text:
The employees of the South Kingstown Animal Shelter have successfully completed the Fear Free Shelters Program.
Founded in 2016, Fear Free provides online education to veterinary professionals, pet professionals, animal welfare communities, and pet owners. The courses are developed and written by highly respected veterinary and pet experts including boarded veterinary behaviorists, boarded veterinary anesthesiologists, pain experts, boarded veterinary internists, veterinary technicians (behavior), experts in shelter medicine, animal training, grooming, boarding, and more.
With all the false (and harmful!) pet information on the internet, Fear Free aims to keep veterinary healthcare teams and pet professionals at the forefront as the true pet health experts. By closely listening to the needs of the profession and those of the new generation of pet owners, Fear Free has become one of the single most transformative initiatives in the history of companion animal practice, providing unparalleled education on emotional wellbeing, enrichment, and the reduction of fear, anxiety, and stress in pets and improving the experience of every human and pet involved. In addition, Fear Free offers a free program to assist you, the pet owner, in maintaining Fear Free Happy Homes for your adopted pet.
Show All Answers
Please complete the Town's Adoption Application, and contact the Animal Shelter for further details. Note that all applicants are carefully screened.
See our animals available for adoption on our Petfinder page.
At this time the South Kingstown Animal Shelter is not accepting volunteers.
Payments & donations are accepted in cash, checks or money orders can be made payable to the Town of South Kingstown.
The Pets for Patriots Program works with nationwide partners including shelter and veterinary networks, military and veteran organizations, and the public to end animal homelessness in the US and give military veterans and their families the greatest "thank you" of all: the love of a companion dog or cat. Pets for Patriots values the lives of both the most vulnerable and heroic among us.
Veteran benefits:
• Receive discounts or other specials when you adopt from a Pets for Patriots shelter partner
• Save on your new Pats for Patriots pet's ongoing medical care with discounted fees from a Pets for Patriots veterinary partners
• Enjoy Pets for Patriots-only savings on everyday supplies, pet insurance, food and more
• Receive a $150 'welcome home' gift card to help start life with your new Pets for Patriots pet
• Get the unconditional love of a companion dog or cat


text:
[Reuters] reports that BlackBerry is working with at least two car manufacturers to develop a remote malware scanner for vehicles, On finding something wrong the program would then tell drivers to pull over if they were in critical danger.
The service would be able to install over-the-air patches to idle cars and is in testing phase by Aston Martin and Range Rover. The service could be active as early as next year, making BlackBerry around $10 a month per vehicle.
Since the demise of BlackBerry in the mobile phone sector, they've been hard at work refocusing their attention on new emerging markets. Cars are already rolling computers, and now they're becoming more and more networked with Bluetooth and Internet connections. This obviously leaves cars open to new types of attacks as demonstrated by [Charlie Miller] and [Chris Valasek]'s hack that uncovered vulnerabilities in Jeeps and led to a U.S. recall of 1.4 million cars.
BlackBerry seem to be hedging their bets on becoming the Kingpin of vehicle anti-virus. But do our cars really belong on the Internet in the first place?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
by Matt Getty
The Durden Athletic Training Center opened to rave reviews this spring as Red Devils began using its more than 22,000 square feet of strength-training, locker, sports-medicine, meeting and event space. With dedicated locker rooms for field hockey, football, and men's and women's lacrosse, the new building—named in honor of William G. '71 and Elke Durden—takes a huge step forward from the 1960s-era facilities previously used at Biddle Field.
"The combination of the weight room and sports-medicine facilities allows the trainers to create a cohesive rehab program that would not have been possible at the old Biddle building," says Brett Whelan '14, women's lacrosse team captain. "The equipment is not only of a better quality, but it is more varied in purpose and plays a huge role in getting athletes back on the field faster."
Rehabilitation tools include therapeutic whirlpools, Intelect electrical modality machines that increase circulation to aid in recovery and Game Ready cold-therapy compression systems to accelerate healing. Add to that Elite Hammer Strength racks and other resources for building explosive power as well as flat-screen monitors for film study in each of the locker rooms, and the facility provides everything student-athletes need under one roof.
"The weight room is a huge upgrade from what we used to have," says Cole Ahnell '15, football team captain. "The locker rooms also have a lot more gathering space, which gives them a more communal feel. I can't wait to move in for the upcoming season."
Built thanks to a $6-million leadership gift from Sam Rose '58 and Julie Walters as well as gifts from roughly 130 alumni, parents and friends, the Durden Center also commemorates Dickinson's 1958 national-championship lacrosse team, on which Rose played. A permanent exhibition honoring the team was installed in early April and was on display for the building's April 12 dedication.
"This is about more than a new building and upgraded facilities," says Les Poolman, director of athletics. "When we celebrate the Durden Center, we're celebrating the foundation of the future of Dickinson athletics. We're celebrating Dickinson's commitment to future Dickinsonians, student-athletes, coaches and alumni."
Learn more about the Durden Center Dedication and Red & White Day.
Read more from the spring 2014 issue of Dickinson Magazine.
Published April 22, 2014


text:
Pears with Chocolate Maple Mousse Serves 6 Low-fat tofu adds protein and richness to the creamy chocolate mousse filling in this juicy pear dessert.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Chilling Time: 30 minutes
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup Dutch cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 orange
3 large, ripe Red Bartlett pears
1. Drain the tofu and place it in the center of a clean kitchen towel. Draw the corners of the towel together, then twist the towel around the tofu to form a ball. Squeeze as much liquid as possible from the tofu by twisting the towel. Transfer the tofu to a processor or blender and puree until absolutely smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. This will take at least 1-1/2 minutes of processing.
2. Grate 1 teaspoon of orange rind into the tofu. Squeeze and strain the juice from the orange and place 3 tablespoons in a small bowl. Set the rest aside. Stir the maple syrup, cocoa and vanilla into the 3 tablespoons of orange juice and mix well. Add the cocoa mixture to the tofu and blend completely. Chill this mousse, tightly covered, for at least 30 minutes or up to 24 hours.
3. Cut each pear in half lengthwise. Remove core then slice each half lengthwise into six wedges. Spread each pear half out in a fan shape on a dessert plate. Brush cut surfaces with reserved orange juice to prevent discoloration. Dollop mousse on plate and serve immediately.


