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[WM]Bruce Smith, Rochester Institute of Technology (RTI) professor of microelectronic engineering and also the director of the Center for Nanolithography Research in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, has led a team of engineering students to develop a new process of Nanolithography that uses evanescent wave lithography (EWL) to produce the smallest ever semiconductor device geometry.
Researchers from University of New South Wales, Australia, are working on developing a coating that may make cleaning bathrooms less of a chore.
The lead researchers Professor Rose Amal and Professor Michael Brungs of the ARC Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, are hoping to apply a coating of tiny particles of titanium dioxide to keep the toilets clean. Currently the titanium dioxide is being used on outdoor items like self-cleaning windows.
The Kama Sutra Virus / worm is going to be activated on Friday. It has been spreading around the world via email, but won’t begin destroying computer files until Friday, February 3rd.
There are some things you can do. First you should back everything up. There are many backup programs available that automatically back your files up. This should be done frequently because even without the destructive force of a virus, hard drives can become corrupted and eventually completely fail.
Intel announced today that it has reached a milestone in the development of the 45 nanometer (nm) logic technology. Intel believes they are the first to have a fully working SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) chip that uses the 45 nm technology.
Scientists have been debating whether Pluto should be classified as a planet or just another rock in space orbiting the sun. Hopefully this question will be answered by NASA in 9 years. Today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched the New Horizons spacecraft on top of a Lockheed-Martin Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The New Horizon craft will travel to Pluto and its moon Charon in an effort to shed light on the body’s surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres. The “flyby” studies will take place in 2015.
Apple announced a new iPod Radio Remote at the Mac World Expo in San Francisco this past week. This new accessory for the iPod nano is a FM radio and a remote control. You can have your iPod in the backpack and use the remote to jump to any song in your playlist or you can listen to FM radio.
Apple computer, for the first time today, showed off the new iMac at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The new iMac uses the Mac OS X operating system and is running on the new Intel Core Duo processor.
There’s a cool new tool available to help you build links. It is called PRASE and in this article I will explain why it’s good at helping find sites.
Further I’ll look at some of the other features to see if there are other uses for this tool, such as competitive intelligence gathering and deep linking opportunities.
Really, this new tool offers so much more when you begin to look at what it can do. And that’s what I’m writing about today.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) may be a great way to lower your phone bills. It is definitely something you should consider if you make long distance calls. This is what you need to know before you leave your regular phone service behind and begin the process of converting over to VOIP.
There are three ways to place a call using VOIP services. ATA (analog telephone adapter) is the simplest and most common way users make VOIP calls. This method allows you to connect your standard phone to your computer. Your ATA adapter converts your phone signal to a digital signal that can be sent over the Internet.
Pulse-Link Inc. from Carlsbad, California, will demonstrate its Gigabit-rate CWave Ultra Wideband (UWB) during the Consumer Electronics Show, January 5-8, in Las Vegas.
F-Secure, a Finnish security firm is warning users not to install a leaked beta version of MSN Messenger version 8. It is a hoax that is a variation of the Virkel instant messaging virus.
The virus uses MSN Messenger client to send the infection to the entire user’s contact list, then connects the user’s computer to a second “botnet” server which can be further used to install more unauthorized software on the machine, such as phishing, hijacking, or keylogger software.
Reverse Dictionary - Ever asked yourself "What's the word for..."
I just happened to stumble on a pretty interesting tool today.
I was trying to find a word for “People that are behind the times” for my previous blog post. I did a couple of searches in Google without avail and eventually started scouring for a tool that did a reverse lookup on a word. A tool where I would give the definition, and it would give me some words that matched that definition. What I discovered was Onelook.com’s Reverse Dictionary.
Reverse Dictionaries allow you to “Describe a concept” in order to find words that match that description. Reverse Dictionary - Ever asked yourself "What's the word for..."
Quadruple Your Visitor Viewing Time!
Field of Dreams By now you probably have read numerous articles about driving traffic to your web site by implementing some proven techniques, such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Keyword Marketing, Google AdSense, Pay Per Click, among others. But how many articles or techniques do you read on “How to keep visitors from leaving a website?” Chances are very few.
The adage, “If You Build It, They Will Come” may work for the movie “Field of Dreams,” but not necessarily in the real Web World. Like in the movie, there has to be a raison d’etre — a reason to keep watching, a baited hook. If you remember, the film featured baseball greats of yesteryear that tapped into the consciousness of the fan, giving people something of value, a need fulfilled or just plain curiosity. They will watch the game/movie transfixed for hours. Quadruple Your Visitor Viewing Time!
Microsoft will discontinue support for the Mac version of Internet Explorer. The support will end on December 31st and the program will be removed from the MS (Microsoft) website Mactopia for downloads on January 31st 2006. The initial announcement was made in June of 2003.
Many Mac users use Safari or Firefox as a browser. This could be a problem because some websites have sections specifically designed for IE (Internet Explorer). I usually use Firefox but ran into a problem on a virtual tradeshow website. A marketing website (Marketworks) I use also requires IE for some of its applications.
On December 15th, Amp'd quietly launched their multi-capable mobile wireless service which is marketed to a niche market.
The hip new mobile company called Amp’d Mobile is more than just a cell phone, it is video broadcasts, music player, still and video camera, and also a cell phone too for the MTV fans and college students. The term used for this type of technology is call mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
Amp’d Mobile uses the Verizon Wireless for the cell phone services. The goal of Amp’d will be to market to a specific demographic group of people. Amp’d has endorsers that are pro surfers, skateboarders and snowboarders. Amp’d Mobile earlier this week announced that MTV is now a investor as well as a content provider.
Mozilla Foundation has issued a security advisory for its new Firefox version 1.5 browser. This is what happens. The browser will hang when the history includes a real long page title / location (like 2.5 million characters for instance). The browser will hang when processing the long file.
The only way to correct this is to clear the Firefox history file (history.dat). Researchers at PacketStorm security group has warned that the bug can result in hackers gaining control of a system, not just a denial of service (DoS) attack.
The non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization has announced that Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan was chosen to be the original design manufacturer (ODM) for the $100 laptop project.
Yahoo! is planning on implementing a new VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) service to compete against Skype. Yahoo acquired Internet VoIP service Dialpad back in June. In September eBay acquired VoIP operator Skype explaining that this could help facilitate sales, specifically international sales. Buyers could actually converse with each other before bidding on an item.
The service will be available in 180 countries and will integrate Yahoo e-mail and instant messenger service features. According to Networking Pipeline computer to computer calls will be free. I used Dialpad when it was free back in 2001 and was able to call any phone number in the US for free using my computer. Later Dialpad became a pay service.
New Internet Explorer (IE) vulnerabilities have been exposed by Israeli hacker Matan Gillon. This new hole gives phishers a way to scan the hard drives of Google Desktop users, when the IE browser is used. Apparently there is a flaw in the way IE processes Web pages.
Malicious Websites could steal sensitive information like credit card numbers or passwords from your hard drive when visiting sites where the pages are created with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). These “style sheets” are a quick method some developers use to make the site look uniform with the same fonts and headers on each page (along with other functional appearances).
Anyone buying a car should consider all of their options. Should they concern themselves with gas mileage or do they have a large family and need a large vehicle? If you have a long commute and drive solo or with a coworker to work, you should consider the hybrid option.
eEye Digital Security has found a critical vulnerability in some versions of Apple Computers iTune. The newest version released just a few days ago has this vulnerability. The flaw could enable attackers to remotely take over a user’s computer.
Analytics are very important to your web marketing campaign. If you do not use analytics properly you may not understand how effective your search engine marketing is.
In this article I look at some practical examples of when to use analytics and some things you need to identify in order to get the most out of your analytics.
SEO and Search Engine Forums & Conferences :: are they really helpful?
Working in the SEO/SEM industry can be very rewarding. Many times a problem can be solved simply with a little online research, and posts on a few forums. All to often, however, some people put too much stock in the posts they see, ultimately negatively impacting their SEO efforts.
In this article I look at some of the positives and negatives of online SEM forums and attending SEM and SEO conferences. As part of my daily routine I visit a few of the search engine forums out there to see what people are talking about and what some have noticed. SEO and Search Engine Forums & Conferences :: are they really helpful?
The necessity for better email management and email archiving grows everyday. Email (electronic mail) changes and evolves with technology. In order to understand the email management technology that will be best for you or for your business let’s take a step back and look at the origins of email itself.
1. Check your website statistics on a weekly basis. Are You Marketing Your Website?
The history occurring in recent patent applications reveals more efficient production of Ethanol from Biomass using transgenomics.
Ethanol production requires nearly complete hydrolysis. Most of the commercial applications for cellulase enzymes represent higher value markets than the fuel market. For this reason, enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass to ethanol remains non-competitive.
A new news aggregator has been developed and is available for use in a beta version. The new website, Inform.com, appears to have more bells and whistles than other aggregators including Yahoo, Google News and Topix but with fewer news sources.
Since the site is in beta more sources might be expected in the future, after all Google and others are continually adding new news sources.
The Apple Computer Inc. iPod is one of the most popular devices of the new millennium. Madison Avenue’s favorite target audience with billions of dispensable income and no mortgage payments is the new generation born after 1985. Call the generation what you want, but they have made Apple very successful again by buying up the new iPod.
I finally broke down and bought a couple pre-paid cell phones. This type of service is great for someone like me that does not use the cell phone much. It is also a great alternative for parents that worry about their kids running up a huge bill.
Parents can give their children an allotted of minutes / money to make calls. After the allotment is used upthe parent can choose to recharge the phone either with a credit card or over the Internet.
Google Inc. has introduced a completely new search engine devoted to blogs. The Google search already indexes blogs, but the links to them are sometimes buried among other webpages. The pages become outdated as the content changes so many surfers are taken to pages that have changed since the regular Google Search indexed it.
Apple Computer unveiled its new iPod last week. The new Nano plays music, displays photos and is extremely small. Like computers, the size of the iPod is shrinking. The new Nano is about the size of a deck of cards, but a little thinner.
Older iPods used a tiny hard drive to story songs. The new Nano uses solid state memory technology to not only increase the speed and reduce the size, but to extend the battery life as well. The Nano can last more than 14 hours on a single charge.
Spamhaus made a claim that Internet giant Yahoo! hosts thousands of phishing websites. The press was given examples of some words including Bank, Paypal, and eBay. Here is how the fraud works. An email may prompt a user to click on a website called yourBank.com to updated your personal information. The email recipient may click on the link and become a victim of identity theft fraud after providing the private information.
Recently Motorola won FCC approval for a new phone that features an Apple iTunes player. If the rumors are right, Apple will be announcing a new iPod phone in partnership with Motorola and Cingular Wireless. Most insiders have predicted this marriage between phone an iPod for years.
A joint effort between the University of Texas and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization has created industrial-ready material made of nanotubes. The scientists reported this in the Friday edition of the journal Science.
A new security hole in Windows XP was reported on Wednesday by the French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT). A file called Msdds.dll (Microsoft DDS Library Shape Control file) is put into the hard drive when Visual Studio 2002 or certain Microsoft (MS) Office XP products are installed.
The new security patch for the Apple Computer Tiger Operating System prevented 64-bit applications from running. A corrected patch can be found at Apples website. Some of the newer high-end applications have been compiled for 64 bit operation. Standard 32 bit programs continued to work.
The new update, 2005-007 version 1.1, will replace the original patch issued on Monday. The original patch omitted the 64 bit version of LibSystem. The original patch was also updated to correct the flaw.
Last Friday Microsoft warned there were vulnerabilities in their plug-and-play feature. There are three critical security flaws and one could potentially allow hackers to seize complete control of a computer.
Since the announcement malware writers have been producing various worms to exploit the hole. They all are variants of the Zotob, as well as other bots (robot worms) and are spreading much faster than the original.
Fireplaces and fireplace mantels are fast becoming a core feature in homes across the world as they add a real feature point to any formal or indeed casual living area. Funnily enough fireplaces have had a relatively short history, considering that fire itself has been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
The Mountain View CA Mozilla Foundation announced Wednesday it will launch a for-profit subsidiary that will continue to develop the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client. The subsidiary, called Mozilla Corporation was necessary to eliminate legal and tax issues that might arise if the Mozilla foundation tried to make money from its desktop products.
Why would anyone want a second mouse button? Apple believes the consumer wants it, so they have introduced the new Mighty Mouse. Actually, Apple went beyond the second button to install a “single upper shell” that features touch sensitive clicking.
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) introduced it’s new Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ on Monday. AMD has also cut prices of their earlier CPU models.
The new model is rated at 2.0 GHz and includes 512K of L2 cache memory. Dual core is a way of splitting the processor so it can complete two tasks simultaneously at a faster speed. Half of the processor can be rendering images while the other is crunching numbers or coordinates for a game. The processor is quicker because it can multi-task, according to the company.
A new planet has been spotted. Astronomers in California have officially identified 2003UB313 as the 10 planet orbiting our sun. They are calling the new planet Xena.
PASADENA, CA - Back in April of this year, my family joined the 21st century when we purchased an iPod. We were in the Apple Store, which I started going to frequently after I purchased a Mini Mac to play with, and we noticed that our oldest son was really interested in an iPod. Since it was right after his birthday, we thought that an iPod Mini might be a good idea, and he was quite enthusiastic about it. Since I had just bought a Mini Mac recently, I was motivated to buy another Apple product (the Mini Mac is really cool, more on that another time).
PASADENA, CA - In another article I mentioned that one of the reasons for the purchase of the iPod was that I would exercise more. Now that I own one, do I exercise more? The answer is … yes!
One of my joys of owning an iPod is walking around the city I live in, Pasadena, and escaping from the moment through the magic of the music. With the tunes that I want to hear a few quick flicks of my fingers away, I wander the neighborhood slowly, window shopping, observing my fellow pedestrians, casting an indifferent eye at traffic, all while enjoying the serenity of the iPod experience. I’ve entered the local record shop (yes, it still exists and it does sell some records) listening to the new Gorillaz album Demon Days, and exited later immersed in the Overture from Tannhäuser. I have the freedom, which wasn’t possible before my iPod, to listen to any of the 5300 + songs on it, all of which I own legally, at any place and at any time!
I have a confession to make. I’ve always wanted one, maybe even secretly desired one. Professional curiosity, the coolness factor, the desire to work with something different, I’m not sure what it was exactly, probably a bit of all of them all, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the cost of adopting a new platform.
Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building.
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[WM]GARY CAHILL has not yet won a Premier League title, unlike some other members of the Chelsea squad.
But right now the England defender can scent one on the horizon –and he wants it.
Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea squad still has a core of players who know what it takes to win a title, men like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Petr Cech, Ashley Cole, Michael Essien and John Obi Mikel.
They are players who have been the distance, know the pitfalls, know what it takes over the nine hard months of the English season.
Coupled with the fast emerging, exciting young talent that is slowly but surely this season turning Chelsea into genuine contenders, Cahill believes that his side now have what it takes.
Chelsea’s comprehensive 3-1 win over Manchester United on Sunday at Stamford Bridge not only virtually ended any hope David Moyes’ side had of being contenders. It also made their hopes of a top four place all that more demanding.
Perhaps, more importantly though, Chelsea’s clinical dominance of the game against their old rivals showed for perhaps the first time that Jose Mourinho’s side are beginning to be forged into a genuine force by the Portuguese, after an uncertain start to the campaign.
Cahill, 28, sees the hunger that still resides in players like Terry and Lampard for a fourth title in the Roman Abramovich era and he shares it.
He said: “It’s one of the biggest trophies you can win and I’m sure the lads who have won it before would say the same thing. They’re just as hungry as me to do it again.
The victory took Mourinho’s record of unbeaten home games in the league in his two spells in charge to 71 now.
Cahill said: “It is an incredible record and one day it will come to an end, but hopefully not too soon.
“We have confidence whenever we play at home, which we should have, and always manage to get results here.
“Hopefully that will continue for the rest of the season, but the main thing for us is consistency, to keep performing every week. The lads have got the drive to do that right now and things are going well.
“United are not having the season they would have hoped for, but nevertheless that was a huge fixture no matter how you look at it so we’re obviously very pleased.
“I don’t want to jinx the record – but we do turn up against the big teams. We’ve put in good performances against them and not dropped too many points. If we can stay consistent, which at the moment we are, we have a good feeling among the group and we’re going about our business quietly. Arsenal and Man City are not dropping points either, but this was a great win for us.
“We are going about our business quietly. Hopefully we keep moving forward. We’re starting to play better, we’re defending well. We’re around the top, just a few points behind.
Chelsea are unbeaten in seven games against the top teams this season, and their match at in-form Manchester City at the Etihad on Monday week has been touted by pundits as a possible early title decider.
But Cahill does not see it like that. He said: “I don’t think it’s a decider. There is a long way to go, we’re just over halfway through the season. There have been times where we’ve slipped up and they’ve slipped up away from home.
“We know how devastating they are at home, it’s going to be tough. We beat them here and it’s going to be even harder up there to get a result. It’s one to look forward too.
Mourinho, meanwhile, celebrated the win in painful fashion as he flew to Paris yesterday for surgery on an old elbow injury.
And Samuel Eto’o says he wants to end his career with Mallorca.
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[WM]How do I know when I should exit a trade?
Are there some rules on this that I can follow?
Many traders approach their strategy with one thing in mind: establishing the qualifications for entry. The ‘edge’ if you will. From there, the trade should take care of itself, right? Not really. How you manage a trade after it has been taken is perhaps the most important dynamic to a true strategy (as opposed to approaching the market trade by trade). Once in a trade, you have cast your line; and the result will ultimately be a gain or a loss. Yet, unless you think this one trade will make you wealthy enough to retire after its closed; it is important to establish some consistent (if flexible) parameters for when you should exit the market with a profit or (preferably) a tolerable loss. What are the considerations you should account for when looking for the exit?
The first rule for plotting your exit is to have some notion of how you will get out of your trade before you even put it on. For those traders that are utter beginners, we usually hammer home the concept of defining a hard stop and target before you even enter a position. This is just a suggestion to instill good habits – namely: don’t trade with emotions. That being said, absolutes aren’t conducive to trading. You need to retain some level of flexibility for a market and financial structure that is adaptable. Nonetheless, we still need to establish some ground rules; because a preconceived notion of an exit can bring significant clarity to the success or failure of your trade. It is a good exercise to ask yourself in the middle of a trade whether this is a good position or not and why. Even those supremely confident in their trading skills and can answer the first question will still have to take a cold hard look at their reasoning.
When going about establishing exit points, you should consider a ‘graceful’ exit whether you have a winning or losing trade. Both scenarios should be accounted for on the initial development of the trade. A stop is pretty straight forward. If the market has broken a specific technical level or the notional loss on the position breaches your tolerance level, it is time to exit and reassess (never right-off a pair altogether, you will have to trade the pair again sometime in the future). Yet, I like to combine technicals and money management when establishing my own stops. I will typically only risk 1 to 5 percent of my total equity on any single trade. That is a hard fast rule. Now, I look at the technical scenario. If a reasonable place to set my stop is too far from the entry or it happens to be very close, I will use that level and simply alter my position size such that my total risk will always fit that 1 to 5 percent rule while maintaining the technical setup.
Targets are a different story. As it is often said: “you should cut your losers and let your winners run.” This is advice to live by; but how? Well, we have capped our losses; but balancing your take-profit is more difficult. The first thing to do is refer back to your stop. How much risk did you take on the outlay? Your trade should be able to compensate for that risk and more. But, how do we do this without leaving the trade open to emotions taking control and stopping a trade out too soon or keeping it on for so long that it reverses? What if we set our first target near or equal to the initial risk taken? This target should be set within meaningful technical bounds so that nothing prevents the setup from playing out aside from natural market forces. With this approach, we are trading with multiple objectives. That first target is to simply reduce the risk with the trade. A big emotional weight will be lifted when you book this allotment. To further lift the haze of fear and greed, we can trail the stop on the remaining portion of the position. Now, with the remaining half of the position, you can ‘let your profits run.’ If you initially entered a trade with the belief that it would force a medium-term breakout; and you just took half profit and curbed your risk. You can now wait for that move to happen with a cool head. For the second half, it is important not to just let it drift. Have a target level or wait for momentum to turn against your position (the end of or pause in a trend).
This further leads us to consider: how long should all of this take? Too few people actually consider when they go into a trade that it should take X-number of minutes, hours or days. Typically, they wait until their patience is tested; and that is when their good trading habits start to break down. A simple way to establish how long a trade should take is to first consider what time frame you are looking at your charts or fundamental developments. If you are waiting for global economic activity to accelerate, then you are talking about a broad driver that can take weeks or months. If you are looking at a range and potential breakout candidate on a daily chart that has taken three weeks to develop, allow for at least a couple days. If you have watched a repeatable pattern develop on a five minute chart; your scalp should develop over approximately the same time as the previous pattern. And, what should you do after your time is up? Exit. Don’t think twice. Just exit the trade and reassess when that pair will once again be a good long or short.
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[WM]Facebook's new Home software on Android means still more ways to interact with people whom you're not actually with at the time. Is that always a good thing?
If you're one of the people who get Facebook's new Home software, your social-media life will be front and center whenever you pick up your phone. It's literally putting Facebook in your face.
While that may have appeal to heavy-duty Facebook users who want to be in constant touch with their social graph, it raises some issues about "presence." People have their phones with them almost all the time, including when they're interacting with friends, family, and work colleagues, and many of us (myself included) have a habit of paying attention to our phones when, perhaps, we should be paying attention to the people around us.
Facebook isn't creating any new problems with this software, but it is making it even easier to be distracted. For some that's not a problem. For others it's a small problem, and for some -- including people who may have some some deeper issues like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), it can be a major issue. And though it has yet to be officially recognized in the United States, there are Asian countries that recognize a condition that's being called "Internet Addiction Disorder."
To find out more, I spoke with three experts: Dr. Jeff Szymanski, a clinical psychologist and executive director of the International OCD Foundation, Robin Maier, a Tampa-based Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who has blogged about ADD and texting, and Dr. Michael Rich, the director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital (scroll down for podcast interview).
I asked each of them to help me understand where to draw the line between normal, though perhaps sometimes annoying, use of technology and when it becomes a serious problem. All three used the traditional definition of addiction: when it interferes with family life, work, or achieving your goals. Szymanski made the distinction of when constant attention to a phone might be necessary versus when it's not. "If a sports editor checks scores several times a day, it might make sense," he said. But if it's not a job requirement and you do it so often that it "interferes with your work, your relationships, and your day-to-day functioning," it could be an unhealthy compulsive behavior. Maier worries that people "on the ADD spectrum who find it harder to stay focused" could easily be distracted by their phones to the point that "it affects their personal relationships."
Dr. Rich asks people to think about whether they're using their device "more and more all the time in order to get the same level of satisfaction," whether they "start to experience negative symptoms" when they're away from it, and whether they're willing "to take on negative consequences such as your wife being angry with you or your colleagues being annoyed with you in order to maintain that habit."
Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit Internet-safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook.
Click below to listen to podcast interview with Dr. Rich.
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[WM]An environmental art project launched at a centre for adults with learning difficulties has attracted interest from the upper echelons of the Welsh Assembly.
The sculptor Richard Houghton and service users at Tyddyn Môn, on Anglesey, have been building artworks with stuff that has been thrown away.
The project is titled "Heglu", which translates as "legging it", and is funded by the Arts Council for Wales.
Richard, who teaches at Coleg Menai, said: "I get a real buzz from discovering materials that other people have thrown away. The materials inspire the final shape and form of my sculptures.
"Reusing materials is a key theme in my work, but Heglu is also about others responding to and modifying my sculptures, and the people at Tyddyn Môn have been great at this."
The project, which is being documented by the photographer Tom Simone, has created a lot of interest and even prompted a visit from Welsh Assembly officials.
Jane Davidson, Welsh Assembly minister for environment, sustainability and housing, said: "Sending waste to landfill sites to rot is no longer an option and we must look at ways of reducing, re-using and recycling.
"Heglu is a good example of how people can take up the challenge. It helps illustrate what can be done to make Wales greener and more sustainable."
As part of the project Richard will build a large sculpture which will be exhibited at Anglesey tip.
The waste management division of Anglesey Council, which has been very successful in rolling out its recycling collection schemes, is a partner in the project.
The work created at Tyddyn Môn will be exhibited at the Ucheldre Centre in Holyhead later in the year, as well as other venues around Wales.
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[WM]TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has begun uranium enrichment at a new underground site well protected from possible airstrikes, a leading hardline newspaper reported Sunday.
Kayhan daily, which is close to Iran's ruling clerics, said Tehran has begun injecting uranium gas into sophisticated centrifuges at the Fordo facility near the holy city of Qom.
Uranium enrichment lies at the heart of Iran's dispute with the West. The technology can be used to produce nuclear fuel, but also materials for atomic bombs.
The U.S. and other countries accuse Iran of developing weapons, but Tehran says it only seeks reactors for energy and research, and refuses to halt its uranium enrichment activities.
"Kayhan received reports yesterday that show Iran has begun uranium enrichment at the Fordo facility amid heightened foreign enemy threats," the paper said in a front-page report. Kayhan's manager is a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But Iran's nuclear chief Fereidoun Abbasi said late Saturday that his country will "soon" begin enrichment at Fordo. It was impossible to immediately reconcile the two reports.
Iran has a major uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in central Iran where nearly 8,000 centrifuges are operating. Tehran began enrichment at Natanz in April 2006.
The Fordo centrifuges however are reportedly more efficient, and the site better shielded from aerial attack.
Both the U.S. and Israel have not ruled out a military strike should Iran continue with its program.
Tehran however says it needs its enrichment program to produce fuel for future nuclear reactors and medical radioisotopes needed for cancer patients.
The country has been enriching uranium to less than 5 percent for years, but it began to further enrich part of its uranium stockpile to nearly 20 percent as of February 2010, saying it needs the higher grade material to produce fuel for a Tehran reactor that makes medical radioisotopes needed for cancer patients. Weapons-grade uranium is usually about 90 percent enriched.
Iran says the higher enrichment activities — of nearly 20 percent — will be carried out at Fordo. These operations are of particular concern to the West because uranium at 20 percent enrichment can be converted into fissile material for a nuclear warhead much more quickly than that at 3.5 percent.
Buried under 300 feet (90 meters) of rock, the facility is a hardened tunnel and is protected by air defense missile batteries and the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's most powerful military force. The site is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Qom, the religious nerve center of Iran's ruling system.
"The Fordo facility, like Natanz, has been designed and built underground. The enemy doesn't have the ability to damage it," the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Abbasi as saying Sunday.
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[WM]BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The Holiday Lights at CALM are out tonight, Christmas Eve according to a Facebook post from the zoo.
They are officially canceling the Holiday Lights tonight due to a power outage and will be closed tomorrow as well.
The zoo and Holiday Lights will reopen on Wednesday, December 26.
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[WM]Amtico hallway flooring hallways flr group. Installing laminate flooring in hallway nouveau amtico vinyl. Amtico herringbone flooring to hallway in chalk farm the flooring. Amtico floor installation to a hallway: #amtico #hallway #flooring.
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[WM]This is a brave man. Despite the fact that the engine on his circa 1980 Ford Fairmont sounds like a sewing machine and is clearly about to explode, he takes it to the drag strip and sprays nitrous through the whole run.
After running a 10.20, the tech guy tells him to cool it (because he doesn't have a cage), so the driver promises to keep it over 11.50. Of course once he's back in the dingy, stained interior of his fantastic Malaise mobile, he unveils his secret plot to break into the 9s on the last run.
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[WM]MIAMI — A little extra bullpen help would be a relief to the Mets.
Even with the rotation showing signs of wear and tear, the team’s primary focus heading toward the Aug. 1 non-waiver trade deadline remains another reliever, according to a person with knowledge of the organization’s thinking.
Bartolo Colon is struggling and Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard are both dealing with bone spurs. Plus, there are continuing questions whether Logan Verrett can pitch effectively enough to warrant a rotation spot.
But given the inventory of available starters at this point, team brass isn’t certain there is a upgrade to be had at a reasonable cost.
The Mets view another reliever as more easily attainable and are monitoring options that include the Angels’ Joe Smith, the Braves’ Chris Withrow and possibly Brewers closer Jeremy Jeffress — who would cost the Mets significantly in terms of players needed to make a deal.
Arizona has made no secret that Tyler Clippard can be had, but the Mets are unlikely to seek a reunion given that the veteran righty is signed through 2017.
With Mike Piazza’s No. 31 set to be retired next weekend, the Mets have changed the location in Citi Field where they will display the retired numbers, now affixing the plaques to the roof, above the upper deck in left field.
Previously, the retired numbers for Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges and Tom Seaver, with tribute plaques for Jackie Robinson, Bill Shea and broadcaster Ralph Kiner, were behind the left-field fence at a lower level.
“The combination of our increased attendance coupled with the retirement of Mike Piazza’s number brought to light the need to enhance the visibility for all of our retired numbers, which were frequently obstructed in their previous location,” the Mets said in a statement.
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[WM]Jofi Joseph: anonymous @natsecwonk handle revealed to be National Security Council staffers.
