” he asked. “The time is now to restore and protect American sovereignty and get out of the United Nations.”

The congressman cited attacks on U.S. liberties as a key motivation for the legislation. “Although the United States makes up almost a quarter of the U.N.’s annual budget, the U.N. has attempted a number of actions that attack our rights as U.S. citizens,” he explained in the statement. “To name a few, these initiatives include actions like the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would subject our country to internationally based environmental mandates, costing American businesses more money, or the U.N.’s work to re-establish an international regulation regime on global warming which would heavily target our fossil fuels.”

Indeed, the UN has in recent years become incredibly bold in attacking the rights of Americans, and even the U.S. Constitution that enshrines those unalienable rights. From attacks on free speech and gun rights to assaults on parental rights and even America’s federalist system of limited government, the UN and its member regimes have become increasingly aggressive during the Obama years. It has also attacked U.S. independence like never before, with recently departed UN boss Ban Ki Moon claiming the UN was the “Parliament of Humanity” and that the radical UN Agenda 2030 was the new “Declaration of Interdependence.”

Representative Rogers took special aim at a deeply controversial UN treaty infringing on gun rights that has become a lightning rod for bipartisan opposition across America. “The U.N. has also offered a potential Arms Trade Treaty which would threaten our Second Amendment rights and impose regulations on our gun manufacturers, who are already facing regulations and pressure from the Obama Administration,” Rogers explained. That treaty, ATT for short, would purport to require gun registration and eventually strict controls. The ultimate aim is disarming civilians and leaving all weapons in the hands of the UN and “authorized state parties” such as the mass-murdering regimes enslaving North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Venezuela, and other prominent UN members.

The UN’s anti-Israel bias, which some critics on both sides of the aisle have even dubbed systemic anti-Semitism, also attracted criticism from Representative Rogers. “Lastly, the U.N. does not support Israel and voted to grant the Palestinian Authority non-member state permanent observer status,” he argued. “Anyone who is not a friend to our ally Israel is not a friend to the United States.” Following the recent vote on Israeli settlements, even leading globalists and neo-cons in Congress have announced plans to defund the global organization.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a cosponsor of the bill, has also outlined a wide array of reasons for the U.S. government to withdraw from the UN in what he termed an “Amexit,” or American exit, after the historic “Brexit” vote in Britain to exit the European Union. “Who would be crazy enough to stay in the United Nations and pay the most for their funding while it’s attended by Third World dictators who are writing rules and regulations that are supposed to bind our country?” asked the liberty-minded lawmaker in a radio interview promoting the legislation last year.

He also suggested that support in Congress for reining in the UN is strong and growing stronger. “When it did come to a vote we came just 70 votes short of cutting funding for the United Nations, and 70 votes is not a lot,” he continued. “You know, you flip 35 votes and it’s passed, out of 435. I think there will be more attention paid to it as time goes on, I think we’re going to pick up momentum. This was trending yesterday on Facebook, this issue.” Indeed, polls show Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the controversial global body, even in the face of an establishment media that generally conceals the truth about the UN.

Congressman Massie, one of the leading constitutional conservatives in Congress, called on listeners to help ensure more cosponsors for the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to move it forward. Other cosponsors on the latest bill include Congressmen Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Jason Smith (R-Mo.). More are expected. Last Congress, establishment operatives on the House Foreign Affairs Committee were able to keep the bill from moving. This time, with momentum growing fast, that may be more difficult.

UN estimates suggest that American taxpayers pay as much as $10 billion per year to support the UN system and all of its tentacles, including the scandal-plagued “peacekeeping” forces that have become infamous around the world for raping and sexually exploiting children. That means the United States, which is constantly being demonized and attacked for its freedoms by the dictators club, pays more than some 185 other nations — combined. In exchange, the United States is constantly attacked by the UN for its constitutional protections.

Since the American Sovereignty Restoration Act was introduced in the 114th Congress, more than a few political heavyweights have echoed calls for a full U.S. withdrawal. Among them is former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has become increasingly vocal since Brexit in calling for the United States to sever the UN “shackles” binding America. “I called for our next president, Donald Trump, to call for the unshackling of the political bands tying us to the UN,” Palin said in a recent radio interview. “It’s our money funding the lion’s share of the globalist circus. It’s We the People needing to rise up and make this a part of the revolution that we have just so benefited from.”

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), meanwhile, has also expressed a desire to dismantle the UN during a campaign stop while a leading contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. “I dislike paying for something that two-bit Third World countries with no freedom attack us and complain about the United States,” explained the popular pro-liberty senator, the son of liberty icon and former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) who led the charge for an Amexit in Congress during his long career as an undefeated constitutionalist lawmaker. “There’s a lot of reasons why I don’t like the UN, and I think I’d be happy to dissolve it.”

In addition to the effort to withdraw from the UN, U.S. lawmakers are also preparing an effort to defund the controversial global institution. “I believe Congress should end U.S. taxpayer funding for the United Nations unless and until the UN reverses this anti-Israel resolution, and I believe there will be considerable support in Congress, I hope in both parties, to do exactly that,” said Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), adding that the push would come “soon, very soon.” Even establishment lawmakers are joining the defunding bandwagon as demands for a U.S. withdrawal become mainstream.

Defunding the UN may be a good interim step on the road to full withdrawal, helping to neutralize the dictators club and the havoc it can wreak in the coming months. However, cutting funds for the UN is no substitute for a complete Amexit from the increasingly totalitarian global outfit. For liberty and self-government to survive over the long haul, the UN and its globalist agenda must be stopped. Thankfully, Americans now have the best opportunity in generations to “Get the U.S. out of the UN” and the UN out of the United States. It will take hard work and effort. But setting the globalist establishment back by decades while preserving American freedom and independence is well worth the price.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com.

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Bulgarian Communist Is Now “Frontrunner” to Lead UNDemocrats are calling on Senate Republicans to delay hearings for President-elect Donald Trump Donald TrumpGraham: 'I could not disagree more' with Trump support of Afghanistan troop withdrawal GOP believes Democrats handing them winning 2022 campaign Former GOP operative installed as NSA top lawyer resigns MORE's Cabinet picks, citing an incomplete ethics screening of several nominees.

“It is unprecedented and deeply worrisome to hold confirmation hearings on President-elect Donald Trump's nominees before basic ethics reviews are completed," Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

"These rushed hearings must be delayed until the ethics reviews are finished, and if Trump and the GOP-led Senate fail to do so, the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that they are concerned about what will be exposed,” Watson added.

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Earlier on Saturday, the director of the federal Office of Government Ethics, a watchdog agency that conducts ethics reviews of all Cabinet appointments, said that the plan to hold confirmation hearings before the ethics reviews are complete is "of great concern."

“As OGE’s director, the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me,” Walter Shaub, Jr., said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Chuck Schumer'Building Back Better' requires a new approach to US science and technology Pew poll: 50 percent approve of Democrats in Congress Former state Rep. Vernon Jones launches challenge to Kemp in Georgia MORE (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth WarrenWorld passes 3 million coronavirus deaths Poll: 56 percent say wealth tax is part of solution to inequality Democratic senators call on Biden to support waiving vaccine patents MORE (D-Mass.).

“This schedule has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews,” he added.

Schumer also blasted the timing of the scheduled hearings, accusing Republican lawmakers of trying to "jam through" the nominees.

“The Office of Government Ethics letter makes crystal-clear that the transition team’s collusion with Senate Republicans to jam through these Cabinet nominees before they’ve been thoroughly vetted is unprecedented,” Schumer said in a statement.

The GOP hopes to hold confirmation hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday as the party seeks to usher a smooth transition of power to the new administration.

The nominees currently scheduled for the next week's hearings include former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Trump's pick for secretary of State; Sen. Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsGarland rescinds Trump-era memo curtailing consent decrees Biden picks vocal Trump critics to lead immigration agencies The Hill's Morning Report - Biden assails 'epidemic' of gun violence amid SC, Texas shootings MORE (R-Ala.), Trump's pick for attorney general; and Betsy DeVos, Trump's pick for Education secretary.

Updated: 3:25 p.m.One of the magical things about economics is that you can create an economic asset out of nothing but persuasion. For example, if you persuade people to be more optimistic about the economy, people invest more money, buy more products, create more jobs, and generally manifest the better economy from their own expectations. This magic of creating wealth from nothing but persuasion is one of the reasons President-elect Trump will be different from other presidents. He knows how to do this particular brand of economic magic. He has been doing it for years with his own company. The more common names for this phenomenon are branding and licensing. Companies license the Trump name for their buildings and other products because they recognize the name as a psychological asset that Trump created by persuasion.

Remember the loan that Trump got from his dad for his first major project? Trump persuaded his dad to give him a loan, then he persuaded people to work for him, and then he persuaded people to move into the building. You can see in that story that persuasion was used as a tool to create a physical economic asset in the form of a building. But a building is not a brand. Trump had to add more psychology to turn it into a brand that others would license. it’s the branding and licensing part that involves creating an invisible economic asset from persuasion alone.

Now President-elect Trump is doing the same thing for America. That’s what his negotiations with Carrier and Ford and Boeing are all about. It is the start of rebranding America as a new and better version of itself, and one in which Americans take care of their own before taking care of the rest of the world. And apparently that brand and the optimism that comes with it is working. The stock market is up since the election, creating billions in new wealth from nothing but persuasion.

I find it easy to imagine a President Trump turbo-charging America’s economy with a ripple effect that benefits the rest of the world in lots of different ways. I don’t know how big this economic effect can get, but “billions” probably doesn’t cover it. I think we’re looking at a trillion-dollar wealth creation from persuasion alone.

Thank you to Ford for scrapping a new plant in Mexico and creating 700 new jobs in the U.S. This is just the beginning – much more to follow — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017

/

—

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The recommendations came in a memo that Carter, like the other Cabinet secretaries, prepared to highlight what their departments achieved during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama. The documents were released Thursday, along with a letter from Obama, about two weeks before Trump takes over the White House.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks at a n FILE - U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks at a news conference during a NATO Defence Ministers meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 11, 2016. FILE - U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks at a news conference during a NATO Defence Ministers meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 11, 2016.

Carter highlighted U.S. responses to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, including boosting joint military exercises and prepositioning equipment in the region.

"The United States must remain engaged with NATO — an alliance of principled and like-minded members backed by strength — to ensure continued progress and to deter and defend against Russian aggression in Europe," he said.

Holding Russia accountable

Russia launched its military operation in Syria in late 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad, a move that Carter said has only made the conflict there "more dangerous and violent, and potentially more prolonged."

Syrian forces have scored major victories against rebel groups since Russia began backing them, including last month retaking full control of the city of Aleppo.

A rescuer looks towards the sky following an airst FILE - A rescuer looks towards the sky following an airstrike in the rebel-held Ansari district in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, Sept. 23, 2016. FILE - A rescuer looks towards the sky following an airstrike in the rebel-held Ansari district in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, Sept. 23, 2016.





Russia entered the conflict saying it was there to go after terrorists, but many of their airstrikes have struck areas controlled by moderate opposition fighters.

Carter also focused on Iran, saying its backing of Assad, the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen are examples of the "malign influence" Iran has in the Middle East.

Defending Iran agreement



But he also pointed to the agreement that Iran reached with a group of six world powers to curb the country's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. U.S. ally Israel has denounced the deal, and Trump has expressed his opposition, including calling it "the worst deal ever negotiated."

"The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is complying with its international commitments, and it is in our best interest to maintain the agreement to check Iran's nuclear ambition," Carter wrote.

He said a priority for Trump should be the continued partnership with Israel, which has a commitment to receive $38 billion in security assistance over the course of 10 years. The Pentagon chief highlighted other security deals in the region, including partnerships with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the sale of more than $100 billion in arms to Gulf partners.

Troops drawdown

The major change in the Defense Department under Obama was the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which began under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Combat operations in Iraq ended in 2011 and in Afghanistan in 2014 as security control went into the hands of local forces built up with the help of the U.S.

U.S. military forces stand guard during a visit by FILE - U.S. military forces stand guard during a visit by Kabul's officials in the governor's compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Aug. 4, 2016. FILE - U.S. military forces stand guard during a visit by Kabul's officials in the governor's compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Aug. 4, 2016.

In his own letter issued Thursday, Obama touted the lack of any foreign terrorist attack carried out in the U.S. during his term as well as the ongoing efforts to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

"We've drawn down from nearly 180,000 troops in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000," Obama wrote. "With a coalition of more than 70 nations and a relentless campaign of more than 16,000 airstrikes so far, we are breaking the back of ISIL and taking away its safe havens, and we've accomplished this at a cost of $10 billion over two years -- the same amount that we spent in one month at the height of the Iraq War."

Carter cited the 2011 U.S. operation that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and last year's killing of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansur.

Airstrikes



Under Obama, the military, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, drastically ramped up the use of drones to carry out attacks against terrorists. Carter said the military's unmanned aircraft pilots now outnumber its pilots in manned aircraft.

A US airman guides a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper dron FILE - A US airman guides a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone as it taxis to the runway at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, March 9, 2016. FILE - A US airman guides a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone as it taxis to the runway at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, March 9, 2016.

But those increased airstrikes came with concerns about who was being hit and how the strikes were being approved.

Carter's memo talks about efforts to promote transparency in U.S. military actions, including the release of reports about civilian casualties and discussing the legal and policy bases for certain actions.

The White House has released reports about the number of civilians killed in its airstrikes, but those were met by criticism from outside groups whose estimates were far higher than the official totals. The Obama administration also released an 18-page document last year about the decisions for targeting of terrorists in drone strikes and safeguards for preventing civilian casualties.

Cultural changes at Pentagon



Carter's document touched on cultural changes within the military during the past eight years. He said the Pentagon has shown a "renewed resolve" to prevent soldier suicides, and prioritized eradicating sexual harassment. He pointed to Obama's decision to end the military's policy against gay service members serving openly and to end the ban on transgender service members. Obama also opened all military positions to women.

The outgoing Pentagon chief directed some criticism at Congress, saying his department became smaller and more capable while dealing with hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions stemming from a 2011 budget battle. Carter said the military faced "significant impediments presented by Congress" that included efforts to micromanage the Defense Department.I did some testing. The key factor seems to be time and speed inside the cone during the count down.That means there are two fairly easy approaches to do it.The first one is simply parking inside the cone edge opposite to your destination once and staying there. Engage towards destination when charged but stay put, fully throttle up once the FSD is charged.This approach was generally a little slower because parking at minimum speed inside the edge takes forever to super charge. However it also did not cause any more damage than usual - so I guess both the charge and damage are tied to the same time/speed/depth criteria(?).The second one is getting the charge first as usual (however you prefer to do it - but getting out again) and engaging towards destination when charged, but parking at minimum speed just outside of the edge opposite to your destination. Once fully charged, full throttle through the cone towards the destination. This approach seems faster and easier. Despite keeping aligned at minimum speed inside the cone not being too hard (since the turbulence seems to be tied to speed) it's a lot better not worrying about that at all. It works because the jump engage is triggered by your throttle setting rather than your actual super cruise speed, so you are tumbling through the full cone width at minimum speed while the FSD already counts down. No way to go wrongWell tiny cones may still be difficult/impossible depending on the direction of your destination.We are now. This is the legacywebsite, which will remain available during a transition period.For information on Audacy, please visit our new site at AudacyInc.com

Entercom Acquires Podcorn Platform matches brands with the most relevant podcast creators to scale native branded content and drive higher ROI for advertisers. Read more David Field Joins Cheddar Entercom Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer discusses interest in audio from consumers and advertisers, and the rise of social audio platforms. Read more Entercom Launches “BetQL Audio Network” Network to Serve as Home of Company’s Sports-gambling Content, Will Launch Companion Broadcast Distribution Channels in Denver and Los Angeles. Learn more Power, People and Politics Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer bring listeners inside Washington for an unfiltered, non-partisan look at every major issue of the day. Learn more RADIO.COM The Long Shot A new Cadence13 and ThreeFourTwo Productions podcast with Miami Heat Forward Duncan Robinson. Learn more Entercom Teams up with the Ad Council on Coping-19 Mental Health Campaign Providing bilingual audio assets with resources to help Americans address mental health challenges. Learn more INSIGHTS Industry Trends In Streaming Audio & Podcast Performance Learn more about setting goals, measuring success with data and benchmarking KPIs across multiple industries. Download eBook OUR PLATFORM 24/7 sports conversation from coast to coast As the nation’s #1 local sports platform, we give fans access to teams they can’t get anywhere else. Visit our stations

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When what is now the European Union first took root in the 1950s, it included just six nations, and in three of them many people spoke French. It could sidestep national jealousies without trouble by designating most of the member nations’ main languages as official languages.

But that set a precedent, and as the union has grown much larger, so has the official language roster — not to mention the bill for translation and interpretation, which now runs to about 1 billion euros, or more than $1 billion, a year.

Defenders of the policy say it preserves diversity and promotes language learning. They contend that it is not to blame for the bloc’s repeated failure to speak as one over issues like migration, the economy and Russia.

Still, the polyglottery can be a bit of a strain, especially when it comes to tongues like Irish, which only a few Irish citizens use frequently outside the education system. Though Irish has been an official language of the union for a decade, member nations keep postponing the deadline for providing full Irish translation and interpretation services.Newspapers have reported on two people shopping in their pyjamas in a supermarket. Is it acceptable to go out in your pyjamas? Should we care about what people are wearing when they are shopping or eating out? Peter White talks to the BBC's former royal correspondent Jenny Bond about sartorial guidelines.

First broadcast on You & Yours, 6 January 2017.A month or two ago I was driving in my car listening to Gary Vaynerchuk speaking at a conference on my way home. He said something that I immediately connected with.

I stopped the program and replayed it on my phone so that I could record what he said.

“We have a massive responsibility to start making positivity louder. One of the trends that I’m massively fascinated by is that the minority of angry is much louder than the silent majority of Happy.”

-Gary Vaynerchuk

To this day, reading this give’s me chills because its something I have been so passionate about for so long.

So many of the happy people don’t spread positivity, we stay in our houses, keep to ourselves and leave the talking and noise making to the unsatisfied, angry, and grumpy folks.

How to change the world

“Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth

If you want to have an effect on the world, clean your front porch. Take care of the people around you. In the grocery store, at the park, your neighbors, your friends, and even your enemies.

The way to change the world is to spread positivity where you live. Help others see how fulfilling it is. How good it is. And show that little things can make a difference. We just need to take care of those in our own sphere of influence and if everyone does that, this world becomes a much better place.

New Glasses

At this point in my life I have moved about 17–18 times. I have lived in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Ohio, and Utah.

Let me tell you the coolest part of it all. I have discovered for myself that there are incredible, selfless, giving, caring, kind, and trust worthy people everywhere I have lived.

I sincerely believe with all my heart that if live in a place that is full of terrible people and live in a life full of terrible things that its because you are looking for it. I am going to highly recommend that you get a new pair of glasses. You need to see the world differently.

There is a psychological term called priming

It says that when we tell our brain to start looking for something it does. It finds it. If we are looking for the bad, we will find it. If we are looking for the good, we will find it.

When I move somewhere, before I meet a single person I already believe I will meet wonderful and kind people and you know what? I do. Every single time.

“Life is an illusion created by our perception and it can be changed the moment you choose to change it. Our entire experience on this planet is determined by how we choose to perceive our reality” Jen Sincero

The reality I choose to see is that we live in a great place. I am surrounded my incredible people, and that it is my duty and obligation to smile more, say hi more, thank people more, help people more, and look for more opportunities to spread good feelings every day.

I believe each and every day that we are surrounded by good and that more good is happening in the world then the bad. It is our duty to look for that, believe it, and spread it. Please do not let be one of the silent majority that allows the loud minority to write the narrative of the world we live in.

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Page not displaying correctly? You need to enable JavaScript to run this page!The Blues' hopes of setting a new Premier League record for most consecutive wins in a single season were ended as they slipped to a 2-0 defeat at White Hart Lane

Gary Cahill says Chelsea are “not robots” but insists seeing their remarkable Premier League winning run come to an end at Tottenham still hurts.

The Blues headed into the crunch clash at White Hart Lane looking to set a new top-flight record of 14 consecutive wins in the same season.

However, Dele Alli scored two headers either side of the interval as Spurs halted Chelsea's winning run at 13 games to move seven points behind the league leaders.

'Alli's going to Real Madrid' - Spurs fans worried after Chelsea display

And although Cahill accepts Chelsea are only human, he was confident his side could have “gone to the next level” by achieving the incredible feat against their title rivals.

"We're not robots but at the same time we're disappointed. I thought we could have gone to that next level," he said.

"I felt like we weren't quite as sharp, we weren't quite as quick as we have been – a few misplaced passed, a few heavy touches.

'I'm staying' - Chelsea target James confirms he will remain at Real Madrid

"We were a little bit short of the levels that we've set this season. You can't be short at places like this. Credit to them, they did well and got the result.”

But Cahill is adamant Chelsea will bounce back from their first league defeat since September.

He added: "We're disappointed with that but it's after a run that's been fantastic. It's one game. It won't affect us mentally."TAMPA BAY - The Tampa Bay Lightning announced today that the No. 26 jersey retirement ceremony for Martin St. Louis will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, January 13, before the team faces off against the Columbus Blue Jackets, presented by Chase. Doors to AMALIE Arena will open to ticket holders at 5:30 p.m. and the team is recommending all fans plan on being in their seats by 6:15 p.m. Doors for those with premium seating and the arena's Firestick Grill will open at 5 p.m. The game is expected to face-off at 8:10 p.m. After the conclusion of the ceremony, the regular 15-minute warm-up skate and game preparation will occur.

John Tortorella, the current head coach of the Blue Jackets and coach of the Lightning's 2004 Stanley Cup Championship team, is one of several expected speakers for the ceremony. Tortorella coached St. Louis for seven seasons in Tampa Bay, including the 2003-04 season, when St. Louis won several of the NHL's top individual awards while leading the Lightning to the Stanley Cup.

St. Louis will be the first player in the history of the Lightning organization to have his jersey retired. He was signed by the Lightning as a free agent on July 31, 2000 and played 13 seasons with the club. He currently ranks first in team history for points (953), assists (588), shorthanded goals (28), game-winning goals (64), hat tricks (8 - tied with Steven Stamkos) and power-play points (300). He ranks second for goals scored with 365, only behind Vincent Lecavalier's 383 goals.

Known for his durability, St. Louis played every possible NHL game in eight of his seasons with the Lightning, setting a team record for consecutive games played with 499 from 2005-06 to 2011-12. During that span he played in every regular season and playoff game for more than five consecutive seasons.

His greatest single year with the Lightning came in 2003-04 when he helped lead the Lightning to the franchise's only Stanley Cup. St. Louis won several individual honors that season, including the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL's point leader with 94. He was awarded Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL's Most Valuable Player and the Lester B. Pearson Award as the National Hockey League Players Association's most outstanding player. He was also named a first team NHL All-Star.

Additionally, St. Louis played in six (2003, '04, '07, '08, '09, '11) NHL All-Star Games, was a four-time All-NHL second team selection (2006-07, '09-10, '10-11, '12-13) and he won the Art Ross Trophy for the second time in 2012-13, becoming, at age 37, the oldest player in league history to be the NHL's top single-season scorer. St. Louis also won the NHL's Lady Byng Memorial Trophy three times (2009-10, '10-11, '12-13) for his "sportsmanship and gentlemanly play combined with a high standard of playing ability".11/01/2017 -

VALENCIA, (EFE). Los líderes de PSPV-PSOE, Compromís y Podemos han renovado hoy el conocido como Pacto del Botánico para la estabilidad del Gobierno de la Generalitat, con 201 nuevas medidas que ponen el acento en la economía para avanzar en el cambio de modelo productivo de la Comunitat Valenciana. [FOTOGALERÍA]



El president de la Generalitat y secretario general del PSPV-PSOE, Ximo Puig, la vicepresidenta del Consell y coportavoz de Compromís, Mónica Oltra, y el secretario general de Podemos en la Comunitat y portavoz parlamentario, Antonio Montiel, han sellado hoy esta ampliación del pacto en el Jardín Botánico de Valencia.



Acompañados por multitud de miembros del Consell y diputados de las tres formaciones, Puig, Oltra y Montiel han firmado la renovación del pacto que permitió la conformación del Gobierno tras las elecciones autonómicas de 2015, más de dos meses después de que representantes estos partidos cerraran el acuerdo.



Los tres dirigentes se han mostrado satisfechos con la ampliación del acuerdo que mantiene al gobierno del PSPV-PSOE y Compromís con el apoyo parlamentario de Podemos, y que supone, a su juicio, un nuevo pacto con la ciudadanía para seguir avanzando en el cambio iniciado hace 20 meses en la Comunitat Valenciana.



Ximo Puig ha destacado que una vez desarrollados los cinco ejes del acuerdo inicial, se comprometen de nuevo con la ciudadanía con la actualización de este pacto que ha contribuido a lograr avances en las políticas sociales, pero también en las económicas.



Los indicadores económicos demuestran, según Puig, que la izquierda "gestiona mejor" que la derecha, pero ha asegurado que "no es suficiente", y ha puesto como próximos retos la lucha contra el desempleo y la exclusión.



Ha explicado que les hubiera gustado avanzar a un mayor ritmo, pero cuando llegaron al Consell se encontraron con que algunas cuestiones estaban "mucho peor" de lo que pensaban, por lo que la prioridad en esos momentos era "dar cobertura a las personas con más dificultades" y reparar derechos básicos.



Una vez logrado eso, ha precisado, se quiere incidir ahora en la reforma y transformación del modelo productivo, con medidas como la puesta en marcha de Agencia de la Innovación o el avance del diálogo social.



Mónica Oltra ha asegurado que cuando llegaron al Consell la prioridad era "reparar la catástrofe social" que encontraron, algo en lo que se seguirá trabajando, pero además, ahora se incidirá en "la nueva economía" que generan las políticas sociales y en el cambio del modelo productivo.



Para Oltra, la firma de esta ampliación demuestra que el Pacto del Botánico está "vivo", es "más actual que nunca" y está "a prueba de bombas", además de evidenciar que el cambio político ha proporcionado "estabilidad, bienestar y progreso y transparencia" y ha puesto a las personas en el centro de la política.



Antonio Montiel, por su parte, se ha mostrado satisfecho por el acuerdo, en el que, como en todos, ha habido que "ceder y transigir", y considera que en él se recogen una serie de proyectos que, a su juicio, "darán viabilidad a políticas concretas", y que podrán ser evaluables.



Para el líder regional de Podemos, 2017 debe servir para diseñar la Comunitat Valenciana del futuro, y ha advertido de que su formación no renuncia a seguir ejerciendo su papel parlamentario y cuando tenga que ser crítico con el Gobierno autonómico, "seguirá siéndolo".



El documento recoge, entre otras medidas, la elaboración de nuevas leyes como la de renta garantizada de ciudadanía o la de memoria democrática, la actualización del plan integral de residuos para mejorar su gestión y tratamiento, y el impulso de un pacto autonómico sobre horarios comerciales.



Asimismo, incluye un anexo de reclamaciones al Gobierno central, en el que, entre otras, figuran la aprobación de un nuevo sistema de financiación autonómica, la financiación del Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofía, la reconducción de las obras del Corredor ferroviario Mediterráneo o la recuperación de servicios privatizados y concesiones administrativas.



La vicepresidenta del Consell ha invitado a todos los partidos y agentes económicos y sociales a sumarse a estas reivindicaciones al Ejecutivo, especialmente a aquellas formaciones que no sostienen al Consell y forman parte de la oposición, en referencia al PP y Ciudadanos.“Back in the day, being a courier was a licence to print money and have fun."

This is what dispatcher Mike Webb* told me, while tracking pickups, deliveries, and riders across a computer screen.

Webb runs a small courier company tucked inside a north London business estate. He worked as a dispatch rider in London throughout the 80s and 90s.





Loadsa money!

“We used to drink stupid quantities of alcohol, ride our motorbikes, and make loads of money. And life was cheap; everything was cheap then; insurance was cheap. And it was just a really good laugh.”

Motorcycle couriers used to be part of a distinct subculture. They were an eclectic mix of bike enthusiasts, including artists, musicians and “real public schoolboys,” who loved to ride, and, one advert alleged, made more money than a “city gent”.

It is not like that anymore.

“That central culture has kind of dissolved or became spread thin," said Peter Bulman, from behind another desk in the busy office.





What has changed, the two men agree, "is that it hasn’t changed".

The money, that is.

While the cost of living has soared since Webb started riding in 1979, the average courier wage has stayed nominally still. Dispatch riders now literally do not take home many more pounds than dispatch riders did back then, he said. Of course, this means the real wage, when you adjust it for inflation, has plummeted.





Webb estimated that the average motorcycle courier makes about £500 each week. But dispatch riders are self-employed contractors, which means they have to pay all their own expenses. Even after they have invested in a bike, weatherproof clothing, and other kit, they still have to pay out for petrol, insurance, repairs to their vehicle, and the occasional speeding ticket or parking fine. Webb said he reckons when you take all this into account, take home is about £350 a week.

In the 80s, it was more like £500, minus £40 or £50 for expenses, and in real terms that was a hell of a lot more money back then.

Wages have stagnated, Webb said, because of big companies becoming involved with an exploitative “supermarket mentality”.

His firm is one of the very few small courier companies left in London. Most others have been bought up by industry giants like CitySprint and eCourier, Webb said.

“Management still make some money out of [the industry], but the riders are the ones who suffer,” Webb said.



PHOTO BY DAVE GURMAN PHOTO BY DAVE GURMAN

The lived experience of couriers seems to back him up.

“I was offered a job at CitySprint working from Birmingham,” said Tom Freed, a dispatch rider I spoke to online. “It was £400 guaranteed a week, but that was with your own bike, insurance, petrol, and he reckoned you'd need to do over 1000 miles a week to get more than £400. So take-home would be abysmal.”





He added, “It's very risky. It will have you soaking wet and freezing for half of the year, and probably kill your interest in bikes”.

Webb said his drivers do take home about London living wage - he pays a retainer to make sure of this. But he agrees it is still a hard way to make a living.

“One of the things I do when we get a new rider, is I tell them all the worst things. I paint a really, really bad picture, I tell them how everyone is against you, you get rained on all day, you get sh*tty receptionists shouting at you… I go on and on and on and then I say ‘if you’re still interested I’ll tell you the good bits’."

“A lot of people go ‘oh thanks’ and run away.”

Big companies tend to do the opposite, he said. They advertise heavily to lure in people who have never been dispatch riders before.

When newbies phone up, they are promised big earnings. It is very common, Webb said, to see people borrow money “to buy a motorbike, get insurance, and get all the gear, only to realise after a week they do not have the right aptitude for the job, so they leave, terribly in debt.”



PHOTO BY DAVE GURMAN PHOTO BY DAVE GURMAN

Iain Rickman used to be a courier with one of the big firms based in London. “You'll spend weeks, months, years getting yourself into debt,” he said. “I spent two years trying to make a living out of it and failed.”





He added the job put a strain on his relationship because he was always on call and frequently exhausted and “grouchy”.

“In all honesty, you will probably earn more delivering for Domino's Pizza in a rich area, ” he said, adding that pizza companies even tend to pay riders a fuel allowance.

On the bright side!

A single good thing about couriering nowadays, Webb said, is the bikes are much more reliable. But despite this, he said he had seen couriers’ enthusiasm for their vehicles wane.

“There’s less of that real enthusiasm for being on two wheels,” he said.

“You used to get in the past more biker people, now most couriers at the end of the day get home and don’t touch their bikes. It’s just a tool. Whereas in the old days, most bikers would play with their bikes at weekends because they were just really into bikes.”

There are still a lot of old bikes out there, he added, in addition to new scooters. But that could be about to change too, with the introduction of a daily emissions charge to reduce pollution in central London next year.





Couriers have always been self-employed, so in a way they are not newcomers to the so-called “gig economy” (if you are not familiar with the term, it is exactly what it sounds like, a model in which workers are contracted job by job — gig by gig — rather than hired as employees with robust workers’ rights).

But in the past dispatch riders were adequately financially compensated for not being pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) staff. Job security and a safety net matter a lot more when you are scraping by hand to mouth, than when you are rolling in it.

“I looked into if I can afford to have PAYE riders, and I can’t," Webb said, adding that it is something he would like to pioneer. But unlike the big firms, he simply does not have the capacity.

Herding cats





Recently, cycle couriers at Citysprint unionised, went on strike, protested and won concessions. On average, they now make the living wage.

But it is difficult to get couriers — perhaps motorcycle couriers especially — to organise. Webb and Bulman said: it is not in their nature.

“The thing about couriers is they’re all very independent," Wedd said. "They’re all loners. They’re all individuals. If you think, they’re spending days riding around on a bike on their own. To actually get them all together is like herding cats, basically.”

But it could happen, Webb said. He is sure there will always be demand for people to take things quickly from A to B.

“When the drivers stop working for peanuts, the customers will have to pay more,” he said. “If you think about it, there will always always be demand for couriers.”

*Some names and identifying details have been changed

Have you worked as a motorcycle courier? Tell us your story at news@wemoto.com

Comments

22/12/16 - My first company was riva

22/12/16 - I witnessed the death of one of the last of the 'rock n roll' jobs. It was the best job in the world ... destroyed by technology and greed

22/12/16 - I used to live in London for many years.I never worked as a courier.But I have this to say:most of them are very good riders,very good guys.Also I am convinced that they are a different kind of bikers.I am a biker but they are different, not better or worst.Respect.

22/12/16 - Been in the courier game for 35 years, starting with Pony Express back in 1981

22/12/16 - Worked at Pegasus Despatch in South London when everyone either had a Peugeot speedfighter or CB500, I worked my EXUP 1000 and Honda Fireblade. Great times

22/12/16 - ￼Love This

22/12/16 - I worked an Exup too. Loads of fun

22/12/16 - Put over 140,000 miles on it.

22/12/16 - Reserve tank switch was a C. ..though. You KNOW what I'm on about....lol

22/12/16 - I used to work as a courier nationwide ten years .worked out of peterborough

22/12/16 - I did 20 years at it .....

22/12/16 - Nice

22/12/16 - So no difference between the UK and Ireland regarding Couriers pay and conditions

22/12/16 - 20*yrs in London, Pegasus/goughwallace/securitydespatch/citysprint.

22/12/16 - Worked for 13 years as a courier always London based but travelled all over. Briefly featured in MCN 1988 and a reader recognised me pushing my GSX 750 a week later as I ran out of petrol near Holyhead late at night and rescued me.

22/12/16 - Worked from 1976 to 1985 for Arrow One, Roadrunners and Inter City Couriers, the last on PAYE so he won't be pioneering anything.



Got to Leeds at 7pm in January one time. By the time I got back to London I couldn't move my legs so had to slip the clutch around the roundabout at the bottom of the M1. I also had to slow down for red traffic lights on the North Circular until I was able to move my legs. I spent the next day in bed.

22/12/16 - Did 4 years London home counties NTV600.

22/12/16 - 1984-1987. Bristol.



Interlink Express. Pony Express.



Over 200,000 miles.



Three Kawasaki's. Z650B1. Z750L3. Z750GPA1.



Great times, with some great people. Nicky at Royds SW, springs to mind.



Liz Riches from Interlinks head office was another.



Never grossed more than £500 in a week.

22/12/16 - It always was (and still is) the best and worst job in the world

24/12/16 - Hell yeah !

22/12/16 - Valuable Post !

22/12/16 - Great experience, a window into the working world of every business in london. . Great times, cold times, wet times. .



Got back what you put into it. . But the good times are laaaaaang gaaaaaaan. . Gave up in 2000. . Was averaging £500 + at reuter brooks. . Gotta take petrol and tyres outta that so. . Not brilliant £. . Could be very stressfull. .



Never doin it again

22/12/16 - Agreed i quit around the same time hiring a cb 350 rent deducted for radio was a means to an end enjoyed the experience but glad i got out

22/12/16 - Nice

23/12/16 - I was at Reuter Brooks too. I started there when they were still Gough Wallace averaging around £700 p/w. I quit left in 99 when I became a full time Virgin Limobike rider.

22/12/16 - I managed just over a decade (13yrs) dispatching in the 80's/90's, Hornets, Pony Express, Fastway Flyers.... fantastic times, great memories but those glory days are long gone

22/12/16 - +1

22/12/16 - 94-99 in london,bonds,premier,west one,courier express and last but not least,holborn globetrotters!

22/12/16 - Worked out of Croydon for Pony Express on a variety of bikes, CX500, 350lc in the summer, cb500, gt500 made an absolute fortune, wheelies everywhere not 1 prang in 3 years. It was great until they started fucking with the rates and if you weren't bunging the controller a wedge each week you'd get shit runs. Do my biking on track now, kindly sponsored by the best spares supplier on the south coast, yup Wemoto

22/12/16 - Did a year or so back in '79 for a small Company based in Duck Lane (Soho) on a Superdream...then years later in around '90 I did 5 years straight finally finishing up with Ricochet (now called just Rico) on an XJ900, until I knocked the Controller out, lol. Was great money back then...regularly hit the 500 quid a week mark.



Wouldn't go back though.... no money in it now, plus it's a young Mans game anyway

22/12/16 - Started at city bikes in 95 on rs260's and cx500's could earn good money then

22/12/16 - That should be rs250's my fat fingers

22/12/16 - Started at mayday couriers in 83 " then city bikes in 86 until 2007.. bl**dy hard and demanding job. Looking back " it was a great experience.

23/12/16 - I did a few wks AtoZ in 86, drove trucks for a dew yrs to Malta. Pony Express and West1,1990 to 99. Ended with a big off on a wet December night in Victoria.



Bought and paid for my house. After being in the Army, it was my 2nd favourite job. Meet Prime ministers, World leaders, celebrities and some d*ck heads on security ￼😀.



Was in an article in a Motoring Magazine. Mentioned by the late Terry Wogan, as I almost wipped him out. Now living in fear of TOGs......my Mother still mentions her Tog embarrassment. As she realised Terry was talking about me on his show. He stepped off the pavement as I "made good progress". Around the corner, past the station. It was so close I heard him breath in, saying "good God"!!!!!



Great days, nearest iv come to being cool.

24/12/16 - Never mind dickheads I soon discovered that by putting down the delivery note on mind side of the receptionist desk I would often get a great view of their cleavage when they stood and lent over to sign. ￼👀

23/12/16 - I worked for Mercury Despatch for twenty years from ’74… the first eight on bikes - Suzuki GT250, GS425, GSX400 - then vans for the rest.



In those days we were ‘employed’ on PAYE, with a company bike which we could use at evenings and weekends. The company looked after us pretty well because there was always the temptation of ‘big earnings’ as an owner rider elsewhere.



Some of the quick guys - and gals - could make good earnings self employed as long as they kept their heads (and their luck). Good riders were quick but not risk takers (though to some observers, it might have looked different). They relied on their knowledge and experience, and looked after each other. Many of the good riders returned to the company. They soon learned the advantages of a reasonable ‘basic and bonus’ with paid holidays, and a bike supplied - replacements if needed - all running costs covered, and a good workshop and crew to service or rescue as required.



I only passed a four wheel test and transferred to the vans so I could transport a race bike to meetings in the company Sherpa (later Transit). The company felt that their bright orange liveried van in the paddock was good advertising, so they allowed me a full tank of fuel on a Friday night, without having to wait till mid-day Monday to fill up again… effectively sponsoring my sport. (If I was racing ‘up north’ - Elvington, Esholt Park, etc. then I was even allowed to fill a big can with diesel too.)



There was definitely a sense of ‘family’ about the business… both within Mercury, and in the friendly rivalry between companies. We certainly had some laughs, with surprisingly few tears as serious injury or fatalities were rare amongst the experienced riders… A courier treated his bike as a tool, and wouldn’t hang on till the last moment in a ‘situation’, but would ‘get off’… unlike a guy clinging on to his ‘pride and joy’ till impact. A work bike could be replaced.

23/12/16 - The only good thing about all those years as a courier was that I got to get my knee down past all the famous London landmarks and most of the squares in W1!

23/12/16 - Did 15 years and lived to tell the tale. I had 3 minor accidents in all that time which was always cars pulling out in front of me and testament to my riding skills plus 6th sense of impending doom. There wasn`t any real money in it once you paid all your expenses. It Certainly wasn`t worth the risk to life and limb. On the plus side, i still know London like the back of my hand. No sat nav required!

23/12/16 - I crashed

23/12/16 - Hahahahahaha haha yeah you did!



But then again, didn't we all?

23/12/16 - Yes but it was into you

23/12/16 - Funny times!

23/12/16 - Now older but not wizer

23/12/16 - Why is this not still a thing.

23/12/16 - ano hahaha I'd love to do that for a job

23/12/16 - Aye but best we could do now a days it deliver pizza

23/12/16 - Gave it 24 years from 1985-2009. Where else do you get paid to do something you love? Money was great for the first 15-20 years - especially as I was fed rotten! Paid for my racing. Had to move to NZ to get out!

23/12/16 - I work at the same company for a while and I can confirm he was feed rotten

23/12/16 - West One 12 yrs MZ, RS,VT,CX,Boxer, KLT, XLH managed to stay upright now a Cabbie Chasbikes are still trading!!

24/12/16 - I remember when the postal strike was on loads of money

24/12/16 - Started at little old Mach 1 in 86 Cbrs125 then driving their transit for a while before taking up controlling there. Rented a bedsit on site off Jeremy Thompson the owner. Used to drink locally got an offer I couldn't refuse from Jambusters who had recently been taken in under the Gough Wallace umbrella. Work was mimimums which pissed the Gough boys off when getting handfuls from the likes of Clifford Chance and Price Waterhouse. Easy money if I didn't earn a £ a mile it was a bad day. Had an accident which involved my foot peg on my XL 500 going through the bottom of my foot. (Don't wear trainers)



Went to work in the office as coordinator / controller as it evolved into Reuter Brooks.



Left in 97 as I cracked under the pressure of office life.



Happy days.



Sciatica keeps me off motorbikes.



Stay upright road warriors



Merry Christmas and a Happy new year

24/12/16 - 15 years I did , best co was ambassador, worst was SG group although Express treated you like shit:

24/12/16 - Worked for Kipling...in late 70s started on a fs1e Yamaha...lol.lol.omg ended up on 750 Suzuki...wow..great manic days..meet lot great people ...learnt my way round London...days when you had knowledge and how too read nickelson map book...not a sat nav...lol..drinking coffee in carnaby st ....cr*p I'm old..lol..

24/12/16 - was a london despatch rider in the early 80s best days of my life to date!.rode for mercury inter city couriers west 1 and loads of less known companys

24/12/16 - I was a motorcycle ￼messenger on a Honda CG 125 with a huge metal box on the rack that was big enough for A2 sized paper to fit flat! Honda main stands wouldn't last 5 minutes until will discovered Honda CB 125 footrests would bolt straight on allowing use of a side stand. Doing 1st gear wheelies was fun because you just couldn't flip it because of that box!

24/12/16 - Tough work and i'm still at it. Tough work and i'm still at it. www.nunonabike.com

24/12/16 - Merry Christmas you're the best one. working there x

24/12/16 - 12 years, Abbis Brand Couriers, Deadline & Churchill Express where i met my sons mum, loved every minute of it

24/12/16 - I've still got my Pony Express jacket, green with white arms

25/12/16 - Iv got a top box in my shed

24/12/16 - Internet killed it, had quite a few mates who did it back in the day, all ended up buying expensive bikes from me for the weekends..ISDN meant internet connection of most documents so courier not needed..

24/12/16 - I did it for a few years back in the day and it was hard!

24/12/16 - Yeah for sure, especially in town, most of the money was made intercity, from what I was told, especially across channel.

24/12/16 - Leaving home at 7am not returning until at least 7pm. Cold and wet most of the time. Sweating profusely the rest. I did mostly City and West end.

24/12/16 - Bit like working on a building site in the city then..mind you they start a bit earlier..

25/12/16 - London and UK couriers past and present. Is a Facebook site. Join up if you havent already.

25/12/16 - I used to work as a courier between surfing trips round the world. Worked crazy hours and did huge milages on my R850 to pay off my debts. Still found time to go to Box Hill at the weekend and up to Archway to hang out with the guys. Competitive, hard, but good fun, still don't use a Sat Nav, still ride (but now only when its dry and I can get my knee down)

25/12/16 - Yeah! Premier, MPC, Addie lee and then out to the 'burbs - mogul and PJ's!!



GT750, maggots ,VT500 (lol) eventually GPZ900r - that's when the fun began.



So many good memories that will never be seen again



Loved it

27/12/16 - I agree about the money side and how wages haven’t changed partly, I think, because the big companies are ripping the couriers off of which I have an example. (Sorry I don’t have pound signs as this is a South African laptop which has $)



I first subcontracted in 88 for News International along with 27 others and were paid an hourly rate for 8.5 hours a day plus overtime if you wanted it. There was no need to rush around as you were paid by the hour not the job and, to be honest, it was pretty laid back with no jobs out of London. I used to work Saturdays (mainly because I had nothing else to do) which usually involved me going to matches (football, rugby, cricket, whatever) and sitting with the photographer and then taking his rolls of film back to Wapping in the afternoon/evening. For this and my normal week work I was paid the princely sum of over 500 quid out of which came maximum 30 quid on expenses. I had two bikes then a Yammie Tenere and a BMW R100RT. I loved this job, it was great fun and I worked with a great bunch of professionals. I left in 91 to go back to my travels in Africa.



I came back here in 2012 and went to work for Courier Connections (ecourier) and even with a couple of long jobs each week and working over 10 hours a day and Saturdays I only just managed 500 quid a week on some weeks but expenses had gone up by a mega amount since 88 so I was working longer hours for less money. The reason I left (not just because of the money) was some of the practices they used. One was, although they knew the day before, they would hang on to long jobs until mid afternoon and then expect you to race like mad to deliver it by a certain time (I picked up one at 3pm and it had to be at Hull Airport by 6pm so you know what speeds I had to travel at). But the clicker was (and here’s the exploitation) that when I was in the travel agents to pick up the passport they wanted to process the payment and one guy asked the other how much were the courier company (us) costs and he said 650 quid. I was getting paid 150 quid for this so I was pissed off with this and resigned. (In 88 I got a job to deliver in Middlesbrough and got paid 150 quid back then). The trouble is that they know that they can exploit it as they mainly employ foreigners who are more than happy to work for that kind of money and not the money they deserve. I’m sure there are some decent courier companies out there and I was sad to stop doing so but in the end things worked out much better for me so I should thank them for their exploitation.