text:
Patch 5.0.4 on Live Servers This Week
The Mists of Pandaria systems patch will be going live this week and it brings a lot of changes! Make sure your Background Downloader has downloaded the files so you aren't stuck waiting.
- New Talent System - Now has 3 talents per tier, with 6 tiers.
- Class Changes - List of class changes and short overview guides.
- New Ability Animations - So shiny!
- Experience Required to Level Changed - Reduced amount of XP to level to 85.
- 11th Character Slot - Unclear if it is coming in 5.0.4, but it will be for sure in Mists of Pandaria.
- AoE Looting - Loot all of the corpses in an area around you with one click!
- Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance Revamp - New lower level versions of the dungeons.
- Dungeon and Raid Valor Reward Changes and Currency Conversion
- Account Wide Achievements, Mounts, and Pets
- Simplified Buff and Debuff System
- Item and Stats Changes - Changes to expertise, Spell resistance, Resilience, and the stats on items.
- New Druid Forms - Armored forms for Incarnation and a new Travel Form.
- New Warlock Pets and Emotes
- Cross-Realm Zones - Play with friends on other realms, no more empty world!
- Interface Changes - New and easier to use interfaces, loot history, and more.
- Graphical Changes - Upgraded graphics slowing you down? Stop by the Computer Forum and talk about upgrades!
- Updated Addons - Find Patch 5.0.4 addons on Curse.
New Talent System
One of the biggest changes in this patch is the new talent system. This system removed the illusion of choice that was part of the old talent system by taking all of the mandatory talents and giving them to your class or specialization. Get your build ready with our new Talent Calculator on WoWDB!
Class Changes
Take a look at the updated skills on WoWDB, as well as the talents on our new Talent Calculator. Several of the forum members and mods have put together brief guides to help ease the transition to the new patch, so a big thanks to them!
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Wowpedia has compiled a nice long list of the changes made to each class in this patch. Be sure to check it out if you want to know every single change made to your class!
New Ability Animations
Many classes also got new ability animations! Note that these videos include all of the spells that had changed at the time, including Mists of Pandaria spells.
Experience Required to Level Changed
The experience required to level has been reduced for some levels, making it a good time to level up alts before Mists of Pandaria is released.
Level | Old XP Requirement | New XP Requirement |
1-9 | Old | Same |
10-39? | Old | (-20%) |
40-82 | Old | Same |
82-83 | 4,004,000 | 2,669,000 (-33%) |
83-84 | 5,203,400 | 3,469,000 (-33%) |
84-85 | 9,165,100 | 4,583,000 (-50%) |
Additional Character Slot
Patch 5.0.4 or the Mists of Pandaria release will add an 11th character slot!
AoE Looting
You will now be able to loot all of the corpses in an area around you with one click!
Scarlet Monastery Revamp
While we are waiting for the new level 90 Heroic versions of Scarlet Monastery, you can go and run the revamped lower level version! There are small new mechanics, changes, and new art that make the dungeon a much nicer experience than before.
Scholomance Revamp
While we are waiting for the new level 90 Heroic version of Scholomance, you can go and run the revamped lower level version! There are small new mechanics, changes, and new art that make the dungeon a much nicer experience than before.
Dungeon and Raid Valor Reward Changes
Currency Conversion
Account Wide Achievements
If you are curious if a specific achievement has account wide progress, check out the tooltip of the achievement on WoWDB.
Account Wide Mounts
Many mounts are now account wide! This means you can use the mount on any character on your Battle.net account. If the last time you read about this was this blue post, fear not, all of those mounts were made account wide.
The major exceptions to the rule now are mounts that are restricted to your class or earned through rated PvP. Faction specific mounts are account wide, but you can only use them on characters with the correct faction.
If you are curious about a specific mount, take a look at the mounts list over on WoWDB!
Account Wide Pets
Simplified Buff and Debuff System
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Attack Power:
Crit Chance:
Melee/Ranged Attack Speed:
Spell Haste:
- Death Knight - Horn of Winter
- Hunter - Trueshot Aura
- Warrior - Battle Shout
Crit Chance:
- Druid(Feral, Guardian) - Leader of the Pack
- Mage - Arcane Brilliance
- Monk(Windwalker) - Legacy of the White Tiger
- Paladin - Blessing of Might
- Shaman - Grace of Air
Melee/Ranged Attack Speed:
- Death Knight(Frost, Unholy) - Unholy Aura
- Rogue - Swiftblade's Cunning
- Shaman(Enhancement) - Unleashed Rage
Spell Haste:
- Druid(Balance) - Moonkin Form
- Priest(Shadow) - Shadowform
- Shaman(Elemental) - Elemental Oath
- Mage - Arcane Brilliance
- Shaman - Burning Wrath
- Warlock - Dark Intent
- Priest - Power Word: Fortitude
- Warlock-PET - Blood Pact
- Warrior - Commanding Shout
- Druid - Mark of the Wild
- Monk - Legacy of the Emperor
- Paladin - Blessing of Kings
Magic Vulnerability:
Mortal Wounds:
Physical Vulnerability:
Slowed Casting Speed:
Weakened Armor:
Weakened Blows:
- Rogue - Master Poisoner
- Warlock - Curse of the Elements
Mortal Wounds:
- Hunter - Widow Venom
- Rogue - Wound Poison
- Warrior(Arms) - Mortal Strike
- Warrior(Fury) - Wild Strike
- Warlock(Pet) - Mortal Cleave / Legion Strike
Physical Vulnerability:
- Death Knight(Frost) - Brittle Bones
- Death Knight(Unholy) - Ebon Plaguebringer
- Paladin(Retribution) - Judgments of the Bold
- Warrior(Arms,Fury) - Colossus Smash
Slowed Casting Speed:
- Death Knight - Necrotic Strike
- Mage(Arcane) - Slow
- Rogue - Mind-Numbing Poison
- Warlock - Curse of Enfeeblement
Weakened Armor:
- Druid - Faerie Fire
- Rogue - Expose Armor
- Warrior - Sunder Armor
Weakened Blows:
- Death Knight(Blood) - Scarlet Fever
- Druid(Feral,Guardian) - Thrash
- Monk(Brewmaster) - Keg Smash
- Paladin(Prot,Ret) - Hammer of the Righteous
- Warrior - Thunder Clap
Raid Benefits
Combat Res:
Buff Removal:
Curse Removal:
Enrage Removal:
- Death Knight - Raise Ally
- Druid - Rebirth
- Warlock - Soulstone
Buff Removal:
- Hunter - Tranquilizing Shot
- Mage - Spellsteal
- Priest - Dispel Magic
- Shaman - Purge
- Warlock-PET - Devour Magic
- Warrior(Protection) - Glyph of Shield Slam
- Death Knight(Glyph) - Glyph of Icy Touch
Curse Removal:
- Druid(Restoration) - Nature's Cure
- Mage - Remove Curse
- Shaman - Cleanse Spirit
Enrage Removal:
- Druid - Soothe
- Hunter - Tranquilizing Shot
- Rogue - Shiv
Disease Removal:
Magic Removal:
Poison Removal:
Magic Removal:
- Druid(Restoration) - Nature's Cure
- Monk(Mistweaver) - Detox
- Paladin(Holy) - Cleanse
- Priest(Discipline,Holy) - Purify
- Shaman(Restoration) - Purify Spirit
Poison Removal:
- Druid(Restoration) - Nature's Cure
- Monk - Detox
- Paladin - Cleanse
Item and Stats Changes
This patch makes some major changes to stats, such as ranged attacks being dodgeable, expertise becoming a rating, Spell resistance being removed, Resilience changes, and more. It also caused some changes to old items, especially PvP gear. You can see the new item stats on WoWDB.
New Druid Travel Form
The new Druid Travel form has some animations for dancing, grazing, cowering, sitting, sleeping, a mountspecial, and a walking animation. It replaces the old Cheetah travel form.
Armored Druid Forms Preview
Druids will have access to the Incarnation talent, which allows them to change into an armored version of the form for their spec.
New Warlock Pets
Warlocks finally got new pets, which are learned by the Grimoire of Supremacy talent. These pets are stronger, do 20% more damage, and replace your normal pets. The Fel Imp is a minor variation of the regular imp pet.
New Character Creation Preview Gear
Mists of Pandaria added some new higher res gear used when creating a new character. This is not the gear that your character will get when starting the game, but the gear that is used to show you what a higher level character will look like.
Cross-Realm Zones
Blizzard will be rolling this feature out beginning with a few realms at the launch of 5.0.4, and increasing until all realms are included for the release of Mists of Pandaria.
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvP Season 11 Ends
Heroic Spine Changes After Mists of Pandaria Pre-Patch
Character Creation Screens
These screens are only used during the Character Creation process, not Character Selection.
Character Selection Screens
New Mounts and Pets Interface
Misc Interface Changes
Dungeon Journal Expansion
The Dungeon Journal has been expanded to cover all of the old dungeons.
New Maps
If you still get lost in Caverns of Time, things are about to get much better. This patch also brings many, many maps for areas that don't show up on zone maps very well, such as caves, underground areas, and starter zones.
Graphical Changes
Patch 5.0.4 will bring us an improved lighting system, SSAO support, and slightly improved reflections. Many of these changes are hard to see without actually playing the game!
If you don't have a higher end computer, you may have to turn down some settings, especially once Mists of Pandaria and the new zones are released. If this sounds like an excuse to upgrade some hardware, head over to our Computer Forum.
The lighting system is more dynamic now, with flickering lights actually changing the light levels on the scene around them. SSAO adds shadows between objects that are very close together, making lighting look slightly more realistic. Mounts and players now appear in the reflections.
Updated Addons
Many addon authors have been hard at work updating their addons for Patch 5.0.4 and Mists of Pandaria. You can find the complete list on Curse! Now might be a good time to take advantage of the Curse Client to update your addons, and the one click update for Premium users! If you are already using Curse Client, be sure to check this box in the options to help populate WoWDB with data!


text:
Mitt Romney Tenure At Cranbrook Prep School in Focus: Why Should You Care?
Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article exploring Mitt Romney's tenure at Cranbrook, a prestigious boarding school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The article's focal point was an incident in which Romney reportedly led a group of peers as they tackled, restrained, and cut the unconventionally long and dyed hair of a student, John Lauber, who was rumored to be gay.
The article, riding on the coattails of President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, has quickly gained publicity. While his aides claimed that Romney had no recollection of the event involving Lauber, the candidate quickly put together a vague apology for his pranks.
Should we pay attention to this story? On the face of it, it would seem to be a sad state of affairs when one's high school behavior becomes fair game in presidential politics. Yet there a number of themes here that are drawing America's attention. Undoubtedly, one of these is the idea of the elite prep school. With all their descriptions of leaded-glass windows and cloth napkins, it's clear that the Post meant to draw our focus to this rarefied high school environment. What is it about prep school that changes the thrust of this story?
A prep school is a place that derives a good chunk of its meaning from the past. All schools thrive by getting individual students to invest themselves in a collective identity; by turning Cranbrook students into "Crannies." The collective identity at a prep school, however, is peculiar in its unique reverence of tradition. It is participation in rituals that first forges students into the collective spirit at a prep school, and it's the imperative to preserve these rituals for the next generation that keeps them there. Tradition is a central aspect of the experience, as well as the glue that holds it all together. Unfortunately for students like John Lauber, the tradition stems from a decidedly conservative past.
How can we understand Romney's response to Lauber in this context? By his senior year, Romney had become the perfect prep school student. Managing the hockey team, cheering for the football team, and loaded to the hilt with extracurriculars, he was the emblem of Cranbrook school spirit. Having attended since the 7th grade, his sense of self was intimately bound with the institution and its traditions. With the counterculturalism of the late '60s beginning to germinate, perhaps Cranbrook and its devotees were already primed to feel that their way of life was under siege. In such a case, a threat to the prep school tradition becomes a threat to Romney. Thus, we can begin to imagine how one head of long blond hair held so much significance for a young Mitt Romney.
So, should voters pay any attention to this incident? Some may dismiss this as a non-story of the media cycle's creation. We are also not getting the whole picture: from a 50 year vantage point, we lack the full depth of historical context. Perhaps the adolescent behavior of a politician is not relevant to the conversation; surely Romney is not alone in having some cringe-worthy moments on his high school record. People also change enormously as they move from adolescence into adulthood.
If these accounts are trustworthy, however, the image of a young Mitt Romney brandishing scissors over the head of tearful young man is too disturbing to escape our attention entirely. What does it say about a man's character that he was once willing to cause another human being this much distress in the name of safeguarding tradition? If institutional loyalty could trump Romney's basic empathic instincts, does that suggest that these instincts were pretty thinly formed to begin with? Can this be chalked up to youthful bad judgment, or does it suggest a cold intolerance lying beneath? Tell us what you think.