Twitter bird says: Don’t be stupid.
“Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Wiener? Almost as bad a pairing as Samantha Powers and Cass Sunstein” tweeted @natsecwonk, a popular anonymous tweeter who was revealed by the Daily Beast this week to be senior National Security Council staffer Jofi Joseph. In an ironic turn, Joseph has now suffered the same fate as his once-Twitter target Wiener: losing a high-profile political position due to reckless tweeting.
What sets Joseph apart from the majority of people who lose their jobs by way of social media is that he took pains to anonymize his online activity. Twitter, unlike Facebook and Google+, does not require users to create accounts under their own names. Many Twitter users—including Anthony Weiner—do link their accounts to their real-life identities, but others do not, leading to a wide variety of anonymous novelty accounts and humorous parody accounts for famous people. And as Joseph’s story reminds us, Twitter is not just a place where anonymous everyday people can take on the voice of famous individuals. It’s also a place where powerful and high-profile figures can take on the voice of anonymous, uninhibited handles.
But social media identities are rarely completely anonymous, even when they are not governed by real name policies. Online activity almost always leaves a trail. Part of that trail is technical—companies like Twitter and Facebook log IP addresses and other data associated with user logins, which courts can compel them to turn over in certain cases—but it’s not clear that the Joseph investigation relied on any such technical tracing via Twitter’s internal records.
Reading through Joseph’s tweets, it’s not hard to imagine how a careful analysis of whom he discussed and what he talked about might be enough to let investigators deduce his true identity. His tweets read almost like a trail of breadcrumbs, dropping clues about whom the author worked with, what events he attended, what issues he followed. An investigation into Joseph’s travel and shopping patterns might mean trying to geo-locate IP addresses used to access the Twitter account at certain times and then matching that location data to places where Joseph was known to be shopping and traveling. But the fact that these patterns were “parsed” from the corpus of tweets suggests the investigation may instead have involved mining the text of the thousands of tweets posted from the now-deleted account to identify specific stores, restaurants, or destinations that Joseph visited. Or perhaps the timing of the tweet postings was analyzed and compared against Joseph’s known patterns of behavior and daily schedules. Piecing together these types of behavioral data may not be easy—the investigation into @natsecwonk’s identity apparently lasted months—but it’s far from impossible.
Technical clues are only part of the identity trail we create on social media sites. The ways in which our behavior and relationships on Facebook and Twitter mirror and intersect with our real-life behavior and relationships can provide equally powerful clues about who we really are. In some cases these social hints may be even more significant than technical traces—after all, an IP address can be spoofed, but an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the White House national security operation is harder to fake.
Joseph intended to pen one of the entertaining, satirical commentary accounts that Twitter has become famous for—accounts like @justin_buber, @notzuckerberg, @queen_uk, or @PimpBillClinton—but he ended up in the middle of a career-ending debacle instead. Sure, he kept the account running for more than two years, but ultimately he ran into the fundamental problem of trying to remain anonymous in an online social world where—much like in Washington, D.C.—the whole point is to network, to connect with other people, to know and be known.
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[WM]The mayor tried to rush through a complicated proposal that caught too many Kansas City leaders by surprise. James enthusiastically presented his broad outline to the Kansas City Council with the hope of getting his proposal on the November ballot. He was met with immediate rebukes from several council members. The City Council’s mixed response was soon followed by slings and arrows from other community leaders and organizations who had serious reservations about the details.
Lost in all the politics and skepticism was the sad fact that only about one-third of 4-year-old children in Kansas City attend pre-K programs. The mayor sees a way to remedy that void. James has proposed a three-eighths-cent sales tax to generate $30 million annually for a citywide pre-K program.
James and his staff have studied preschool initiatives in several major cities. Denver’s successful plan was a model for the mayor’s proposal. It’s critical to bring key leaders from Denver to Kansas City to provide a full-blown, detailed presentation with open discussion involving as many stakeholders as possible.
This time, James needs broad-based participation. The City Council should provide input in the earliest stages. The 15 superintendents and school boards of districts that include Kansas City can provide the perspectives of educators whose students will benefit from this effort. Leadership from the Urban League of Greater Kansas City is a critical component. The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce — which is a booster, if not a true partner in this effort — will almost certainly take a leadership role, along with the mayor.
The details need to be hammered out right now. It will take until year’s end to weave together a proposal that the community and local leaders will support. Since James wants to put this on the ballot in April, through a citizen petition, that effort needs to start in early January so that the campaign can quickly get underway. It will take three months to run a decent campaign.
Fortunately, Kansas City has a visionary mayor to lead the charge for this visionary idea. But a lot more work and planning need to take place before it goes to Kansas City voters in April. Already the mayor has provided a rough blueprint for success. But more consensus is needed, or this worthy proposal will be nitpicked to death.
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[WM]BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Paumanok Vineyard winemaker Kareem Massoud.
Kareem Massoud has been the winemaker at the family-owned Paumanok Vineyards since 2001.
Paumanok has been an estate winery since 1990, when Ursula and Charles Massoud renovated and re-built a turn-of-the-century potato barn.
“I’m a second generation, homegrown winemaker. I learned the trade under my father’s tutelage,” Mr. Massoud said.
His father, Charles Massoud, is still a big part of making the wine at Paumanok, though the day-to-day responsibilities are Kareem Massoud’s, he said.
And now the eldest son at Paumanok has a big feather to stick in his winemaking cap.
Recently, Paumanok’s 2010 Semi-Dry Riesling was chosen as one of the Wall Street Journal’s “luxury dozen,” the top 12 bottles of wine in the nation chosen in an 800-bottle blind judging, chaired by British author and world-renowned wine writer, Hugh Johnson.
Because of 2010’s exceptionally dry and warm season, Paumanok’s riesling was picked a week or two earlier than normal — in mid-September, Mr. Massoud said. The semi-dry vintage was blended from the estate’s four separate riesling blocks, roughly 16 acres, he said.
“We have one block that was planted in 1983, two from the late 80s, and the most recent from ’05,” he said. The harvested blocks were fermented separately and later blended together. The process also included a mixture of different yeasts.
“The wine didn’t touch oak at all,” Mr. Massoud said. “It was fermented entirely in stainless steel tanks and given two or three months contact with the lees — relatively brief lees aging, where the wine is still in contact with the dead yeast cells that have settled at the bottom of the tank.” This method could add texture and volume to the wine, he said.
“The key thing to note about this wine is that we call it semi-dry, meaning there’s residual sugars in the wine,” he said, adding the wine has about 3 percent residual sugar, or 30 grams per liter, and about 8 and a half grams of acid per liter.
The first riesling the vineyard produced was its 1990 Dry Riesling. The vineyard began producing semi-dry riesling two years later.
When asked what qualifications it takes to be a winemaker, Mr. Massoud said a degree is not among them.
“I think I’m living proof that you don’t need an oenology or viticulture degree to be a winemaker, though that certainly doesn’t hurt.” He said that if you have the right attitude, perseverance and a strong work ethic, you can do whatever you want to do in life, including winemaking. He added the job is also very demanding.
Some say Paumanok’s honor as one of the Wall Street Journal’s “luxury dozen” has put the Long Island region on the fine wine map, but Mr. Massoud said the region has already been on the map.
“This can only help bolster the perception that Long Island is a legitimate wine district that serious wine connoisseurs around the world should be familiarizing themselves with,” he said.
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[WM]So what are they doing about the latency problem with Sat internet connections?
Unless this is somehow addressed it won't get much of a foothold against DSL or WIFI.
The average home user wants VOIP and gaming, latency critical apps.
"help make satellite a mainstream internet alternative"
Not unless they can do something about the 250ms latency imposed by the speed of light on a round trip to geostationary orbit. It's a great solution for folks who will never get a cable or DSL connexion, but it can never be a replacement for land-based technologies.
"The ViaSat-1 will have a throughput of about 100Gb/s... ViaSat claims the satellite will let distributors price a basic service at 2Mb/s... It's expected to be able to provide service to about two million subscribers."
So they're expecting to provide service of 1,000Gb/s (512Kb/s) to 4,000Gb/s (2Mb/s) from a 100Gb/s satellite? It's good to see the practice of massively overselling capacity is alive and well.
And am I the only one who thinks even 2Mb/s will be virtually useless by the time this is launched? With the massive increase in size (and thus bandwidth) used by most websites in recent years, even 2Mb/s will look like dial-up speed for anything other than email. I'm sure some people in rural areas (or for whatever reason can't get high-speed Internet through other means) will be happy to wait 10-20 seconds for each page to load, but most others will probably think it's not worth the cost they'll have to pay for it.
oh well there goes the PLANET!!!
Sunday 7th December 2008 11:59 GMT yeah, right.
orbit? Fact checker, aisle 3.
It's unlikely to be "in orbit over North America". More likely to be "in orbit over Ecuador", or some other place on the equator. That is, after all, where geosynchronous orbits need to be.
What about the police radar?
Isn't this the same band that the police radar use. My Valentine 1 is going to go nuts.!!!
Satellite is Good for Broadcast.
I'm sceptical about these Ka Internet business plans due to the 800ms Latency and extra rain fade on Ka.
2 Million people on 100GBps is indeed 50kbps per person. At 50:1 contention, it's 2.5Mbps.
But that is Clear Sky. It uses adaptive modulation on up and down links and in heavy rain will give 200kbps at 50:1 contention on downlink.
Uplinks are about 1/8th speed at best. Users want more like 4:1, 5Mbps and <50ms latency for VOIP and Gaming.
Unless you use the flavour of VPN that viasat supports natively on their modem you lose all the TCP/IP accelerator features. As is the case for encrypted Torrents.
Similar Ka is launching in Europe @13E in similar Time Frame. US already has similar "Wild Blue".
In the end these may make satellite TV cheaper. Sat TV can't use the ACM on downlink, but needs CCM, so speed is the same (and lower) in Clear Sky and Rain.
ok not so good for games, passable for IM, though obviously not ideal, but for stuff like p2p, or anything like email or general web surfing its probably fine.
depends on the price they charge. if they offer it as "unfiltered, limited only by bandwidth" i.e. no specific throttling but when its full it slows down. it may fly.
especially if the link kit to upload/download is a black box on an ethernet wire (or wifi) thats easy to set up. make it need a phone line for the uplink and its dead in the water. if you have a phone line you don't need it.
it comes down to price. slow but cheap? or no bandwidth caps but slow? or seriously fast, cheap but limited and they may have a chance.
limit it in any serious way, or have the connection kit seriously expensive and its dead.
Web browsing is horrible over satellite connections, particularly bi-directional satellite. The amount of data isn't huge, but its lots of itty bitty files which generates lots of individual TCP connections that never get going very quickly due to the high latency and small window sizes.
I used to maintain an ISP satellite service in the 90's and the only way we could improve the performance of web browsing was to proxy HTTP and break some RFCs to keep TCP window sizes big. Even doing that, some commercial apps still used to run far better over ISDN or even analogue dial..
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[WM]How critical can one be of Israel? It is a question that Germany has been debating since SPIEGEL ONLINE columnist Jakob Augstein was included on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of the world's worst anti-Semites. Political leaders in Berlin have a different answer than Germans at large.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has charted a firmly pro-Israeli course.
Does Angela Merkel mistrust the very people she governs? Is she uncomfortable with the German people?
In October 2011, the German chancellor stood onstage at the academy of the Jewish Museum, in Berlin, next to conductor Daniel Barenboim. The celebratory concert had concluded, and the museum's director had just presented Merkel with its Award for Understanding and Tolerance.
This is one of many awards the chancellor has received from Jewish institutions over the last couple years, including the Heinz Galinski Prize from the Jewish Community of Berlin, the American Jewish Committee's Light Unto the Nations Award and an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University.
At the Jewish Museum, Merkel spoke a few pleasant words, calling the award both an honor and a responsibility. Then she cited a study, according to which 60 percent of Europeans -- including Germans -- consider Israel the most significant threat to world peace.
Following Merkel's logic seems to present a conclusion that two thirds of Germans harbor anti-Semitic sentiments. Is this really what the chancellor believes? Or was her intention simply, as she said in her speech, to warn against allowing anti-Semitism to increase?
Merkel's speech provides a direct path into the minefield that is relations between Jews and Germans, and between Germany and Israel. Of course it is absurd to label Israel the world's worst aggressor. But does simply making such a statement count as anti-Semitism? Where does objective criticism end and defamation begin? The controversy over journalist Jakob Augstein's columns in SPIEGEL ONLINE and elsewhere has re-ignited this debate, a storm triggered when the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles placed Augstein on its list of the world's worst anti-Semites.
Two different arenas of discussion have arisen in Germany in recent years, one for the country's politicians and one for the public. Most politicians cling tightly and fearfully to the safety of the official line when they give speeches. Particularly members of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, haven't forgotten the 1988 case of Philipp Jenninger. Then president of the Bundestag, Jenninger expressed himself unclearly in a commemorative speech on the anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938, leaving his own views too open to interpretation. Within 24 hours of that speech, Jenninger resigned.
The general public, on the other hand, is tired of the strictures that dictate what can and cannot be said for the sake of maintaining good German-Israeli relations.
Every society needs its taboos, of course. In Germany, Holocaust denial is one such taboo, as is casting aspersions on Israel's right to exist. But doesn't each era need to find its own particular language in which to communicate? World War II has been over for more than six decades. The generation that perpetrated the crimes is dying out. Germany has become one of Israel's closest allies, as can be seen from the billions of euros' worth of arms sales from Germany to Israel. Isn't that grounds enough for speaking openly, even expressing severe criticism if necessary?
The chancellor certainly doesn't think so. More than any other head of government, she has aligned Germany with Israel. Some see these efforts toward reconciliation with the Jewish people as the only conviction the chancellor truly holds. "She takes the matter personally," says Deidre Berger, head of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee. Shimon Stein, former Israeli ambassador to Germany, was even a private guest at Merkel's weekend house in the Uckermark region northeast of Berlin.
In a 2008 address to the Knesset, Merkel declared Israel's security "part of my country's raison d'être." Even more spectacular was the statement that followed: "And if that is so, then these cannot be allowed to remain empty words at a critical time." This can only be understood as Merkel assuring Israel that Germany will step in with military aid if necessary.
"A German politician must establish a relationship of mutual trust with Israel, so that criticism of Jerusalem is not misunderstood," says Ruprecht Polenz, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and chair of the Foreign Policy Committee in the Bundestag. Chancellor Merkel has certainly done this. But she has also offered at most quiet protest over Israel's settlement policy, to little effect. Many within the Chancellery are frustrated that these arguments have not moved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the least.
Merkel's unconditional solidarity with Israel has thus failed to pay off, yet at the same time her approach has distanced the chancellor from many Germans, who are unwilling to follow her so unconditionally. Just how wide that rift has grown could be seen in the public debate last spring over a poem by Günter Grass, in which the author portrayed Israel as the aggressor in the Middle East and a threat to world peace. None of the country's top politicians came to Grass' defense. Hermann Gröhe, secretary general of the CDU, said he was "appalled" by the poem and even Sigmar Gabriel, chair of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) stated, "Some of it is excessive, and in many parts hysterical." These reactions only made the public's support for Grass all the more vehement, with letters piling up in the parties' headquarters expressing outrage over the politicians' rebuke of Grass.
What exactly does this response signify? Are the Germans a nation of anti-Semites, with the ugly countenance of hatred toward Jews lurking behind every corner, as author Tuvia Tenenbom recently suggested in his book "I Sleep in Hitler's Room: An American Jew Visits Germany"?
There have been a number of studies on anti-Semitism in Germany, and few topics have been examined as extensively as Germans' sentiments toward Jews. The most recent major study, conducted on behalf of the Federal Interior Ministry, clocks in at 204 pages.
Still, the question remains: How can one measure an attitude, a feeling? In what units is hate calculated? Is someone an anti-Semite if they say Jews have too much influence in Germany? Or if they express agreement with the opinion that Jews never look after anyone but themselves and their own?
One thing can be said for certain, and that is that Germany falls more to the middle of the spectrum on such questions. In Poland and Hungary, for example, anti-Jewish sentiment is far more widespread than in Germany. All told, according to the Interior Ministry study, 20 percent of Germans harbor latent anti-Semitism.
Certainly these numbers should be taken with a degree of skepticism. The researchers themselves admit it's impossible to produce clearly measured results in this field. But one thing is clear: Germans' anti-Semitism acts as a great temptation in politics -- any politician looking to garner votes for his or her party quickly can play on anti-Jewish sentiment.
That, though, is a dangerous game, as politician Martin Hohmann found out when he used the term "a nation of perpetrators" in connection with Jews. Merkel excluded him from the CDU's parliamentary group as a result.
The story of Jürgen W. Möllemann ended badly as well. Möllemann, a top politician in the Free Democratic Party (FDP), played a game that held not only many voters in thrall, but his own party as well, stating in an interview that he could sympathize with Palestinian suicide attackers, and accusing then-Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Michel Friedman of being "intolerant and spiteful."
FDP party head Guido Westerwelle was slow to take any action on Möllemann. Not until Hans-Dietrich Genscher and the party's higher-ups intervened did Westerwelle break with Möllemann. Israel hasn't forgotten the incident and keeps Westerwelle, now Germany's foreign minister, under close observation to this day because of the Möllemann affair.
Israel feels under threat more than ever before, both from Iran and through the developments throughout the Arab world, and that sensitivity is only growing. At the same time, from Germany's perspective there are many reasons to view Israeli policies critically. The country has changed, with demographic changes due to immigration from Eastern Europe and Africa causing a political shift to the right. Hardliners will have the say here for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, Israel's settlement policy will soon render the idea of a Palestinian state impossible. When Hans-Ulrich Klose, the SPD's top politician on foreign policy issues, recently attended a political congress in Israel, he met hardly any politicians still working for a two-state solution -- the solution Germany considers the only viable path to peace in the Middle East. "It was sobering," Klose stated.
What, then, should Germany do? Klose says he still believes the German government should refrain from publicly reprimanding Israel. "Why should Germany of all countries make itself Israel's critic?" he asks.
But some younger politicians take a different view, and are increasingly unwilling to stick to the old approach. "Germany has a historical responsibility," agrees Julia Klöckner, 40, head of the CDU in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. "But that's not a blank check to be uncritical in foreign policy."
Germany needs to find a way to be less inhibited in its dealings with Israel, Klöckner suggests. She adds, "Those who throw around accusations of anti-Semitism at every turn lose credibility."
"Less inhibited in dealings with Israel"? "Throwing around accusations of anti-Semitism"? Are these acceptable things to say? Klöckner may find herself taking considerable heat for her statements -- or meeting with considerable approval.
Israel doesn't care whether Germany endorses the policy of building settlements in what would become Palestine or not. If it doesn't care what the USA thinks, then sadly it certainly won't care what Germany thinks. Germany's role, for many years to come, will be to support Israel when it can, and to keep quiet when it can't. This may not be fair, or rational, but it is a consequence of history, and it is the only honourable course of action that remains for Germany at this time. It is to the great credit of Germany that most its people recognize this reality and are prepared to abide by it. Despite all of the sophistication of international relations, relationships between countries are not so different from relationships between individuals. Wrongs must be righted, and the duration of righting far outlasts the duration of the wronging, and most Germans, even young Germans, know this and accept this, and it honourable and commendable that they do so.
I could not agree more with clockwatchr. Germany's role, for many years to come, will be (or at least should be) to support Israel when it can.....and to remain quiet when it cannot. As this poster stated, it is a consequence of history! I am a supporter of Germany and its people. But, c'mon, if there is ever to be any criticism of the policies of the Israel govt, it should be left up to other European governments. Some people may think 6 decades (since the Holocaust) is a long time. But in the course of history, it really is not! Yes, indeed, there have been many other atrocities throughout history. But what happened in WWII can NEVER be forgotten. And it is beyond despicable. Sadly, history shows us that it is a consequence of what can happen when a society does not make themselves aware of what is going on around them.
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[WM]"The mortgage rate is very high in this country," putting a drag on the economy as housing-related companies struggle, CNBC's Jim Cramer says.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate was at 4.85 percent on Thursday, according to Freddie Mac, after spiking to 4.9 percent the prior week.
Rising mortgage rates may really start to hurt the economy, consumer spending and company earnings soon, CNBC's Jim Cramer warned on Monday.
"We're going to see more and more bad earnings because [a] 5 percent mortgage is the end, that is the line in the sand," Cramer said Monday on "Squawk on the Street." "The mortgage rate is very high in this country."
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate was at 4.85 percent on Thursday, according to Freddie Mac, after spiking to 4.9 percent the prior week in the rising bond-yield environment. A year ago, the 30-year mortgage was at 3.88 percent.
In recent weeks, Cramer has been critical of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying the central bank is not taking into account signals of a slowing economy, particularly in housing-related companies, in charting a course for interest rates next year.
Cramer has also been urging the Fed to go back to being data-dependent to determine whether more rate hikes are needed, and not to be blinded by an arbitrary desire to normalize monetary policy.
The Fed raised rates three times this year, and another hike is expected in December.
Earlier this month, Powell sparked concerns on Wall Street after he said rates are a long way from neutral, a level of being neither accommodative nor restrictive to the economy.
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[WM]The rudest awakening. Chrissy Teigen tweeted about an awful racist encounter on Thursday, April 16, which prompted support from her fellow celebrities including Retta and Mindy Kaling.
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover girl, 29, was taking a stroll in West Hollywood to kick off her morning when the unexpected suddenly occurred.
"I dropped my sunglasses this AM on Santa Monica blvd and this seemingly normal looking dude screamed "f—ing ch-nks always dropping s–t," wrote the gorgeous model, who is of Norwegian and Thai descent. "…like that's not even a stereotype. get your s— together. What a bad racist."
As if his first strike wasn't enough, the offender then followed up with another racial slur to make it clear he was targeting John Legend's wife. "We were the only ones on the block and he screamed it from 5 feet away," she wrote. "Then when I acknowledged it he said 'oh now the oriental can hear.'"
Teigen infused some humor into the harrowing tale, commanding her nearly 710,000 Twitter followers to be on the lookout for the culprit. "Anyhoo, that was my morning!" she wrote. "If you see a guy in weho wearing a brown suit jacket and jeans, probably avoid eye contact."
Her celebrity pals immediately reacted to the news. "WHAT?!" Kaling wrote, following up with a huge serving of sarcasm. "That's an insanely hilarious new racism I've never heard of before. Congrats, sociologically."
Parks and Recreation star Retta also joked about the incident outright and tweeted: "Do you think you could get me his number? He seems fun."
Teigen's day, it seems, improved considerably as she later shared an Instagram clip of her latest recipe tutorial. "Your morning pork chop video!" the avid cook wrote. "Used crushed up chicken stove top for the breading. Chicken fried pork!! It's. Delicious."
Your morning pork chop video! Used crushed up chicken stove top for the breading. Chicken fried pork!! It's. Delicious.
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[WM]Apple's newest iPhone 3GS will be the most powerful yet with more robust graphics and a faster network connection when it hits on June 19 for $200 to $300, the company announced today during their annual World Wide Developers Conference.
The iPhone 3GS will hit the same week as the new game-centric 3.0 firmware for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The 3GS will sell for $199 for the 16GB version and $299 for the 32GB version. The original 3G will stay on the market for $99 with 8GB of storage.
Apple calls it "the most powerful, fastest iPhone we've ever made."
Apple says that the iPhone 3G S takes advantage of the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard for "stunning high-quality 3D graphics, making mobile gaming and other graphic intense applications better than ever."
With the 3GS, launching messaging is faster, viewing Excel is faster and loading SimCity is 2.4 faster. The 3Gs will include a 3MP autofocus camera, 30FPS VGA video capturing and supports OpenGL/Es and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. The 3GS will also include a built-in digital compass.
The device's battery life has also been improved, with the 3Gs getting nine hours of life on Wifi, compared to the 3G's six, and 30 on audio, compared to 3G's 24.
Last week sources told Kotaku that the new iPhone would sport a gaming-centric 3D graphics chip, run on a faster national network. We were also told that Apple's 3.0 firmware for their existing iPhones, which includes a bounty of new features for gaming, will hit on the same day.
This year the World Wide Developers Conference drew 5,200 developers from 54 countries. Apple also announced today that they have sold more than 40 million iPhones and iPod Touch. They've also logged more than a billion downloads and the App Store has 50,000 programs. That's quite an install base.
Apple's firmware and this new iPhone come at a time when the company is seeing huge growth in the games flooding their App Store. The company seems to be a crossroads of sorts, one that has folks like the Entertainment Software Association sort of hinting that they need to dive in with both feet.
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[WM]HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — Western Kentucky will host Louisiana Tech at 11 a.m. Saturday at Houchens-Smith Stadium in the Conference USA championship game. The contest will be televised by ESPN.
The Hilltoppers (9-3), the 2015 Conference USA champions, won the league’s East Division by virtue of its 60-6 win at Marshall on Saturday. Louisiana Tech (8-4) clinched the West Division earlier this month, but lost the right to host the title game after losing 39-24 at Southern Mississippi on Friday.
The Bulldogs have defeated WKU in two of the last three meetings including a 55-52 victory Oct. 6 in Ruston, La. The Tops beat LTU 41-38 in 2015 in Bowling Green.
Western has won six straight and 20 of its last 22 against Conference USA opponents. It has also won 12 straight against conference opponents at home.
A win against Tech would give the Hilltoppers back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time in program history and two straight conference titles for the first time since 1970-71.
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[WM]ZURICH, April 10 (Reuters) - Sunrise Communications' top shareholder on Wednesday blocked plans to extend the company's right to issue fresh capital to 2021, complicating its bid to buy Liberty Global's Swiss UPC cable business for $6.3 billion.
The rejection by Freenet at the Swiss telecoms firm's annual shareholder meeting does not scupper the takeover, which was announced in February.
A separate meeting will decide on the $4.1 billion capital increase needed to push that through.
But the thumbs-down from German telecoms company Freenet, which holds a 24.5 percent stake, denied Sunrise the required two-thirds majority to extend capacity for authorised capital until 2021. The measure got only 59.3 percent support.
"Together with Freenet we could have agreed it makes sense by pushing forward a (further potential) capital increase to take pressure off the large capital increase," Sunrise finance chief Andre Krause told Reuters.
"Now we can't do that. Freenet robbed us of optionality."
Freenet had already said it would not take part in the main capital hike, saying it was disturbed by how the transaction was structured. It has not yet decided how to vote at the extraordinary shareholder meeting that will be convened to approve that, Freenet lawyer Alexander Borgwardt told Reuters on the sidelines of the annual meeting.
The date for that meeting - where only a simple majority is needed - has yet to be set pending regulatory approval for the deal.
Authorising fresh capital now could have helped contribute some of the money needed for the deal, Borgwardt said, adding: "We think this should be voted on at the end, when the entire transaction will be discussed."
Sunrise Chairman Peter Kurer said a two-thirds majority for the capital increase could be needed should Liberty Global in the meantime buy shares in Sunrise.
In that case, it would be easier for Freenet with its nearly one-quarter stake to block the capital increase because not all shareholders attend meetings. The turnout on Wednesday, for instance, was 62 percent of the voting capital.
There was no evidence at this stage that Liberty planned such a move, Krause said.
Kurer had earlier expressed optimism that Sunrise would win backing to raise the money needed to complete the UPC takeover.
Sunrise officials have met more than 170 large shareholders and potential investors in recent weeks to outline the deal. "After these talks they view the transaction significantly more positively," he said.
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[WM]Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has big plans for the Marvel Cinematic Universe following 2019's Avengers 4 - over a dozen, in fact.
"[Marvel is] 22 movies in, and we’ve got another 20 movies on the docket that are completely different from anything that’s come before- intentionally,” Feige told Vanity Fair.
Avengers 4 will be Marvel Studios' twenty-second film, and the end to the MCU's Phase 3. The previously-announced Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel would account for two of those 20 post-Phase 3 projects. Additionally, sequels for Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and the upcoming Captain Marvel can be safely assumed.
That still leaves 15 projects unknown - barring any surprise fourth film for Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, or Guardians of the Galaxy, or a fifth Avengers film.
But as Feige said, these films will be "completely different" from the previous MCU films - a statement that Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger illuminates - and possibly opens some doors to.
“We’re looking for worlds that are completely separate - geographically or in time - from the worlds that we’ve already visited,” said Iger.
Captain America: The First Avenger was a period piece - the 1940s - while 2019's Captain Marvel film will be set in the 1990s.
And following the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Feige and writer/director James Gunn have repeated used the term 'Marvel Cosmic Universe' when referring to that corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which could be tipping the hand on what's to come.
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[WM]A Babylon Town worker could lose his job after posting hateful insults on social media targeting a Muslim teenager in Lindenhurst the day before her graduation, the town supervisor said Friday.
The Facebook account of Andy Vita, 51, posted commentary on Thursday in response to a Lindenhurst School District video celebrating its high-achieving high school seniors, including salutatorian Yasmin Zohny, who appeared in the video wearing a traditional Muslim hijab, or headscarf.