29/12/16 - Started.. Carlton cars/couriers Crystal Palace Football stadium ( Charlie victor 15?) Suzki gs125.....ahhh late Friday pick up from what is now CAPITA Beckenham to Redditch ( Yes That one) on my 125 with a loose chain that kept slipping in 1st, 2nd and by the end 3rd.....M1 L plates off.......Oh how I laughed ...then S & G Couriers, old street then Globe couriers Foley St (Captain Kev) then independent for Planet 24 the big breakfast/The word.....then 1st couriers E.2 on a CX500....but many little bikes......and in those days you didn`t always have a licence, insurance, etc etc , lol just be polite and hopefully you don`t bump into that officer again.......lol

29/12/16 - A CX 500, a popular choice for many messengers.

04/01/16 - Worked as a courier from 1987 to 2009. Loved it. As I am a woman the receptionists didn't yell at me, they just delayed me by asking questions! Moved to Cornwall in 2010, not much call for bike couriers there unfortunately. Still ride my bike nearly every day though.

04/01/17 - Great feature, thanks



I couriered in London with Addison Lee and then with Interlink (much better) in 1978 and 79, and again in 1981 on my MZ250. The money was very good, but only if you worked long hours every day, didn't take much holiday, seldom crashed, kept costs right down (that MZ!), and lived somewhere cheap but central. It was crucial also to avoid the tax man. I kept every pay advice note and every receipt for petrol, oil, tyres, parts, clothing etc for 10 years in case he asked- but he never did.



Chris Scott's book



Yours, ex- Echo 20



By the way, I still have the MZ Great feature, thanksI couriered in London with Addison Lee and then with Interlink (much better) in 1978 and 79, and again in 1981 on my MZ250. The money was very good, but only if you worked long hours every day, didn't take much holiday, seldom crashed, kept costs right down (that MZ!), and lived somewhere cheap but central. It was crucial also to avoid the tax man. I kept every pay advice note and every receipt for petrol, oil, tyres, parts, clothing etc for 10 years in case he asked- but he never did.Chris Scott's book The Street Riding Years is an excellent read on the hey day of the couriers and the spirit of the age.Yours, ex- Echo 20By the way, I still have the MZ

04/01/17 - I started in 1985 with Media messengers EC2, great times. VT500 mainstay bike. Become their controller for a while but hated it. Formed my own firm in Colchester in 1989 and continued onto 2009 when we transformed into a motorcycle training school and moved to Wickford. Very happy memories throughout. Great full I made a living for my family from bikes. Unbelievable.

04/01/17 - I have been a courier for more over 25 years, it all started Croydon based with CCL as a sub contracter, all the other riders were company riders., I worked for Capital Parcels, Hornets, Fiveways express, Direct couriers and West One Rapid. That was just the Croydon based companies. When West One was taken I stayed with the new American owners now under the name City Sprint. After an issue with one of the riders I moved to stay with City sprint but from the London base. Ended up moving to Quicksilver which didn't work out and went PINK. Stayed with them till I ended up booted out from a Fleet manager who was a t*ss*r and was on a mission to get rid of all the riders and replace them with people will kiss his arse I ended up working for Worlds End Couriers which is where I am still. Back in the Capital Parcel days I was doing long distance work, had a Quack GT550 and boy did I do some miles and same days didn't get home till the wee small hours. Since the GT550 wore out I've been using Honda CD250U's then onto CB250's For many years I've done more local work, south east area mainly but at Worlds End my work is confined to within the M25 with the odd run outside. I can see myself doing this job till I'm pushing up the daisies.

06/06/17 - Did 7 years on the road for Mercury, short time at Delta and a while at West One. Loved the call "anyone want an early start?" It usually meant BACS, Southend wait and return. A days wages in the bank, before anyone else had earned anything !!!!! Then about another 7 years back at Mercury in the workshop. I can still remember how to take a VT 500 engine apart, throw all the parts into a box, and then rebuild it. Some great times, and some miserable times, I remember one year when it rained EVERY DAY for 6 months !!!!!

06/02/18 - Thanks for writing a very good and very realistic aspect of being a dispatch rider (D.R.).



I too was a D.R. back in the 80’s & 90’s and have particularly fond memories of doing the job for 15 years or so! Postal strikes were of course a favourite; earning £1,300 or more per week but this happened rarely so your take on what a courier actually takes home (after expenses) is spot on.



As I got older and ‘tired’ of the job I decided to become a primary teacher!



Long story short, after 15 years of teaching I decided to don my leathers once again working for a company here in Bournemouth. I only started last week so it’s early days but the owner and other riders are definitely from ‘the gold ol’ days’! I’m 53 years now and have always loved riding motorcycles - but only time will tell whether or not I can ‘last’ another 15 years!

13/08/19 - I was a courier in london and Birmingham and loved it.

26/09/19 - I just read the article about dispatch riding. I was 18 when I got my first full time dispatch job in W.1. I had been a rider for a photographic studio in Duck Lane where there was a Dispatch Co in the same alley. The Company was a Rogues gallery of every type of bike rider ( Same Day Delivary ) which was run from a base down in Tintagel , Cornwall had guys doin the knowledge , Firemen on side work, old hippies rolling their joints for the day ( Dave Bond "007" ) , an orthodox Jew ( Steve Steingal )., ( Grubert the Marine Biologist ) a couple of college boys from Streatham along with my mate Turkish Ed and myself from SW16 too



There were the girlfriends of the hippies , Jenny , Vanessa , Jane who all did some riding too , ( I found Jane working in Africa where she has lived from many years.)..The Girls were the ones who got some nice jobs if we were all out on the road....We had a guy who was the exact double for Bob Hoskins ( Stan) without being menacing ..He and his house mate Steve road the big Suzuki's and lived in Blackheath....



OH GOSH !! The memories are flooding back...Once in a while during the summer we would all take off for the New Forest or the Black mountains of Wales and set up camp...everyone would be there along with whatever kids they owned too....I remember a girlfriend who I took once and she was a nice girl from a nice family in Streatham,,,,She was scared stiff when she first set eyes on the mob but soon changed when she saw what a great family we all were.. I treasure those times.....I left Same Day in 81 and in 1985 I found myself in Los Angeles working the same job for 2 Londoners who had set up the company and were raking it in... I would make more in a day in LA than I would in a week in London .....and I was on good £ in London in 79/80... I think I was on a guarantee of £200 a week and that was low compared the the older riders.



I really wish that the collected time I spent at Same Day could be written down by a professional writer. There is a story there somewhere . Thatchers Britain help some people and in a roundabout way I was a victim of it too. I left the UK and made LA my home for 20 years and what a story that is.....from living in a Castle in the Hollywood hills , with all that LA bull shit life style to soak up and also the fact that one day I went to work and found out I was working for the Gambino crime syndicate out of NYC......what tales.. !!!Abu Dhabi // The appointment of the recently retired Pakistan army chief as commander of a Saudi-led military alliance of Muslim countries is a significant – if for now symbolic – shift by Islamabad away from its strategy of balancing relations with Riyadh and Tehran.

As tensions between the rival regional powers have increased amid proxy conflicts across the Middle East over the past few years, Pakistan has sought to remain neutral and protect itself from any spillover of the region’s turmoil.

Despite its close partnership with Saudi Arabia, Islamabad has also sought to maintain positive relations with Iran and even enhance them, with an eye to increasing trade and energy imports from its neighbour.

Pakistan, with the backing of parliament, even risked badly strained ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, when it declined to contribute forces to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen in April 2015.

In December 2015 the Saudi defence minister, deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, announced the formation of an alliance of Muslim-majority countries – which now numbers 40 – ostensibly aimed at fighting extremist groups like ISIL, but widely seen as a show of force against Tehran.

Pakistan is a member of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism and participated in related military exercises in the kingdom in last February, while officials maintained that concrete contributions would depend on further clarifications and details from Riyadh.

But Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, confirmed over the weekend that former chief of army staff retired general Raheel Sharif had been appointed the alliance’s military commander, a move that makes Pakistan – the only Muslim nuclear power – the face of the Saudi effort.

Mr Asif said last year that there were 1,180 Pakistani troops based in the kingdom to provide training and advice, after Riyadh in 2015 reportedly requested a larger deployment of Pakistani soldiers to the country, in part to bolster its own less experienced forces against ISIL. One western diplomat based in the Gulf said the number of Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia was much higher than the figure given by Mr Asif.

Mr Asif said in an interview to Pakistani media that his government had consented to Gen Sharif’s new appointment, and the fact that it comes so soon after his retirement suggests the decision was one taken by the state rather than a personal move by the general.

“This certainly suggests that Pakistan has moved away from its very successful positioning in terms of playing the middle on Saudi Arabia and Iran and signalling to the Saudis that they’re with them but without really doing much for them,” said Moeed Yusuf, an expert on Pakistan at the US Institute of Peace in Washington.

Pakistan is historically adept at negotiating over Saudi demands, and is also reliant on Saudi aid and other concessions, but what has changed is that Islamabad’s foreign policy is currently being driven primarily by a desire to counter India’s stated aim of isolating Pakistan globally.

New Delhi took advantage of the Pakistan-Gulf tensions over Yemen to try to appear to enhance ties with the GCC at Islamabad’s expense. Iran and India have also strengthened economic relations since oil sanctions were lifted last year, and the two countries are developing Chabahar port in Iran as a rival to the Chinese-built Gwadar port that is the keystone of a trade corridor linking the Arabian Sea to western China on which Pakistan has bet its economic future.

Last week, India’s army chief Gen Bipin Rawat said that “we are also carrying out actions to negate the nexus … between China and Pakistan”.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani made his first state visit to Pakistan last March, but it was overshadowed by allegations by the Pakistani military that an Indian spy had crossed into the country from Iran. Pakistani officials were frustrated that Mr Rouhani or other senior figures did not say unequivocally that “Iran is not going to play the game of isolating Pakistan in terms of India, Iran, Afghanistan joining hands”, Mr Yusuf said. “Iran has been very reluctant to do that, and in fact has not done that at all.”

In the context Indian attempts to isolate Pakistan, Gen Sharif’s appointment may be a signal of the depth of Islamabad’s displeasure with Tehran over its growing ties with India.

This dynamic may change, however, if Washington’s relations with Iran deteriorate under president-elect Donald Trump, who has appointed a number of Iran hawks to key national security positions. Mr Trump may ask strategic ally India to walk away from Iran, which may change the dynamics between Tehran and Islamabad.

While Gen Sharif’s new role is symbolically important, it is still unclear what Pakistan will contribute to Riyadh’s alliance. With a quarter of its 190 million population Shiite, the politics that prevented Islamabad from involvement in Yemen would likely undermine attempts to contribute significant numbers of troops or to deploy them in combat in the Middle East.

“Pakistan cannot be strategically sucked into the Middle East and that has to be its number one goal if it’s going to do this well,” Mr Yusuf said of its participation in the Saudi alliance.

tkhan@thenational.aeA Republican-controlled Congress opens Tuesday with the most sweeping conservative agenda in decades, providing Donald Trump ample room to gut the Affordable Care Act, slash corporate tax rates and undo Obama-era environmental regulations.

The House is almost certain to reelect Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) as its first order of business, dispensing with the messy political infighting that has hobbled Republicans in the past.

And the Senate will swiftly begin vetting the president-elect’s most controversial Cabinet picks, ready to confirm some when Trump is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.

Yet Republicans remain at odds on some high-profile issues — such as how aggressively to investigate Russian hacking in the 2016 election — and how to fulfill other big-ticket promises, such as replacing Obamacare.

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Despite firm Republican control of both the White House and Congress, the internal disputes have left them without a clear plan yet for Trump’s first 100 days, or an endgame for the two years of the 115th Congress.

Trump’s often shifting views on major issues will test relations with GOP’s leaders on Capitol Hill, and his willingness to skirt ideological rigidity gives incoming Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco an opening to influence and shape the president’s evolving agenda.

President Obama will visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with Democrats bracing for their new role, not just as the minority party, but as the main roadblock preventing Trump from dismantling the healthcare law and other parts of the Obama agenda.

Republicans will also assemble behind closed doors. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was a popular conservative congressman before he was elected governor of Indiana, is likely to serve as a crucial link between the Trump administration and its allies in Congress.

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Given Trump’s inexperience in government, Pence is expected to play an enhanced role, perhaps like the one former Vice President Richard Cheney held under President George W. Bush.

At a minimum, Pence could provide a vital conduit between the untested new president and his more ideological party members in Congress, especially as Ryan’s own relationship with Trump has been strained.

Ryan flip-flopped over Trump — first withholding his endorsement, then ultimately campaigning for him — but the speaker insists he and the president-elect have let bygones pass as they talk almost daily on their plans for fulfilling Republican promises to voters.

“Very soon after the race, Donald and I said: ‘Look, this is fantastic. We have so much to do. Let’s forget about, you know, any differences in the past and let’s get working on this agenda,’” Ryan said recently on Fox News. “And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing from -- that day on.”

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Once Trump takes office, Republicans will face enormous pressure to score some legislative wins after six years of trying to block most of Obama’s initiatives.

Lawmakers will vote this week on low-hanging fruit -- a popular GOP measure to rein in the executive branch by requiring congressional approval for new federal regulations with an economic impact of more than $100 million.

The measure, which passed the Republican House three times since 2011, is a GOP priority. Its supporters say it would have prevented nearly all the climate and employment rule changes of the Obama era.

Republicans are also expected to punish Democrats for last year’s gun control sit-in, led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), by imposing new rules that would slap up to $2,500 fines on lawmakers who film such floor protests from smartphones or other devices.

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Whether that would pass judicial review is less clear. Opponents say the proposed ban is clearly unconstitutional.

But the GOP’s top promise — to end Obamacare — remains a tough haul.

Votes are expected in coming days on legislation to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act. But these first steps will be largely symbolic while lawmakers debate the details of dismantling the healthcare law.

With 20 million Americans now benefiting from Obamacare, the GOP’s gutting of it comes with an asterisk.

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Republicans are also likely to postpone fully dismantling the healthcare law until they can sort out their own ideas for a yet-to-be-determined alternative.

That could push a full Obamacare repeal and replace until 2018 or 2019, after the midterm elections.

“Repeal and delay, it doesn’t even have alliteration,” Pelosi scoffed on a conference call Monday with reporters. “It’s an admission that it’s a lot for them to lose politically.”

Similarly, Republicans are still working out the details of tax reform beyond the lower rates proposed in the House GOP’s “Better Way” blueprint agenda for the new year.

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Ryan will almost certainly reemerge as speaker in Tuesday’s floor vote. But his leadership remains constrained by the same internal party divisions that hobbled his predecessor, John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), and that have prevented Republicans from making gains on a cohesive agenda.

Those divisions surfaced late Monday when Republicans split during a closed-door session over a proposal to gut a congressional ethics office at a time when Trump has promised to come to Washington and “drain the swamp.” Approval of the proposal signaled a rocky start to the new session.

Democrats, despite being in the minority in both the House and Senate, will be more than bit players in the new Washington environment.

Senate Democrats are planning a robust grilling of Trump’s Cabinet choices, particularly Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the conservative orthopedic doctor who has been tapped to helm the Health and Human Services Department and the Obamacare unraveling.

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Democrats are also lining up against Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general, and have raised questions about ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, who has substantial ties with Russia, as secretary of State.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) intends to have several of Trump’s Cabinet picks – likely the national security team -- cleared for quick confirmation after Trump takes office.

But McConnell faces his own difficulty as several top Republicans, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are pushing for an aggressive investigation in Congress of Russian cyber-attacks during the presidential race. McCain plans to hold his first hearing on the issue Thursday.

McConnell has resisted calls by a bipartisan group, led by McCain and Schumer, for creation of a separate special committee – or an independent panel like the bipartisan commission that investigated the terrorist attacks after Sept. 11, 2001.

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Many Republicans are optimistic for the days ahead, ready to “hit the ground running,” Ryan has said.

Congress adjusted its calendar to work more, with several five-day work weeks in the House as it races to deliver on election promises. Normally the House is in session only four days a week.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Twitter: @LisaMascaro

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ALSO

Can a federal government scientist in California convince Trump that climate change is real?

Trump was silent on new U.S. sanctions against Russia, but he praises Putin’s response

This Congress filled the fewest judgeships since 1952. That leaves a big opening for Trump

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UPDATES:

9:05 p.m.: The story was updated with the news that Republicans voted during a closed-door session to gut a congressional ethics office.

The story was first published at 2:10 p.m.Maryland Del. Richard Impallaria, right, has a word with Del. Pat McDonough, left, in the Legislative Services Building (Matt Houston/AP)

A Maryland delegate from Baltimore County was convicted of driving while intoxicated last week for charges stemming from a traffic stop while attending a conference in Ocean City in August.

Del. Richard Impallaria, a Republican and a proponent of stricter drunk-driving laws, is scheduled for sentencing on March 10, according to court records. Impallaria, who pleaded not guilty, requested a jury trial in Wocester County Circuit Court and was found guilty on Jan. 4, according to court records. Court officials said Impallaria had a 0.07 alcohol level.

Impallaria could not be reached for comment.

In Maryland, driving while impaired is a secondary charge for operating a vehicle with a blood alcohol level between 0.04 percent and 0.08 percent.

Impallaria, who serves as a deputy minority whip, is a member of the House Economic Matters Committee. At the time of his arrest, he was attending the annual Maryland Association of Counties summer conference.This item has been removed from the community because it violates Steam Community & Content Guidelines. It is only visible to you. If you believe your item has been removed by mistake, please contact Steam Support

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Offline File Size Posted Size 0.326 MB Jan 10, 2017 @ 8:00am 1680 x 1050 121 Unique Visitors 0 Current FavoritesPROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — It’s now the law in Rhode Island: do not enter an intersection unless you’re sure you can get out of it on the other side, whether by crossing straight across or turning.

In many cities it’s known as “blocking the box,” where the box is bordered by the four streets of an intersection – too many people enter the intersection but then are stuck in it because traffic has not cleared on the other side. Rhode Island lawmakers have now outlawed the traffic-jamming practice.

One of the law’s co-sponsors, Rep. Charlene Lima, D-Cranston, said there’s now a campaign on to have municipalities identify problem areas.

“They will have to paint these types of lines at the intersections” — illustrating the “box” — “and they will have to post a sign so that the public will know they are not to enter the box until they can clear it,” she said Monday.

The law was passed by the General Assembly last June, and became law in September without Gov. Gina Raimondo’s signature. The law took effect Jan. 1.

“What happens is, now you’re sitting here, sometimes through two red lights, even three at some of these bad areas – and traffic gets all jammed up. There’s congestion,” Lima said. She added she’s excited to see law enforcement crack down on the frustrating driving habit.

“I think the campaign, ‘do not block the box,’ will make the public aware that they should not be doing this, and that it’s a safety problem. I think it’s going to work,” she said.

Being ticketed for the first violation carries a $100 fine. The second, $250; the third and every subsequent violation, $500.Medal.tv

Medal is the #1 platform to record gaming clips and videos. Start a game, press a button, get a link.

Clips are stored in the cloud for free and sync between mobile devices and PC. Plays.tv users are now on Medal.tv.

Page not displaying correctly? You need to enable JavaScript to run this page!La jefa de gabinete de Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero, ha dicho este lunes que el secretario de política, Iñigo Errejón, tiene, como cualquiera en Podemos, "legitimidad para pedir lo que quiera" en el futuro del partido, pero ha avisado de que "para ganar a Mariano Rajoy" la formación morada "no puede ser una tarta a repartir".

Montero ha defendido que Podemos "tiene que seguir siendo una estructura muy abierta y porosa" y no "una tarta a repartir". De hecho, ha defendido que el proyecto de Iglesias para el partido pasa porque se deje a la gente participar sin que se le pida un carnet. "Hay que garantizar que Podemos no es una tarta, que la gente no necesite adscribirse a ninguna familia", ha apostillado.

La también portavoz adjunta de Unidos Podemos en el Congreso, que participaba en un debate en Telecinco, respondía así a las preguntas sobre el reparto de poder que pretende negociar Errejón de cara a un posible acuredo que evite la confrontación en el próximo congreso del partido, previsto en febrero. Con todo, ha preferido hacer una "tarea de contención", porque es lo que pide la militancia "a gritos" y hacer caso a la petición del líder, Pablo Iglesias, de no "lavar los trapos sucios" en los medios.

"En un proceso de debate cada cual tiene derecho a plantear lo que sea. Yo voy a intentar cuidar las respuestas y hacer lo que nos han pedido Teresa o Pablo, unidad y no sacar los trapos sucios en los medios de comunicación. Tenemos por delante un Vistalegre en que el objetivo es organizarnos para ganar a Rajoy", ha explicado.

Negociaciones sin principio ni final

Además, ha descartado que vaya a haber "un proceso de negociación transmitido" entre el sector 'pablista' y el 'errejonista', o que se vaya a "marcar un inicio y un final de negociaciones" porque Errejón e Iglesias "llevan hablando todo este tiempo", igual que con el anticapitalista Miguel Urbán, para buscar la "unidad".

Preguntada también sobre si la campaña lanzada en redes sociales con el mensaje 'Iñigo así no' fue un error, la responsable 'morada' ha dicho que no se arrepiente de" poner una voz encima de la mesa", pero ha pedido perdón a los inscritos porque "mucha gente no lo entendió" y no quiere que laven fuera sus "trapos".

"Voy a ser cauta, no voy a decir más cosas. Por encima de mis opiniones personales está la militancia. Creo que hemos dado un espectáculo que no deberíamos haber dado. Una cosa es debatir y en los últimos días hemos dado una imagen de poco debate. Creo que lo mejor es hablar de política", ha explicado.A new version of open-source 2D animation software Synfig Studio is available to download.

Synfig 1.2.0 ships with a new rendering engine built from the ground up with ‘optimization’ in mind. The rewrite also introduces an ‘advanced task-based architecture’ that delivers ‘significant speedup for bitmap and vector elements, full multithreading and also reduces memory usage’.

Memory comparisons with earlier versions of the software show notable gains.

Elsewhere, integration with open-source Papagayo lipsync software allows budding animators to match mouth shapes to recorded dialogue, a feature that is demoed in this Synfig tutorial:

Other changes include a new-look preferences window, a new zoom level widget, tooltips on the group transformation widget, and various bug fixes.

You can learn more about this release in this announcement post from the Morevna project.

To download Synfig Studio 1.2.0 for Windows, macOS or Linux just follow the links on the official website. This will point you to a pay-what-you-want page but, if you don’t wish to donate to support the project, you can skip this to grab a direct download link.We'll be in touch with the latest information on how President Biden and his administration are working for the American people, as well as ways you can get involved and help our country build back better.On Tuesday morning, Ford Motor Co. announced it would scrap a plan to invest $1.6 billion in a new production plant in Mexico and instead plow $700 million into the Flat Rock Assembly Plant south of Detroit, which will add 700 jobs.

It is tempting to see the move as a proactive response to President-elect Donald Trump’s propensity to call out U.S. companies moving production overseas. Earlier Tuesday morning, Trump was zinging General Motors on Twitter for producing the Chevrolet Cruze in Mexico and allegedly shipping them across the border. (GM says it only ships about 4,500 Cruzes per year from Mexico to the U.S.) In his announcement, Ford CEO Mark Fields did cite the “pro-growth policies that President Trump and the newly-elected Congress have proposed” as a reason for the investment.

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But Ford’s announcement is primarily a response to market forces that have been underway for years. And it is inspired in part by explicit policies of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations—the fruits of which Trump will almost certainly take credit for.

As a general rule, U.S. car companies prefer to make cars that are big, expensive, or technology-laden—ideally all three—because the sticker prices are higher and the profits margins are much greater than those associated with cheap, small cars. On a percentage and absolute basis, carmakers tend to make much higher profits on SUVs and pickup trucks that cost $40,000 or $50,000 than on a car like the Ford Focus, which starts at about $17,000.

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When the economy is doing poorly and gas is very expensive, manufacturing and sales strategies that center around expensive, low-mileage cars are a recipe for disaster, which is one of the reasons Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler ran into so much trouble in 2007 and 2008. But when the economy is going well, when lots of people have jobs and incomes are rising, and when gas is very cheap, selling those big, pricey, tech-filled cars is a really good strategy. And regardless of how the U.S. economy is doing or where gas prices are, it is making less and less sense to build very cheap cars in the U.S. where fixed costs are high. So it’s not surprising that Ford is pushing more production of the Focus to Mexico and investing in greater capacity to produce expensive, large vehicles in the United States.*

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Another set of competitive pressures underway for several years is pushing further bifurcation in North American auto manufacturing: low-margin, cheap, basic cars made in Mexico largely for the local market, and expensive, gadget-laden vehicles made in the U.S. largely for the U.S. market. Beyond simply building larger and more expensive vehicles, U.S car manufacturers are seeking to profit and keep up with competition by adding more technology—specifically, greater electrification and autonomous capabilities. “The era of the electrified vehicle is dawning, and we in Ford plan to be a leader,” Fields said in Tuesday’s announcement. The Flat Rock plant, he promised, would build an all-electric SUV with a range of 300 miles as well as fully autonomous hybrid and electric vehicles. Henry Ford’s company is transforming into “both an auto and mobility company,” he said.

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Here, again, it is logical for U.S.-based car companies like Ford to make such investments in the U.S. rather than Mexico. Electrified and autonomous vehicles tend to cost a lot more than their old-fashioned counterparts and require more sophisticated R&D and assembly lines. Manufacturers in the U.S. must comply with local clean-air and mileage mandates. And in the past several years, thanks to an explicitly mercantilist and economically nationalist policy of the Obama administration—one that was much reviled by Republicans—Ford has invested significant sums in vehicle electrification and battery research and production.

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As part of the highly successfully Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program, which actually began under the Bush administration, loans were made available to automakers and suppliers to work on batteries, electrification, and fuel efficiency. One of the automakers that took a loan, Fisker, failed, costing the taxpayers $139 million. Tesla repaid its $465 million loan, in full and with interest, nine years early. Ford was the only one of the Big Three to participate. It borrowed a hefty $5.9 billion in 2009 and used the money to upgrade 13 factories in the U.S., and revamp its assembly lines and supply chains so it could produce the F-150 pick-up truck with an aluminum body and develop the eco-boost engine. Ford has been paying back the loan and as of Sept. 30, 2016, had a balance of about $2.27 billion.

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Put another way, several years ago Ford took a boatload of government money and promised to spend it on research, development, and processes that would give it the know-how and capability to produce electric and electrified cars in the U.S.—and only in the U.S. And it has delivered. It’s little noticed, but each month Ford’s plug-in hybrids, the C-Max Energi and the Fusion Energi, sell more units combined than the Chevrolet Volt. Armed with the experience, technology, and platforms it has built in the last several years, Ford is plunging ahead into an electrified future. Fields announced Tuesday that the company would introduce 13 electric vehicle models in the next five years, and would soon be producing hybrid versions of its iconic Mustang and Ford-150 in the Detroit area.

So, sure, you could thank Trump that these American cars are going to be made in America. But you should thank Bush and Obama first.

*Correction, Jan. 3, 2017: Due to an editing error, this article originally misstated that Ford Motor Co. is pushing production of the Chevrolet Cruze to Mexico. It has been moving production of the Ford Focus to Mexico. (Return.)© 2001-2020 City of Hamilton - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Terms of UseEm inglês, a expressão para fazer maratonas de séries é “binge watching” e ela foi considerada a palavra do ano de 2015 pelo renomado Dicionário Collins. Com a popularidade dos serviços de streaming, como a Netflix, esse comportamento de assistir às séries com uma velocidade absurda só tem aumentado.

Em 2013, a própria Netflix divulgou que 61% dos seus assinantes praticam maratonas de suas sérias favoritas. Para “Breaking Bad”, por exemplo, 75% das pessoas assistem aos sete episódios iniciais da primeira temporada em uma tacada só! O que pode ser uma diversão sem tamanho também pode ser algo que esteja acelerando a sua morte. Achou drástico? Então se liga nesses fatos:

1. Maratonas podem levar a problemas mentais

A Universidade do Texas publicou um estudo no qual relaciona os maratonistas com a depressão e a solidão. Além disso, passar um final de semana inteiro assistindo a séries pode levar a sentimentos de tristeza e culpa, de acordo com o médico e professor Grant H. Brenner. Por fim, a doutora Carol Lieberman alerta para o fato de que viver intensamente uma série pode fazer com que a pessoa deixe a vida real de lado e sofra fisicamente com os anseios dos personagens retratados.

2. Os maratonistas podem desenvolver obesidade e diabetes

Nada melhor do que um petisco para acompanhar o seu programa favorito, certo? Bem, se isso não se tornar uma rotina pode até ser verdade, mas acontece que muitas das pessoas que fazem maratonas também passam bastante tempo comendo besteiras ultracalóricas, levando à obesidade.

De acordo com pesquisadores da Universidade de Pittsburgh, cada hora em frente à TV aumenta em 3,4% o risco de desenvolver diabetes do tipo 2. Agora imaginou uma maratona com mais de 10 horas de duração de seu programa favorito? A saúde agradece se você não ficar tanto tempo parado.

3. Os riscos de câncer aumentam

Um estudo publicado no American Journal of Preventive Medicine diz que praticar maratonas diárias com cerca de 4 horas de duração aumenta o risco de desenvolver câncer em até 15%. A conclusão foi feita com base no tempo em que os maratonistas passam sentados: 43 pesquisas diferentes mostraram que pessoas que passam mais tempo sentadas do que em pé ou dormindo possuem um risco 24% maior de desenvolver câncer de cólon, 32% maior de câncer de endométrio e 21% maior de câncer de pulmão.

4. Insônia

Televisores, computadores e smartphones produzem a luz fluorescente azul, que, segundo os pesquisadores, tem relação direta com a nossa produção de melatonina, o hormônio responsável pelo sono. Dessa forma, a superexposição a essas tecnologias pode resultar em dores de cabeça, vista cansada, desordem afetiva, disfunção imunológica, ansiedade e problemas de sono! Não precisa parar com tudo isso, mas maneirar a dose diária já é um bom começo.

5. Diminuição na contagem de espermatozoides

Um estudo de 2013 mostrou que praticar maratonas constantes pode diminuir a contagem de espermatozoides no sêmen. Foram analisados os hábitos de mais de 100 homens para descobrir que aqueles que viam mais de 20 horas semanais de televisão possuíam uma quantidade de espermatozoides até 50% inferior em comparação aos que assistem a menos conteúdo midiático.

Por outro lado, os homens que praticam atividades físicas por mais de 15 de horas por semana possuem até 73% a mais da quantidade média de espermatozoides. Ou seja: se você está querendo ser pai, talvez seja uma boa hora para trocar as preliminares com suas séries favoritas para um pouco de musculação, academia ou corridinha, hein?Image by DARPA

Bullets that Follow You

You may have seen the movie Wanted. Sure, the movie was almost unrecognizable from the Mark Millar comic book series it was very loosely based on. But that didn’t stop anyone from pretending to be a bullet-curving, badass, supervillain-with-a-heart sniper like Angelina Jolie after seeing it.

But the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) new self-steering bullet is about to change the pretend part into reality.

As part of its Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program, DARPA has been developing a .50 caliber ammunition that can maneuver in flight. To be clear, it can change direction after being fired from a weapon.

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How It Works

A post on DARPA’s website describes EXACTO’s specially designed bullet as using a “real-time optical guidance system” that tracks and directs the bullets right to their targets.

This guiding system is what ensures the high accuracy rate of snipers regardless of external factors that could affect the trajectory of the bullet, such as weather or target movement.

“For military snipers, acquiring moving targets in unfavorable conditions, such as high winds and dusty terrain commonly found in Afghanistan, is extremely challenging with current technology,” DARPA said. “It is critical that snipers be able to engage targets faster, and with better accuracy, since any shot that doesn’t hit a target also risks the safety of troops by indicating their presence and potentially exposing their location.”

In 2014, DARPA demoed its guided sniper bullets for the first time. The video showed the EXACTO bullets, changing direction in mid-flight, like it was almost following its target.

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Live-Fire tests were conducted February 2015, which showed the EXACTO rounds self-steering itself to hit not just moving, but also accelerating targets.

“True to DARPA’s mission, EXACTO has demonstrated what was once thought impossible: the continuous guidance of a small-caliber bullet to target,” said Jerome Dunn, DARPA program manager. “This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that EXACTO is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting EXACTO’s guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers.”

See the full video below:

As a Futurism reader, we invite you join the Singularity Global Community, our parent company’s forum to discuss futuristic science & technology with like-minded people from all over the world. It’s free to join, sign up now!

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AdvertisementThe Great California Earthquake of 2018: First State To Default

If only it were just an earthquake. We could then just repair some damaged roadways or condemn a couple dozen buildings, then resume our lives. Maybe the Bay Bridge would need a section reattached. Or the last letter "D" in Hollywood would tip over. We'd send over some lumber reinforcements. No problem. This tragedy, however, has no asphalt-rending fault lines, except the ones in government, where the fault lies. I would like to direct your attention to something boring but infinitely informative regarding the nature of this mismanaged state. Employers who utilize labor pay into the FUTA, or the federal unemployment tax, at a rate of 6% and are credited back an offset of 5.4% that they previously paid the state, leaving a small federal liability of only 0.6%.

However, if the state-run U.I. trust gets overdrawn, as it did in California for going on its third year now, it automatically pulls an emergency loan out from the federal government to service the underfunded account. And if that is not repaid by November 10, and it defaults, then the government forces employers to pay it. They just defaulted. Our company received a mystery bill in the mail two weeks ago, explaining our new $15,000 owed. We got a shock, as it was not expected. I presume that many employers won't be able to pay it. I'm still not quite sure if we can ourselves, considering how much the minimum wage hikes, the new mandatory paid sick leave, and Obamacare have impaired our cash reserves. To appreciate what is going on here in the lousy 14K Golden Alloy State, we need to connect a few moving pieces that the media won't report on, but I'm here to help. First, why is U.I. getting robbed when the BLS has said this is such a great jobs economic recovery? California, one of the most populous states, has a 6.3% U.R. The national average for the rest of the country is 4.7%. Ignore that both numbers are a lie and shadow stats have them both well north of that, but why is California's percentage higher? California is a sanctuary state, a rogue state, mining votes openly from the southern border in exchange for welfare benefits but also for under-the-table Home Depot cash jobs. It is indeed a "depot" station, but not one visa overstay violator will ever be depot'ed here or asked for authenticating ID. ICE officers in the state have probably never walked onto a hardware store parking lot looking for violators – and why would they? To be harassed by Jerry Brown's free legal advice now given to illegal aliens, paid for by the taxpayer? California's U.I. trust is being kneecapped because of arms-wide-open amnesty that is removing jobs from those born here, and thus sending the U.I. rate ever higher. And the employer is the fall guy politicians will use to force you to buy votes for them. Isn't helping a Democrat hold on to power using your taxes great? I've been telling women upset with mandatory vaccinations the same thing for years. Politicians are inviting hordes of illegals, unvetted, infected with TB, and, like A Clockwork Orange, you, civilian, must sit in that chair squirming, getting the needles placed under your skin, because don't you realize how important it is to get Democrats elected. So sit in the chair and take it. Jerry Brown has important things to get done that don't involve you. Never have. And so, with record-low interest rates now going on our ninth year and federal debt that could reach Saturn's rings and back, the real fault lines will be seen first emerging in the states, since they can't print their own money, unlike the feds. California is the first one to emerge with fiscal cracks invading the farcical narratives of Hopeychangey Land. It won't be the San Andreas that swallows us whole, or causes us to drift off the coast. It will be more and more little things like an employer tearing open a tax bill and seeing an entirely new line item that never existed before. And the business asking why they continue to remain behind the Democratic Party's cocky supermajority iron curtain. And, as the seismic plates shift in their mind as they ask that question and it later moves under their feet, mobilizing them, then a Randian exodus out to healthier, less shaky, more stable state economies, where businesses will be respected, maybe even wanted, and not used like a kicked vending machine for extra change in the coin slot every time they run out of other people's money to buy votes from border-crashers. I am sure that some businesses will stay waiting for the Big One. Then perhaps FEMA can step in and slap all of its fresh printed digital mint across the barren land in an equal exchange of debt for debt. Problem solved.in In Fitness And In HealthThe Archdiocese of Bombay has started a nationwide online survey that looks at understanding viewers of pornography in India. The survey aims to take forward an earlier endeavour by the Roman Catholic Church to gain an insight into the stages when youngsters and adults get exposed to pornography. However, that survey was restricted to Mumbai.

Called Plague of Pornography, the present one is an online survey (http://survey.snehalayafamily.com) which seeks responses from people in the age group of 15 to 25 years, as well as those over 25 years. The identity of those who participate will be kept confidential.

"At present, we hear a lot of things about pornography. While there are studies being done on porn and its effects outside India, nothing has been taken up here. We have not done any study on porn users, and hence, we wanted to do one," said Fr Cajeton Menezes, director of Snehalaya Family Service Centre, who has started the year-long survey.

Snehalaya Family Service Centre is a not-for-profit NGO that helps families in Mumbai. It is run by the Archdiocese of Bombay. It calls the survey a part of its commitment and work to build and strengthen families of not just Catholics but also of all other communities that approach the centre.

It was in the counselling centres — where the Church looks to ensure that marriages last — that they realised the need to study the porn issue closer. The Church stands for saving marriages unless there was some pre-existing problem that was not known and due to which a marriage needed to be annulled. "What we saw during counselling sessions was that there were more and more cases of erectile dysfunction, partners fulfilling their need by watching porn, husbands forcing their wives to watch porn and also enact steps. All this was leading to breaking of marriages. With internet speed going up by the day and incidents like the Nirbhaya and Mahalakshmi rape cases indicating usage of porn among minors, we thought we should have a study on the porn users of India," said Menezes.

Besides looking at the male porn users, the study also aims to have an understanding of female users. In the earlier survey, the findings stated that boys and girls had seen pornography for the first time when they were in class five and eight respectively. "This study also looks at figuring out addiction among women. Women addiction patterns are different. They are not so much into graphic but more into literature," added Menezes.

The other aspects of the study will be place of access of porn, how deep the users go into it, the genre, role of porn in marriage and life, post-porn effects, methods tried to de-addict, being open about watching porn, money and time spent, inclination towards religion and the self-esteem of the person. "The aim is to understand the addicts and their practices. Some people surf porn in offices and waste work hours. Questions will also gauge how they feel about themselves and their self-esteem, whether it is high or low," said Dr Trudy Dantis, research consultant who has put together the questions and will be structuring the report when responses are close to 5,000.

"Through the study, we will also come to know if the problem is overrated or underrated. Once the study is complete, the report will be given to counsellors or psychiatrists who help people come out with answers on preventive programmes," said Allwyn Dantis, project co-ordinator of the Plague of Pornography.

"We want to complete the survey with good response. But what we see is that a number of people are not answering all the questions. Their identities will not be disclosed," said Menezes.BETA POKEMON DESIGNS

We got a new reveal of never-before seen beta designs from gen 1 again

Quoting Helix Chamber, which Provided a guide:

Cubone, Pinsir, Scyther, Lapras, Tentacool (Ambler instead of Menokurage) Gastly, Rhyhorn, Arcanine (Wing instead of Windie), Gyarados, “Shellder” Omega (The Mystery O), Blastoise (Caravaggio instead of Kamex), Staryu (Mimii instead of Hitodemon) Tangela



Holy shit guysEnglish patriotism is on the rise at the expense of a sense of British identity, with voters in England increasingly likely to describe themselves as solely English, according to research.

The studyfound that almost a fifth of people describe themselves as English not British, up 5% from 2015, with more than a third of those surveyed describing themselves as either solely English or more English than British.

The YouGov data showed that the number of people who described themselves solely as British fell in 2016 from a year earlier. Last year just 18% of those surveyed said they felt only British or more British than English.

The study, led by the former Labour cabinet minister John Denham who now heads the University of Winchester’s Centre for English Identity and Politics, found a growing correlation between identity and political behaviour, with numerous polls during and after the referendum showing that those who felt most English were most likely to vote leave.

Ukip’s new leader, Paul Nuttall, has said his focus will be to tap into what he sees as a renewed sense of English nationalism, after devolution in the other UK nations.

“The next big issue that’s going to come up in British politics beyond Brexit is Englishness,” he told the Telegraph on the eve of his election. The party plans to target Labour in its traditional English heartlands.

“There is a value that unites that vast majority of British people away from the small metropolitan clique, and that value is patriotism,” Nuttall has said.

Denham said he believed Labour needed to take note of a rising English consciousness. “Voters who most strongly identify as English are much more likely to reject Labour as a party and key Labour messages, like support for the EU,” he said.

“Without a change in Labour’s appeal, rising English identity may make attracting key groups of voters even harder.”

Labour’s priority in EU negotiations will remain full access to the European single market, Jeremy Corbyn will say on Tuesday in his first speech of the year. He will insist, however, that his party wants “managed migration” and to repatriate powers from Brussels that would allow governments to intervene in struggling industries, such as steel.

“Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle. But nor can we afford to lose full access to the European single market on which so many British businesses and jobs depend. Changes to the way migration rules operate from the EU will be part of the negotiations,” he will say.

“Labour supports fair rules and reasonably managed migration as part of the post-Brexit relationship with the EU.”You're eager to buy your favorite candy bar. You go in the store. You pay the usual amount. But when you open the familiar wrapping, you get a terrible surprise. It's smaller, way smaller, than you expected.

Millions of Americans may have an experience like this in the future. Only it will be with something far more important. The shrunken candy bar will be their Social Security check. Benefits will be far smaller than expected if Social Security is "reformed." The change would come through a bill submitted by Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano.

You would not know this from his news release. It bears a modest title: "Sam Johnson Unveils Plan to Permanently Save Social Security." The release then describes a series of proposed changes that would make Social Security solvent for 75 years.

This is huge. The 2016 Trustees Report estimates exhaustion of the trust fund by 2034. Worse, the actuarial deficit over the next 75 years is 2.66 percent of taxable payroll. Since the employment tax is 12.4 percent, that's a huge amount. Measured another way: The unfunded liability amounts to $11.4 trillion. Today.

That $11.4 trillion is not on hand. And that's the candy bar dilemma. The only way to deliver the promised benefits is to increase the tax. The alternative is to shrink the candy bar. That means finding a way to weasel out on promised benefits while continuing to collect the same amount in taxes. Future retirees will pay the same high tax but receive less in benefits.

What a deal.

Cuts to future benefits are not mentioned in the news release. Nor are they mentioned in a supporting document from Johnson's office. In the glorious tradition of misleading language from our elected leaders, Johnson calls for:

"Modernizing how benefits are calculated." (Code for reducing the benefit-crediting rate for most workers.)

"Gradually updating the full retirement age at which workers can claim benefits." (Code for reducing the benefits for anyone who can't work as long as we say they should work.)

"Ensur(ing) benefits keep up with changes in the economy." (Code for using an inflation measure that reduces the rate of increase in benefits.)

But the truth comes from Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary for Social Security. A 30-page letter from his office provides an item-by-item analysis of the proposed bill. It also gives estimates of how future retiree benefits will compare to those due under current law. Here's my CliffsNotes summary:

The Social Security Reform Act of 2016 proposes 15 changes. Of those, 10 have impacts under 0.10 percent of funding. Many are considered "negligible." The big bucks are in three proposals. One works to change the benefit formula. Another advances the full retirement age. The third changes the method for calculating inflation. Those changes would cut benefits by 2.94 percent of payroll over the next 75 years.

The changes would have no immediate effect. But they would start to bite for workers retiring in 2030 or later. That means workers who are 50 or younger. So, if you're already retired, you're safe. But your adult children and grandchildren will see their benefits reduced. Meanwhile, they still pay employment taxes that support current retirees.

Future retiree benefit cuts depend on their level of lifetime earnings. Here are examples for medium- and higher-wage workers retiring in 2030. (Low-wage workers are affected in another way, which I will cover next week.)

A medium-wage worker with a 44-year record (one with about $49,000 wages in 2016) will start retirement with an 11.4 percent benefit cut. The cut will increase to 18.8 percent by age 95.

A high-wage worker with a 44-year record (about $78,600 for 2016) will start retirement with a 19.9 percent benefit cut. It will increase to a 26.6 percent cut by age 95.

A top-wage worker with a 44-year record (one earning $118,500 in 2016) will start retirement with a 25.2 percent cut. It will increase to a 65.4 percent cut by age 95.

Benefit cuts increase each year after 2030. A 33-year-old medium-wage worker today would experience a benefit cut of 33.2 percent when retiring in 2050. That cut would increase to 34.1 percent by the time they reached 95.

Bottom line: This would be a good time to make certain that your members of Congress read more than news releases. The chief actuary's letter is a good start.

Universal UclickLe comité organisateur fixe un objectif de 800 bénévoles pour s'assurer que les jeux fonctionnement rondement. La campagne de recrutement lancée en octobre dernier n'a toujours pas permis de combler les besoins en main-d'oeuvre des jeux.

Agrandir l’image ﻿ (Nouvelle fenêtre) ﻿ ﻿ Le nouveau logo et le slogan des Jeux de la francophonie canadienne Moncton-Dieppe 2017, « Right fiers ». Photo : JeuxFC2017

Les organisateurs vont donc accentuer leurs efforts dans le but d'attirer les 700 bénévoles qui manquent.

« On va aller dans les marchés de fermiers, à l'université, au CCNB, on va être un peu partout » souligne la présidente des Jeux de la francophonie canadienne, Mélissa Martel. « On peut aussi s'inscrire sur place, on va avoir le matériel pour ça. On peut aussi le faire en ligne sur notre site web », précise-t-elle.

Des retombées prometteuses

Plusieurs visiteurs sont attendus lors des Jeux. Les organisateurs ne sont cependant pas en mesure de chiffrer les retombées économiques potentielles.