text:
Medical claims: Lawyers who specialise in acting for people who have suffered through medical mistakes (eg mistakes by doctors, nurses, hospitals). See also our section on accident claims for lawyers who do non-medical accident cases (eg accidents at work; road accidents). Legal aid? No - but you should be able to get a free 'no win, no fee' deal from your solicitor.
No lawyers found for Medical claims in WELWYN, Hertfordshire . Click here to try a different search or try the nearby locations above.


text:
OneGeology Web Services Accreditation Scheme
This scheme is intended to provide an incentive for geological survey organisations (GSOs) who are participants in OneGeology and help them be more responsive to the needs of current and potential users of their map data. Practicality, attainability and simplicity of operation have been the key points in the design of the scheme. The criteria which are set out below were produced by reference to the overall OneGeology system, the GeoSciML protocols, the European INSPIRE Directive good practice in data and service sharing guidance, and last but not least the views of users. The Scheme has been developed by the OneGeology Coordination and Technical teams, with input from the Steering and Operational Management Groups. A scheme such as this can never be 100% quantitative, but this is not an issue; the intention of this scheme is to progressively raise the standard of GSO services, not seek perfection. The scheme is aspirational!
How it will operate
All existing OneGeology map service providers are regarded as already having attained the One Star level and graphics will mailed to them shortly. GSOs who wish to be accredited for Two or more Stars may apply to the OneGeology secretariat by submitting the form below. The GSO will state the Star Rating and level of service they believe they meet. Their service will then be assessed by OneGeology Coordination and Technical team members. If the application meets the criteria the GSO will receive notification by email and at the same time receive files containing the appropriate OneGeology Star graphics. These graphics and any of the text within "Definition of Star Ratings" below may be used by the GSO on its web site or other communications and PR material. If the service is assessed as not meeting the criteria, feedback will be provided to the GSO and the application can be immediately re-submitted after corrective action. A reasonable degree of tolerance will be given; for example, if an issue which results in non-compliance is outside the control of the organisation, this will be taken into account in the assessment. All services should be available for better than 95% of the year. Regular re-assessment will be made by the OneGeology Coordination and Technical teams on at least an annual basis.
Definition of the Star Ratings
Star Rating | Level of service attained | Technical and service parameters to be met |
One star | Basic Web Map Service (WMS) | Web Map Service (WMS) supporting "GetCapabilities" and "GetMap" requests to deliver map images. |
Two star | Upgraded Web Map Service (WMS) |
Three star | Enhanced Web Map Service (WMS) |
Four star | Web Feature Service (WFS) |
Five star | Enhanced Web Feature Service (WFS) |


text:
First Phase of US-VISIT Becomes Operational
First Phase of US-VISIT Becomes Operational
The Department of Homeland Security on January 5 will implement the first phase of its program to electronically track the entry and exit of foreign visitors using biographical information and biometric identifiers. The U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology System (US-VISIT) will incorporate and supersede previous special registration and foreign-student tracking programs. The system, announced April 29, 2003 to meet the requirements of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (as revised in 2000, 2001, and 2002 legislation) will serve as a new nationwide border security and enforcement tool. The program will be operational at 115 airports and 14 seaports for entry control, and at up to 30 airports and one seaport via self-serve kiosks for exit control. Foreign visitors with visas will be required to have two inkless fingerprints and a digital picture taken upon entry and verified upon departure. Future plans for US-VISIT include entry and exit control at all ports, including land ports, by January 2006. U.S. citizens, foreign visitors from 27 Visa Waiver Countries, and Canadian citizens will not be affected by the new requirements. However, the biometric data of visitors from Visa Waiver countries will be gathered automatically as of October 26, 2004, by which date such information must be included in all passports. (See the May, June, and October 2003 Policy Beats for more information on US-VISIT).
Ridge Discusses Need to Legalize Undocumented Population
Homeland Department Secretary Tom Ridge in a speech on December 10 expressed the need to "determine how [to] legalize the presence" of the approximately nine to twelve million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. Two days later, the White House confirmed that officials are pursuing an immigration review that could lead to the legalization of the country's unauthorized population. The goal expressed by some officials is two-fold: to reveal and document the large unauthorized population as part of a broader security approach, and to create an immigration enforcement policy to deter and prevent future illegal entries. Those in favor of a regularization plan claim that it is not in the United States' interests to maintain a large and growing undocumented population that contributes to the economy and yet cannot demand basic workers' rights. Critics of regularization decry the breakdown of the rule of law that grants legal status to those who entered or remained by illegal means. It is expected that U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexico's President Vicente Fox will discuss migration-related topics, including the potential legalization of millions of unauthorized Mexicans living in the U.S., during their next meeting January 11, 2004 in Mexico. In 2000, the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that Mexicans accounted for 70 percent of the total unauthorized population.
Canada Creates Ministry as Counterpart to DHS
Canada's new Prime Minister Paul Martin on December 12 announced the creation of the Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness headed by Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan. The new ministry includes a Border Services agency to consolidate border functions from various government agencies, and it also consolidates all agencies with intelligence components through one chain of command. McLellan's position, formerly held by John Manley, most closely corresponds to that of Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. Martin also appointed several other high-level officials that day, including Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada Judy Sgro. Sgro replaced former minister Denis Coderre and will manage the immigration and citizenship services functions of Canada, similar to her U.S. counterpart Eduardo Aguirre, Jr. at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. and Canadian officials have worked closely to heighten security at their land border crossings while facilitating the flow of goods and services. McLellan's and Sgro's appointments came on the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Canada-U.S. Smart Border Declaration — an accord created to enhance security and information-sharing along the shared border. (See Insight No. 2 for more information on the Canada-U.S. Smart Border Declaration).
Settlements Expected in Two IRCA Class-Action Lawsuits
The settlements for two class-action lawsuits granting permanent resident status to over 100,000 unauthorized immigrants are expected to be approved in early January 2004. The settlements were submitted for the approval of the U.S. Eastern California District Court in late November 2003. Both lawsuits were filed over 15 years ago in connection with immigrants who were disqualified for amnesty, and therefore application for permanent resident status, under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) for having traveled outside of the U.S. during their residence. The law included a provision for amnesty for all unauthorized immigrants who had lived continuously in the U.S. from 1982 to 1987, but the interpretation of "continuously" has been in dispute. After being appealed eight times by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the decision to settle the lawsuits was made by the Department of Homeland Security, into which the INS was folded in early 2003. If approved, those individuals who qualify for amnesty under the lawsuits will have one year to apply for legal status.


text:
Duke Scientists Uncover Cells that Mend a Broken Heart
Humans have very limited ability to regenerate heart muscle cells, which is a key reason why heart attacks that kill cells and scar heart tissue are so dangerous.
But damaged heart muscles in the amazing, highly regenerative zebrafish have given Duke University Medical Center scientists a few ideas that may lead to new directions in clinical research and better therapy after heart attacks.
"Our hearts don't seem so complex that they shouldn't have the capacity to regenerate," said Kenneth Poss, PhD, senior author of the study in Nature and professor of cell biology at Duke.
The data in this study showed that the major contributors to the regeneration of surgically removed heart muscle came from a subpopulation of heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) near the area where the removal occurred.
The study appears in the March 25 issue of Nature.
The team labeled cells in the heart and found that cells that activated the gata4 gene upon injury ultimately contributed to regenerating the heart muscle.
The team first used a labeled "fluorescent reporter" fish that shows the presence of gata4, a gene required for heart formation in the developing embryo. They found that fluorescence was undetectable in uninjured zebrafish ventricles, but when they clipped a small section of the heart, a subpopulation of cardiac muscle cells along the outer wall of the ventricles began to fluoresce.
Some of these cells near the removal site ultimately proliferate and integrate into the wound, replacing the injury clot.
"We don't know the instructions or the mechanisms yet that mobilize these cells or cause them to proliferate, but we now know that they are the cells that are participating in new muscle growth," said Poss, who is also an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Finding a key origin of heart muscle provides a target for studies that will help scientists understand cardiac muscle regeneration, said lead author Kazu Kikuchi, a postdoctoral fellow in the Poss lab. "By studying this important cell population, we expect results that could help in the repair of diseased human hearts."
The team uncovered other interesting findings.
They still needed to know whether the new cardiomyocytes were connecting in a useful way to the muscle that was spared by injury. They found that within two weeks of the injury, the new heart cells started to show normal electrical coupling needed to keep the heart beating in rhythm.
A month later, the electric coupling was the same as in the uninjured heart, Poss said. "This is the first evidence that I know of that the new cardiomyocytes do become electrically coupled. It's exciting because the new muscle has to approach the functional level of the existing muscle to be of use."
This experiment was done in collaboration with colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Another finding was that the fish heart muscle found a way to work around scar tissue, a finding with interesting implications for the human heart, which stubbornly scars after heart muscle dies during a heart attack. Poss and the team found a genetic way to manipulate the zebrafish to slow down the regenerative process and form cardiac scars after tissue removal, which they normally don't do.
The scientists were able to make the tissue form a scar by blocking a certain genetic signaling pathway. Then they returned the activity of the pathway to the animal to learn whether regeneration could occur after scar tissue formed.
The manipulation worked, and the researchers saw the gata4 label expressed in cells near the scar. They could also see a wall of new muscle forming around the scarred tissue removal site.
"I think this experiment is relevant to a lot of heart attack victims who have established scars," Poss said. "We would like to know ultimately to what extent regenerative therapy of the heart could help people who have lived with scars for a long time. When we allowed the regenerative signaling pathway to remain active after the scar was formed, we didn't see removal of scar tissue, but we did see improvements in the tissue near those injuries."
Poss said there is more to learn from the zebrafish. "We want to know the sources of all of the different cell types in the regenerated heart tissue, and the molecular events responsible for activating those sources," he said. "There is a lot left to learn about the mysterious regenerative abilities of animals like zebrafish and salamanders."
Other authors include Jennifer E. Holdway, Yi Fang and Gregory F. Egnaczyk of the Duke Departments of Cell Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Gregory Egnaczyk is also in the Duke Department of Medicine); Andreas A. Werdich and Calum A. MacRae of the Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; Ryan M. Anderson and Didier Y. R. Stainier of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California -- San Francisco; and Todd Evans of the Department of Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University in New York, NY.
The study was funded by postdoctoral fellowships from American Heart Association (AHA), the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), NIH training grants, NHLBI grants, the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, the March of Dimes, and grants from the AHA, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Whitehead Foundation.