The video was shared on a Lindenhurst Facebook community page. The Facebook account of Vita, who is a member of that community, responded with expletives and derisive comments about Zohny’s hijab.
Condemnation from the community was swift, and Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer was alerted. Schaffer said that as of Friday Vita was suspended for 30 days without pay from his job as a heavy equipment operator in the Department of Public Works. Schaffer said the town is seeking to fire Vita, who as a union member is entitled to defend himself in a hearing within the next 30 days.
Neither Vita nor a woman who identified herself as his wife, Jenn Vita, on Facebook, responded to requests Friday for comment.
She defended her husband on the same community page, claiming that his account was hacked and that they had filed a police report. Suffolk County police on Friday could not immediately confirm the report.
According to town records, Vita was paid nearly $84,000 last year and has been an employee since 1985. Schaffer said Vita was one of several “critical” workers who helped rescue residents during superstorm Sandy in 2012, lifting them out in a payloader bucket.
“I was blindsided by this,” Schaffer said, adding that it’s unclear whether Vita made the comments — which appear to have been posted about 1 p.m. — while on the job.
Zohny, who with her family declined to speak to Newsday, is graduating Friday. In a statement, Lindenhurst school Superintendent Dan Giordano called Zohny a well-liked and hardworking student.
“I will not allow anyone’s ignorance to taint this academic milestone for Yasmin, or any other Lindenhurst student,” Giordano said.
In the district’s video, Zohny mentions joining a youth group near a mosque.
“I think it’s important to become active in your community because we can’t all save the world, obviously, but we can help it,” she said.
Zohny, who will attend the University of Texas in Austin in the fall to study engineering, went on to say she is thankful to everyone she has met on the way to graduation.
“Even the people who haven’t been kind to me have taught me something I’m going to take with me,” she said.
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[WM]Dr. Narges Bani Asadi says cancer is a genetic disease, and she is using technology to fight it.
Asadi is the founder and CEO of Bina, a healthcare startup working to make ‘personalized medicine’ a reality. Bina applies big data analytics to genomics, making it possible to sequence the human genome in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.
Today, Bina launched its commercial product. The platform provides physicians, clinicians, and researchers with a detailed picture of a patient’s health. From there, they can make data-driven diagnoses and prescribe individualized courses of treatment.
There are thousands of genetic disorders. In 2013, over 580,000 Americans are expected to die of cancer. One in 20 babies born in the U.S. is admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit, and 20 percent of infant deaths result from congenital or chromosomal defects. Technology can be used to curb these terrifying trends. Bina’s role is to bridge the gap between DNA sequencing technology and the diagnosticians and clinicians who can apply it to their practice.
Asadi said her team had to achieve innovations in every step of genetic processing in order to create a scaleable, marketable, effective solution. Bina’s platform includes a hardware box to collect DNA, advanced software to process the data, and applications to turn the data into actionable form. Whereas before a full genetic analysis took weeks or months and could cost thousands of dollars, Bina turns it around within hours for around $200 a sample.
The technology emerged out of Asadi’s PhD work at Stanford. She collaborated with professors from around the world to apply high performance computing and computer architecture to gain a new understanding of human health and disease. Bina was founded in 2011 by three professors from the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford. It is backed by venture funding, and pilot customers include the Stanford Genetics Department and Palo Alto Veteran Affairs Hospital.
Startups don’t often set out to cure cancer or prevent infant mortality. However, as technology continues to evolve and along with it, the healthcare industry, a medical system where diagnoses and treatments are based on hard data, where each and every individual is treated as such, could be on the horizon.
Read a VentureBeat guest post by Dr. Asadi: The personalized medicine revolution is almost here.
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[WM]Purdue's season has been a little rocky to this point, but Sunday's game against Michigan State could turn things around.
The Boilermakers played their best game of the season when they hosted No. 6 ranked Michigan State, winning 73-.
Purdue lead wire-to-wire and held a double-digit lead for the majority of the game. The Spartans closed the gap down the stretch but just couldn't overcome the early deficit.
Fans took to Twitter to voice their thoughts on the game.
Purdue is stressing me out!! Just put them away please!
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[WM]I thought we were a Tree City and tried to protect all our trees.
I have heard that a house in Flintridge with two magnificent old oak trees just sold. The oak tree in the front is being retained, but the gorgeous one in the back is being considered for removal so the new owners can build another huge home.
The city can’t let this happen. That tree is healthy and should be protected. I learned that Miller Tree Service has been servicing that tree for years. I hope the city has contacted them about the health of the tree and will make sure the new owners do not get rid of the tree.
Also when such trees are destroyed, shouldn’t the fees be much more than just $10,800 to remove an unwanted protected tree that’s 36 inches or greater in diameter? This provision was written some years ago and now people think nothing of paying the fine and being able to just build where they want. We need these trees to give beauty to our city, shade to everyone and to save the environment!
We are so fortunate to have these beautiful trees here in La Cañada Flintridge. Why do we so easily let new owners destroy their beauty instead of being resourceful in their home designs to make sure the trees are always an asset to their property?
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[WM]Who is Sherlock Holmes? Such is the question posed this summer by Jeffrey Hatcher’s play Holmes and Watson, the final production of the Alley Theatre’s 17-18 season, but it’s also the mystery unraveled within the International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Fans have been obsessed with the enigmatic detective since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first set him deerstalking into the world’s collective imagination 130 years ago. In film and television, he and his many contemporary incarnations are more popular than ever. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Houston is getting a cool summer of Sherlock.
But who is Sherlock Holmes and why do we in Houston continue to love him so? This was the mystery I set out to solve with a day devoted to murder, mayhem, and the master detective, ever ready to put the world to right.
First up, I headed over the Museum District to discover the very dramatic HMNS exhibition unexpectedly had something of an immersive theater feel. Before entering I received a casebook I would need to use along my journey into the dark underbelly of Victorian crime fiction.
This HMNS exhibition contains manuscripts and artifacts of Doyle’s era which delve into the history of Holmes and give insights into Doyle’s influences, including the writings of Edgar Allen Poe and Doyle’s his real life medical training and studies under Dr. Joseph Bell. The majority of the galleries are organized around a new Holmes mystery, written by noted Doyle biographer Daniel Stashower. The guiding narrative invites visitors to help Holmes solve this latest diabolical case.
At times working my way through the exhibition did feel as if I had entered into a role playing theatrical piece. The casebook and displays invited me to attempt some observational exercises, documenting all I saw, solve puzzles and work through a series of problems and experiments. The layout of the galleries gives the impression that Holmes himself was always just a few steps in front of me, in the next room.
One of the most fun parts of the experience was watching kids, ages 5 to 65, diligently and sometimes gleefully filling out their casebooks and working through the steps to solve the mystery. Along the way, the exhibition rather sneakily teaches some Victorian history and forensic science all in the guise of putting us through an audition to become Baker Street Irregulars.
For fans of the latest onscreen versions of the detective, the exhibition presents several displays of props and costumes from the three most popular current incarnations of the mythology: Guy Ritchie’s steampunk Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr., the BBC Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock and CBS’s Elementary.
Once I felt my observation skills finely honed, I headed over to the Alley to see if I could out deduce Hatcher’s Sherlock, only to find that in the play, it is the good doctor who must play detective.
Holmes and Watson, directed by Mark Shanahan, begins three years after the notorious Reichenbach Falls case, when Holmes and his archenemy Moriarty fell to their deaths. Or did they?
Dr. Watson (Jeremy Webb) is invited to a mysterious island asylum by a seemingly concerned, but perplexed Dr. Evans (Bruce Warren). Three inmates (Jay Sullivan, Dan Domingues, and Chris Hutchison) housed there all claim to be Sherlock Holmes. They all have a different story to tell about what happened that fateful night on the Falls and very different motives for telling their tales to Holmes’s best friend, confidant, and biographer. In turn, Watson must discover who is the real Sherlock Holmes, as danger lurks in every night shadow.
Of course, one of the allures of a good mystery, especially a Holmes play, is seeing if we can keep up with the game and figure out who done it, or in this case who is who, before a Sherlock or Watson explains it all.
In only 90 minutes, Hatcher, director Shanahan, and the cast create enough quick plot turns that audiences members might find themselves dizzy at the final reveals. Near the end, I did want to give my (imaginary) Baker Street Irregular badge a congratulatory polish because I did spot a few, though not all, of those plot twists leading up to the finale.
Whether I half-solved the case thanks to the training the International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes gave me earlier in the day, or it was the years of watching and reading so many versions of the great detective that made me a successful plot sleuth, who, but Holmes, can know.
Holmes and Watson runs at the Alley Theatre through July 22. The HMNS presents the ticketed International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes through September 30.
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[WM]Balkan Bistro and Bar, formerly the Balkan Bakery in the space demolished to make way for the Waterhouse project on Water Street, celebrated a grand opening in the former Under the Roof furniture store at 1003 West Main Street on Monday, June 21.
In 2006, at the Charlottesville City Market, Anja Cetic and her family began offering traditional pastries, pies, and breads from their Balkan Peninsula homeland. Originally from Bosnia, the Cetics also lived in Croatia and Serbia, moving around as they endured the brutal conflict known as the Bosnian War (1992-1995), which claimed over 100,000 lives and created over a million refugees like the Cetics.
Following the war, they relocated to the United States with the help of the local International Rescue Committee. In early 2009, they opened the Balkan Bakery on Water Street, serving up things like traditional Meat Pie (Burek) and Cevapcici, a kind of grilled minced-meat sandwich, and, of course, baklava. Another treat: Bosnian coffee, prepared by boiling finely ground coffee in a small, pear-shaped pot.
"We are going to be a full bar and restaurant now," says matriarch Anja Cetic, "offering American and European cuisine– what I like to call food from the heart with an accent."
The bakery items will be the same, says Cetic, like the baklava, Mascarpone cake, and cookies and baked walnut bread. But now they'll be serving lunch and dinner Tuesday through Friday, brunch and dinner on Saturday, and brunch on Sunday. In addition to homemade sausages, kielbasa, panini sandwiches, and salads, Cetic says they will also be offering beer from Croatia, Slovenia, and Russia.
"We're the only restaurant in Charlottesville serving these beers," says Cetic, "and the only one making their own kielbasa, hamburger patties, and sausages in-house."
Sounds delicious. Thanks for the heads-up. Will check them out very soon.
We went to a Balkan Bistro and bar for dinner and a drink which was former Balkan Bakery, the service was great and food was delicious. They also have Croatian, Russian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and domestic beers. Bud light was only $2.50 per glass amazing… I will be going there every day.
This place is amazing, the owners work so hard they use local vegetables and local meats, and also they are on the Farmers market on Saturday with delicious desserts.
Fresh ingredients but. Always creative and fun and great service.
Brunch is a comfortable, solicitous and delicious experience here.
Me and my bit@$ are gonna hop in the coop and hit that joint tonite son.
If my girl get the lobster you know what happens next son.
Sounds great and I look forward to patronizing this business.
But does this mean no more guys in track-suits talking Slavic noisily on their cellphones at the Barracks' Rd Greenberry's?
"If my girl get the lobster you know what happens next son."
YOU GET THE CRABS! HA HA HA AHA HAHH HAHH HA HAH AHH HA!!!!!
This was truly an outstanding dining experience that could have been in a Bistro in Paris, but happens to be in Charlottesville. Each dish was beautifully presented, delectaible and interesting in every way. It is rare to enjoy all the dishes my husband and I order but we both did and cleaned our plates. We did find room for sumptuous desserts, worth every calorie in them. We certainly will dine there on our next visit to Charlottesville.
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[WM]Tisdale, who is from Lugoff-Elgin, played four years for the Winthrop University team and two years of independent professional baseball.
He coached high school baseball in Miami, where he earned region coach of the year honors. “I had good kids to work with,” said Tisdale.
After meeting with returning York players in the school’s media center last week, Tisdale said he left the get-acquainted session feeling good about his new coaching position.
“There’s support from the administration, athletic director and the community,” he said.
Tisdale said he knows Region 3-AAAA is a strong region. “Every game is a challenge,” he said.
While he is eager to embrace his new role, Tisdale said, he plans to touch all the bases. He wants to get a firsthand look at baseball in the community, whether it’s youth play at the York Recreation Complex, Dixie Boys at Optimist Park or Junior Legion baseball at the YCHS complex.
Tisdale was scheduled to meet with Boyd this week to talk about the Cougars’ offseason involvement. “Coach Tisdale wants to get things started with the players as soon as he can,” Boyd said.
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[WM]Can You Guess Which City Is Bigger?
Tampa is 170.6 square miles and Orlando is 110.7 square miles.
New York City is 304.6 square miles and Los Angeles is 503 square miles.
Chicago is 234 square miles and Indianapolis is 372 square miles.
Cedar Rapids is 72.07 square miles and Honolulu is 68.42 square miles.
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[WM]The nation's leading Spanish-language television networks, Univision and Telemundo, continue to pay the price for doubling and tripling down on pushing unfettered immigration policies, and declining numbers have now led to layoffs and more.
Horrible disasters like the recent Category-4 Hurricanes Harvey and Irma focus attention on heart-wrenching stories of lost lives, near misses and property destroyed in the storm or ravaged by looters. They also have an uncanny way of illustrating the many people who will pull together in a crisis and how the benefits of capitalism are often used to help those in need.
ESPN has had a hoot playing the role of sports Pravda during Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba.
Since this is a presidential election year, it's not surprising to find harsh comments and angry rhetoric regarding candidates running to occupy the White House next January.
Humorist Dave Barry hammered the media on Wednesday's New Day for their "daily obsession with Donald Trump: "We keep asking why he's doing so well — and he's on TV all the time. He's on more than the GEICO gecko." When CNN's Alisyn Camerota defended the press coverage of Trump by using his front-runner status, Barry countered that "you can't deny the incredible impact...at this point, Kim Kardashian also could run for president and would do okay if we gave her the same level of coverage that we give to Donald Trump."
The Washington Post joins its GOP presidential forum partner, Univision, rehashing a 2011 narco-by-association smear of Marco Rubio.
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[WM]In 2016 Jessica Pell fainted and cut her ear when she fell. She went to Hoboken University Medical Center, where was given an ice pack and a bandage. That was the extent of her treatment. She did not get a diagnosis. Her bill was $5,751.
Pell left the ER when she discovered the plastic surgeon who would see her was out of network for her insurance. She decided to go to an in-network facility instead. She thought this was a smart way to avoid the costly fees that came with seeing a provider that wasn’t included in her health plan.
Pell’s health insurance plan paid the hospital $862, what it deemed a “reasonable and appropriate” fee for the services the hospital paid. That left Pell with a $4,989 bill that she received on February 28.
“There was no way for me to have avoided this bill, to have known what I would have been charged,” Pell says.
In other words, if you get injured in the United States and don't have the kind of taxpayer-funded medical insurance that members of Congress have, you are screwed.
American health care is so screwed up, so horribly distorted by the insurance companies' abusive practices, that millions of Americans (even those with insurance) fly to Mexico every year to get state-of-the-art medical care -- and a resort vacation in the bargain -- rather than face the US system, and save money by doing so.
If Trump gets his way, your elderly relatives will be evicted from nursing homes after their Alzheimer's care eats up their lifetime Medicaid benefits; as Yves Smith writes, "are family members supposed to let them wander out into traffic and have nature take its course?"
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[WM]In addition to a sense of adornment or function, clothing can provide insights to global issues like the economy and climate change.
TANG UNCOVERS FASHION: With her new book “Disrobed: How Clothing Predicts Economic Cycles, Saves Lives and Determines the Future,” Syl Tang puts a lot of stock in clothing.
In the 12 years she freelanced for the Financial Times, she frequently touched upon a similar topic but didn’t have the time to explore it due to word count restrictions. For example, she once wrote a piece about jewelry in the Afghan world and how the department of defense funded some of these companies that were started by women. “But when I would talk to people about linking apparel, jewelry or wearables to other topics, I would see their eyes glaze over a little bit. They wouldn’t connect the dots so I knew I needed to write a book about it,” she explained.
The underlying theme is how “behind the clothing, there is this understanding of the world,” she said. To that point, the cover art for the Rowman & Littlefield book is an unzipped hoodie on a globe of the world. Through her writing, she explores the role that clothing plays in natural disasters, climate change, terrorism, geopolitics and agribusiness.
Earlier this fall she shared her insights with the nonprofit Creative Coalition. Tang also consults with a few companies including a digital fashion start-up that is trying to merge handmade with an app, a Los Angeles technology company that is trying to reinvent how clothing is resold and the third client is Silhouette International brand of eyeglasses and sunglasses.
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[WM]Star Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, 28, appeared in the D.C. Superior Court to be sentenced for the gun crime he admitted to in January. He has been spared a jail term.
Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas pleaded guilty Friday in D.C. Superior Court to a felony count of carrying a pistol without a license, leaving his NBA career in jeopardy.
As part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to ask for more than six months in jail for Arenas. He will remain free at least until he is sentenced on March 26 by Superior Court Judge Robert E. Morin.
Morin is not bound by the plea agreement -- a fact he emphasized in court -- and could sentence Arenas to anywhere from probation to a maximum five years in jail. The former all-star was released after agreeing to surrender his passport and not possess any handguns.
Arenas, 28, has been the face of the Wizards since he arrived in Washington in 2003. He has four years remaining on his six-year, $111 million contract, but the NBA has suspended him indefinitely and the team has not publicly supported its star since the gun incident. On Friday, the team issued a terse statement saying officials were disappointed in Arenas. "Gilbert used extremely poor judgment and is ultimately responsible for his own actions," the statement said. He likely is done playing at least for this season. Adidas announced late Friday it was ending its relationship with Arenas, whom it had sponsored since 2003.
During his court appearance, Arenas showed little of the engaging personality that has made his No. 0 jersey ubiquitous at Verizon Center. He walked into the courthouse wearing a gray flannel pinstriped suit and answered questions from Morin with simple "yes, sir" and "no, sir" responses. Those questions included whether he had agreed to plead guilty and waive his right to a trial.
The charges stem from the now-infamous incident in the Wizards' locker room at Verizon Center on Dec. 21. At the hearing Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Kavanaugh filled in some of the details of the confrontation between Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton, without mentioning Crittenton by name.
On Dec. 19, the team flew on a chartered flight to the Washington area from Phoenix. Arenas and Crittenton got into an argument over a card game. Crittenton suggested a fistfight. But Arenas said he was too old to fight and instead said he would burn Crittenton's vehicle or shoot him in the face. Crittenton then told Arenas he would "shoot the [expletive]" out of Arenas and shoot Arenas in his surgically repaired left knee. Arenas later told Wizards employees that he was joking about the threats.
On Dec. 21, at about 9:30 a.m., Arenas arrived at Verizon Center for practice. He came into the locker room wearing a black backpack with a silver Smith & Wesson .500 magnum revolver inside. He then placed four guns on the chair directly in front of Crittenton's locker. Arenas wrote "PICK 1" on a piece of paper and placed it on Crittenton's chair near the guns. Arenas said he also was joking about that.
When Crittenton saw the guns, he said, "What is this?"
Arenas told Crittenton, "You said you were going to shoot me, so pick one." Crittenton said he did not need Arenas's guns because he had his own. Crittenton picked up one of the guns from the chair and threw it across the locker room. Crittenton then displayed his own silver-colored, semiautomatic handgun, the prosecutor said.
After the incident, Arenas collected the guns, placed them inside his locker and then put them in a suitcase. He gave the suitcase to another Wizards teammate and told him to take it take it to Arenas's car in the garage. Prosecutors said there was no evidence that the teammate knew what was inside the suitcase.
When the unnamed teammate went to the garage, he did not know which vehicle belonged to Arenas. So the player left the suitcase in the garage. Minutes later, Wizards management learned about the incident and met with Arenas. He admitted he brought the guns from his home in Virginia into Washington. He also told management that Crittenton had a gun.
Wizards management then told security guards to grab the suitcase and remove it from Verizon Center. Arenas led a member of the security staff to the garage and pointed out the suitcase. The security officer then took the guns back to Virginia.
On Dec. 24, attorneys for the Wizards and Arenas told the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District about the incident. Authorities then seized the four guns from Arenas's house in Virginia, including the .500 magnum; a .50-caliber gold-plated semiautomatic Desert Eagle with a magazine; a .45-caliber, black semiautomatic Kimber Eclipse with a magazine; and a 9mm Browning with a magazine.
Now, Arenas must wait until March to learn his fate. Prosecutors and Arenas's lawyer will both issue sentencing recommendations to Morin. Morin will consider those requests along with a mandatory report from the court services division, which will interview Arenas and others. Arenas also must turn himself in to D.C. police by Jan. 29 to be fingerprinted and officially booked.
His attorney, Kenneth L. Wainstein, issued a statement saying Arenas "accepted full responsibility for his actions." NBA Players Association chief Billy Hunter said in a statement that the union is "committed to aggressively representing him."
Arenas could have been charged with four counts of illegal gun possession -- one for each of the pistols in the locker room. But as part of the plea agreement, he faces one charge, making it more likely that he'll avoid much jail time, the sources said. As part of the deal, prosecutors agreed not to bring any more charges.
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[WM]Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee will play their season opener Saturday. Here is how to watch and listen to the game.
Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee will play their season opener Saturday. Kickoff is 6:30 p.m. at Vanderbilt Stadium.
As FBS foes, the teams have split the past six meetings. Middle Tennessee won three straight in 2001, 2002 and 2005. Vanderbilt won three straight in 2015, 2016 and 2017. There are no future games scheduled.
TV: The game will be shown on SEC Network Alternate, which is available on the following channels: 608-609 AT&T U-Verse, 235 Charter Spectrum, 633 TDS, 596-597 Dish, 611-1 DirecTV, 723-724 Comcast/XFinity.
RADIO: 95.9 FM, 98.3 FM, 102.5 FM, 560 AM, 1450 AM, 1510 AM; Full list of Vanderbilt Network and Blue Raider Network.
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[WM]What gives? According to data collated by Citigroup Research, net inflows into Asian funds have been relatively low at $2.1 billion (Rs9,828 crore today) since August. In the same period, global emerging market funds received net inflows worth $8.6 billion. This is based on data published by Emerging Portfolio Fund Research (EPFR). Citigroup’s analysts point out that the lower inflows into Asian funds have been because of large fund-raising by Asian companies: “Over the last three months, companies in Asia (ex-Japan) raised US$54 billion both through IPOs (initial public offerings) and secondary issuances, which was 3.6 times the funds raised in Latin America, Emerging Europe, Middle East and South Africa all put together."
While this has affected short-term returns of investors in Asian emerging markets, it is a healthy trend so far as the long-term health of Asian companies goes. It’s always good for companies to raise funds when markets are awash with liquidity, rather than scramble for funds when they are scarce. Asian companies have adopted this principle rather aggressively in recent months.
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[WM]Spoiler alert: Santa Clause isn’t real—at least, according to these celebrities. For decades, the jolly, red-suited and white-bearded man has ruled the holidays and the imagination of most children under the age of 10. You know the drill: Santa rides in on his reindeer, slips in through the chimney while everyone is sleeping, and leaves his presents before exiting with a bite of milk and cookies. The story is told a million times in a person’s childhood until they learn the catastrophic truth that Santa is fictional.
Even celebrities like Mila Kunis and Gina Rodriguez fall for the ploy. But, like most of us, they’ve lived through the deception to tell the tale. To understand how Hollywood found out about the biggest scandal to rock a third grader’s life, we rounded up stories from seven celebrities on how they learned that jolly old Saint Nicholas was a urban myth. Hear their hilarious stories, ahead.
Like a lot of us, Mila Kunis learned that Santa wasn't real from someone at school. In an interview with BuzzFeed, the actress revealed that an elementary school classmate spoiled the news by explaining how ridiculous a flying sleigh sounded. Though, not wanting his little sister to become jaded to Christmas magic, Kunis's older brother came up with the perfect solution to buy her one more year.
Gina Rodriguez spoiled the fun herself when she snuck around on Christmas Eve to find her dad putting "Santa's" presents underneath the tree. Though, from the sound of her story, her parents were relieved that they didn't have to keep the jig up.
"I knew at 4 or 5. I was so nosey. I would look in the closets," Rodriguez told "Entertainment Tonight." "I would look in the presents. I would stay up, and then I was like that ain't no Santa Clause, that's my daddy! They were like 'Child, don't worry.'"
From an early age, Justin Bieber's mom was "straight up and honest" with him about Santa. In an interview with AOL Music, the singer revealed that his mom explained to him that Santa wasn't real when he was very young, so he didn't feel lied to and betrayed when he was older.
"My mom always told me there wasn't a Santa," Bieber said. "This was her logic: She thought if I grew up knowing about Santa then finding out he wasn't real, that it would be like she was lying to me. And then when she told me about God, I maybe wouldn't believe her."
As an intuitive child, Nick Jonas always had an inkling in his mind that Santa wasn't real. In an interview with Music Choice, the singer revealed his skepticism when people told him that he would receive a lump of coal from Santa if he was bad.
"I was never given a lump of coal, thankfully," Jonas said. "Also, I never really believed in Santa Clause, to be honest. I wasn't as easy trick into thinking it was real, and that I would get the lump of coal if I was bad."
A lot of us can relate with Brad Pitt's feeling of "betrayal" when he learned that Santa wasn't real. In an interview with E! News, the actor recalled his frustration when he found out that Saint Nick was fictional.
"I'm not a real big on the whole Santa thing," Pitt said. "I thought it was a huge act of betrayal when I was a kid. I didn't like that. When I found out the truth, I was like, 'Why, why, why would you lie to me, why?'"
Mariah Carey is proof that there are some Santa believers out there. In an interview with BuzzFeed, the "All I Want for Christmas" singer outed herself as a Santa truist when she refused to fess up when she learned the holiday icon was fake.
"What are you talking about? Santa comes every year!” she said.
Little Mix member Jade Thirwall might have never known that Santa wasn't real if it wasn't for her dad's slip-up when she was a kid. In an interview with SiriusXM, the singer explained that every year her dad would dress up as Santa and put presents underneath the tree. It fooled her for a while, until one year she saw "Santa" wearing the same slippers her dad owned. Whoops!
"Dancing With the Stars" pro Witney Carson's parents were the ones who spoiled the Santa news for her. After seeing their daughter getting bullied for believing in the holiday legend, Carson's parents broke the news that wasn't was fictional—something she didn't take very well.
"I think I was about 8 or 9. I was actually devastated. I just loved Santa Claus. I believed in it so much, and my dad was like 'Honey, he's not real,'" she told "Entertainment Tonight." "It got to the point where people would still make fun of me at school because I still believed in Santa Claus. They're like, 'Sweetie, we have to tell you the truth because you’re getting made fun of at school.' They were like, 'He's not real,' and I was like 'No!'"
"Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" alum Brandi Glanville's disappointment when she learned that Santa wasn't real in ninth grade (yes—when she was a freshman in high school) is the reason she's trying to keep the magic alive for her kids as long as she can.
"I'm telling my kids forever that he’s real," she told "Entertainment Tonight." "I was like in ninth grade [when I found out.] I was old and devastated. I learned from kids in school."
"Iron Man" actor Paul Bettany learned that Santa was fictional when he was sleeping on Christmas Eve one night when he woke up to his drunk dad ambling around, putting presents in his stocking.
“My drunk father [was] stumbling into my room and I woke up and I saw him stuffing stuff in my stocking and he went, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’" he said on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
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[WM]Jeb Butler and Tobin were law school classmates at the University of Georgia.
Jeb Butler outlined his reason for leaving in the news release.
Leaving was not an easy decision Jeb Butler said.
Jim Butler has been one of the nation’s top trial lawyers winning large verdicts against major corporations such as General Motors.
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[WM]"Don't be a "d--- sheep," my father told me this so early and often in my life that I thought the word "sheep" started with a "d." But I didn't miss the counsel that I should think for myself and not blindly follow what others, especially my peers, were doing. So I grew up without much appreciation for what it meant to be a follower – or for the value of good leaders.
When I started to study Christian Science and to probe the Bible more deeply, I gained an understanding of God as a shepherd who would care for and guide His sheep. One day I came across the definition of sheep in Mary Baker Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Innocence; inoffensiveness; those who follow their leader" (p. 594).
This gave me a new insight into the role of sheep. Being a follower didn't seem so bad if it involved the qualities of innocence and inoffensiveness. I saw that my dad's counsel was against blindly following the wrong leader, as Jesus warned: "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."
Blindness, which can mean holding so firmly to our own opinions that we can't see others' perspectives, is not good in either a follower or a leader. And since we all have opportunities to be both followers and leaders, we need to know how and when to do both.
Doris Kearns Goodwin has written much about leaders and leadership. In her latest book, "Team of Rivals: The political genius of Abraham Lincoln," she sets out much of what makes a good leader.
In an interview Ms. Goodwin was asked, "What personal qualities made Lincoln such a successful leader?" She answered in part, "Lincoln had a quiet self-confidence that allowed him to surround himself by people better known than he was.... Lincoln also had the ability to absorb and listen well to what people were feeling and thinking. He could see both sides of the issue" (July 6, www.forbes.com).