L'événement pourrait représenter des retombées intéressantes. La ville de Gatineau, qui avait accueilli les jeux en 2014, avait estimé les retombées à quatre millions de dollars.

Agrandir l’image ﻿ (Nouvelle fenêtre) ﻿ ﻿ Un groupe de jeunes participants au Jeux de la francophonie canadienne, à Gatineau. Photo : Radio-Canada

« Ce qu'on sait, c'est que ça va rapporter de bonnes retombées économiques pour l'Université de Moncton au niveau des inscriptions », avance Mélissa Martel.

Les jeunes [participants] vont découvrir l'Université de Moncton. Pour les commerces francophones dans la région, nous allons encourager les gens à s'y diriger. Une citation de : Mélissa Martel, présidente, comité organisateur des Jeux de la francophonie canadienne 2017

C'est la deuxième fois de son histoire que le Nouveau-Brunswick reçoit les Jeux de la francophonie canadienne. Le village de Memramcook avait accueilli les jeux, en 1999.

Avec les informations d'Anne-Marie ProvostDespite being a world-class conspiracy theorist, President-elect Donald Trump is not a fan of the CIA, even now as he is about to oversee the agency as president. It’s not totally clear why Trump, who may have never read a book in his life and surely has never had much interaction with the American intelligence infrastructure outside of Jason Bourne, is so anti-CIA from the get-go. The obvious answer is that Trump wants to diminish the credibility of the America’s intelligence agencies before they get the chance to release their findings about Russia’s attempts to sway the presidential election. Such a shortsighted response from Trump, however, wouldn’t explain why, as the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, the Trump administration is not just looking to discredit the intelligence agency, he’s looking to reduce its size.

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From the Journal:

… [Trump] is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation’s top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said. The move is prompted by his belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized, these people said… One of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment… Mr. Trump’s advisers say he has long been skeptical of the CIA’s accuracy, and the president-elect often mentions faulty intelligence in 2002 and 2003 concerning Iraq’s weapons programs.

Donald Trump, who famously does not use email or speak a foreign language or apparently travel much outside the Trump-themed hotel circuit, has some ideas. This should end well.“They got beaten very badly in the election,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Times

“I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan,” he continued. “They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.”

Trump’s comments came just hours before he was scheduled to receive a classified briefing from top intelligence and national security officials on the extent of Russian hacking tied to U.S. elections.

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His decision to double down on his skepticism toward the allegations is likely to inflame tensions with the intelligence community, which at the top level has expressed uniform confidence about Russia’s cyber hacking activities.

But Trump claimed the focus on Russia is political, pointing to what he said was a tamer response to China’s 2014 hack of the Office of Personnel Management.

“China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” he said. “How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.”

Trump’s reluctance to accept the charges against the Kremlin has irked the Obama administration and influential Republicans in Congress, who have taken a more hawkish approach toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

President Obama on Thursday expressed hope that “some of those current tensions will be reduced” after Trump receives his own briefing on the intelligence community’s findings.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday indicated frustration with Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Moscow’s role in election-related hacking.

“I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement," Clapper said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Clapper is set to brief Trump on the intelligence community’s findings, alongside National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey.

Trump said he was looking forward to the briefing and praised Clapper, who he said “wrote me a beautiful letter a few weeks ago wishing me the best.”

But he also said “a lot of mistakes were made” by the intelligence community surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq War.

“We have great people going into those slots,” Trump said of his incoming intelligence team. “I expect to have a very, very good relationship with them.”Shortly after intelligence officials delivered a highly-classified briefing on the Russian government’s alleged interference in US politics to President-elect Donald Trump, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) published an unclassified version of the report. This version outlines the majority of the joint conclusions of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. While it contains no major new hacking revelations, what is new is its focus on the role of Russia’s state-funded media organization, known as RT, and its international satellite media operations.

Ars is still preparing a more thorough analysis of the report and its findings. But the gist of the CIA, NSA, and FBI analysts’ findings is that the Russian Federation’s president, Vladimir Putin, directly ordered intelligence agencies to collect data from the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and other organizations, and he orchestrated an effort to discredit Clinton, the Democratic party, and the US democratic political process through “information operations.”

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgements.

In an appendix to the report, the agencies laid out a detailed, publicly-sourced analysis of RT’s alleged propaganda operations, including television programming that promoted the Occupy Wall Street movement and focused on information countering US government domestic and foreign policy. RT, in the agency’s assessment, used coverage of the Occupy Movement to promote the notion that change wasn’t possible within the US democratic system and that only “revolutionary action” could affect real change.

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Many of the ideas promoted by RT, such as coverage critical of “fracking” for natural gas in the United States, aligned both with domestic opposition to the US government and with Russia’s own interest in curtailing US development of natural gas and reducing the price of the oil and gas upon which Russia’s economy is highly dependent.

The three US agencies found that the Russian government’s effort to affect the US election was “multifaceted;” it included fake hacktivists (Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks) pushing stolen data through online dumps and exclusive reveals to journalists; Internet “trolls” reinforcing tailored messages and “fake news” links denigrating Clinton and the Democrats while promoting Trump; and propaganda operations that included collaboration with WikiLeaks—including a “partnership” between WikiLeaks and RT.

Putin’s motivations, according to the analysis, included the leak of the Panama Papers—a breach of documents from a Panama-based law firm that set up structures allowing many wealthy people, including members of the Russian government and supporters of Putin, to hide money overseas in secret accounts. “Putin publicly pointed to the Panama Papers disclosure and the Olympic doping scandal as US-directed efforts to defame Russia,” the report notes, which suggests “he sought to use disclosures to discredit the image of the United States and cast it as hypocritical.”This was the highest absolute increase of students ever and followed the previous year's record growth.

A record 165,918 Indians were studying in the US during academic year 2015-16, a rise of 25 per cent over the last year, making it the second leading country of origin among international students in America, according to a report released today."This was the highest absolute increase of students ever and followed the previous year's record growth," according to the 2016 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange.Also, "the number of international students at US colleges and universities surpassed one million for the first time during the 2015-16 academic year, an increase of seven per cent from the previous year to a new high of nearly 1,044,000, representing five per cent of the total student population at US institutions," it said.The Open Doors report is published annually by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs."The new report indicates there were a record 165,918 students from India, a 25 per cent increase on the year before, making it the second leading country of origin among international students in the United States," it said.The US hosts more of the world's 4.5 million globally mobile college and university students than any other country in the world, more than double the number hosted by the UK, the second leading host country, the US Embassy here said in a statement, quoting from the report."In 2015-16, there were nearly 69,000 more international students in US higher education compared to the previous year," it said."Higher education continues to be the bedrock of our people to people ties. More students from India studied in the United States than ever before - at all levels - and I am especially pleased to see the record back-to-back, year-on-year growth in student numbers," US Ambassador Richard Verma was quoted as saying in the statement."With efforts such as our Passport to India initiative, we are also seeing the number of American students in India beginning to grow," he added.India accounts for one out of every six international students in the US. Approximately three-fifths of Indian students are at the graduate level and three-fourths are in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).Open Doors also reports that over 313,000 US students received credit last year for study abroad during 2014-15, an increase of nearly three per cent over the previous year.

"India is ranked 13th among the top 25 destinations of US study abroad. The number of US students going to India to study for academic credit at their home university in the US decreased by 3.2 per cent to 4,438, although this number has remained relatively flat across the last five years at 4,500," the report said.Miguel Cotto has never had to explain himself.

He’s pretty unambiguous and to the point when he speaks to the media, articulating the usual platitudes (while hiding a rich sense of humor that he displays out of the public eye).

But on Wednesday, Cotto spent large swaths of a luncheon designed to promote his Feb. 25 bout with James Kirkland on HBO PPV on reiterating a theme he’s hinted out previously: 2017 will be his final year as a fighter. He said it in a Manhattan hotel ballroom but given Cotto’s grand history as a warrior, few seemed to believe him, which is why he was asked, several times in various ways if he really meant it. At least on Wednesday, he did.

“2017 is going to be my last year in boxing,” Cotto told a large room of reporters. “We’ll see what happens next. I want to end my career in the best way possible, and that’s why we decided to face James. I’ve been in boxing since I was 11. I have four kids. I have been away from them a lot of their lives and I want to be a 100% father.”

Cotto, a former four-division champion who turned pro in 2001, hasn’t fought since he lost a competitive decision to Canelo Alvarez in November of 2015. He took 2016 completely off, never thinking, he says, if he would ever fight again. Retirement never entered his mind. Instead, he viewed the time off as a way to restore his body. Now, Cotto (40-5, 33 knockouts) hopes to have between “two and three” fights to cap off his career, starting with the bout against Kirkland at the Dallas Cowboys new training facility at the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas. But asked if he has a match-up on his bucket list to bring down the curtain on, the stoical 36-year-old demurred.

“I’m always looking for the best name out there,” Cotto said. “We have to wait and see.” His trainer, Freddie Roach has the perfect opponent in mind for him to ride off into the sunset: Floyd Mayweather Jr., who won a decision against Cotto in 2012. “Well, I always thought with us together, Mayweather would have been a great fight,” said Roach, who started working with Cotto in 2013. “But he’s retired right now but that can change. And our last fight (against Canelo) was a very controversial decision, and I thought we won that fight but — there’s a couple good fights out there for us.”

Prodded on facing Alvarez again, Cotto said that yes, he would be interested in a rematch, though it’s a question what Canelo would stand to gain, other than a big payday. “I’m here for the best fights,” he said. “If the best fighters are out there, if they want a rematch to clear what happened last November 21, 2015, they know where and how they can make it. It was close,” Cotto said of the loss to Canelo by scores of 118-110, 119-109, 117-111. “We orchestrated the plan in a perfect way and we believe we were the winners of the fight.”Still Fighting After Birth at 21 Weeks

J.R. Smith's newborn daughter is continuing to fight hard after her premature birth and we're told she's doing well ... TMZ Sports has learned.

The Cleveland Cavs star and his wife, Jewel, announced their daughter, Dakota, was born 5 months premature earlier this month.

Now, we're told specifically Dakota was born between 21 and 22 gestational weeks. She weighed roughly 1 pound at birth. A typical healthy pregnancy is 40 weeks.

Obviously, Dakota -- who's now 8 days into her battle -- is receiving the best care possible.

There are reports from around the world of babies born that early who survive. It's rare. They've been described as "medical miracles." Here's hoping Dakota can be one of those miracles.

#PrayersUpA Winnipeg man was slapped with a nearly $240 ticket for driving with too much snow on the roof of his van.

Jonathan McCullough said it took him a moment to realize a police officer was trying to pull him over as he drove on Bishop Grandin Boulevard on Friday on his way to a hockey rink.

"When I rolled down my window he asked me why did I have so much snow on my roof, and I didn't know what to say," McCullough said. "I was completely dumbfounded by his question."

McCullough said he had roughly seven to 10 centimetres of snow on the roof of his minivan — enough to earn him a ticket for operating a vehicle with an unsecured load worth $237.50.

McCullough said he's familiar with Manitoba law regarding unsecured loads on vehicles, but he didn't know the law applied to snow, too.

Now, he says he wishes the law was more specific.

"It's not specific to snow, so it's really hard to interpret. It makes sense for making sure that stuff doesn't fly off the vehicle, it's just, I never made the connection between snow and it being a load."

'Common sense' inclusion

Winnipeg police Const. Rob Carver says the rules on snow fall under the securement of vehicle loads portion of Manitoba's Highway Traffic Act.

The law says cargo transported by a vehicle must be "contained, covered, immobilized or secured" so it can't be dislodged from the vehicle or shift to the extent it adversely affects the vehicle's stability, although it doesn't mention snow specifically.

"It applies to anything on the vehicle that isn't actually part of the vehicle that could potentially fly off and cause a hazard for people behind you," Carver said of the law.

"It's been used for years regarding things that are attached to vehicles that pose a hazard. My understanding is it serves us to ensure vehicles are safe for various things that are attached or on them, including the leftover effects of a snowstorm. From a common sense standpoint it's part and parcel the same thing."

After a friend posted about his ticket on Facebook, McCullough said he's seen a flurry of comments criticizing either him or the law.

"There's no in between. They either think I'm an idiot for not cleaning it off and lazy, or they think that the law is stupid and that there wasn't really that much snow on it. I don't know what to think about that," he said.

McCullough said he will likely try to fight the ticket in court to get it reduced or dismissed.

Spreading awareness

McCullough said he doesn't think the public is well-educated on the law and wants people to know about his ticket so they don't get dinged, too.

"I got a ticket, and there's plenty of people out there who, if they got a ticket of this amount, probably couldn't afford it at this time of year. I want them to be aware that they should clean off their vehicle to make sure they can avoid it," he said.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything around that would alert people. You drive down the street you see [signs reading] 'Don't text and drive,' 'Watch for motorcyclists,' stuff like that. I've never seen something about cleaning off your vehicle in the winter so it's never even crossed my mind."Despite extraordinarily intense coverage of all aspects of Hillary Clinton’s emails, all commentary to date (to my knowledge), even the underlying FBI Report, has paid little to no attention to the destruction of Huma Abedin’s emails, also stored on the Clinton server. Further, even with the greatly increased interest in Huma’s emails arising from the discoveries on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, speculation has mostly focused on the potential connection to deleted Hillary emails, rather than the potentially much larger tranche of deleted Huma emails from the Clinton server (many of which would, in all probability, be connected to Hillary in any event.)

Both Hillary and Huma had clintonemail accounts. Huma was unique in that respect among Hillary’s coterie. (Chelsea Clinton, under the pseudonym of Diane Reynolds, was the only other person with a clintonemail address.)

The wiping and bleaching of the Clinton server and backups can be conclusively dated to late March 2015. All pst files for both Hillary and Huma’s accounts were deleted and bleached in that carnage. While an expurgated version of Hillary’s archive (her “work-related” emails) had been preserved at her lawyer’s office (thereby giving at least a talking-point against criticism), no corresponding version of Huma’s archive was preserved from the Clinton server.

Huma had accessed her clintonemail account through a web browser and, to her knowledge, had not kept a local copy on her own computer. So when Huma’s pst files were deleted from the Clinton server and backups, those were the only known copies of her clintonemail.com emails. When Huma was eventually asked by the State Department to provide any federal records “in her possession”, her lawyers took the position that emails on the Clinton server were not in Huma’s possession and made no attempt to search Huma’s account on the Clinton server (though such an attempt would have been fruitless by the time that they were involved). Huma’s ultimate production of non-gov emails was a meagre ~6K emails, while, in reality, the number of non-gov emails that she sent or received is likely to be an order of magnitude greater.

Hillary was also asked to return all federal records “in her possession”, but did not return Huma’s emails on the Clinton server. In today’s post, I’ll examine Hillary’s affidavit and answer to interrogatories in the Judicial Watch proceedings, both made under “penalty of perjury” to show the misdirection. You have to watch the pea very carefully

In respect to the ~600K emails recently discovered on the Anthony Weiner laptop, my surmise is that many, if not most, will derive from Huma’s unwitting backup of her clintonemail account prior to its March 2015 destruction on the Clinton server. In other words, the March 2015 destruction of pst files from the Clinton server included several hundred thousand Huma emails from her tenure at the State Department, over and about the 30K Hillary emails about “yoga”.

The Expurgated Version of Hillary’s Email Archive

At the time of their exit from the State Department, employees are required to sign a separation form (OF-109), formally confirming that they have returned all federal records, both classified and unclassified, and have not kept personal copies. The form lists multiple statutes, each with criminal penalties, and requires the exiting employee to confirm that they have been advised of and understand these penalties. Hillary does not appear to have signed an OF-109 form when she left the State Department in 2013, but it seems evident that the obligations listed in the form arise from the underlying legislation and not from the form itself.

On or about July 23, 2014, State Department employees gave Cheryl Mills a heads-up that Hillary’s private email address would be revealed in eight emails, scheduled to be delivered to the Benghazi Committee in August 2014. Mills then initiated a program for collation and culling emails from Hillary emails archived on the Clinton server, then operated by Platte River Networks (PRN). The culling was primarily carried out by Heather Samuelson, a lawyer working for Mills who, like Mills, had previously worked for Clinton at the State Department.

On November 12, 2014, nearly two years after Hillary’s departure, the State Department belatedly requested that Hillary provide them with a copy of federal records in her possession, via a letter to Mills in her capacity as Hillary’s “representative”. The letter stated that, “should your principal or his or her authorized representative be aware or become aware in the future of a federal record, such as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State, that a copy of this record be made available to the Department… We ask that a record be provided to the Department if there is reason to believe that it may not otherwise be preserved in the Department’s recordkeeping system”.

Working under the supervision and direction of Mills and David Kendall, Hillary’s outside lawyer, Samuelson had extracted a subset of approximately 30,000 “work-related” emails from approximately 62,000 emails said to have been stored on the Clinton server. This subset was returned to the State Department in paper form (55,000 pages) on December 5, 2014. Samuelson also created a corresponding pst file, which was placed on a thumb drive for Kendall, the thumb drive subsequently being turned over to the FBI on August 6, 2015.

Although (1) the State Department request had been for “federal records” in Hillary’s possession and (2) Huma’s emails were also federal records in Hillary’s possession (on the Clinton server), neither Mills nor Clinton took any steps to make a copy of Huma’s emails for review by counsel or otherwise produce them to the State Department.

March 2015: the destruction of pst files on the Clinton server and backups

After production of the expurgated version of Hillary’s emails, Mills directed Combetta of Platte River to change the retention policy on Hillary’s email account to 60 days – a change in policy which would have led to the cleansing of the archive by mid-February 2015. Mills’ request can be dated precisely to December 10, 2014 by a reddit query by Combetta, using the pseudonym stonetear – an identification discovered in September 2016 by Twitter commenter Katica. However, Combetta forgot to implement the 60-day policy, an oversight with important implications.

In January 2015, under Mills’ direction and authority, Combetta deleted and bleached all copies of pst files pertaining to the Hillary archive on the computers belonging to Samuelson and Mills.

Events began to accelerate on March 2, 2015, when the New York Times reported Hillary’s exclusive use of a private email address and server during her tenure at State.

The next day (March 3), the Benghazi Committee issued a comprehensive preservation order to Williams and Connolley, Hillary’s lawyers as follows:

1. Preserve all email, electronic documents and date (“electronic records”) created since January 1, 2009, that can be reasonably anticipated to be the subject to a request for production by the Committee. For the purpose of this request, “preserve” means taking reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, testing, deletion, shredding, incineration, wiping, relocation, migration, theft or mutation of electronic records, as well as negligent or intentional handling that would make such records incomplete or inaccessible;

2. Exercise reasonable efforts to identify and notify former employees and contractors who may have access to such electronic records that they are to be preserved; and

3. If it is the routine practice of any employee or contractor to destroy or otherwise alter such electronic records, either: halt such practices or arrange for the preservation of complete and accurate duplicates or copies of such records, suitable for production if requested.

The preservation order included a provision that ought to have turned off the 60 day policy that Mills had ordered as well as further deletions. The Benghazi Committee issued a subpoena the following day for documents pertaining to Benghazi.

Williams and Connolley do not appear to have notified Platte River of the preservation order until March 9, nearly a week later, when, according to the FBI report, Mills sent Platte River an email to which a notice from Kendall was attached. The language of Kendall’s notice was not disclosed in the FBI documents and it is therefore not possible to determine whether the notice exactly tracked the requirements of the order from the Committee.

Prior to notifying Platte River of the preservation order on March 9, Mills had already initiated contact with Platte River by email and telephone, including an attempt to inventory pst files on the PRN server, Pagliano Server and various backups on or about March 5. The FBI 302s document multiple different pst files related to the Hillary archive, all of which appear to have been extant at the time of Mills’ contact with Platte River on or about March 5, including the following files mentioned in the FBI 302s: “HRC archive – complete.pst”; “hrcarchive@clintonemail.com – HRC archive.ost”; “export.pst”; “HRC.gov.email.Archive.pst”; “HRC.gov.emails.pst” and “HRC gov emails.pst”. Doubtless, there were others. Pst files then existed on both the server and backup. The FBI 302s also noted the existence of a pst file for Huma’s yahoo and gmail accounts (“huma-gmail-yahoo.pst”), but did not discuss the pst file for Huma’s clintonemail account.

On March 5, there were three emails to Platte River about the Clinton server. The sender of the emails is not identified in the FBI 302s, but it seems likely that Mills was involved in one or more of the March 5 emails.

Platte River work tickets revealed that PRN employees traveled to the Equinix facility in New Jersey on March 7-8 to examine the predecessor server and backup then in storage at Equinix (Pagliano Server), following which they “confirmed” to Mills that there were no pst files remaining on the server. This server was later turned over by Kendall to the FBI on August 12, 2015.

On March 9, Mills sent an email to Platte River and employees, including Combetta, in which preservation instructions from Kendall were attached. In his February 2016 interview, Combetta denied knowledge of the preservation order, but in a subsequent interview in May 2016, Combetta admitted knowledge of the preservation request, saying that he interpreted it “as meaning he should not disturb CLINTON’s email data on the PRN server”.

Platte River work tickets show that Combetta did further work for Mills on March 10 and 12. Combetta’s implausible explanation to the FBI was that “MILLS did not have an account on the Server and he could not recall what work he might have done for MILLS” and that “MILLS occasionally contacted [Combetta] with problems related to her personal email account, so the work tickets may have been of that nature”.

On March 19, the Benghazi Committee formally requested that the Clinton server be turned over to an independent third party for examination of the supposedly “non-work-related” emails.

On March 25, Mills and/or Kendall sent two emails to Platte River and had a conference call with Platte River. According to the 302 for Combetta’s February 2016 interview, one of the March 25 emails referred to “backups”, a reference which Combetta purported not to recall. This reference was omitted from the FBI report itself. The FBI 302 went on to state that Combetta was advised by his attorney not to “answer any questions related to conversations with KENDALL based on [his] protections under the Fifth Amendment”. In his May 2016 interview (after receiving an immunity agreement), Combetta stated that “he could not recall the content of the call or the reference to backups in the email”. In the FBI Report itself, Combetta’s refusal to answer questions on his discussions with Mills and Kendall was incorrectly described as a refusal based on assertion of attorney-client privilege, but the interview notes attributed the refusal in the February interview to invocation of the 5th Amendment and lack of recollection in the May interview.

Platte River server logs show that on March 25 (presumably subsequent to the conference call with Mills and Kendall), the Platte Admin account was used to modify multiple mailboxes associated with Hillary’s emails (H, HDR29, and HRC Archive), with the HRC Archive mailbox being completely removed from the Exchange server. The changes on March 25 were described in the 302 as follows:

[Combetta] believed he had an ‘oh Shit moment and removed the HRC Archive mailbox. He also changed the mailbox retention policy from 30 days to 1 day, and cleaned the mailbox database because MILLS previously requested in late 2014 or early 2015 he change the retention policy for CLINTON and ABEDIN’s existing and ongoing email to 60 days. He removed the HRC Archive mailbox manually because all content in the mailbox was older than 60 days. [Combetta] changed the deleted items retention policy from 30 days to 1 day to ensure no email outside of the 60 days remained on the server and executed the Clean-MailboxDatabase command to clean whitespace within the database, similar to running a disk defragmentation. [Combetta] also enabled Circular Logging, but did not recall why he did so in this instance. He typically enabled it when importing email because Microsoft Exchange logs contain email that hasn’t been committed to a database. Circular Logging reduces the log file size by forcing Exchange to commit data to the database immediately,

Two days later (March 27), Kendall sent a letter to the Benghazi Committee, in which he made the surprising announcement that none of Hillary’s emails from her tenure at State Department remained on either the server or backup (thereby rendering moot their request for examination of the server):

The letter was immediately circulated to Hillary’s inner circle (see Podesta emails here) though, curiously, Hillary herself was not included in the distribution. The deletion of emails from the server was promptly reported by the New York Times (here) and Politico (here).

Ironically, Kendall’s statement was incorrect when made. Combetta had not erased all pst copies.

On March 31, Mills and Kendall had a further conference call with Platte River. Platte River work tickets and server logs for March 31 show more deletion of pst files, including “multiple manual deletions” from the Datto backup. In his second interview, Combetta “stated everyone at PRN has access to the Datto client portal”, but in his third interview, conceded that it was “unlikely anyone else at PRN would have deleted the files”. Combetta denied any recollection of performing the deletions or being asked to delete backups.

PRN logs also notoriously showed that Bleach Bit was applied to both the PRN administration server and exchange server on March 31. While the 302s did not provide timing relative to the conference call with Mills and Kendall, it seems a reasonable surmise that it was subsequent to the call. The FBI 302 (third interview) summarized the incident as follows:

After reviewing documents titled “Bleach Bit – PRN Admin Seryer and “Bleach Bit – Exchange Server” indicating the use of Bleach Bit on March 31, 2015, [Combetta] stated he checked the Exchange Server for remaining copies of CLINTON’s email. When he located a pst file, he used the most recent non-beta version of Bleach Bit available at the time to shred the pst files on the PRN server, but did not recall which pst files he found or removed. He did not wipe free space, encountered no errors, and viewed the folders to see if the files were gone, but did not take additional steps to confirm the deletions.

In his February 2016 interview, Combetta pleaded the 5th Amendment on his March 31 conference call with Mills and Kendall, as well as the March 25 conference call. In his February 2016 interview, Combetta said that he carried out the “action of his own accord based on his normal practices as an engineer”. In his May 2016 interview, Combetta said that he “did not talk with MILLS about the files he found and deleted”.

Mills was interviewed twice, first on April 9 and secondly on May 29. Mills appears to have agreed to her April interview on the understanding that she not be questioned about events subsequent to Hillary’s tenure at State (i.e. about the destruction of emails.) According to a contemporary press report, Mills stormed out of the first interview when it began to touch on 2014 procedures for culling “work-related” emails. In her second interview, Mills denied any involvement with the deletion of pst files by Platte River Employees as follows:

Note that Mills claimed here to have notified Platte River of preservation obligations prior to commissioning the trip to the Pagliano Server on May 7-8, though the date of her email containing Kendall’s preservation notice was not until March 9. Although Kendall was involved in the conference calls immediately prior to the destruction of pst files, the FBI does not appear to have interviewed Kendall.

It appears certain that pst files for Huma’s email were destroyed as part of the carnage on March 25 and/or March 31, 2015. The FBI does not seem to have turned its mind to questioning Combetta on the specific authority for the destruction of Huma’s emails, as distinct from Hillary’s emails. The most relevant comment appears to be the following from Combetta’s second interview:

[Combetta] does not recall who or when the conversation occurred, but someone from CESC told him at some point s/he did not want the pst files hanging around and wanted them off of the Server after the export.

Combetta’s wholesale destruction of pst files, without even paying attention to “which pst files he found or removed”, seems very much in the spirit of an instruction to destroy all the pst files.

By the time that the FBI seized the Clinton servers (August 2015 for the server used from 2009 to June 2013; October 2015 for the server used from June 2013 on), the pst file or files containing Huma’s emails had been bleached from the Clinton servers.

Huma’s Trick

When Huma left the State Department in February 2013, she signed a form OF-109 that she had returned all classified and unclassified federal records, assertions that were obviously untrue on multiple counts.

On March 11, 2015, following the publicity from the New York Times article and Benghazi Committee requests, the State Department belatedly asked Huma to “make available to the Department” any “federal record in your possession, such as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving in your official capacity at the Department”. The State Department sent its request to the wrong addresses and Huma didn’t receive the letter until she initiated contact with the State Department in mid-May 2015.

When Huma received the State Department’s request, she gave (what she thought) were the relevant devices to her lawyers and the password to her clintonemail account and charged them with responding to the State Department request. Her lawyers (Rodriguez and Dunn) took the technical position that Huma’s emails on the Clinton server (huma@clintonemail) were not in Huma’s possession and thus not Huma’s responsibility to locate. This is clear from the following paragraph in the FBI 302 for the interview with Huma:

At the time of the review by Huma’s lawyers (July 2015), the Huma pst file on the Clinton server had almost certainly been already bleached. As a result, even if they had attempted to access her clintonemail.com account, they would not have recovered anything anyway. However, they did not do so and do not appear to have notified the State Department about potential Huma emails on the Clinton server that had not been produced.

Huma told the FBI in May 2016 (and her evidence on this seems plausible) that she had accessed her clintonemail account using a web browser and did not maintain a local copy:

In summer 2016, Huma’s lawyers produced a small number of non-gov emails (6,271) to the State Department – a number that was only a small fraction of the ~62K emails from Hillary’s clintonemail account. Huma’s failure to produce emails from her clintonemailcom account doesn’t seem to have troubled anyone at the State Department or FBI, who either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Hillary’s Trick

The disappearance of Huma’s clintonemail emails was, however, an issue in Judicial Watch’s FOIA litigation (01363) in summer 2015, which eventually led to Hillary providing answers “under penalty of perjury”. Here, it is interesting to watch the pea carefully.

Judicial Watch’s FOIA action 01363 originated in a request for documents related to State Department permission for Huma to be employed by Teneo Consulting and the Clinton Foundation, while concurrently being employed by the State Department. The request had originally been filed in 2013 following the original news about Huma’s conflicting employments, but had been discontinued in 2014 without tangible results from the State Department.

When news of the private server broke in March 2015, Judicial Watch successfully applied for re-opening of the case, with an order being granted in May 2015. The State Department argued that they had any obligation to search records on the Clinton server, but, after fierce resistance, Judicial Watch managed to obtain an order from Judge Emmett Sullivan on July 31, 2015, which required that the State Department request each of Hillary, Huma and Cheryl Mills to give affidavits “under penalty of perjury” that they had returned all “responsive” federal records.

On August 5, 2015, Patrick Kennedy, Under-Secretary of State, accordingly wrote a letter to Kendall, in his capacity of Hillary’s lawyer, in which he first noted that the State Department had previously requested that Hillary provide it with “any federal record in her possession, such as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State, if there is reason to believe that it may not otherwise be preserved in the Department’s recordkeeping system”, and then notified Kendall of the court order in the Judicial Watch case, characterizing the request as follows: Hillary:

In response, on August 8, Hillary provided an affidavit which did not make the requested declaration that she had returned all federal records in her possession. Instead, Hillary made the different declaration that she had directed the return of “all my e-mails”, a sleight of hand which concealed the destruction of the Huma emails, also federal records which had been in Hillary’s possession:

Judicial Watch was alert to the misdirection and, in follow-up pleadings, drew attention to the lack of clarity about the outcome of the Huma emails on the Clinton server. They succeeded in obtaining an order for discovery (highly unusual in FOIA cases). It has taken over a year to obtain responses. They deposed Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin earlier this year and, after continued obfuscation, were authorized to issue interrogatories to Hillary, which were sent to her on August 31, 2016. While several questions in the Judicial Watch interrogatories (especially questions 21,22,23 and 25) touch on the deletion of emails from the Clinton server, the interrogatories did not pose questions about the deletion of Huma’s emails as squarely as they might have, but did define the “clintonemail.com accounts” broadly enough to encompass the fact that both Huma and Hillary had accounts.

The response by Hillary and her lawyers (filed recently on October 14, 2016) took care to misdirect away from the destruction of Huma emails on the Clinton server using the same technique as the August 8, 2015 affidavit. Hillary’s lawyers slyly re-defined the scope of the “clintonemail.com account” to Hillary’s account only:

By doing so, they were then able to make assertions about the re-defined “clintonemail.com accounts” without discussing the fate of Huma’s clintonemail.com emails.

Hillary’s interview with the FBI took place in June 2016. She does not appear to have been asked particularly searching questions about events and, in any event, pleaded ignorance on all issues regarding the deletion of emails from the Clinton server.

The Emails on the Weiner Laptop

Just as the above trails were running cold, approximately 600K emails were discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop in an unrelated investigation. Some of these emails were traced back to the clintonemail domain, resulting in the FBI re-opening their investigation into mishandling of classified information on the Clinton server.

Information on the provenance of these emails is thus far sketchy, but the following seems plausible:

A source close to Anthony Weiner’s legal team tells Bret Baier that it seems the laptop containing those emails was used to backup his estranged wife’s Smartphone contacts. In the process, the computer apparently backed up all of the emails as well.

There has been speculation that they might include 32K Hillary emails that had been deleted. However, it seems to me that it is far more plausible that they will turn out to include (or even be) the Huma emails from clintonemail.com, accidentally backed up prior to their deletion from the Clinton server in March 2015.

As a start, it is logical that Huma’s email count would be much larger than Hillary’s simply from the nature of her job function. In the Podesta emails, there were approximately 3.5 times as many emails to/from Huma’s clintonemail address as to/from Hillary’s clintonemail address, but the ratio could easily have been considerably higher while they were at the State Department. There were ~62K emails in the Hillary clintonemail.com archive provided to her lawyers. Application of the Podesta ratio as a rule of thumb yields an estimated count of approximately 220,000 Huma emails. If all of the Weiner laptop emails came from Huma’s clintonemail account, the ratio would be approximately 10:1, a ratio that is not implausible.

The connection to climate

One of the best-known Climategate incidents involved the deletion of emails in order to avoid a FOIA request. Phil Jones notoriously emailed Michael Mann asking him: “Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise… Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. Cheers, Phil”. Mann cheerfully agreed, contacting Wahl who promptly destroyed the emails that worried Jones and Briffa.

As a result of researching potential U.S. legal issues in the Climategate email deletion, I discussed or mentioned an interesting U.S. case on obstruction of justice (U.S. v Quattrone) at Climate Audit on several occasions (most thoroughly in a post here on the Mann v Steyn libel case in 2014, but also in passing here and here). In the post on the Mann v Steyn libel case, I summarized U.S. v Quattrone as follows:

At the time, Quattrone’s firm was under SEC investigation for its handling of IPO trading. It was then relatively late in the calendar year and an administrator at his firm had sent a standard memo to all staff reminding them of the firm’s document retention policies and procedures. A few hours later, after learning of a leak of the investigation by the Wall Street Journal and being told to retain counsel, Quattrone sent an email to his staff endorsing the seemingly routine instruction as follows: “having been a key witness in a securities litigation case in south texas (miniscribe) i strongly advise you to follow these procedures”. Quattrone’s email was countermanded the following day by the firm’s legal department and no documents were deleted. Nonetheless, Quattrone was charged with obstruction of justice under pre-Sarbanes-Oxley section 1512. The case had a complicated history and went on for years. The key point for the present discussion [Mann’s role in the deletion of climate emails] is that an appeal court ruled that a trier of fact could have concluded that Quattrone acted with a “corrupt intent”, an element of the offence, even though, on its face, Quattrone was endorsing a legitimate request.

The Quattrone case has a remarkable connection to the present controversy: the DOJ attorney who had found corrupt intent in Quattrone’s actions was James Comey, the present director of the FBI.

Postscript

I originally became interested in the controversy over deletion of emails because the issue had arisen in Climategate controversy and I recalled Comey’s connection with the Quattrone case. When I examined the documents, I noticed the apparent sleight of hand on the fate of Huma Abedin’s emails on the Clinton server almost immediately. Dealing with climate scientists over the years teaches one to always watch the pea. I had been mulling whether or how to write it up, but the discovery of emails on Weiner’s laptop, together with resulting speculation, resulted in the topic becoming of more general interest and prompted me to write the present post.

I am fascinated by the present U.S. election. I once voted for the Rhinocerus Party in a Canadian election in which all parties seemed particularly unpalatable and, if I were an American, I would probably stay home or write in some obscure candidate. As a form of both reassurance and realism to U.S readers, regardless of which candidate wins, I suspect that it will matter much less to future governance than partisans hope on the one hand or fear on the other.



Last week on Smackdown Live, we saw a masked female come down to the ring dressed as La Luchadora. The masked female caused a distraction, allowing Alexa Bliss to retain her Smackdown Women’s Championship. The week prior, Becky Lynch wore the costume in the match against Alexa Bliss.

There was much speculation about who it would turn out to be. Names like Eva Marie, Mickie James, Naomi and more were being thrown out.

PWInsider.com is reporting that La Luchadora on this past weeks episode was Deonna Purrazzo. It should be made clear that this doesn’t mean that she will be the one revealed on this weeks Smackdown, just that she was under the mask.

It is being speculated that Deonna was used because Mickie James was unable to attend the show. The rumored plan is for Mickie James to be revealed as the masked luchador, likely starting a feud with Becky Lynch.

[irp posts=”18849″ name=”La Luchadora – Close-Up Photos Of The Masked Female From Smackdown Live, Who Was It?”]

Mickie James tweeted that she was heading back to Florida after visiting some family for the Holiday season. Smackdown Live is in Jacksonville, Florida this week…

FL bound after an amazing few days visiting the family & so many friends in VA. Had such a wonderful time. Gotta kick it into OD tomorrow! — Mickie James~Aldis (@MickieJames) January 2, 2017

I guess we will find out on Tuesday night but it looks like Mickie James could be starting a feud with Becky Lynch!!

Let us know what you think in the comment section below.Latest Change-log 13th May 2019 | v3.04 Added Boruta summary from patch notes.

Removed Irrelevant information from official guild news.

Added some misc info under Other Information on Boruta.

Reorganized certain topics to make it more relevant and readable.

[WIP] Added some minor information about guild raids

Guild Fixes and Patches EP11 Guild members can be given permission to “Grow Hangout Companion”, which allows them to use Guinea Pig Eggs in the Guild Hangout.

Guild members that have the authority to approve guild membership will now receive alerts in the Guild Info icon as intended.

Clicking on “Check online members with authority to accept applications” will now display the online members correctly.

Resolved the issue where guild members could not participate in Guild Hangout Raids at times.

Latest Official Guild Related News

if you’d like to see the extracted portion of the guild news, be sure to click on the Official Guild News History below. All changes that have content update towards guild are extracted from the patch notes and placed there with formatting.

Change-log History 13th February 2019 | v3.03 Added Guild territory war and its mechanics into the topic. 28th January 2019 | v3.02 Added a missing benefit for joining guild which is additional 5 points for being in a guild and logging in.

Clarified some information on the farming & guild companion.

Extracted Boruta information and placed under the Official Guild News History. 26th January 2019 | v3.01 Edited Mishekan Forest loots based on what we’ve received in Re:Build’s Completion. 23rd January 2019 | v3.00 Revamped information to include Re:build’s update changes are the following. 1.1 Updated Guild Creation Information

1.2 Added Exclusive Guild Quests under Guild Benefits

1.3 Added Exclusive Guild NPCs under Guild Benefits.

1.4 Added Guild Shared Storage and Mileage information under Guild Benefits

1.5 Changed / Edit some images to fit in Re:Build’s revamp.

1.6 Added Guild Alerts under Other Information. Moved the huge text of guild news into the official guild news category below to conserve space.

Guide has been rename [SUBMIT] to contest into the community rewards.

Minor editing of certain text to make it much clearer and concise. 17th January 2019 | v2.06 Debunked Repeatable Quest Details as shown in post #276

Edited Official Guild News to include the latest information (Note that the content of this topic has not been edited) 2nd October 2018 | v2.05 Added Guild Reward Box Listing. Based on hundreds of boxes that we’ve opened we’ve added the listing on the second post to indicate what Mission, Boss Raid, Special potions can be obtained from Guild Events. 1st October 2018 | v2.04 Added Mishekan Forest details thanks to @DestinedWing . 29th August 2018 | v2.03 Revised Pantorex item drops to include the missing items that weren’t there. 5th August 2018 | v2.02 Added a few more information on the drop loot sheet on the 2nd post. 1st August 2018 | v2.01 Minor adjustments on 2nd post formatting and rewards listing.

Removed further irrelevant information from the main post. 31st July 2018 | v2.00 Full Revamp of the Guide to Guilds to accommodate the current changes to the guild.

Removed all irrelevant topics and added new information. 29th June 2017 | v1.12 Guild event listing currently includes 2 different colors to indicate different rewards. Red items are practonium based items

Blue items are unique drops that the event provides please note that this is only for boss kill rewards only. 6th June 2017 | v1.11 New! Latest guild listing includes level requirement for the events, please let me know if any of them are wrong. HUGE CREDITS TO MIENZ FOR GIVING THE KOREAN SPREADSHEET! Edited guild rewards listing. As this is a highly sought information, this will be placed on top for better viewing.

Practonium itself has been found. It drops on Level 14 guild boss kill. This has been confirmed with a screenshot from the ktos thread.

After balance patch, all bosses seems to be heavily nerfed. you do not need to be incredibly geared to pass them. Level 7 guild missions and level 15 guild missions bosses have been nerfed and buff with average 7m hp as opposed to 700k and 250m per boss previously. Boss hunts at the lower level has been buffed starting from 20m hp together with hard bosses which scales with members. 20 people brings the boss up to 162m hp. Further calculation still needed, but average each person brings about 7-8m of HP for the boss. 24th April 2017 | v1.10 | Edited the reward listing to include missing bosses and rewards

Edited latest guild news. 2nd April 2017 | v1.09 | Edited the reward listing to include Manticen from @Sandu and also to confirm the Mythical Cube Recipe drops on Gosal boss kill. Required guild level 14 .

drops on boss kill. Required guild level . Edited the listing once more to include additional rewards from Giant Wood Goblin & Rocktortuga. Credits to @trielav 29th March 2017 | v1.08 | Added listing of level 15 Guild Mission: Gele Plateau 24th March 2017 | v1.07 | Edited the guild event rewards listing, credits to @Plasmagica, @trielav for helping out on the confirmed rewards.

Edited a few information on the other information category. 17th March 2017 | v1.06 | Added more information on the guild event listing based on the new content. We have confirmed the following details. Kurmis - 8 Tickets

- 8 Tickets Gosal - 10 Tickets

- 10 Tickets Naktis - 10 Tickets

- 10 Tickets Raid: Returning Crisis - 14 Tickets (Requires level 14 Guild) 13th March 2017 | v1.05 | Added Official Guild News History (This makes it easier to review previous guild contents)

Added more information on shield chargers

Tidied up the guild guide. 12th March 2017 | v1.04 | Added additional rewards of guild event listing. (Credits to 13 Apostles)

Added level 14 guild event: Demon Lord Hauberk

Added Latest official guild news below here as an easier access for official guild information.

Added Archive change log to reduce clutter on main page.

Added additional information about shield charge. 6th February 2017 | v1.03 | Added more details onto the guild reward sheet.

Added some minor information about speculations for Academy. 26th Jan 2017 | v1.02 | Added some guild event ticket information

Added Level 13 Guild Event: Yonazolem Boss Hunt 11th Jan | v1.01 | Added Guild Skills

Added Guild Storage

Added Talt level requirements. (Credits to DeGozarukun)

Added Guild Disband, Transfer Information (Credits to Shuchu)

Work in Progress - GvG / War Declarations 9th Jan | v1.00 | Completed First Post.

Official Guild News History Episode 11 Changes (Bug Fixes, Boruta Changes and new guinea egg permissions) - 13th May 2019 Patch Notes: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1709 Guild Territory War Patch - 12th Feb 2019 Patch Notes: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1619 GTW Mechanics explained by IMC

Part 1: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1615

Part 2: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1616

Part 3: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1617 Re:Build Boruta Content Update Patch - 28th Jan 2019 Read in detail in this link: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1606 Re:Build Guild Content Update Patch - 15th Jan 2019 (Guild Design Changes with new functions.) Patch Notes: https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1582

Hello everyone! My name is PrimeMinister from Telsiai and I’m the guild leader of Eminence. From many of the various people that I’ve met, there are only very few who are have knowledge about what are guilds all about. Therefore, in order to help everyone understand a little further to what guild are about, I’d like to extend my knowledge that i know so far. There are of course many benefits of joining a guild and I’ll explain them the best that i can within this thread.

If you found any sort of information that is incorrect or lacking, feel free to let me know down below.

Guild Creation

To create a guild, simply be at least Level 40 and head to the Klaipedia Master. Note that you need at least 1 million silver in order to create a guild. Once you’ve joined a guild, All your characters will automatically be placed into the guild.

He can be found in Klaipedia location at this area here. Simply talk to him and select Create a Guild and you’ll be on your way to have your own guild!

Due to changes in the nature of the Templar class in Re:Build, Guild Tower skill functions will now unlock according to guild level.This means that, even if the guild master’s team contains no Templar, increasing your guild level will allow you access to the following:

Guild Level 1 - Warp, Personal Storage, Guild Growth

Guild Level 2 - Move to Hangout

Guild Level 4 - Guild Quests

Information: For newer players, that have just joined Tree of Savior and reading this guide. Previously before a major patch on 15th January 2019, the Templar class was needed in order to access all functionalities of a guild, this requirement has since been removed and no longer valid. Any class can obtain full functionality of a guild as long as their guild continuously levels up.

There are 3 skills in total that you can increase for the guild. Here is a summary of all 3 skills.

Increasing Guild Slot - each point in this skill will expand your guild capacity by 3. The guild starts off with 50 members initially and can expand up to 95 members.

Breeding - Each point will determine the number of companions you can breed at one time in the guild hangout.

Farming - Each point will determine (skill level * 3) number of seeds you can place in the guild hangout. Each seed upon a successful harvest will yield you 50x of that seed. For example, 1 Dilgele seed upon successful harvest will provide you 50 dilgele upon harvesting it.

Joining a guild (depending on your guild level) provides everyone benefits! To summarize, here are some of the benefits you can get among joining a guild.

Able to perform farming within the guild hangout.

Able to obtain specific guild companions

Able to obtain exclusive guild reward items from guild quests.

Able to access some exclusive guild NPCs

Able to obtain some guild exclusive quests for up to 5000 attribute points weekly.

Locate parties to do dungeons, raids, and other content easily.

Earn additional 5 points for logging into the game for your class change points for being in a guild.

Able to perform guild raids that summons a boss in the guild hangout, and earning silver on a weekly basis (1m weekly, based on maximum cap of 4000 points)

Farms

Seeds can be placed / destroyed / harvested by anyone at all that have the appropriate permissions. This can be set in the guild Roles and Authorities to provide the relevant permissions for the members to use the farm.

Therefore, if you’re not able to use the hangout farm, be sure to bug the Guild Leader to provide the permissions to allow you to farm. One thing worth to note is that over-watering your plant will kill them therefore avoid that at all costs!