text:
On Knowing (or Not)
Judy is an intelligent, articulate woman with a great sense of humor. She is also completely paralyzed on her left side. Trouble is, she doesn't know she is. On the contrary, she knows that she isn't.
What's going on? Self-deception? Denial? Puzzling examples like this are scattered throughout a recent series in the NY Times, which explores what it means to know, not know, know what you don't know and not know what you know. Follow? Me neither.
A Sting for Absolutes
Sam Harris can sting. Well known for his sharp criticisms of religion, this social gadfly has picked a new target: moral philosophy. His recent TED talk and later articles about the science of morality (here and here) have caused a bit of a ruckus in philosophical circles as well as a feisty response from the general public. His main claim is simple enough: science can give us answers to moral questions. Not just inform our moral judgments or help us get what we want out of life, but actually tell us what we ought to value. In his words, values are a certain kind of fact.
A Secular Foothold?
"Insofar as modern
liberal discourse rests on a distinction between reasons that emerge in the
course of disinterested observation — secular reasons — and reasons that flow
from a prior metaphysical commitment, it hasn't got a leg to stand on."
Stanley Fish concludes his recent
column about the role of secular reasons and religion in public life. While
he briefly touches on a number of issues that stem from this ongoing debate, he
focuses his commentary on the ideas of Stephen Smith, whose new book is called The Disenchantment of
Secular Discourse. Since much of Smith's argument circles around the
notion of secular reasons, Fish begins by explaining what these reasons are all
Metaphors We Moralize By
"He has a heart of gold." "There's
not a mean bone in her body." "They're rotten to the core."
"We're going to show them what we're made of."
What do all these statements have in
common? They all cluster around the idea that people contain fundamental
moral properties that define who they are and determine how they behave.
In other words, they form a conceptual metaphor that understands morality
as essence. There are other common conceptual metaphors for morality
as well: morality as bounds (leading astray, deviating
from the path, transgressing bounds) or morality as uprightness
(an upstanding citizen, a lowly thing to do). These moral
metaphors can tell us quite a lot, according to George Lakoff, a cognitive
linguist and author of numerous influential books like Metaphors We
Live By and Moral Politics. In fact, Lakoff argues, metaphors may be
the key to understanding much of politics, culture, and human thought
Renaming a Disorder
What's in a name? Quite a lot, considering the huge commotion over proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Almost a thousand pages long, this psychiatric bible is
used all over the world to classify and diagnose mental patients – it's
the definitive authority on that nebulous concept known as "normal".
The implications of any revisions are tremendous, and the American Psychiatric Association, publisher of the manual, has attracted support as well as harsh criticism.
Could these revisions actually cause more harm than good? I'm not sure,
but I want to explore the implications of just one of the proposed
revisions – that concerning EDNOS, or "Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified."
Persons of the Sea?
You've stumbled upon a group of beings. For all you can tell, these beings are self-aware, intelligent, have emotions, solve complex problems, and call each other by name. They have thoughts and feelings and probably experience life in a way that is very similar to your own. Are they persons? And do you have moral obligations towards them?
Thomas White, Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, has made news claiming that we have found such a group of beings. In fact, we've been living alongside them for a while now. They're dolphins, and they're people too. At an upcoming AAAS conference in San Diego, White will be arguing that dolphins deserve the status of "nonhuman persons". The research in marine science now overwhelmingly shows that dolphins have a highly sophisticated type of consciousness and inner world – and their cognitive capacity is second only to humans (yes, they beat chimps). With such high intellectual and emotional abilities, White claims they are entitled to special moral status and protections. The implications for current practices involving dolphins (in the context of fishing, entertainment, research and the military) are serious, since they would be considered chillingly unethical if they involved human persons.
Aid Beyond Belief
The days following the devastating
earthquake in
saw a surge in fundraising efforts from organizations all over the world. In
this charitable climate, the atheist scientist Richard Dawkins set up an aid
campaign of his own: Non-Believers
Giving Aid. Why donate through his group? In addition to rallying fellow
non-believers, Dawkins claims this offers a chance to "counter the scandalous
myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans." There are a host
of issues that could be discussed in relation to the aid effort and belief –
why we feel compelled to help distant strangers, the problem of suffering, the
idea of natural disasters as divine punishment – but I'll concentrate on two
main objections to Dawkins.
One objection would be that the
entire project is simply a shameless propaganda scheme to get more "data" on charity
giving among non-believers. Its purpose is to give the non-believers some
numbers to point to, some "proof" that they give lots of money to charity. And
for that reason, it is just an opportunistic ploy that is deeply inappropriate in
a time of real crisis and tragedy.


text:
Monday's Gazette includes a note to readers saying that it will no longer be carrying a weekly soccer column written by Paul Carbray.
The reason? Repeated instances of plagiarism, the paper concluded:
It was recently brought to our attention that a column which was submitted for publication used material from another source without attribution. A check of columns we published over the previous two months turned up two other cases where, again, extended passages were taken from articles and blogs that had been published online by other media outlets. The passages were repeated in the Gazette columns with very minor changes and no attribution.
Carbray, a former copy editor on the sports desk (one I worked with for a couple of years while he was there), wrote the weekly column and an accompanying notes package on the subject of European soccer for the past 15 years.
He told OpenFile Montreal that he had no excuse:
"I am well aware that plagiarism is a journalistic mortal sin," Carbray said via email. "In 15 years of doing a column, my standards slipped on these occasions and I regret that extremely. Ultimately, there is no excuse. The fault was of method mostly, not intention. This is not how I envisioned ending 40 years in journalism."
Local corrections specialist Craig Silverman writes about this case for Poynter, and suggests a more thorough investigation is needed.
The last time something like this happened was in 2006, when The Gazette found that language columnist Howard Richler had lifted material from reference sources without attributing it. His column was terminated and he hasn't written for the paper since, though he has written for other publications including the National Post.
I haven't conducted my own investigation into the accusation against Carbray, and due to the inherent conflict I won't analyze this specific case significantly.
But this kind of thing is a constant worry at the back of any journalist's mind, and if it isn't it should be. The mistake can seem so minor at times – just forgetting to attribute a quote or a turn of phrase or a piece of information. The intentions can be honourable – not all cases are like a high school kid taking a paper written by someone else and putting his name on it. It could just be a question of rushing through a story on deadline and being lazy about a minor but still fundamental point.
But the consequences can be devastating. Being branded a plagiarist can end a journalist's career.
A memo was sent to The Gazette's newsroom staff reminding them of the seriousness of plagiarism and the need to attribute. Hopefully we can prevent such a thing happening again.