When a situation cries out for good leadership, it also demands followers. It's obvious that humility is required to be a follower, but it takes even more humility to be an effective leader. Certainly it means dropping selfish ambition for the rewards of leadership and adopting the ambition to serve.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, great leaders such as Moses and the prophets frequently referred to themselves as servants of the Lord. This positive sense of servitude was instilled in Jesus from his early Jewish training, and he said plainly, "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant" (Matt. 20:27).
Leadership involves being servant both to God and to our fellow human beings. In essence, the leadership role is far from being exalted above others. Mary Baker Eddy, the Leader of Christian Science, wrote, "The true leader of a true cause is the unacknowledged servant of mankind ("Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896," p. 266). Thinking of oneself as a servant instead of a master is essential to having faithful followers. When this attitude of serving is exhibited in a leader, his or her right to authority is upheld by divine law.
The ultimate goal for both leaders and followers, I believe, is to see God's kingdom come on earth and for us to find our direction to do God's will. While the journey may seem difficult, we can retain our inspiration by looking to the example of Jesus, the greatest leader of all time.
It is unfeigned love for both God and our fellow humans that makes a good leader, caring for the flock he or she is to guide. And the "sheep" find comfort as they follow their leader. Their innocence and freedom from taking or giving offense will save them from the wrong leadership, even as it saves the leaders from mistakes and failures. In scriptural terms, we are all taught (led) by God.
Robert Reich What makes a leader?
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[WM]Why is Christmas pagan and what is an alternative tradition to Christmas one can do instead? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Why is Christmas pagan and what is an alternative tradition to Christmas one can do instead?
Paganism is merely a religion other than one of the main world religions. In other words, the only thing that distinguishes paganism from Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Shintoism, or Judaism is the number of people that have signed up for the newsletter. It isn’t something to fear and it is bigotry to act like it is.
Christmas is a holiday that has evolved due the passage of time and the influence of various cultures as Christmas has entered their lives. Each of those cultures has enriched the holiday, giving us more traditions with which to celebrate it.
If we traveled to the ancient world, we would find some kind of celebration at that time, in many places, each at first independent of the others. For the ancient Romans, that holiday was called Saturnalia, named for the god Saturn. Saturnalia was celebrated by feasts, the giving of gifts, and a brief sense of equality through role-reversal as the masters tended to the servants. The ancient historian, Livy, tells us that Saturnalia began in 497 BC. Modern historians believe it probably started earlier than that. So, at least half a millennia after the origin of Saturnalia, Jesus Christ was born. His birth was not initially a holiday, because birthdays were not then celebrated in Jewish culture. It would be a few centuries until early church leaders decided it was a day to put on the calendar and commemorate. It would also be a few centuries until they decided to pick a day for that celebration, because the gospels do not tell us on what day he was born.
On December 25th, 274 AD, the Emperor Aurelian consecrated the temple of Sol Invictus, creating a holiday called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – the birthday of the Sun – officially elevating the Sun to the highest position among the gods – nudging a steering current towards monotheism.
Shepherds watch their flock by night during lambing season, which is the spring. But there’s no rule that says a day of celebration has to coincide with the actual date of origin. In Britain, we celebrate the Queen’s birthday on June 9th instead of her actual birthday of April 21st, because April showers bring May flowers.
So, in Rome in the fourth century, there were three big holidays being celebrated on December 25th – Saturnalia, Dies Natalis Sol Invictus, and the Dies Natalis of the Christ. It’s only natural that elements from these celebrations would cross-pollinate each other, especially when they fit so well – for example, the gift giving of Saturnalia could be adopted by Christians as symbolic of their God giving his only son to them as a gift on that day.
As Rome faded and Christianity grew, the people that celebrated those holidays would take their traditions to new areas. As those early Christians moved into Northern Europe and introduced Christmas to the native Germanic peoples, the practices of Christmas were influenced by the practices of those peoples for their winter solstice holidays. Over time, traditions like the Yule log, mistletoe, tree decorating, and evergreen wreaths were absorbed and became thought of as Christmas traditions. The Saxons, the Vikings, the Victorians, and the capitalists have all added traditions to the rich tapestry of the holiday we all call Christmas.
There’s nothing to be feared from those traditions. They are additive, not dilutive. Pagan contributions are not something to fear. Heck, today is Wednesday, for English speakers and Miercoles for Spanish speakers. Where do you think those names come from? Wednesday comes from the pagan Germanic god Woden and Miercoles comes from the pagan god Mercury. We are no more corrupted by having a “pagan” Christmas tree in our house than we are by having a calendar that says Wednesday or Miercoles on it.
Christmas: How did your kid react when you told them Santa isn't real?
Holidays: What is the best wine to go with turkey?
History: What is the coolest obscure historical fact you know?
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[WM]While specific incidents involving police violence – from the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO, to the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island – have been highlighted in protests all over the country since the summer, some commentators have attempted to contextualize the unrest. They detail what many describe as the daily injustices, especially in black communities, suffered by residents in their routine interactions with the police.
It is these daily interactions that create the foundational distrust that has exploded into a national phenomenon this year, activist Opal Tometi explained.
Yet, the police do not act independently but within a wider framework attentive to social order and, in many places, the maintenance of the status quo.
In New York City, local policing reforms have focused on departmental policies and tactics, but less attention has been paid to the bedrock of the NYPD's authority, the laws that officers, as agents of the state, have been empowered to enforce.
In New York City alone, there are nearly 10,000 laws, violations, rules, and codes that a person might break, and the NYPD initiates approximately 1 million punitive interactions with residents every year. Almost none of these interactions have anything to do with serious crime. About half result in summonses. Of arrests, just 25 percent are related to felonies. Between 2001 and 2013 there were nearly 7 million summonses issued in New York City, compared to 5 million 'stop-and-frisks' during the same period. In 2014, tickets for jaywalking were up about 275 percent.
It hasn't always been this way. A concerted effort was made by city lawmakers in the 1990s to expand the authority of the NYPD to include enforcement for behaviors that had not previously been considered crimes. This shift provided legal justification for the routine intrusions that some, like Tometi, have pointed to as provocation for the apparent decline in legitimacy felt towards the police in specific neighborhoods around the New York City.
While the police have borne the brunt of recent protests targeting criminalization and brutality, lawmakers have generally been left off the hook, despite their crucial role in determining which behaviors are considered "criminal" and which are not. The City Council - not the police - has the power to roll back some of these laws, providing them with perhaps the largest lever to push in fundamentally changing the relationship between the police and residents. The Council also provides oversight for the NYPD and controls, with the Mayor, the agency's budget.
In the 1970s and 1980s, law enforcement resources were focused on serious crimes. As order-maintenance policing became en vogue in academic circles, and was adopted by NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Rudy Giuliani here in New York, the size of the police force was expanded and the emphasis shifted from policing serious crimes to the enforcement of low-level penal code violations and infractions of the City's administrative codes. Above all, Bratton wanted an increase in the number of interactions between the police and the public.
For the police to stop people constitutionally, however, they needed justification. In addition to beefing up enforcement on existing low-level laws, a strategic effort was made by the City Council and Giuliani, at the NYPD's urging, to create new laws explicitly for this purpose. Thus "aggressive panhandling" entered the realm of criminal conduct. At the time some council members balked, claiming the new laws and codes were "repressive," that the NYPD should not have increased authority to control particular behaviors, but today, it's the new normal.
In the early 1990s, along with a huge rise in misdemeanor arrests (recently detailed in a John Jay College report) there was a concomitant rise in summonses, which refer to behaviors, typically, that do not rise to the level of criminality. The number of summonses issued by the NYPD exploded, jumping from 150,000 in 1993, to nearly 500,000 just five years later. Of the seven most common summons infractions, which make up about half of all summonses in New York City, only two are actually penal code violations - that is those laws dictated by the State of New York. The others are violations of administrative code, health code, parks rules, and traffic law - generally local rules dictated by City Council. Open liquor container citations - an administrative code violation - were, in 2013, the top summons offense in the city. At least one judge has suggested that the police are enforcing this rule in a racially discriminatory way.
In the beginning, state lawmakers pushed back against this effort by the City Council, Bratton, and Giuliani to criminalize what had previously been legal behavior (in some cases de facto), in large part because they were concerned about the costs associated with adjudicating these new criminal cases – almost all of them violations and misdemeanors – in court. And so, in 1995 the State enacted a law that removed from criminal court jurisdiction all non-misdemeanor offenses charged under the Administrative Code. This would have made infractions, such as open container and public urination, into civil penalties, akin to a traffic ticket to be adjudicated in administrative, rather than criminal proceedings. Giuliani viewed the state law as "potentially devastating" because it divested the City of certain law enforcement authority.
At the behest of Giuliani, the City Council responded to the state bill with its own legislation to retain jurisdiction over violations. This allowed the police to continue the practice of using infractions as justifications to stop, question, detain, search, warrant check, and identify people who were suspected of breaking minor rules. This cemented the heyday of so-called "broken windows policing" - which Bratton, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and others credit for leading to the city's precipitous drop in violent crimes, although this assertion is contested.
In one manifestation of the approach, marijuana enforcement was increased as a way to control public gatherings of youth – not necessarily to curb marijuana use. "The police were not really interested in the possession of marijuana but instead used marijuana arrests to try to discover people with felony warrants outstanding against them," Criminologist Frank Zimring explained.
One result of Bratton's new strategy was a dramatic increase in the number of defendants in criminal court with no prior criminal court experience – and the population of people marked with a criminal record began to grow swiftly. As did distrust of police. People with criminal records or open and unresolved cases are left vulnerable to heightened enforcement should they come into contact with police at a later date.
Over forty certified city agencies – from the Human Resources Administration to the Sanitation Department – have the legal authority to issue summonses, yet the vast, vast majority are written by the NYPD. In 2013 there were 458,095 summons issued citywide, down from 510,270 the year before and from a peak of 648,638 in 2005. As of late 2014 the city was on pace to see the decline continue, a trend perhaps welcomed by the communities most heavily impacted by summons practices – the same communities targeted by stop-and-frisk, vertical patrols, and Operation Impact.
As the data shows, it is specific neighborhoods targeted for this type of policing. For example, there were roughly the same number of summonses issued in the single Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook as issued in the entire borough of Staten Island in 2012; the jurisdiction of the Red Hook court covers approximately 200,000 people - less than half the population of Staten Island.
Also targeted are specific demographic groups. While only 17 percent of dogs in the city are licensed, according to an estimate by the Health Department, 91 percent of people ticketed for the offense of having an unlicensed dog are either Black or Latino. Black residents are especially likely to be stopped by police when they are moving through a mostly white neighborhood, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Police argue they simply go where the crime is.
Broken Windows policing in New York City has been operationalized to mean the aggressive enforcement of minor crimes and violations in specific, targeted neighborhoods, and, as the NYCLU analysis suggests, against specific demographics of people; whether or not any of this has had any impact on crime reduction in New York remains unproven.
There is no empirical evidence to support the idea that aggressively enforcing so-called "quality of life offenses" through police actions has had a positive impact on public safety. These behavioral offenses, some of which are technically crimes, and others, like riding a bike on the sidewalk, which are violations, have come to include actually legal actions such as playing music on the subway platform or falling asleep on the train, for which people are now receiving criminal summonses.
Some academics have argued that the social costs of these enforcements, which might lead to job loss, housing eviction, or loss of parental rights, outweigh the benefits.
Meanwhile arresting and incarcerating, for example, a homeless person who cannot afford bail, costs the city at least $600 per day simply for housing at Rikers Island, which does not include the law enforcement or court administration costs; financially there is not a more expensive option to manage this quality of life concern.
Bratton and de Blasio have been vocal supporters of this type of policing, generally, while acknowledging the necessity of reforming the manner in which police interact with the public and suggesting that there should be off-ramps for people who have already been arrested to avoid spending time in jail for minor crimes. Arrests in 2014, both the gross numbers and the volume of misdemeanor cases, virtually mirror those of 2013 - the final year of the previous administration.
These policies have already scarred a generation of New Yorkers with criminal records and seem to have played a starring role in inspiring the profound distrust of the police felt in certain communities in New York. This distrust has turned to widespread civil unrest in the wake of the death of Eric Garner, who was accosted by six police officers soon after breaking up a fight. It doesn't seem from the evidence we have that Garner, accused of selling "loosies" – a tax violation – was breaking any laws when he was stopped by the police that day. He did not have any illegal cigarettes on him at the time of his death and was never charged with a crime.
Yet, the broken windows policies implemented by the City Council empowered the police to attempt to take him into custody. The law Garner was accused of violating, roughly speaking, is a similar type of offense as being paid off the books to babysit.
In December, New York City Council members joined the protests against police brutality, staging a "die-in" on the steps of City Hall, chanting "I Can't Breathe" and "I am Eric Garner" to honor the Staten Island man. Even as the City Council decried the results of the overreach of police influence, the body, led by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, has sought to add 1,000 new cops to the force. While these additions would ostensibly be given the additional training and oversight aimed at improving the quality of police-resident interactions, (new training chief Michael Julian is working with officers to get them to swear less frequently) the Council could also consider using its legislative authority to reduce the quantity of police-resident interactions.
While a small number of members have raised concerns about broken windows policing specifically, the Council as a whole has remained mostly silent on the unlimited role of the police in initiating the interactions with residents of the City that invariably lead to summonses, arrests, and incidents of brutality. The Council did announce a plan to open CCRB outposts in the district offices of participating council members, but it is unclear how many members will participate and when, or if, that initiative will get off the ground.
The police reform legislation currently before the Council, such as the Right to Know Act, which has wide support among council members but is opposed by Bratton and de Blasio, focuses on the content of police interactions rather than the number.
There has yet to be a legislative proposal for the Council to invoke its authority to limit the role of the police by carving out certain quality of life offenses from their jurisdiction or mandating civil enforcement where the NYPD has that discretion. Fare evasion can lead to either a civil summons or an arrest - there were 24,747 such arrests in 2013 and 89,128 summonses. Black residents were most likely to be arrested, rather than given a summons.
Ironically, the NYPD, in apparent protest following the death of two on-duty officers last month has stopped enforcing many quality of life violations. While the sample size remains too small thus far to provide much statistical evidence either for or against a reduced role for law enforcement, it does provide an opportunity for the City to consider ways of addressing community concerns besides the knee-jerk response for more police.
According to former cop and current John Jay professor Eugene O'Donnell, rank-and-file officers would welcome a reduction in their responsibilities to enforce quality of life concerns. "The root of this is that loose cigarette enforcement is a lunatic mission that no cop ever joined the NYPD to be part of," O'Donnell recently said.
Nick Malinowski is a social worker and independent journalist, living and working in Brooklyn; and is on Twitter @nwmalinowski.
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[WM]A bizarre interstellar object called 'Oumuamua continues to perplex astronomers a year after it vanished. Here's why a few scientists still wonder if it was alien.
An illustration of the space object 'Oumuamua flying through the solar system in late 2017.
A building-size object called 'Oumuamua flew through the inner solar system in late 2017.
Telescopes observed the mysterious interloper, but scarce data has left questions open about the object's shape, size, and composition.
A few astronomers wonder whether it could be alien, but 'Oumuamua is most likely a "slightly weird" asteroid, comet, or space rock.
New space missions are being dreamed up to intercept the next interstellar object that visits our solar system.
In 2016, something roughly the size of a skyscraper emerged from deep space and careened toward the inner solar system.
The mysterious object flew within about 15 million miles of our planet on October 14.
But it wasn't until four days later that humanity finally spotted it in telescope data. By then, it was moving away from the sun at a speed of more than 110,000 mph. It took days for astronomers around the globe to point every tool they could in its direction.
Astronomers initially called their unprecedented catch "1I/2017 U1," with "I" standing for interstellar - or from another star system. The object was later dubbed 'Oumuamua, a Hawaiian name that's pronounced "oo moo-uh moo-uh" and means "a messenger from afar, arriving first."
'Oumuamua remains one of the most significant, confounding, and at times contentious astronomical discoveries in recent memory. Little is definitively known about its composition, mass, shape, or dimensions - it may be a 3,300-foot-long cigar, a city-block-size pancake, or something in-between.
"This one's gone forever. We have all the data we're ever going to have about 'Oumuamua," David Trilling, an astronomer at Northern Arizona University who led Spitzer Space Telescope observations of the object, told Business Insider. "Now it's trying to understand if we can tell a story. Do we know what's going on?"
Read more: Smart aliens might live within 33,000 light-years of Earth. A new study explains why we haven't found them yet.
Enough doubt surrounds 'Oumuamua that at least one reputable astronomer and a few of his colleagues continue to speculate about potential alien origins. But nearly all other experts who have studied 'Oumuamua say the aliens hypothesis is extraordinarily unlikely.
Here's what we know about 'Oumuamua, why it probably isn't alien, and how astronomers are preparing for another interstellar object to unexpectedly sail through our solar system.
A view of the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii.
Researchers in 1976 predicted that other star systems were likely ejecting big asteroids and comets and flinging them toward our solar system, suggesting we could perhaps spot some in the future.
But the most recent estimate of how often such interstellar vagabonds would pay us a visit (and be detectable) was "bleak," according to the authors of a study published just months before 'Oumuamua was discovered. The odds, in fact, were low enough that practically no one was overtly looking for these space objects.
Then on October 19, 2017, Robert Weryk, a postdoctoral student at the University of Hawaii, discovered 'Oumuamua somewhat by accident.
Weryk was perusing a batch of data collected by an observatory called Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) that sits atop a mountain in Maui. The observatory scans the entire sky each night, allowing astronomers to compare fresh data to the previous evening's. Anything that's bright enough to detect and moving will thus stand out.
As Weryk told The Atlantic in November 2017, he initially thought the object was a typical asteroid. But after a glance at the previous evening's data, he realized it was unusual.
"I'd never expected to find something like this," he said.
Calculating the exact path of 'Oumuamua took about a week. The math showed it was an object from beyond - way, way beyond. Its orbit was "unbound" or loop-less, and it was making a checkmark-shaped trip through the solar system. It had entered from above the plane of the solar system, dipped close to and below the sun, and was exiting out the top.
This realization prompted Weryk, fellow astronomer Karen Meech, and others to launch a global effort to observe 'Oumuamua with as many powerful telescopes as possible before it vanished. More astronomers eventually followed suit, though with some delay.
"I was caught off-guard, and I think a lot of astronomers were, too," Trilling said. "It took a while for many of us to think, 'I should go look at it.' The delay was people thinking, 'Naw, it couldn't be from another solar system.'"
Because of this element of surprise, and the fact that world-class observatories are scheduled months or years ahead, it took a week or more for powerful telescopes to start looking at 'Oumuamua. Hubble didn't observe it until November 2018, then again before the object vanished from sight in January 2018.
No telescope resolved its shape in any discernible detail, though. One observatory was equipped to do so - the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico - but nature had other plans.
"Unfortunately, the Arecibo Observatory missed the opportunity to determine the actual shape of 'Oumuamua due to Hurricane Maria, really bad timing," Abel Méndez, an astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico, told Business Insider.
Is it a comet, asteroid, or something else?
An artist's depiction of interstellar object 'Oumuamua.
The observations that were made suggest 'Oumuamua has a fairly uniform surface, is relatively dark, and has a reddish color (which is not unusual for deep-space objects).
Lacking any detailed photograph of 'Oumuamua, astronomers resorted to studying its brightness as the next-best method to deduce its shape. This is because any side of an object that faces the sun will reflect light; a longer side tends to reflect more light than a shorter side because it has a greater area. Repeating changes in brightness can also betray the rough dimensions and 3D-motion of a space object.
Early calculations suggest 'Oumuamua tumbles about once every eight hours and has a cigar-shape, with a large-to-small-dimension size ratio of roughly ten to one. That is abnormal.
"The most extreme bodies we know of in the solar system are three-to-one," Trilling said.
Another peculiarity is that in January 2018, on its way toward interstellar space, 'Oumuamua deviated from its predicted path by about 25,000 miles.
If 'Oumuamua were a typical comet, this might explain its change of direction: Comets that drift close to the sun warm up, which causes internal gases to evaporate. The shooting jets of these gases can act like small rocket engines, altering the path an object travels and the way it tumbles.
In such cases, the evaporating gases form a tail behind the rock. They can also cause big chunks of a comet to break off. But no tail or break-up of 'Oumuamua was definitively seen.
There was also another surprise from the Spitzer Space Telescope: It did not detect a heat signature. The fact that Spitzer was unable to detect that heat suggests 'Oumuamua is somewhat shinier than a normal object, since less warmth being absorbed means more sunlight is getting bounced away.
Trilling said "shiny" is relative, though -'Oumuamua could be as dark as "dirty slush" in a gutter, and that would be shinier than expected.
"We're not talking about a ball of tin foil flying through space," he said.
However, an extraordinary possibility - an unnatural object - did occur to some researchers, a few of whom chose to test the idea against the limited observations.
Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as seen by the Rosetta spacecraft on October 9, 2015.
Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard University's astronomy department, took the peculiarities of 'Oumuamua as reason to pursue the remote possibility that 'Oumuamua might be alien in origin.
In December 2017, Loeb directed Breakthrough Listen (an effort to listen for alien signals that Loeb helps run) to point radio antennas toward 'Oumuamua. No alien communications were detected.
In October 2018, Loeb and a colleague wondered in a study whether the object might have a more extreme pancake-like shape. Based on mathematical analysis, they suggested it could perhaps be as thin as a sail that could be pushed by light (also called a lightsail), which might also explain the 0.1% change in direction found by Hubble.
Most recently, Loeb and an undergraduate student published a brief study suggesting 'Oumuamua might actually have a 50-to-1 size ratio if it's cigar-shaped, or a 20-to-1 ratio if it's more of a pancake.
Loeb defends his pursuit of the idea as a valid scientific argument, given the data available. In a blog post at Scientific American, he wrote that humans spotting alien technology "might resemble an imaginary encounter of ancient cave people with a modern cell phone," at first interpreting it as "shiny rock" and not a "communication device."
However, Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory, told Business Insider that Loeb's latest paper is based on a misunderstanding of brightness data from a study that Hainaut co-authored. Hainaut added that Loeb's conclusions "collapse" when the uncertainty of the data is taken into account. Loeb and a co-author disputed this, claiming the uncertainty is not as great as Hainaut said.
Many researchers interviewed by Business Insider also noted that because the observations of 'Oumuamua were relatively distant, limited, and filled with gaps, there's not nearly enough data to reasonably make extraordinary claims (which, as Carl Sagan once quipped, require extraordinary evidence).
Hainaut thinks the object is most likely a "slightly weird" space rock, as does Trilling.
"All of the evidence is consistent with a rock," Trilling said. "We've never seen an alien spaceship - we have no idea what that evidence would look like. So I think it's just a rock."
Trilling said he accepts the possibility, however remote, that Loeb and his colleagues' "extreme" ideas could eventually be borne out.
"I don't have any direct evidence that says it has to be a rock and it cannot an alien spacecraft," he said. "The only way to do that is to go visit it."
But for now, Trilling explained that it's most logical to side with hundreds of years of astronomical research.
A Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX launching a satellite into space.
Since 'Oumuamua, astronomers have made adjustments at major observatories to allow for more rapid-turnaround observations of the next rare interstellar object that comes to town.
"With this one, we were taken fairly by surprise," Hainaut said, adding for the next one: "We are ready."
The research community has also reconsidered how often things like 'Oumuamua might visit the solar system. Trilling and others published a study suggesting that current observatories may see an interstellar interloper about once every five years. By the mid-2020s - after new telescopes come online that are designed to look for Earth-threatening asteroids - they might be spotted at a rate of once per year.
This, in turn, has led multiple groups of researchers to wonder if a small spacecraft could be readied to chase down another interstellar visitor like 'Oumuamua and study it up-close. Hainaut is part of one of the groups researching that idea.
"We had a workshop on this in October, and at the beginning of the workshop we said, 'This is impossible.' But after one week of hard work, we realized it's not impossible anymore, it's just difficult," Hainaut said. "Impossible? That's a problem. Difficult? As a first approximation, that just means expensive."
There's also a chance that, decades from now, a project called Breakthrough Starshot that Loeb is part of might resolve the question of what 'Oumuamua is and is not.
Starshot aims to propel tiny spacecraft to another star system with powerful lasers, perhaps at around 20% the speed of light. Such robots could also hypothetically be sent to catch up to 'Oumuamua in deep space.
"The Breakthrough Starshot is extremely interesting. The problem is that the laser technology that is required is far from being ready," Hainaut said. "I hope it will be one day."
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[WM]Teen was found safe and sound on Monday.
EDITOR'S NOTE: CBC has removed the name and photo from this story. Now that this person is no longer missing, their identity is no longer in the public interest.
Quebec provincial police say a missing 17-year-old girl has been found.
She was last seen Feb. 5 in Valleyfield, Que., about 60 kilometres west of Montreal.
She was found Monday, Feb. 11, safe and sound, said Sûreté du Québec Sgt. Stéphane Tremblay.
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[WM]Gayle, who debuted for Liverpool in 1977, said via Facebook that “unfortunately I had to decline the nomination for the reason that my ancestors would be turning in their graves after how empire and colonialism had enslaved them”.
He said he was nominated for the British state honour because of work with the anti-racist group Show Racism a Red Card. Gayle said that while some may be attracted to the title of the MBE, he believed that accepting the honour would “be a betrayal to all the Africans who have lost their lives, or who have suffered as a result of empire”.
Gayle, who was born in Toxteth, in the city's south, has previously said that being Liverpool's first Black player got a lot of media coverage, where many labelled him as an activist and self-righteous.
“I was a landmark as far as Black people were concerned, and I was proud to represent the Black community of Liverpool,” Gayle said on Liverpool fan website, This is Anfield.
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[WM]Looking for calm? Head to Rüschlikon in Zurich, where, eight metres below the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Centre, IBM Research has six new "noise-free" labs. "Their purpose is to enable research at the scale of single molecules and atoms," says Emanuel Lörtscher, a nanoscale electronics researcher and the designer of the lab. "At this scale, disturbances -matter." The lab doesn't just cancel out sound, but also electromagnetic radiation, vibrations from the ground, temperature and humidity, all of which can affect experiments. "These are varieties of noise -- it's not just acoustic noise," says Lörtscher, who started designing the lab five years ago.
Three pairs of Helmholtz coils provide an active cancellation system and purpose-designed air-conditioning controls -temperature to + or -0.01°C. Lörtscher built two prototype labs before completing the final six in early 2011 -- it took the next two years to set up the ultra-precise equipment. "All the details, they really matter," Lörtscher says. "If you lose a magnetic piece inside the lab, you screw up the whole magnetic-field compensation."
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[WM]Mounir el-Motassadeq, one of the only men sent to prison because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is now a free man. He was released from the maximum-security Fuhlsbüttel prison in Hamburg on Oct. 15, blindfolded and with his hands sealed, and taken to the airport to board a commercial flight bound for Morocco. No one is quite sure what will happen to him next.
El-Motassadeq was friends with Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. He also signed Atta’s will and had power of attorney over the bank accounts of Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot of the plane that hit the second tower. They all had prayed together in a mosque in Hamburg, which was shut down eight years ago.
El-Motassadeq, who also spent time in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, has always denied being anything more than friends with the hijackers. He still maintains he knew nothing of the plot. ”I didn’t even know they had gone to America,” Deutsche Welle reported him as saying in reference to the hijackers.
The Moroccan was arrested in Germany two months after the 9/11 attacks, becoming the first person to be indicted. After five years of trials and appeals, he was convicted of being a member of a terrorist organization and an accessory to the murders of 246 people aboard the two planes that were crashed into the World Trade Center. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which he served until this week. El-Motassadeq is banned from re-entering Germany until April 2064.
Not many others have been arrested or charged with crimes in connection to 9/11.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of bin Laden’s deputies, was captured in 2003 in Pakistan and transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He admitted being part of 19 successful or attempted terrorist attacks, including the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, Richard Reid’s attempt to blow up an airline, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, and many more. “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” he said through his personal representative at a military tribunal hearing, the transcript shows (pdf, pp. 17-18).
Barack Obama attempted to try Mohammed in New York in 2009, but after a wave of opposition, it was announced Mohammed—who was waterboarded 183 times in a single month in March 2003—would face a military trial at Guantanamo. His case is still ongoing. Moussaoui has offered to testify at Mohammed’s trial.
Bin Laden was assassinated by U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan in 2011.
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[WM]Mexico's first supercar: Can it compete with the best?
When you think of famous car-producing nations, Mexico is probably not at the top of your list. But two brothers, Guillermo and Iker Echevarría, are on a mission to change that with a two-seater built by their own fledgling manufacturer, Vuhl.
Vuhl's first creation, the 05 is a bare-bones halfway home between the sort of car that only cares about going fast around the track, and one that provides more accessible B-road thrills. Yet the fact its 2.0-liter Ford engine develops 285 bhp in something that has a dry weight of 695 kilograms means it is anything but short on performance.
The speed at which the 05 went from an idea to a car you can buy is no less impressive than its design. The 05 first surfaced in concept form back in 2013, unveiled by former British Formula One driver Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London. A week later, Formula One driver Esteban Gutiérrez was driving it up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed to show it meant business.
Three years later, sales of the Vuhl 05 have begun.
It was all but inevitable that the brothers, who have a background in industrial design, would be bitten by the motoring bug. Their father, Guillermo Echevarría senior, was a racing driver and loved to tinker with cars at home -- a pastime that lasted 30 years, Iker explained. No wonder, then, the 05's design inspiration comes from a motoring heyday of unlimited power outputs and few regulations that gave us the legendary Porsche 917 and McLaren M8F.
"The Vuhl 05 design is inspired in Can-Am racers from the '70s," Iker said. "No doors, no roof, no windscreen, and an exposed roll bar. The challenge was to make the essence of this iconic cars work in a contemporary concept without looking like a retro."
The resulting design is an aggressive mix of clean lines, gentle curves mixed with a hint of Batmobile and the function over form ethos seen by other cars in its space. "It will age well through time," he added confidently. "We intend the Vuhl 05 and it successors to be renowned for their effective simplicity and aesthetics guided by a purity of function."
Though the spirit is Mexican, the Vuhl is incredibly multicultural. The tub holding everything together is Mexican, but around 50 percent of the components are British. The engine, meanwhile, is American and various body panels come from Canada.
But is an international pedigree enough to tempt the more snobbish buyer used to British, German and Italian cars?
"We are aware that Mexico doesn´t have an engineering or racing heritage as strong as other countries like Germany or UK which will always be a barrier," Iker said. "Nevertheless, Mexico is living one of its best moments in motorsport with two Mexican drivers in F1 -- Formula 1 -- and (FIA World Endurance Race is) back to Mexico."
Like many fledgling supercar makers, Vuhl has had its share of critics who said Vuhl was going to be yet another wannabe supercar maker that dies a death before it has even started. Yet three years on, the company has just announced a more potent version of the 05 known as the 05RR.
With the 05 and 05RR under its belt, Vuhl has cause for celebration yet success takes time and respect must be earned. But for now Vuhl can exploit a gap between a number of established rivals. "It's a lot of money for a not-actually-that-exotic car, but it sits in a niche above (British manufacturers) Zenos (and) Caterham and below Radical (and) BAC that nobody else seems to be in, so the market is there for the taking," motoring journalist Phil Huff, explained. "That it's Mexican is irrelevant -- I think few people will even realize that."
With plans to make around 25 05 cars a year, each one costing from £60,000 ($78,250), Vuhl has a long way to go before Britain, Germany and Italy have anything to worry about, but never has Mexico had such a chance to make an impact in the performance car world.
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[WM]After the Yes Men pulled their now-famous prank earlier this week on the US Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber issued a vague threat of “law-enforcement action.” The group doesn’t appear to have called the cops on the Yes Men just yet, but on Wednesday it issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down demand notice for the parody site that the Yes Men set up to publicize their fake event, in which the “Chamber” announced that it would support a sane global warming policy after all.
The Chamber’s attorney at the intellectual property law firm Kenyon & Kenyon issued a notice to the Yes Men’s internet service provider, Hurricane Electric, asking them to take down the site. “The website infringes the Chamber of Commerce’s copyrights by directly copying the images, logos, design, and layout of the Chamber of Commerce’s copyright-protected official website, located at www.uschamber.com,” they wrote.
They ask Hurricane to “take down all such infringing material” and/or end their business relationship with the Yes Men. “Continuing to be the ISP for this material could subject Hurricane Electric to legal liability,” the letter states.
“We are certain you can understand our client’s concerns, and its need to protect its intellectual property,” it continues.
And now the Electronic Frontiers Foundation is jumping in, telling the Chamber to take a chill pill. The site, they say, fits within the accepted fair use and parody rights.
UPDATE: It seems that Hurricane, fearing the Chamber’s legal rebuke, pulled the plug on both the Yes Men site and May First/People Link, the group that was directly providing service for the Yes Men. Hurricane was the upstream provider, but a May First/People Link in turn provided service for the Yes Men and 400 other groups. So, for a period last night, all 400 groups had their websites shut down.
The Yes Men issued a press release on Friday stating that May First/People Link was able to get the service reconnected for the other groups. Meanwhile, the Yes Men have relocated the parody site.
It also presented a problem for ticket sales, as the Yes Men’s latest film, The Yes Men Fix the World is currently in theaters. The action, say the Yes Men, threatens theaters (which also happen to be small businesses) who may be selling tickets through the Yes Men site.
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[WM]Prodigy has invested in an online music industry information service called SonicNet. The service will provide Prodigy with content and a link to their site.
Prodigy announced it has purchased a stake in Sunshine Interactive's SonicNet, an online music industry information service.
Under the agreement, SonicNet will provide Prodigy with exclusive use of original content and a direct link to the SonicNet site. SonicNet offers chat forums, record and performance reviews, and links to other music industry-related sites.
The company did not disclose the financial terms of the arrangement, but said it plans to hire additional staff to assist SonicNet with content development.
The investment is the first for Prodigy's new Wildflower Partners division which provides financial support and distribution to Net-based content providers.
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[WM]Archives|OFFERS NEW THEORY FOR ALL MEDICINE; Sir James Mackenzie, Just Before Death, Said He Had Hit on a Revolutionary Principle. BASED ON STUDY OF CELLS In a Letter Published in The London Times He Outlined the General Conclusions He Had Reached.
OFFERS NEW THEORY FOR ALL MEDICINE; Sir James Mackenzie, Just Before Death, Said He Had Hit on a Revolutionary Principle. BASED ON STUDY OF CELLS In a Letter Published in The London Times He Outlined the General Conclusions He Had Reached.
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[WM]CHELSEA legend Didier Drogba will play his last game for the club today.
The Ivory Coast striker returned for his second spell at the club last summer but he's not intending to extend his homecoming into a second season.
Drogba was a doubt for the game at Stamford Bridge agasint Sunderland today due to an ankle injury but it looks likely he will play some part in the game as a substitute to say goodbye to the adoring Chelsea faithful.
Chelsea confirmed the news on their Twitter page.
They said: "Didier Drogba has announced it will be his last game as a Chelsea player today."
They also posted a vine showing the striker's kit laid out for the last time.
It is unclear whether Drogba intends to retire or if he will attempt to find another club.
The 37-year-old has scored 104 goals for Chelsea in 253 league appearances before today.
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[WM]Thanks to ever more sophisticated technology, it is much easier to obtain data - and to analyze it - than was thought possible even a few years ago. As a result, there is an understandable feeling that decision-making in organizations today is more scientific and soundly based than was the case in the days when hunches, gut feel and experience guided much activity. However, leaders must not be seduced into thinking that basing decisions on data necessarily makes them beyond reproach.
Indeed, in an article in the Fall 2018 issue of Rotman Management, the magazine of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Megan MacGarvie and Kristina McElheran argue that "in some instances, data and analytics actually make matters worse." This is because, even with impressively large sets of data and the latest, most effective analytical tools, executives can still fall into various traps, particularly if they take shortcuts in reasoning in an effort to overcome information overload.
In the article, which was previously published in the HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers, MacGarvie, associate professor in the markets, public policy and law group at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, and McElheran, assistant professor of strategic management at the Rotman School of Management and a digital fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, point out that it is widely acknowledged by academics in a variety of disciplines that people do not carefully process every piece of information in every decision. Instead, they say, we rely on heuristics, or simplified procedures that help us make decisions when faced with uncertainty or where there is insufficient money or time for extensive analysis. The result is we think we are making sound decisions when in fact we are making systematic mistakes. On top of this, even with access to data, human brains are geared to adopting certain biases that distort choices often without us being aware of them.
MacGarvie and McElheran identify "three main cognitive traps that regularly bias decision-making, even when informed by the best data" and offer suggestions for avoiding them.
The Confirmation Trap. This is what happens when we pay more attention to findings that align with our existing beliefs and ignore other facts and patterns in the data. Confirmation bias can become much harder to avoid when individuals are under pressure from bosses and colleagues to come up with data that supports a pre-existing view of the world, say MacGarvie and McElheran. Their advice for dealing with the issue? Don't avoid information that does not fit with you or your boss's beliefs. Instead, embrace it by such means as specifying in advance the data and analytical approaches that will be used in the decision-making in order to reduce the temptation to "cherry-pick" findings; actively seek out findings that disprove your beliefs; do not automatically dismiss findings that fall below your starting point for statistical or practical significance; assign several independent teams to analyze the data separately and if they do not come to similar conclusions concentrate on the points where they diverge in order to see whether the differences are due to error, inconsistent methods or bias; and treat your findings as if they were predictions and test them.
The Overconfidence Trap. Senior decision-makers are especially prone to this, say MacGarvie and McElheran, for the simple reason that they tend to assume that they have been promoted on the basis of past successes that have themselves been based on making decisions. But overconfidence can also reinforce many other pitfalls of data interpretation. "It can prevent us from questioning our methods, our motivation and the way we communicate our findings to others; and it also makes it easy to under-invest in data analysis in the first place," they write. This can be a particularly difficult problem to crack because, while overconfidence can dissuade us from spending enough time or money on acquiring more information or doing extra analysis, just acquiring more information can make matters worse by adding to the sense of confidence. As MacGarvie and McElheran say, moving from data to insights "requires quality inputs, skill and sound processes." They stress the importance of processes, making several procedural tips for escaping this trap. Among them are describing your ideal experiment and then comparing this with your actual data to see where it might be lacking; making being devil's advocate a formal part of the process; keeping track of predictions and systematically comparing them with what actually happens in order to test their accuracy; and making such processes a part of the decision-making routine in order to avoid persistent biases creeping back in.
The Over-Fitting Trap. This is what happens when a statistical model describes "random noise" rather than the underlying relationship an organization is seeking to capture. As MacGarvie and McElheran put it, "When your model yields surprising or counterintuitive predictions, you may have made an exciting new discovery - or it may be the result of 'over-fitting.'" They quote Nate Silver, the statistician who found fame for predicting the winner of all 50 states in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, as describing this concept as "the most important scientific problem you've never heard of." The problem is that over-fit models look like they do a very good job of explaining the nuances of the past but struggle to predict the future. To overcome this bias, they suggest randomly dividing the data into a training set, on which the model will be estimated, and a validation set, which will be used to test the accuracy of the model's predictions; as with the confirmation trap, avoid cherry picking data; look for relationships that measure important effects related to clear and logical hypotheses before looking at nuances; look to see whether it is possible to construct another story using the same data; and beware the common tendency to see patterns in random data.
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[WM]The GOP hopes President Obama’s low approval translates to support for Corbett.
How many gubernatorial elections will Pennsylvania hold this November? A trick question? Yes, sort of – but the question reveals an important and too little recognized characteristic of state elections.
The latest poll shows Corbett cutting into Wolf’s lead but still down by double digits.
The latest Magellan survey shows the Democratic candidate’s lead narrowing.
Cosponsored by PoliticsPA & The Law Offices of Adam Bonin, enter for your chance at eternal glory. Winners announced here next week.
Some great polling news for Tom Wolf, McCaffery steps down from the Court and congressional Republicans are in the driver’s seat. See who made this week’s list!
We present our State House races to watch on Election Night, potential Supreme Court nominees are floated and Planned Parenthood goes after Governor Corbett. Good morning politicos, here’s the Buzz!
Top Republican leaders floated potential replacements for the seats left by McCaffrey and eventually Castille.
Over one year after her conviction, the former PA Supreme Court Justice sent out an apology letter.
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[WM]BRIDGEWATER — Try telling J.R. Hopf that 11 days doesn’t make a baseball season.
The unlikely slugger continued the best power surge of his career Sunday night by hitting two home runs to lift the Somerset Patriots to a 5-2 victory against the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in front of 5,899 at TD Bank Ballpark.
Hopf, who went homer-less in his first 102 at-bats this season, has smashed five in 19 at-bats since Aug. 19 to match a career high set in 57 games between Single-A and Triple-A for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2007.
“Let’s hope he keeps breaking that (record) all the time,” Patriots manager Sparky Lyle quipped.
The Patriots (27-24, 63-58) maintained a one-game lead atop the Freedom Division by prevailing for the eighth time in 10 games and taking the rubber game of the series from the Atlantic League’s winningest team.
Hopf homered in the second inning against starter John Koronka, who issued seven walks in 4 2/3 innings and was fortunate to escape with only four runs on his ledger.
All nine Patriots’ starters reached base at least once by the fourth inning despite a total of four hits off Koronka (0-3).
On the other hand, Bill Pulsipher was plain old effective.
Pulsipher (4-1) scattered five hits, struck out six and walked one. The former major leaguer left after six innings with a 4-1 lead, marking the sixth time in eight starts since his acquisition that he has allowed two runs or fewer.
Ben Grezlovski, who helped recruit Pulsipher to the Patriots, kept the lead in tact through a precarious seventh. The first two batters homered and doubled, respectively, but the submariner induced a ground-ball double play with runners on the corners and one out.
Jeff Kennard’s turn to come up big came in the eighth.
The Blue Crabs (30-18, 71-47) loaded the bases on three consecutive two-out singles but Kennard struck out Ben Harrison swinging on a pitch diving out of the strike zone.
Hopf furthered the momentum swing with a home run to center field in the bottom half of the frame.
Scott Williamson brought the potential tying run to the plate in the ninth but struck out the side to notch his seventh save.
Josh Pressley hit one of the longest home runs in the 12-history of TD Bank Ballpark but the Patriots lost 5-3 to the Blue Crabs. Pressley’s sixth-inning blast was estimated at 430-450 feet. Losing pitcher Brian Adams gave up four runs in six innings.
The homestand continues as Somerset’s Josh Miller (11-8, 3.54) faces Camden at 7 p.m.
Posted in Uncategorized on August 30, 2010 by Ryan Dunleavy.
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[WM]ENT specialists are aplenty and ear buds too have been around for quite some time, but many Delhiites still love to get their ears cleaned by the traditional ear-cleaners.
Ear cleaning is one of the oldest professions on the streets of Delhi. It is a skill handed down from father to son through generations.
Ask any ear-cleaner and he will say all his ancestors have followed the same profession. “I learnt the art from my father, and my father from his.
We have done nothing else. This has always been our family business,” says 30-year-old Mohammed Anas, who offers his unique service in Connaught Place.
Most traditional ear-cleaners in Delhi come from Moradabad. Like their forefathers, they come to the bigger cities looking for clients. In Delhi, the ear-cleaners find their patrons in Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place, G B Road, in office areas as well as in cinema halls and railway stations. They have not entirely lost favour with the educated elite either.
It is rather easy to spot the ear-cleaners, thanks to their peculiar red headgear and the small shoulder bags that hold their ear-cleaning paraphernalia. They solicit by sidling close to passersby and announcing their trade. If anyone agrees, the ear-cleaners take him or her to a quiet spot and get down to work.
“It is an intricate job and not everyone can do it. We can do it as it is in our blood,” says Sheikh Raza , a 45-year-old ear-cleaner who has been cleaning ears since he was 18.
All ear cleaners have five basic cleaning tools which they make on their own. They are thin and spindly and made of steel. One end of the instrument is wrapped in a small wad of cotton and inserted into the ear. The ear-cleaner rotates his instrument in the ear for a while and removes the wax.
His next task is oiling the ears with mustard oil and then the job is done. In more complicated cases, for instance when a foreign body has to be extricated from the ear, the cleaner has a special tool with a tiny hook at one end. And it is in such cases that the ear cleaners' services are most sought.
“Doctors can never take out objects from ears as successfully as we can,” says Sheikh. He narrates an incident when doctors failed to remove a grain of wheat from a patient's ear. “The doctors only managed to push the grain further into the ear. It took me only a minute to take it out,” he claims.
The doctors on the other hand warn people against accepting the services of ear-cleaners. Rajiv Puri, a senior consultant at Apollo Hospital, says that ears have a self-cleaning process and there is no need to clean them.
“Inserting objects can pose a risk to the eardrum, and other delicate parts of the ear,” he says. But those who love to get their ears cleaned turn a deaf ear to the doctor’s advice to savour the pleasure of traditional ear cleaning.
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[WM]Ruth Carr only had three runners on Friday...and they all won!
TRAINER Ruth Carr was in dreamland on Friday as she landed three big prizes at Newcastle and Lingfield.
Carr and Jack Garrity struck twice up north before Sovereign Debt made it third time lucky at the All-Weather Mile Championships.
After Dandy Nicholls announced his retirement, Sovereign Debt was moved to her yard just over a month ago.
The eight-year-old had previously finished second in the race twice, but he finally got the deserved win in the race as he held off the fast-finishing Nimr.
Winning jockey James Sullivan, riding the grey for the first time, said: "He's a very good horse. He travelled round lovely. It got a little bit tight round the home bend, but in fairness to the horse he put his head down and went through it and galloped the whole way to the line.
"I've watched him through the years and we're very lucky Mrs Carr got to train him.
"She and the team have done a very good job with him and it's a great result for the yard.
"It's great for me. It's great to be riding a good horse like this."
Who won the 2.05 at Haydock live on ITV4 today?
Carr said: "It's not very often I'm lost for words, but I kind of am at the moment! It's fantastic for the owners and for the horse itself, he's been the bridesmaid so many times, he's really deserved it.
"It's a fantastic day for the yard. Jimmy had him in a really good position early and he's always stuck his neck out and tried.
"Andrew Mullen would have ridden him if he hadn't been banned but one man's good luck is another's bad luck.
"I was hopeful we were going to peg back the leader, I was a bit worried about him, but we were in front where it mattered.
"I'm not sure how much of the credit I can take for the training, but we got him qualified, we got him here and got him right on the day.
"He's eight years old but he's not getting any worse. He's genuine, he tries and it's great for us.
"We're delighted to have a horse of his calibre. A win like this should hopefully raise our profile and it's a big boost for the staff in the yard.
"It's a team effort and I think we will just enjoy today for now."
Art Collection got the day off to a flyer up at Newcastle and made it two out of two since joining her Stillington-based team in the Betway Sprint Handicap.
Winning jockey Garrity said: "They went very fast early and the race developed in front of me.
"He was flat out but when they started coming back to me I was able to pick and choose my way through.
Less than an hour later, Garrity was back in the winners' enclosure at Newcastle with Carr's Chaplin Bay after rallying late to win the sunbets.co.uk Handicap.
"Things are going my way for a change today!" said Garritty.
"Fair play to Ruth, getting him ready to run a race like that first time out."
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[WM]Warehouse retail king Costco recently ended its relationship with American Express in favor of a new one with Visa and Citigroup. And after a bit of a bumpy start, it looks like the new deal is starting to pay off.
Costco chief financial officer Richard Galanti said in a conference call with investors Thursday that nearly 11.5 million former Costco AmEx cards have now been transferred to Visa and Citi.
What’s more, Galanti added that 1.1 million additional customers have applied for the new Costco Visa-Citi card — and that more than 730,000 new accounts have already been activated.
Costco took a lot of heat initially for making the switch. The AmEx card was popular with the retailer’s members … and the execution of the switch from AmEx to Visa wasn’t exactly a smooth one.
But it appears that those problems are in the past. The company is now benefiting from the fact that it is paying lower fees to Visa than it did to AmEx.
Shares of Costco rose 4% Friday. The company also reported quarterly earnings late Thursday that topped Wall Street’s forecasts.
But the stock, which has been a Wall Street darling for the past few years, has stumbled a bit in 2016. Shares are still down 5% this year — even after Friday’s big rally.
Investors are worried about increased competition from Amazon — which is touting home delivery of groceries — as well as Walmart’s Sam’s Club unit.
Lower food prices are hurting too, even though consumers love it.
The big decline in the prices of many agricultural commodities has been a problem for Costco as well as big grocery chains like Kroger, Supervalu, Sprouts and Whole Foods.
Low oil prices — despite a recent uptick — have been a problem too since it means reduced sales and profits for the gas stations that Costco has at many stores.
There are also concerns that Costco could lose customers if it raises the cost of its annual membership fee, something Galanti hinted at in March.
Finally, the company was told by a jury Thursday that it must pay $5.5 million to Tiffany as a result of a lawsuit involving fake Tiffany diamond engagement rings being sold at Costco.
That’s not a huge amount of money for Costco. But the company still could be asked to pay more in punitive damages. And it’s not exactly great for Costco’s image with consumers.
So even though Costco can finally breathe a sigh of relief now that the credit card switch to Visa is complete, the company still faces a lot of challenges.
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[WM]Parents in towns at the centre of the Novichok nerve agent poisonings have been warned not to let their children pick up foreign objects.
The move comes two days after Dawn Sturgess died from picking up a contaminated container and her partner Charlie Rowley is fighting for his life in hospital.
Today Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies stressed that no-one in Salisbury and Amesbury should pick up anything they haven’t dropped themselves.
She especially stressed youngsters should avoid handling strange objects ahead of the start of the school holidays.
Dame Sally said: ‘I want to emphasise to everyone in the Salisbury and Amesbury area that nobody, adult or child, should pick up any foreign object which could contain liquid or gel, in the interests of their own safety.
‘This, in practice, means do not pick up containers, syringes, needles, cosmetics or similar objects, made of materials such as metal, plastic or glass.
‘This is particularly important as families are starting to prepare for their children’s summer holidays and so I am asking that people are extra vigilant.
The advice from Public Health England remains that the overall threat to the public is low, but that everyone should avoid picking up strange objects.
It is believed that Dawn Sturgess, 44, who died from Novichok poisoning, and her partner, Charlie Rowley, 45, who is critically ill, somehow handled a vessel that contained the deadly substance.
The vessel has not yet been recovered.
There is no evidence to suggest they went to any of the areas that had been decontaminated following the attempted murders of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were also exposed to the nerve agent.
Dame Sally added: ‘Life continues in Salisbury and Amesbury and I want to be clear that the overall threat to the public is unchanged and remains low.
‘I also want to highlight that those areas that have been cleaned and released to the public over the past few weeks are safe, and should be used normally.
‘You do not need to seek advice from a health professional unless you are experiencing symptoms.
‘If you are concerned, you should call NHS 111 and Wilshire Police has also established a helpline to offer further advice: 0800 092 0410.
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[WM]Apple’s events are getting predictable. Time for a refresh?
Were Apple's iPad sales really as bad as they looked?
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[WM]Everybody got a little hot under the collar this week as European Council president Donald Tusk became the latest to let his frustration with the United Kingdom get the better of him, suggesting that “a special place in hell” awaits those who backed Brexit without a plan.
“I’ve been wondering what that place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan for how to carry it out safely,” he said after a meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
Most seemed to agree it was an unhelpful intervention at a time when relations with the UK are at an all-time low, and the withdrawal agreement at an impasse in the House of Commons with no sign of a way forward.
Tusk should also have known that nobody outdoes the DUP when it comes to fire and brimstone. The party’s Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson channelled his inner Dante to describe Tusk as a “devilish, trident-wielding euro maniac”, no less.
Wilson wasn’t the only one to react. British prime minister Theresa May said the remark had caused “widespread dismay” in the UK, while former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said being free of “unelected arrogant bullies” like Tusk sounded “like heaven”.
These days though, Brexit seems a lot more like purgatory than heaven or hell. There were yet more calls from London this week to reopen the withdrawal agreement and – you guessed it – more refusals from Brussels, leaving the process very much in limbo.
May travelled to Belfast on Tuesday where she told business leaders that her commitment to avoiding a hard border was “unshakeable”. She also signalled her intention to push the European Union to agree to a time limit being placed on the backstop.
German chancellor Angela Merkel suggested a “creative” approach to talks could see the backstop questions resolved, but that re-opening the withdrawal agreement was “not on the order of business”.
If the UK didn’t have enough on its plate dealing with Brussels and Dublin, the United States threw in its tuppence worth during an event in the Capitol building to mark the 100th anniversary of the Dáil.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England warned that Britain faces its weakest economic growth in 10 years this year, blaming mounting Brexit uncertainty and the global slowdown. But it stuck to its message that interest rates will rise, if a Brexit deal is done.
The latest company to jump ship in the UK was UBS which received approval from a London court to move up to €32 billion in assets from Britain to Germany.
The uncertainty surrounding Brexit was the main reason the European Commission cut its growth forecasts for Ireland this week.
In its latest set of winter forecasts, Brussels forecast the Irish economy would grow by 4.1 per cent this year in gross domestic product (GDP) terms, down from 4.5 per cent previously. That was lower than the Government’s forecast of 4.2 per cent.
There was a warning also from the Central Bank, which said that if the State’s transition to a low-carbon economy is too slow, it will pose macroeconomic and financial stability risks as sharper adjustments will be necessary.
Governor Philip Lane said the financial system had a central role in managing climate risks and financing decarbonisation, but that regulatory policies and supervisory practices must also play their part.
That being said, the latest economic indicators painted a pretty rosy picture for the State. Household debt fell in the third quarter of 2018, reaching its lowest level in 13 years, the latest figures from the Central Bank showed.
The regulator said household debt fell by €518 million in the third quarter to €137.5 billion, or €28,316 per capita, at the end of the three-month period, the lowest point since 2005.
Meanwhile, the Republic’s jobless rate remained steady at 5.3 per cent for the second consecutive month in January. That was the lowest recorded since February 2008 and is almost three points below the euro zone average.
Elsewhere, VAT receipts jumped to a record €2.7 billion in January as strong pre-Christmas sales boosted the Government’s tax take for the month. The latest exchequer returns show the sales tax accounted for more than half the €5.4 billion in tax collected.
Three of Ireland’s richest men – Denis O’Brien, Dermot Desmond, and Michael O’Leary – will be glad to see the back of this week after each suffered setbacks in their business dealings.
Digicel, the Caribbean telecoms company owned by O’Brien, became embroiled in a $1.5 billion US lawsuit over allegations it is a “co-conspirator” in a “ruse” to divert cash that is meant to fund education in Haiti, but is instead allegedly spent corruptly.
Digicel said it “categorically denies . . . any wrongdoing of any kind” and insisted it follows the law. “Digicel has always conducted its business in Haiti consistent with all applicable laws and regulations,” it said.
Elsewhere, the Central Bank opened an investigation into Datalex, in which Desmond holds a 26.4 per cent stake, after it issued a massive profit warning last month and revealed that it had uncovered a possible accounting issue.
The regulator is understood to be looking at Datalex’s trading statement less than eight weeks earlier in which the company said it was performing in line with expectations and was “confident” about posting double-digit percentage earnings growth.
Finally, O’Leary said he was “disappointed” as Ryanair recorded a loss of €20 million in the three months ended December 31st due to a fall in air fares and a rise in fuel prices.
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[WM]Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis, which started with strikes by teachers, students and those in the legal profession in late 2016 and now includes groups calling for secession, is deepening. People from English-speaking South-West and North-West regions of Cameroon have long complained about their marginalisation in the centralised state apparatus in Yaoundé and the government’s failure to protect Anglophone heritage.
Opinion is divided on how to address the Anglophones’ concerns. Victor Mukete, member of the ruling party and the country’s oldest senator, tells sister publication Jeune Afrique that a federal system should be created “as soon as we are capable of financing it.” A fringe group has declared an independent state of Ambazonia, but many people say that a fairer system rather than a separate system would be the best solution. Yaoundé’s response so far has been a security crackdown and creating a weak national commission on the issues of bilingualism and multi-culturalism. President Paul Biya launched a government reshuffle in early March, separating the decentralisation portfolio from the interior ministry. Elanga Obam George, a technocrat who worked in prime minister Philémon Yang’s office, is the new minister of decentralisation.
The Anglophone crisis also highlights the often difficult relationship between neighbouring Cameroon and Nigeria. Back in 1961, the United Nations (UN) organised a referendum in the areas colonised by Britain, giving northern and southern Cameroon the options of joining Nigeria or joining Cameroon. The North went to Nigeria, and the South went to Cameroon.
Since the flare-ups of late 2016, the UN estimates that nearly 20,000 Cameroonian refugees have fled to Nigeria. Anglophone Cameroon’s economy, heavily integrated with Nigeria, has been severely affected as many small towns and villages have been abandoned. Businesses often close down for ‘ghost town’ protests. Meanwhile big firms with interests in the region are reporting reduced profits, and cross-border trade has slowed to a trickle.
Cameroon and Nigeria share a long border, with security flashpoints along the 1,975km frontier. Nigeria’s north-eastern states of Borno and Adamawa and Cameroon’s Far North Region continue to deal with a significant Boko Haram insurgency while an escalating pastoral conflict between Fulani herdsmen and settler communities is currently raging from Adamawa through Taraba and Benue into parts of Cross River, with small arms proliferation in Akwa Ibom and other states in the Niger Delta.
The stakes are getting higher, as Cameroon will hold elections in 2018, and President Muhammadu Buhari will be up for re-election in 2019. A wider expansion of the anti-separatist crackdown could lead to increased tensions between the governments in Abuja and Yaoundé, a state of affairs not unheard of as both countries have clashed over territory, access to resources and political interference in the past.
Anger from citizens who feel left behind by South Africa's development -- known as 'service protests' is resurfacing ahead of elections; anger that politicians are navigating around, and even capitalising on.
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[WM]Thousands of Oregon hunters need to start planning their fall forays this weekend as Monday's deadline for controlled hunt application looms.
Fall may be months away, but it’s time to start planning your big-game hunt. Apply online, at a license sales agent or Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife office that sells licenses by 11:59 p.m. Monday to get a shot at controlled-hunt tags for most big-game species.
The cost is $8 per application, and hunters need a 2017 annual hunting license to apply.
While it doesn't pay to be a latecomer to the drawing, it certainly seems to be an ingrained trait among Oregon hunters.
Last year, more than half of the 467,028 applications were submitted in the week before the deadline, including nearly 74,149 on deadline day, according to ODFW.
Many hunters wait until the last minute to apply, which can cause long lines at stores and ODFW offices, ODFW Wildlife Division spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy says.
New this year, as part of efforts to simplify the regulations, final tag numbers are already printed in the 2017 Oregon Big Game Regulations.
In the past, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission did not set big-game tag numbers for the fall hunts until June.
The agency has reduced tag numbers for some Eastern Oregon big-game hunts to account for high winter mortality of deer and pronghorn in some Eastern Oregon units, the agency says.
ODFW used the controlled-hunt lottery as a way to mete out tags and distribute hunting pressure for specific hunts and species. It does not include general-season hunts such as deer and elk hunts in the south Cascades.
The Rogue Valley's younger outdoors enthusiasts will have a chance to test-drive a variety of outdoor activities, including hunting and fishing, during a free Saturday event May 20 at the Denman Wildlife Area.
Young Oregon Hunters Day will give youth ages 5 to 16 a chance to try such activities as trout fishing, tomahawk throwing, shotgun and archery shooting and laser shooting, and they'll have a chance to learn to identify animal species by their pelts.
The 16th annual event, often referred to as YOH Day, will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Denman, 1495 E. Gregory Road in White City. Parental consent and chaperones are required.
The event is sponsored annually by the Rogue Valley Chapter of the Oregon Hunters Association, along with ODFW and Black Bird Shopping Center.
Food and beverages will be available, and a free raffle drawing will occur. However, drawing participants must be present to win.
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[WM]Making the most of natural resources of farms is critical in today’s environment, where rainfalls are becoming ever so scarce.
While in Queensland the use of animal recognition technology is being used to conserve water, on the other side of the country in Western Australia, satellite technology is providing farmers with a suite of tools to accurately estimate the amount of feed in their pastures, how quickly their pastures are growing and the pasture quality.
Jointly developed by the CSIRO and Western Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Department of Land Information, the project, called Pastures from Space, uses satellite data from NASA to monitor the efficient use of feed resources in the livestock industries.
The Pastures from Space message is clear: use it or lose it.
For maximum efficiency on a farm, farmers need to use the pasture when it is at its best. This was one of the main drivers for the project, which predicts the quantity of green pasture in each paddock for a farm, or Feed on Offer (FOO), as kilos of dry matter per hectare.
According to Gonzalo Mata, who is in charge of farming systems and web development for the project, the general rule of thumb is that only about 20 to 30 per cent of pasture grown is utilised in many beef and sheep production systems. This is because a lack of information on feed resources leads to conservative management as a means of mitigating risk.
“Farmers need this information in order to match the animals’ nutrient demands for growth and reproduction with the supply of feed which can be very seasonal. If this is not achieved, production is lower or costs increase through the use of supplements to achieve the balance,” Mata added.
According to Mata, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, hence the need for allowing farmers to measure how much pasture there is on their farms. The project also predicts the rate of growth of pasture, or Pasture Growth Rate (PGR), on a weekly basis as kilos of dry matter per hectare per day.
The PGR tool uses images from a NASA satellite to create a composite greenness index. The climate data is sourced from the Bureau of Meteorology on a weekly basis and the two data sources are combined in a pasture growth model.
Pastures from Space boasts a 97 percent accuracy and it is possible farmers with a subscription (which costs $900 per year) to have sustainable pasture utilisation of more than 50 percent.
“When the farmers get their system up and running, the level of interaction that they have is only limited by their ability to ask questions of the data. New information is downloaded on a weekly basis using a software package called ‘Pasture Watch’ and can review the automatically generated graphs showing PGR for individual paddocks or combination of paddocks depending of what decision he is trying to make,” Mata said.
By going online, the farmer can also look at maps of PGR for their farm, giving them a better understanding of why some parts of a paddock or of the farm are performing better than others.
As of 2007, Pastures from Space had 80 commercial subscribers, and the numbers of people accessing the non-specific satellite measurements on the free Web site is growing.
Mata says the numbers have been growing every year by at least 10 percent, and up to late last year, nearly 10,000 unique IP addresses had visited the Web site.
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[WM]The local comedy world is in mourning following the shock death of beloved satirist John Clarke.
Clarke, a regular fixture in TV and film – most prominently his groundbreaking political interviews with Bryan Dawe – died while on a hiking trip in Victoria, aged 68.
His death has sparked countless tributes from local comedy personalities who worked with the prolific star and have spoken about his enduring legacy.
Most notable among those has been fellow giant of Australian comedy Barry Humphries, who is outraged at Clarke's sudden passing.
"How dare he die! John wasn't just funny, he was original and he was very, very nice," Humphries said.
"When Bruce Beresford and I were making the first Barry Mackenzie movie in the early '70s we had a scene in a London pub favoured by Australians. We'd cast a mob of noisy Aussies drinking and when we ran the somewhat random footage Bruce said, 'Watch this bloke'. We ran it again and froze frame on a young man at the bar drinking. He might have had one line, or maybe just a word, but he was terribly funny and terribly real. It was John Clarke.
"I've been watching him and admiring him ever since. He deserves a state funeral."
Frank Woodley, who worked as a script editor and "mentor" on his 1997 series The Adventures Of Lano And Woodley with Colin Lane, shares Humphries' admiration. "From the first time I heard a Fred Dagg cassette to this week's Clarke and Dawe, John Clarke made me laugh. Every time," he said.
"John could be silly and serious but he always had a twinkle in his eyes that made me happy. 'Trust your instincts. You boys know what you're doing.' I can still hear John's distinctive dry voice saying that to me as if it was yesterday."
Charlie Pickering, host of ABC's comedy slot The Weekly, on which Clarke and Dawe appeared last year, praised Clarke's towering impact on local political satire.
"If you are going to have the nerve to make jokes about the news in Australia, you do so knowing you will never clear the bar set by John Clarke," he said.
"John and I once talked about how writing a good comedy script was somewhere between poetry and physics. Whatever that middle ground is, John Clarke deserved the Nobel Prize."
He had "an incalculable gift" for comedy, said Max Gillies, for whom Clarke wrote The Gillies Report in 1984. "At school we were told sarcasm was the lowest form of wit, but John Clarke spent his whole life giving the lie to that. It was in his comic bloodstream, a deep sense of outrage that kept his blood pumping and the electricity in his brain firing."
Wendy said Clarke was instrumental in making comedy mainstream by fighting for television funding in the mid '80s. In doing so, he gave and many others their big break.
"Comedy then just completely took off," she said. "It was the thing everybody wanted to watch. John had sown the seed. For something like 30 years, John has been advocating and mentoring for comedy to take its place among the Australian arts.
"I think his contribution to the nation has been peerless."
Fans, both local and from across the Tasman ("Now we'll claim him back. He's our Phar Lap of comedy," New Zealand director Taika Waititi said), shared personal recollections of the man – and tidbits of his most celebrated work.
"He was always a lovely guy to me," said Dave Hughes. "He was a brilliant man who made me laugh a lot from a very young age and continued to make me laugh over the past 25, 30 years. It's such a big loss."
"John can read the Mildura phonebook and get a laugh," said Matthew Saville, who directed him in his final film role, as real estate agent Phillip Lang in 2015's A Month of Sundays.
Wil Anderson, who spent much of the day leading a YouTube deep-dive into Clarke's best bits, called Clarke "the funniest satirist on TV, until the end that came way too soon."
Clarke's stablemates over at ABC, including 7:30's Leigh Sales, also shared their memories of the comedy legend.
"Respected by his peers, adored by his fans, loved by his colleagues with a reputation as one of the nicest blokes," wrote Sales.
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[WM]Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard says he has "no respect" for Charlton boss Les Reed after the way he treated him during England's Euro 2000 campaign.
Reed, who faces Gerrard at The Valley on Saturday, was part of Kevin Keegan's coaching team in Germany.
And Gerrard said in his autobiography: "To this day I have no respect for Reed or (England coach) Derek Fazackerley.
"I felt they could have shown me more sympathy. They were always pushing me, telling me to buck up my ideas."
He added: "They didn't seem to understand that not everyone can board a plane, settle in a strange hotel far from the family they love and find it easy.
"My homesickness worsened whenever I was forced to be in their company."
Reed did not appear aware of Gerrard's ill-feeling towards him when he discussed their meeting when in-form Liverpool travel to Charlton.
He said: "Steven Gerrard came into the senior England squad for the first time when I was working with Kevin Keegan.
"I've got his framed Euro 2000 shirt hanging on my wall saying 'best wishes Steven Gerrard', so I have come across him.
"I think he's such a dedicated player, he loves playing for Liverpool and he loves playing for England. He'll do whatever his coach asks him to do."
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[WM]The Crescenta Valley Community Assn. on Wednesday will meet to discuss a number of development issues, including the planned office building on Foothill Boulevard and the old fig tree that members say could die as a result of the construction.
Residents held a candlelight demonstration earlier this month to promote protecting the tree.
The association will also discuss the new water well at the historic Rockhaven Sanitarium site, a planned condominium development and efforts to establish residential building standards.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the Dunsmore Park Community Room, 4700 Dunsmore Ave.
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[WM]Carl Johnson, co-founder of Anomaly, a marketing communications firm and advertising agency, isn’t actually staying in Cannes. He’s staying at the historic Hotel du Cap in Antibes, an extravagant celebrity destination since the early days of Hemingway. Johnson has a bit of the Hemingway in him himself, insofar as he has a gut and some stubble, curses somewhat liberally, and actually says what he thinks. In a town—he drove in to Cannes for our interview—where so many people are repeating variations on familiar themes, he made for a refreshing lunch partner.
Johnson, now in his early 50s, hadn’t been to Cannes for over a decade. After Sept. 11, 2001, the then-COO of TBWA\Worldwide packed up the family and moved from New York to Sydney, where he spent two years “on the beach.” He only got back into advertising in 2004, when he started Anomaly: the firm or agency or whatever you want to call it—he prefers “a place for clients to go when they don’t know where to go”—that is responsible not only for successful Budweiser, Converse, and Sony campaigns, but for the Emmy-winning television show Avec Eric, the experience of flying Virgin America (down to the interior, the uniforms, and the entertainment), and all the posters and stickers around New York City for a soccer team that doesn’t even exist . . . yet. In 2010, Adweek picked Anomaly as one of six top insurgent agencies to watch.
We were sitting at a table on the terrace of the Carlton Hotel, which is to Cannes Lions’ wealthier delegates what Rick’s was to Casablanca. Arguably, you could meet everyone you wanted to meet at this festival without leaving your table. (Ours, incidentally, had been offered to us by Arianna Huffington.) But that also had something to do with the fact that so much of what was being said on stage sounded the same. The chances of getting through a lecture in Cannes without hearing a CEO or CMO or COO talk about the importance of “content” was about as good as your chances of getting a helicopter ride out to a yacht, which is to say, roughly one in 20.
Here was something else. And that, of course, is what Anomaly set out to be. But it’s been seven years since 2004, and in the new landscape, there are many agencies that describe themselves as “not an agency” and talk about “breaking down silos.” So how long can Anomaly continue to be an anomaly?
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[WM]A straight man discovers his inner drag queen in Matthew Lopez's gender-bending comedy, The Legend of Georgia McBride, being given its New York premiere by off-Broadway's MCC Theater. Featuring enough amusingly bitchy one-liners and energetic musical numbers to be a genuine crowd-pleaser, the play is frothy to the extreme, a show for people who find Mamma Mia! heavy lifting. But its relentless silliness is sweet and amiable enough to make it go down easy.
Set in Panama City in the Florida Panhandle, the comedy centers on good-hearted slacker Casey (Dave Thomas Brown), trying to make ends meet by performing as an Elvis impersonator at Cleo's, a seedy beachside bar run by the financially hard-pressed Eddie (Wayne Duvall). When Casey bounces a rent check buying pizza, and his wife Jo (Afton Williamson) suddenly announces she's pregnant, their situation goes from dire to desperate. And things get even worse when Eddie informs Casey that he's dropping the Elvis act in favor of a drag routine performed by his cousin Tracy (Matt McGrath) and his — excuse me, her — equally flamboyant friend Rexy (Keith Nobbs), whose stage name is Anorexia Nervosa.
Casey reluctantly stays on as bartender, but when Rexy shows up for work drunk one night he's recruited to take her place performing an Edith Piaf number. Quickly coming up with the stage name Georgia McBride — inspired by the state in which his mother was born and the last name of the first girl he kissed — Casey receives a crash course in drag performing from Tracy, which, it turns out, is all about attitude.
At first his performance is dismal, but Casey discovers that he has a nascent talent and quickly adapts to his new persona, becoming a local sensation, lip-synching to the likes of Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. His renewed joy in performing, however, is offset by his determination to keep his new identity a secret from Jo and, well, you can guess the rest of the plot from here.
Making a major stylistic departure from his previous work The Whipping Man — a searing post-Civil War era drama that's become a favorite on the regional theater circuit — Lopez demonstrates an equally stellar gift for amusing dialogue and farcical humor. While not all the one-liners land — Rexy's comment, "I've been raped in better places than this," upon setting foot in Cleo's being one unfortunate example — the ratio of hits to misses is admirable.
Brown is boyishly appealing in the title role, tearing into his drag routines with gusto and looking gorgeous as his female persona. McGrath is even better as his drag queen mentor, investing his portrayal with equal amounts of hilarious bitchery and hard-won dignity. The supporting players are also impressive, particularly Nobbs, who doubles as the married couple's good-old-boy landlord.
Director Mike Donahue's staging is sleek and fast-paced; set designer Donyale Werle has expertly transformed the stage into a rundown dive bar, complete with Christmas lights and neon signs; Anita Yavich's costumes and Jason Hayes' wigs are amusingly over-the-top; and Paul McGill's choreography of the drag routines would pass muster in any nightclub.
Despite its earnest message of tolerance, The Legend of Georgia McBride is too lightweight to register as anything more than a mild diversion. But it's highly entertaining nonetheless.
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[WM]New Delhi: Apollo Tyres said on Wednesday its board would seek shareholders’ guidance and independent counsel regarding the compensation for its managing director Neeraj Kanwar, whose reappointment was rejected by shareholders last month.
The company’s board, which met on 1 October, however, expressed “unanimous approval" for his leadership.
“The board will now seek shareholder guidance and independent counsel, on a compensation level commensurate with the position. Once this process is complete, it will re-nominate Kanwar to be re-appointed as MD, effective 28 May 2019," an Apollo Tyres spokesperson said in a statement.
Minority shareholders of the company had last month rejected the reappointment of Kanwar as MD. Kanwar is also the vice-chairman of Apollo Tyres. In 2017-18 Kanwar received ₹ 44.64 crore as compensation, up from ₹ 30.89 crore in 2016-17.
The resolution for “reappointment of Kanwar as MD" was not passed as a special resolution as the votes cast in favour (72.72% ) were less than three times the number of votes cast against (27.28%), Apollo Tyres said said in a regulatory filing last month.
The company said it board reiterated its approval of Kanwar’s leadership.
Kanwar had spearheaded Apollo Tyres’ growth in India, taken the brand onto the world stage, and grown its market capitalisation around 700% since his appointment as MD, the spokesperson said.
“The board has full confidence in Kanwar to continue Apollo’s sustainable development and expansion," the spokesperson added.
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[WM]Bible Lite is an easy to navigate offline Bible Application for Mac. It has got a beautiful design with a number of useful features. It allows you to dive into the Sacred Scriptures without all the clutter of Internet. Speak Mode: Bible Lite will read out Bible Verses for you. Write Journals or take notes and save them for future reference. Share Journals via all the available sharing options. Search the entire Bible with Keywords and get to a specific Chapter or Book. Mark Bible verses as favorite and browse all of them in one place. Highlight Bible verses with color and browse all of them in one place. Copy Bible verses from the app and paste anywhere.
Limitations The free version has limited functionalities. Only one Bible Translation (KJV) is available in the Free version (Bible Lite).
Access and read the Bible easily.
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[WM]East Brunswick Buick Pontiac & Gmc Truck is located at the address 1120 State Route 18 in East Brunswick, New Jersey 08816. They can be contacted via phone at (732) 651-6200 for pricing, hours and directions.
East Brunswick Buick Pontiac and GMC TRUCK located at 1120 State Hwy No 18 in East Brunswick, NJ services vehicles for Auto Repair. Call (732) 651-6200 to book an appointment or to hear more about the services of East Brunswick Buick Pontiac and GMC TRUCK.
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[WM]This year will mark the 40th year of this exhibition. Organized and hosted by the Art League, this juried exhibition will highlight the work of talented high school artists from eleven area high schools. High school art teachers select the best works by their students to submit for the show. Professional artists in each category will select those to be included. There are usually over 300 entries and only 1/3 will be chosen for the exhibit. Cash awards are given by category and for the “best of show.” In addition, there are several special awards bestowed. One of our most-visited exhibitions, New Artists annually draws over 4,000 visitors from throughout our region.
Museum will be open Easter Sunday.
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[WM]According to a report issued by the Pew Research Center, American adults have a sub-par knowledge of basic science. The organization surveyed 3,278 Americans of various social, racial and academic backgrounds. The questionnaire involved a simple set of 12 questions that assessed basic science competencies. Despite the quiz was far from demanding, most test-takers answered only 7.9 questions out of 12 correctly. That’s 66% or a big fat ‘D’.
See the rest of the questions and take the quiz yourself here.
Only 6% of the quizzed participants answered all 12 questions correctly. At the other end of the spectrum, 1% of those surveyed missed 11 of the questions, 2% missed 10 and 3% missed nine.
formal education predicted how well respondents fared on the quiz. Those who earned at least a graduate degree got 9.5 questions right, on average, compared to 6.8 for those who only finished high school.
men answered more correct questions than women, even when correcting for social background or education. Men outscored women, 8.6 to 7.3, on average.
whites did better on the test than Latinos or African Americans. Their average scores were 8.4, 7.1 and 5.9, respectively.
more than one in five respondents thought “the study of how the positions of stars and planets can influence human behavior” was astronomy, instead of astrology. For quite a few, it seems, the two are interchangeable.
Now, I don’t think this poll was the best way to gauge American interest or general knowledge in science, but it was interesting nonetheless. It shows the American public is still lagging behind the needs and expectations of an increasingly technology-driven society. It also means that people are more susceptible to fraud and rhetoric when discussing topics like climate change, genetically modified organisms or energy policy. The more you know, the harder you are to fool.
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[WM]An all-out strike by state sector teachers in Nigeria has ended after four weeks with a government recommendation that teachers get a 27.5 percent pay increase.
Teacher’s pay is awarded locally in Nigeria’s 36 federal states, but the Nigerian Union of Teachers demanded that the government introduce an enhanced teachers’ salary structure to improve and regulate their wages nationally.
The strike did not achieve this, but the pay award it did win has been an enormous boost to workers’ confidence in Nigeria.
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[WM]SAN FRANCISCO — The outgoing chair of the California GOP — the nation’s largest state Republican Party — has issued a dire warning that his state represents “the canary in the coal mine” for the party‘s national fortunes unless it confronts demographic shifts that have already turned California into a majority-minority state.
“We have not yet been able to figure out how to effectively communicate and get significant numbers of votes from non-whites,’’ said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, who’s held the job of state GOP chair since 2013 and will retire in February.
Despite trend lines that show the “the entire country will be majority minority by 2044,’’ he said, the GOP has failed to confront the reality of those changes — or recognize the possibility that the recent "blue tsunami" midterm election in California was a harbinger of what lies ahead for the national party.
But he said those warnings about the changing political and ethnic landscape have gone unheeded.
“And that’s why I have said that I believe California is the canary in the coal mine — not an outlier,’’ for the GOP in the coming cycles, he told POLITICO.
The California chairman’s comments come days after some state party leaders — including former state party chair Shawn Steele — charged that the party’s shellacking in 2018 was less about demographics and more about Democrats’ use of new practices at the ballot box, suggesting they could have involved voter fraud.
Brulte told POLITICO he categorically rejects the notion that voting irregularities may be the source of the party’s historic beating in the 2018 midterms in California, where Democrats flipped seven House seats and left the party with just seven members in the congressional delegation, the lowest number since the 1940s. He said Republicans were repeatedly informed of ways that Democrats were marshaling new and effective ways to get out the vote — but campaigns failed to take action.
“We personally briefed the candidates, the congressional delegation, the legislators,’’ and even staff inside the White House in 2017 on the upcoming changes in California laws that might affect turnout,’ said Brulte, who lead his party for decades in the legislature.
Brulte pointed to new laws that allowed for “motor voter” registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles, same-day registration, and new efforts to register younger voters. And, he said, campaigns were specifically informed of changes which legalized “ballot harvesting” — coordinated efforts to gather and return absentee ballots with voters’ permission, a program which backers said would assist older or disabled voters.
While Democrats used ballot harvesting with great success in a collection of key races here where mail ballots made up the margin of success, “we’ve not been able to find Republicans having a lot of success anywhere related to ballot harvesting,’’ he said.
Brulte, who said in 2013 it would take a minimum of six years to rebuild the dilapidated state party, has taken heat within the GOP for speaking out about the dangers it faces.
Despite Brulte's stark assessment of the GOP's future, three potential candidates are vying to replace him as chair when his term ends next February — and all of them insist the real problems lie somewhere other than in its message to the changing ethnic electorate.
Steve Frank, a conservative Republican activist and former party official, said that the GOP has “unilaterally disarmed itself,’’ by failing miserably in outreach to church-going conservatives and other GOP voters — and by standing by helplessly while laws that have advantaged Democrats, including the state’s top-two primary, act as “illegal voter suppression” against Republicans in California.
Former Assemblyman Travis Allen, a favorite of the party’s far right conservative wing — who failed to get the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year — says he strongly rejects Brulte’s suggestion that demographics are at fault for the party’s 2018 battering.
“We need to start with the central matter at hand: the Democratic Party, and the special interests that control it, are the mightiest political machine in the history of American politics,’’ he said.
In California, as in the national party, Republicans continue to dismiss the stark evidence of growing ethnic voter clout in hopes of returning to “an America that was the way it used to be,’’ Sragow said. “They’re rubbing the rabbits’ foot and think they’re going to take back the homeland."
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[WM]A Los Angeles-bound Alaska Airlines flight was forced to return to Seattle's airport Monday afternoon after an airport worker fell asleep and became trapped in the cargo hold.
Alaska Airlines said the flight had taken off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 2:39 p.m. local time. Fourteen minutes later, the plane's captain and some first-class passengers heard banging coming from beneath the aircraft. The pilot decided to return to the airport and declared an emergency for priority landing.
"I think we’re hearing a noise from the baggage compartment," the pilot said, according to KCPQ. "Might be a person in there, so we’re going to have to come back around."
After the plane landed a ramp agent came out from the front cargo hold, which Alaska said is pressurized and temperature-controlled. The area is often where animals are kept during flights.
"Upon exiting, he told authorities he had fallen asleep," the airline said.
The man, an employee of Alaska contractor Menzies Aviation, walked off the plane. He was initially checked by medics at the airport and found to be unhurt, airport spokesman Perry Cooper said.
The man was also checked at a hospital and released, the airline said Monday evening. After his release from the hospital, he passed a drug test, airline spokesman Bryan Zidar said.
The airline did not identify the worker. A Menzies spokesman did not immediately return an email request for comment and details about the employee.
Alaska Airlines said the man started work at 5 a.m. Monday and was due off at 2:30 p.m.. He had been part of a four-person team loading baggage onto the flight.
Before the plane departed, the leader of the man's team noticed he was missing, called into the cargo hold for him and called and texted the man's cellphone but got no answer, the airline said. Co-workers thought he had finished his shift and gone home.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, spokesman Allen Kenitzer confirmed in an e-mail.
All ramp employees undergo full criminal background checks and drug checks before hiring and are subject to random drug tests during their employment, the airline statement said.
The plane carried 170 passengers and six crew members.
The flight departed again at 3:52 p.m. and arrived at a terminal gate in Los Angeles at 6:29 p.m., more than an hour late, the airline said.
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[WM]While cybersecurity should be a year-round concern for small business owners, income tax filing season can bring some particular risks, according to the IRS.
The agency says it has gotten an increase in reports of attempts to obtain employees' W-2 forms in hopes of stealing people's personal information and identities. The scams often go after employees in companies' human resources and payroll departments, but any staffer or manager could be a target. In the scam, a potential thief poses as a company executive, sending an email from an address that might look legitimate, and requests a list of employees and their W-2s.
Owners need to be sure that anyone with access to employee records including W-2s understands that they shouldn't send the forms or staffer information to anyone without checking to be sure this isn't an attempted scam. The IRS also wants companies to report W-2 scam emails to the agency, and it also wants to know if anyone has become a victim. For more information, visit the IRS website, www.irs.gov , and search for "Form W-2/SSN Data Theft: Information for Businesses and Payroll Service Providers."
The IRS also warns all taxpayers about emails that look like they're coming from the agency but that are phishing attempts aimed at getting harmful software into a PC or a server. The emails might say that the taxpayer has a refund waiting at the IRS, or that the agency needs more information from the taxpayer. There's likely to be a link or an attachment that the reader of the email is supposed to click on - and that's how thieves and hackers gain entry to a computer.
The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text messages or social media; it sends letters by U.S. mail. Company owners and their employees need to be on guard against all kinds of phishing scams, and no one should ever click on a link or attachment until they're completely sure the email is legitimate. And if an email says it's from the IRS, it's not.
Accountants and other tax professionals are also targets of thieves looking to steal personal information and identities, the IRS says. It has a page on its website devoted to providing paid tax preparers with information so they can protect themselves and their clients. The address is www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/protect-your-clients-protect-yourself .
Some small business owners struggle with getting their financial records organized and keeping them that way, and that makes tax filing season more difficult. SCORE, the organization that offers free advice to small companies, is sponsoring an online seminar to help owners get their books in order. It will be held Tuesday, Jan. 9 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. You can learn more and register at http://bit.ly/2CSfKwW .
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[WM]The Office of Multicultural Affairs facilitates the Navigation mentoring program that pairs students with a faculty or staff member who will serve as their Navigation Partner throughout their journey at the University of Dayton. A Navigation Partner can answer questions, be a listening ear, and connect students with resources and opportunities for success.
Student engagement with faculty members outside of the classroom has been consistently found to promote student persistence, educational aspirations, and degree completion (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, 2005). Positive faculty relationships have been shown to predict student learning and other positive outcomes for African-American, Latino/a, Asian, and Native American students (Kuh & Hu, 2001; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Tinto, 1993). We offer this program as we believe that this is an experience that all students will find valuable.
Name at least one other faculty or staff resource with whom they have met during the semester.
Name at least one campus resource.
Describe at least one leadership or involvement opportunity.
Describe at least one semester goal they set for themselves and 2-4 mini goals or actions they took to work toward achieving their goal.
CLICK HERE if you are a student and would like to be paired with a faculty or staff mentor.
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[WM]Iglesia collections stashed in Cayman?
IGLESIA ni Cristo (INC) members in the United States were asked to bring $100 bills for their offerings, a former head of the church’s foreign mission said as he confirmed receiving reports about INC leaders skimming cash off collections as early as 2011.
Allegations that collections from cash offerings in the United States were being stashed possibly in the Cayman Islands have been swirling for some time, said former minister Isaias Samson Jr., who was expelled in July on suspicion that he was the one who wrote critical online stories about the INC governing council.
Samson said that back in 2011, the arrival of a roving auditor to pick up the entire collections after worship services, instead of these being deposited in a bank, raised alarm bells among some congregations in the United States.
“I know the members. They’re very close to me. And they were asking me: ‘How come offerings are being picked up immediately and the members were being asked to bring $100?’” he said in an interview last week.
Samson received the reports when he headed the church’s foreign mission from 2007 to 2012. An ordained minister for 43 years, he was a resident minister in the United States for 18 years and in Europe for two years.
When the new scheme was carried out, only amounts below $100 were deposited in the bank, Samson said.
“This scheme probably began in 2011. The members were shocked but they’re very obedient. They just rationalized that the church needed the money for the construction of chapels until they found out that commissions were being made out of the construction of chapels,” he said.
Samson was unaware if the reports reached INC executive minister Eduardo V. Manalo.
Of an estimated 3 million INC members in the Philippines and abroad, some 100,000 can be found in the United States, according to Samson.
He accused INC leaders of illegally detaining him in mid-July, a charge dismissed by state prosecutors. He had been suspected of blogging about corruption in the 101-year-old homegrown church under the pseudonym Antonio Ebangelista. He has denied this.
American Vincent Florida, a former minister in the INC Northern Virginia congregation, has reported the sect, Manalo and general auditor Glicerio Santos Jr. to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for tax fraud.
Florida told the Inquirer he filed his report in IRS form 3949A for failure to pay taxes in August.
The form is used for reporting suspected tax fraud, including false exemptions or deductions, kickbacks, false or altered document, failure to pay tax, unreported income and organized crime.
Florida left the church on July 30 amid charges of corruption in the INC and abduction of ministers critical of the sect’s leadership.
He claimed that congregations were asked to convert cash collections into $100 bills and turn over the money to district auditors. He said only offerings in checks were deposited in the bank.
The district auditors in turn remitted the cash to Santos during pastoral visits.
He did not respond when the Inquirer sought his comment on the alleged diversion of INC collections.
INC insiders, collating testimonies from members in the United States, documented a scheme committed right under the noses of some ministers.
The offerings are converted into $100 bills at a local or parish for easier transport, collected by the district auditor or minister “under duress” and brought to a collection center, like a conveniently located chapel.
The collections are consolidated at a hotel where Santos, the INC’s chief finance officer, is billeted, or stashed in a vault at the church’s US main office in California, for eventual pickup.
The scheme is carried out during “big events”—when Manalo or Santos is around for a pastoral visit—and in locals headed by “obedient” resident ministers.
In their calendar, the major cash-generating thanksgiving services are held in the third or fourth weekend of July and in the third week of December.
Congregations in Long Beach, California; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Washington, DC; Temple Hills, Maryland; Bronx, New York; Seattle, Washington; Anaheim, California; and Corpus Christi, Texas, received verbal instructions to collect $100 bills for the thanksgiving service in July, the insiders said.
The insiders said it wouldn’t be a surprise to find a huge drop in bank deposits.
For instance, from $20,000 in December 2011 and $20,500 in December 2012, the deposits dropped to $12,000 in December 2013 in a certain local, they said.
“These are brought to the Cayman Islands through a small plane and then a big plane. The plane is registered in Cayman,” Samson said, citing reports from members in the United States.
The transport of money allegedly by the church-owned Airbus could not be confirmed.
Florida alleged that Manalo, Santos and other INC leaders had managed to stay under the radar for years because they carried the cash on a private plane that they used for their regular pastoral visits to the United States.
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[WM]RACIST supporters at Colchester United have been blasted by Burnley boss Stan Ternent who claims they almost forced Ian Wright to quit the game after just two matches in the Second Division.
In his autobiography Stan The Man, Ternent describes Layer Road as an "Essex fleapit" and accuses U's fans of hurling "the foulest racist abuse I'd ever heard at a football match".
Ternent was furious after former England striker Ian Wright MBE was subjected to the tirade of abuse during a Second Division game in February 2000.
Colchester United made a full and unreserved apology after the incident and have worked tirelessly to eradicate the racist problem at their ground.
Marie Partner, the U's chief executive, last night said: "At the time, the club dealt with the incident in the appropriate manner and made a full apology to Ian Wright. With that in mind, we feel it is a shame that Mr Ternent – who has a reputation for being an extremely professional manager – has to stoop to that level to sell books and we will not be drawn into making similar comments."
It was only Wright's second game for Burnley where he joined after suffering abuse in Scotland while playing for Celtic.
He wrote: "Whether running out for Arsenal at Wembley or for us in an Essex fleapit, with his jokes and gold-toothed smile, he gave the impression it didn't matter a damn."
He went on to describe the appalling abuse Wright suffered at Layer Road.
"Throughout each of the previous 90 minutes the Colchester crowd hurled at Wrighty the foulest racist abuse I'd ever heard at a football match.
"My face was red with shame as I stood on the touchline, powerless to stop the narrow-minded scum chanting sick songs at one of England's greatest players.
"The pride I'd felt for Ian as he ran out on to the pitch in Burnley colours rapidly became embarrassment.
"I'd persuaded him to play in a league where I believed he would be afforded dignity and respect."
He said that all the small section of racist supporters had to offer was "jealousy, bile and bitter insults based on his skin colour."
They "had had the chance to watch one of the most talented players our country has ever produced yet they chose to barrack him instead", he said.
Ternent goes on to explain how Wright called him to say he wanted to quit because of the abuse but was eventually persuaded not to by Ternent and others but only played 17 times for Burnley before packing the game in to work in the media.
It is not the first time Colchester supporters have been labelled racist, among those left unhappy at a visit to Layer Road were Luton Town supporters who complained players and fans had been targeted.
Ms Partner added: "Colchester United has one of the best records for crowd behaviour, indeed last season saw the U's have one of the lowest policing bills in the Nationwide League. Further to that, our record of just six arrests was again amongst the lowest, with none of those being for racist abuse.
"We are proud of that fact and are keen backers of the Kick Racism Out of Football scheme. In fact, our Community Sports Trust provided sporting and educational projects for thousands of local children, which cut across social, educational and racial boundaries."
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[WM]A truck carrying a container drives past cranes at the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai, China, Oct. 23, 2013.
Good morning. Company executives concerned about escalating tensions between the U.S. and China might breathe a sigh of relief, report the WSJ’s Lingling Wei and Bob Davis. The two governments have quietly started to negotiate better U.S. access to Chinese markets, potentially avoiding a trade war.
The talks come after the Trump administration last week set out specific requests that include lower Chinese tariffs on U.S. cars, higher orders for U.S. semiconductors from China and greater access to China’s financial sector for American firms.
President Trump on Thursday threatened to impose tariffs on as much as $60 billion of Chinese imports, while China on Friday rolled out penalties against $3 billion in U.S. goods as Washington’s levies on imported steel and aluminum took effect.
Business leaders over the weekend warned about additional punitive trade measures. Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook urged the U.S. to embrace open trade, while Larry Fink, chief executive of investment firm BlackRock Inc., said the U.S. and China should not fight a trade war.
Meanwhile, governments across the globe scrambled to lessen the impact of the steel and aluminum tariffs on their industries. The WSJ’s William Mauldin and Rhiannon Hole explain how some countries managed to get temporary exemptions.
Fed’s Dudley speaks in Washington. Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley will discuss financial regulation and the economy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, days after the U.S. central bank decided to raise its benchmark interest rate and signaled it could move faster on rate increases in the years ahead.
U.S. GDP, Japanese unemployment, Chinese factory output. On Wednesday, the U.S. Commerce Department releases its third estimate of fourth-quarter gross domestic product and corporate profits, followed by data on U.S. personal income and consumer sentiment (Thursday), Japanese unemployment (Friday) and China’s factory activity (Friday night EDT).
New York Auto Show puts spotlight on Cadillac, Lincoln. This week’s New York Auto Show -- commencing Friday -- presents a chance for General Motors Co.’s Cadillac and Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln to play catch up to foreign competitors.
Statoil to shed finance jobs. Norwegian oil giant Statoil ASA will slash the number of workers in its finance department as part of a wider push to automate tasks, according to the company’s finance chief.
Statoil last year launched its first robot, named “Roberta,” to automate tasks in the treasury department, such as sending payment reminders. Since then, around 10 different robots have joined her in the finance department, including one called Rob, said Chief Financial Officer Hans Jakob Hegge. The robots reconcile accounts, collect data and document payments made by the company to its suppliers, among other tasks.
The company had 897 finance employees at the end of 2017, down from 1400 at the end of 2013, Mr. Hegge said.
A SoftBank store in Tokyo, Japan, Feb. 22, 2018.
SoftBank probes shareholder campaign. The board of Japanese tech firm SoftBank Group Corp. is investigating a shareholder campaign that sought to remove two of its executives, people familiar with the matter said. Meanwhile, the company is looking to invest $1 billion in a truck-hailing company backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd.
Facebook tries to calm advertisers. A handful of marketers suspended advertising on Facebook Inc. as the company rushed to allay concerns about its platform. This comes in the wake of revelations that an outside company improperly handled data on tens of millions of its users.
Waymo chief trusts own self-driving technology. The head of Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car unit said he is confident its technology would be able to detect someone crossing the street, avoiding an accident such as the one in which an Uber Technologies Inc. self-driving car killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
Uber sells Southeast Asia business. Uber said Monday it would no longer compete with Grab Inc. by selling its local operations in exchange for a minority stake in the Singapore-based company. Uber has left other markets where it was struggling against local rivals, for example Russia and China, reports the BBC.
Citigroup focuses on purely digital services. After years of shrinking its retail banking unit, Citigroup Inc. is aiming to become a national player once again -- through an expanded mobile app.
Qualcomm directors get less than 50% re-election vote. Six of Qualcomm Inc.’s directors failed to win support from a majority of the company’s shares Friday, a protest vote that signals investor discontent after the chip-making giant rebuffed a hostile takeover from Broadcom Ltd.
Glaxo CEO dispenses bitter pill. Emma Walmsley is making sweeping changes at GlaxoSmithKline PLC, replacing nearly half the company’s top 125 executives and shutting down two dozen clinical trials.
Smurfit Kappa rejects revised bid. Smurfit Kappa Group PLC has rejected another bid from International Paper Co. which offered shareholders a total of €37.54 ($46.37) a share. The packaging-and-paper company said it received a revised offer from the U.S. company on March 22, after it had rejected an unsolicited offer on March 6, reports MarketWatch.
Volvo to build Chinese SUVs in Europe. Zhejiang Geely Group Co.’s Volvo Cars confirmed on Monday that starting next year it would produce Lynk & Co.’s sport-utility vehicle in Ghent, Belgium, marking the first production of a Chinese automotive brand in Europe.
Remington seeks bankruptcy protection. Firearms maker Remington Outdoor Co. filed for chapter 11 protection, with plans to hand over control of the company to its creditors in exchange for wiping much of its debt from its balance sheet, reports Bloomberg.
New tax on overseas earnings hits unintended targets. A new tax aimed at overseas income earned by U.S. technology and pharmaceutical firms is hitting unexpected places, including Kansas City Southern, a U.S. railroad company.
Auto dealers worry about rising prices. Car dealers across the U.S. worry that higher prices will put off potential buyers. Consumers on average paid around $32,200 through February, about $500 more than last year.
A Toshiba logo is seen on a printed circuit board, July 31, 2012.
Toshiba awaits approval for chip deal. Toshiba Corp. said Monday it has yet to gain approval from Chinese authorities for the $19 billion sale of its chip unit, putting pressure on the company ahead of a March 31 deadline to close the deal.
New FCC rule could curb U.S. sales of Chinese equipment makers. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is considering a new rule to further limit the U.S. business of Huawei Technologies Co., raising the bar for small and rural carriers to buy equipment from Chinese companies.
Wells Fargo overhauls risk management as probes continue. Wells Fargo & Co. is overhauling its risk management amid ongoing regulatory scrutiny of the U.S. bank by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
China to name reformer as party secretary of PBoC. China has picked Guo Shuqing, a reform-oriented regulator, to be the party secretary of the central bank, a move that could bolster momentum for financial overhauls.
China’s oil futures surge on debut. China’s yuan-denominated crude-oil futures jumped on their first day of trading on Monday, indicating positive sentiment toward the new market, which Beijing hopes will give the country an oil benchmark to rival those in the U.S. and Europe.
Foreign trade houses dominate U.S. crude exports. A handful of foreign commodity trading firms are dominating the buying and selling of U.S. crude exports, two years after Washington lifted its ban on sending oil abroad.
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[WM]Melton just about deserved victory for a first half display in which they dominated the scrum and moved the ball well through the backs and forwards.
Wonderful line breaks by Martorano, Evans, Spence and Williams put Melton on the front foot, while the scrum drove Oakham back, allowing Wade to take several balls against the head.
Skipper Greaves bounced several would-be tacklers out of his way, while back row partners Peters and Prior added the more delicate touches. The front row of Kerr, Wade and Spence belied their combined age of 150-plus years with great performances.
Young half-backs Haywood and Grindey probed with useful breaks, and several times Grindey turned the Oakham team with good rolling kicks.
Clemmons drew his centre partner Freeston on to some lovely lines of running, and allowed wings Clarke and Forfar chances to run at Oakham, while full-back Williams ran the ball back strongly.
The forwards nearly got a pushover try, but moved too quickly to control the ball. But from the next scrum Wade took one against the head and the pack drove Oakham over the line.
Melton went further ahead when good handling from forwards and backs allowed Prior to score.
Just before half-time Oakham replied with a breakaway try to turn round at 17-7.
Both teams made several changes with Blagburn, Underwood and Farrish coming on in the backs and O’Reilly and Broughton came on in the forwards.
Melton struggled to get their game back together in a much tighter second half, and an Oakham try with 10 minutes left set up a grandstand finale.
But Melton held out to shade a keenly-fought and enjoyable match.
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[WM]Howard Dean formally announced on January 11 that he was officially entering the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which will be voted on in early February. The ex-governor of Vermont had been unofficially campaigning for the position since the Democrats’ loss to the Republicans in November’s presidential election.
Dean joins a field of contenders that includes Democratic activists Simon Rosenberg and Donnie Fowler, former Texas Representative Martin Frost, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, former Representative from Indiana Tim Roemer, and former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Leland. Dean’s decision to enter the race so late in the game reflects his fears that if he had peaked early as a contender, he would have deflated by nomination day.
Roaming the blogs of Dean’s ardent supporters reveals mixed emotions about his decision to run. Many Deaniacs are glad their man is attempting to take on the stalwarts of special interest, but others are upset that Dean’s bid could jeopardize another race for the presidency in 2008.
So what are Dean’s chances of winning the DNC chairmanship? Well, if the presidential contest in 2004 was an accurate indicator, his chances don’t look good.
The DNC chair, unlike the Democratic presidential primaries, is voted on by only 440 members of the DNC, not thousands of registered Democratic voters. Dean however, is a rhetorical threat to party brass, as his grassroots constituents are not happy with the corporate takeover of their party. So insiders are not likely to support his candidacy for fear Dean’s base could disrupt party business. Despite these worries among DNC members, there is little to indicate that Dean would perform his duties any different than the current DNC maestro, Terry McAuliffe.
Certainly the support for Dean is coming from the left end of the Democratic mainstream, including organizations like MoveOn.org, among others. But this outside support is irrelevant; for it is unlikely to sway DNC members to vote for Dean as a result.
Although there is some debate as to what direction a DNC head would steer the party, historically the leader of the DNC has been a corporate fundraiser, not a platform creator. And Howard Dean is not likely to satisfy these deep-rooted Democratic requirements in the eyes of the voting delegates. As a consequence Dean is unlikely to win the nomination.
Sad to say, hope for the Democrats is not on the way, regardless of who wins the DNC position next month.
Joshua Frank is author of the forthcoming book, Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, to be released in early 2005 by Common Courage Press. He can be reached at: [email protected].
* No Time for Democracy: This is an Emergency!
* Homes Destroyed, Death Toll Mounts: Where's Kerry?
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[WM]Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has done more to define later generation’s ideas about who Crawford was than perhaps any other movie that she was actually in. Unfortunately, most of those ideas center around Crawford’s supposed feud with co-star Bette Davis, which began as a marketing ploy and turned into something quasi-real - or, at least as real as certain celebrity “feuds” of today.
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[WM]There is no easy option for Northern Ireland after Brexit.
Deciding on post-Brexit border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic is becoming an issue for which the phrase "the devil is in the detail" could have been coined. Finding a satisfactory solution that delivers a border flexible enough not to damage international trade and commerce and doesn’t undermine the spirit, or the letter, of the Good Friday Agreement settlement is foxing Whitehall’s brightest.
The dial seemed to have settled on David Davis’s suggestion that there could be a "digital border" with security cameras and pre-registered cargo as a preferred alternative to a "hard border" replete with checkpoints and watchtowers.
However the Brexit secretary’s suggestion has been scotched by the new Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, who says electronic solutions are "not going to work". Today’s Times quotes him saying that "any barrier or border on the island of Ireland in my view risks undermining a very hard-won peace process" and that there is a need to ensure the "free movement of people and goods and services and livelihoods".
The first is to ignore Dublin (and just about everybody in Northern Ireland for that matter) and institute a hard border along the 310-mile demarcation between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Given it takes in fields, rivers and forests it’s pretty unenforceable without a Trump-style wall. More practically, it would devastate trade and free movement. Metaphorically, it would be a powerful symbol of division and entirely contrary to the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. The Police Federation in Northern Ireland has also warned it would make police officers "sitting ducks for terrorists". Moreover, the Irish government will never agree to this course. With the EU in their corner, there is effectively zero chance of this happening.
The second option is to actually keep Northern Ireland inside the EU: offering it so-called "special status". This would avoid the difficulty of enforcing the border and even accord with the wishes of 56 per cent of the Northern Irish electorate who voted to Remain in the EU. Crucially, it would see Northern Ireland able to retain the £600m a year it currently receives from the EU. This is pushed by Sinn Fein and does have a powerful logic, but it would be a massive embarrassment for the British Government and lead to Scotland (and possibly London?) demanding similar treatment.
The third option is that suggested by the Irish government in the Times story today, namely a soft border with customs and passport controls at embarkation points on the island of Ireland, using the Irish Sea as a hard border (or certainly a wet one). This option is in play, if for no other reason than the Irish government is suggesting it. Again, unionists will be unhappy as it requires Britain to treat the island of Ireland as a single entity with border and possibly customs checks at ports and airports. There is a neat administrate logic to it, but it means people travelling from Northern Ireland to "mainland" Britain would need to show their passports, which will enrage unionists as it effectively makes them foreigners.
Unpalatable as that would be for unionists, the fourth option is simply to recognise that Northern Ireland is now utterly anomalous and start a proper conversation about Irish reunification as a means to address the border issue once and for all. This would see both governments acting as persuaders to try and build consent and accelerate trends to reunify the island constitutionally. This would involve twin referendums in both Northern Ireland and the Republic (a measure allowed for in the Good Friday Agreement). Given Philip Hammond is warning that transitional arrangements could last three years, this might occur after Brexit in 2019, perhaps as late as the early 2020s, with interim arrangements in the meantime. Demographic trends pointing to a Catholic-nationalist majority in Northern Ireland would, in all likelihood require a referendum by then anyway. The opportunity here is to make necessity the mother of invention, using Brexit to bring Northern Ireland’s constitutional status to a head and deal decisively with the matter once and for all.
In short, ministers have no easy options, however time is now a factor and they will soon have to draw the line on, well, drawing the line.
Kevin Meagher is a former special adviser at the Northern Ireland Office and author of "A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable and how it will come about"
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[WM]Camp Laughing Loon 100th anniversary/reunion, noon to 4 p.m. July 28, 52 Laughing Loon Lane, East Waterboro. Past and present campers, staff and families are invited. Attendees are asked to bring a lunch, swimsuit and towel. Anniversary cake will be served and bottled water provided. Contact is Liz LaFountain at 885-1331.
Portland High School Class of 1948 70th reunion, social hour from 11 a.m. to noon Sept. 14, followed by luncheon at Clarion Hotel, 1230 Congress St., Portland. Ordering from menu. For reservations, call Art Smith at 883-3731.
Portland High School Class of 1965 reunion luncheon buffet, 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Aug. 4. DiMillo’s Restaurant, Commercial Street, Portland. $31. Contact Cathy (Banks) Harrington at 887-9045 or [email protected] Register by July 27.
Portland High School Class of 1973 45th reunion, 5 to 10 p.m. Aug. 4. DiMillo’s Restaurant, Commercial Street, Portland. $40. Contacts: Joni Gordon Beliveau at [email protected]; Dana Neuts at [email protected]; Val Grzyb Stefanski at 878-3007; and Gloria Giordano Lax at 892-2932. Mail checks to: Val Grzyb Stefanski, 115 Blackstrap Road, Falmouth, ME 04105.
Portland High School Class of 1978 40th reunion, 1 p.m. Aug. 25, Casablanca Cruises. $20. Tickets available online. Lunch on your own at Porthole Restaurant at 11 a.m., followed by a tour of Portland High School.
South Portland High School Class of 1948 70th reunion, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 11. DiMillo’s Restaurant, Commercial Street, Portland. RSVP by Aug. 29. For planning or more details, call Bob MacVane at 657-3856.
South Portland High School Class of 1983 35th reunion, 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 4, Two Lights State Park group site, 7 Tower Drive, Cape Elizabeth. Featuring music, activities and a meal. Cost is $10 to $20+. Donations appreciated . RSVP required by July 28. Contact is [email protected],org.
97th annual reunion, Second (Indianhead) Division Association of Olivia, North Carolina, is searching for members who served in the Army 2nd Infantry Division to attend a planned 97th reunion. Sept. 19-23 in Jacksonville, Florida. Contact Mike Davino at [email protected] or 919-498-1910, or go to 2ida.org/2018-reunion.
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[WM]Friends, we've gathered today to say, Yes! Yes to not just the good things about Memphis, but the BEST things about Memphis. The things that make you the happiest to live here. The best taco and the best vet and the best local band. Yes!
The art in this issue was designed by Memphis Flyer Graphic Designer Jeremiah Matthews to bring to mind video games — of the '80s zam! pop! wow! sort. Did you know in the Ms. Pac-Man game, the ghosts can go into the center square? We've seen it with our own two eyes. We were always the type of player who ate all the pills leaving us vulnerable to the ghosts. But you can go into that square if you're really good. If you're the BEST.
Shall we drop the quarter in the slot? Let's all play. Let's all get into that square. Game Over? No, it's Game On. Yes!
A few things to note about this issue. We got the biggest number of voters ever this year. We thank you, as the Best of Memphis wouldn't be so good — actually, the BEST — without you. A lot of people worked on this issue. It was written by Jackson Baker, Julia Baker, Olivia Bates, Samuel X. Cicci, Shara Clark, Chris Davis, Jesse Davis, Michael Donahue, Susan Ellis, Michael Finger, Alex Greene, Chris McCoy, Toby Sells, Maya Smith, Jon Sparks, and Bruce VanWyngarden. It was designed by Carrie Beasley, with images by Justin Fox Burks.
We thank our advertisers as always, because without them, this paper wouldn't be free to you each week.
A BOM designation means the winner won by a vast majority of votes.
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[WM]ROCK CREEK -- From calling in Craig Robinson to host the Hollywood-themed 20th annual gala this Saturday, to implementing a new strategic plan, the Washington County Museum is exploring all avenues in a quest to become a community focal point.
The transformation started with a renovation to the building on the Portland Community College Rock Creek campus in 2007. A year later, the board of directors hired interim director Sam Shogren with a mission for the museum to offer a more diverse array of programs and events incorporating art, culture and history.
The Washington County Historical Society and Museum then became the Washington County Museum.
With the help of Shogren and consultant, Susan Suran, community interviews and surveys were conducted to get an understanding of the people the museum serves.
"Really what's driving the transformation is recognition by the board of the transformation in Washington County," Shogren said.
Increasing minority populations is a reason behind programs like the Latino Mobile Museum – a traveling exhibit that aims to teach local children about the history of Latinos in the county, he said.
In July, the museum officially partnered with Print Arts Northwest, which was struggling to survive. In what PAN interim director Barbara Mason calls a "natural" partnership, the lobby of the museum was converted into an art gallery for monthly exhibits. Now on the third Thursday of each month, the community is invited to sip wine at exhibit openings.
The museum hosts Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts two Saturdays a month and holds a Crossroads Lecture on regional and cultural history every third Wednesday.
Shogren said museum visitation has increased since his arrival. In 2008, 1,666 visitors walked through the museum doors and so far, 2,455 people have visited this year.In September, the first free Family Day lured in more than 200 people, who Shogren said came from all throughout the Portland metro area. The monthly Family Day events are being funded in part by a grant from the PGE Foundation.
Museum membership has also increased in the past year, in fact, it's doubled, he said. As of Jan. 1, the museum had 118 members. Eight months later, that number jumped to 314 members, Shogren said.
And those members are donating more money than ever before.
Shogren said he's seen a significant portion of members who donated between $30 and $50 last year bump up their gift to the "supporter" level to $100 or more.
Last year, members donated a total of $1,252 to support the annual gala and with just a few days before this year's event kicks off, donations have already reached $4,470, he said.
"Despite the economy, our members are making a bigger investment in the museum," Shogren said.
Tickets are selling well for Saturday's annual benefit, featuring Oregon State University basketball Coach Craig Robinson acting as master of ceremonies.
Proceeds from of the gala titled "A Swank Affair: Lights, Camera, Action!" which is sponsored by Reser's Fine Foods, will help finance the museum's educational programs and events.
With tickets priced at $150 a person and $270 a couple, the museum's programs should also be fairing well.
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[WM]Now is the time to build your dream home and hangar at the prestigious Mogollon Airpark (AZ82). This heavily treed 0.47 acre corner VIEW lot has direct taxiway access. Utilities including electric, water and phone/DSL are available on the property. Local builder recommendations available.At 6,658 MSL it is the perfect fly-in escape from the summer heat or enjoy all 4 seasons. We look forward to seeing you at the Mogollon Air Park, Arizona's finest and friendliest residential aviation destinations.
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[WM]March 30, 2007: While the users of suicide bombers may not have noticed, the track record of such tactics shows that it doesn't work. In fact, this particular weapon actually backfires. Consider the facts.
The Tamil separatists of Sri Lanka (the LTTE) pioneered the modern use of suicide bombers over twenty years ago. The LTTE was particularly effective at attacking senior politicians and security officials. But each attack just made their opponents angrier. The LTTE is now being defeated, partly by an enraged Sri Lankan population, and partly dissention and demoralization within their own ranks.
Hizbollah was the next to pick up on suicide bombers. While Hizbollah claims to represent the Shia minority in Lebanon, it has brought itself increasing resistance from the majority of Lebanese by acting in support for foreign nations. Actually, Hizbollah has largely abandoned suicide bombing, apparently noting the downside of the tactic.
Palestinian terrorists adopted the use of suicide bombing against Israel in 2000. The Israelis eventually developed tactics that defeated this weapon, The Palestinian attacks destroyed the substantial support within Israel for a Palestinian peace deal, and increased support for stronger measures against Palestinian terrorism. The Palestinian terrorists are still at it, although many Palestinians admit that the tactic has failed, and been counterproductive.
Al Qaeda also adopted suicide bomber tactics, particularly in Iraq. This turned out to be a major error. So many Moslems were killed, particularly women and children, that Arab public opinion turned against al Qaeda. Even Sunni Arabs in Iraq have been fighting al Qaeda, despite the fact that al Qaeda is committing all this mayhem in the name of Sunni Arabs.
Al Qaeda began using suicide bombers in Pakistan four years ago, and were promptly taken apart by an enraged Pakistani government, with much public support. This, despite many Islamic conservatives in the government. Al Qaeda was largely driven out of most of Pakistan, and confined to the tribal areas along the Afghan border. Here, the Taliban had a lot of influence, and al Qaeda has convinced the Taliban to support a suicide bomber campaign in Afghanistan. In the last six months there have been nearly 80 suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan, over fifty percent more than in the previous six months. This campaign has been even less successful than previous ones. The Taliban do not have the experienced support personnel (bomb makers and bomber handlers) to make most of the attacks successful by any measure. Meanwhile, most of the victims are Afghan civilians. Naturally, Afghans see these foreigners (Afghans are difficult to recruit as suicide bombers) as murderers who do not have Afghan interests at heart.
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[WM]Many in the media and tech industry see Uber’s decision to sell its Chinese business unit to rival Didi Chuxing as a failure for the U.S. ride-hailing giant. It’s easy to believe that the sale of Uber China’s operations to its closest rival is a face-saving exercise, an inevitable outcome for a U.S. company that tried to beat the odds and succeed in China.
But the more you chew over the finer points of the deal, the more it looks like an astute piece of business for both parties.
Don’t believe that this deal was created in haste. The rumor of a merger had been circulating for a month — with both sides denying it — and one source close to negotiations told TechCrunch that the two parties had tried to engineer a deal two previous times without success. So it was third time lucky but, more importantly, ongoing discussions suggest that this is more than Uber saving face — this is an alliance.
Likewise, don’t believe that Didi acted out of kindness. Didi showed it can raise capital easily when it closed a colossal $7.3 billion funding round that even included money from Apple. It could have let Uber continue to spend billions in China and wither, but it wanted to remove its threat from China and perhaps elsewhere. This was two-way; not merely a tactical Uber exit.
So, how does the deal play out?
Firstly, and most obviously, Uber swaps its capital-intensive business unit in China that its own CEO said was costing it $1 billion per year, for a (potentially) near-20 percent stake in the country’s dominant ride-sharing company, valued at $35 billion. That’s a near-11 fold increase on Didi’s valuation when it was formed by a merger in 2015.
But there’s certain to be a lot more growth.
Earlier this summer, Li Zijian, senior director for international strategy at Didi, estimated that his company is taking just 1.1 percent of China’s taxi market. China’s new regulations, which will legalize Uber and Didi from November, combined with this merger are sure to mean that Didi’s business grows multiples more — all with Uber as its largest single shareholder.