Planting seeds also requiring the farming skill from your guild skills. each level of the skill provides you 3 seeds to place. Therefore if you plant 3x dilgele seeds and harvest them, it’ll net you 150 dilgeles! Seeds can only be used in the Guild Hangout.

note that during maintenance time, the time will be freezed.

Companions

Similar to seeds, companions can be placed, released or obtained by anyone at all within the guild that have permissions. The difference between farming is that the person who placed the guild companion will have their name attached to the companion, however take note that anyone can still harvest the pet once it reaches maturity.

The food that it consumes before and after maturity is different. before maturity (within guild hangout) it consumes the normal companion food that can be purchased by any companion trader in any town. During the growing phase, if it dies without feeding, you will lose that pet forever. However once the pet matures, it will not die and acts like a normal companion where not feeding it will not kill the pet.

Only mountable classes are able to mount the pet. However as of this point of time, Alfafa is purchasable through the companion trader in Klaipedia / Orsha for 10k silver each. Therefore unless the pets level up, the stamina bar will always be 0. Getting a Guinea Pig gives better stats compared to the original Hoglan.

note that during maintenance time, the time will be freezed.

Guild Exclusive Quests

With the recent Re:Build update, it has brought upon a new repeatable quest that resets every week on Monday 6am server time.

The guild quest itself is extremely easy to achieve. The rewards that you receive weekly are the following. Note that you have to be above level 250 to obtain this bonus.

5x Attribute Points 1000 ( 14 days )

Goddess Statue ( 14 Days )

Miracle Seed ( 14 Days )

As shown in the image above, here are the detailed instructions on how to begin them.

Step 1: Begin any guild quest. For all participating players, you will automatically receive the quest in your quest log upon accepting the guild quest.

Note that only players who have permissions can begin the guild quest.

Step 2 : Complete the guild quest by getting the required points. There are 2 ways you can obtain points. Either by killing monsters which provide you 5 points, or complete the guild quest itself to gain 100 points. Once you’ve reached 200 points, you’ll automatically receive them upon quest completion. Note that the monsters killed inside the guild quest will only be counted.

Step 3: Get your free 5000 attribute points automatically upon finishing it! Note that it is character bound, therefore if you have a certain character you’d like to benefit for the points, be sure to use that character to receive the points accordingly.

Guild Exclusive NPCs



As part of the recent update in Re:Build, 2 new NPCs are present in the guild hangout. The NPC’s functionalities are as follows.

Expedition Merchant - Allows you to purchase items that may help / required for guild territory wars with silver.

Royal Supply Officer - Allows you to exchange items in exchange for Medal of Honor: Boruta. Obtainable by joining the Boruta Raid.

Accessing the guild storage

In order to access the guild storage, it is a fairly hidden button if you’re still new to guild mechanics. You can either press alt+G to bring up the guild menu, or find it under your quick menu on your bottom right (where all the icons are at). From there, select the storage menu and you’ll see all the items listed there.

Upon clicking the image, you should be able to open up your current guild’s storage. Do take note that only the guild leader is able to distribute all the rewards. Here’s a sample of what we have gotten so far from the guild events.

Guild Shared Storage

Guild shared storage is a new addition in Re:Build’s update. With this, you’ll have a new button in your guild menu which allows you to transfer items via a shared storage. Note that Storage and Shared Storage in the guild represents 2 different things.

To distinguish both storages, here are the explanation and uses for them.

Storage :- All guild quest rewards are placed here. No guild mileage is consumed at any point of time for withdrawal of items. You cannot deposit any items into the storage. Only the guild leader is able to distribute items in the storage.

Shared Storage:- Any item can be placed here by guild members who have permissions to do set by the guild leader. Each deposit will consume 20 Guild Mileage. Guild Mileage can be obtained via:

** - Daily Login of Members ( 3 points)

** - Participating in Guild Territory Wars ( 30 Points )

** - Clearing Guild Quest ( 15 Points )

The image below shows the shared storage button and some information about it as well highlighted in the image.

Participation in Guild Territory War and its mechanics.

IMC has pasted a very detailed guide about the Guild territory war and it’s mechanics. Therefore i’ll paste the information down below here regarding the Territory war and it’s information below.

Part 1 How to play? : -> https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1615

Part 2: Reward Info : -> https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1616

Part 3: Strategies Info :-> https://treeofsavior.com/page/news/view.php?n=1617

There are 2 types of guild events. Depending on your guild level, some of these features will not be available.

Note

All guilds now have 3 tickets to use that is refreshed on every Monday 6pm Server Time. It is highly advisable to finish all of the tickets before the week ends as each and every event will provide drops and experience to the guild.

Guild Boss Hunts - Very straightforward, heading to the location and defeat the boss.

Guild Missions - This involves a series of challenges, Depending on the type of mission, you’ll may have to destroy some points, defend some points, solve puzzles and many more.

I’ll list down the type of events that are available on the 2nd post below.

Click the link below to head there directly!

What are guilds? [v3.03] - Added Guild Territory War info(Re:Build Ready) Community Guides [guilds%20dungeon] Guild Event Box Reward Drops Boss Raid Mission Special Potions Guild Quest Reward Coin: Gold Guild Quest Reward Coin: Gold Guild Quest Reward Coin: Silver Guild Quest Reward Coin: Silver Guild Quest Reward Coin: Bronze Guild Quest Reward Coin: Bronze Monster Card Album: Black Raudonelis Seeds Recipe: Goddess Aegis Potion: Demon Practonium Gyslotis Seeds Recipe: Goddess Aegis Potion: Insect 3x Portium Alfafa Recipe: Goddess Aegis …

In order to promote your guild, there are multiple ways to do so! Currently the first and foremost is adding an emblem! The first time you register an emblem, it is free of charge, however the 2nd time onwards, there’s a 12 million silver fee. Be sure to tick the Promote Guild located below in order to ensure that your guild is advertised in the Guild Promotion!

You can find the emblem under settings for the options below.



Creating an Emblem

After you’ve created your emblem, click on register and on Open Folder to open the upload folder. Place your emblem there and click on refresh. If you’ve done it successfully, it should appear as below.



Emblems must be in PNG (32 bit) format and sized 64x64.

After registering an emblem, you will not be able to change it for another week.

The first emblem can be registered for free. Changing it consumes 12,000,000 Silver (subtracted from the guild funds).

Be sure not upload any indecent emblems or you may face suspension!

Creating a Banner Image

This will be what will be shown to the players, for example, look at the image below when someone clicks on the Guild Promo! If you’d like to know how it looks like in game, you can see a sample from here as well based on our Banner.

Creating a Cover Page

Cover pages are what will appear when a member clicks on the guild Promo. Use this to your advantage to promote your guild as this will automatically appear when a member clicks on your advertisement!

Your file can go up to 768 * 3840 in total size in PNG format.

If you’d like to view our sample, check out the link below!

Guild Funds

Within the same page, you’ll notice that there are guild funds located in the guild. Unfortunately, as of this point of time, the funds can only be used to change your emblem. The first time you register an emblem is free, however the 2nd time you’d like to change, there’s a 12 million silver fee. The fee is deducted from the guild funds.

Guild Towers

A guild tower only lasts for 7 days upon placing it. It can be obtained via the templar master and each Guild Tower costs 100,000 silvers. This can be purchased from the Templar Master in Klaipedia. If you place some seeds or rare a hamster within the period and the tower expires, the seeds and hamsters time still countdowns as normal.

Donating Talts

You can donate talts via the guild tower. Click on upgrade guild then drag the talts into the box and click upgrade guild. 1 Talt provides the guild 20 EXP.

Guild Events

All Guild Events can only be started from the Guild Tower, the Guild Master and players who hold the permission to start guild events can begin them.

Invitation to guild

You can directly invite a person to the guild by typing /guild PrimeMinister (Please note that it is case sensitive) and it will not work if the person is in a instanced dungeon.

Guild Disband Information (Credits to Shuchu)

Guild Disband: Require the Guild Leader to Kick/Remove all other guild members, and ensure the guild is not in war with any other guild(if so, need to wait exactly 7 days before the war is over - even the war is canceled in the middle of it)

Guild Leader Transfer (Credits to Shuchu)

Guild Leader Transfer: Only available from Templar to another Templar Players. Require both of them to be in a same guild and inside Guild Tower for the option of transferring leader available(right click the player name). cooldown is 7 Days for each transfer.

Additional Tips: Guild Related Addons needs to be removed for these function to be available

Guild Alert System Messages Listing

An alert message will now display on your Guild Chat whenever a guild member performs one of the following tasks: Achieves +15 enhancement on a high-level Unique or Legend equipment item.

Achieves Stage 10 transcendence on a high-level Unique or Legend equipment item.

Completes a character’s final advancement.

Achieves the maximum level on a character.

Is the first in the guild to achieve a certain value in physical/magic attack or physical/magic defense (units of 10,000).

Levels up the guild with their contribution.

Completes a guild quest.

Installs a guild tower.

Defeats another player (GvG).

Becomes incapable of combat (GvG).

Boruta Information as of Episode 11

Borutos Kapas The contribution earned from Hoarded Echoes is reduced and players can no longer earn contribution from Vengeful Fevers.

Players can choose their starting position when entering Sulivinas Lair.

Only the contribution earned by attacking Boruta will go towards Guild contribution points.

The duration of the invincibility players receive upon entering Sulivinas Lair will be reduced to 1 minute.

Players will receive a debuff that forbids them from entering Sulivinas Lair or earning contribution points upon leaving a guild that lasts for 2 weeks.

The debuff, Mark: Familiar Foe, will only be displayed while the player is in Vedas Plateau and the number displayed on the icon will be a count for how many days remain until the debuff is removed.

Players who have left their Guild prior to the May 14 scheduled maintenace will have the debuff applied to them with the correct remaining days counted from the time they had left their Guild.

The menu displayed by right-clicking on player characters will be displayed in Sulivinas Lair.

Players will automatically be teleported to Kupole Kaze after 30 seconds when becoming incapable of combat during the Borutos Kapas raid.

Entry restriction of 1 hour per day per Team will be applied for the Borutos Kapas raid.

Players will be returned to Vedas Plateau after an hour has passed since entry.

The entry times will keep running even when the player has left Sulivinas Lair after their first entry.

Invincibility buff applied to players upon entering Sulivinas Lair will be removed immediately when the player either moves or uses a skill.

Boruta will no longer recover HP every 20 minutes.

Boruta Rewards



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Not being able to sell rural voters on the importance of switching from fossil fuels to solar and wind power is Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy’s biggest regret, she said Friday.

“We tried to change the outreach and messaging in rural America in a number of ways, but … has it changed the rhetoric that people hear? It hasn’t,” McCarthy said in an interview at EPA headquarters. “We couldn’t get it, but I wish we had.”

President Barack Obama nominated McCarthy to lead the agency in 2013. Her tenure has been riddled with controversies and marred by heavy-handed regulatory maneuvers.

She implement controversial environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP) — which are viewed as job-killers in coal country — and told reporters earlier this year that she gave up talking to “climate deniers.”

“I don’t check out flat Earth society and I’m not talking to climate deniers,” she said in October. “That’s it. Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be for everybody, but my patience has worn thin over eight years.”

Republican lawmakers even demanded she resign after the EPA-caused Gold King Mine spill in 2015, a disaster that dumped nearly 3 million gallons of toxic mine wastewater ran into a Colorado river, contaminating the drinking water for thousands of people.

McCarthy’s hard-nosed regulatory scheme eventually paved the way for then-presidential nominee Donald Trump to successfully campaign in coal states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Trump campaigned throughout the election season on resuscitating the beleaguered coal industry.

The president-elect capitalized on the coal industry’s stumbles — more than 4,800 coal miners in West Virginia and Kentucky lost their jobs during the Obama administration, according to Energy Information Administration.

Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a strident EPA critic, in December to head the agency. The Sooner State Republican made no bones about his animus toward the CPP, along with the Paris agreement forged by Obama and approved by McCarthy.

McCarthy said the shift toward green energy projects would move forward despite Trump and Pruitt’s preference for fossil fuels. The new EPA chief will “come in here with policies he wants to implement and changes he wants to make,” she said.

But most of their objectives will be hampered, McCarthy added, by gains made throughout the past few years in green energy.

“These are today’s technologies not yesterday’s,” she said of solar and wind power. “These are the jobs of tomorrow, not of yesterday.”

Follow Chris on Facebook and Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.In the opening round of this Ranji Trophy season, Tamil Nadu had begun well in the second innings after being bowled out for 87 in the first dig on a greentop in Lahli. Dinesh Karthik was at the heart of his team's effort to set Mumbai a competitive target, and had begun by hitting a four and a six. But he was out trying to paddle-sweep Balwinder Sandhu, a seamer, and his dismissal triggered Tamil Nadu's collapse from 129 for 2 to 185 all out.

Mumbai nearly botched their chase of 97 and got there with only two wickets in hand. When the dust settled, Karthik's shot selection came under the scanner. At the end of the match, one of the first people Karthik sat down with for a debrief was a member of the opposition, Abhishek Nayar. Nayar, incidentally, was the calm head that had steered Mumbai through a nervy chase.

Nayar says he discussed the process and not the consequences with Karthik. "I don't focus on whether he played a good or bad shot, it's just why he played that particular shot and I try and understand that," he tells ESPNcricinfo. "I don't think he played a shot like that in the season going forward, not because I told him not to but because he understood why he could have done something else."

This wasn't just the vanquished seeking out the victor for a one-off chat. For over a year, Nayar has been Karthik's go-to man for counsel. Nayar helps Karthik with his pre-match preparation, and together, at the end of every match, they review Karthik's performance. Whenever Karthik finds time, he takes the flight to Mumbai to stay with Nayar and train with him. During the times Karthik can't be there physically, Nayar is just a phone call away. It's a unique mentor-pupil relationship between two active cricketers, who, apart from a season for Kings XI Punjab in 2011, have rarely played on the same side.

At 31, Karthik is two years younger than Nayar, and they have known each other since their Under-16 days. Karthik can't remember when he decided to approach Nayar, but they have always been good friends and so they "kind of got talking."

"A lot of times people didn't understand me that well, but I thought he really connected with me very well," Karthik tells ESPNcricinfo. "He was also in a space where he was willing to give me some time and hear me through. I can definitely say after I started talking to him I've become a much better player, a far more consistent player."

Nayar doesn't reveal the details, but says he plans specific sessions in accordance with Karthik's needs at different stages. While most of his work with Karthik during a tournament involves discussions on the cricketing side of things, their off-season preparation features physical fitness and mental conditioning.

"He normally stays with me and we plan a training programme," he says. "Then, during games, he calls me up before every game, and in the two-three days break we plan them and we plan the games as well. He likes everything to be specific and immaculate, and wants to know why we are doing a certain thing and how it will benefit him.

"During the IPL, it was about planning his innings, his mindset before the game and understanding what situations he may face, and discussing the bowlers before the game. I wasn't part of the IPL last year, so it was easy for me to watch every single game he played. Before any tournament, we focus really hard on his preparation, his programmes and what he needs to do as a build-up to the tournament."

Apart from Karthik, Nayar also assists the likes of Andhra's Srikar Bharath and Bengal's Abhimanyu Easwaran with their preparation BCCI

While Nayar can't put a name to the kind of work he does - "I just call it helping out someone" - Karthik feels "life coach" is an apt title. "For about 15 years, it's Mr Basu, who has been the Indian team's trainer, who has always been there for me," he says. "He has definitely been one of the most important persons.

"In the last 15 months, Abhishek has been a huge help. He is a lovely guy and we are very fond of each other. He and I have one thing similar - we pushed ourselves a lot more than most people would have, in different ways. He has probably pushed himself a lot more physically. I have tried to mentally push my barrier.

"He is somebody who isn't as talented as some cricketers, but he has really overachieved in terms of where he's ended up, playing for India. He was a touch unlucky sometimes not to get picked [for India], but he's had a great cricketing journey. I don't think I've given him any sort of help whatsoever. If anything, he's given away a lot of time and energy to me, but not vice-versa."

Nayar says he has always derived satisfaction helping players achieve their dreams. Making tough decisions at a young age about his cricketing career, he says, taught him understand life better. "Since a young age I have been the kind of guy who gives advice to his friends, and have taken important decisions also in my family," he says. "I have had faced a lot of difficulties growing up - there are a lot of personal things I don't want to talk about - so understanding life from my point of view and from my family's point of view kind of helped me."

Karthik says he aspires to do something like Nayar. "I'd like to be somebody who can help a lot of people and genuinely that's one of the things I want to do," he says. "I don't want to just share my experiences - that is one small aspect - but I want to hear people out and genuinely give them feedback."

Nayar says his relationship with Karthik doesn't involve financial considerations. "I am not a very money-minded person. So, it is for the love of the game and the fun of helping someone," he says.

So, is mentoring a career option for Nayar, who already runs a cricket academy in Mumbai, after his playing days are over? "I don't know, man. I haven't thought of anything right now. I never started doing it thinking Icould keep doing this later on. I do it because I enjoy it. It depends how it goes, it is going well so far and guys are doing well and very happy. As long as I can keep doing it, it doesn't matter."

Nayar also assists other players, such as Srikar Bharath of Andhra and Abhimanyu Easwaran of Bengal, in their preparation. "He's helped so many people. In the last couple of years, one big name most people know is Rohit Sharma," Karthik says. "Rohit always trains only with Abhishek. Off late, there is Shardul Thakur and Shreyas Iyer from the Mumbai team."

According to Nayar, his team-mates don't mind him helping out players from other sides as long as they are beneficiaries of his assistance as well. "For me, it doesn't matter you are playing against each other. In this game, everyone knows what each other's flaws are," he says. "If I can help someone out, so be it. It doesn't matter if he scores a hundred or a zero against us. I think helping someone out is more important."

Nayar and Karthik, though, abide by a mutual code where they don't communicate with each other before a Mumbai-Tamil Nadu game. At Lahli, they spoke only after their game concluded, and with the semi-final in progress, they haven't talked for more than a week now. On the field, though, they go hard to each other. Nayar was visibly disappointed when he beat Karthik's bat in the first innings without finding the edge.

"I think he wants to take my wicket very badly, and I definitely want to score runs off him, so that way the competitive edge is there for both of us," Karthik says.

Nayar too says he doesn't let friendship come in the way of competition. "On the field, I am playing for Mumbai and he is playing for Tamil Nadu and we are opponents," he says. "I didn't have the chance [to sledge DK during the Lahli game] because he didn't bat that long. But, next time if I am in the position and if I feel I should sledge him, I will. But, I know sledge doesn't have an impact on him."Fits any Mil-Spec AR-15 lower receiver

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The ELF Drop-In Match Trigger has been built for performance. The only AR- 15 trigger using aerospace grade sealed bearings, making for an incredibly smooth and fast trigger pull. Pull weight is so easy to adjust it can be done in seconds without removing the trigger from your lower receiver. A second-to-none AR- 15 drop-in trigger system that is strong and light, made of wire EDM machined, hardened A2 tool steel and lightweight aircraft-grade aluminum. Installation can be done in minutes using your AR’s original hammer and trigger pins. This single stage trigger is user-adjustable from 2.75 to 4 pounds pull weight. It is absolutely drop-safe regardless of pull weight.The amazingly short takeup, glass-rod crisp break and next to zero over-travel can be compared to the finest custom 1911 triggers. Adjustability puts you in charge based on your current use. If you are looking for the finest adjustable trigger for your AR-15 platform, this is the trigger system for you.Elftmann Tactical is a well-known name in the 3 gun competition community with their selection of high-quality AR-15 and AR10 aftermarket triggers. Each of their triggers come with unique features such as drop safeties, needle bearings, and much more to ensure that you get a product that can take on the competition. All their products are made in the United States of America and are backed with a lifetime guarantee. Elftmann products will continue to innovate for many years to come.Play this game with friends and other people you invite.See all your private servers in the Servers tab.Mavericks center Andrew Bogut said his days in Dallas likely won't extend beyond when his contract expires at the end of this season.

Bogut, who has been relegated by the Mavs to a full-time bench role at his request, said in a phone interview with Australia's Sky Sports Radio that it wouldn't surprise him if he were traded before February's trade deadline.

"Thankfully, I'm a free agent here, so I only have a couple of months more here and then will most likely move on," Bogut told Sky Sports. "I don't see myself hanging around with everything that's gone on. It will be an interesting six months ahead."

Asked by Sky Sports Radio whether he expected to be dealt before the Feb. 23 trade deadline, the Australian native replied, "You never know."

"I've got a valuable contract ... having four months left on my contract, I'm a valuable commodity to be moved," Bogut said.

Bogut, a 12-year veteran, was traded by the Warriors to the Mavericks in July as Golden State made room on the payroll for Kevin Durant.

Bogut will be coming off the bench for the foreseeable future due to problems the Mavericks have had playing him next to Dirk Nowitzki. Coach Rick Carlisle has said Bogut went to him last week and volunteered to come off the bench.

Bogut, 32, said earlier this week he was skeptical that he could play with Nowitzki, except for the rare occasions when the opponents uses two traditional big men.

Bogut, a former No. 1 overall pick, has started 648 of 662 games in his career.

Information from ESPN's Tim MacMahon was used in this report.Getty Images

A surprising new name has been added to the Rams’ coaching wish list: Mike Vrabel.

Vrabel, the Texans’ linebackers coach, will interview with the Rams next week, Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com reports.

Vrabel is best known to football fans for his 14-year career as a linebacker for the Steelers, Patriots and Chiefs. After retiring as a player he spent three years on the coaching staff at Ohio State, and then spent the last three years on the Texans’ staff.

Some might question whether the 41-year-old Vrabel is ready to be a head coach, as he has never even been a coordinator. But the Rams are apparently interested in hearing what he has to say. That they’re willing to wait until next week to interview him suggests that they’re taking their time about finding a new head coach and won’t hire one any time soon.Breast pumps are large, loud and often painful. The devices women use today require them to stop what they're doing every few hours in order to pump.

Willow, the first smart wearable breast pump, wants to change that.

The Silicon Valley company launched its hands-free breast pumps at CES 2017 this week. The pair of teardrop-shaped devices fits in a woman's bra and silently pumps -- no awkward tubes required.

Inside each pump is a collection bag that holds up to four ounces of milk. The three-piece system is dishwasher safe, and the batteries last for a couple days on a single charge.

John Chang, founder and CTO of Willow, told CNNMoney the product was inspired by his wife and three children.

Related: Trying to build a better breast pump

Chang hopes his product enables more women to breastfeed, because the pumps are discreet, simple to use and quiet. In trials, mothers wore them on train commutes and during conference calls.

The CDC recommends children breastfeed until they're at least 12 months, but while 81% of infants born in the U.S. start breastfeeding, just 50% of them still do at six months.

The companion app is a convenient addition to the system. It tracks the amount of milk pumped from each breast, how frequently someone pumps, and how long sessions last. Instead of having to log activity in a notebook or breast pump app, Willow does it for you.

Willow will retail for $430 when it launches this spring.

Other baby tech displayed at CES includes Snoo, an infant bed that prevents babies from rolling on their stomachs, which can put their lives at risk. Created by pediatrician and author Dr. Harvey Karp, the bassinet is made for newborns to 7-month-old babies.

An audio sensor listens for noise, and the bed automatically moves around when it hears a child start to cry. Parents can manually turn the bed on, too.

Snoo also comes with swaddling that zips up the front so the baby can keep its limbs close and comfortable while it sleeps.

It retails for $1,160 and is available now.The 50-day deadline for deposit/exchange of old notes ended on December 30.

Clarifying the government's stand on the December 30 deadline for the deposit of banned 500 and 1000-rupee notes, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had specifically said that the central bank RBI will fix "terms and conditions" for the same.Mr Jaitley made these remarks in response to a question that PM Modi, while announcing the notes ban on November 8, had said that people will have opportunity till March 31 to deposit old notes in selected Reserve Bank of India branches. "The word terms and conditions was part of the Prime Minister's address," he said on Wednesday.Claiming that "people in large number have already exchanged (notes)," Mr Jaitley said, "the RBI has fixed their own criteria...I will respect that...""There may be some who for some reason, are not able to deposit their old 500 or 1,000 rupee notes by December 30, 2016. They can go to specified offices of the Reserve Bank of India up to March 31, 2017 and deposit the notes after submitting a declaration form," PM Modi had said, in his address to the nation on November 8.In contradiction to its earlier statement, the RBI issued a statement after December 30 deadline that only Indians who were abroad during November 9 to December 30, 2016 have been given a 3-month grace period till March 31 to deposit the junked notes, while for the NRIs, it is six months till June 30.The central bank in its notification dated November 8, under the provision of exchange facility, had said, "any person who is unable to exchange or deposit the specified bank notes in their bank accounts on or before the December 30, 2016, shall be given an opportunity to do so at specified offices of the Reserve Bank or such other facility until a later date as may be specified by it".While there is no limit on deposit of defunct notes by an Indian national who was abroad when the 50-day window was in operation, NRIs can deposit only Rs 25,000 as per FEMA law restrictions.The Finance Minister, explaining the government's stand on removal of restriction on cash withdrawal, said that the RBI will remove restrictions after "assessing market situation"."Actions are taken in phases, so relaxations are also done in phases," he said.

Currently, an account holder is allowed to withdraw Rs 24,000 per week from the counters and Rs 4,500 per day from ATM.We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Venezuelans in Pacaraima, Brazil, carry rice across the border to their country. About 10,000 Venezuelans are streaming into Brazil every month in search of food and medicine, according to authorities. (Marina Lopes/For The Washington Post)

Rosibel Diaz used to affectionately call her 4-year-old son “my chubby boy.” She couldn’t stand it when he started going hungry.

So in November, Diaz packed up her family’s possessions and boarded a bus with the boy and her 11-month-old daughter to escape Venezuela’s famished interior. She now lives under a blue tarp in a trash-strewn alleyway of this Brazilian border village, where she begs for food.

“I won’t go back,” said the rail-thin mother, who lost her job as a home nursing aide four years ago. She leaned against a pole, feeding a piece of bread to the baby. “We are surviving here,” she said.

Survival for Venezuelans such as Diaz is becoming a matter of flight. About 10,000 Venezuelans are streaming into Brazil every month in search of food and medicine, authorities say, camping out on the streets and swamping government services in Amazon frontier towns ill-prepared to receive them.

Oil-rich Venezuela has been an immigrant destination for much of its history. Now it is a place to flee. Chronic food shortages, rampant violence and the erratic and often paranoid behavior of President Nicolás Maduro have turned the country’s border crossings and beaches into escape valves.





It is an exodus by land, sea and air. Venezuela’s well-to-do can leave on planes, if they haven’t already. Rickety boats ferry small groups of migrants to Curacao, Bonaire and other Caribbean islands a short distance from Venezuela’s north coast. But those numbers are dwarfed by the tens of thousands pouring into Brazil and Colombia each month — either for emergency shopping trips or long-term stays.

Venezuela’s economic meltdown and political chaos have left its neighbors fearful of a large-scale humanitarian crisis that could bring even greater numbers of needy migrants.

Every month seems to bring a new low. Maduro attempted to outlaw Venezuela’s largest ­banknote in mid-December, a measure that he said would strike at foreign powers conspiring to sabotage his socialist government. Instead, cash dried up, retail commerce froze, and Maduro suspended the move as rioting and looting erupted.

It was a reminder to the whole region that Venezuela is burning on a short fuse, and Maduro’s cash-strapped government will need a major boost in global petroleum prices to avert disaster.

“We are working with the understanding that things will get worse,” Gustavo Marrone, the highest-ranking immigration official in Brazil’s Justice Ministry, said in an interview. “The immigration issue can only be fixed when you deal with the problem at the origin, not at the ­destination.”

Maduro abruptly closed Venezuela’s border with Brazil and Colombia on multiple occasions last year, ordering the crossings reopened with just as little notice. This, too, appears to be fueling a sense of urgency among Venezuelans who opt to face precarious living conditions in neighboring countries rather than suffer the hunger and social breakdown back home.

Brazilian government services are buckling under the weight of the sudden influx of Venezuelan migrants. Their arrival has overwhelmed Roraima, a poor, sparsely populated state the size of Wyoming.

Venezuelans account for 60 percent of all hospital visits along the border, according to the Health Ministry in this northern state. Infections from sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing from the arrival of so many Venezuelan prostitutes. In December, Roraima’s governor declared a state of emergency and appealed for federal assistance to cope with the crush of ­border-crossers.

Venezuelans can enter Brazil without a visa and remain for 90 days, but even Venezuelans who don’t have passports can skirt formal checkpoints to enter the country illegally. Pacaraima is surrounded by an indigenous reserve that straddles the border, making it easy to cross into Brazil.

Almost overnight, sleepy border towns such as Pacaraima have been transformed into bustling hubs of international commerce, where makeshift supermarkets pop up selling food, medicine, soap and other goods that are hard to find in Venezuela.

[In Venezuela, buying too much food can get you arrested ]

Venezuelan shoppers crowd Pacaraima’s main street carrying plastic bags stuffed with their rapidly depreciating bolivars, looking for the best prices on 50-pound sacks of rice they can haul back across the border. Nearly every business in town — from the beauty salon to the local tourism agency — decorates its storefront with big bags of rice and sugar.

Shopkeeper Adriano Brito sells sacks of food alongside the tires and car jacks in his auto parts store. In six months, his sales have jumped from $3,000 to $25,000 a day. “I had no idea it would be so sudden,” he said.

Although some Brazilians welcome the business, many are worried that things are spiraling out of control.

“There is no security or sanitation,” said Osvaldo do Para, 55, who owns a restaurant next to the alley where Diaz and several other families live in a squatter’s camp. Tattered sheets and underwear were flapping on a clothesline a few feet from his patio tables. “I’m having to suffer the consequences of another country’s neglect of its own people,” he said.

Although they can easily enter Brazil, Venezuelans can’t work legally unless they apply for an immigration or refugee visa. Because the visas are hard to obtain, many Venezuelans have taken informal jobs selling food, cleaning car windshields at traffic lights or unloading trucks at the border. The unregulated work has heightened tensions with locals, who say they are unable to compete with the Venezuelans’ low wages.

The crisis is similar in the Colombian cities along the border with Venezuela.

Colombian authorities last year registered 6 million visits by Venezuelans crossing into their country, many of them to purchase food and other goods that have become scarce back home.

There are no formal immigration checks at the busy crossings, so Venezuelans can freely enter Colombia as tourists, and it is unknown how many aren’t going back. But Christian Kruger, Colombia’s top immigration official, said many Venezuelans are remaining in the country to work illegally. Colombian authorities reported 2,000 Venezuelans last year who were caught working without authorization, Kruger said.

But Kruger and other officials said they remain committed to an open-border policy that facilitates commerce and offers a lifeline to families who can’t find enough to eat in Venezuela.

“We can’t turn our backs on the Venezuelan people at their time of greatest need,” he said, adding that it would be logistically impossible to shut down the ­1,400-mile border between the countries, which is heavily forested and crisscrossed by smuggling trails.

Still, Kruger added, Colombian officials are preparing for the worst, and would be ready to cope with a collapse in Venezuela or a mass migration. The United Nations and international aid organizations would also be called on to help.

“Every government institution in our country knows what it has to do,” he said, including the military, police and health authorities. “We know it isn’t something that would only affect our border region. It would be the whole country.”

Miroff reported from Bogota, Colombia

Read more

Venezuela declares a 2-day workweek becuase of dire energy shortages

Venezuelans are storming supermarkets and attacking trucks as food supplies dwindle

Venezuela’s currency is so devalued it no longer fits in ordinary wallets

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign newsIt's a laptop with three screens built for gaming, a machine that claims to be the first of its kind. And it's been stolen.

California-based gaming firm Razer says two prototypes of its yet-to-be-released laptop were swiped from its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Sunday. And it's willing to pay $25,000 to find out who took them.

"Our teams worked months on end to conceptualize and develop these units," CEO Min-Liang Tan said on Facebook, describing the theft as potential industrial espionage.

"It is cheating, and cheating doesn't sit well with us," he said. "Anyone who would do this clearly isn't very smart."

Razer describes the laptop, named Project Valerie, as "a new standard for immersive entertainment." It says the device's three built-in 17-inch screens will replace the cluttered multiple-monitor setup that gamers favor.

It was unveiled at CES on Thursday, three days before the two prototypes were taken from Razer's press room at the annual tech conference, according to the company.

Razer is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for any information that leads to the identification, arrest and conviction of the thief.

"We have filed the necessary reports and are currently working with the show management as well as law enforcement to address this issue," Tan said.

The Consumer Technology Association, which produces CES, said it regretted the theft and would work with law enforcement officials and Razer.

"The security of our exhibitors, attendees and their products and materials is our highest priority," it said in a statement. "We use a wide variety of security measures at our show to combat theft.""This really doesn't change anything as it relates to our enforcement efforts. It is a matter of venue where we will see those offenses processed," the police chief said. "Up until now, cannabis and drug paraphernalia violations were filed through the Kendall County State's Attorney's Office. Now officers will be able to issue local ordinance tickets and those cases will be brought to the local adjudication process."El presidente Enrique Peña Nieto reconoció que comprende la molestia y el enojo entre los ciudadanos por el aumento del costo de la gasolina, aunque liberar su precio y dejar de aplicar un subsidio era una medida “necesaria” e “inevitable”, que a la larga ayudará a proteger la economía de las familias.

”Es sin duda esta medida una acción que nadie hubiera querido tomar”, dijo Peña este miércoles 4 de enero al apelar a la “comprensión” de los ciudadanos.

“No es una decisión fácil (…) pero es para proteger la economía de las familias, que se vería seriamente afectada si no tomamos estas medidas“, agregó. “El costo (de no actuar) sería mucho más grave y delicado”.

Peña Nieto insistió en señalar que no liberar el precio de la gasolina hubiera tenido un efecto “más doloroso” para los mexicanos, y que el aumento del costo responde al incremento en los precios internacionales del combustible.

En un discurso desde Los Pinos tras nombrar a Luis Videgaray como titular de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, el mandatario mexicano rechazó que el llamado “gasolinazo” sea un resultado de la reforma energética o hacendaria, como ha señalado la oposición.

Es la primera vez que el presidente Peña Nieto se refiere al tema del incremento en el costo de los combustibles.

El discurso

(…)

Finalmente, quisiera concluir mi mensaje, refiriéndome al tema que está hoy, sin duda, en la opinión pública y en el comentario de toda la sociedad, que se refiere al anuncio hecho por el Gobierno para incrementar el precio de las gasolinas.

Y déjenme decirles que, como Presidente de la República, comprendo la molestia y el enojo que hay entre la población en general y entre distintos sectores de nuestra sociedad.

Comparto esta molestia que acompaña, precisamente, la aplicación de esta medida.

Pero déjenme decirles que es, sin duda, esta medida, una acción que nadie hubiera querido se tomara. No es para el Gobierno de la República una decisión fácil tomar una medida como la anunciada. No es, y menos el deseo del Presidente de la República, ni de su Gobierno, el tomar una decisión como ésta.

Pero no hacerlo, y es a donde apelo a la comprensión de la sociedad, a donde apelo a que la sociedad escuche los motivos y las razones que el Gobierno ha venido exponiendo, precisamente, del por qué esta decisión que, de no haberse tomado, debo decir, sería aún más doloroso los efectos y las consecuencias.

Como lo ha explicado ampliamente en distintos foros, a través de distintos medios, el titular de la Secretaría de Hacienda, el ajuste en el precio de la gasolina no es resultado ni de la Reforma Energética, ni de la Reforma Hacendaria, ni se debe tampoco a un incremento en los impuestos.

Refleja, más bien, esta medida el aumento en los precios internacionales de la gasolina, y es una medida responsable y consistente en lo que he definido es una prioridad para mi Gobierno, que es preservar la estabilidad de la economía de nuestro país.

No hacerlo así, el costo de ello; el costo de no velar de forma prioritaria por nuestra estabilidad económica, sería aún mayor, mucho más doloroso y costoso de lo que significa la medida que se ha tomado, y que no dejaremos de explicar ampliamente, como ya ha venido siendo, y a lo que pido se preste atención y oídos de parte de la sociedad, para poder escuchar lo que el Gobierno ha querido una y otra vez compartirles qué llevó a esta definición, sin duda, dolorosa, sin duda, difícil, pero inevitable.

Y, repito; no hacerla, el costo de ello sería mucho más grave y delicado en contra de lo que es, repito, una prioridad, que es preservar nuestra estabilidad económica.

El Gobierno de la República no permitirá abusos de quienes, al amparo, precisamente, de esta medida, se excusan, cometen tropelías y pretenden, excusándose en esta medida, eventualmente incrementar o tomar decisiones de alza en precios de productos que no son justificados.

De igual manera, el Gobierno de la República está trabajando para definir medidas particulares de apoyo a los sectores más vulnerables de nuestra población.

Sé que es difícil asumirlo, pero es justamente para proteger la economía de las familias que se vería seriamente afectada si no tomamos estas medidas, por lo que se ha realizado este ajuste en el precio de las gasolinas.

Vuelvo a reiterarlo:

No hay mayor costo para una sociedad, que no ser responsables en cuidar la estabilidad de nuestra economía. Y es por ello, que todos debemos asumir el reto de este ajuste para seguir adelante.

El Gobierno de la República seguirá reuniéndose con los distintos sectores de la sociedad para explicar, para dialogar y, sobre todo, para encontrar la forma, sobre todo, de aquellos grupos más vulnerables, de poder recibir algún apoyo de parte del Gobierno.

Pero, soy reiterativo en este tema:

Esta medida que, repito, no ha sido fácil tomarla, pero es en el sentido de responsabilidad para cuidar la estabilidad de nuestra economía. Afectarla, trastocar nuestra estabilidad económica, el costo de ello, será mucho más doloroso y mayor a las medidas que se han anunciado.

Estaremos comunicando esto de forma reiterada a través de las dependencias correspondientes, y también, reuniéndome, repito, o reuniéndose áreas del Gobierno con distintos sectores de nuestra sociedad para convocarles, como desde aquí, hoy lo hago, a una comprensión, a razonar por qué la medida, y a ajustarnos a esta realidad que nos impone al final de cuentas, no un asunto del orden interno. Lo que está ocurriendo en el mundo y los precios de la gasolina en el mundo, nos han llevado a tomar esta definición consistente, repito, con el propósito y prioridad que es el de preservar la estabilidad de nuestra economía.

Por su atención, muchas gracias.

Buenas tardes a todos.

Quisiera agregar nada más, Miguel, Luis, si me lo permiten.

Le he dado indicaciones al señor Secretario de Gobernación para que, en mi representación, dé posesión formal a los dos nuevos Secretarios, ya con los equipos de trabajo de cada una de las Secretarías, se haga la presentación formal ante ellos, y transmitiendo el mensaje que hoy he compartido con la opinión pública.

Muchas gracias, nuevamente a todos.

Muy buena tarde.

Y un Feliz Año Nuevo para todas y todos ustedes.Westland police confirm to 7 Action News, the Wayne Westland Soccer League filed a police report after, sources tell us, its treasurer admitted to embezzling funds from the league’s bank account.

The amount taken, we don’t know. But it is enough that the league has had to take out an insurance claim to cover costs.

The league president did not respond to our requests for comment.

The case has been sent to the Wayne County Prosecutors Office for charges. Until then, we are not naming the treasurer accused.

When we called him, he hung up on us. We attempted to reach him at his home. His wife was there and claimed to not know anything about the accusations.

League sources say they are taking steps to make sure this does not happen again and are hopeful it won’t affect the spring season.BuzzFeed - Do Not Sell My Data

We, and our partners, use technologies to process personal information, including IP addresses, pseudonymous identifiers associated with cookies, and in some cases mobile ad IDs. This information is processed to personalize content based on your interests, run and optimize marketing campaigns, measure the performance of ads and content, and derive insights about the audiences who engage with ads and content. This data is an integral part of how we operate our site, make revenue to support our staff, and generate relevant content for our audience. You can learn more about our data collection and use practices in our Privacy Policy.

If you wish to request that your personal information is not shared with third parties, please click on the below opt out button. Please note that after your opt out request is processed, we may still collect your information in order to operate our site.From the autumn of 2015 through the end of Donald Trump’s vulgar, violence-invoking, free-speech-threatening ascent to the presidency, a broad swath of America’s chattering classes and upscale college alumni consumed itself in denouncing something different. Instead of taking alarm at Trump's many breathtaking threats to quash freedoms of dissent, the chorus of conventional wisdom panicked about the “creeping totalitarianism” that former Harvard President Lawrence Summers warned was being insinuated into American life by sanctimonious liberal college students and campus elders and by recent graduates in the media and government.

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It was a massive, almost desperately determined avoidance of facing what was actually threatening our freedoms.

The year-long public paroxysm over the scourge of racial and sexual political correctness was ignited in September, 2015 by "The Coddling of the American Mind," a widely read essay with a scarifying subtitle: “In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education — and mental health.”

The public psychodrama climaxed 14 months later with Mark Lilla's "The End of Identity Liberalism," which blamed Trump’s “repugnant” victory primarily on a condescending, censorious liberalism that privileges racial and sexual identities which many Trump supporters viewed as marginal, deviant and worse. Liberals had forced “diversity” down Americans’ throats; now, "real" Americans would vomit it back out.

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The “Coddling” and “Identity Liberalism” articles became book ends for what Greg Lukianoff, co-author of the former and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — an organization supported by right-wing funders, as I reported here — celebrated as “an epic year” for their brilliantly orchestrated crusade to blame politically correct parenting and pedagogy for asphyxiating free speech and other rights in education and, by extension, in public life. That crusade was reinforced by some breast-beating liberals, and it was hijacked by opportunists such as Trump himself.

To be sure, liberal “identity politics” has sometimes thwarted the open inquiry and expression that liberal education and democracy should defend, and it has sometimes diverted effective responses to the serious threats to freedom that are now upon us; As the author of "Liberal Racism," I've long warned against such political correctness.

But during the campus free-speech crusade's “epic year," Lukianoff and his co-author, the business psychologist Jonathan Haidt, scurried like itinerant preachers from campuses to green rooms and lecture halls across the country, brandishing First Amendment claims and professions of academic heterodoxy while casting college students and deans as the most dire threats to open inquiry and expression.

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Many journalists joined the crusaders in prowling campuses with video-cams and open notebooks to construct what Yale President Peter Salovey, in an address to freshmen this September, assailed as “false narratives” about threats to freedom of speech on campuses. Although Salovey didn’t mention anyone by name, he surely had in mind some of the tall tales about brave students and professors being silenced and martyred on altars of free speech by politically correct hordes.

Even as growing public awareness of murders of unarmed black men (by police, vigilantes, other black men (and, in my view, by National Rifle Association lobbyists against reasonable gun-control) spurred the Black Lives Matter movement and introduced justified racial activism into the supposed self-indulgence of campus protests, millions of Americans remained fixated on a video Lukianoff had shot of a 20-year-old black student hurling imprecations at a professor and on others’ characterizations of black college students as “privileged.”

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By the time Trump joined in denouncing political correctness — even while abusing his own freedoms of speech to humiliate and silence others and encouraging supporters to do likewise — the crusade against identity politics was all-too obviously diverting effective public responses from the real danger at hand.

Now the unfolding horror show of Trump’s transition to the presidency is revealing political correctness to have been only one symptom, among others far more virulent, of the wide-ranging corruption of American public discourse and politics. Those who are still gloating over liberals’ comeuppance and who think Trump has expanded their freedoms of speech by speaking his mind about smug liberals will soon find themselves gulping instead of speaking their own minds about, say, Trump’s collaborations with cronies on Wall Street or with Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, or about his promised crack-downs on freedoms of the press and of speech, and his likely moves to roll back public and private-workplace rights and benefits and to abrogate judicial and congressional checks and balances.

In the cold light of 2017's dawn, the passing year's “free speech” crusade looks a lot like other paroxysms that have gripped American upper-middle classes whenever civil society has been under great stress. At such times, self-appointed keepers of conventional wisdom have ginned up public paroxysms of alarm and rage at selected internal enemies whom they blame for the crisis.

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In the 1690s, it was witches, hysterical women and girls whom Puritans said had been taken by Satan. From the 1840s, it was Catholic immigrants, whom a spokesman for Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine in 1884 said were besotted with “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” In the 1920s, it was anarchists, Reds, and unwashed immigrants, including pushy Hebrews. In the 1950s, it was American Communist spies for Stalin, the Satan of that time. In the 1960s, it was hippies and traitorous opponents of the Vietnam War. Since 2001, it has been American Muslims and, in 2003, critics of the Iraq War. And, of course, in every decade before and since, it has been feral, riotous blacks.

This sorry progression of scapegoating should have warned otherwise-intelligent people against the "free speech on campus" crusade and other recent stampedes against scapegoats. Yet many of the same pundits and propagandists who've crusaded for “free speech” this year also sneered at Ned Lamont's campaign of 2006 against Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a champion of the Iraq War; they also lambasted the political psychologist Drew Westen for wondering, “What Happened to Obama's Passion?," in his column accusing the president, quite fairly I think, of deferring too much to government shut-down artists during the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis.

Some of the same critics disparaged Occupy Wall Street protestors who forced a public reckoning with this country’s increasingly illegitimate and unsustainable inequalities. Even as these same critics bewailed political correctness this year, they found time and reasons to assail Bernie Sanders’ campaign against those illegitimate inequalities.

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No matter whether such spasms against internal dissent are orchestrated impulsively and demagogically or coolly and strategically, they always egg on many who are fretting that the society they’ve made their peace with is unravelling and who want someone “safe” to blame.

Always, these crusades also draw some support from breast-beating, finger-wagging liberals (Mark Lilla now prominent among them) who hope to stave off the worst by condemning whatever's most noxious on their own side of the spectrum. Twice this year, professors at small, leafy, upscale undergraduate residential colleges told me that political correctness is much worse than I’d reported. No doubt, they were right about their colleges. But they let their local grievances eclipse the larger dangers gathering force beyond their campus gates. And some journalists let their own ambivalences about college skew their assignations of blame.

Now, though, with Trump’s inauguration impending, the conventional-wisdom keepers’ “epic year” may have been their last hurrah. No longer is there much seductive, thrilling relief in assailing “cry-bullies,” teenaged “snowflakes” and “smug liberals.”