text:
London area of St James's guide
What to do and where to stay in London's St James's neighbourhood
Once the London home of the very wealthiest members of the British aristocracy, almost every building lining the streets of St. James's is a palace – though now most play host to corporate headquarters and grand hotels rather than famous families. Pall Mall is the home of London's gentleman's clubs, in whose backrooms the new aristocracy of newspaper editors, CEOs, generals and investment bankers swig brandy and make insider deals. Their expensive tastes are catered to by the exclusive boutiques, delicatessens and tailors of Jermyn Street, and the grand theatres of Haymarket. To the south, St. James's Park is one of the loveliest of the Royal parks, full of semi-tame wildlife and landscaped gardens. Stand on the bridge in the middle of the lake for a perfect London view, with Buckingham Palace on one side, and the palaces of Whitehall on the other.
See our recommended nearby St James's Hotels, Entertainment, Sights and Attractions, Shopping, Restaurants, Pubs, Nightlife, Leisure, Education, and Meeting Venues.
St James's Hotels
London > Hotels > Luxury Chain Hotel
5 Curzon Street, W1J
Dating back to 1913, The Washington Mayfair Hotel successfully blends historic art deco with modern design. Located in the premier commercial and cultural centre of London, ... More
London > Hotels > Luxury Chain Hotel
116 Piccadilly, W1J
Situated opposite Royal Parks and Buckingham Palace, and just down the road from national museums and galleries, The Athenaeum Hotel & Residences is an independent, award-winning ... More
London > Hotels > Luxury Chain Hotel
35 Charles Street, W1J
Typically for this aristocratic part of town, a discreet entrance leads to a thoroughly luxurious interior. Muted colours and marble floors give the sense of an ... More
St James's Entertainment
London > Entertainment > Cinemas
63-65 Haymarket, St James's, London SW1Y
The independently-owned Empire owns cinemas at 14 locations across the UK including this one, the three screen Empire Cinema on Haymarket in London's ... More
London > Entertainment > Theatres
18 Suffolk Street, Haymarket, St James's, London SW1Y
The Haymarket Theatre was built by John Potter on the site of the King's Head Inn and the Gun Smith shop in 1702. It has had ... More
London > Entertainment > Theatres
218-223 Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus, St James's, London W1V
The tiny entrance of the Criterion Theatre is almost invisible among the massive advertisements, traffic and crowds of Piccadilly Circus. To ignore it, however, is to ... More
St James's Sights and Attractions
London > Attractions > Historic Buildings
St James's Palace, St James's, London SW1
The home of the Queen Mother from 1953 to 2002, a tour of Clarence House is an excellent way of experiencing the living history of the ... More
London > Attractions > Historic Buildings
27 St James's Place, St James's, London SW1A
Spencer family's 18th London residence. The ancestral home of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Spencer family hasn't lived in this, their London residence, since 1926. Following ... More
London > Attractions > Art Galleries
6 Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y
Bowman Sculpture in St James's is a presitgious gallery where art collectors with deep pockets can get their hands on an original Rodin. Specialising in 19th ... More
St James's Shopping
London > Shopping > Wine Merchants
3 St James's Street, St James's, London SW1A
300-year-old wine emporium. From £5 bottles of Berry's Good Ordinary Claret to £7000 bottles of Romanée Conti this historic wine emporium has something to suit every palate. ... More
St James's Restaurants
London > Restaurants > French restaurants
5 St James' Street, St James's, London SW1A
Named after legendary French chef Marcel Boulestin, this St James' Street restaurant from Joel Kissin takes its inspiration from the original Boulestin which stood on Covent ... More
London > Restaurants > Cafes and Delis
21 Crown Passage, St James's, London SW1Y
Pret sells up market fast food, hand made from natural ingredients, to take away or eat on site, in its trademark no nonsense chrome interiors. The ... More
London > Restaurants > Modern European restaurants
3-4 Crown Passage, Pall Mall, St James's, London SW1Y
... More
St James's Pubs
London > Nightlife > Pubs
104 Pall Mall, St James's, London SW1Y
Located in the heart of London's traditional Clubland in Pall Mall, The Reform Club was founded in 1836 and was membership was initially restricted to those who ... More
London > Nightlife > Pubs
14-16 Rupert Street, St James's, London W1D
Located where it is, Waxy's is fairly predictable. It's busy, it's Irish and it's got a fair smattering of tourists, but it also has that certain ... More
St James's Nightlife
London > Nightlife > Bars
35 St James's Place, St James's, London SW1A
Famous for its martinis - a favourite with James Bond author Ian Fleming - Dukes Hotel extends its drinking area to include an outdoor Cognac and ... More
London > Nightlife > Bars
The Ritz Hotel, St James's, London W1J
The Rivoli Bar, an intimate cocktail lounge within the famous Ritz Hotel, re-opened in 2001 after a closure of some twenty years with interiors stylishly updated ... More
London > Nightlife > Wine Bars
181 Piccadilly, St James's, London W1A
The Fortnum's wine bar has had a makeover as part of the store's refurbishment in 2007, three hundred years after this grand old department store first ... More
St James's Leisure
London > Leisure > Fitness
30 Bury Street, St James's, London SW1Y
Catalyst personal trainers are among the best in London. Get fit without doing yourself an injury, lose weight with a specially devised programme or build your ... More
London > Leisure > Health and Beauty
6 Waterloo Place, St James's, London SW1Y
Opened in July 2009, So SPA by Sofitel is a stunning relaxation space - all marble and modern design - housed within the Sofitel St James ... More
London > Leisure > Parks and Gardens
Piccadilly, St James's, London W1J
Although many of the parks in London are officially owned by the sovereign, it is the four central London parks (one of which is Green Park) ... More
St James's Education
London > Education > Professional Training
2 Carlton House Terrace, St James's, London SW1Y
... More
London > Education > Universities and Colleges
1 Sherwood Street, St James's, London W1F
... More
London > Education > Universities and Colleges
1 Birdcage Walk, St James's, London SW1H
... More
St James's Meeting Venues
London > Business > Venue Hire
27 St James's Place, St James's, London SW1A
Spencer family's 18th London residence. The ancestral home of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Spencer family hasn't lived in this, their London residence, since 1926. Following ... More
London > Business > Venue Hire
116 Pall Mall, St James's, London SW1Y
... More
London > Business > Venue Hire
195 Piccadilly, St James's, London W1J
The home of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) is also available to hire for your own event. The iconic building at 195 ... More
London Hotels
From cheap budget hotels to luxury 5 star hotels see our deals for hotels, including from 0% off. |


text:
Paul asks lefties a question: is the crisis one of managerialism or neoliberalism? I'd answer: both.
The proximate cause of our current troubles is the failure of managerialism. The banking crisis shows not so much that financial markets fail but that organizations do so. There are three (non-exclusive) ways of reading the banking crisis, all of which represent a failure of management in some sense:
- Banks did not understand the risks they were taking in mortgage derivatives, relying upon wholesale finance or taking over ABN Amro.
- There was a principal-agent failure. Either regulation failed, or shareholders failed to rein in CEOs, or CEOs didn't appreciate the dangers their trading risks were taking.
- Banks' business models failed to adapt to the new conditions of the 00s, in which saving was concentrated among Asians rather than westerners and in which there was a demand for safe securities.
However, you read it, the crisis shows that managerialism - the idea that some people have the capacity to control large organizations for the better - is wrong. Managerialism is an ideology justifying big pay for bosses, not an empirical truth.
However, in two other senses, the highlights a failure of neoliberalism.
First, the deep cause of the banking crisis was a dearth of capital investment. In a parallel universe, the high Asian savings rate would have had a happy ending. In driving down bond yields, it would have encouraged western firms to invest in new plant and technology thus making us all richer. But it didn't. Because of the lack of investment opportunities, the savings glut was invested in the housing bubble, which burst.
I say this represents a failure of neoliberalism because neoliberalism told us that if only labour and product markets could be deregulated, (some) taxes cut and profits increased, that investment would follow. From the 80s onwards, the UK and US governments followed this advice to some degree - but investment did not follow. Neoliberals had too much faith in entrepreneurial spirits.
Secondly, the banking crisis - and the euro zone debt crises - are crises of risk-bearing. The neoliberal case for financial deregulation was that it allowed risk to be parcelled up and so be bought by those best able to bear the risks. But this was wrong. Risk ended up being concentrated in the hands of a few banks, with the result that quite small losses had terrible macroeconomic effects.
Now, you might think that one implication of what I'm saying is that the left needs alternatives to both managerialism and neoliberalism. It does. The problem is that the left's alternative to neoliberalism (insofar as it has one) often seems to lie in a call for just a different type of managerialism - top down control by a group of people whose confidence exceeds their ability.


text:
GAO blasts an $8 billion Medicare program, a blow to the Obama's health agency, run by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office urged the Obama administration on Monday to end a new $8 billion experiment aimed at improving a key Medicare program.
The three-year demonstration project by the Department of Health and Human Services, which began this year, is intended to speed up quality improvement in Medicare Advantage plans as called for under the 2010 health reform law.
Medicare Advantage serves as an alternative to the original Medicare program and covers about 25% of all Medicare beneficiaries. It is offered to seniors through private insurers under contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which operate the government-sponsored health programs.
The health reform law set up a new bonus structure for highly-rated private insurers. The demonstration project widened eligibility for those bonuses.
But the GAO concluded that the program was badly designed and unlikely to provide "meaningful results."
Consequently, GAO said the project should be terminated and that HHS should allow the original Medicare Advantage quality measures under the health reform law to take effect.
Republicans, who have been criticizing the program for months, pounced on the report, accusing the Obama administration of abusing its power. They say the program merely sends extra money to providers to cushion against impending Medicare cuts expected under the new health care law.
Republicans say the program is a political move aimed at keeping seniors happy.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said the report calls into question whether HHS even has the authority to launch this program.
"The White House does not have the authority to green light spending on whatever program it wants," Hatch said in a statement.
The health department disagreed with the criticism and said the agency has no plans to end the program.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday that before the new health care reforms were passed, Medicare overpaid private insurers to the tune of 114% above Medicare rates, and lacked any power to assure the care was high quality.
She said that, with the program, Medicare is overpaying private insurers by 107% and more beneficiaries have been switching to higher-rated plans.
"With the demonstration, we're on track to reduce ovepayments," Sebelius said. "I think it's a basic win-win-win situation. We've got lower rates, we've got better-quality plans, and we're on track to reduce the overpayments in the long run."
In a written comments to the GAO, the health department said it disagrees with the criticism and does not plan to terminate the program.
"CMS believes the demonstration supports our national strategy to improve the delivery of health care services," the health department wrote. "Absent this demonstration, we believe many plans would not have an immediate incentive to improve the quality of care to [Medicare Advantage] enrollees."
The demonstration project would cost $8.35 billion over 10 years, according to the GAO report.
Separately, efforts under the 2010 health care law to reduce payments to private insurers that operate Medicare Advantage would save $68 billion over five years, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday.
Overall, the report estimates that Medicare will save more than $200 billion through 2016 due to the health reform law.
Overnight Avg Rate | Latest | Change | Last Week |
30 yr fixed | 3.80% | 3.88% | |
15 yr fixed | 3.20% | 3.23% | |
30 yr refi | 3.82% | 3.93% | |
15 yr refi | 3.20% | 3.23% |
Today's featured rates:
Latest Report | Next Update |
Home prices | Aug 28 |
Consumer confidence | Aug 28 |
GDP | Aug 29 |
Manufacturing (ISM) | Sept 4 |
Jobs | Sept 7 |
Inflation (CPI) | Sept 14 |
Retail sales | Sept 14 |


text:
For this week, I have continued with a second part.
Taking part in the 100 word Challenge for Grown Ups – Week #20
The ramblings & obsessions of a fisherman's wife! ~ a potpourri of history, genealogy and books. Also some general ramblings if they take my fancy!
Hello! Thanks for stopping by and choosing to leave a message. I read every message and I usually reply via the comment thread. Posts are currently moderated due to the sudden influx of spam postings!