That stake not only allows Uber to move towards a much-anticipated IPO by removing the China cash burn from its balance sheet, but it is likely to be a very lucrative holding in a business with vast potential to grow. Even if Didi has so far denied reports of IPO plans of its own.
There are some who argue that Uber could have saved time and money and simply invested in Didi earlier if it wanted this kind of financial return potential. For one thing, it would have needed to choose between Didi Kuaidi and Didi Dache, which eventually merged. But, more than that, it is foolish to believe that Didi Chuxing would have grown into the company that it is today without rivalry from Uber.
Uber, for example, pioneered peer-to-peer in China when it introduced People’s Uber in late 2014. It hadn’t been done before at scale. Didi was unprepared and late to the party, introducing its take on the service some six months later. The company started out working exclusively with licensed taxis, and this example shows that competition with Uber clearly sharpened its business and helped shape its growth.
The real negative here looks to be for Didi’s allies: Lyft in the U.S., Ola in India and Grab in Southeast Asia.
The four companies formed a coalition, dubbed the ‘Anti-Uber Alliance’, last year for business synergies such as enabling users to roam between services when they travel, and sharing know-how. Alongside that, Didi made investments in its three allies: putting $100 million in Lyft, and contributing undisclosed minority amounts to Ola’s $500 million round last year, and Grab’s most recent $350 million raise one year ago.
While it often seemed like a PR play, the coalition does give Didi’s cohorts solidarity and support, and likely increased confidence to investors, all of which is important when you are battling a global giant like Uber, which is seemingly capable of raising billions in fresh funding on a whim.
Well, that alliance looks uncertain at best, or messy at worst, following Uber’s deal with Didi.
Not only has Didi struck a deal with the sworn enemy and given it a sizable chunk of its business, but it made an undisclosed investment in Uber’s global business which Bloomberg pegged at $1 billion. That’s a drop in the ocean for Uber given the numbers it has raised, but, if the figure is correct, then that investment is multiples larger than the money Didi put into its fellow alliance members.
Not only that, but Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will sit on the Didi board, no less, while Didi Chairman Cheng Wei will join the Uber board.
Many, including yours truly, saw the alliance and those Didi investments as a possible first step to acquisitions to expand Didi overseas as and when it saw fit. But this deal with Uber throws all of that into contention. Who is to say that, in Southeast Asia, for example, Didi will back Grab with any vigor now that it is also aligned with Uber. It could let the market play out and then befriend the company that wins.
That’s a hypothetical scenario, of course, but it was unthinkable prior to yesterday.
Grab was bullish on the news, with CEO Anthony Tan coming out positively before the deal was even confirmed. Tan said in a company-wide memo that we obtained that Uber’s exit was proof a regional rival could defeat Uber.
“They’ve lost once, and we will make them lose again,” he told his staff.
Fighting words indeed, but the conditions that forced Uber’s exit from China simply don’t exist in Southeast Asia which weakens the comparison. The subsidies war is almost certainly multiples more modest than China, and Uber is only just getting round to putting the pedal to the floor in the region.
While Tan publicly rallied his troops, you’d imagine that he was privately disappointed at the way this incident has played out.
Lyft, for one, was more measured with its comment on the Uber-Didi deal.
Ola of India declined multiple requests to comment publicly on the deal.
It’ll take some time before the smoke clears and we understand more about how this deal impacts the global ride-sharing economy, but right now it looks like Uber is sitting a lot prettier than many people believe.
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[WM]Welcome to my blog!! Here’s a little bit about me.
I’m a feminist and a Christian social ethicist. I studied at Union Theological Seminary in NY with this amazing woman, Beverly Wildung Harrison. She pioneered the field of feminist Christian ethics and she taught me how to do ethics and how to be a good mentor and a passionate and caring colleague. I’ve written and edited several books which you can find on the “books” page.
In my most recent book, Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice (Beacon Press, 2018), I outline how the justification framework shaping current American discussion of abortion is fatally flawed and argue that the framework of Reproductive Justice offers a more ethically robust opportunity for public dialogue. Buy it, read it, study it in your church or with friends. Then, let me know what you think!
What do I do? Well, lots of things but I get paid to be a Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University in NC. I’m starting my 18th year this fall and feel incredibly fortunate to have a great job at a great institution. This photo is of a Wealth and Poverty course that I teach during our three-week winter intensive where I take students to NY for a week to visit the UN and to look at anti-poverty grassroots organizing in the City. I helped start a Poverty and Social Justice program at Elon and also teach environmental ethics and feminist and other liberation theologies.
I also am very active ecumenically. Ten points for Gryffindor if you can find me in this photo! It was taken at the most recent meeting of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission. I represent the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Faith and Order, which a commission of representatives from churches around the world that meet together to talk about issues that continue to divide us from one another. It is the only place where official representatives of Orthodox churches, Protestant churches, and the Roman Catholic church work together on issues of Christian unity.
I have been active in the international ecumenical movement for 25 years and am passionately committed to the WCC and the World Student Christian Federation. If you are a college student and a progressive Christian or progressive college student trying to figure out what you think about Christianity – you should definitely check on the Student Christian Movement (or SCM) in the US. Here is a photo of me and some colleagues at a recent SCM-North America event.
I’m an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the PCUSA and here you can see me with my family one Sunday when I preached, my husband played his guitar in the church band, our oldest daughter read the scripture, and our youngest lit the candles.
I’m a drinker of tea, a lover of wine, a cyclist, a mom, a wife, a daughter, and a seeker of justice. I’m a Christian who struggles with the history of Christianity and many of the people who claim to be Christians yet understand what that means in very different ways than I do.
I am passionately committed to inclusive language for all peoples and expansive language for God and I am always seeking worshipping communities that can speak to my deepest spiritual needs – inclusive language, progressive Christianity, and embodied justice. I am even lucky enough to find these spaces on rare and miraculous occasions, it’s how I continue to know there is a holy presence in the world.
In this blog, it is my fervent hope to think with you about what it means to live faithfully as a Progressive Christian in the world today. Seeking “to do justice” is how I understand my Christian calling in the world. I hope you will follow my blog and walk with me on this journey.
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[WM]Published: Dec. 31, 2018 at 09:13 a.m.
Updated: Dec. 31, 2018 at 01:51 p.m.
Steve Wilks is out after one season.
The Arizona head coach was fired by the Cardinals on Monday, the team announced. Wilks told his staff during a meeting that he expected to be fired before the Cardinals later made it official, a source told NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport.
During a news conference Monday, team owner Michael Bidwill said he has "a lot of confidence" in general manager Steve Keim, who echoed his boss's sentiments.
"I have confidence in myself to get this turned around," Keim said.
The expectation that Wilks would be one-and-done escalated in recent weeks as the Cardinals fell to 3-13.
Arizona owned the worst offense in the NFL in Wilks' first season, ranking last in points per game (14.1), total yards per game (241.6), passing yards per game (157.7) and rushing yards per game (83.9). Wilks fired offensive coordinator Mike McCoy midway through the season, but still, the struggles remained. Perhaps one of the coach's biggest mistakes was hiring a retread like McCoy in the first place.
If it was only the offense that took a step back with rookie quarterback Josh Rosen going through growing pains, perhaps a dismal first season could have been overlooked. However, Wilks' defense also cratered. The Cards' run defense went from allowing 89.6 yards per game and 12 rush TDs in 2017 to 154.9 yards per tilt and 25 rush TDs in 2018.
Worse still were the reports from Arizona that players didn't play hard for Wilks and appeared to give up when the going got tough. If a head coach can't motivate players, his goose is cooked.
Wilks becomes the first one-and-done coach since Chip Kelly was fired by the San Francisco 49ers in 2016.
The 49-year-old Wilks should not find trouble landing a defensive coordinator gig should he so choose. Perhaps a return to Carolina, where Ron Rivera fired his DC this season, could be in order.
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[WM]- Both phones to have wireless charging?
Huawei will unveil its much-rumoured Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro smartphones on 16 October and yet another feature has seemingly been revealed ahead of time.
As well as hands-on images of what is thought to be the Pro, pictures of the front glass panels for both devices, and the posting of more specs than an optician's, an official FCC filing has been found for a wireless charger from the firm.
That points to the new phones potentially having glass backs rather than aluminium, as it is likely you will be able to charge them wirelessly.
The Huawei CP60 wireless charger has gained certification by the Federal Communications Commission - mandatory for technology destined to be sold in the US. It ensures the wireless performance complies with set standards and is safe.
Its appearance in an FCC document both confirm that the charger is real and that it is coming soon. Say, for example, 16 October.
What we can glean about the charger itself is that it supports 5V-12V 2A fast charging. And it looks to be powered itself through USB Type-C.
Other than that, it's fairly similar to many other Qi-chargers out there.
You can catch up with all the latest about the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro here: Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro specs, release date, rumours and news.
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[WM]Jerry Cao is a UX content strategist at the wireframing and prototyping app UXPin. For advice on how to conduct 30+ different types of usability tests, check out The Guide to Usability Testing.
Natural and near-natural tests minimize the amount of interference from the observer, who is more interested in what the user does of their own will. These tests are great for broad data, especially ethnographic, but sacrifice control in exchange for greater data validity.
Because the goal is to minimize interference from the study, natural tests are usually conducted remotely and without a moderator. The most common natural tests (A/B testing and field/diary studies) and near-natural tests (first-click tests and eye-tracking tests)— are intended to understand user behavior and attitudes as close as possible to reality.
In an A/B test, different groups of participants are presented with two choices or variations of an element. As explained in The Guide to Usability Testing, these are generally scientific tests, where only one variable differs, while the rest are controlled. Mostly conducted with websites to test if a certain layout, placement, or messaging will result in better conversions, A/B testing is considered a natural test because users are not notified nor provided a set of tasks.
Call to actions — This piece by Hubspot explains how Friendbuy more than doubled their response rate to their CTAs using A/B tests.
Headlines — In this A/B test, it was discovered that a single line of text for headlines increased signups by 38 percent compared to longer ones.
Forms — A unique style of form field input, the “Mad Libs” style, has been proven to increase conversions by 25-40 percent.
Pricing and promotional offers — Another A/B case study shows explicitly stating “it’s free” increased sign-up conversions by 28 percent.
Images on landing and product pages — A specific study involving A/B tests shows the surprising impact of using a human photo on conversion rates.
Amount of text/pages — show that users prefered a single-page checkout by 21.8 percent.
There are also other usability testing tools like Optimizely (great for everything) and Unbounce (more landing page focused) that make it extremely easy to get started with A/B testing. These usability tools handle the distribution and collection of data for you, so all you have to do is wait for the results. If you’re interested in a comprehensive list of website elements to test, you can also check out this detailed explanation of 71 things to A/B test.
Run both variations at the same time — Time is a control, so doing version A first and then version B later may skew the results. Running both tests simultaneously and evenly will ensure the most accurate results.
Test with enough people for statistical significance— As shown with this sample size calculator, you should test each variation with enough people for a 95 percent significance rate.
Test new users — Regular users will be confused if they see a new variation, especially if you ultimately choose not to use it. Plus, there’s the mere-exposure effect, in which people prefer what they’re used to.
Be consistent with variations on all pages — For example, if you are testing the placement of a call to action that appears on multiple pages, a visitor should see the same variation everywhere. Inconsistency will detract from accurate results, so don’t show variation A on page one and variation B on page two.
Tailor your test length to statistical significance — Cancelling the test too early will reduce accuracy. Decide your statistical significance, then you can use this test duration calculator to get a rough timeline. Many paid online usability tools (especially Optimizely) also have a feature for calculating optimum time based on the goals.
To see some of these best practices put to use, check out this site containing hundreds of free A/B test case studies. Hubspot also provides a highly visual and easily digestible 27-page guide to A/B testing.
In the late 2000s, Dr. Bob Bailey, UX Designer and Researcher, conducted a series of studies around what he called the “first click” concept. The results of the studies were surprising, and very advantageous to anyone looking to improve their website. As it turns out, for any given task, a user’s success rate is 87 percent as long as their first click is correct. If their first click was not correct, the chances for success fell to below 50 percent.
This type of usability testing is even more relevant if your site gets a large volume of search traffic — because your homepage probably won’t be the first page users find, first click testing should ideally be done across your entire site.
We would consider this a “near-natural” test because users are still assigned tasks (instead of just using the site for whatever purpose they please), but these tests are usually unmoderated and ran remotely in the comfort of the user’s home.
The test itself is simple, and can be conducted with online testing tools like Chalkmark by Optimal Workshop. The software presents the user with a screenshot and a task, and then records their first click. For example, as we discuss in User Testing & Design, we asked users to find a local mechanic on Yelp and found that 24 percent of them first clicked on the Search bar (suggesting that the existing information architecture may not be clear enough).
Write clear task scenarios — Just like you would for a scripted usability test, make sure the participant is thinking about how to solve a problem instead of just where to click. Detail isn’ required, but clarity is.
Define the best paths to success — Start from the homepage and plot all possible paths that will correctly accomplish each task.
Time each task — A 90 percent first click rate on the correct label might deceptively indicate that your navigation is effective, unless you timed the test and saw it took an average of three minutes to make that first click.
Measure user confidence — After each task, you can ask participants to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 regarding their confidence of task completion. Any 3s and 4s will indicate navigation problems.
For more information on how a first click test might help, the customer experience newsletter Neo Insight wrote about the three biggest usability problems that first click testing can help solve.
It doesn’t get more “natural” than field and diary studies. Both are designed to observe a user as they behave naturally, without the interference of a testing process. The beauty of these tests is that the user never leaves their natural environment and are encouraged to act normally. The difference between the two is that field studies involve an observer going on location, and diary studies involve the participant recording their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
A field study provides data you can’t find anywhere else by letting you observe users in their own environment. Jared M. Spool, Founder of User Interface Engineering, believes that while standard usability tests can lead to valuable insights, the most powerful tool in the toolbox is the field study.
Witness real user behavior in their everyday lives — In an interview setting, a user may not be aware of how they behave or how they would talk about a product in their everyday lives. However, in the field study, these behaviors are witnessed without a need for explanation.
Understand the context for decisionmaking— Users aren’t always aware of how external factors, like timing for example, affect their decisions. Field studies mark the times and environments of the user, and their impact can be seen during the analysis of the data, even if the user themselves doesn’t know.
Scope out the competition — By observing how the user interacts with different products, you can start to notice similarities and differences, which will flesh out your data to enormous degrees.
The biggest downside is primarily the cost of organization and time required (they can last anywhere from a few weeks to several months). Workers have to leave the office for large periods of time, plus scheduling these studies can be troublesome.
However, if you still think field studies could help with your usability goals, take a look at this helpful list of tips from the Nielsen Norman Group, and you can also follow this process for field research that helped companies like Apple, Yahoo, DirecTV, and others.
A less-involved study of a user in their natural environment is the diary study. In this study, participants are asked to keep a diary and account for their experiences with a type of product or system. As Carine Lallemand, Researching Engineer and UX Scientist, explains in her piece for User Experience Magazine, the diary study is similar to surveys and interviews, yet is distinguished by its length and depth of user-generated research.
A diary study captures the expectations, mindsets, moods, and social contexts that affect the user experience. A diary study might reveal that a bad mood or criticism read on the web impacted the user’s assessment of the product experience, independent of the product itself.
Let’s say that you’re asked to improve a web application that helps product managers track progress. You could provide tape recorders and/or journals to five product managers and ask them to document anything odd or frustrating they experienced when using the application. After a few weeks, you would analyze the data and make specific recommendations.
Significance of participant — The quality of results depends on the quality of the participant. Because this takes a good deal of effort on their part, the participant’s commitment to the project influences the outcome whether positively or negatively. On top of that, the participant’s self-awareness, self-expression, and writing skill can all sway the results.
Training sessions — While it may sound like the participant acts independently, the truth is that a thorough training session is necessary to ensure the participant understands exactly what is expected before starting.
Analysis — The analysis of an entire diary is time-consuming, especially if it is hand-written.
Include contextual and open-ended questions in the writing prompt — Contextual questions like, “What prompted you to use the app?” give you direct insight, but open-ended questions like, “What would you have done differently in this situation?” can uncover new solutions.
Let users decide how to record themselves — Text, online photo galleries, voice recording, even Twitter can all work. It also helps the process feel more natural and makes participants less self-conscious.
Keep size in mind — The diary (whatever form) can be as small or large as needed. On paper, space for forty entries can be overwhelming, while ten might be more encouraging. That’s also why digital methods might be better since users can use as much space as they want.
For a more detailed explanation, complete with hypothetical examples, check out this extensive post by UserTesting and this list of Dos and Don’ts.
While diary and field studies let you see the context for how and why products are used in everyday life, an eye tracking test goes into almost microscopic detail.
An eye tracking test is just as it sounds, tracking a user’s eye movement, and more to the point where specifically they are looking. The eye tracking test is usually done in a lab environment in which hardware tracks eye movement, while heat mapping remotely tracks where users click (through software like CrazyEgg).
Users are predictable — As we can see by the eye tracking patterns above, people’s sight follows similar trends, allowing us to plan our visual layouts for the masses. In Web UI Best Practices, we explain how to lay out a site in accordance to the popular F pattern and Z patterns.
Users search pages differently depending on goals — A user’s eye pattern will differ depending on why they are searching a screen; for example, browsing and searching for something in particular have two different modes.
Users are drawn to visuals — Visuals like thumbnails or vibrant colors will attract a user’s attention more than plain text, so use this accordingly.
People ignore ads — In a phenomenon that Jakob Nielson calls “banner blindness,” people will neglect ads habitually, so online advertisers will have to work harder.
Unconventional products cause confusion — Being creative with the color of a link or the placement of your menu may set you apart from other sites, but it will also take the user longer to figure out how to use your product, which can be risky.
If you’re interested in using eye tracking to help your website, it’s a lot more achievable than it might seem. This instructive guide will explain how you can make eye tracking work for you. If you’re more interested in a more natural test, SumoMe explains how to run a heat map study based on over 1,000,000 tests that they’ve run.
Tests that observe the users in their natural (or near-natural) environments provide a specific type of data that other, more controlled tests can’t access. An A/B test lets you make decisions that are informed by more thorough and statistically significant results (since you have a huge sample size).
Similarly, field and diary studies can provide you with unique information about your target users — namely external factors such as timing, environment, mood, etc. — that more direct card sorting or tree testing cannot.
As for first click and eye tracking tests, they literally let you see your website as your users do, but make sure you run other types of tests for the right context. While each of the different test types has its own advantages and disadvantages, sometimes its best to mix-and-match them to achieve results more specific to you.
For explanations and practical tips for 30 different types of usability tests, check out the free 109-page Guide to Usability Testing. Best practices are included from companies like Apple, Buffer, DirecTV, and others.
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[WM]Hackers extracted lists of files from computers that they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyberattacks last week in the United States and South Korea, police in Seoul said Tuesday.
The attacks, in which floods of computers tried to connect to a single Web site at the same time to overwhelm the server, caused outages on prominent government-run sites in both countries.
The finding means that hackers not only used affected computers for Web attacks, but also attempted to steal information from them. That adds to concern that contaminated computers were ordered to damage their own hard disks or files after the Web assaults.
Still, the new finding does not mean information was stolen from attacked Web sites, such as those of the White House and South Korea's presidential Blue House, police said. It also does not address suspicions about North Korea's involvement, they said.
Police reached those conclusions after studying a malicious computer code in an analysis of about two dozen computers - a sample of the tens of thousands of computers that were infected with the virus that triggered the attacks, said An Chan-soo, a senior police officer investigating the cyberattacks. The officer said that only lists of files were extracted, not files themselves.
"It's like hackers taking a look inside the computers," An said. "We're trying to figure out why they did this."
Extracted file lists were sent to 416 computers in 59 countries, 15 of them in South Korea. Police have found some file lists in 12 receiver computers and are trying to determine whether hackers broke into those systems and stole the lists, An said.
Investigators have yet to identify the hackers or determine for sure where they operated from. Dozens of high-profile U.S. and South Korean Web sites were targeted.
There have been no new Web attacks since the last wave launched Thursday evening.
South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, lowered the country's cyberattack alert Monday as affected Web sites returned to normal.
North Korea is suspected of involvement. The spy agency told lawmakers last week that a North Korean military research institute had been ordered to destroy the South's communications networks, local media reported.
The agency said in a statement Saturday that it has "various evidence" of North Korean involvement, but cautioned it has yet to reach a final conclusion.
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[WM]Sudan: Military Leadership Challenged by Ongoing Protests | Democracy Now!
In Sudan, the head of the newly installed military council resigned Friday, just one day after he was sworn in following the ouster of longtime President Omar al-Bashir. The ouster came after months of public protests demanding al-Bashir’s resignation. The military’s chief of staff also stepped down from his post Friday. Protesters celebrated the news and mounted calls for the creation of a civilian transitional council, rejecting the military’s proposal to lead a two-year pre-election transition period.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has called on Sudanese authorities to release anyone arrested for demonstrating against the government. It also called on Sudan to cooperate with the International Criminal Court , which issued an arrest warrant in 2005 for ousted leader al-Bashir over possible war crimes. Sudan’s military council said they would not hand over al-Bashir to the ICC but instead would put him on trial in Sudan. Local reports emerged Monday that other top officials from al-Bashir’s government were arrested by the military council and could also face prosecution.
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[WM]MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - As our world continues to advance with the help of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has generated a lot of buzz lately in healthcare. AI healthcare providers share the goal of treating more patients, cutting down the cost of healthcare, and ultimately aim to achieve better outcomes.
Artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry uses human-created algorithms through a computer-driven system to break down complex medical data, and helps with decision support around treatment. Healthcare providers can then easily sift through large amounts of data to identify infections sooner, improve preventative medicine and enhance diagnostics. Results from an Accenture report estimated that AI applications in healthcare could save up to $150 billion annually for the U.S. healthcare economy by 2026.
Local hospitals like Conway Medical Center are already using forms of AI in their electronic medical records, such as a sepsis monitoring system used to alert doctors and nurses. With these advancements in the healthcare industry, doctors say it can reduce human error and boost overall outcomes.
“It can be a second set of eyes. The other thing you have to look at too is when we’re looking at big data. We can have computers that can read thousands of studies in seconds," said Dr. Paul Richardson, chief medical officer at Conway Medical Center.
In the next few months, Richardson says Conway Medical Center will launch robotic surgery in several departments. The robots will still have a human touch - surgeons will be able to direct movements of the robot, resulting in faster recovery times and fewer risks. Additionally, in the next few weeks, the hospital will launch a 3T MRI scanner, which Richardson says is a higher resolution MRI that will allow staff to conduct high-tech imaging studies.
“My hope for the future is - our number one goal is to deliver the best healthcare to each patient every time, and if we can utilize or leverage technology to do that, then I think we’re all the better for it," said Richardson.
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[WM]Aldar Investment Properties, a fully owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s biggest listed developer Aldar Properties, is commencing a round of fixed-income investor meetings for the issuance of an Islamic bond to repay its $750 million (Dh2.75 billion) existing sukuk.
“The objective of these [investor] meetings is to issue a fixed-rate US dollar-denominated sukuk (the New Aldar Investments Sukuk) with a tenure of five to 10 years,” the company said in a statement to Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, where its shares are traded.
Aldar will meet investors in the Middle East, Europe and Asia it said, without disclosing the size or the timing of the potential sukuk issue, adding that the outcome of the transaction is subject to market conditions.
Earlier this month the company announced the spinning-off Dh20bn of revenue-generating assets into Aldar Investments, a new entity able to raise capital independently. About 5,000 residential units and 500,000 square metres of retail and commercial space will be transferred into the new vehicle over the coming weeks, along with Dh6bn of existing debt.
Before the new vehicle was established, Aldar comprised two parts – a real estate development business and an asset management business whose revenues came predominantly from residential and commercial rents.
Aldar is also launching a tender offer for the repayment of $750m sukuk, which is due to mature on December 3 of this year.
“The offer is being made as part of Aldar’s proactive liability management strategy to optimise its debt profile and aggregate costs of funding,” the company said.
The offer will be funded through the proceeds of the potential new issue, and the outcome of the tender offer is contingent on the successful pricing and completion of the new sukuk.
The tender offer is expected to close on September 26. First Abu Dhabi Bank, JP Morgan Securities and Standard Chartered Bank are the managers for the deal, Aldar said.
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[WM]West Ham manager Manuel Pellegrini has confirmed he hopes to sign Samir Nasri in January and insisted Marko Arnautovic is going nowhere.
Midfielder Nasri, who played for Pellegrini at Manchester City, is training with the Hammers to build up his fitness following an 18-month doping ban.
Pellegerini needs reinforcements to his injury-hit West Ham squad and he will offer Nasri a contract if the 31-year-old Frenchman can get up to speed.
"Samir Nasri is working here with us," said Pellegrini.
Arnautovic, meanwhile, is the subject of fresh transfer speculation after his brother and representative hinted during the international break that the Austrian forward, 29, should be at a club higher up the table.
But Arnautovic is a key figure at West Ham with five goals to his name this season and Pellegrini is determined not to lose him.
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[WM]▪ The wine salesperson on the floor might actually have tasted the wines and be able to point out intelligently which ones are fit for tonight’s dinner and which ones should be socked away.
▪ Some wine critics note or imply whether a wine be drunk now or held.
▪ Other hints for telling whether a wine is best consumed now or is meant to age: Screwcaps indicate a wine is intended for early consumption, while corks indicate that the wine should be aged. Also, the lower the alcohol the more likely the wine should be drunk young. Furthermore, price can be a guide; the higher it is, the longer the wine likely will age, or at least that’s the implication. There are, however, enough exceptions to these guidelines to send consumers back to the advice of a knowing wine merchant.
What put me in mind of two types of gold-medal sticker was a class of cabernet sauvignons our panel judged at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in Cloverdale earlier this year. There were 66 of them, all priced between $39 and $43. Yes, we were lucky, for cabernets in that price niche should be models of varietal typicity, energy, balance and length. We gave 16 of them gold or double-gold medals, the latter being granted when all judges of a panel agree that a wine merits gold.
Le Casque Wines 2012 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($40): Get this: Our best-of-class cabernet sauvignon came from Le Casque Wines in little ol’ Loomis. While Le Casque is identified largely with varietal wines and blends based on Rhone Valley grape varieties grown in the Sierra foothills, owner-winemaker Kevin Stevenson knows where to go for cabernet sauvignon, and that’s Napa Valley. The result is a 2012 that comes down proudly and expressively on the herbal side of the cabernet spectrum, a well-proportioned throwback to the days when Napa Valley cabernets could be drunk immediately as well as laid down to age handsomely.
Ecluse Wines 2013 Paso Robles Lock Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($40): For its silken texture and seductive cherry flavor, this entry won a rare spontaneous double-gold medal. Usually, a double-gold is a negotiated medal; that is, a panelist who thought it warranted silver but not gold had to be persuaded of the wine’s grandeur. With this elegant and balanced interpretation there was no question that it deserved gold.
DeWitt Family Wines 2012 Sonoma County Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($42): Cabernet sauvignon out of Alexander Valley long has been recognized for its dark lush fruit, supple tannins and graceful presentation, characteristics captured here in a readily accessible representative. It was one of six double-gold medal winners in the class.
Speedy Creek Winery 2013 Knights Valley Speedy Creek Cabernet Sauvignon ($40): After a stretch of especially rigid cabernets during the judging, this entry was embraced not only for its vivid fruit but its tangy acidity, modest tannins and all-around drinkability.
Hood Crest Winery 2013 Columbia Valley Waving Tree Cabernet Sauvignon ($42): From northern Oregon comes a cabernet that while lithe in build nonetheless is hung with ample sweet fruit that is welcoming at first sip and refuses to give up its embrace until long after the last swallow.
Boatique Winery 2012 Lake County Red Hills Cabernet Sauvignon ($40): This is why the volcanic soils of the Red Hills rising from the west shore of Clear Lake are generating so much buzz – a cabernet sauvignon complex, graceful and persistent, with a note of sarsaparilla and the kind of firm tannic build that will have it drinking best in five or so years.
Longboard Vineyard 2013 Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon ($42): In my notes, I call this “a conversation piece,” code for a certain alluring eccentricity. It won’t be everyone’s cup of cabernet sauvignon, primarily for its young stiffness and brooding attitude, but lurking behind all that is fresh dark fruit, spice, silk and a lingering finish, all of which is bound to build upon itself with a few years in the cellar.
Vina Moda 2013 Sierra Foothills Cabernet Sauvignon ($40): Though gold-medal cabernets out of the Sierra foothills are rare, and double-gold medals even more rare, which this was, the Vina Moda won over the panel for its faithful juiciness, insinuations of tea and complications of earthiness and oak. It’s hard right now, but should continue to evolve into a wine of suppleness and balance.
V. Sattui Winery 2012 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($39): V. Sattui is recognized for wines faithful to breeding, accessibility and value, and while this cherry- and oak-saturated release can be enjoyed right now with appropriately marbled beef, it should evolve into a more open take on the genre with a few years of age.
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