No longer can this year’s paroxysm help the crusaders to shrug off their earlier paroxysms during the run-up to the Iraq War, whose opponents they harassed in 2003; or during the 2008 financial meltdown, whose most-powerful perpetrators they excused in a frenzy to blame public-sector accomplices; or the government shutdown efforts of 2011 that they contrived to blame on those like Westen who were pleading with Obama to rouse the public against a do-nothing Congress.

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They won't be able to keep on blaming such scapegoats for the casino-like financing, predatory lending and intrusive, degrading consumer marketing that are really causing our crises.

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a’prey, when wealth accumulates and men decay,” wrote Oliver Goldsmith in 1777. “You can't build a clear conservatism out of capitalism, because capitalism disrupts culture," Sam Tanenhaus, the biographer of the conservative icon Whittaker Chambers and, soon, of William F. Buckley, told a less-than-receptive audience the conservative American Enterprise Institute in 2007.

True, today’s turbo-capitalism isn’t the only danger. Greed, the lust for power, tyrannical empires and technological upheavals were part of human history long before there was capitalism. One might argue that there has always been a festering hole in every civilization’s soul.

But today's capital is deepening the hole because it's less entrepreneurial than it is ensnaring, trapping us like flies in a spider's web of 800-numbered, sticky-fingered pick-pocketing and surveillance machines.

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Why not direct the next crusade against those creeping threats to our liberties? The dispiriting answer lies in stampedes like the one for campus "free speech" that abetted Trump's triumph instead of advancing Americans' freedoms.Epic PVP battles, hundreds of unique creatures and tactical intelligence await you in this amazing collectible card game. Summon your powerful cards in a 3x3 board, pay attention to the strength and skills of all creatures and try to destroy your opponent's moves.

Click to expand...Newslink: God Banned By Facebook For Wanting Healthcare and Education

Apparently God's account on Facebook got an 30-day ban for posting a message to Americans to “stop making your military so damn huge and give people medicine.” Considering the junk Facebook keeps I'm not that shocked that they suspend influential accounts like this one, the page has almost 3,200,000 likes. I think God needs to join a new social media like Steemit. Newslink: https://www.good.is/articles/facebook-bans-godIs former All-Pro receiver Wes Welker headed from the playing field to the coaching ranks?

According to a report from 247Sports, Welker was in Knoxville on Monday — presumably meeting with head coach Butch Jones to discuss potentially joining the coaching staff.

Welker last played for the St. Louis (now Los Angeles) Rams in 2015. A former walk-on at Texas Tech, he turned into a fantastic professional.

He went from being an undrafted free agent and developed into a five-time Pro Bowler, and one of the best pass-catchers in his generation.

With the offensive coordinator position currently vacant, wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni or tight ends coach/special teams coordinator Larry Scott could be promoted.

If this scenario unfolds, Welker could get a job as an assistant. You have to think Welker would make for an excellent receiver coach on Rocky Top.Questions surrounding Sean Payton's future as the coach of the Saints disappeared in a hurry after Payton made it clear Monday that he wants to remain in New Orleans.. The same cannot be said for Drew Brees' future with the Saints.

On Monday, Brees said that he doesn't want to sign a contract extension with the Saints this offseason. Instead, he wants to play out the final year of his deal with the team in 2017.

"Listen, so I signed a one-year extension, so that was this year and then next year," Brees said, per Nola.com. "And so I plan on playing that out and just allowing things to take form and take shape here for next year and putting forth my absolute best effort to help us win a division championship and then a world championship.

"And then, again, just one year at a time, and that's not a lack of commitment or anything like that. It's just, I just want to focus on what's right in front of me."

As Brees himself indicated, that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to leave New Orleans or retire after the 2017 season. But when you combine that quote above with the quote below, you can definitely envision a scenario that doesn't involve Brees playing football in New Orleans after next year.

Brees in our @CoxSportsTV 1on1: "not sure how much longer I can do this, tired of saying next year, next year" #saints — Mike Nabors (@MikeNabors) January 2, 2017

That can be taken a few different ways. One, Brees could be contemplating retirement -- after all, he'll turn 38 this month. Two, Brees might want to switch teams so that he's not stuck on the Saints, who have finished 7-9 in three straight seasons. Three, Brees might've just been emotionally drained at the end of another disappointing year when he made those remarks.

Maybe we're just reading too deeply into his comments, because Brees emphasized that he's not thinking too far ahead.

"I'm just taking it one year at a time, honestly, because I certainly don't want to miss out," he said. "I don't want to overlook any opportunity. I don't want to miss out on any just moment, and I understand that I'm more toward the end of my career than I am the beginning and so time is limited. I can't tell you how long that's going to be.

"I just want to make the most of each moment, each opportunity, each season and don't look any further ahead than just what's right in front of me, and just value that so it doesn't go by too fast."

If he were to hit free agency in a year, he'd likely have plenty of suitors. Despite his age and the Saints' futility, Brees experienced another stellar season, completing 70 percent of his passes for 5,208 yards, 37 touchdowns, 15 picks, and a 101.7 passer rating.Since opening in 2015, Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People, has served as a vital cross-river connection for bus, MAX and streetcar riders, as well as pedestrians and bicyclists. The bridge, which has no car traffic and does not need to lift for ships and boats to pass under it, is the preferred river crossing for the project. Using Tilikum Crossing, the project will provide a transit link for a regional educational corridor, connecting Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland Community College and Mount Hood Community College. This alignment also enables the project to utilize the transit-exclusive route from SE 8th Avenue and Division to SW Naito Parkway. TriMet continues to work with Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) to further reduce UPRR train delays and improve travel reliability at the intersection of SE 8th Avenue.

River Crossing Fact Sheet PDFEnter the characters you see below

Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies.The Senate rejected an alternative budget proposal from Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Tax March - CDC in limbo on J&J vax verdict; Rep. Brady retiring Anti-Asian hate crimes bill overcomes first Senate hurdle Fauci on Tucker Carlson vaccine comments: 'Typical crazy conspiracy theory' MORE (R-Ky.) on Monday.

Senators voted 14-83 against Paul's balanced budget measure aimed at overhauling legislation that is being used to pave the way to repeal ObamaCare.

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The measure would have balanced the budget over roughly five years but retain the guidelines for nixing the Affordable Care Act.

Paul pitched his spending measure ahead of the vote as a "conservative budget" that could still appeal to senators in both parties.

"I think there's something in my version of a budget for both Republicans and Democrats because mine calls for a freeze in spending, but would allow the different appropriations committees to decide where the spending would be cut," he said.

The Senate is expected to pass the shell budget this week, which includes repeal instructions, with a marathon voting session tentatively expected for Wednesday.

Republicans need 50 votes to clear the resolution. With Paul expected to vote against, it they can only afford to lose one additional GOP senator.

"I will not support him, because I understand that the cuts that he is proposing are devastating to working families, to the elderly, to the children, to the sick and the poor," he said. "But all my Republican friends who year after year talk about the deficit, here's a vote that you should cast."It’s that time of the month! Evan Dandrea put together a selection of top ten snaps written in December.

To recap for those of you that may not know, snaps are a new way for developers to package their apps, bringing with it many advantages over the more traditional package formats such as .deb, .rpm, and others. They are secure, isolated and allow apps to be rolled back should an issue occur. Snaps really are the future of Linux application packaging.

Our list this month contains a mix from the ultimate media downloader to a Twitter snap!

1. TeaTime A simple egg-timer type application to time your teas. 2. Ultimate media downloader A Gui based video audio downloader which support download media from various sites.

3. Anatine This app is based on the Mobile Twitter site, with modifications but more usable on desktop. 4. Unison-jz Unison is a file-synchronization tool. 5. Pingus-game Pingus is a free clone of the popular Lemmings game. 6. Syncthing Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. 7. Minetest A minecraft-inspired game written from scratch and licensed under the LGPL 8. qcheckers Checkers game written in QML for all Ubuntu Devices 9. Quassel-webserver – only in edge: snap install –edge quassel-webserver) 10. Micro A modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor. Available in the beta channel, so snap install –beta micro

Happy snapping! And learn more at Snapcraft.Israel’s second-largest Arab city asked the Culture Ministry to ban the screening of a new film about a conservative Muslim woman who gets swept up in the liberal lifestyle of Arabs in Tel Aviv.

On Sunday, the cultural arm of Umm al-Fahm’s city hall wrote a letter to the Culture Ministry, asking that the movie “In Between” — which premiered on January 5 — be removed from all Israeli theaters.

“In Between” (in Arabic “Bar Bahar” and in Hebrew “Lo Po Vi Lo Sham”) tells the story of a young, religious Muslim woman who moves to Israel’s fast-moving coastal city, becoming the roommate of two secular, party-loving Arab women — a criminal defense lawyer originally from Nazareth whose family is secular Muslim, and a DJ from a Christian family.

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In the letter to the ministry, the municipality argued the film is “propaganda” that “distorts the traditional, conservative, and religious lifestyle in Arab society.”

It further argued the film “in its essence is offensive, is offensive to the religion of Islam and to the residents of Umm al-Fahm in particular.”

The letter to the municipality was co-signed by the Islamic Council, the most senior Muslim body in Israel.

https://youtu.be/fPiVZj8Mm7o

Umm al-Fahm, a conservative Muslim town where Israel’s Islamic Movement is based, asked its residents to boycott the film in a Facebook message.

The movie, directed by Maysaloun Hamoud, offers a rare glimpse for Israelis into the lives of Arabs in Tel Aviv.

While Umm al-Fahm city hall is not a fan of “In Between,” Hamoud’s film has already garnered a number of international awards, including one at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, three more at the 2016 San Sebastian Film Festival and one at the 2016 Haifa Film Festival.Intro

word2vec is an algorithm that transforms words into vectors, so that words with similar meaning end up laying close to each other. Moreover, it allows us to use vector arithmetics to work with analogies, for example the famous king - man + woman = queen .

I will try to explain how it works, with special emphasis on the meaning of vector differences, at the same time omitting as many technicalities as possible.

If you would rather explore than read, here is an interactive exploration by my mentee Julia Bazińska, now a freshman of computer science at the University of Warsaw:

Word2viz by using GloVe pre-trained vectors (it takes 30MB to load - please be patient)

Counts, coincidences and meaning

I love letter co-occurrence in the word co-occurrence.

Sometimes a seemingly naive technique gives powerful results. It turns out that merely looking at word coincidences, while ignoring all grammar and context, can provide us insight into the meaning of a word. Consider this sentence:

A small, fluffy roosety climbed a tree.

What’s a roosety? I would say that something like a squirrel, since the two words can be easily interchanged. Such reasoning is called the distributional hypothesis and can be summarized as:

a word is characterized by the company it keeps - John Rupert Firth

If we want to teach it to a computer, the simplest, approximated approach is making it look only at word pairs. Let P(a|b) be the conditional probability that given a word b there is a word a within a short distance (let’s say - being spaced by no more that 2 words). Then we claim that two words a and b are similar if

\[P(w|a) = P(w|b)\]

for every word w. In other words, if we have this equality, no matter if there is word a or b, all other words occur with the same frequency.

Even simple word counts, compared by source, can give interesting results, e.g. that in lyrics of metal songs words (cries, eternity or ashes are popular, while words particularly or approximately are not, well, particularly common), see Heavy Metal and Natural Language Processing. See also Gender Roles with Text Mining and N-grams by Julia Silge.

Looking at co-occurrences can provide much more information. For example, one of my projects, TagOverflow, gives insight into structure of programming, based only on the usage of tags on Stack Overflow. It also shows that I am in love with pointwise mutual information, which brings us to the next point.

Pointwise mutual information and compression

The Compressors: View cognition as compression. Compressed sensing, approximate matrix factorization - The (n) Cultures of Machine Learning - HN discussion

In principle, we can compute P(a|b) for every word pair. But even with a small dictionary of 100 000 words (bear in mind that we need to keep all declinations, proper names and things which are not in official dictionaries, yet are in use) keeping track of all pairs would require 8 gigabytes of space.

Often instead of working with conditional probabilities, we use the pointwise mutual information (PMI), defined as:

\[PMI(a, b) = \log \left[ \frac{P(a,b)}{P(a)P(b)} \right] = \log \left[ \frac{P(a|b)}{P(a)} \right].\]

Its direct interpretation is how much more likely we get a pair than if it were at random. The logarithm makes it easier to work with words appearing at frequencies of different orders of magnitude. We can approximate PMI as a scalar product:

\[PMI(a, b) = \vec{v}_a \cdot \vec{v}_b,\]

where \(\vec{v}_i\) are vectors, typically of 50-300 dimensions.

At the first glance it may be strange that all words can be compressed to a space of much smaller dimensionality. But there are words that can be trivially interchanged (e.g. John to Peter) and there is a lot of structure in general.

The fact that this compression is lossy may give it an advantage, as it can discover patterns rather than only memorize each pair. For example, in recommendation systems for movie ratings, each rating is approximated by a scalar product of two vectors - a movie’s content and a user’s preference. This is used to predict scores for as yet unseen movies, see Matrix Factorization with TensorFlow - Katherine Bailey.

Word similarity and vector closeness

Stock Market ≈ Thermometer - Five crazy abstractions my word2vec model just did

Let us start with the simple stuff - showing word similarity in a vector space. The condition that \(P(w \vert a)=P(w \vert b)\) is equivalent to

\[PMI(w, a) = PMI(w, b),\]

by dividing both sides by P(w) and taking their logarithms. After expressing PMI with vector products, we get

\[\vec{v}_w \cdot \vec{v}_a = \vec{v}_w \cdot \vec{v}_b\] \[\vec{v}_w \cdot \left( \vec{v}_a - \vec{v}_b \right) = 0\]

If it needs to work for every \(\vec{v}_w\), then

\[\vec{v}_a = \vec{v}_b.\]

Of course, in every practical case we won’t get an exact equality, just words being close to each other. Words close in this space are often synonyms (e.g. happy and delighted), antonyms (e.g. good and evil) or other easily interchangeable words (e.g. yellow and blue). In particular most of opposing ideas (e.g. religion and atheism) will have similar context. If you want to play with that, look at this word2sense phrase search.

What I find much more interesting is that words form a linear space. In particular, a zero vector represent a totally uncharacteristic word, occurring with every other word at the random chance level (as its scalar product with every word is zero, so is its PMI).

It is one of the reasons why for vector similarity people often use cosine distance, i.e.

\[\frac{\vec{v}_a \cdot \vec{v}_b}{\vert \vec{v}_a \vert \vert \vec{v}_b \vert}.\]

That is, it puts emphasis on the direction in which a given word co-occurs with other words, rather than the strength of this effect.

Analogies and linear space

If we want to make word analogies (a is to b is as A is to B), one may argue that in can be expressed as an equality of conditional probability ratios

\[\frac{P(w|a)}{P(w|b)} = \frac{P(w|A)}{P(w|B)}\]

for every word w. Sure, it looks (and is!) a questionable assumption, but it is still the best thing we can do with conditional probability. I will not try defending this formulation - I will show its equivalent formulations.

For example, if we want to say dog is to puppy as cat is to kitten, we expect that if e.g. word nice co-occurs with both dog and cat (likely with different frequencies), then it co-occurs with puppy and kitten by the same factor. It appears it is true, with the factor of two favoring the cubs - compare pairs to words from Google Books Ngram Viewer (while n-grams look only at adjacent words, they can be some sort of approximation).

By proposing ratios for word analogies we implicitly assume that the probabilities of words can be factorized with respect to different dimensions of a word. For the discussed case it would be:

\[P(w\vert dog) = f(w\vert species=dog) \times f(w\vert age=adult) \times P(w\vert is\_a\_pet) \\ P(w\vert puppy) = f(w\vert species=dog) \times f(w\vert age=cub) \times P(w\vert is\_a\_pet) \\ P(w\vert cat) = f(w\vert species=cat) \times f(w\vert age=adult) \times P(w\vert is\_a\_pet) \\ P(w\vert kitten) = f(w\vert species=cat) \times f(w\vert age=cub) \times P(w\vert is\_a\_pet)\]

So, in particular:

\[\frac{P(w|dog)}{P(w|puppy)} = \frac{f(w\vert age=adult)}{f(w\vert age=cub)} = \frac{P(w|cat)}{P(w|kitten)}.\]

How does the equality of conditional probability ratios translate to the word vectors? If we express it as mutual information (again, P(w) and logarithms) we get

\[\vec{v}_w \cdot \vec{v}_a - \vec{v}_w \cdot \vec{v}_b = \vec{v}_w \cdot \vec{v}_A - \vec{v}_w \cdot \vec{v}_B,\]

which is the same as

\[\vec{v}_w \cdot \left( \vec{v}_a - \vec{v}_b - \vec{v}_A + \vec{v}_B \right) = 0.\]

Again, if we want it to hold for any word w, this vector difference needs to be zero.

We can use analogies for meaning (e.g. changing gender with vectors), grammar (e.g. changing tenses) or other analogies (e.g. cities into their zip codes). It seems that analogies are not only a computational trick - we may actually use them to think all the time, see:

Differences and projections

woman - man = female - male = she - he , so wo = fe = s (a joke)

Difference of words vectors, like

\[\vec{v}_{she} - \vec{v}_{he}\]

are not words vectors by themselves. However, it is interesting to project a word on this axis. We can see that the projection

\[\vec{v}_w \cdot \left( \vec{v}_a - \vec{v}_b \right) = \log\left[ P(w|a) \right] - \log\left[ P(w|b) \right]\]

is exactly a relative occurrence of a word within different contexts.

Bear in mind that when we want to look at common aspects of a word it is more natural to average two vectors rather than take their sum. While people use it interchangeably, it only works because cosine distance ignores the absolute vector length. So, for a gender neutral pronoun use \((\vec{v}_{she} + \vec{v}_{he})/2\) rather than their sum.

Just looking at the word co-locations can give interesting results, look at these artistic projects - Word Spectrum and Word Associations from Visualizing Google’s Bi-Gram Data by Chris Harrison.

I want to play!

If you want explore, there is Word2viz by Julia Bazińska. You can choose between one of several pre-defined plots, or create one from scratch (choosing words and projections). I’ve just realized that Google Research released a tool for that as well: Open sourcing the Embedding Projector: a tool for visualizing high dimensional data - Google Research blog (and the actual live demo: Embedding Projector).

If you want to use pre-trained vectors, see Stanford GloVe or Google word2vec download sections. Some examples in Jupyter Notebooks are in our playground github.com/lamyiowce/word2viz (warning: raw state, look at them at your own risk).

If you want to train it on your own dataset, use a Python library gensim: Topic modelling for humans. Often some preprocessing is needed, especially look at Sense2vec with spaCy and Gensim by Matthew Honnibal.

If you want to create it from scratch, the most convenient way is to start with Vector Representations of Words - TensorFlow Tutorial (see also a respective Jupyter Notebook from Udacity Course).

If you want to learn how it works, I recommend the following materials:

Julia Bazińska, at the rooftop garden of the Warsaw University Library - the building in which we worked

Technicalities

I tried to give some insight into algorithms transforming words into vectors. Every practical approach needs a bit more tweaking. Here are a few clarifications:

word2vec is not a single task or algorithm; popular ones are: Skip-Gram Negative-Sampling (implicit compression of PMI), Skip-Gram Noise-Contrastive Training (implicit compression of conditional probability), GloVe (explicit compression of co-occurrences),

while word and context are essentially the same thing (both are words), they are being probed and treated differently (to account for different word frequencies),

there are two sets of vectors (each word has two vectors, one for word and the other - for context),

as any practical dataset of occurrences would contain PMI \(-\infty\) for some pairs, in most cases positive pointwise mutual information (PPMI) is being used instead,

often pre-processing is needed (e.g. to catch phrases like machine learning or to distinguish words with two separate meanings),

linear space of meaning is a disputed concept,

all results are a function of the data we used to feed our algorithm, not objective truth; so it is easy to get stereotypes like doctor - man + woman = nurse .

For further reading I recommend:

Some backstory

I got interested in word2vec and related techniques for my general interest in machine learning and for my general appreciations of:

matrix factorization,

pointwise mutual information,

conceptual metaphors,

simple techniques mimicking human cognition.

I had an motivation to learn more on the subject as I was tutoring Julia Bazińska during a two-week summer internship at DELab, University of Warsaw, supported by the Polish Children’s Fund. See also my blog posts:

Thanks

This draft benefited from feedback from Grzegorz Uriasz (what’s simple and what isn’t), Sarah Martin (readability and grammar remarks). I want to especially thank Levy Omer for pointing to weak points (and shady assumptions) of word vector arithmetics.

EDIT

It got some popularity, including ~20k views in the first day, and being tweeted by the authors of GloVe at Stanford and Kaggle.

Though, what I like the most is to see how people interact with it:The London Knights have announced that the team has completed two trades. The Knights will acquire forward Dante Salituro from the Ottawa 67’s as well as defenseman Mitchell Vande Sompel from the Oshawa Generals. See below for the full details of the trades.

Salituro, a Willowdale, Ontario native will come to the Knights after spending time in the American Hockey League this season. The quick and skilled forward is currently property of the Columbus Blue Jackets, after signing as a free agent last offseason.

Vande Sompel will return to his hometown to play for the Knights as the quick, intelligent defenseman was born and raised in London. Vande Sompel, who currently sits third in defenseman scoring, was drafted by the New York Islanders in the third round of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.

To London

Dante Salituro

Ottawa 8th Round Selection in 2021 OHL Priority Selection

To Ottawa

Chris Martenet

London 2 nd Round Selection in 2021 OHL Priority Selection

Round Selection in 2021 OHL Priority Selection Oshawa 3 rd Round Selection in 2018 OHL Priority Selection

Round Selection in 2018 OHL Priority Selection London 15th Round Selection in 2021 OHL Priority Selection

—

To London

Mitchell Vande Sompel

To Oshawa

Ian Blacker

London 2 nd Round Selection in 2017 OHL Priority Selection

Round Selection in 2017 OHL Priority Selection Sudbury 2 nd Round Selection in 2019 OHL Priority Selection

Round Selection in 2019 OHL Priority Selection London 3 rd Round Selection in 2018 OHL Priority Selection

Round Selection in 2018 OHL Priority Selection Conditional London 3rd Round Selection in 2024 OHL Priority Selection

Dante Salituro Right Wing Born: November 11, 1996 – Willowdale, ON Height – 5.09 Weight 175lbs – Shoots R Season Team League GP G A PTS PIM 2016-17 Cleveland Monsters AHL 5 1 0 1 2 2015-16 Ottawa 67’s OHL 65 38 45 83 55 2014-15 Ottawa 67’s OHL 68 37 41 78 38 2013-14 Ottawa 67’s OHL 68 22 37 59 76 2012-13 Ottawa 67’s OHL 64 14 26 40 56According to a new Gallup poll, Americans are continuing their steady march away from organized religion. Almost 49 percent of those polled identify as Protestant or some other Christian affiliation, but less and less people are openly identifying as “Christian,” the poll found.

The dominance of Christianity in the U.S. is not new, but it has changed over time. The U.S. has seen an increase in those with no formal religious identity (sometimes called "nones") and a related decrease in those identifying with a Christian religion. Since 2008, when Gallup began tracking religion on its daily survey, the "nones" have increased by six percentage points, while those identifying as Christian have decreased by six points. The 5% who identify with a non-Christian religion has stayed constant.

However, it’s not just organized Christianity in America that is taking the hit.

The most significant trend in Americans' religiosity in recent decades has been the growing shift away from formal or official religion. About one in five U.S. adults (21%) don't have a formal religious identity. This represents a major change from the late 1940s and 1950s when only 2% to 3% of Americans did not report a formal religious identity when asked about it in Gallup surveys. The increase in those claiming no religious identity began in the 1970s, with the percentage crossing the 10% threshold in 1990 and climbing into the teens in the 2000s.

This was true for Muslims and Jews in their claimed affiliations with a mosque or synagogue. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Americans are less “religious.” There has only been a slight decline in people saying that religion is important in their lives. It’s the organized practice and direction that seems to be waning. A telling find here is that seven out of ten people felt that religion was having less of an influence on American life. Since Gallup has been conducting this poll, the perceptions of religious influence on American life fluctuate and seem to have more political origins than spiritual ones.

The connection between religion and politics manifested itself in the presidential election this fall. Exit poll data showed that among those who reported attending religious services weekly, 55% voted for Donald Trump and 41% voted for Hillary Clinton. Among those who never attend religious services, 62% voted for Clinton and 30% voted for Trump.

The good news is that evangelicals have been telling me that Donald Trump is the vessel of God. The three times married, fornicator and practicer of at least six of the seven deadly sins is here to bring us all into the light.Heavy smog shrouds buildings on January 1, 2017 in Beijing, China. VCG | Getty Images

Choking smog continued to blanket a vast area of the mainland, disrupting schools and traffic on the second day of the new year. Nine provinces and municipalities in the northern and central regions, including the area comprising Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei as well as Shan­dong, Shaanxi and Henan provinces, were engulfed by heavy air pollution. After pollution made Beijing's air quality index (AQI) fly off the chart on the first day of the new year, residents got to breathe less toxic air for only a few hours before conditions got worse again on Monday night, according to the national meteorological agency.

Beijing recorded an AQI close to or above 500, the top of the scale, on Sunday. Cold air helped disperse the smog on Monday morning, but the effect was short lived. The capital raised its orange alert for air pollution on December 30 and has extended it until Wednesday. An orange alert is the second-highest level on a four-tier warning system. Heavily polluting vehicles and trucks carrying construction waste are banned from roads and some manufacturing firms have cut production. More from the South China Morning Post :

What exactly is causing China's toxic smog?

China's smog knocks 2 years off life expectancy: International Energy Agency

China's smog-hit residents willing to pay over US$30 for 'bottled fresh air'

The pollution disrupted traffic over the three-day New Year's holiday. The toll station near the capital on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau expressway reported numerous stationary vehicles, making the highway around the station look like a car park. Several highways in Henan were closed due to low visibility, which had dropped down to as ­little as 50 metres in some parts of the province. Kindergartens, middle and primary schools in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, were to be closed today. Similar measures were taken in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province.Search

Your search did not match any objects.In the animal kingdom, cats are the most popular animals these days, no doubt about that. They’re awesome, soft, elegant, and majestic. So, is there anything out there that could possibly make them cooler? The answer is – vampire teeth! Meet Monkey (Monk for short), the absolutely adorable kitten with long vampire teeth, that somehow make him look even cuter. Monkey’s human, Nicole Rienzie, found him stranded on the streets, alone and scared. She took him into her own home, cured him, and since then these two are inseparable. If you find this “vampire cat” adorable, make sure to follow him on Instagram here.

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He sometimes hides his teeth.

“I’ll feast on your blood, human!”

He’s not dangerous, though.

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Although he sometimes looks scary!

But he’s just any other cat.

Adorable.

Beautiful little vampire!

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Look at those cute teeth!The 23-year-old took his first two wins in the category last season in the same car on his way to 10th in the overall points, and he landed fourth place in the Independents Trophy.

"We made tremendous progress last season, and to win our first race together in the very first round was an incredible achievement," explained Ingram.

"Our qualifying pace was superb and our race pace was equally strong.

"I don't see anybody else in our position and with our level of resources doing a better job out there.

"It's vital in the BTCC to make hay on the good days and make the most of the bad days - but last year, our bad days were very, very bad.

"In nine of the 30 races, we didn't score at all and in two more we picked up just a single point.

"If we'd been more consistent and averaged just eighth place in each of those races, we'd have won the championship.

"Having broken our duck, that box has been ticked and we can focus on the bigger picture.

"We have proved we deserve to be here and will go into the new season with a lot more confidence."

Team principal Christian Dick said: "Last year was beyond doubt our best yet in the BTCC by a country mile.

"Winning our first race was a massively significant milestone, and to then back that promise up by fighting towards the sharp end season-long represented a huge step forward.

"That said, it was far from perfect and there are many aspects that we have focused on refining over the winter to enhance our performance for 2017 because the championship never stands still."Image: Sari Törmikoski / Yle

Clive (name changed at interviewee's request) has been living in Finland since he graduated in 2012 with a degree in social work specialising in multicultural social work. In a bid to find work in his field, he signed up with his local employment office in early 2013. He had a personal assessment one year later in 2014, duly applied for positions recommended and attended a career coaching programme at a well-known adult education institution.

In spite of his qualifications and previous experience working in the field in the UK, Clive still had not landed a position after three years. He was then transferred to Helsinki region’s Duuri programme, which focuses on serving the long-term unemployed, or individuals considered to be in danger of falling into long-term unemployment.

Although he tried to play by the rules, Clive wasn’t entirely happy with the services he was receiving. For one thing, he grew frustrated when his case workers directed him to apply for positions for which he was not qualified and was therefore hardly likely to get.

"One job was a kindergarten teacher and they specifically asked for a teacher qualification. And I contacted the employer and [they] said that they had four specific requirements," he explained.

Image: Marja Väänänen / Yle

Clive said that he immediately contacted the employment office and informed them that it would be pointless to apply. When he didn’t in fact apply, the unemployment office decided to discontinue payment of his basic unemployment allowance. The basic unemployment allowance paid out by the Finnish Social Insurance Institution Kela is around 700 euros before tax.

No way around sanctions, but workers are people too

Services Director of Uusimaa region employment services Mika Salo told Yle News that decisions to sanction jobseekers who fail to apply for recommended vacancies are based on Finnish law – and that there’s no way around it.

"According to the law people coming to the TE [employment] office have three months to refuse jobs they are not eligible for. But after three months you no longer have the right. It’s the law. After that every person must apply for every job you are offered," Salo explained.

Salo added that employment officials usually ensure that they provide jobseekers with vacancy lists that are relevant to their background and training. If jobseekers find that irrelevant suggestions are coming their way, all it takes is a call and some negotiation with their employment officers to find common ground. But he did admit that the scenario that Clive described is not improbable.

"The law of employment benefits means it could happen, we are people too, there may be pressure on an officer to offer a job, even if the applicant doesn’t have the qualifications and they must be offered something. According to the law we should offer positions to applicants," Salo added.

Employer attitudes slow to change

Clive says he’s also unhappy with the quality of the career counseling he received. On many occasions, he was urged to get a bar license or a hygiene pass so he could find work in the restaurant or catering sectors – areas in which he has no training or experience. He was also advised to seek work as a cleaner, with liaison workers pointing out that he would not need very strong Finnish language skills for such positions.

"Cleaning work sometimes requires people to handle strong chemicals and if they are labeled in Finnish, that might pose a risk,” Clive pointed out.

Salo said that for most foreigners looking for work in Finland, language is ultimately the key to opening the door to employment. He said that’s because many professions require language skills for security or safety reasons – precisely as Clive outlined.

Nevertheless, the service director admitted that apart from language, some employers are reluctant to employ non-Finns.

"I believe in general that good experiences will get the message across. It takes time and we are trying to push the message that foreigners are good. We have programmes, and some large employers will hire foreigners, but work is still needed on some attitudes," he remarked, adding that the situation has nonetheless improved over the past 20 years.

Very high immigrant unemployment rate

However for jobseekers like Clive those observations offer little comfort. He said he's looking into filing a complaint, but noted that he's tied to the unemployment because the unemployment allowance had been his sole source of income.

"I think I was better off by myself rather than going to the TE [employment] office. You fall into that because you are claiming unemployment allowance. If I had the choice not to fall on the TE office I wouldn’t."

The latest unemployment data for the Uusimaa region show that Clive is far from alone. According to Salo, as of October 24, there were some 16,000 foreigners looking for jobs in Uusimaa. The overall unemployment rate in the region was 11 percent. For foreigners, it was more than double that at 26.9 percent.

"It’s still a problem and there is still a lot of work to do," Salo concluded.Hogan was back on the links to much amazement just 11 months after his near fatal wreck

On February 2nd, 1949 Ben Hogan and his wife Valerie ran into a dense fog on the way home from the Phoenix Open. With low visibility a Greyhound bus that was trying to pass in it’s opposite lane hit the Hogan’s head on crushing the vehicle. Miraculously, Hogan’s wife escaped with scrapes and bruises while he suffered a fractured pelvis, broken collar-bone and bruised ribs. Even though doctors would say he would make a full recovery, they didn’t know if he would be able to golf again.

“Don’t believe a word of it,” Valerie said. “Ben will be himself again, bones, nerves and all.”

Flash Forward 11 Months

Just 11 months after laying up in a hospital bed for weeks Hogan was back on the links competing in the PGA Tour again. They called him golf’s “mechanical man” when he returned to the season opening Los Angeles Open. Held at Riviera Country Club, he had already won the event in 1942, 1947, & 1948. A huge crowd showed up to see his return and despite his best efforts Hogan carded an opening round of 73. In his first tournament back, Hogan went all the way down to the wire. He eventually lost to Sam Snead who ended up winning in a playoff.

Without a doubt fatigue and delays were a major disadvantage to Hogan. Reports show that the tournament was delayed between the second and third rounds due to rain. The second and third rounds were a little more familiar and friendly to Hogan shooting a three straight 69’s. His iconic moment would be months later at the 1950 U.S Open at Merion. Where he hit his iconic “1 iron” photograph and won eventually the next day in a playoff.Iowa's CJ Fredrick entering men's hoops transfer portal

Iowa guard CJ Fredrick has entered his name in the NCAA transfer portal. Fredrick started 52 games the last two seasons for the Hawkeyes and is a 47% career 3-point shooter.In the fall of 1965, a 33-year-old father of three named Arthur King—a patient on the alcoholics ward at Baltimore’s Spring Grove Hospital—swallowed an LSD pill and laid back on his bed in a special unit called “Cottage Thirteen.” Sanford Unger, the chief of psychosocial research at the Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center, knelt beside King’s bed, holding his hand and reassuring the patient as he started to feel the drug’s mind-altering effects.*

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This was not a normal psychotherapy session. During his 12-hour experience, designed to help stop his destructive drinking habit, King sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the photo of his son that he’d brought. Suddenly, the child became alive in the picture, which initially frightened him. Then King noticed that a lick of his son’s hair was out of place, so he stroked the photo, putting the errant strands back in place. His fear vanished. Later, Unger held out a small vase with a single red rose. King looked at the flower, which seemed to be opening and closing, as though it were breathing. At one point, Unger asked him whether he’d like to go out to a bar and have a few drinks. King didn’t say anything but was shocked when the rose suddenly turned black and dropped dead before his eyes. He never picked up another drink.

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Arthur King was one of thousands of research subjects who were given LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline as therapeutic tools in the 1950s and 1960s, often with government support and with promising results. But by the time King was enjoying his sobriety, the backlash against psychedelic testing had already begun. By the mid-1970s, the legal exploration of the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs was over.

This research is only now gathering momentum again in a new wave of U.S. clinical trials into other drugs with psychedelic properties. In recent years, university administrators, government regulatory agencies, and private donors have begun giving the stamp of approval and the money needed for new and expanding research into the use of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. In 2017, for instance, the Heffter Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, two organizations leading the psychedelic psychotherapy revolution, will begin a final round of government-approved clinical trials in which hundreds of new patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and severe anxiety will undergo therapy sessions fueled by MDMA and psilocybin. Now, as we enter into a new age of experimentation, it’s worth looking back at the route that got us here.

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LSD’s effects were discovered in 1943 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who accidentally dosed himself and was amazed by the powerful psychoactive effects of a drug he had labeled LSD-25. Hofmann had been working with ergot, a rye fungus, hoping to develop a new and improved cardiovascular stimulant. His employer, Sandoz Laboratories, soon made the drug available to doctors and researchers, advertising it as a tool to better understand psychosis and the possibly help patients in psychotherapy. The first wave of American psychedelic drug research—secretly funded by the CIA and the U.S. Army—began in Boston in 1949. By 1951, U.S. intelligence reports revealed that the Soviets had purchased 50 million doses of LSD from Sandoz. That discovery kicked off a decade of bizarre and sometimes-horrific U.S.-sponsored research into the use of psychedelics as chemical weapons. There were tests to see whether LSD could be used as a truth serum or possibly be sprayed on enemy troops as a kind of weapon of mass distraction.

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Meanwhile, brain scientists and psychotherapists were conducting more socially beneficial experiments in laboratories and medical offices around the world. Through the 1950s and 1960s, more than 1,000 research papers were written about LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelic drugs. Some 40,000 subjects were given these mind-expanding agents, and great progress was made in the understanding of how they might help people suffering from depression, alcoholism, and the psychospiritual distress that often comes with the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. Researchers in Canada and the U.S. showed that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy could be more effective in treating alcoholism than existing treatments, including the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the late 1950s and 1960s, even AA co-founder Bill Wilson advocated the cautious use of LSD, experimenting on himself and a small circle of friends. Theologians and psychologists studied how psychedelic drugs could inspire creativity and evoke life-changing mystical experiences in healthy volunteers. On the East Coast, a Harvard University researcher dosed seminary students with psilocybin to show that the active ingredient in magic mushrooms could inspire an authentic religious experience. On the West Coast, the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, California, did research indicating that LSD could be used to improve cognitive functioning and problem solving.

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By 1963, however, these drugs had escaped from the carefully controlled domain of the researcher’s laboratory and psychotherapist’s office. Millions of baby boomers were coming of age and starting to experiment on their own with LSD, magic mushrooms, peyote, and other hallucinogens. A charismatic Harvard University psychologist named Timothy Leary reinvented himself as the “high priest” of the psychedelic counterculture. In California, a promising novelist named Ken Kesey gathered a Dionysian troupe of Merry Pranksters and put on a series of huge parties called acid tests, where revelers dosed themselves and danced to a new band called the Grateful Dead.

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By the end of the decade, LSD and other psychedelic drugs, along with marijuana, were linked in the public imagination with the 1960s counterculture, the antiwar movement, the crusade for sexual liberation, and the rising popularity of Eastern mysticism, yoga, and meditation. It was the decade of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. President Richard Nixon called Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America.” His administration’s crackdown on psychoactive drugs became part of a broader political reaction against the liberation movements on the 1960s. Leary’s mantra of “turn on, tune in, drop out” was seen as a direct threat to the corporate establishment and the consumerist, materialist mindset.

In the 1970s news of the destructive, sinister research conducted in secret by the Army and the CIA began to get out. Back then, one of my first major stories as a young San Francisco journalist detailed how one of these tests, dubbed Operation Third Chance, destroyed the life of a U.S. solider who was falsely accused by being a spy, given massive doses of LSD, and “interrogated in a hostile environment.” One Army scientist who specialized in biological warfare, Frank Olson, killed himself (or according to some conspiracy theorists, was murdered) following a psychotic incident that may have been exacerbated by LSD.

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The crackdown on both recreational and therapeutic use of psychedelics was not simply a political reaction. It was part of a broader re-examination of the loose standards applied to all kinds of drug research in the 1950s and early 1960s. Today, there is a greater appreciation for the rights of patients and research subjects to be fully informed of the potential dangers and side effects of these compounds. LSD was and is an unpredictable tool when used carelessly—a fact that was discovered by both CIA operatives and counterculture crusaders.

These consciousness-raising substances are finally coming out of the drug culture and into the mainstream laboratories of universities and medical centers. Researchers are building on the findings from the first wave of research. Today, scientists and therapists are more cautious in their screening of patients and the use of double-blind, placebo-controlled research to try to separate the effects of the psychedelic experience from other therapies patients get. More emphasis is placed on follow-up work to integrate the insights from psychedelic drugs into one’s everyday life.

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Over the last several years, I’ve interviewed scientists, therapists, and patients involved in this new wave of research into psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. There was Nigel, a U.S. Marine and MDMA patient who’d struggled with psychological demons since returning from the war in Iraq; Carroll, a hardcore drunk who got her life back following treatment with psilocybin; and Richard, a cancer patient who was treated for depression at Johns Hopkins.* Their stories illustrate how the powerful mind-altering effects of these drugs—along with the gentle guidance of trained therapists—can lead to real psychological healing, often accompanied by experiences of oneness, awe, and wonder that are traditionally associated with dreams or religious excitation. Exactly how these substances work remains a mystery, but to my unscientific mind, it has something to do with the loosening of the ego and the opening of the heart.

What’s happening in many of these experimental circles is the coming together of psychology and spirituality. Even the self-proclaimed secularists in the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy movement employ rituals that draw from Native American shamanism and the sacramental rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Atheists pound on drums and ring Tibetan Buddhist bells. Medical doctors with priestly decorum present MDMA and psilocybin pills to patients in special chalices.

Advocates of both the therapeutic and the spiritual use of psychedelics are already celebrating the start of the “post-prohibition era.” That party may be a bit premature, but the government crackdown in the 1970s and 1980s on scientific research and personal use of psychedelic drugs has certainly declined. Marijuana may be the model for changing attitudes and public policies about LSD, magic mushrooms, ecstasy, and other psychedelic drugs. But much will depend on how all this will play out in the administration of President-elect Donald Trump. It’s not hard to see how the psychedelic research could, once again, be slowed by a renewed “war on drugs” by such hard-liners as Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the man Trump wants to serve as the attorney general. On the other hand, decisions about the medical use of these compounds by the Food and Drug Administration are supposed to be based on science, not politics, and the Veterans Administration is desperately seeking new treatments for returning soldiers suffering from PTSD.

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For Arthur King, the positive effects of LSD-assisted therapy are undeniable. King, whose story was first told in a 1966 television documentary produced by CBS News, was tracked down decades later by filmmaker Dennis McDougal. In 2009, Arthur was still sober and married to same woman who helped him through his battles with the bottle. King was asked to look back and assess the long-term impact of psychedelic psychotherapy. He didn’t mince words.

“It saved my life,” he said.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

*Correction, Jan. 4, 2017: This article originally misidentified the affiliations of psychedelic researcher Sanford Unger. He was the chief of psychosocial research at the Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center, not the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Unger was an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins. (Return.)Deleted

The note reads "Eric, your secret Santa asked me to make a custom giraffe pipe in December for someone special. I made the pipe from hand mixed colors, along with a few other goodies for ya. However, I wasn't aware that this was for a secret Santa. A lot of prep/work for these takes times sometimes and I was unaware my friend was on a deadline. I've included a set of doopie tips and a silver inlaid Game Of Thrones pendy. I hope your group will reconsider allowing Chris to participate next year as the problem/confusion was on my part. Happy holidays & enjoy - Mikey @mikeysglass"400_401_403_bgr

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By logging in to LiveJournal using a third-party service you accept LiveJournal's User agreementBild , the largest-circulation newspaper in Germany, warned that the country was "capitulating to Islamic law."

Migrants committed 142,500 crimes during the first six months of 2016, according to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 32.5 crimes each hour, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a migrant suspect has been caught.

A document leaked to Der Spiegel revealed that more than 33,000 migrants who are supposed to be deported are still in Germany, being cared for by German taxpayers. Many of the migrants destroyed their passports and are believed to have lied about their countries of origin to make it impossible for them to be deported.

Half of the three million ethnic Turks living in Germany believe it is more important to follow Islamic Sharia law than German law if the two are in conflict, according to a survey.

A 23-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker wearing a T-shirt with the words "I'm Muslim Don't Panic" was assaulted by fellow refugees for offending Islam. He was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized.

The German branch of Open Doors, a non-governmental organization supporting persecuted Christians, reported that thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards.

A Cologne police superintendent revealed that he was ordered to remove the term "rape" from an internal police report about the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve. He said that an official at the North-Rhine Westphalia Interior Ministry told him in an angry tone: "This is not rape. Remove this term from your report. Submit a new report."

The Turkish government has sent 970 clerics — most of whom do not speak German — to lead 900 mosques in Germany that are controlled by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government's Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet. Critics accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of using DITIB mosques to prevent Turkish migrants from integrating into German society.

"There are written instructions ... today we are not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees. This is government journalism, and this leads to a situation in which the public loses their trust in us. This is scandalous." — Wolfgang Herles, Deutschlandfunk public radio.

Development Minister Gerd Müller warned that the biggest refugee movements to Europe are still to come. He said that only 10% of the migrants from the chaos in Iraq and Syria have reached Europe so far: "Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way."

Mass migration from the Muslim world is fast-tracking the Islamization of Germany, as evidenced by the proliferation of no-go zones, Sharia courts, polygamy and child marriages. Mass migration has also been responsible for a host of social disruptions, including jihadist attacks, a migrant rape epidemic, a public health crisis, rising crime and a rush by German citizens to purchase weapons for self-defense — and even to abandon Germany altogether.

Germany's Muslim population surpassed six million in 2016 for the first time ever. Germany now vies with France for the highest Muslim population in Western Europe.

The increase in Germany's Muslim population is being fueled by mass migration. An estimated 300,000 migrants arrived in Germany in 2016, in addition to the more than one million who arrived in 2015. At least 80% (or 800,000 in 2015 and 240,000 in 2016) of the newcomers were Muslim, according to the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.

In addition to the newcomers, the rate of population increase of the Muslim community already living in Germany is around 1.6% per year (or 77,000), according to data extrapolated from a Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.

Based on Pew projections, which were proffered before the current migration crisis, the Muslim population of Germany was to have reached an estimated 5,145,000 by the end of 2015.

Adding the 800,000 Muslim migrants who arrived in Germany in 2015, and the 240,000 who arrived in 2016, combined with the 77,000 natural increase, the Muslim population of Germany jumped by 1,117,000, to reach an estimated 6,262,000 by the end of 2016. This amounts to approximately 7.5% of Germany's overall population of 82 million.

Mass migration from the Muslim world is fast-tracking the Islamization of Germany, as evidenced by the proliferation of no-go zones, Sharia courts, polygamy and child marriages. Mass migration has also been responsible for a host of social disruptions, including jihadist attacks, a migrant rape epidemic, a public health crisis, rising crime and a rush by German citizens to purchase weapons for self-defense — and even to abandon Germany altogether.

What follows is a chronological round-up of some of the key stories about the Islamization of Germany during 2016.

JANUARY 2016

January 1. Mobs of Muslim men of "Arab or North African" origin sexually assaulted hundreds of women in Cologne and other German cities. Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime." The government and mainstream media were accused of trying to cover up the crimes to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiment.

January 1. The Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, rejected public concerns about the "alleged Islamization" of Germany. "How should Muslims, who represent a minority, Islamize our society?" he asked. Germans feel insecure, he said, because "people are afraid of strangers they do not know."

January 3. Bremen Police Union Chairman Jochen Kopelke said that migrants were attacking city police with increasing frequency: "The tone has become extremely aggressive; sometimes the police must apply massive force to get a situation under control." Bremen Senator Ulrich Mäurer added: "The excesses of violence against police officers show that these people have no respect for our constitutional order and its representatives."

January 4. A leaked police report revealed chaos "beyond description" in Cologne on New Year's Eve. Women were forced to "run a gauntlet" of drunken men of a "migrant background" to enter and exit the central train station. Police officers were unable to re-establish order. One migrant reprimanded a police officer: "I am Syrian; you have to treat me kindly! Mrs. Merkel invited me."

January 6. Former Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said it was "scandalous that it took the mainstream media several days" to report on the sexual assaults in Cologne. He said public media was a "cartel of silence" exercising censorship to protect migrants from accusations of wrongdoing.

January 9. Development Minister Gerd Müller warned that the biggest refugee movements to Europe are still to come. He said that only 10% of the migrants from the chaos in Iraq and Syria have reached Europe so far: "Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way."

January 9. A vigilante group began patrolling the streets of Düsseldorf to "make the city safer for our women." Similar groups emerged in Cologne and Stuttgart.

January 12. Frank Oesterhelweg, a politician with the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), caused a scandal when he said that police should be authorized to use deadly force to prevent migrants from raping German women. Bild reported that many German police officers are afraid of using lethal force "because of the legal consequences."

January 17. Berlin clergyman Gottfried Martens accused German politicians and church leaders of ignoring the persecution of Christians by Muslims in German refugee shelters. He said that the Christians were facing "verbal threats, threats with knives, blows to the face, ripped crucifixes, torn Bibles, insults of being an infidel, and denial of access to the kitchen."

January 18. A 24-year-old migrant from Sudan was released after being held for questioning at a police station in Hanover. After crossing the street, the man, who receives 300 euros ($335) a month in social welfare benefits, dropped his pants, exposed himself in public and shouted, "Who are you? You cannot do anything to me. Whatever I cannot get from the state, I will steal."

January 20. Migrants invaded female changing rooms and showers at public swimming pools in Leipzig. City officials tried to keep the incidents quiet, but details were leaked to the media.

January 21. More than 200 migrants sued the German government for delays in processing their asylum applications.

January 26. In an interview with Deutschlandfunk public radio, retired public media personality Wolfgang Herles admitted that public broadcasters receive "instructions from above" when it comes to reporting the news:

"We have the problem that we are too close to the government. The topics we cover are determined by the government. But many of the topics the government wants to prevent us from reporting about are more important than the topics they want us to cover...

"We must report in such a way that serves Europe and the common good, as it pleases Mrs. Merkel. There are written instructions ... today we are not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees. This is government journalism, and this leads to a situation in which the public loses their trust in us. This is scandalous."

January 28. Politicians in Kiel ordered city police to overlook crimes perpetrated by migrants. Police in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony were also instructed to be lenient to criminal migrants.

January 28. A migrant from Sudan sexually assaulted a female police officer in Hanover as she was attempting to arrest him for theft. "Such brazen behavior towards a police officer has been unheard of until now," said public prosecutor Thomas Klinge.

January 28. Berlin's Tempelhof airport, the iconic site of the Berlin Airlift in 1948-49, became the biggest refugee shelter in Germany. Opposition politicians said the government was creating an "immigrant ghetto" in the heart of Berlin.

January 30. A gang of Afghan migrants on a Munich subway attacked two elderly men who tried to stop them from groping a woman. Although they had been denied asylum in Germany four years earlier, they were not deported because Afghanistan is "too dangerous."

January 31. ISIS sympathizers defaced more than 40 gravestones at a cemetery in Konstanz with slogans such as, "Germans out of Syria," "Christ is Dead" and "Islamic State."

January 31. In an effort to silence critics of the government's open door migration policy, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel called on German intelligence to begin monitoring the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the third-largest party in Germany. The AfD is surging in popularity because of its anti-immigration platform.

FEBRUARY 2016

February 2. A total of 91,671 migrants — an average of around 3,000 migrants each day — entered Germany during the month of January 2016.

February 4. German police arrested four members of a cell allegedly planning jihadist attacks in Berlin. The ringleader — a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying at a refugee shelter in Attendorn with his wife and two children — arrived in Germany posing as an asylum seeker from Syria. He reportedly received military training from the Islamic State.

February 5. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency, revealed that more than 100 Islamic State fighters may be living in Germany as refugees, some of whom are known to have entered the country with fake or stolen passports.

February 8. German police arrested an alleged ISIS commander who was living at a refugee shelter in Sankt Johann. The 32-year-old jihadist, posing as a Syrian asylum seeker, entered Germany in the fall of 2015.

February 16. Migrants committed 208,344 crimes in 2015, according to a leaked police report. This figure represented an 80% increase over 2014 and worked out to around 570 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 23 crimes each hour, between January and December 2015.

The actual number of migrant crimes is far higher, however, because the report included only crimes that have been solved (aufgeklärten Straftaten). Statistics show that only around half of all crimes committed in Germany in any given year are solved (Aufklärungsquote). This implies that the actual number of crimes committed by migrants in 2015 exceeded 400,000.

February 16. Police raided the homes of 44 Salafists in Bremen. "It is rather apocalyptic that we have people living in the middle of our city who are prepared, from one day to the next, to participate massively in the terror of the Islamic State," said Bremen Interior Minister Ulrich Mäurer.

February 25. Afghan asylum seekers assaulted three girls at the Sophienhof shopping mall in Kiel. After posting photographs of the girls on social media, the two men were joined by at least 30 other migrants who began to harass the girls. When police arrived, the migrants verbally and physically abused the officers. Only two of the perpetrators were apprehended.

February 26. A 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and wounded a police officer at the central train station in Hanover. The stabbing was the first Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack in Germany. "The perpetrator did not display any emotion," police said. "Her only concern was for her headscarf. Whether the police officer survived, she did not care."

February 29. German authorities admitted they lost track of some 130,000 migrants who entered the country in 2015. The admission was in response to a parliamentary question from the opposition Left Party. The revelation raised concerns that unaccounted migrants could include jihadists who entered the country posing as refugees.

MARCH 2016

March 1. The Schleswig-Holstein branch of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU announced plans to ensure that pork continues to be available at public canteens, child daycare centers and schools across the north German state. CDU politician Daniel Günther complained that canteens, nurseries and schools are removing pork from their menu in order not to offend Muslims. "The consumption of pork belongs to our culture," he said. "No one should be obliged to do so. But we also don't want the majority having to refrain from pork."

March 3. The Arriba water park in Norderstedt, one of the largest such parks in Germany, announced that males and females would be segregated after two Afghan migrants raped a 14-year-old girl at the facility.

March 4. A court in Düsseldorf sentenced Nils Donath, a 25-year-old German national, to four-and-a-half years in prison for joining the Islamic State. The court heard how Donath, a convert to Islam, received weapons training and learned how to build bombs — and how he volunteered to carry out jihadist attacks in Europe.

March 7. Police in Cologne arrested a 25-year-old German national, Shahid Ilgar Oclu S, on charges of being a member of the Islamic State.

March 24. Following a wave of sexual assaults by migrants, the Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn, a railway in central Germany, announced plans to install women-only compartments.

March 31. The German Ministry for Families designated €200 million to fight the sexual abuse of women and children in refugee shelters.

APRIL 2016

April 3. Two migrants from Afghanistan were arrested for forcing a 14-year-old boy to perform sex acts on them at a public swimming pool in Delbrück.

April 10. A 26-year-old Syrian migrant admitted to setting fire to a migrant shelter in Bingen. He also admitted to painting swastikas outside the building in order to make it look as though the fire was set by anti-immigration protesters.

April 11. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency, expressed alarm at the growing number of radical mosques in Germany. "Many mosques are dominated by fundamentalists and are being monitored because of their Salafist orientation," Maassen said. Many of the mosques are being financed by Saudi Arabia.

April 13. Andreas Scheuer, the General Secretary of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel's CDU, called for an "Islam law" that would limit the influence of foreign imams and prohibit the foreign financing of mosques. His comments came amid reports that the Turkish government has sent 970 clerics — most of whom do not speak German — to lead 900 mosques in Germany that are controlled by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government's Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet. Critics accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of using DITIB mosques to prevent Turkish migrants from integrating into German society.

April 14. Angela Merkel and her coalition partners reached a compromise deal on a new "Integration Law" to spell out the rights and responsibilities of migrants in Germany: asylum seekers must attend German language classes and integration training or have their benefits cut. Critics said the law does not go far enough because it does not threaten with deportation those migrants who refuse to integrate.

April 14. Angela Merkel acquiesced to a demand by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that German comedian Jan Böhmermann be criminally prosecuted for reciting a poem that lampooned Erdogan. She was accused of pandering to Erdogan's autocratic government.

April 15. A 13-year-old German boy of Iraqi descent was arrested in Turkey after he attempted to join the Islamic State. Police said the boy, originally from Munich, was going to Syria to obtain combat training in order to return to Bavaria to carry out attacks there.

April 24. The Roman Catholic Cardinal of Cologne, Rainer Maria Woelki, ridiculed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) for saying that Islam is incompatible with the German constitution. "Whoever says 'yes' to church towers must also say 'yes' to minarets."

MAY 2016

May 1. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) adopted a manifesto calling for curbs to migration and restrictions on Islam. The document called for a ban on minarets, Muslim calls to prayer and full-face veils.

May 2. Hans-Georg Maassen, the German spy chief, revealed that around 90 "predominately Arabic-speaking" mosques in Germany are under surveillance. He said they involve mostly "backyard mosques" where "self-proclaimed imams and self-proclaimed emirs" are "inciting their followers to jihad."

May 2. A Cologne police superintendent revealed that he was ordered to remove the term "rape" from an internal police report about the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve. He said that an official at the North-Rhine Westphalia Interior Ministry told him: "This is not rape. Remove this term from your report. Submit a new report." The revelation added to suspicions of a political cover-up to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

May 3. A 20-year-old Afghan migrant sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy in the changing room of a sports hall in Munich. Police said the same migrant had sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at a public swimming pool in 2013.

May 5. An INSA poll found that 60% of the Germans surveyed believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. Nearly half (46%) of those surveyed said they are worried about the "Islamization" of Germany.

May 9. The German branch of Open Doors, a non-governmental organization supporting persecuted Christians, reported that thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards. The report, which asserts that in most cases German authorities have done nothing to protect the victims, alleges that German authorities and police have deliberately downplayed and even covered up the "taboo issue" of Muslim attacks on Christian refugees, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

May 10. A German man shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is the Greatest") and "infidels must die" stabbed one person to death and slashed three others in an early morning attack at a train station near Munich.

May 11. Turkish-born Muhterem Aras, 50, became the first Muslim woman to be elected as speaker of the state parliament in Baden-Württemberg. Her election was hailed as a Muslim integration success story. Aras has been a proponent of allowing migrants without German citizenship to vote in local elections.

May 12. An appeals court in Bamberg recognized the marriage of a 15-year-old Syrian girl to her 21-year-old cousin. The court ruled that the marriage was valid because it was contracted in Syria, where such marriages are allowed according to Islamic Sharia law. The ruling effectively legalized Sharia child marriages in Germany.

May 14. A Finance Ministry document revealed that the migrant crisis could end up costing German taxpayers €93.6 billion ($105 billion) between now and 2020. About €25.7 billion would be for social spending, such as unemployment benefits and housing support. About €5.7 billion would be destined for language courses and €4.6 billion for integrating refugees into the workforce.

May 15. Nearly a dozen women between the ages of 16 and 48 reported being sexually assaulted by male migrants at a music festival in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. The attacks at the Carnival of Cultures, where groups of men encircled the women and assaulted and robbed them, were similar to those in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's Eve.

May 16. Beatrix von Storch, the deputy leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), called on Germany's main Islamic associations to "explicitly distance" themselves from Islamic sharia law, something they have so far refused to do. She said the AfD was not opposed to Muslims but to political Islam, which she said contradicts the German constitution.

May 18. Migrants sexually assaulted female passersby at the Boulevard Berlin shopping mall in the Steglitz district of the capital. At least 35 teenage migrants were loitering at the mall, in part because of free access to the internet. When security guards asked them to leave the premises, the youths called for back-up and soon dozens more migrants arrived to harass the guards.

May 22. A doctor in Cologne was sued for discrimination after he declined to treat a Muslim woman who refused to shake his hand. The woman said she could not shake the doctor's hand on religious grounds. The doctor noted that the Koran does not prohibit handshakes.

May 23. A 23-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker wearing a T-shirt with the words "I'm Muslim Don't Panic" was assaulted by fellow refugees for offending Islam. He was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized.

May 23. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann announced a plan to recruit migrants to the police force — regardless of whether they have acquired German citizenship. He said he hoped the initiative would create a "more direct line" to people with an immigrant background by hiring those who understand their mentality.

May 26. Increasing numbers of Germans are relocating to Hungary because of Chancellor Angela Merkel's open door migration policy, according to the newsmagazine, Focus.

May 27. The head of the Protestant Church in Germany, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, called for Islam to be taught in all German public schools as a way to prevent young Muslims from becoming radicalized. "Tolerance, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience should apply to all religions," he said. "These principles can be best taught if religion is part of the state's educational mission."

May 27. A Protestant church in Hamburg held a funeral service for a convert to Islam who was killed in Syria while fighting for the Islamic State. The funeral at the St. Pauli church was for a teenager who was born in Cameroon and raised as a Christian in Hamburg. When he was 14 he converted to Islam, became radicalized and joined the German Salafist movement. He left for Syria on a false passport. Pastor Sieghard Wilm, who organized the "interfaith" funeral, said the church should be a "place of learning for the respect of other religions."

May 29. Green party politician Stefanie von Berg called for new mosques to be built in every district of Hamburg so that the city's burgeoning Muslim population has enough space to pray. She said the construction of new mosques is necessary to integrate the Muslim community. The Heinrich Böll Foundation, a think tank linked to the Green party, estimates that there are more than 150,000 Muslims in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, but fewer than 50 mosques.

May 31. Male migrants sexually assaulted at least 18 women at an outdoor festival in Darmstadt. The attacks at the Schlossgrabenfest, in which large numbers of men surrounded women and sexually assaulted them, were similar to those that occurred in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

May 31. The Dalai Lama said that Germany has accepted "too many" migrants and that they should eventually be returned to help rebuild their home countries. "Germany cannot become an Arab country," he said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Germany is Germany."

JUNE 2016

June 2. A new statistical survey of Germany showed that ethnic Turks are economically and educationally less successful than other immigrant groups. The report, produced by Destatis, Germany's official statistics agency, showed that more than one-third (36%) of ethnic Turks live below the poverty line. Only 60% complete secondary school (Hauptschulabschluss), while less than 10% of ethnic Turks between the ages of 17 and 45 earn a Bachelor's degree. Education is a determinative factor for successful integration, the report said.

June 2. Three Syrian jihadists were arrested for plotting a jihadist attack in Düsseldorf. A fourth individual was arrested in France. The plan involved two suicide bombers who would blow themselves up along the Heinrich-Heine-Allee, a busy street in the city center. Subsequently, other assassins would kill as many passers-by as possible with guns and bombs.

June 3. The head of the German police union, Rainer Wendt, said that budget cuts in the public sector made it impossible to vet all of the migrants coming into Germany. He was responding to demands that all migrants undergo immediate security checks.

June 12. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel compared members of the anti-Islam Alternative for Germany (AfD), the third-largest party in Germany, to the Nazis.

June 13. Half of the three million ethnic Turks living in Germany believe it is more important to follow Islamic Sharia law than German law if the two are in conflict, according to a survey. One-third also yearn for German society to "return" to the way it was during the time of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, in the Arabia of the early seventh century. The survey — which polled Turks who have been living in Germany for many years, often decades — refuted claims by German authorities that Muslims are well integrated into German society.

June 25. Police discovered a huge stockpile of military-grade weapons in a grocery store near a mosque in Cologne. "The danger posed by fundamentalist Salafists who are arming themselves to use violence in Germany is very great," said local politician Ismail Tipi. "This secret raid makes this more than clear."

June 30. A court in Ahrensburg found a 17-year-old migrant from Eritrea guilty of attempting to rape an 18-year-old woman at the Bad Oldesloe train station. After police arrived, the migrant resisted arrest and head-butted a police officer, who was hospitalized. The court gave the man a seven-month suspended sentence.

JULY 2016

July 1. A court in Bavaria ruled that a law that prohibits Muslim legal trainees from wearing headscarves is illegal.

July 3. A 24-year-old woman, raped by three migrants in Mannheim in January, admitted to lying about the identity of her attackers. Selin Gören, a Turkish-German woman, initially said that her attackers were German nationals, when in fact they were Muslim migrants. Gören said she lied because she was afraid of fueling racism against migrants.

July 4. The 30 biggest German companies have employed only 54 refugees, including 50 who have been hired as couriers by Deutsche Post, the logistics provider. The data cast doubt on Angela Merkel's promise to integrate asylum seekers into the German labor market as quickly as possible. Company executives say the main problem is that migrants lack professional qualifications and German language skills.

July 7. The German parliament approved changes to the criminal code to expand the definition of rape. Also known as the "No Means No" ("Nein heißt Nein") law, any form of non-consensual sex will now be punishable as a crime. Previously, only cases in which victims could show that they physically resisted their attackers were punishable under German law. The changes, which were prompted by the sex attacks in Cologne, were hailed as a "paradigm shift" in German jurisprudence.

July 7. More than six months after the Cologne attacks, a German court issued the first two convictions: The District Court of Cologne gave a 20-year-old Iraqi and a 26-year-old Algerian a one-year suspended sentence and then released the two men. Observers said the light sentences were a mockery of justice.

July 10. A Federal Criminal Police Agency (BKA) inquiry into the sex attacks in Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and other German cities on New Year's Eve found that more than 1,200 women were victims of attacks, which were perpetrated by more than 2,000 men, most of whom are believed to be from North Africa. BKA President Holger Münch said: "There is a relationship between the attacks and the strong wave of migration in 2015."

July 13. The Platanus-Schule, a private bilingual school in Berlin, apologized to a Muslim imam after a teacher at the school called him "misogynistic" and "ill-adapted to German life" because he refused to shake her hand. Critics accused the school of endangering the principle of gender equality in Germany. The imam's lawyer said the apology was insufficient.

July 14. Ruprecht Polenz, a former secretary general of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that the German law which regulates name changes (Namensrecht) should be amended to make it easier for Muslim migrants in Germany who feel discriminated against to change their legal names to Christian-sounding ones.

July 15. At least 24 women were sexually assaulted at a music festival in Bremen. The attacks were similar to the attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve. Police were able to identify only five perpetrators, all of whom are migrants from Afghanistan.

July 16. A document leaked to Der Spiegel revealed that more than 33,000 migrants who are supposed to be deported are still in Germany and are being cared for by German taxpayers. Many of the migrants destroyed their passports and are believed to have lied about their countries of origin to make it impossible for them to be deported.

July 17. An investigative report by Bavarian Radio BR24 found that deradicalization programs in Germany are failing because many Salafists do not want to become deradicalized.

July 19. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker brandishing an axe and shouting "Allahu Akbar" seriously injured five people on a train in Würzburg. The assailant was shot dead by police after he charged at them with the axe. The teenager had been placed with a foster family just two weeks before the attack as a reward for being "well integrated." Green Party MP Renate Künast criticized the police for using lethal force.

July 19. The managers of a German Red Cross refugee shelter in Potsdam were accused of covering up the sexual abuse of women at the facility.

July 20. The Federal Labor Office reported that the educational level of newly arrived migrants in Germany is far lower than expected: only a quarter have a high school diploma, while three quarters have no vocational training at all. Only 4% of new arrivals to Germany are highly qualified.

July 22. Ali Sonboly, an 18-year-old Iranian-German who harbored hatred for Arabs and Turks, killed ten people (including himself) and wounded 35 others at a McDonald's in Munich.

July 23. A mob of men shouting "Allahu Akbar" barged into a nudist beach in Xanten and "insulted and threatened" the beachgoers. Police kept the incident hidden, apparently to avoid negative media coverage of Muslims "in these sensitive times."

July 24. Mohammed Daleel, a 27-year-old migrant from Syria whose asylum application was rejected, injured 15 people when he blew himself up at a concert in Ansbach. The suicide bombing was the first in Germany attributed to the Islamic State.

July 24. A 21-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker murdered a 45-year-old Polish woman and her unborn baby in a machete attack in Reutlingen.

July 24. A 40-year-old migrant from Eritrea raped a 79-year-old woman in a cemetery in Ibbenbüren. The woman, who lives in a local nursing home, was visiting the grave of her late sister at 6AM when the attack occurred.

July 25. A 45-year-old Palestinian brandishing a "Rambo knife" and shouting "Allahu Akbar" tried to behead a doctor in Bonn. The attacker's 19-year-old son had complained about the doctor's treatment for a fractured leg. The man, holding the doctor down on the floor, said: "Apologize to my son. Go down on your knees and kiss his hand."

July 25. Frank Henkel, a CDU Senator from Berlin, said: "No one should delude themselves: We obviously have imported some brutal people who are capable of committing barbaric crimes in our country. We have to say this clearly and without taboos. This also means that we must deal aggressively with Islamism. If we do not, we risk that German politics will be perceived as being detached from reality."

July 25. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière revealed that German authorities are currently investigating 59 refugees because of the "suspicion that they are involved in terrorist structures."

July 27. Police in Ludwigsburg arrested a 15-year-old who they said was planning a mass-shooting. Police found more than 300 rounds of ammunition, as well as knives, chemicals and bullet-proof vests, during a search of the teenager's home.

July 28. Angela Merkel insisted there would be no change to her open-door migration stance: "We decided to fulfill our humanitarian tasks. Refusing humanitarian support would be something I would not want to do and I would not recommend this to Germany.... Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions."

July 29. Thomas Jahn, the vice chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU), lambasted Angela Merkel's open-door migration policy: "We need to control our borders. That is the most important thing at the moment. And we need to send the dangerous people with Islamist ideology back to the countries outside Europe and the European Union."

July 30. CSU politician Jens Spahn called for a burqa ban: "A ban on the full body veil — that is the niqab and the burqa — is overdue... I do not want to have to encounter any burqa in this country. In that sense, I am a burqaphobe."

AUGUST 2016

August 2. Amid fears of Islamic terrorism, German officials raised the possibility of deploying the military within German borders for the first time since World War II.

August 11. Muslim patrols enforcing Sharia law were seen operating in the Wandsbek and Dammtor district of Hamburg.

August 16. Asylum seekers in Lower Saxony refused to accept job offers because they were "guests of Angela Merkel."

August 19. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière called for a partial ban on full-face veils in public. "We unanimously reject the burqa," de Maizière said. "It does not fit in our open country." North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Ralf Jäger, said a burqa ban was misguided because it would require a ban on all religious garb: "Whoever forbids burqas, must also forbid people disguised as Saint Nicholas."

August 25. Police in Hamburg launched a crackdown on purse-snatchers. More than 20,000 purses—roughly 55 a day—are stolen in the city each year. According to police, 90% of the purses are stolen by young males from North Africa or the Balkans.

August 28. A 26-year-old German national shouting Allahu Akhbar stabbed a 66-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man who were picnicking in Oberhausen.

August 28. Angela Merkel urged people of Turkish origin living in Germany not to bring their conflicts to Germany.

SEPTEMBER 2016

September 3. Only 2,500 people attended a mass rally in Berlin to protest the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The organizers of the rally, including members of the Green Party, and the Left Party, had expected around 10,000 demonstrators to show up.

September 3. The Vice Chairman of the DPolG German Police Union in Hamburg, Freddi Lohse, said that many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behavior. "They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries," he said. "They have no respect for us."

September 4. Angela Merkel suffered a major blow when the Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged ahead of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in elections in her home state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. With 20.8% of the vote, the AfD came in second place behind the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) (30.6%). Merkel's CDU came in third place, with 19% of the vote, the worst result it has ever had in Meck-Pomm, as the state is called for short. The election in Meck-Pomm was widely seen as a referendum on Merkel's open-door migration policy.

September 6. Migrants committed 142,500 crimes during the first six months of 2016, according to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 32.5 crimes each hour, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a migrant suspect has been caught.

September 7. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) calculated that Germany will spend some €20 billion on refugees in 2016. "Particularly large portions of the expenditure involve ... the initial provision of accommodation or health care services, as well as services such as the renting of accommodations," IfW said.

September 9. The German Interior Ministry, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed that 1,475 married children are known to be living in Germany as of July 31, 2016 — including 361 children under the age of 14. Most of the married children are from Syria (664), Afghanistan (157) and Iraq (100). Nearly 80% (1,152) are girls. The true number of child marriages in Germany is believed to be much higher than the official statistics suggest because many are being concealed.

September 13. Muslim fashion shops in Germany are serving as stepping stones to Islamic extremism, according to Germany's ARD public broadcaster. They are "competing" with Western socialization by helping women adopt an orthodox Islamic way of life, eventually assimilating them into Salafism and subsequently, extremist Islam.

September 13. Three Syrian jihadists were arrested in Schleswig-Holstein. They were believed to be members of an Islamic State sleeper cell waiting for further instructions to carry out attacks in Germany.

September 17. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann accused the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) of failing to root out potentially tens of thousands of fake passports. Many migrants entering Europe as Syrians are, in fact, from another country of origin. Almost 40% of all Moroccans who entered Greece falsely represented themselves as Syrians, according to one study.

September 23. A new poll showed that support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged to 16%, its best result ever, and more than three times the 5% needed to win seats in the parliament. According to the poll, Angela Merkel's CDU is at 32%, while the Social Democrats, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, would get 22%. Together they would have 54%, enough for the ruling coalition to continue.

September 30. A 28-year-old migrant sexually assaulted a 27-year-old woman on a train. German media initially reported the nationality of the perpetrator but then deleted the information. "This article initially included the nationality of the offender," a statement said. "The reference was subsequently removed because it did not correspond to our editorial guidelines — that is, there is no connection between nationality and action."

OCTOBER 2016

October 1. Two migrants raped a 23-year-old woman in Lüneburg as she was walking in a park with her young child. The men, who remain at large, forced the child to watch while they took turns assaulting the woman.

October 2. A 19-year-old migrant raped a 90-year-old woman as she was leaving a church in downtown Düsseldorf. Police initially described the suspect as "a Southern European with North African roots." It later emerged that the man is a Moroccan with a Spanish passport.

October 2. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called for the development of a "German Islam" to help integrate Muslims in the country.

October 4. The 2016 Munich Oktoberfest recorded its lowest turnout since 2001. Visitors reportedly stayed away due to concerns about terrorism and migrant-related sexual assaults.

October 17. The German Press Council reprimanded the weekly newspaper, Junge Freiheit, for revealing the nationality of three Afghan teenagers who raped a woman at a train station in Vienna, Austria. The press council said the nationality of the perpetrators is "not relevant" to the case. By revealing this information, the newspaper "deliberately and pejoratively represented the suspects as second-class persons."

October 24. A YouGov poll found that 68% of Germans believe that security in the country has deteriorated due to mass migration. Nearly 70% of respondents said they fear for their lives and property in German train stations and subways, while 63% feel unsafe at large public events.

October 24. Serbian teenagers in Hamburg were allowed to walk free after gang-raping a 14-year-old girl and leaving her for dead in sub-zero temperatures. The judge said that although "the penalties may seem mild to the public," the teens no longer posed a danger to society.

October 27. Public prosecutors charged Shaas Al-M, a 19-year-old Syrian jihadist who arrived in Germany posing as a refugee, with plotting to bomb popular tourist sites in Berlin, including the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, for the Islamic State.

NOVEMBER 2016

November 3. Five Somali migrants went on a rampage after the owner of a pub in Wabern asked them to pay for the alcohol they had consumed. "We are Somalis, we don't pay," the men said before smashing up the establishment.

November 11. The Military Intelligence Service (Militärische Abschirmdienst, MAD) reported that more than 20 Islamists are serving in the German armed forces, and another 60 service members are suspected of being Islamists. Some 30 veterans are known to have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq. The report raised concerns that Islamists are joining the German armed forces in order to obtain combat training.

November 15. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière banned the Salafist group, "The True Religion" (Die wahre Religion), for being unconstitutional. The group is behind a mass proselytization campaign — Project "Read!" — aimed at distributing 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, with the goal of placing one Koran into every home in Germany, free of charge. De Maizière said the campaign amounted to a "systematic infringement of our fundamental values."

November 18. Public prosecutors charged two North African migrants for setting fire to a migrant shelter in Düsseldorf. The arson attack, which injured 26 people and caused more than 10 million euros in damage, was reportedly triggered by a dispute over food. The two men were angry because they felt there were not enough sweets offered at a buffet lunch.

November 20. A 38-year-old German-Kurdish man in Lower Saxony tied his ex-wife to his car and dragged her through the streets of Hameln. The crime drew attention to the problem of Sharia justice in Germany.

November 21. The Wuppertal District Court ruled that seven Islamists who formed a vigilante patrol to enforce Sharia law on the streets of Wuppertal did not break German law and were simply exercising their right to free speech.

November 23. Bild, the largest-circulation newspaper in Germany, warned that the country was "capitulating to Islamic law."

November 27. German radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio Kultur reported that Muslim migrants enrolled in German schools are bullying their Christian counterparts. In some cases, the persecution is so great that Christian parents have moved their children to other schools.

November 29. A German intelligence officer confessed to plotting to bomb the Cologne-based headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency, the BfV. The 51-year-old convert to Islam was tasked with monitoring the German Salafist scene.

DECEMBER 2016

December 3. A 17-year-old Afghan migrant was arrested for raping and murdering a 19-year-old medical student in Freiburg. Police said she may have met her killer at the asylum shelter where she was a volunteer. Freiburg Mayor Dieter Salomon warned against making generalizations about migrants because this crime was an "isolated case."

December 6. Eyeing reelection, Angela Merkel called for a burka ban: "The full veil is not appropriate here and it should be forbidden wherever that is legally possible." In September, Merkel said she was opposed to a burka ban because it would violate "religious freedom."

December 8. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany's highest court, ruled that Muslim girls must take part in mixed swimming classes at school, finding against an 11-year-old pupil who had argued that even wearing a burkini, or full-body swimsuit, breached Islamic dress codes. The court rejected an appeal by the girl's parents that she should be excused from the classes because a burkini did not conform to the Islamic standard of decency.

December 13. The trial began of a 45-year-old Iraqi migrant accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy 68 times at a refugee shelter in Spandau, Berlin. The perpetrator said his actions were the result of a "love affair."

December 14. A judge in Oldenburg ruled that a 19-year-old Afghan migrant who groped two women at a festival in Bad Zwischenahn was not guilty of sexual assault. "It is quite conceivable that the young man wanted to communicate his interest for the women in this way," the judge said.

December 16. A 12-year-old German boy of Iraqi descent tried to detonate a nail bomb at a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen.

December 19. At least 12 people were killed and dozens injured after a truck rammed into a Christmas market in Berlin. The main suspect in the attack was Anis Amri, a 23-year-old migrant from Tunisia who arrived in Germany in July 2015 and applied for asylum in April 2016. Although Amri's application for asylum had been rejected in July 2016, he was not deported because he did not have a valid passport.

December 20. Frauke Petry, the chairwoman of the Alternative for Germany, said Angela Merkel bears responsibility for the attack on the Berlin Christmas market:

"The milieu in which such acts can flourish has been negligently and systematically imported over the past year and a half. Our borders, which were so irresponsibly opened, must once again be controlled. Germany is no longer safe."

December 22. Bild reported that the head of the judicial authority in Hamburg, Till Steffen, refused to allow police to release pictures of the Berlin terror suspect, Anis Amri, for more than 12 hours after the attack because he feared that sharing the images would incite racial hatred.

December 22. Underage migrants at a refugee shelter in Freising were watching Islamic State propaganda videos, creating jihadist flags and posing with the insignia of the terrorist organization in front of the camera. "Watching IS-videos or crafting an IS-flag may indicate that a radicalization process is at an advanced stage," German authorities said.

December 27. Police arrested seven migrants from Syria and Libya on charges of setting a homeless man on fire on Christmas Eve at the Schönleinstraße subway station in Berlin. Video footage captured them laughing as the man was burning on the platform. Police said all seven of the perpetrators, the youngest of whom is 15, arrived in Berlin as refugees.

December 31. Police in Cologne — who were tasked with avoiding a repeat of the mass sexual assaults that occurred in the city on New Year's Eve in 2015 — were accused of racial profiling when they questioned more than 600 migrants from North Africa.It’s the latest sign of major ice loss in the fast warming Antarctic Peninsula, which has already seen the breakup of two other shelves in the same region, events that have been widely attributed to climate change.

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The crack in the ice shelf, known as Larsen C, has been growing at an accelerating rate. Since the beginning of December, it has grown about 11 miles in length, after extending 13 miles earlier in the year. In total, the rift has grown about 50 miles since 2011 (it’s almost 100 miles long in total), and has widened to well over 1,000 feet. Now, only 12 miles of ice continue to connect the chunk with the rest of the ice shelf.

When it breaks away, the loss would be of nearly 2,000 square miles of ice, say the researchers with Project MIDAS, a British government-funded collaboration based at Swansea and Aberystwyth universities in Wales. That’s larger than Rhode Island and almost as big as Delaware.

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The consequences of the break could be dramatic.

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“When it calves, the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10% of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever recorded; this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula,” said the researchers in a statement about the rift.

“We have previously shown that the new configuration will be less stable than it was prior to the rift, and that Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 following a similar rift-induced calving event.”

Here’s an image showing the apparently accelerating advance of the rift, per the Project Midas team:

The British Antarctic Survey also released a statement on the growing rift, saying a huge iceberg is “set to calve” from Larsen C.

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“Because of the uncertainty surrounding the stability of the Larsen C ice shelf, we chose not to camp on the ice this season,” David Vaughan, the survey’s director of science, said in the statement.

The floating ice shelf is fed by the flow of ice glaciers that sit above sea level on the Antarctic Peninsula. As the shelf loses mass, these glaciers could flow more quickly — which would contribute to rising sea levels. Losses from the ice shelf alone, however dramatic, would not have that effect, as the shelf is already floating on water, just like an ice cube in a glass of water.

Fortunately, the Antarctic Peninsula does not contain nearly as much ice as other, thicker parts of Antarctica, such as the West and East Antarctic ice sheets. The potential sea level rise if Larsen C is lost would be measured in centimeters, not feet.

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Still, it would subtract a major, enduring feature from the planet, and add to already dramatic changes that have been seen in the Antarctic Peninsula, the portion of the icy continent that extends northward towards South America.

Two scientists trek to remote Petermann glacier in northern Greenland to find out how quickly it is melting and what that means for global sea level rise. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

Two smaller ice shelves near Larsen C – Larsen A, and Larsen B – have already largely disintegrated. Larsen B retains a remnant of its former size, but scientists have determined that this ice, too, could vanish before too long. They have also documented that following the collapse of much of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002, the glaciers behind it sped up their flow towards the sea. Now, the fear is the same process could be unleashed on the larger Larsen C shelf.

The Larsen C ice shelf is more than 1,000 feet thick, and in spatial extent, nearly the size of Scotland. It is the fourth-largest ice shelf in Antarctica, although nothing compared with the two largest, the Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves.

NASA, during a flight in November, captured several spectacular photos of the rift, including the one at the top of this article and also the close-up below. But that was before further extension of the rift last month:

The Antarctic continent is ringed with ice shelves, which are the ocean-front portions of larger glaciers. But as the climate changes, these features have been thinning and in some cases breaking apart dramatically.

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The Project MIDAS group did not immediately make a statement attributing the development at Larsen C to climate change, but the fact that the shelf would be “at its most retreated position ever recorded” after the break is certainly suggestive.

Previous research has also documented that the Larsen C ice shelf is becoming less thick, and so floating lower in the water, and this appears tied to the warming of the Antarctic Peninsula in recent decades. Warmer seas could also be playing a role.

Now, the wait for the anticipated break begins.

Swansea University’s Adrian Luckman, who heads up Project MIDAS, told the BBC that “If it doesn’t go in the next few months, I’ll be amazed.”

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Daniela Jansen, a researcher with the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany who collaborates with the Project MIDAS team, largely agreed in an email to The Washington Post.

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“I think the iceberg will calve soon,” she said. “The jumps of the rift tip occurred in shorter time intervals the longer the rift got. This is probably due to the longer ‘lever’ for the forces acting to advance the rift, such as the up and down of the tides or strong winds towards the sea. Whether it will be months or maybe next year, I don’t know.”

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Open CartIt's time for them to take their shot! Tony nominee Joshua Henry, Michael Luwoye and Tony nominee Rory O'Malley will headline the touring production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-winning musical Hamilton. The trio take on the roles of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and King George III, respectively. The national tour of the tuner will begin performances on March 10 at the SHN Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, before playing its premiere Los Angeles engagement at the Hollywood Pantages August 11 through December 30.



Henry, currently performing in the Chicago production of Hamilton, made his Broadway debut in In The Heights, received Tony Award nominations for his roles in Violet and The Scottsboro Boys and created the role of Noble Sissle in Shuffle Along. Luwoye made his Broadway debut in Hamilton and was nominated for a 2016 Lucille Lortel Award for his work as Jacob in Invisible Thread. O'Malley is currently playing King George III on Broadway and received a Tony Award nomination for his role as Elder McKinley in The Book of Mormon.



Other principal roles in Hamilton will be played by Rubén J. Carbajal as John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton, Jordan Donica as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, Amber Iman as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds, Isaiah Johnson as George Washington, Solea Pfeiffer as Eliza Hamilton, Emmy Raver-Lampman as Angelica Schuyler and Mathenee Treco as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison.



The national tour cast will also include Ryan Alvarado, Raymond Baynard, Amanda Braun, Daniel Ching, Karli Dinardo, Jeffery Duffy, Jennifer Geller, Jacob Guzman, Julia Harriman, Afra Hines, Sabrina Imamura, Lauren Kias, Yvette Lu, Desmond Newson, Desmond Nunn, Josh Andrés Rivera, Raven Thomas, Ryan Vasquez, Keenan D. Washington and Andrew Wojtal.



Hamilton is the story of America's Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the West Indies who became George Washington's right-hand man during the Revolutionary War and was the new nation's first Treasury Secretary. Featuring a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, blues, rap, R&B and Broadway, Hamilton is the story of America then, as told by America now.



Directed by Thomas Kail and featuring a book, music and lyrics by Miranda, Hamilton is inspired by the book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and is running at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre.TL;DR: Agile Metrics

Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization.

At the team level, qualitative agile metrics typically work better than quantitative metrics. At the organizational level, this is reversed: quantitative agile metrics provide better insights than qualitative ones.

Good Agile Metrics

Generally speaking, metrics are used to understand the current situation better as well as to gain insight on change over time. Without metrics, assessing any effort or development will be open to gut feeling and bias based interpretation.

A metric should, therefore, be a leading indicator for a pattern change, providing an opportunity to analyze the cause in time.The following three general rules for agile metrics have proven to be useful:

The first rule of tracking meaningful metrics is only to track those that apply to the team. Ignore those that measure the individual. The second rule of tracking metrics is not to measure parameters just because they are easy to follow. This practices often is a consequence of using various agile tools that offer out-of-the-box reports. The third rule of tracking metrics is to record context as well. Data without context, for example, the number of the available team member, or the intensity of incidents during a sprint, maybe turn out to be nothing more than noise.

For example, if the (average) sentiment on the technical debt metric (see below) is slowly but steadily decreasing, it may indicate that the team:

May have started sacrificing code quality to meet deadlines or

May have deliberately built some temporary solution to speed up experimentation.

While the latter probably is a good thing, the first interpretation is worrying. (You would need to analyze this with the team during a retrospective.)

Good Qualitative Agile Metrics: Self-Assessment Tests

If you like to track a team’s progress in adopting agile techniques and processes, self-assessment tests are well-suited for that purpose. For example, I like to use the Scrum Checklist by Henrik Kniberg.

All you have to do, is to run the questionnaire every four to six weeks during a retrospective, record the results, and aggregate them:

In this example, we were using a kind of estimation poker to answer each question with one of the three values green, orange, and red. The colors were coded as follows:

Green: It worked for the team.

Orange: It worked for the team but there was room for improvement.

Red: It either didn’t apply, for example the team wasn’t using burn down charts, or the practice was still failing.

If the resulting Scrum practices map is getting greener over time, the team is on the right track. Otherwise, you have to dig deeper to understand the reasons why there is no continuous improvement, and adapt accordingly.

In addition to this exercise, I also like to run an anonymous poll at the end of every 2-week-sprint. The poll is comprising of three questions that are each answered on a scale from 1 to 10:

What value did the team deliver last sprint? (1: we didn’t deliver any value, 10: we delivered the maximum value possible.) How has the level of technical debt developed during the last sprint? (1: rewrite the application from scratch, 10: there is no technical debt.) Are you happy working with your teammates? (1: I am looking for a new job, 10: I cannot wait to get back to the office on Monday mornings.)

The poll takes less than 30 seconds of each team member’s time, and the results are, of course, available to everyone. Again, tracking the development of the three qualitative metrics provides insight into trends that otherwise might go unnoticed.

Good Quantitative Agile Metrics: Lead Time and Cycle Time

Ultimately, the purpose of any agile transition is to become a learning organization, thus gaining a competitive advantage over the competition. The following metrics apply to the (software) product delivery process but can be adapted to various other processes accordingly.

In the long run, this will not only require to restructure the organization from functional silos to more or less cross-functional teams, where applicable. It will also require analyzing the system itself, for example, to figure out where queues impede value creation.

To identify the existing queues in the product delivery process, you start recording five dates:

The date when a previously validated idea, for example, a user story for a new feature, becomes a product backlog item. The date when this product backlog item becomes a sprint backlog item. The date when development starts on this sprint backlog item. The date when the sprint backlog item meets the team’s ‘Definition of Done’. The date when the sprint backlog item is released to customers.

The lead time is the time elapsed between first and the fifth date, the cycle time the time elapsed between third and the fourth date.

The objective is to reduce both lead time and cycle time to improve the organization’s capability to deliver value to customers. The purpose is accomplished by eliminating dependencies and hand-overs between teams within the product delivery process.

Helpful practices in this respect are:

Creating cross-functional and co-located teams

Having feature teams instead of component teams

Furthering a whole-product perspective, and systems thinking among all team members.

Measuring lead time and cycle time does not require a fancy agile tool or business intelligence software. A simple spreadsheet will do if all teams stick to a simple rule: note the date once you move a ticket. The method even works with index cards.

The following graphic compares median values of lead time and cycle time of three Scrum teams:

The values were derived from analyzing tickets—both user stories as well as bug tickets—from a period of three months. (It is planned to change that interval to two weeks in 2017.)

Other Good Agile Metrics

Esther Derby suggests in her article Metrics for Agile to also measure the ratio of fixing work to feature work, and the number of defects escaping to production.

Bad Agile Metrics

A bad, yet traditional agile metric is team velocity. Team velocity is a notoriously volatile metric, and hence actually only usable by the team itself.

Some of the many factors that make even intra-team sprint comparisons so difficult are:

The team onboards new members,

Veteran team members are leaving,

Seniority levels of team members change,

The team is working in unchartered territory,

The team is working on legacy code,

The team is running into unexpected technical debt,

Holiday & sick leave reduce capacity during the sprint,

The team had to deal with serious bugs.

Actually, you would need to normalize a team’s performance each sprint to derive a value of at least some comparable value. (Which usually is not done.)

Additionally, velocity is a metric that can be easily manipulated. I usually include an exercise in how to cook the “agile books” when coaching new teams. And I have never worked with a team that did not manage to come up with suitable ideas how to make to sure that it would meet any reporting requirements based on its velocity. You should not be surprised by this—it is referred to as the Hawthorne effect:

The Hawthorne effect (also referred to as the observer effect) is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify or improve an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed.

To make things worse, you cannot compare velocities between different teams since all of them are estimating differently. This practice is acceptable, of course, as estimates are usually not pursued merely for reporting purposes. Estimates are a no more than a side-effect of the attempt to create a shared understanding among team members on the why, how, and what of a user story.

So, don’t use velocity as an agile metric.

Ugly Agile Metrics

The ugliest agile metric I have encountered so far is ‘story points per developer per time interval’. This metric equals ‘lines of code’ or ‘hours spent’ from a traditional project reporting approach. The metric is completely useless, as it doesn’t provide any context for interpretation or comparison.

Equally useless “agile metrics” are, for example, the number of certified team members, or the number of team members that accomplished workshops on agile practices.

Conclusion

If you can only record a few data points, go with start and end dates to measure lead time and circle time. If you have just started your agile journey, you may consider also tracking the adoption rate of an individual team by measuring qualitative signals, for example, based on self-assessment tests like the ‘Scrum test’ by Henrik Kniberg.

What do you measure to track your progress? Please share with us in the comments.Kentucky's newly sworn-in Republican House majority on Thursday took the first step toward requiring women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound first, acting swiftly to capitalize on winning a majority for the first time in almost a century.

The 83-12 vote on the bill came on the third day of the state's 2017 General Assembly session, the first in which the Republican Party has led the House since 1921.

The bill requires a physician or qualified technician to perform the ultrasound and position the screen so the woman may view the images. At the same time, the medical staff will be required to describe what the images show, including the size of the fetus and any organs or appendages visible.

Sponsors say the bill will better protect the health of women and provide the materials necessary for women to make an informed choice, while abortion rights advocates contend such laws are designed to scare and shame those seeking an abortion.

Some 25 states have laws regarding ultrasounds and abortions, but only three states require medical staff to display and describe the images, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit group focusing on health issues.

While Kentucky's bill passed easily, some supporters criticized the new House leadership for pushing the legislation through so quickly that it might open the state to a lawsuit if, as expected, the bill becomes law.

"I think that had we had a chance to discuss this bill, we might have come up with something that was not going to open this state up to millions of dollars in litigation" costs, said Democratic state Rep. Angie Hatton, from Whitesburg in southeastern Kentucky.

Meanwhile, the state's Republican-controlled Senate passed another measure that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The House on Thursday was also considering a right-to-work bill as well as a measure that would repeal prevailing wage laws across the state.

In past sessions, lawmakers have used the first week of January predominately for organizational purposes before returning in February for the start of legislative sessions.

However, with Republicans in complete control in the capital of Frankfort, party leaders decided to move quickly on issues they deemed priorities.

Leaders in both chambers plan to meet this weekend to pass bills to be sent to Republican Governor Matt Bevin for approval, House Republican Caucus spokeswoman Daisy Olivo said.

(Reporting by Steve Bittenbender; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Alan Crosby)President-elect Donald Trump Donald TrumpGraham: 'I could not disagree more' with Trump support of Afghanistan troop withdrawal GOP believes Democrats handing them winning 2022 campaign Former GOP operative installed as NSA top lawyer resigns MORE on Sunday blasted NBC's "Meet The Press" for not airing a full interview with one of his top advisers.

"Kellyanne Conway went to @MeetThePress this morning for an interview with @chucktodd," the president-elect tweeted.

"Dishonest media cut out 9 of her 10 minutes. Terrible!"

Kellyanne Conway went to @MeetThePress this morning for an interview with @chucktodd. Dishonest media cut out 9 of her 10 minutes. Terrible! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2017

NBC aired an interview Sunday with Conway.

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The network also tweeted out a link to the full interview. Trump shared the link to the full video on Twitter.

During the interview, Conway was asked about the report detailing Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

"In terms of Russia, if the report says that they attempted ... they did not succeed. They did not succeed to embarrassing this country on the world stage. They did not succeed in throwing the election to Donald Trump," she said during the interview.

"That's very clear in this report ... there is no evidence that Russia succeeded in any alleged attempt to disrupt our democracy or in fact influence the election results."

CNN's Brian Stelter said an NBC source told him that Trump aides knew on Friday that the show was only planning to run a short clip.

NBC source says Team Trump knew (on Friday) that the show was only planning to run a sound bite from @KellyannePolls, not full interview https://t.co/8xFulaizfC — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 8, 2017

The president-elect often hits the media, accusing reporters of biased and dishonest coverage against him.

Trump's incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told The Hill that the media doesn't treat the president-elect with the proper respect.

--This report was updated at 12:36 p.m.The previous page is sending you to http://fox6now.com/2017/01/01/it-could-be-somebody-else-president-elect-trump-says-he-has-inside-information-on-hacking/amp/ If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous pagePHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- It was quite a sight for sore eyes.And some sore muscles.The Flyers Alumni team made up of guys ranging in age from their 40s to their 60s hit the ice Monday morning in anticipation of Saturday's matchup with the Penguins alumni as part of the Flyers 50th anniversary celebration.They were all smiles."I don't know if it was a smile or my mouth was agape just trying to gain oxygen," former Flyers defenseman Mark Howe said.But nobody had a bigger smile on his face than former Flyers forward Brian Propp.16 months removed from suffering a massive stroke that left him unable to speak, the Flyers Hall of Famer will suit up with his old teammates."For me, mentally, it really has helped me to do what I love," Propp said.Propp probably has more practice than any of the other guys.His doctors have been using skating as part of the therapy to aid in his recovery. "I have to take it slowly. Mentally, I'm not there yet. My brain doesn't work that well yet. I have trouble with numbers, days of the week, and things like that. So it's just going to take me a little time," Propp said.Propp says he still has trouble with everyday tasks - like dressing himself and feeding himself. Yet, here he was on the ice, playing hockey."Anybody that knows Brian knows he's one of the most positive and upbeat people I've ever met. Nothing like that is going to keep Brian down," Howe said."That's amazing. Just to see the strides he's made since his accident, it's tremendous. To see him out there and the way he's moving, it's great. It's inspiring," former Flyers forward John LeClair said."He just loves being out there. The fact that he's out there playing and still scoring goals is a testament to his hard work and perseverance," former Flyers goaltender Brian Boucher said.No doubt Saturday, it'll be Propp hearing the loudest cheers of all.When the CIA's connections to the Paris Review and two dozen other magazines were revealed in 1966 , the backlash was swift but uneven. Some publications crumbled, taking their editors down with them, while other publishers and writers emerged relatively unscathed, chalking it up to youthful indiscretion or else defending the CIA as a "nonviolent and honorable" force for good . But in an illuminating new book Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers , writer Joel Whitney debunks the myth of a once-moral intelligence agency, revealing an extensive list of writers involved in transforming America's image in countries we destabilized with coups, assassinations, and other all-American interventions.

While the CIA's involvement in anti-Communist propaganda has been long known, the extent of its influence—particularly in the early careers of the left's most beloved writers—is shocking. Whitney, the co-founder and editor at large of the literary magazine Guernica, spent four years digging through archives, yielding an exhaustive list—James Baldwin, Gabriel García Márquez , Richard Wright, and Ernest Hemingway all served varying levels of utility to Uncle Sam. (Not that the CIA's interest were only in letters: Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were also championed by arms of the agency .)

The CIA developed several guises to throw money at young, burgeoning writers, creating a cultural propaganda strategy with literary outposts around the world, from Lebanon to Uganda , India to Latin America. The same agency that occasionally undermined democracies for the sake of fighting Communism also launched the Congress for Cultural Freedoms (CCF). The CCF built editorial strategies for each of these literary outposts, allowing them to control the conversation in countries where readers might otherwise resist the American perspective. The Paris Review, whose co-founder Peter Matthiessen was a CIA agent, would sell its commissioned interviews to the magazine's counterparts in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. Mundo Nuevo was created to offer a moderate-left perspective to earn trust among Latin American readers, effectively muting more radical perspectives during the Cuban Revolution. Sometimes the agency would provide editors with funding and content; other times it would work directly with writers to shape the discourse. Through these acts, the CCF weaponized the era's most progressive intellectuals as the American answer to the Soviet spin machine.

"It was often a way to change the subject from the civil rights fight at home," Whitney said of the CIA's content strategy during the Cold War. We can easily draw parallels to today, where the nation's most dire issues are rarely our viral subjects. With Donald Trump's presidency just weeks away, Finks arrives at a crucial time, exposing the political machinery that can affect which stories are shared and which are silenced.

But don't let that ruin Love in the Time of Cholera. Whitney explains with methodical clarity how each writer became a tool for the CIA. This nuance not only salvages many of the classics from being junked as solely propaganda, but it serves as a cautionary tale for those trying to navigate today's "post-truth" media landscape. In an era where Facebook algorithms dictate the national discourse, even the most well-meaning journalist is prone to stories that distract on behalf of the US government.

And the excuses varied. You mentioned Gabriel Garcia Márquez's advice that "when you write, it's you who informs the publication." If that's true, why did the CIA work with so many left-leaning Latin American authors, whose writing would give voice and credibility to the idea of autonomy in the region? Can we measure how successful the CIA really was in working with these artists? That's the thing about secrecy: Without any public discussion about what the actual goals were, there was no accountability, and you could keep moving the target. They found that with the early magazines of Latin America—the first one was Cuadernos [del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura]—they had their politics too much on their sleeve, and they weren't getting the readers they wanted. Cuadernos could speak to the hardliners who were already convinced that the US did some good stuff in Latin America. It helped prop up the rich, and it helped knock down purportedly Communist-influenced leftists who often turned out not to have much communism in their leftism. But during the Cuban Revolution, we see a shifting target. Rather than enabling hardliners, "soft-liners" could reach more people.

VICE: So why did you have to ruin all my favorite authors? Joel Whitney: You want to know the truth about the writers and publications you love and what their aims might have been, but that shouldn't mean they're ruined. For somebody like Richard Wright or James Baldwin or even Peter Matthiessen, I feel like there were a lot of people who joined or participated through professors. They were in their early 20s, and when you're young and your professors have national reputations, you take their attention seriously. I was a little bit more interested in where people ended up once the truth was known.

For example, the scholar Patrick Iber pointed out a moment where Emir Rodríguez Monegal admitted that he published an anti-Vietnam war op-ed just to reestablish the idea that it wasn't a CIA instrument. It gets super complicated, but that's where I got interested. Because once I got to that level of complexity I kind of had to throw out my maybe sweet naïve tendency to sort of morally judge all that stuff. After a while, I was just sort of more interested when people changed their mind or when people had a breakdown or when somebody was so instrumentalized and weaponized that they realized it and it crushed them for a moment.

So the CCF published writers who were just left enough to win an audience's trust? The way that they went about it was to use a cultural leftist like Garcia Márquez with their creative work and put their names on the cover in a sort of Trojan Horse style, so that they had a hand in the conversation during the Cuban Revolution. There was something democratic behind that, but there was also something unaccountable and not so democratic about it.

"The CIA's influence in publishing was on the covert ops side, and it was done as propaganda. It was a control of how intellectuals thought about the US."

Basically, they enacted something that I had stumbled into as an idea behind Guernica's political coverage, which is somebody needs to referee, at all times it seems, a debate between the anti-war progressive left and the interventionist left. I was always curious why the interventionist left always was heard and the anti-war progressive left always seemed like it was marginalized.

But not only did the Paris Review solicit this kind of propaganda literature, a lot of their editors were also monitoring writers and expats and the going-ons in France. How did they casually just replace their editors and move on? This "joint employ" is important because it shows a sort of soft collusion. Peter Matthiessen admitted that we were spying but he resigned when he saw how ugly it was. There are some conspiracies out there that he never resigned from the CIA (and his boss did have Deep Cover writers working for him). But I've tried to stick with what I could find, and I found that rumor to be totally unsubstantiated—worthy of a John le Carré novel. Were Nelson Aldrich and Frances Fitzgerald spying on their friends while they were working for the Congress for Cultural Freedom? I don't think so. They were basically doing magazine work and PR work, disguising it as innocent cultural work while doing sort of PR for the American Way. It's not totally inconceivable that you could imagine yourself in the way that García Márquez did, taking that money and sort of affecting its outcome more than the paymasters would. That's the conundrum, I think, and the problem with patronage in secret: It lets you tell yourself, "I don't think I was tainted" and justifying your own behavior. But as soon as you say that, you're talking against the basic journalistic principle of transparency.

The CIA's influence in publishing was on the covert ops side and it was done as propaganda. It might have been conceived by some of the participants as an altruistic funding of culture, but it was actually a control of journalism, a control of the fourth estate. It was a control of how intellectuals thought about the US. But once it was exposed, it was completely useless.

When the CIA's connections to theParis Review and other publications were revealed, the backlash was starkly uneven. The Beirut-based Hiwar—as well as the life and career of its editor Tawfiq Sayigh— were destroyed . Why was the Paris Review left unscathed? Your question just points to a central aim of the book. I think a lot of the writing that deals with this issue never looks at it next to all the coups and assassinations and interventions that made Americans so unpopular. Once Hiwar and other magazines were exposed, they were folded into all the interventions that people hate in the postcolonial world.

Once you start doing negative propaganda, I think it quickly turns into disinformation. You're willing to entertain any argument that makes your enemy look bad. In the moment The Paris Review started to chase the Boris Pasternak interview, its implicit propaganda mission changed from something like: "We need the American and Western writers to be known overseas" to a more negative one that tells Americans how unfree "they" are, without explaining much in terms of context. I can almost agree with the first gesture of wanting Americans to be known by our writers rather than our Republicans. But this is more equitable when we're willing to say, "We need Americans to know about work in translation."

The CIA turned writers into cultural weapons even when they weren't saying anything explicitly pro-America, by simply advertising for the "American alternative." How is that different today? American writers still have a monopoly in the literature scene—are they not conveying the same narrative? That's a huge question, and a good question. It reminds me of the mission for Guernica during the Bush Administration. The US was committing an ugly war, and I was horrified, ashamed, but I was a lit guy who did an MFA, so what could I do to help? I feel like a lot of writers feel that way now—what can we do? I needed to be instrumentalized. There is a shame in being represented by Bush or Donald Trump and the assholes only who often cheat their way into government. I will say, I don't think positive propaganda is quite as nasty as disinformation and negative propaganda, which are almost always the same thing.

Pasternak is in many ways a native informant, in that he was a foreign writer who gave testimony to a narrative that the US wanted, and so became a CIA darling.

That's what the Pasternak story is. He wrote Doctor Zhivago as an independent dissident, but the CIA wanted to control that, and so Pasternak became a symbol of why Western democracies "were better than that" culturally.

You have to hear his criticism not as a one-way thing that only criticizes his system. You have to listen to these dissidents and think about your own dissidence. Who is your Pasternak, and how are you treating him while you're propping up Pasternak? That was one impetus behind the book: the question of whether we have a Pasternak now. What is Snowden compared to Pasternak? I don't know that you can make huge comparisons to one creative writer making critique versus a leaker and whistleblower. But I wanted people to see in Pasternak not just the symbol that we try to make him into as Cold Warriors. These people are now symbols, but before that, they were independent thinkers. In some cases, they were just trying to tell their stories.

Where can we draw the line today? If writers want to avoid the blurred lines between honest expression and propaganda, should we simply swear off any sort of government funding or is it possible to be more nuanced?

No. It's way more nuanced. We should have a wall of separation, and we have the principle in government in the separation of powers. It's not that we don't want government funding, it just can't be secret. Some principles that point back to some of our finest big principles need to be re-articulated and restated. We're in a messy, impure world, and as journalists, we'll take whatever funding we can get. [But] we have be smart about it, like what García Márquez was trying to do.

Social media has dethroned editors as the gatekeepers of information. Do you think that makes it easier for the CIA to control the conversation?

I feel like some of these platforms withstood the government pressure better than others. I know that Facebook constantly is changing its algorithm for ad-related purposes, but they withstood some of the pressure a little differently than Twitter, who faced pressure to reveal identities in the wake of Arab Spring and other movements.

But there are other ways to leverage these cultural markets. If you look at the film industry— Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, etc.—we're paying billions of dollars to lie to ourselves. I feel like at some point in the early war on terror, the Bush administration met with filmmakers, and they said, "We need to enlist you in this mission." That's not a new thing, but it felt new at the time, if you didn't know how often that kind of thing happened during the cultural Cold War.

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Current visibility: Hidden This item will only be visible to you, admins, and anyone marked as a creator.Free shipping on $50+, free returns on all ordersBy Adam Taylor

I thought I would kick off the new year with a few blogs that look at the Zynq SoC’s power-management options. These options are important for many Zynq-based systems that are designed to run from battery power or other constrained power sources.

There are several elements of the design we can look at, from the system and board level down to the PS and PL levels inside of the Zynq SoC. At the system level, we can look at component selection. We can use low-voltage devices wherever possible because they will have a lower static power consumption. We can also use lower-power DRAM by selecting components like LPDDR in place of DDR2. One of the simpler choices would be selecting a single-core Zynq SoC as opposed to a dual-core device.

Within the Zynq SoC itself, there are several things we can do both within the PS and PL to reduce power. There are two categories we can consider when it comes to reducing power consumption in Zynq-based systems:

Entering a low-power standby mode in which application execution is stopped. This is achieved by placing the Zynq PS in sleep mode and powering down the PL. Optimizing the PS and the PL to reduce power during operation.

The first option allows us to reduce the power consumption after we have detected that the system has been inactive for a period and should therefore enter a low-power mode to prolong operating life on a battery charge. The second option allows us to make the best use of the battery capacity while operating. I will demonstrate the savings to be had with the Zynq SoC’s sleep mode and how to enter it in a follow-up blog. For the moment, I want to look at what we can do within the Zynq SoC’s PS to reduce power consumption. Most of these techniques relate to how we configure the clocking architecture within the PS.

As you can see in the diagram below, the Zynq SoC’s clocking architecture is very flexible. We can use this flexibility to reduce the power consumption of the Zynq PS.

Zynq SoC Clocking Architecture

The first approach we can take is to trade off performance against power consumption. We can reduce the power consumption within the Zynq SoC’s PS simply by selecting a lower APU frequency. Of course, this also reduces APU performance. However, as engineers one of our roles is to understand the overall system requirements and balance them. CMOS power dissipation is frequency dependent so we reduce power consumption by reducing the APU frequency, which has the potential to significantly reduce PS power dissipation. We can also use the same trade-off with the DDR SDRAM, trading memory bandwidth for reduced power.

Clock Configuration in the Zynq SoC – Reducing the APU frequency

Along with reducing the frequency of the APU, we can also implement a clocking scheme that reduces the number of PLLs used within the PS. The Zynq PS has three available PLLs named the ARM, IO, and DDR PLL. The clocking architecture allows downstream connections to use any one of the PLL sources, so a clocking scheme that uses fewer than all three PLLs results in lower power dissipation as unused PLLs can be disabled and their power consumption eliminated.

In addition, the application being developed may not require the use of all peripherals within the PS. We can therefore use the Zynq SoC’s clock-gating facilities to reduce power consumption by not clocking unused peripherals, further reducing the power consumption of the PS within the Zynq.

I performed a very simple experiment with a MicroZed board by inserting an ammeter into the USB power port supplying power to the MicroZed. This is a simple way to monitor the board’s overall power consumption. Running the Zynq PS alone with no design in the programmable logic, the MicroZed drew a current of 364mA @ 5V (1.825W) with the default MicroZed configuration.

I ran a few simple experiments to see the effect on the overall power consumption by reducing the clock frequency by half from 666MHz to 250MHz and then selecting the use of only one PLL—the DDR PLL—to clock the design. Running just from the DDR PLL reduced the current consumption to only 308mA, a 16% reduction. However, I did to have de-activate the unused PLL’s myself in my application. Reducing the frequency of the APU alone only reduced the overall current consumption to 345mA, a 6% reduction. So we see that turning off unused PLLs can have a big effect on power consumption.

If we want to gate the clocks to unused peripherals within the PS, we can use the Zynq SoC’s APER register to disable the clocks to that peripheral.

APER Control Register Bits

For a final experiment, I relocated the program to execute from the Zynq SoC’s on-chip RAM and disabled the DDR memory. For many applications, this may not be feasible but for some it may, so I thought it worthy of a test. Relocating the code further reduced the current consumption to 270mA (a 26% reduction) when combined with peripheral gating, APU frequency reduction, and running from one PLL alone.

Next time we will look at how we can place the processor into sleep mode.As a subscriber, you are shown 80% less display advertising when reading our articles.

Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local services.

These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community.

It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times.Kingdom Hearts is celebrating its 15th anniversary, and Square Enix isn't going to let it slide by without some major promotions. The latest is a Memorial Stained Glass Clock display in the Tokyo Metro Marunouchisen Shinjuku Station Metro Promenade, which will take place from January 9-15.

The display is exactly what it sounds like, with a giant Sora stained glass clock set to be surrounded by 12 smaller stained glass pieces as clock dials. Once the campaign is over, Square Enix plans to give all 13 away as part of a Twitter contest.

The stained glass clock displays in question:

As for the contest, it involves following the @_KingdomHearts Twitter account and tweeting them a pic of your favorite stained glass piece from the website. Alternatively, folks in Japan can take a photo of the exhibit and tweet using the #キングダムハーツ15周年 hashtag.

There's more to the display than the massive clock, too, including a flashback video showing Kingdom Hearts moments and counting down to January 12's launch of HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue.

Square Enix also has a memorial exhibition planned, complete with a mural featuring characters from the series.

Via Gematsu

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. You can read his webcomic, BIG DUMB FIGHTING IDIOTS, every week at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter @Moldilox.Whatcha gonna do about it, Doc.

Also line-practice. I’ll figure this out one day I swear.Las tres semanas españolas de la Navidad tocan a su fin. Muchos españoles apuran las últimas horas entregados a la tarea de comprar con encomiable entusiasmo. Los grandes parques temáticos de centros comerciales llenos desde primera hora de la mañana. Pasillos y tiendas en alegre festejo. Apenas nadie tiene, como nosotros, doble visita de forasteros obsequiosos que entran de noche por las ventanas a traer regalos. Uno, procedente del norte; tres, de Oriente. Como en España no se vive en ninguna parte repetirán algunos.

Las librerías registran una inusual actividad, auténtica aglomeración. Es fácil comprobar la presencia de neófitos que no distinguen entre las cajas de pagar y los pupitres de información. Loado sea el espíritu que los introduce en los templos del saber –y del merchandising, todo hay que decirlo- piensas por un momento, solo un momento. Dos tendencias sobresalen entre los libros: los de autoayuda y los de cocina.

Cualquiera cara conocida por salir en una pantalla cocinando ha debido sacar su libro. Y así encontramos Cocina para familias o personas solas, vegetariana, verde, sana y de fritos y tapas. Innovadora y tradicional o casera, rápida y de baja –y lenta- cocción, para adelgazar –comiendo-, para aumentar la longevidad o para Peter Pan que todavía deben ser los hombres que se resisten a crecer. Probablemente con un rico surtido de papillas o platos de pasta. Rizando el rizo es posible aunar las dos preferencias de moda y adquirir libros de cocina para vivir mejor.

Se unirá así a toda la suerte de consejos en formato libro, cartel, taza, cepillo de dientes o adorno en donde recuerdes que tú puedes con todo, has de perseguir tus sueños –éste se lleva mucho-, y seguir andando aunque no puedas más porque es lo que te diferencia de otros. Que rendirse no es una opción, que saldrás de está, que esto también pasará, que cada día cuenta contigo y que en definitiva tienes que ser feliz. No deja de ser curioso en un país que registra cifras récord en consumo de ansiolíticos y antidepresivos. Quizás piensen que tomando el desayuno con esa frase positiva no será necesario el tranquimazín o el orfidal. Uno ponía Not, no en inglés, que explica muchas cosas.

La España de Campofrío en su apogeo, la maniquea, la que hace las delicias de esa simpleza fanfarrona y persistente que ha dado en llamarse “cuñadismo”. Lo peor es que muchos niños participan de la ceremonia con similar júbilo. Papa Noel o Santa Claus han caducado por este año como el yogur y esperan ya a Melchor, Gaspar y Baltasar. Y los caramelos que se cogen con paraguas del revés para que los otros no pillen ni uno.

Pobres de nosotros. Quienes viven así y quienes sufren sus decisiones. Porque mirar la deriva de esta sociedad lleva a preguntarse si estamos preparados para afrontar lo que se nos viene encima.

Nos encontramos en uno de los momentos más preocupantes de nuestras vidas. Todas las piezas del caos construidas a conciencia están a punto de ensamblarse. No quisieron evitarlo antes y ahora tampoco. Se están afrontando los alarmantes cambios con la habitual despreocupación, con insensata irresponsabilidad.

Estados Unidos y Rusia reactivan la guerra fría. Reactivan sus negocios para ser más precisos. Disponiendo ya material de defensa ante amenazas, cuando precisamente confluirán en la cabeza de ambos países dos personas con muchos puntos en común y gran afinidad y simpatía el uno por el otro. Trump, el inminente presidente norteamericano, defendió a Putin, frente a Obama. El mundo en estas manos vive en un polvorín. Y las empresas empiezan a tomar partido. Por el poder. La automovilística Ford ha cancelado una inversión millonaria en México por las amenazas de Trump.

Pero aún habría que añadir a Theresa May en el Reino Unido del Brexit que no pasa por ser la más razonable, ni progresista. Varios más aguardan la salida. Sin olvidar a unos cuantos sátiros diseminados por puntos neurálgicos, como Al Asad en Siria o Erdogan en Turquía que está encarcelando a medio país con la excusa del presunto golpe de Estado que sufrió. Y sin duda los atentados terroristas que -sean fruto de asesinos solitarios u organizados por ISIS que los reivindica todos-, crean una gran alarma social. Añadan la siembra permanente del miedo. Seguridad es la palabra del inicio de 2017, la que cuentan proporcionan los controles y las armas.

Entretanto, muchos ciudadanos, en su nube. Vistas las tendencias de consumo de estos días, igual piden, en la carta a los Reyes Magos, una máquina de croquetas para comer la cuarta parte de proteínas envueltas en harina. Con la ventaja añadida de que son blandas y fáciles de pasar. Y varias tazas de pensar en positivo.

Pero convendría más demandar que sus hijos no lleguen a saber cómo, entre las decisiones de unos y otros, les va a ser más difícil estudiar y conseguir un trabajo bien remunerado. Y que emigrar empieza a no ser una salida cuando se levantan las fronteras y en el Reino Unido, o en los Estados Unidos de Trump, solo quieren a los nacionales. Tenemos tanto que contarles. Imagínense a quienes ni siquiera les alcanza muchas veces para croquetas.

Prueben a pedir a a los reyes magos justo lo contrario: saber lo que está sociedad está haciendo y por qué. Han de estar preparados. Una reflexión acerca de lo bien que se traga la corrupción del PP. El constante olor a trampa de muchas de sus decisiones. El sabor a impunidad llegada al culmen en el caso de las responsabilidades por el accidente del Yak 42, con 62 militares muertos, que hubiera sido evitable.

Los privilegios de unos sobre otros. Los apaños para no pagar impuestos. El “cerebro financiero” de la Gürtel se lo amañó a Supermercados Alcampo, según su propia confesión. Los indultos del gobierno del PP, como a ese “promotor inmobiliario” que estafó a numerosas familias vendiendo casas que nunca construyó. Imaginen que la corrupción organizada fuera de un partido de izquierdas. Piensen qué pasaría y qué dirían usted, sus conocidos y los medios. Reflexionen sobre cómo está sociedad engulle la corrupción letal y se atraganta con fantasmas de odios inducidos.

Recapaciten sobre qué hay de verdad en toda esta patraña, en quién se beneficia. Cómo el mundo ha llegado a las puertas de Trump, y de Putin, y todos los demás de una larga lista. A un segundo gobierno de Rajoy y a una Gestora del PSOE que da el gobierno a Rajoy. Cómo se lo han contado o cómo no se lo han contado. Y por qué. Calibren esa influencia sobre los hechos. Y, sobre todo, piensen qué van a hacer ustedes.

Para empezar, todos los niños -y mayores- del mundo harían bien en pedir a los Reyes Magos que les saquen de debajo de la cama al lobo ComeCaperucitasyPeterPanes. Es lo primero para ser autónomo. Aunque mucho mejor será que lo saquemos nosotros mismos.BRUSSELS, January 10. /TASS/. Belgian parliament’s commission for external affairs on Tuesday considers a draft resolution demanding an end to the EU sanctions against Russia, MP Aldo Carcassi, the author of the resolution told TASS.

If the commission endorses the document, a date for its hearings at a plenary session of the parliament will be appointed.

"The objective of the resolution is to empower the Belgian government to call on the EU Council lift the European sanctions against Russia, as they inflict damage on Belgian farmers," Carcassi said. "On January 10, the commission for external affairs of the Chamber of Representatives will hold hearings on the resolution."

Belgian-Russian trade, which stood at 15.1 billion euro in 2013, or year preceding the introduction of sanctions against Moscow, has shrunk by 23% to 11.4 billion euro by now, while the Belgian agrarian sector’s output has evidenced a 5% decrease by the most optimistic counts as a result of the anti-Russian measures. The draft resolution contains these figures, the MP said.

The text of the resolution cites four reasons for the revoking of EU sanctions.

It says that, in the first place, they contravene international law, since the UN Security Council is the only body that has appropriate powers for introducing sanctions and it has never imposed any restrictive measures against Russia or supported them.

Secondly, the resolution says the sanctions should be lifted proceeding from the EU’s own logic, as the EU linked their abolition to Russia’s compliance with all the provisions of the Minsk accords on settling the armed civil conflict in eastern Ukraine, while Russia is not a party to that conflict.

Thirdly, the document underlines full inefficiency of the sanctions, saying that the Russian economy, which received a blow as a result of the sanctions in 2014, has fully recuperated by now, since the ruble has stabilized and Russia’s macroeconomic indicators look better than those of a number of European countries.

Last but not least, the resolution calls Russia a friend and ally in the struggle against terrorism and extremist organizations like the Islamic State.Sejun Park, the 2014 World Champion, is one of the most influential team builders in Pokémon and widely considered one of the greats of the game. Often his ideas are adopted, and adapted by various other players in different regions to great success. Today we take quick look at his recent Battle Spot team that he posted on his blog.

We aren’t confident translating Korean so we’ve used a mix of intuition and broken translations to deliver this content. If you enjoyed it, want more, or have suggestions as to how to improve the formatting and content, feel free to comment below!

Introduction

Before starting, Sejun would like to thank the creator of the original team and the foundations of this build, Shochan.

On the 17th and 18th of December the first VGC 17 tournament was held in Busan, Korea; just a day after Sejun’s final exam. This left Sejun with little time to build a new team. On the 17th, Sejun participated in the TCG tournament losing in Top 8 against Break Trevenant whilst playing a Mega-Rayquaza deck himself. He notes staying in a hotel with JJI and MeLuCaVGC.

Sejun expresses his troubles at finding a team he was happy with at this point, but MeLuCa showed him a team he had found. The original post detailing the team has since been deleted.

The team was fairly unique at this point, however Sejun was convinced it had potential to succeed as the team had proven successful on the ladder. Tapu Fini and Porygon-Z especially stood out. Sejun and his friend opted to change the items and sets on Arcanine as well as Alolan-Muk. It was very late at this point and they opted to settle on the team rather than lose more sleep.

With four hours sleep, and a new team; Sejun headed for the tournament!

The team exceeded expectations and took Sejun to the final! Ultimately he lost to a Trick-Room team.

After returning home, he felt the team had a lot of potential, made some additional changes, and headed onto the ladder.

Sejun tried for 2000 but ultimately fell short as the surprise factor of the team wore off as people learnt the sets. He ended up facing, and losing to two perfect mirrors.

Team

Tapu Fini @ Choice Specs

Ability: Misty Surge

EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 Spe

Modest Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

– Muddy Water

– Scald

– Dazzling Gleam

– Moonblast

Tapu Fini’s strength is in its stability and consistent damage. Water/Fairy typing can act as both defensive and offensive. Tapu Fini’s natural physical and special bulk needs only 252 HP EVs, to ensure the longevity of strong attacks. The consistent, very powerful damage due to the Choice Specs, can often be enough to disrupt and throw off an opponent that has a weak match-up or is struggling to gain tempo.

Misty Terrain is stronger as a means to remove other terrains than to function on its own. Tapu Fini is not a particularly threatening lead, and not always as strong as the other Tapus, but is very stable due to the above qualities. As it is slower than Tapu Koko and Tapu Lele, Misty Terrain will remove the opposing respective terrains. This contributes to the longevity of not only Tapu Fini, but other team members. PorygonZ is specially mentioned; this is likely due to the lead combination the pair offer.

In addition, the power of dragon moves are reduced, specially Salamence’s Z-move Devastating Drake and Draco Meteor. As Misty Terrain also blocks status conditions on grounded Pokémon, it can mitigate hax experienced in a battle, especially from moves like Blizzard and Discharge.

Predominately, Muddy Water is used. It is easy to not have to think, and just spam Muddy Water. Of course it is annoying if Muddy Water does miss, however due to the stability of Tapu Fini, it can afford to miss occasionally.

Dazzling Gleam is also used to accumulate damage on both opponents. Scald and Moonblast are used in situations were the opponent may have Wide Guard, or when Tapu Fini needs to do extra damage to pick up a KO.

The EVs are simple. 252 HP gives longevity and 252 SpAtk maximises damage output.

Porygon-Z @ Choice Scarf

Ability: Adaptability

evel: 50

EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe

Modest Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

– Tri Attack

– Hyper Beam

– Ice Beam

– Dark Pulse

When most people see Porygon-Z they instantly assume it is a Z-Conversion team and hence play very aggressively. This plays into scarf Porygon-Z as it can outspeed and pickup early KOs with strong, STAB Tri Attack. For example, it has a 37.5% chance to OHKO offensive Tapu Koko builds.

252+ SpA Adaptability Porygon-Z Tri Attack vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Tapu Koko: 130-154 (89 – 105.4%) — 37.5% chance to OHKO.

Ice Beam can comfortably OHKO Garchomp and, with very little chip damage or a high roll, Assault Vest variations. 252+ SpA Porygon-Z Ice Beam vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Garchomp: 180-212 (97.8 – 115.2%) — 87.5% chance to OHKO

Hyper Beam is used to ‘one for one’ other Pokémon and should be used expecting Porygon-Z to faint afterwards. Naturally, this is good to remove Pokémon that the rest of the team struggles against. As it only has 90% accuracy, lets hope it hits!

Dark Pulse is used to cover Pokémon that the other three moves don’t such as Alolan Marowak, and Metagross. (Sejun makes special note of Arcanine and Kartana as well). Although it was just a filler move, Sejun notes it was useful.

As there are few Pokémon using fighting type moves, Porygon-Z can often survive a long time, especially if Misty Terrain is active. Normally the only moves that can OHKO it are Z-moves. Sejun considered mixing in HP EVs however he wanted to outspeed Scarf Tapu Bulu (especially to avoid Rock Slide), so he opted for 252 SpAtk and 252 Spd.

Arcanine (F) @ Firium Z

Ability: Intimidate

Level: 50

EVs: 76 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SpD / 164 Spe

Adamant Nature

– Flare Blitz

– Wild Charge

– Extreme Speed

– Protect

As a fire type Pokémon, as well as intimidator, Arcanine compliments Tapu Fini well. As Z-Flare Blitz has no recoil, it is very useful to target bulky Pokémon such as Porygon 2 and Alolan Muk for huge damage.

Wild Charge is excellent as a means to hit Gyarados, Pelipper, and Araquanids whilst Arcanine is beside Gastrodon. Extreme Speed is a powerful move +2 priority move strongest when the opponent has already taken significant damage.

76 HP EVs minimise hail and sand damage as Arcanine’s HP stat hits a 16n-1 number. 252 Adamant ensures Arcanine does as much damage as possible. 164 outspeeds puts Arcanine on a speed stat of 136, outspeeding 252 Modest Xurkitree by 1 point.

Arcanine is the only Pokémon in the team that can hit Celesteela for super-effective damage. Sejun discusses briefly that Celesteela is not such a problem as the rest of the team is not ‘weak’ to it. It will only set up a substitute and use Leech Seed. By defeating the rest of Celesteela’s teammates, it can be double targeted respectively until it is KO’d or Arcanine can OHKO it.

Kartana @ Focus Sash

Ability: Beast Boost

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe

Jolly Nature

– Leaf Blade

– Smart Strike

– Sacred Sword

– Protect

Kartana is a very high speed attacker that pairs well with Tapu Fini as it can remove other water types such as Gastrodon. It is also extremely effective against all the Tapu Pokémon excluding Tapu Koko, as well as putting pressure on Porygon2. Kartana pairs well with both Porygon-Z and Tapu Fini as it can exert a lot of offensive pressure.

Celesteela with only Heavy Slam do very little to Kartana and cannot Leech Seed it. For these reasons, Kartana is free to attack Celesteela’s partners, a stategy discussed above under Arcanine’s set.

Unfortunately, most Kartana are also max speed so sometimes you need to win the speed tie.

Muk-Alola (F) @ Figy Berry

Ability: Gluttony

Level: 50

EVs: 204 HP / 252 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpD / 4 Spe

Adamant Nature

– Poison Jab

– Knock Off

– Shadow Sneak

– Protect

Figy Berry gives Alolan-Muk great longevity. It is very strong against teams that use Alolan-Marowak, Tapu Pokémon, Oranguru, Porygon2 etc.

Sejun did not change any EVs on the Muk from the original team, however he notes that the speed could be changed as some Alolan-Marowaks now run speed investment. Muk is slow enough to move before all of the Tapu Pokémon in Trick Room.

Muk is brought mainly against teams that rely heavily on Tapu Pokémon and/or Trick Room. Sejun notes that Muk is quite weak against Garchomp, so if Arcanine is already selected, he would not bring both.

Gastrodon-East @ Sitrus Berry

Ability: Storm Drain

Level: 50

EVs: 164 HP / 92 Def / 252 SpA

Quiet Nature

IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe

– Scald

– Ice Beam

– Sludge Bomb

– Protect

Against Rain teams, Milotic, Gyarados, Araquanid etc Gastrodon was selected. It also has strong synergy with Arcanine. Whilst Gastrodon can do super effective damage against Tapu Koko and Garchomp, one should be weary of Grass Knot and Tectonic Rage as surprise KOs.

The EVs were not changed from the original team. It can function as an both an attacking and defending Pokémon depending on the situation.

In general it was not selected much for battle save for when the opponent had Trick Room in which Alolan Muk was also selected.

Even if Gastrodon is not selected for battle, it will influence the opponent’s team selection.

Team Selection

The four Pokémon selected for battle for the four that supply the most effective attacks against the opposing team. Often the lead of Tapu Fini + PorygonZ/Kartana is used. Teams that don’t have effective countermeasures to Tapu Fini, such as Kartana, would normally lose through this basic lead combination.

Trick Room is a tough matchup. (Remember; Sejun lost in the final to Trick Room). The team needs to try and navigate the Trick Room turns without losing too much momentum and finally strike once Trick Room expires. It is paramount that Trick Room is not set up twice. Trick Room + Belly Drum Snorlax is a very tough matchup.

As the team offers no countermeasure to gimmicky teams, it is most probable that these teams, such as those focused around Eevee, will win.

The team is far from ideal and struggles against Kartana, Alolan Ninetales and Lilligant + Torkoal.

Conclusion

It has become harder to win now that Tapu Fini and Porygon-Z’s sets are known and the number of Kartana’s has increased. For the time that the team was used, it was fun but now it is time to retire it. This combination is still powerful. The foundations of the team are from Shochan!

Many thanks for reading. Sejun will be stronger in 2017!Fun with TCGs, CCGs, Collectible miniatures games, and everything in between.President-elect Donald Trump said Friday morning that Mexico would pay the U.S. back for a border wall, following reports he may ask Congress for U.S. tax dollars to pay for it.

In an early-morning tweet, Trump ripped “the dishonest media” for not reporting that any money spent on building the wall “for sake of speed” will later be paid back by Mexico.The regular season might be over, but you can still get your Fantasy Football fix by playing in a playoff challenge throughout the postseason.

Several sites offer a playoff challenge game and we have you covered with player rankings, which can also be applied to daily leagues.

The ideal situation is to find players who play four games (Wild Card round through the Super Bowl), but three games should be the goal. Obviously, the more games they play, the better their overall production, but knowing the rules of your playoff challenge is important.

The first thing you want to do is map out the postseason and figure out who will win in each round. For example, in the AFC, I expect Houston to beat Oakland and Pittsburgh to beat Miami. New England will beat Houston, and Pittsburgh will upset Kansas City on the road. The Patriots will then advance to the Super Bowl over the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game.

The games that could go either way in the AFC are the Raiders and Texans in the Wild Card round and the Chiefs and Steelers in the Divisional Round. I don't have faith in Connor Cook or Matt McGloin to win on the road, which is why I like Houston even with Brock Osweiler or Tom Savage, and I think the Steelers are better than the Chiefs, even in Kansas City. It also wouldn't be a shock if the Steelers reached the Super Bowl as well.

In the NFC, I like Green Bay over the Giants, which is close, and Seattle over Detroit, but then it gets tricky in the Divisional Round. Atlanta should beat Seattle at home, but Green Bay at Dallas can go either way. You can make a strong case for the Cowboys, Falcons or Packers to reach the Super Bowl, but I see the Packers beating the Falcons in the NFC Championship Game.

My Super Bowl prediction before the season was a Patriots-Packers Super Bowl, so I'm sticking with that since both teams are still alive. With that in mind, I'm leaning heavily toward players from Green Bay and New England in any playoff challenge.

But I also like players from the Steelers since they could play 3-4 games, and I'm still leaning on guys from the Falcons and Cowboys in case they play three games as well. Seattle should play two games, and the Giants and Chiefs can also play two games, although I don't expect that to happen.

Most people expect the Lions and Dolphins to lose in the Wild Card round, and whoever wins the Raiders-Texans game should be destroyed the following week at New England. The one certainty about these NFL playoffs is the Patriots have the best chance to reach the Super Bowl.

And we'll see if these predictions lead to Fantasy production for the players throughout the playoffs.

Quarterback

Tom Brady TB • QB • 12 2016 regular season stats CMP % 6,740.0 YDS 3,554 TD 28 INT 2 View Profile

I struggled with the order for the top five quarterbacks, but I went the safe route with Brady at No. 1 since he should play three games in reaching the Super Bowl. Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Ryan and Prescott all have the chance for three games as well, but Rodgers and Roethlisberger could get four games if they reach the Super Bowl.

Wilson should play at least two games, and Manning could pull off the upset in Green Bay, which puts him at No. 7. Smith could also play two games, but he has minimal upside as a Fantasy quarterback.

Osweiler or Savage are No. 9 since I expect the Texans to play two games, and Stafford and Moore should be done after one week. Cook or McGloin also should play just one game since I expect the Raiders to lose on the road at Houston.

Running back

Le'Veon Bell KC • RB • 26 2016 regular season stats ATT 261 YDS 1,268 TD 7 REC 75 REC YDS 616 REC TD 2 View Profile

If Bell gets four games in the playoffs then he should be the best Fantasy player in any playoff challenge, which is why he's No. 1. Blount has the chance for three games, and he led the NFL with 18 rushing touchdowns this season, but he won't help you much in any PPR challenge with only seven catches during the year.

It wouldn't be a surprise to see Elliott or Freeman play three games and dominate, and both could easily be better than Blount, especially in PPR. But those first four running backs could be exceptional, especially if all four advance to the Championship Game in each conference.

Montgomery is No. 5 since I expect the Packers to play four games, and I have Miller at No. 6 and Rawls at No. 7 since I expect them to play two games, which gives them the chance for plenty of volume. Ware and Murray could also play two games, so those two guys are next on the list.

Lewis and Coleman are backups who still get plenty of touches, and we've seen both have solid games of late, especially Coleman. And Ajayi was tough to rank because he could easily struggle against the Steelers in the Wild Card round, but he could also have one great game even in a loss at Pittsburgh.

I hope the Giants lean on Perkins over Jennings at Green Bay, and either of these guys could be a steal if the Giants upset the Packers and play at least two games. The same goes for Zenner, who has played well in the past two games for the Lions, but Detroit will likely be eliminated in the Wild Card round at Seattle.

Wide receiver

Antonio Brown TB • WR • 81 2016 regular season stats TAR 155 REC 106 YDS 1,284 TD 12 View Profile

Brown should have a big game against the Dolphins, and he should be great throughout the playoffs, especially if the Steelers play four games. The same goes for Nelson and Adams if the Packers play four games, and both were top-seven Fantasy receivers in standard leagues during the regular season.

Jones looks to be fine following a two-game absence toward the end of the year with a toe injury, and he could play three playoff games. The same goes for Edelman, who went off in Week 17 at Miami.

Bryant can easily be a top-three receiver in any playoff challenge if the Cowboys play three games, and I like Baldwin's potential in two games as the No. 1 receiver for Seattle. Mitchell was hard to rank since he missed Week 17 with a knee injury, but hopefully he'll be healthy coming off a bye. And it was hard to rank Beckham at only No. 9, but the Giants could easily be one and done in the Wild Card round at Green Bay.

I hope Hopkins does well in potentially two playoff games, but his volume puts him in this spot. And Rogers has come on of late and slots in at No. 11 with the Steelers expected to play at least three games.

The Raiders receivers are tough to trust with Derek Carr (leg) out, and we'll see if Gabriel (foot) is healthy after missing Week 17. I also struggled with Hill since he could be awesome (three touchdowns in his past four games), but he also went two games without a catch over that span and the Chiefs could lose in the Divisional Round.

Tight end

Martellus Bennett NE • TE • 88 2016 regular season stats TAR 73 REC 55 YDS 701 TD 7 View Profile

Bennett has a touchdown in three of his past four games, and he should be the No. 1 tight end in the playoffs if the Patriots play three games. Kelce could challenge him for that spot, but he has to get at least two games for that to happen.

Graham has a great matchup against the Lions in the Wild Card round and the Falcons in the Divisional Round, and he could also challenge for the No. 1 spot on this list. And we hope Green is healthy because of his potential for at least three games, especially in the Wild Card round against the Dolphins, but if he's out then James would get a boost in value.

Cook hasn't been a great Fantasy tight end this year, but his potential for at least three games puts him in this spot. And Fiedorowicz scored in Week 17 at Tennessee, and hopefully he can build on that game against the Raiders in the Wild Card round, especially since he had six catches for 82 yards against Oakland in Week 11.

Witten ranks at No. 7, kind of by default, with the hope he can produce one or two good outings if the Cowboys are able to play at least three playoff games. And Ebron hopefully will play at least one good game in the Wild Card round at Seattle.

Kicker

Defense/special teamsLast night, I watched a Japanese vampire film called Higanjima, which is based on a manga book series of the same name.

Meet Atsushi, an overly sensitive high school student whose brother has been missing for two years. After a cold teaser opening that introduces the vampires (and gory ways to kill them), we see Atsushi run away from a group of troublemakers. Coincidentally, his escape route leads him past every single one of his friends, who are thus introduced. Atsushi is saved by a beautiful and mysterious woman who claims to have information about his brother’s whereabouts. Of course, the secret behind it all is much bigger……

…… it always is, isnt’ it?

This very clunky form of exposition aside, the film starts quite promising. There is some decent choreography, and visually the film really looks good. I am no fan of gore myself, but I am ready to accept that this film is not doing any half-measures in that respect but is going for gore whole-heartedly. The methods by which vampires are killed in this film are accordingly often rather inventive and elaborate, and invariably messy.

Unfortunately, the film is saddled right from the start with tons of teenage issues and especially teenage angst. If I tell you that Atsushi’s group of friends are all stereotypes and that ‘Higanjima’ is, in fact, an island, it might already dawn on you what particular sub-genre we find ourselves in: the typical “trapped teens” splatter film. I tried to define this sub-genre in my review of Prowl, but it basically needs no definition as anyone knows this type of film anyway. Here, we have all the important elements. Group of teenagers (‘check!’), all stock characters (‘check!’), trapped in geographically isolated location (‘check!’), with no way of getting out (‘check!’); a location where GPS does not work (‘check!’) and where there is no cell-phone reception (‘check!’). Now just add lots of gore and some exploitation elements and you have got your film.

There are some additional themes thrown into this film (but often barely used): brotherly love, some martial arts, an abusive relationship… and, of course, vampires. The ‘vampires’ in this film are basically just blood-drinking creatures with long teeth that could have easily been substituted for any other kind of monster. In this respect, Higanjima is similar to the aforementioned Prowl, another “trapped teens” film I reviewed a while back. It is the “trapped teens” premise and all the “technicalities” (isolated location, etc.) that were really important for the creator of the manga, the precise nature of the monsters was surely a secondary concern.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why the vampires in this film are in their ways and looks more reminiscent of traditional Japanese film monsters than of vampires.

There is some confusion and variety as well: one of the vampires possesses abilites that the others seem to lack. And there is at least one additional creature that has no perceivable connection to the vampires.

Those things said, the film is still pretty much on solid “trapped teen” slasher grounds when, 82 minutes into the film, a new set of characters is introduced; and that introduction and the segment that follows robs the film of most of its momentum (which did not amount to much in the first place). The melodramatic teenage angst that had already been a burden to the film so far, now gets intensified and becomes increasingly whiney.

And this leads me to another problem of the film: I did not really like any of the characters that much. I did not connect with them and so I did not really care what happened to them. The whiney teenage angst was probably one reason, but I also feel that there was a lot of bad acting. But it is kind of hard to tell because of all the melodrama, so I am tempted to lay a lot of the blame at the feet of director Tae-gyun Kim. For example, male lead Hideo Ishiguro seems like a very fine actor for the first couple of minutes of screen-time (when his character Akira is still behaving like a normal human being, before he morphs into an annoying whiner). On the plus side, there is a lot of decent choreography and the actors follow it through in a competent manner.

From that slowed-down section the film moves on into a very prolonged final battle which is marred by really bad CGI. With all the slow elements and the prolonged end battle(s) the film ends up with a total runnning time of two hours. And that time is not used well at all: there are two key characters we know absolutely nothing about; likewise, the main villain also has no back-story whatsoever. Nor does the film offer any mythology or lore regarding these vampires. And then there is one important sub-plot that is hinted at but never developed. With two hours running time (and many scenes that feel more like fillers than anything else), the film should have managed to find the time to shed some light on those back story elements.

Many of the problems mentioned betray the fact that this is based on a series of mangas. For such serialised material, a TV show often seems to be the more appropriate form of adaptation. And with Higanjima, they took that route in 2013, rebooting the material only four years after this film’s release.

I am sure that this film can be quite entertaining if you like gore and the “trapped teens” sub-genre (which I do not). But you also need a certain aptitude to enjoy bad dialogue and acting and you should take all the pompous silliness of this film as part of the entertainment package.

Bad CGI aside, Higanjima is quite competently made; and with regards to teen slasher horror it fulfils its obligations as genre fare. Personally, I would rate this film at between 4.5 and 5.0 out of 10.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday that he will fight “tooth and nail” to make sure the vacancy on the Supreme Court stays open until a Democratic president takes office.

“We are not going to settle on a Supreme Court nominee,” the New York Democrat told Maddow. “If they don’t nominate someone good, we’ll oppose them tooth and nail.”

“We are not going to make it easy for them to pick a Supreme Court justice.”

WATCH:

“Is there an argument to be made,” pressed Maddow, “That that was basically a stolen seat, so it isn’t theirs to fill. In that case, no nominee would be legitimate because that seat should have been filled by President Obama.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support that we could support,” Schumer answered. “So you’re right.”

“So you will do your best to hold the seat open?” Maddow asked for clarification, prompting Schumer to smile and say “absolutely.”

Schumer’s proclamation marks a stark departure from his comments he made shortly after Justice Scalia’s passing.

[dcquiz] In June, Schumer demanded Senate Republicans “do their job and give Judge [Merrick] Garland the hearing and vote he deserves because the American people deserve a fully functioning court.”

“Having a deadlocked, 4-4 court could lead to judicial chaos surrounding environmental protections, voting rights, and so many other issues that are important to everyday Americans,” he continued. “This delay has gone on long enough. It’s time for the Senate to do the job we were elected to do.”

Follow Datoc on Twitter and FacebookMotorola has been doing well in the budget phone arena with its Moto G series, the fourth generation of which just launched last year. These phones are more important than ever now that the Moto X is dead (or on hiatus or whatever), but what does Moto have in store? Well, there's a guy in Romania who appears to have a Moto G5. He's (foolishly) trying to sell it online.

According to this listing, which is asking the equivalent of $388, the phone has the following specs.

Display 5.5 inches Full HD (480dpi)

Octa core Snapdragon 625 2.0 with Adreno 506

13 MP / 5MP cameras

4GB RAM

32 GB storage

Android 7.0 Nougat

Fingerprint sensor

3,080 mAh battery

If the above is accurate, this will be a modest improvement over the fourth gen phone. The current model has a Snapdragon 617, but there are variants with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. This is supposedly a Plus model, so it might be the top tier version. The listing insinuates the device will be launched in March, which would be rather early.

As for the design, it's got the big, round camera module on the back that we see on the Z series phones. However, this phone is still sporting a microUSB port. At least it still has a headphone jack. The back also has an unusual texture and shape. I'm not sure what's up with that—it might just be the lighting.

The seller seems unaware of what he's gotten into. This device is clearly marked as a prototype, and all the engineering marks are visible. Motorola will see this phone, ID it, remotely kill it, then trace the chain of ownership to see who it belongs to. This guy is not going to get his $388. It looks legit, but there's still a chance it could be fake. Either way, this is a bad idea.Happy new year, I guess.

Get over 50 fonts, text formatting, optional watermarks and NO adverts! Get your free account now!

Everyone else is excited about the new year - And I'm just sitting here masturbating

Check out all our blank memesApple cut CEO Tim Cook's 2016 pay after the iPhone maker missed its revenue and profit goals for the year. From a report on CNBC:Apple last year faced declining revenue as it grappled with the first prolonged slump in iPhone sales. The salary of some other executives were also trimmed.Background:

In patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), care requirements can conflict with the need to promptly focus efforts on organ donation in patients who are pronounced dead.

Objective:

To evaluate objective criteria for identifying patients with OHCA with no chance of survival during the first minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation to enable prompt orientation toward organ donation.

Design:

Retrospective assessment using OHCA data from 2 registries and 1 trial.

Setting:

France (Paris Sudden Death Expertise Center [SDEC] prospective cohort [2011 to 2014] and PRESENCE multicenter cluster randomized trial [ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01009606] [2009 to 2011]) and the United States (King County, Washington, prospective cohort [2006 to 2011]).

Patients:

1771 patients from the Paris SDEC 1-year cohort (2011 to 2012) and 5192 from the validation cohorts.

Measurements:

Evaluation of 3 objective criteria (OHCA not witnessed by emergency medical services personnel, nonshockable initial cardiac rhythm, and no return of spontaneous circulation before receipt of a third 1-mg dose of epinephrine), survival rate at hospital discharge among patients meeting these criteria, performance of the criteria, and number of patients eligible for organ donation.

Results:

In the Paris SDEC 1-year cohort, the survival rate among the 772 patients with OHCA who met the objective criteria was 0% (95% CI, 0.0% to 0.5%), with a specificity of 100% (CI, 97% to 100%) and a positive predictive value of 100% (CI, 99% to 100%). These results were verified in the validation cohorts. Ninety-five (12%) patients in the Paris SDEC 1-year cohort may have been eligible for organ donation.

Limitation:

Several patients had unknown outcomes.

Conclusion:

Three objective criteria enable the early identification of patients with OHCA with essentially no chance of survival and may help in decision making about the organ donation process.

Primary Funding Source:

French Ministry of Health.The inimitable comedy duo of Kate Berlant and John Early have teamed up again for a new original Vimeo series 555, and PAPER is premiering the trailer below.

Directed by Andrew DeYoung, the show finds the two comedians embodying the callous absurdity and morbid competitiveness of Hollywood, through various characters and surreal situations.

555 will follow in Berlant and Early's staple ability to perfectly illustrate and lampoon the various humiliations--and humanity--in the obsessive quest to conquer tinsel town.

The series, which is executive produced by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, is available exclusively on Vimeo starting January 31, and also stars a slew of fellow comic geniuses, including Kristen Johnston, Jane Adams, and Claudia O'Doherty.

Watch the trailer for 555 below.“A woman is always accompanied, except when quite alone, and perhaps even then, by her own image of herself. While she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father, she cannot avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does, because how she appears to others – and particularly how she appears to men – is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.”

Art critic and writer John Berger, who died yesterday aged 90, spoke these words in the second episode of seminal BBC series Ways of Seeing. Together with a shoestring budget, a shared leftist ideology and a sympathy for the burgeoning women’s movement, he and director Mike Dibb challenged the elitism of arts programming, encouraged their audience to unpick the meanings of paintings rather than simply revere them, and managed to make Walter Benjamin’s ideas about mechanical reproduction digestible in a 30-minute episode. With the series spanning topics including the role of the critic, the way art is constructed for our ‘gazes’, how it depicts women and possessions, and even the way that advertising works, it remains deeply relevant today.

But it’s Berger’s discussion of how we look at women which resonates most strongly in our current image-obsessed society. Today, the idea of the male gaze may seem well established, and Berger and his all-male team didn’t claim to invent the concept which would later be christened by film critic Laura Mulvey. But this was 1972 – the Sex Discrimination Act was still three years away, contraception wasn’t yet covered by the NHS, and it would be almost a decade before women could take out loans in their own names without a male guarantor. And yet, here they were, on one of only three channels on mainstream television, sitting in a group and discussing issues such as agency, empowerment, and their relationships to their own bodies and to men. Of course, not everyone was pleased about it – according to the Guardian, Ways of Seeing was derogatorily compared to Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book “for a generation of art students”.

“The female nude in Western painting was there to feed an appetite of male sexual desire. She existed to be looked at, posed in such a way that her body was displayed to the eye of the viewer”

The ideas put forward by Berger and Dibb, which were later published in a best-selling book created with Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, and Richard Hollis, were simple but radical. The female nude in Western painting – hairless, buxom, invariably with skin as white and unblemished as a pearl – was there to feed an appetite of male sexual desire. She did not have desires of her own. She existed to be looked at, posed in such a way that her body was displayed to the eye of the viewer, there only to be consumed. Of course, there was hypocrisy in this, too – “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her,” wrote Berger, “Put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity,’ thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”

Naturally, the way female bodies were presented culturally as objects to be looked at had an effect on women, on the way they came to see themselves – as a sight, a vision. In the words which opened this article, Berger pins down a feeling which, although perhaps not universal, is familiar to many, many women. It comes with adolescence – maybe the first time a man yells at you from a moving car – and is the sense of living life one step removed, living as your own spectator. You are never yourself, you are yourself as you appear to others. To men, yes, and to the women with whom you are supposed to compete for their attention.Jobs at WCC

Whatcom Community College offers a variety of employment opportunities, great employee benefits, and a friendly work environment. The College is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and educator, and is strongly committed to enhancing the diversity of its workforce. Review our current positions and apply online through NeoGov.

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Current students, WCC alumni and community members can browse job, work study, and internship opportunities through WCCPathways, as well as get help with the job search process, career exploration, and resume writing at WCC’s Career & Transfer Center. Local employers can post job openings too. Discover employment and internship opportunities, career exploration resources, and more through WCCPathways.

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If you have been affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19, WCC is here to help. We want to know who you are, what your experience is, and what you need from us to take the next step to grow your earning potential in a high-wage and high-demand occupation. WCC’s Workforce Recovery Team can provide you with customized information, and ensure you get to meet with a human being who will be there to support you from that first meeting through graduation and on to your next career. Tell us about yourself to get started.

Upgrade Your Skills

WCC’s Community & Continuing Education program offers a variety of non-credit professional development and personal enrichment workshops via Zoom as well as self-paced non-credit advanced career training programs. Learn more at www.whatcomcommunityed.com.Newsletter

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Browns left tackle Joe Thomas has been a good employee, and seen a lot of losses in his time and never been a malcontent

But he’s also seen a lot of good players walk out the door, and he’s tired of that.

As he was packing up after another wretched season, Thomas said the Browns organization has to do a better job of securing the players they need for the future.

“One of our biggest mistakes that we’ve made since I’ve been here is not identifying talent early on in their career, after you’ve drafted them, and re-signing them before they get to free agency,” Thomas said, via Dan Labbe of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Last offseason, it was center Alex Mack (Atlanta) and right tackle Mitchell Schwartz (Kansas City), who are now in the playoffs while the Browns had one of the worst offensive lines in the league despite the presence of Thomas.

Of course, those guys left as owner Jimmy Haslam was ushering in another new administration, and that served as an open door.

“Once a guy gets to free agency, he could go anywhere, because all it takes is one team to really fall in love with somebody and throw a big number at them and then they’re gone,” Thomas said. “Now all that effort and energy that you’ve put into developing a young man into a great NFL player is gone, and that draft capital you spent on him is a waste. . . .

“You sometimes hear fans say, ‘Well we were 1-15 with them, we can be 1-15 without them.’ But if you want to be better than 1-15 you have to keep your good players. That’s just the way it goes. You can’t keep getting rid of good players and think you’re going to get better. Anybody with a brain can figure that out.”

When you look at the list of players the Browns have sent out into the world in recent years, you understand Thomas’ frustration. Players such as wide receiver Travis Benjamin and safety Tashaun Gipson left in free agency last offseason. The year before, it was outside linebacker Jabaal Sheard going to the Patriots and safety T.J. Ward going to Denver.

They face more key decisions this offseason, with wide receiver Terrelle Pryor and linebacker Jamie Collins, and perhaps with some stability in a front office the Browns may actually keep a good player or two.US Vice-President Joe Biden has criticized President-elect Donald Trump for raising questions about the US intelligence community and slammed his inflammatory Twitter activity, urging him to “grow up”.

In an interview with PBS aired Thursday, Biden said it is "absolutely mindless" that Trump thinks he knows more about intelligence than intelligence agencies, before telling the business mogel: “Time to be an adult, you’re the president.”

Trump is due to be briefed on allegations of Russian interference in the US presidential election on Friday. The president-elect has repeatedly queried the accusations, which have been leveled without the provision of any evidence of Russian involvement.

On Thursday, Trump questioned why the FBI outsourced the job of checking whether the Democratic National Committee’s servers were hacked.

READ MORE: ‘What is going on?’ Trump wonders why FBI never requested access to the DNC’s ‘hacked servers’

“The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia… So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?” the president-elect tweeted.

"For a president not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to, the myriad intelligence agencies, from defense intelligence to the CIA, is absolutely mindless," Biden said of Trump’s outburst.

"The idea that you may know more than the intelligence community knows, it's like saying I know more about physics than my professor. I didn't read the book, I just know I know more."

READ MORE: ‘Propaganda intended to incite Americans’: John McAfee to RT on ‘Russian hacking’ claims

The senate veteran went on to say that he has read the soon-to-be-published report by US intelligence agencies on Russian interference in the election. He claimed that the report says "that the Russians did, as a matter of policy, attempt to affect and... discredit the US electoral process."

When pressed for his thoughts on Trump’s use of Twitter, Biden said: "Grow up Donald, grow up, time to be an adult, you're president. Time to do something. Show us what you have. You're going to propose legislation, we're going to get to debate it. Let the public decide, let them vote in congress.

“Let's see what happens. It's going to be much clearer what he's for and against, and what we're for and against, now that it's going to get to actually discussing in detail these issues that affect people's lives.”

On Friday Trump took to Twitter to reiterate his claim that Mexico will pay for the proposed border wall between the two countries and to berate Arnold Schwarzenegger for the viewership ratings of The Celebrity Apprentice which the movie star and former Republican Governor of California now presents.Consilierul local independent Emanuel Gongu revine în prim plan cu o nouă repriză de deszăpezire în Focşani, semn că nu pare deloc mulţumit de modul în care autorităţile locale, pe care le-a girat cu votul său după alegerile locale, şi-au făcut treaba.

Acesta şi-a scos din magazie minifreza de zăpadă şi a ieşit cu ea pe strada Militari, unde locuieşte, atât duminică, dar şi luni, timp de mai multe ore. Consilierul a ales astfel să-i răspundă şi unui fost consilier local, Gheorghiţă Berbece, care duminică seara a postat pe pagina de Facebook următorul mesaj:

"Mă poate ajuta cineva? Mă tot învârt prin nămeţi în oraşul nostru Focşani şi nu dau de GONGU cu freza lui! Ar mai fi două străduţe şi o alee de deszăpezit!!!!!!", l-a ironizat Berbece pe Gongu.

Câteva ore mai târziu venit şi răspunsul lui Emanuel Gongu.

"La mulţi ani domnule Berbece. Spune lumea că mă cauţi şi nu ştii de unde să mă iei. Uite domnule Berbece unde sunt eu. Pe strada Militari. Aici mă găseşti. Ajut oameni. Aşa se munceşte pentru cetăţenii oraşului Focşani", a replicat Emanuel Gongu.

Acesta s-a făcut remarcat în anul 2014, în luna ianuarie, când după o ninsoare mai consistentă întreaga stradă pe care locuieşte a rămas izolată.

„Nu am deranjat duminică pe nimeni, pentru că m-am gândit că prioritate au bulevardele mari şi abia apoi se va interveni pe străzi.Însă luni, după ce am citit declaraţiile viceprimarului, care se lăuda că a intrat pe toate străzile, am sunat la primărie să semnalez că pe strada unde locuiesc nu s-a intervenit în nici un fel, mai ales că de duminică după-amiaza nici nu a mai nins. Mi s-a dat la un număr de telefon la care nu mi-a răspuns nimeni. Am mai revenit cu alte două telefoane în cursul zilei, dar în afară de promisiuni verbale, nimic concret”, ne-a spus atunci Emilian Gongu despre încercările sale de a contacta autorităţile.

Dându-şi seama că nu are cu cine sta de vorbă, dar gândindu-se şi la eventuale consecinţe nefaste care ar putea apărea, în special medicale, din cauza faptului că pe stradă nu poate intra nici măcar o ambulanţă, focşăneanul a decis să dea o palmă municipalităţii, deszăpezind singur artera pe care locuieşte.

„Când eşti abandonat de autorităţile locale, care încasează milioane de euro, te gândeşti cum să faci investiţii inteligente pe care te poţi baza. Mi-am cumpărat cu ceva vreme în urmă o mini-freză de zăpadă, pe benzină, în patru cilindri, pentru gospodăria proprie, care m-a costat 3300 de lei. Am pus patru litri de benzină în ea şi luni seara am îndepărtat zăpada de pe toată strada, astfel încât să poată circula o maşină. Cu multă energie şi voinţă, în două ore am deszăpezit singur 500 de metri pătraţi din stradă. Şi bine am făcut, pentru că marţi dimineaţă un vecin avea copilul bolnav şi a putut pleca la spital”, ne-a declarat atunci Emilian Gongu.

Acesta consideră că dacă primăria ar investi în utilaje ca al său ar ieşi mult mai ieftin cu deszăpezirea, dar va avea străzi şi trotuare curate.Donald Trump told Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer in a phone call he likes him more than his GOP brethren House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a source close to the transition team said.

During a recent phone call, the president-elect “said to Schumer he likes Schumer more than Ryan and McConnell because they both wanted him to lose,” the source said. “They are Republicans and Trump knows they didn’t support him.”

A rep from Schumer’s office would not comment on private remarks between the two men.

Trump ridiculed Ryan on Twitter and at rallies during the campaign and teased both Republican leaders, saying they “weren’t in love with me” before the election but they “love him” afterward.

Trump has described his relationship with the incoming Senate minority leader as “very good” and “close” in interviews.

They have spoken several times since the election, sources said.

“These two fellas are both New Yorkers. Washington is like a cafeteria table. You sit where you know,” said a Capitol Hill source.NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked for 50 days’ time for his demonetisation measure to work: the people were supposed to suffer for 50 days, by the end of which the wonderful results of demonetisation were to become evident.



The PM was even willing to get “hanged” if proved wrong at the end of this period.



Well, the 50 days are now over; the cash shortage, and the consequent distress of the people, continues; no wonderful results of demonetisation are evident; but on the contrary, as predicted by most economists, the economy is sliding into a serious recession which afflicts not only the informal sector as expected, but the formal sector as well, through the multiplier effects of the recession in the former.



Yet, in his New Year’s Eve speech, which came after the end of these 50 days, there was not a hint of contrition, not a whiff of self-criticism, not a reference to the grand offer to get “hanged” if demonetisation failed.



Instead there was the usual word-spin, the usual swagger and the usual trotting out of yet another benefit that demonetisation would supposedly bring in its wake. This newly-added item to the list of benefits is inflation-control: demonetisation, it is now being claimed, would have the effect of bringing down the rate of inflation.



PM Modi gave a bizarre argument for why this should be so. High-value currency notes he suggested were used largely these days by those who are engaged in all sorts of nefarious activities, including hoarding and black marketeering; demonetisation by making these notes worthless had hurt such people; and since they are the ones behind inflation, demonetisation, it followed, made possible a reining in of inflation.



The Prime Minister’s perception that high-value notes are used largely by those engaged in the parallel economy, is completely wrong. Cash, including notes of the denominations that have been demonetised, is used primarily in the informal economy, rather than in the “black economy” whose cash-GDP ratio is no higher than that of the “white economy”.



By associating cash-use predominantly with the “black economy”, PM Modi in effect suggested that the 85 percent of the workers who are employed in the informal economy are actually employees of the “black economy”, and that the entire Indian agricultural sector belonged to the “black economy” which is a calumny against the peasantry.



But let us ignore PM Modi’s reasons, and dispassionately ask the question: might it be the case that demonetisation would actually help to control inflation?



To answer this question we must first be clear what inflation-control means, for which must ask the initial question: why should inflation be controlled?



In an economy like India where there is no catastrophic hyper-inflation that is destroying the economy, but rather a steady but low rate of inflation, of around 5-6 percent, the reason for concern over inflation is that it may nonetheless be hurting the poor. If money wages remain constant, then even a 5-6 percent rise in prices, entails an erosion of real wages and hence an increase in the distress of the poor.



But if the evil of inflation is seen essentially in terms of its damage to the living standards of the poor, then it follows that inflation-control must be defined in terms of controlling the damage to these living standards.



Consider an example. If with money wages constant, prices rise by 5 percent, then we have inflation hurting the poor. But if with prices remaining constant, the money wages fall by 5 percent then too we have the poor being hurt, even though we have no inflation.



Hence if the 5 percent rise in prices is sought to be controlled through a 5 percent reduction in money wages, then we do not really have inflation control, even though price rise has been controlled.



The question to ask therefore is: would demonetization cause a decline in inflation without using some means for doing so that would have the same consequence of squeezing the poor that inflation has? If it can cause a decline in inflation without using for this purpose means that achieve the same squeeze differently then we can indeed say that demonetization can control inflation.



More specifically, control of inflation must mean controlling the fall in the real incomes of the working poor which inflation causes. Demonetisation can be said to have controlled inflation if it can bring down the rate of growth of prices without squeezing the money incomes of the working poor.



Since the working poor in the country are largely concentrated in the informal sector, demonetisation can be applauded for controlling inflation if it does not reduce employment in this sector and if it does not reduce real wages in this sector even while reducing the rate of growth of prices in the economy. Can a reduction in cash supply in the economy achieve this?



I talk of a “reduction in cash supply” since if the cash supply remains the same as it was before demonetisation, i.e. if all demonetised notes are replaced by new notes, then we are back to square one and there is no question of any change in the rate of inflation arising from this side.



Indeed from PM Modi’s remark about demonetisation resulting in control over inflation, it is clear that the government has no intention of replacing fully all the demonetised notes. Mukul Rohatgi had already stated this before the Supreme Court, and Jaitley too had said as much. But now we have confirmation of this straight from the horse’s mouth.



Let us continue with the argument. A reduction in currency supply by say 10 percent in the informal sector, it may be thought, can bring down prices and money wages by 10 percent in this sector, in which case the money wages deflated by prices would have remained unchanged, and in such a case no fall in employment need ensue.



Both our conditions, i.e. no fall in employment and no fall in real wages would appear to have been satisfied, while prices would have fallen by 10 percent, so that inflation-control would have been achieved through demonetisation. This however cannot happen for the following reason.



The working people in the informal sector also consume some goods from the formal sector. Now, with a 10 percent cut in currency supply there is no reason why the formal sector goods’ prices would fall by 10 percent, or why they should fall at all. Not only is there less currency use in this sector, but, what is more, the oligopoly firms that typically dominate this sector act as “price makers” rather than as “price takers”: they collude to fix prices. When their unit prime costs rise, they jack up their prices to maintain their profit margins; and when their unit prime costs fall, they tend not to lower their prices, at least not to the same extent.



Hence even if the informal sector goods prices fall by 10 percent, in the above example, and even if some of these goods are used as inputs in the formal sector, the prices of the latter sector’s goods will not fall by 10 percent; indeed they would most likely not even fall at all.



In such a case, the real wages of workers in the informal sector, i.e. money wages of workers deflated by what they purchase, from both the formal and informal sectors, would actually fall, if their money wages fall by 10 percent.



In other words, in our hypothetical example, even if employment remains unchanged in the informal sector, the real wages of workers would fall because of demonetisation. And if real wages in this sector are not to fall, then the money wages must fall by less than 10 percent even while the prices of goods in this sector fall by 10 percent, in which case however employment in this sector must fall. This is because many marginal producers, when faced with a 10 percent fall in prices but less than 10 percent fall in money wages, would find their profit margins shrinking to negative levels. This would drive them out of business and cause recession and unemployment in this sector.



No matter how we look at it therefore demonetisation controlling inflation, in the sense of preventing a fall in both employment and real wages in the informal sector, is a sheer impossibility. The inflation rate may fall because of demonetisation but this would necessarily be accompanied by a fall in the real incomes of the working people of the informal sector, in which case this fall in inflation rate does not amount to inflation-control. It brings down the inflation rate by doing what inflation would have done through other means; and this, as argued above, does not constitute inflation control.



But BJP leaders are now so desperate, because all the claims made about the beneficial effects of demonetisation have turned out to be false, that they are simply clutching at straws. First they talked about a surgical strike against “black money”, but that turned out to be a hollow claim.



Then they talked about the “extinguished currency”, i.e. demonetised notes that do not get either deposited or exchanged against new ones, boosting the RBI’s profits (by reducing its liability), and hence enabling the government to spend more for the poor; the amount of “extinguished currency” however has turned out to be utterly trivial.



They then talked about banks’ lending rates getting reduced because of the huge deposits of demonetised currency that have come into their coffers, but the reduction to date has been paltry, and could have been effected anyway through monetary policy, without any recourse to demonetisation.



And now there is talk of inflation control, camouflaging the fact that such inflation control is accompanied by an identical squeeze on the poor through other means.



No doubt we shall soon be having much noise about how demonetisation has defeated inflation. In a regime where unreason reigns supreme, decibels become a necessary accompaniment of such unreason.



(Professor Prabhat Patnaik is a reputed economist and scholar. He is Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University and author of several books including The Value of Money, The Retreat to Unfreedom, A Theory of Imperialism(co-author Utsa Patnaik))Ken and Rachel, a married couple who do not want their surname used so as to protect their children’s privacy, have been in Apollo House since the first night of its occupation by campaigners.

From outside Dublin, they lost their council house following intimidation which included an arson attack, they say. Their children are with their grandparents.

Now sharing a large office converted into a comfortable double room, the couple had been sleeping in a tent for 16 months and in doorways in Dublin.

“I heard about this place that Thursday night, December 15th. Someone told me about Home Sweet Home, said people were gathering at the GPO that night,” says Ken.

The Home Sweet Home (HSH) coalition of activists and homeless people, supported by high-profile artists, have been occupying Apollo House, a vacant Nama-managed office building on Poolbeg Street which has housed homeless people since last month.

When Ken and Rachel got word activists had gained entry to Apollo House, the couple were among those carrying mattresses, delivered by Mattress Mick, into the building at about 11pm.

“That first weekend all we had were the mattresses,” laughs Rachel. “We had electricity but no heating and were using bottled water,”she says.

Furniture and food

By the following Monday, HSH had donations of furniture, clothes, cooking equipment, showers and professional expertise.

The heating is now on, food is served throughout the day and, unlike many other hostels, residents can come and go as they please during the day. There is an 11pm curfew.

Ken and Rachel’s room has a double bed, two bedside lockers, a couch, wall-to-wall carpeting, a fluffy rug, a television and a DVD player.

A bowl of fruit sits on the coffee table and a small electric stove makes for a cosy refuge.

They had been unable to get emergency accommodation as a couple, explains Rachel.

“All we were offered was a bed for Ken in a men’s hostel and for me in a women’s. We’re married. We can’t be separated.”

Ken, who is in a drug recovery programme with the Peter McVerry Trust, says this is the first time in over a year he can focus on a future.

“I feel like a man again,” he says. The couple are among 33 people staying in Apollo House.

Asked about the attraction of the project, Ken says: “We can stay together. And it’s clean and safe.”

Apollo House “Ground Rules” are posted at the entrance, where people sign in and out. Among these are: “Everyone is equal”,

“This is a drug and alcohol-free space” and “Use respectful language. This is an inclusive and open space”.

This floor then opens out into a large communal area with a television and couches at one end, a small library area, tables and chairs, and at the far end a pool table.

Also, here is a large arts table on which people are painting a “Home Sweet Home” banner.

Residents and volunteers

“We do a lot of art therapy,” says Tom Ryan. A HSH volunteer who has been homeless for 18 months, he shows the fully fitted kitchen donated by catering firm Caterex.

From a room equipped with ovens, sinks, fridges, pots and pans, chilli con carne followed by fruit crumble was served last night served to residents and volunteers.

The kitchen remains open to anyone wanting a cup of tea, biscuits or other snacks.

There are bedrooms off this area, and bedrooms on the next two floors.

A fourth floor – an open plan office – now accommodates donations, sorted into such categories as toiletries, cooking equipment, books, delph and cutlery, clothes, shoes and bedding. On a fifth floor are showers.

Frank, an EU-union citizen who has been in Ireland for three years, arrived at Apollo House on New Year’s Eve.

A recovering alcoholic, he lost his accommodation on December 15th. “I had a slip. I got drunk and all my money was robbed.”

He sought “help from social services” he says, but because he could not prove he had been working in Ireland he could not get assistance.

A graphic designer, he heard about Apollo House on the radio. “It is beautiful here,” he says. “If I could I would stay forever.”

HSH has been ordered by the High Court to vacate the building by noon on January 11th.This year we have witnessed Yahoo acknowledge the greatest data breach in history. In September, the Internet giant admitted to the theft of at least 500 million email addresses, passwords, usernames, dates of birth, phone numbers, and, in some cases, security questions with their corresponding responses. Shortly thereafter, in December, the company announced that up to 1 billion accounts may have been compromised in a different breach.

This wasn’t the only major security crisis of 2016. The personal data of Snapchat employees (names, Social Security numbers, salaries…) fell in the wrong hands because of a con known as “whaling”. Cyber criminals impersonated Evan Spiegel, the company’s CEO, in order to obtain the data in question.

The credentials of 117 million LinkedIn users, 68 million Dropbox users, and 1.5 million Verizon customers also fell into the hands of cybercriminals, some of which went up for sale on the dark web. There are a few lessons we can learn from this and other unsettling news items we’ve seen in 2016.

1- No Password is Safe

At this point, following the theft of such an enormous quantity of information, one can assume that any password that is a couple years old is compromised. There is no service that is significantly safer to use than others, and none that we should trust blindly. It follows that the most sensible thing to do is to change all passwords that have been in use for a period of time. Reusing passwords unnecessarily puts the user at risk.

2- Security Questions Are Part of the Problem

As soon as they learned about their data breach, Yahoo disabled security questions like “when is your mother’s birthday?” and “what color was your first car?”. It’s no longer only a matter of whether the answers can be found by digging into potential victims’ profiles on social networks, but also of the fact that many answers have been directly stolen. Unlike passwords, this kind of data does not change. Substituting it for false data would be tantamount to creating a second password. In other words, the risk of forgetting it is still there, which obviously defeats its purpose as a means of password recovery. The remedy becomes worse than the original problem.

3- Delete Registration Emails

Cybercriminals place increasingly more value on web users’ emails and passwords. This comes as no surprise, since emails can be the door to many other things. If your password is stolen from one service, and you use the same one for email, intruders will have access to whatever recovery email they need for any other service you have an account at. What’s more, they can look through old messages for registration emails to find out where you’ve been signed up before. This is easily avoided by deleting registration emails as soon as you receive them.

4- Bigger Fish to Fry?

If you’re running a company, however small, don’t make the mistake of thinking that data theft only affects the giants. In fact, it’s easier and more profitable for cybercriminals to target small business. Not only have attacks on small businesses been on the rise, but also their consequences are much more severe. The smaller the company, the greater the risk of a security crisis wiping it out.

5- Be Transparent and React Quickly

If the worst should happen, notifying your customers or users that their confidential information has been stolen should not be taken lightly. It’s important to let them know right away, with as much detail as possible and without downplaying the potential risks. Hiding or disguising the truth can only make things worse. For starters, those who have been affected will not be able to change their passwords as quickly as they should. Finally, your credibility is at stake. The damages done to it will grow the more time that passes between the breach and your announcement of it.Johanna Konta will be a force at the latter stages of all of the Grand Slam tournaments this year, according to leading tour coach Nigel Sears.

Sears, who coached both former World No.1 Ana Ivanovic and Daniella Hantuchova, joined the Telegraph’s Tennis Podcast for the first show of the year and described his admiration for the improvements made by Konta over the last two years.

“She’s had an outstanding 18 months, her level has gone up several notches and she’s maintained it against the very top players,” said Sears. “She’s earned her ranking, she has such a strong base game and she moves so well that you can’t see her losing in the early rounds at any tournament. She has a heavy first serve, good weight of shot and one of the best second serves on the tour, so I see her in the second week of most Slams. I wouldn’t say she is the favourite to win the Australian Open and the other Slams at the moment, but who’s to say that she can’t? She can contend for them all and I do think she will make the WTA finals this year.”For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browserIntraosseous (IO) Needle Length in Obese Patients

Written by Anand Swaminathan REBEL EM Medical Category: Procedures and Skills

Background: Intraosseous (IO) access can play an important role in the resuscitation of the critically ill patient to help expedite delivery of critical medications (i.e. RSI). Much like with peripheral or central access, obesity can present a challenge to placement of an IO as accurate placement relies on use of landmarks which may not be palpable in this group. Additionally, increased soft tissue depth may render standard needles ineffective. IO needles require 5 mm of excess length from skin to bony cortex to ensure successful placement (i.e. maximal depth of 20 mm for a 25 mm needle). Studies investigating these questions are necessary in order to understand how reliable IO access will be in obese patients.

Article:

Kehrl T et al. Intraosseous access in the obese patient: assessing the need for extended needle length. Am J Emerg Med 2016; 34: 1831-4. PMID: 27344097

Clinical question: What is the relationship between body mass index (BMI), and the ability to palpate the tibial tuberosity (TT) and soft tissue depth at standard IO insertion sites?

Population: Obese patients (defined as BMI > 30 based on current height and weight entered in hospital EMR)

Intervention: Measurement of soft tissue depth by ultrasound at proximal humerus, proximal and distal tibia (3 most common IO placement locations). The investigator performing were ultrasound fellows who also evaluated whether the TT was palpable or non-palpable.

Outcome (primary): Soft tissue depth at IO insertion sites (defined as distance from skin surface to outer bony cortex in mm). Recorded both continuous variable and dichotomous variable (</= 20 mm or > 20 mm)

Outcomes (secondary): TT palpability

Design: Prospective, observational, convenience sample study of obese patients presenting to an urban ED.

Excluded: Any existing condition that might preclude IO access i.e. overlying infection, trauma, prior amputation) (authors state no exclusions encountered during study)

Primary Results:

75 patients enrolled

Mean BMI = 47.2

Critical Results:

Mean soft tissue depth (primary outcome) Proximal Humerus: 29.6 mm (CI 27.5 – 31.7) Proximal Tibia: 11.0 mm (CI 8.9 – 13.0) Distal Tibia: 10.7 mm (CI 9.4 – 12.1)

TT palpability (secondary outcome) Palpable in 70 patients with average BMI = 45.7 Non-palpable in 5 patients with average BMI = 67.2

In patients with a non-palpable TT (n = 5) soft tissue depth exceeded 20 mm at all three IO sites

Strengths:

Asks important question regarding IO use in an increasingly common patient population

Limitations:

Study includes a small number of patients collected by convenience sample

Did not have multiple operators perform soft tissue depth measurements to assess for inter-rater reliability

Did not have multiple operators assess for palpability of TT to assess for inter-rater reliability

Patients did not have IO placed to confirm failure or success of placement

BMI extracted from most recent data in EMR. May not be accurate

Unable to control for physical compression applied by US during measurement

The lower limit of the interquartile range was a BMI of 39.7. The study result can not be extrapolated to obese patient with a lower BMI

Author’s Conclusions:

“In obese adults with a palpable TT or BMI ≤43 a 25mmIO needle is likely adequate at the proximal and distal tibial insertion sites. Empiric use of an extended 45mmIO needle is advisable at the proximal humeral insertion site in obese patients.”

Our Conclusions:

Obesity may limit the utility of the short (25 mm) IO needle for access. In obese patients, or in those with a non-palpable TT, employ the longer, 45 mm IO needle to increase the likelihood of successful IO placement.

Potential Impact to Current Practice:

In obese patients, it is reasonable to reach for the 45 mm IO needle instead of the 25 mm needle to ensure adequate length to obtain access. The 45 mm IO needles can be used at any site regardless of depth as long as the provider does not “bury the needle.” Placement until the needle penetrates the cortex (possibly leaving some portion of the needle protruding from the skin) will provide IO access at all three common sites.

Bottom Line:

The 25 mm IO needle may not provide proper length for obtaining IO access in obese patients. Consider reaching for the 45 mm IO needle in these patients particularly if you cannot palpate the tibial tuberosity.

Post Peer Reviewed By: Salim Rezaie (Twitter: @srrezaie)Story highlights In recent years, states have been allowed to "experiment" with legalizing pot

"It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce," Sessions said

Washington (CNN) Sen. Jeff Sessions indicated at his confirmation hearing Tuesday that as attorney general, he might break the federal government's truce with states on marijuana.

During President Barack Obama's administration, states have been allowed to "experiment" with legalizing pot, and the Justice Department, under Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, has allowed many legal operations to continue without laying down the full weight of federal law against them.

But asked by Utah Sen. Mike Lee on Tuesday if the federal government would continue to look the other way while states enacted their own laws regarding marijuana, Sessions said he wouldn't commit to not enforcing existing federal law.

"It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our job and enforce laws as effectively as we're able," said Sessions, adding that Congress was entitled to change federal law if it so desired.

Still, the Marijuana Policy Project, which aims to allow states to determine their own marijuana laws, was encouraged by Sessions' comments.

Read MoreThe official website for light novel author Kazuma Kamachi (A Certain Magical Index, Heavy Object) teased on Tuesday that he will launch a "big project" in 2017.

Kamachi has been publishing a new novel volume through Kadokawa's Dengeki Bunko imprint every month for over two years, but his streak ends this month. However, Kamachi will return to publishing a new novel volume in March, and his website asks fans to watch for more new information.

Kamachi is exclusively publishing a vampire and zombie story (seen left) on his official website, and he posted the latest update this month.

The author recently published Toaru Majutsu no Index x Dennō Senki Virtual-On: Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On (A Certain Magical Index x Cyber Troopers Virtual-On: A Certain Magical Virtual-On), a crossover novel between his A Certain Magical Index franchise and the Virtual-On arcade game franchise. He also launched his new Saikyō o Kojiraseta Level Counter Stop Ken Seijo Beatrice no Jakuten Sono Na wa "Buu Buu" (The Name of the Weakness That Has Aggravated the Strongest Max Level Sword Holy Woman Beatrice, is "Buu Buu") novel series last March, with illustrations by Mahaya.

Kamachi wrote the original light novels behind the Heavy Object and A Certain Magical Index franchises. His other works include Waltraute-san no Konkatsu Jijō (The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute's Marriage), Satsujin-ki to Deep End (The Killer Princess and the Deep End), Kantan na Monitor Desu (It Is a Simple Monitor), and Intelle Village no Zashiki Warashi (The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village). Square Enix's Shonen Gangan published a crossover manga from February-October 2015 that featured characters from his various works.

[Via Nijipoi]Gasoline Grill har kun fire burgere på menukortet. Til gengæld er de lavet med kærlighed.

Byder din søndag på fantasier om en saftig burger og fritter (måske med ekstra salt)? Hvis du vil sikre dig en god oplevelse, kan du roligt besøge Gasoline Grill i København.

Jeg synes, det er fuldstændig sindssygt. Det er virkelig kæmpe stort.

Burgerbaren på Landgreven kan i hvert fald prale af at servere en af verdens 27 bedste burgere ifølge en kåring af det anerkendte amerikanske medie, Bloomberg.

Gasoline Grill er kommet i fint selskab, efter at Bloomberg sidste sommer sendte tre burgereksperter ud i verden for at finde klodens bedste burgere.

Stifteren af Gasoline Grill, Klaus Wittrup, er naturligvis begejstret over, at hans burgerbar er havnet på listen.

- Jeg synes, det er fuldstændig sindssygt. Det er virkelig kæmpe stort. De mennesker, der har været forbi, er nogle tunge drenge og nogle, man har respekt for, siger han til TV 2 Lorry.

Gasoline Grill er kommet i fint selskab, efter at Bloomberg sidste sommer sendte tre burgereksperter ud i verden for at finde klodens bedste burgere. Foto: TV 2 Lorry

Gasoline Grill åbnede den 26. april 2016, og siden da har der været travlt i den lille burgerbar i det indre København. Konceptet er enkelt, og burgerbaren har kun fire forskellige burgere på menukortet.

- Vi er mest kendte for vores cheeseburger og vores butterburger. Vores butterburger er ligesom en cheese burger, men i stedet for et stykke ost, lægger vi en klat smør på bollen lige inden, vi lægger låget på, siger Klaus Wittrup.

Han mener selv, at hemmeligheden bag burgerbarens succes skal findes i den kærlighed, der bliver lagt i burgerne.

- Vi går ikke på kompromis i forhold til, hvordan vi laver burgerne. Vi har udviklet en bolle, som ingen andre i København har. Vi bruger det bedste kød, og vi hakker det hver dag. Det er gode råvarer, der gør, at slutproduktet bliver godt. Jeg har lavet en burger, som jeg gerne vil have en burger, siger han.

OMG! This is huge! We are on Bloombergs list of the 27 best burgers in the world!! We are very grateful! Posted by Gasoline Grill on Friday, January 6, 2017 Vi kan kun vise dig dette Facebook-opslag, hvis du accepterer alle cookies.

En af de tre udsendte fra Bloomberg hedder Randy Garutti og er kulinarisk direktør for den legendarisk amerikanske burgerkæde Shake Shack. Klaus Wittrup kan godt huske, at han sidste sommer serverede en burger for amerikanske Randy Garutti.

- Jeg havde vild optur over, at han lige pludselig var i min burgerbar, men dengang vidste jeg jo ikke, hvorfor han var der. Bagefter fik jeg at vide af Noma, at han havde været på besøg, lyder det.For the second day, demonstrators angry about Mexico’s gasoline price hike took over Tijuana’s El Chaparral Port of Entry for several hours during a peaceful if boisterous protest that ended after U.S. authorities blocked traffic to the port at the request of Mexican officials

The angry crowd at the U.S. border joined protesters across Mexico who have been speaking out since the New Year’s Day gas price increase of close to 20 percent that has come as President Enrique Peña Nieto has moved to deregulate the country’s energy industry.

“It is a price rise that is too high, that we can’t afford,” said Jahaira Montaño, a 30-year-old Tijuana elementary school teacher holding up a sign. “We hope the government really pays attention, and supports the people rather than filling the pockets of politicians.”

Elsewhere in Tijuana, gasoline trucks from the Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex could be seen making deliveries to gas stations across the city, and residents were once again able to fill their tanks. On Saturday, police broke up a protest that since last Monday had blocked access to the region’s main gas distribution and storage facility.

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At El Chaparral on Sunday, protesters arrived at about noon to take over the inspection lanes. They waved flags and signs, while drivers signaled support with honks and thumbs up sign. For several hours, there were no Mexican customs inspectors in sight.

A statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that at around 5:30 p.m., “at the request of Mexican officials in response to protesters’ disruption of their inbound operations,” the California Highway Patrol diverted highway traffic heading into Mexico through El Chaparral.

“All travelers wanting to enter Mexico in a vehicle must do so through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry until further notice,” the CBP statement said. A CBP official said that by 7:30 p.m., the Mexican facility was re-opened for southbound vehicle traffic.

Mexican officials had made the same request on Saturday after protesters commandeered the inspection lanes, and traffic was diverted for about four hours.

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1 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Jesus Navaro waving at car passing through. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Protestors stood into the USA side signaling cars passing by. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Marco Antonio Salas Garcia sitting on the car waving to cars passing by. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Several hundred protestors came out to support. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Several hundred protestors came out to support. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Oscar holding an anti-Pe–a Nieto sign. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Several hundred protestors came out to support. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Leticia on the right holding up a sign as cars pass through the border. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Lady holding up a sign “Pe–a out”. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | Several hundred protestors came out to support. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | El Chaparral border crossing into Tijuana Mexico was disrupted a second day by protesters. Cars entering into Mexico were allowed through. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | El Chaparral border crossing into Tijuana Mexico was disrupted a second day by protesters. Cars entering into Mexico were allowed through with out officials present. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 13 Tijuana Baja California, Mexico, January 8th, 2017: | A SAT official passing by the protest area. | (Alejandro Tamayo, The San Diego Union-Tribune) (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Before traffic was shut down Sunday, protesters were waving vehicles through as they shouted “Fuera Peña” —“Out with Peña”.