text:
All Events
Top Picks of the Week
San Francisco Calendar
East Bay Calendar
Bay Area Calendar
– North Bay Events
– South Bay Events
– Peninsula Events
Win Tix
Free Museum Days
Add Event
East Bay
Danville Town Green
420 Front Street, Danville, CA 94526
East Bay
No Comment
Most Popular Upcoming Events
80,000 Free Tulips Are Coming to SF's Union Square (2024)
SF's $15 "Pay by the Bag" Thrift Store Clothing Sale (March 2-3)
2024 White Elephant Sale: Final Blowout Days w/ Free Entry (Mar. 2-3)
SF's St. Patrick's Day Parade & Festival 2024
SF's Lunar New Year Dragon Statue "Parade" (Final Day)
Bank of America's "Museums On Us" Free Museum Weekend (2024)
Golden Gate Park Hosts 125+ Free Concerts (2024 Kickoff)
SF's Ocean Beach Bonfires Return for 2024 (March 1 – Oct. 31)
San Francisco Giants FanFest 2024 at Oracle Park
SF's Easter In the Park & Hunky Jesus Contest 2024 (Dolores Park)
Sign Up For Funcheap Emails
Join the Funcheap SF Email List
Join the
San Franciscans and get our picks for the best Bay Area
free & cheap events
and deals each week.
Most Popular City Guides
SF's Iconic Union Square Macy's to Close
Free Monthly Museum Days
SF's Brand New Rare Stinky "Corpse Flower" is About to Bloom
Golden Gate Park Hosts 125+ Free Live Concerts in 2024
How to Get the NY Times for Free (Updated for 2024)
San Francisco March Festivals & Street Fairs
5 Fun Things to Do This Weekend (Mar. 1-3) in SF + Bay Area
SF's "Chinatown Night Market" Returns for 2024
San Francisco February Festivals & Street Fairs
Bruce Lee Statue Coming to SF's Chinatown?


text:
Companies with ties to Israel have become a significant force in Massachusetts, multiplying their revenues over three years and employing roughly 6,700, according to a new study released Thursday.
At least 200 businesses, cutting across the state's innovation economy, have Israeli connections, according to the study for the New England-Israel Business Council, a group aimed at fostering collaborations between Israel and New England. Together these companies — including information technology, medical device, and software firms — last year generated $6.2 billion in revenues in the state.
A previous study found 78 companies generating $2.4 billion in revenues in 2009.
The economic impact of the Massachusetts-Israel connection is only expected to grow in coming years, as capital, customers, and technical talent attract more Israeli firms to the state — particularly in emerging sectors such as nanotechnology, robotics, and 3-D printing, the report said
"It's the new markets that will provide the turbocharge," said David Goodtree, the local consultant who authored the study.
Nicknamed the "Startup Nation," Israel and its people are known for producing game-changing innovations, including computer processors used by Intel and search algorithms used by Google. But its startups often must leave the small Middle Eastern nation to grow to a global scale and access world markets.
Those firms have found a home away from home in Massachusetts, where local universities, business incubators, and technology companies have produced their own share of ground-breaking advancements. Attracting innovators from places such as Israel has become an important part of the state's economic development strategy. Governor Deval Patrick led a trade mission to the country in 2011 to promote the state's life science and biotechnology industries.
"There's a lot compatible between Massachusetts and Israel," Patrick said Wednesday. "Arguably brainpower, in both cases, is our biggest natural resource."
Massachusetts companies frequently tap the Israeli innovation pipeline. Boston Scientific Corp. the Natick medical device maker, and Akamai Technologies Inc., the Cambridge Web content delivery firm, have spent millions buying Israeli companies in recent years.
Akamai, with nearly $1.4 billion in revenues last year and roughly 3,000 employees, was cofounded by the late Daniel Lewin, a former Israeli commando who went to the country's famed scientific university, Technion.
Massachusetts' largest technology firm, Hopkinton data storage company EMC Corp., has acquired nine Israeli companies for roughly of $2 billion since 2005. Joel Schwartz, EMC's senior vice president of global new business development, said Israel has been an important source of technology that has helped build the company and fill gaps in EMC's research and development programs.
EMC's flagship data storage product, Symmetrix, for example, was created by an Israeli-led team. In July, the company signed an agreement to buy ScaleIO , an Israeli data storage startup.
"It's not that we have a particular desire to do more in Israel," Schwartz said, but "it stands out almost more than any other place in the world as a high-tech startup environment."
Most recently, state and business leaders have focused on using Israel's leadership in water technology to create an industry hub here that will produce solutions to global water shortages. Israel, meanwhile, sees the partnership as a way to launch its companies onto the world stage.
"The relationship is only going to grow stronger," said Richard K. Sullivan Jr., state energy and environmental affairs secretary. "We've got the real bones of a significant water cluster here."
The New England-Israeli Business Council's study made several recommendations to help Massachusetts stay ahead of other states also vying for Israeli business, including getting nonstop air service between Boston and Tel Aviv and providing more educational opportunities for Israeli students at local universities.
"We are a knowledge economy," Goodtree said of Massachusetts. "We don't create it all; we attract people here, starting at university."
Erin Ailworth can be reached at email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @ailworth.


text:
Author Lily Koppel reveals for the first time the stories and secrets of America's unsung heroes – the wives of our original astronauts in The Astronaut Wives Club.
As America's Mercury Seven astronauts were launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focused on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons. Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was proclaimed JFK's favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived on base with a secret. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, meeting regularly to provide support and friendship. Many became next-door neighbors and helped to raise each other's children by day, while going to glam parties at night. As their celebrity rose – and as divorce and tragic death began to touch their lives – they continued to rally together, and the wives have now been friends for more than fifty years. This is the real story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history. (description from publisher)


text:
In two major developments this week, President Trump has been labeled in the parlance of criminal investigations as a major subject of interest, complete with an opaque legal code name: "Individual 1."
New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump's version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump's campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.
Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.
Keep Reading
On Thursday, Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he insisted that Trump was not pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after January 2016, casting Trump's repeated claims that he had no business interests in Russia in a new light. A draft special counsel document revealed Tuesday also indicates that prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump's interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked Democratic emails.
Legal experts said it's still unclear how much peril the president might face as a result of the new evidence Mueller has gathered about the Moscow project and WikiLeaks, but his prominence in the prosecutors' papers puts the president in an awkward starring role.
"It's deeply troubling. It's not a place that anybody wants to be, or where you would want your friends or family to be," former federal prosecutor Glen Kopp said. "And it's certainly not a place that you would want your president to be."
Trump, identified as "Individual 1" in Cohen's guilty plea, was said to have received direct updates from Cohen as he pursued a Moscow Trump Tower project with the Kremlin, up until June 14, 2016. The president also appears in the draft charging document for Trump ally Jerome Corsi, who allegedly told Stone about WikiLeaks' plans to release damaging Democratic emails in October of that year because he knew Stone was in "regular contact" with Trump. The Washington Post reported this week that Trump spoke with Stone the day after he got the alert from Corsi.
In the draft documents, prosecutors sought to have Corsi plead guilty to lying when he said he didn't know about WikiLeaks' plans and urging others to visit WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to obtain emails damaging to Democrats.
Trump has given slightly differing accounts of his Moscow business ties over time. In July 2016, he tweeted: "For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia." A day later he claimed, "I have nothing to do with Russia."
In January 2017, he told a reporter: "I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we've stayed away."
Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday that the president's written answers to Mueller about the Moscow project, which he submitted just before Thanksgiving, conform with Cohen's version of events. They discussed a project, starting in 2015, continuing into 2016, and it went nowhere, he said.
"The president, as far as he knows, he remembers there was such a proposal for a hotel," Giuliani said. "He talked it over with Cohen as Cohen said. There was a nonbinding letter of intent that was sent. As far as he knows it never came to fruition. That was kind of the end of it."
Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and constitutional lawyer, said Cohen's confessions don't suggest Trump committed any crime but could suggest that Trump wasn't telling the public the whole truth about the Moscow deal.
"This is politically damaging, but I'm not sure how legally damaging it is," Dershowitz said. "This is all about questionable political behavior. It's a good reason for people voting against Trump. But I don't see a crime yet."
But Tim O'Brien, a Trump biographer and frequent critic, said the developments pose significant new challenges for the president.
"This is part of the fact pattern that gets to the heart of whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the campaign," O'Brien said. "I think the unforgiving grinding force of the U.S. justice system, which he has tried to undermine since he became president, is encircling him. I don't think we know where he will land. But he is certainly mired in something that he is ill-equipped, legally and personally, to handle."
Some legal experts argued Mueller appears to be drawing a picture of a candidate who was beholden to the Kremlin. Emails released in the Cohen plea show Trump seeking a financial endorsement from the Russian government on a private project while Russian President Vladimir Putin was offering to say flattering things about Trump.
"It creates the potential for Trump to feel an obligation to pay back President Putin, or Russia in general that . . . do not put the best interests of American forward." Kopp said. "You are creating a potential vulnerability for a future leader of America."
Trump privately stewed as he followed news coverage of Cohen's plea early Thursday morning, a White House official said.
A Justice official called the White House Counsel's Office on Wednesday evening to let personnel know that Cohen would be pleading guilty in a case the following day, according to one person with direct knowledge of the notice. They were not told the details, however, which they learned about shortly before Cohen's plea Thursday morning.
Giuliani said the president believed the news development was a gratuitous slap from the Mueller team just as he was about to depart the White House for a trip to the Group of 20 summit in Argentina.
In public, Trump was defiant, telling reporters that Cohen was a liar and a "weak person" who would do anything to save himself from fraud charges he faces related to his taxi business. Speaking before he stepped onto the Marine One helicopter for his trip, he also denigrated Cohen's intelligence, calling him "not very smart."
"He was convicted of various things unrelated to us," Trump said. "He's a weak person, and what he's trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he's lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean, we were very open with it."
He questioned the scrutiny of the Moscow project.
"There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it," Trump said. "When I'm running for president, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to do business."
Trump often grows aggrieved seeing Cohen on TV, aides say. Among White House advisers, Cohen is seen as an existential threat — as much or more so than the Mueller investigation itself because of his longtime role as Trump's fixer. Trump's legal team did not learn until Thursday that Cohen had sat for dozens of hours of interviews with Mueller's office, according to a senior administration official.
Trump was infuriated earlier this year when Cohen released tapes of him, and asked his lawyers and advisers if anything could be done to stop him from releasing any more.
The Trump legal team cast Cohen as a flawed character whose word is meaningless, as it had when he pleaded guilty in August to eight felony counts, including paying women for their silence about alleged affairs with Trump.
Legal experts said prosecutors were not likely to build a guilty plea — a brick in the overall case — on the word of one person. The prosecutors' filings show they have corroborated and buttressed Cohen's account with contemporaneous emails, and people familiar with the probe say they have also obtained corroborating testimony from other witnesses.
"This is obviously a significant plea and statement. It means that when the president was representing during the campaign that he had no business interests in Russia, that that wasn't true," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "If the president and his associates were being untruthful in real time as they were pursuing this deal, what does it mean now about how much we can rely on what the president is saying about any continuing Russian financial interest?"
Giuliani said the president and his business have not tried to hide his pursuit of a Moscow tower project, and voluntarily disclosed some of the documents Mueller's team used in its probe of Cohen for lying to Congress. According to a person familiar with the investigation, Cohen and the Trump Organization could not produce some of the key records upon which Mueller relies. Other witnesses provided copies of those communications.
In the White House, two aides said Trump had complained more in recent days about Mueller's prosecutors and has kept close tabs on the comments of Corsi and Stone. Trump has praised his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort extensively for fighting Mueller's team, which accused Manafort this week of breaching a plea agreement by lying repeatedly to prosecutors as part of his pledged cooperation in the Russia probe. Cohen had not been on the front of Trump's mind, both of these aides said.
Many in the White House try to avoid talking with the president about the Mueller probe, for fear they will be subpoenaed. And both of the aides said it was unclear why Trump was complaining more about the investigation recently. During the midterm campaign, the president occasionally told advisers that people had forgotten about the Mueller probe and remarked positively that it was no longer dominating TV headlines.
Alice Crites contributed to this report.


text:
REUTERS Sunday, 03 February 2013 02:40 PM EST
That's why the focus this week will be on what European Central Bank (ECB) Governor Mario Draghi has to say about the strength of the euro and what Canadian central bank chief Mark Carney might have in mind when he succeeds Mervyn King at the Bank of England (BOE) in July.
Draghi holds a news conference on Thursday after an ECB policy-setting meeting. On the same day, with delicious timing, Carney will be wrapping up testimony to British lawmakers just as the BoE announces the results of its own policy meeting.
The unanimous verdict of economists polled by Reuters is that neither bank will change its stance. The environment, however, is shifting, presenting both with unwanted challenges.
The ECB must keep a close eye on the euro, which has risen to a 14-month peak against the dollar and a 30-month high against the yen, reflecting the Federal Reserve's promise to keep buying bonds until U.S. unemployment falls much farther and the Bank of Japan's plan for a much looser monetary policy.
Exchange rates have much less of an impact on trade volumes than the state of external demand.
But, with global growth languishing, the relative performance of euro zone exporters will take a hit, said Daniel McCormack, a strategist at Macquarie in London.
"The euro could well be starting to cause a bit of pain already. It's moved up significantly, and in the context of what Japan's doing and the Fed's desire to get the dollar down or keep it low, it will have some impact," he said.
France has already complained about the euro's climb and Germany has blamed Japan for encouraging a weaker yen.
But Goldman Sachs said an ECB rate cut in response to a rising euro was still some way off, not least because the currency's vigour was largely due to improving economic and financial news from the euro zone.
The bank's economists did acknowledge, however, that the risks to its forecast that rates will stay on hold in 2013 were skewed to the downside.
"While global growth is picking up and demand growing, concerns about appreciation may be muted. But a strengthening euro in a stagnant global economy is likely to prompt questions about where the 'pain threshold' of German exporters to the level of the euro exchange rate lies," they said in a report.
Like the dollar, sterling has also fallen to a 14-month low against the euro.
British policymakers view a weaker pound as part of the solution to reviving the economy, which stagnated in 2012, and Goldman is among those who expect continued depreciation given the prospect of a more innovative and expansionary monetary policy under Carney.
McCormack reckons the shortfall in Britain's potential output that has opened up due to the recession is so great that the BOE might not need to contemplate tightening until 2018 - a full decade after the financial crisis climaxed.
But he said it was debatable whether Carney would prevail with his suggestion of targeting nominal gross domestic product, which implies permitting a temporary overshoot of inflation to allow growth to catch up.
"Most central bankers at the end of the day are in favour of strict inflation targeting. So he'll face a lot of intellectual pushback if he tries to get that through. But clearly there's the potential for some significant policy innovations once he's on board because he'll want to make his mark," McCormack said.
Central banks are not alone in rummaging around for new ways to spur growth.
European Union leaders, who hold a summit on Thursday devoted mainly to the bloc's budget, are expected to call for maximum efforts to reach a series of bilateral free trade pacts to lower tariffs and cut red tape throttling exports.
The prospects for talks with the United States and Canada are still up in the air, but leaders are likely to endorse an early start to talks with Japan, according to diplomats.
Trade figures happen to be the core of this week's global economic releases.
Britain's gaping goods deficit is forecast to show a small improvement, due in part to sterling's weakness.
China's imports are projected to leap, which would bode well for world growth.
But, like most early-year data from Asia, interpretation will be treacherous because of calendar distortions: Lunar New Year, when factories in China close en masse, falls this year on Feb. 10, while last year the week-long holiday was in January.
America is likely to show a narrower trade deficit in December. Improving net exports would reinforce the view that the unexpected dip in GDP last quarter was due to fleeting factors and not the harbinger of a trend.
Bruce Kasman, an economist with JP Morgan in New York, said after Friday's good-but-not-great January jobs report that the economy was on track to expand about 2 percent this year despite fiscal drag that would lop at least 1.5 percent off growth.
Kasman said he was heartened by solid gains in labour income in recent months. Risks of a break-up of the euro, a hard landing in China and a plunge off the fiscal cliff in the United States had also been avoided.
All this pointed to steady if unspectacular U.S. growth.
"We don't have by any means the kind of growth that we would like, but we are setting ourselves up for a world where there's less risk and more sustainability," Kasman said on a conference call.
© 2024 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.
Receive breaking news and original analysis - sent right to your inbox.
Newsmax, Moneynews, Newsmax Health, and Independent. American. are registered trademarks of Newsmax Media, Inc. Newsmax TV, and Newsmax World are trademarks of Newsmax Media, Inc.


text:
Dr. Oris Griffin
Women For MadisonFor the last three years, Oris has spent at least one day a week in an inner-city school in Richmond, Va., as part of JMU's Professor-in-Residence Program, hoping to encourage minority high school students to pursue higher education. She'll readily admit it's a challenging goal. "Inner-city schools are not without their problems," she says, "Nonetheless, these students deserve great teachers too. They need teachers who will push them to excel, to become inquirers, to dream and to navigate a society where some have low or no expectations of them being successful." Oris is convinced that such teachers play a huge part in getting inner-city students to realize their potential to graduate high school and college and become contributing citizens in their communities. Thanks in no small part to her efforts, many high school seniors are far better prepared for college than before. Madison has benefited too — there has been a significant increase in the number of students from inner-city schools who have enrolled in JMU. Her trailblazing efforts have earned Oris numerous awards recognizing her role in building partnerships that increase diversity at JMU and improve the quality of public school education. But for Oris, the real reward is more fundamental. She says, "I've been able to fully embrace my calling."
"No one wants to be tolerated. Rather, people want to be accepted for who they are and for who they may not be. … It's not just ethnicity. … We have so many differences. We need to not only acknowledge those differences but also talk about how we can come together and build a community. It's all about community … and not being afraid to ask the tough questions."


text:
Skin manifestation of sarcoidosis characterized by yellowish-brown papules that vary in size from 1 to 5 mm and particularly affect the face and the extensor aspects of the limbs. The papules later become brownish-red or violaceous and often leave a pale or telangiectatic scar when they disappear. The small nodular type carries a more favourable prognosis than do other types of infiltration.
Sarcoidosis, Small Nodular Type


text:
STUDY: How Broadcast News Covered Climate Change In The Last Five Years
Written by Laura Santhanam
A Media Matters analysis reveals that news coverage of climate change on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX picked up in 2013 over the previous year, but remained lower than a 2009 high. Furthermore, while one Sunday show interviewed scientists about climate change, distinguishing itself as the first such program to do so in five years, these shows continued to rely largely on media figures and Republicans to dictate the conversation around global warming.
In 2013, Broadcast Networks Increased Coverage But Remained Below 2009 Highs
Media Offered Tepid Coverage Despite Major Report, Presidential Speech, And Scientific Milestone On Climate Change. In 2013, top international climate scientists released a major report on the state of climate science, following up on a 2007 report. The report found that the science on climate change has only gotten stronger during those six years, determining with 95 percent certainty that human activities are the "dominant cause" of global warming. Additionally, President Barack Obama delivered a major speech entirely focused on climate change, which former Vice President Al Gore hailed as the "best address on climate by any president ever." The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping gas driving climate change, also surpassed a long-feared milestone of 400 parts per million -- an amount never seen before in human history. And extreme weather events made more likely or worsened by climate change also drew widespread coverage, even as the climate connection was ignored: near-record floodwaters washed over the Midwest, devastating wildfires swept the western United States, and the worst cyclone to make landfall on record struck the Philippines, wiping out entire communities and killing thousands of people. Despite all this, broadcast news' climate coverage remained relatively low.
Sunday Show Coverage Of Climate Change Picked Up, But Not By Much. The Sunday news shows devoted more airtime to discuss climate change in 2013 than in recent years, but it remained a paltry amount. Out of a year's worth of coverage, the Sunday shows focused on climate change for 27 minutes, the most aired since 2009. Not surprisingly, politics dominated 88 percent of these stories. Only one story, on CBS' Face The Nation, was driven by the scientific evidence linking some recent extreme weather to climate change.
- CBS' Face the Nation aired nearly 16 minutes of climate change-related coverage, almost twice as much as its nearest competitor, ABC's This Week.
- NBC's Meet the Press broadcast the least amount of coverage, failing to offer a single substantial mention of climate change in all of 2013. Fox News Sunday even aired more about climate change than Meet The Press, with nearly 4 minutes of politically-driven coverage.
Network TV Evening News Broadcasts Reported On Climate Change More In 2013. Network TV newscasts aired more climate change coverage in 2013 over the previous year, when there was less than an hour of coverage for the whole year. Altogether, ABC, CBS and NBC reported on global warming for nearly an hour and 42 minutes during their nightly newscasts in 2013, compared to a combined total of less than an hour in all of 2012. The majority of this coverage -- 58 percent -- was driven by stories on climate change's relation to extreme weather or impacts on wildlife, while 19 percent was driven by scientific findings, another 19 percent by political stories related to climate change, and 4 percent by other stories.
- NBC Nightly News outpaced both ABC and CBS, airing roughly 52 minutes of climate change coverage, recovering from a lull in coverage in 2012.
- ABC World News nearly cut its climate change coverage in half in 2013 over the previous year, reporting on this issue for less than 10 minutes.
Overall, Network TV News Outlets Ramped Up Climate Change Coverage In 2013. CBS aired 56 minutes of coverage on the topic in 2013, slightly more than NBC's nearly 52 total minutes of coverage and far greater than the 18 minutes of coverage that ABC devoted to climate change.
Sunday Shows Finally Interviewed Scientists About Climate Change, But Still Skewed Toward Media Figures And Republican Politicians
For The First Time In Five Years, A Sunday Show Invited Scientists To Talk About Climate Change. Before this year, Sunday show hosts did not interview a single scientist about climate change when discussing the issue on their shows. In 2013, that trend narrowly came to an end when, in a single episode of CBS' Face the Nation, the chief climatologist at Climate Central, Heidi Cullen, illustrated how rising temperatures have already affected weather extremes, and what would happen if climate change continues to worsen. In that segment CBS also interviewed Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd, the head of the American Meteorological Society, who was counted as a scientist in our study due to his Ph.D. in Meteorology. No other Sunday show hosted a scientist to discuss climate change. [Climate Central, 5/28/13]
- Nightly news shows were much more likely to host scientists. In 2013, almost 54 percent of guests were scientists. However, this was a decrease from 2012. CBS Evening News also falsely balanced a scientist with the "skeptic" Global Warming Policy Foundation's Benny Peiser, who has no degree in science.
Media Figures And Republicans Dominated Sunday Show Coverage Of Climate Change. On the rare occasions when Sunday shows focused on climate change, they were still unlikely to talk to scientists. Of those guests who did appear on the Sunday shows to talk about global warming, 43 percent were media figures and another 29 percent were politicians. Among the politicians who came onto the Sunday shows to inform the public about climate change, three-quarters of them were Republican.
This report analyzes coverage of "climate change" or "global warming" between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2013, on four Sunday morning talk shows (ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday) and three nightly news programs (ABC World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News). Fox Broadcasting Co. airs Fox News Sunday, but does not air a nightly news equivalent; Fox News is a separate cable channel. Our analysis includes any segment devoted to climate change, as well as any substantial mention (more than one paragraph of a news transcript and/or or a definitive statement about climate change). Timestamps were acquired from Media Matters' internal video archive and the Internet Archive online database and were applied generously. For instance, if a segment about an extreme weather event mentioned climate change briefly, the entire segment was counted as climate coverage. For those segments not available in our archive, we estimated the length of the segment based on its word count.


text:
The Tuskegee Airmen were formed in 1941 in Tuskegee, Alabama. They would serve as the first black members of America's Air Force. Among those enlisted one year later were Retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard R. Hall, Jr. and Retired Lieutenant Colonel Bob Hughes – a white man. The definition of a Tuskegee Airman is anyone who was a pilot, navigator or part of the support personnel during the Tuskegee Experience between 1941 and 1949. Bob Hughes was a trainer at the Tuskegee Army Air Field and there were more white documented airmen.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the government's answer to integration of the U.S. Military Air Force. The young pilots were trained through the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Then on September 16, 1940, the Selective Service and Training Service Act was passed by U.S. Congress which stated that all American males between the ages of 21 and 35 had to register for the draft. Because of Tuskegee Institute's dedication to aviation, Tuskegee Institute was chosen to be the leader in aviation training. From the first class of 13 cadets, five earned their silver wings and became the nation's first black military pilots: second lieutenants Lemuel R. Custis, Charles DeBow, Mac Ross, George Spencer Roberts and Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. This group was the 99th Pursuit Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group.
Black college students took notice of the Tuskegee Airmen training program, which graduated 932 pilots. But only 355 would deploy into actual duty as Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots.
It's no secret that the U.S. military had difficulty integrating the Tuskegee Airmen. In one mission to fly from South Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico, the unit was not allowed to fly over Georgia or arm their weapons until they were across the Gulf of Mexico because they were black.
The military continued to train new airmen until 1946, with women eventually entering the program.
The Congressional Gold Medal (CGM) was presented to the Documented Original Tuskegee Airmen (DOTA) as a group and not as an individual recognition.
The total number of Documented Original Tuskegee Airmen is between 16,000 and 19,000 individuals, which is anyone man or woman, military or civilian, black or white who were part of the Tuskegee Experience.
The Tuskegee Airmen are known as the "Red Tails" because of the success of the four fighter squadrons (99th, 100th, 301st, & 302nd ) that operated under the 332nd fighter group flying the P-40 and later the P-51 with the tails painted red. There were also four bomber squadron (616th, 617th, 618th and 619th ) that flew the B-25 bomber but never deployed overseas during WWII.
To bring notice to the lives and history of the Tuskegee Airmen, members of the prestigious group of individuals formed the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. organization.
The Tuskegee Airmen Inc. is self-described as: a non-profit national organization, existing primarily to motivate and inspire young Americans to become participants in our nation's society and its democratic process. Tuskegee Airmen Inc. is dedicated to keeping alive the history, achievements, and the importance of the original Tuskegee Airmen.
According to the Gen. Daniel "Chappie" James, Jr. Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. more true facts about the Tuskegee Airmen include:
Little Known Black History Fact: The True Tuskegee Airmen was originally published on blackamericaweb.com


text:
Scientology cult contract
From WikiLeaks
Unless otherwise specified, the document described here:
- Was first publicly revealed by WikiLeaks working with our source.
- Was classified, confidential, censored or otherwise withheld from the public before release.
- Is of political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance.
Any questions about this document's veracity are noted.
The summary is approved by the editorial board.
See here for a detailed explanation of the information on this page.
If you have similar or updated material, see our submission instructions.
- Release date
- April 27, 2008
Scientology "enrolment application, agreement and general release" form (section 1).", which according to document time stamps was scanned in from paper form on Sat Apr 26 11:08:04 2008.
Anyone who wishes to attend or participate in one of Scientology's religious services (possibly restricted to members of staff or other "active" members) must sign this document before they can do so. Section two of the contract effectively defines everything Scientology does as a "religious service".
By signing the contract a person agrees that any and all disputes they have with Scientology and its affiliates that cannot be resolved informally will be handled by an internal arbitration system. Under no circumstances will they or anyone acting on their behalf take any sort of legal action against the Church/affliliates/employees. If they (or someone acting on their behalf) does try to take legal action, this contract will be presented as sufficient evidence for having the case dismissed immediately and with prejudice.
By signing this contract a person is also stating that they fully agree with Scientology's opposition to Psychiatry and that they themselves absolutely do not want to be committed to Psychiatric care.
The document's primary effect appears to prevent members of Scientology from suing the Scientology for any abuses, negligence or to regain donated moneys or course fees.
Further information
File size in bytes
This is the Staff Contract all non-Sea Org staff members are required to sign before ANYTHING.
1. Possible partial excerpts, not aware of entire document being released.
2. It demonstrates the control it exerts on its members, and it's hostility to mental health practitioners.
3. Anyone with an interest in the subject.
4. Any ex-member could verify, as well as via the Religious Technology Center (http://www.rtc.org/contacts.html)
5. To help increase understanding of what joining the cult entails.


text: Germany's 176th Oktoberfest is underway, with six-million visitors from around the world expected at the 16-day beer festival. Oktoberfest is our kind of festival. It combines some of our favorite things in life: beer, food, and cleavage. In honor of the later, we have put together a gallery of the hottest girls of Oktoberfest, sporting their "Dirndl" – traditional dress. For those of you who want to know about the festival and the beer, we provide the following link to Wikipedia. The rest of you can get to the reason you came here: