text:
Advocates call for general's ouster
An advocate for sexual assault victims is urging the Air Force to fire a general involved with a case that has enraged members of Congress who are pushing for the military to finally crack down on the sexual violence that critics say has become an epidemic.
Protect Our Defenders President Nancy Parrish argued Tuesday in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force, used "failed and biased reasoning and unreliable information" in his decision to dismiss the sexual-assault conviction of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson.
Story Continued Below
Parrish argued that Franklin's decision to overturn the findings of a court-martial and free Wilkerson "clearly conflicts with his responsibility to further good order and discipline within the service."
The case drew a hail of criticism from members of Congress, who argued Franklin's decision showed an old-boys' club at work protecting its own. Hagel responded with a proposal that Congress change the Uniform Code of Military Justice to weaken commanders' abilities to void court-martial verdicts, which victims' advocates welcomed as a first step toward what they say is needed reform.
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley defended Franklin, telling reporters in a breakfast meeting Tuesday that Franklin has a track record of acting correctly and within the bounds of the law. Franklin, Donley said, uses his power as "convening authority" in courts-martial based on the merits of each case. Although Franklin has altered the results in two of the five sexual-assault cases he's dealt with, he has let convictions stand in three of them, Donley said.
Franklin himself has also dismissed charges that he does not take sexual assault seriously.
"Accusations by some that my decision was the result of either an apparent lack of understanding of sexual assault on my part, or that I do not take the crime of sexual assault seriously are complete and utter nonsense," Franklin said in a six-page letter to Donley last month. "I unequivocally view sexual assault as a highly egregious crime. I take every allegation of sexual assault very seriously."


text: This information is provided for historical purposes only. It may contain outdated information and links may no longer function. Please contact the DoD Webmaster if you have any questions about this archive. IMMEDIATE RELEASE Military Commissions Media Invitation Announced for United States v. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri April 9, 2015 Press Advisory Release No: PA-035-15 The Department of Defense and the Office of Military Commissions will allocate seats for news media aboard military chartered aircraft for travel from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military commission pre-trial proceedings scheduled for United States v. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, May 6-15. Travel originates at Andrews AFB, Maryland, on Sunday, May 3; the return flight from Guantanamo to Andrews AFB is scheduled for Saturday, May 16. Due to a limited number of seats aboard the flight and limited accommodations at Guantanamo Bay, selection is not guaranteed. However, there will be an additional opportunity for media members to view the proceedings by closed circuit television (CCTV) from a media work center at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, from May 6-15. Media desiring to view this hearing should send their requests via email to firstname.lastname@example.com. All requests must be received no later than 12 p.m. EDT, April 14. Media members should submit their names, positions, sponsoring organization, contact information, birthdate, and passport information to the above email address. Multiple names from the same organization may be listed. Requesters should indicate each individual's desire to be considered for travel to Guantanamo or attendance at Fort Meade. NOTE 1: There are no tours of detention camps scheduled during military commissions. Request for reporting on Guantanamo topics not related to the military commission (courtroom) must be coordinated through OSD Public Affairs and Joint Task Force-Guantanamo public affairs. The primary purpose of travel to Guantanamo is courtroom reporting. NOTE 2: All media must ensure their passports and visas (foreign press) are up-to-date and eligible to enter and exit the United States. Expeditionary Legal Complex B-Roll: (2014) http://www.dvidshub.net/video/384521/expeditionary-legal-complex-guantanamo-bay-cuba (2011) http://www.dvidshub.net/video/283025/expeditionary-legal-complex-video-2011#.VLAbBzZOk-4 Expeditionary Legal Complex Photos: http://www.dvidshub.net/image/1710409/expeditionary-legal-complex-guantanamo-bay-cuba#.VLAavzZOk-4 Further information including the media ground rules can be viewed at the Office of Military Commissions website at http://www.mc.mil.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
In doing this, I was really trying to augment the savory profiles of the beef without really changing the flavor of the meat. I went with some proven elements for my taste palette. Onions, carrots, garlic, shiitake mushrooms, Bragg's Amino Acids and Red Boat fish sauce. I am hoping to get a blend of the aromatics and umami elements with the addition of some sodium as well.
Bob's Test Injection
1 small onion
4 small carrots
2 cloves garlic
3 shiitake mushrooms, dried
1/4 cup Bragg's Aminos
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons Red Boat Fish Sauce
6 cups water
I brought the water to a boil, reduced to a simmer and added everything but 2 tablespoons of fish sauce. After 10 minutes and back to a simmer, I cut the heat and let it steep until cool. This was bottled and allowed to sit for 2 days. Upon opening, gave it the sniff and taste test. It smelled great, no fish smell, no funkiness, just a nice aromatic blend, I would liken to a vegetable version of demi-glace. It was a little intense and salty in terms of taste. But, no matter, I used two cups to inject the brisket until it started rejecting the liquid. Into the fridge for now. Upon removal from the fridge, there was a notable fish sauce aroma, that got stronger as the meat came to room temperature, not to worry, this always goes away over time.
Well, it took me an extra day to get the whole thing together and onto the kettle. I setup the kettle for a longer burn with a little adaptation to create sort of a heat sink under the brisket. Not sure how this setup will work, but, hey, let's mess with all the parameters at once. I did apply a dry rub to the meat, one portion an experimental rub called Cow Pow by the makers of Big Butz BBQ sauce, and the other a mix of leftovers from Simply Marvelous BBQ (their Cherry and Sweet and Spicy) mixed with some of my mother rub. Why would I do this, well, I needed to test the Cow Pow and did not have enough to do the whole brisket, but, it needed to be tested. The Simply Marvelous would have been fine alone, but, I wanted more heat from the Phu Quoc peppers that I am now using, so I added that to it.
I set up the kettle a little different to see what I could do with a few extra pieces to add some thermal mass and a little shielding of heat. he setup also allowed me to put a couple more pounds of charcoal to the overall load, meaning a few more hours of burn time. I believe I could get 6 to 8 hours with this rig.
Onto the kettle at 200F intially, and letting it run up to 300F over 4 hours, I will hold it there for a couple of hours more and let it then rest until ready to be sliced and tested. Now here is where things get even a little more odd, I had to shut down the cook about 4 hours in, to go take care of some family affairs, so the brisket was wrapped in foil and rested in a heated and then turned off oven.
Here it sat for three hours. Upon my return, it was returned to the now marginally running kettle for another 2-1/2 hours and then into the oven again to rest, as I had a dinner to attend to. I got home 4 hours later to a cold brisket. If you have ever had cold brisket, you know it can be hard and a little dry, this stuff rocked. It was tender, almost flaky with just a little pull and you could see it was still moist.
The taste was right there. The CowPow rub was a great spicy complement to the beef, a true brisket rub. Here are the sliced pics, I wish you could smell and taste this brisket. The injection really upped the meaty profile without adding a lot of salt or strange meat texture, a perfect balance.
Sorry about the pics, this was shot at midnight, after a few cocktails and a full tasting menu with pairings, so there may be some focus issues. For those not familiar with BBQ, that may look burned, but, that bark is a lot of flavor.


text:
|2012-05-03, 17:23
|Link #1322
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
lol, and I was just about to make a comment about how this series basically turned into Punch-Out at this point.
Anyhow, Itagaki wins by awakening new BS superpowers again..... what a surprise. And I really wish that Mori would give Aokimura a break and give them a freaking proper victory, for cryin' out loud. As was already noted, we can only have so many mud-fights that result in decision wins. That's why, even if the possibility is small, I'm hoping that Aoki can somehow obtain a comeback victory from that Frankenstein-looking dude....
|2012-05-18, 08:42
|Link #1324
U mad?
Join Date: Apr 2012
So some new guy comes along, is trained by Maron for a few months and levels up to world level? Seriously, Kimura lost in half a chapter off-screen and Aoki has a death flag, while Ippo is still in the middle of fighting asian national champions. I wouldn't be surprised if Takemura conquers all 6 classes before Ippo has his match against a high world ranker.
|2012-06-02, 14:56
|Link #1330
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2008
Man this is one of the few time i can feel the rage from Takamura. I recall the last time he was this angry outside the ring was Hawk knocking the old man.
On a lighter note, I guess the picture promise between Aoki and Kimura is void now.
|2012-07-19, 16:43
|Link #1338
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: U.S.
I'm still pissed about this too, especially with Kimura having such a great match against Mashiba and for someone who regularly sparring with Ippo and Miyata you'd think he get some break.
As for Aoki, he was suppose to be more athletic than Kimura and based on his baseball poweress, his hand-eye coordination and reflex should be top of the the gym. Now that the mystery was solved that with his eye-shutting problem, you'd things would click for him but no.....
|2012-07-21, 20:14
|Link #1339
Looking for ONE PIECE
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Sleeping Forest
ippo will most likely fight someone ranked a little higher than him. i don't really see Miyata going for Ricardo.he's reserved for ippo. hope he has a match outside Japan. go to america to face a ranker and meet up with Volg again. be an undercard in his title fight.
Miyata will go for wbc. then when they have both won world titles they face each other.
feel bad for Sendo he is the one who is going after ricardo. it'd be great if Sendo fights Ricardo before ippo. though i doubt that'll happen his ranking is too low.
Last edited by kayote; 2012-07-23 at 14:42.
|boxing, shonen, sports
|Thread Tools


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I promised I'd stop blathering on about Iron Girl and so I'm going to write about something I've been meaning to write about for the last 2 weeks… my worst nightare, jury duty. Wow – that was quite a run-on sentence, huh?
I live in Baltimore City. While they city claims that they don't just pull people for jury duty based on voter registration – I call shenanigans on that because the week I changed my voter registration was when I received my jury duty notice. Coincidence? I think not.
I'm not sure why I dreaded jury duty so much. I love courtroom drama shows. Jeremy is going to school to be a lawyer and as much as I don't enjoy hearing about 80% of his schoolwork, every so often a case intrigues me.
Plus – I have an opinion on everything. I love judging people. Its what I do best. Clearly – jury duty was something that was right up my alley.
But still – I dreaded it. It just seemed like such a hassle.
Anywho – I ended up going 2 weeks ago and loved it. While I'll agree that the majority of time is spent sitting around in a waiting room – if you actually get called into a case for jury selection… its really quite fascinating. And talk about some great people watching!
I'll try to keep this brief. I spent the morning reading David Sedaris' "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" (I recommend it) and half watching "Meet the Parents". I later learned that they play "Meet the Parents" everyday and felt very very sorry for the employees of the courthouse. Its a funny movie and all… but every day? Ugh.
Anywho – to make this a quick read, I'll just list the highlights of my jury duty experience. And no, sadly I was not selected for the jury.
1. They pay you $15! In cash! And okay – that basically covers the cost of lunch. But I got to eat lunch with Jeremy since he works so close to the courthouse and we ate a Suzy Soba and that place is like crack cocaine if I knew what that stuff was really like but I imagine that its addicting because its usually the reason people end up on intervention. Anyways…
2. I got to finish my book.
3. I got a paid day off of work.
4. The people watching is top notch in a courthouse. Its amazing to see what some people deem appropriate courtroom attire. I saw people in t-shirts, cutoffs and flip-flops to stripper-wear to a man wearing ALL WHITE (no joke… he must have thought he was Diddy).
5. Watching people do everything in their power to avoid being selected for a jury is entertaining too. One woman kept rambling on and on about her cataracts despite the judge instructing everyone to hold their explanations until called to his… judge's table? I don't know what that's called.
6. The judge asks the potential jurors a series of questions that you are supposed to stand for if your answer is yes. When the questions are done, he'll call you up individually so you can explain your story. I stood up for, "Have you ever been the victim of a crime?"
Well yes – yes, I have. I was held up at gunpoint about 6 years ago in Baltimore. No biggie. But the judge – I almost heard his heartbreak. His apology was so sincere that I actually responded, "Its okay. I'm okay."
7. Did I mention Diddy was there?
When all was said and done, the jury was filled before they even reached my number. I was bummed. The judge kept referring to the case as a "fascinating" and "interesting" case. I really wanted to be a part of that! But alas – the prosecutor and defending attorney had used all their "strikes" (something I was familiar with from Runaway Jury! haha – I love movies and tv) before they got to me.
So there you have it. This isn't my best post but I said I'd blog about something other than Iron Girl and I've been meaning to write about jury duty for quite some time.
Poop! (sorry – had to throw that in there)


text:
Expert systems are computer programs that contain subject-specific knowledge. Guided by user-defined rules, expert systems can analyze a given set of data with the same skill as a human expert. In the forensic community, an expert system (once optimized and validated) can assist forensic DNA analysts with the routine processing of single source samples and can streamline sample processing workflow by alerting the analyst to those samples that require more thorough manual review as specified in the user defined rules. This enhances the expertise of the forensic analyst. Since some data will always require some manual review by the analyst, it is critical that forensic expert systems also provide an efficient and robust workflow for this process so that the analyst has the necessary tools to quickly analyze a wide range of data. This dramatically reduces the amount of time an analyst needs to spend on the entire DNA analysis workflow.
"Expert systems are software or a suite of software programs that are used to rapidly process DNA data and generate final DNA results. Expert systems have the potential to reduce or eliminate backlogs of unanalyzed data, thereby streamlining DNA analysis and increasing the number of profiles available for import into CODIS." Marshall University Forensic Science Center
"With the advances made in higher throughput sample punches of convicted offender cards, robotic pipetting workstations, multicapillary instrumentation, and multiplex single amplification chemistry and the outsourcing of convicted offender samples, the bottleneck today has shifted from sample processing to sample data review for eventual upload into NDIS...The incorporation of expert systems into laboratory processes will lead to a reduction in time required for the data review process of convicted offender samples and submission to NDIS."
Rhonda Roby NIJ Technical Consultant
"Expert systems in forensic DNA analysis will eventually become essential for every crime lab. It is the next step in the evolution of our field. Years from now we will wonder how we ever worked without one."
Gary Shutler, Ph.D. DNA Technical Leader, Washington State Patrol, Crime Laboratory Division
Why use an expert system?
Laboratories facing increasing backlogs and expanding database legislation all over the world continually seek automated solutions that enable them to process and analyze an exponentially increasing number of samples with the same resources. Data review and analysis remains a significant time consuming activity for most forensic laboratories and the promise of expert system data review from a trusted manufacturer has the potential to tremendously impact the workflow of forensic laboratories. For this reason, forensic community experts have continued to define the role of expert system software for forensic data analysis over the last several years.
The most basic description of an expert system is a software program that can evaluate the quality of a sample according to a laboratory's established DNA interpretation guidelines. Based on the software's assessment, it then alerts users which samples require manual review and which do not. The results from the samples that DO NOT require manual review may be reported without any further review. Samples that require manual review may either be rejected or visually inspected. During visual inspection, the analyst may then reject the sample, edit the sample or manually accept (override) the sample. The goal of an expert system is to get data that requires manual review in front of the forensic analyst as quickly as possible to enhance their expertise.
- Allelic Ladder Quality Assessment: this feature eliminates the need to manually inspect allelic ladder samples
- Sample Level Quality Assessment
- Marker Level Quality Assessment
In addition to being able to meet the needs of the forensic community as an Expert System, GeneMapper® ID-X offers sophisticated tools to help users manage the data and separate those samples that require manual review from those that do not. This is accomplished through generation of the Analysis Summary. This automatic tool provides snapshots of allelic ladder, control and sample quality. Using an interactive window, users are able to link to desired groups of samples.


text:
Russia vs. Hellas…
…starring Andrei Kirilenko, with a special cameo from Kosta Koufos (box score).
Russian national team head coach David Blatt opted to rest AK in the second of Russia's three games, and played AK major minutes (game-high 32:16) in the third and last game of the tournament. AK
delivered (can't use that word to describe any Jazzman but Karl Malone) answered with 23 points, 9 boards, 6 assists, and 2 blocks while also drawing 9 of the 21 fouls awarded to Russia.
Meanwhile, at the Hellas of Justice, the Koof hit a sweet, high-arcing hook shot and had one foul and one turnover in 3.5 minutes of action.
AK, who started at the 4 again, had a difficult time scoring in the first quarter. He made his first bucket–a hoop and harm–but missed the FT. His other FGA in the quarter ended with 1) non-shooting foul; 2) fouled with no call; 3) offensive foul.
BTW, here's how AK's tat looks under his jersey:
I think we all pretty much assumed that his back would look plague-ridden, but it's actually nothing like that at all. The ink is a lot more subtle and translucent than you'd think.
Greece only made 1/7 2-point FGAs in the first quarter and Russia had 5 assists to Greece's 0, but the score after 1 was 16-9 Russia. AK scored 5 points in the first 1:30 of the 2nd quarter, and the Koof got called for a flagrant on Timofey Mozgov 37 seconds after he checked in.
Random observation: They keep showing all these scantily-clad and overly-tanned women in the stands. I assume they're WAGS. No Masha sighting though.
43-34 Russia at the half, but Greece ties it up early in the 4th after being given four consecutive flagrant or technical fouls (I can't tell which). After that, it was a really close game with a wild and wacky finish that I've included in the video.
I have to say, though he did have one great hammer dunk (a real hammer dunk, not one of Boler's hammers), AK goes up for the dunk far too infrequently and instead opts for layups or double-pump-throw-it-ups. More strength, less flail please. That said, it was pretty cool to see AK being the go-to guy down the stretch. He scored 23 points, but I was most impressed by his passing, i.e. AK's brand of 50% chance highlight/50% chance turnover dishes. He had one that was an underhanded shovel pass to Mozgov that was thrown from an inch above the floor, and another that was truly threading the needle while trapped between two defenders.
Speaking of Mozgov, AK and Mozgov are fantastic together…kind of how AK and Fes would be in an alternate fantasy reality. Mozgov might still be a kid, but it's like he knows how to use his body (#UDQM) while Fes and the Koof are newborn colts that haven't quite figured out how their limbs work. Which is weird, because they're both great dancers. /end digression


text:
Oh, vegetables. I used to love you. Then, I got pregnant and everything changed. I no longer wanted vegetables. All I wanted to eat was chocolate chip cookies and grilled cheese sandwiches.
However, a girl can't live on chocolate chip cookies and grilled cheese alone. (I mean, technically, I could. But I shouldn't.) I've had to practically force myself to eat vegetables, and it hasn't been easy. But, just when I thought I might never like vegetables again, I happened upon this kale salad. I don't know what it was about this particular salad, but it completely snapped me out of my anti-vegetable funk. It just tasted so good. Frankly, I couldn't get enough of it.
This salad happens to be incredibly good for you. It's vegan and gluten free. It contains a whole bunch of super foods – kale, quinoa, and cranberries. And, most importantly, it tastes good to this pregnant lady. (For the record, my husband also loved this kale quinoa salad. He ate two bowls of it for dinner one night, and ate the rest for lunch the next day. I'd say it was a hit.)
- 1 bunch of black (dinosaur) kale
- 1-2 small carrots
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 1 cup dry quinoa
- 3 tablespoons tahini paste
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- Water, as needed
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
- The juice of 1 lemon
- 1.5 teaspoons honey
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- Salt & pepper, to taste
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
- Optional garnishes: red chili flakes or avocado
- Cook quinoa according to package directions. When the quinoa is fully cooked, set aside until needed.
- while the quinoa is cooking, prep the vegetables. Using a sharp knife, slice the kale into thin strips. (No need to remove the stems!) Using a vegetable peeler, peel the carrot into thin ribbons. Toss the sliced kale and carrots together, along with the dried cranberries.
- To make the tahini dressing, stir together tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice. The mixture will thicken and turn a lighter shade. Begin adding water, a little at a time. Stir until the mixture is light and creamy, and the desired thickness. Stir in honey, salt, pepper, and minced garlic.
- Toss the kale mixture with 1.5 cups of cooked quinoa. Pour the dressing over the salad, and stir to coat. Sprinkle the sesame seeds atop the salad. Garnish with red chili flakes or avocado, if desired. Serve at room temperature.


text:
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text:
Stepfather of Zoe Perry.
Matthew P. Roth
The acclaimed actor stretches his range with John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, reveals what he's watching, and plays with how he says "Bosch."
Check out IMDb's San Diego Comic-Con coverage, featuring Kevin Smith as captain of the IMDboat, July 18 to 20, 2019, visit our guide to Star Wars, family entertainment, and more.


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From ConsumerWiki
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If a consumer has a complaint with a photographer, they should contact the photographer's employer. In the case of a free-lance photographer, consumers should contact a mediation source such as the Better Business Bureau, Small Claims, or local Consumer Protection Agency.
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text:
The Mountain View City Council decided not to give final approval of a major redevelopment project at San Antonio Shopping Center Tuesday, saying that the design had clearly not been finished.
Council members said they weren't interested in approving the project Tuesday after a representative for the developer read a long list of changes that they wanted to be made to the project. The changes made it "as clear as mud" what the project would be, said council member Ronit Bryant. City staff had also proposed a number of changes to the project just days before the meeting.
The developer nearly talked the council into approving the project, saying the changes could be worked out with city staff after the project's approval.
"What you are asking is for the council to give carte blanch to staff," said Mayor Jac Siegel. Council member Ronit Bryant was also opposed. "The worst thing is to vote on something and we don't know what we are voting on," Bryant said. "That I will not do."
In the most ambitious redevelopment of San Antonio Shopping Center since it was built in the 1950s, San Francisco-based Merlone Geier has proposed the redevelopment of one-third of the 56-acre shopping center, a 16.3-acre portion that extends from Sears to Rite Aid at the corner of San Antonio Road and El Camino Real.
The "Village at San Antonio Center" would include a one-acre park, 325 to 350 rental apartments and 311,000 square feet of retail space, including a new Safeway grocery store. It was announced Tuesday that Rite Aid is no longer part of the project.
In the last 40 minutes of the four-hour discussion, at around 11 p.m., council members gave some feedback on the project, adjusting building locations and street frontages, moving driveways and increasing park and sidewalk space, but not making the fundamental changes to the design that a number of residents suggested.
"We feel the project has been really poorly designed and mismanaged," said Forest Linebarger, CEO of Vox Design Group, calling the project "another strip mall" dominated by parking lots and cars. Another resident said the city could expect as much traffic from the project as the parking lots could accommodate and another praised the council for making "walkability and bikeability" a priority. Council members have also been less than enthusiastic about the large parking lot Safeway requires right at the "gateway" corner of San Antonio Road and El Camino Real.
Steve Rasmussen, owner of the nearby Milk Pail market, said he was worried about being squeezed out of business by major parking restrictions, as overflow parking could take up the spaces his customers use.
Resident Sandy Berry advocated for the newer-style Safeway as a cheaper alternative to driving to various specialty stores. She said she didn't "have that kind of time" to not drive a car to the supermarket. She urged the council to listen to the developer and the retailers because "they are the experts." In response to calls for a wider sidewalk and building frontages along El Camino Real, she said "I don't care what anybody says, El Camino Real will never be a nice place to walk."
"El Camino Real can be a perfectly pleasant place," Bryant said, citing a popular cafe in Menlo Park as an example. "Saying this is the way it will always be ... will not work."
Several council members supported an opportunity to implement the "Grand Boulevard" vision for a walkable El Camino Real with a 15-foot-wide sidewalk along the project's shops, replacing the less-than-10-foot-wide sidewalk proposed. Resident Jarret Mullin suggested a 24-foot-wide sidewalk.
A 54-inch-high wall at San Antonio and El Camino, designed to enclose a seating area from the busy intersection, was noted by Abe-Koga to be about as tall as she was. "Frankly, I think that's offensive," Bryant said of the height. "Three feet should do it."
Council members also supported an Environmental Planning Commission recommendation for shop entrances along El Camino, or at the very least, "something alive" such as store display windows, Bryant said.
The project includes three, five-story apartment buildings, with either parking or retail on the first floor and with recreation areas in each building. The developer proposed on Tuesday to rent 3 percent of the units at below market rate, less than the 10 percent the city required before such "inclusionary zoning" was ruled illegal in Palmer vs. the City of Los Angeles. It was noted that Prometheus Real Estate Group eventually agreed to include below market rate units in the Minton's redevelopment through the use of a development agreement.
In return for the 10 below-market-rate apartments offered, the developer requested that the city reimburse 100 percent of the value of the one-acre public park in the project, rather than the typical 50 percent. That could lower the $5.5 million park in-lieu fee that would otherwise be required.
The one-acre park, dubbed "San Antonio Green," would bisect the property into northern and southern halves. The developer claims there is space in the park for a farmers market, a dog park, bike paths and a bocce ball court.
Abe-Koga and others questioned the need for a one-way driveway circulating around the park, which several members said would not encourage use of the park. Some called for a two-way driveway on one side of it.
It has been suggested that Target may wish to move from Showers Drive into the northern portion of the site, where there would otherwise be space for three, 40,000-square-foot retailer stores above a street-level parking garage.
There was intense discussion about how to direct pedestrians through the Safeway parking lot, which had the developer defending a sidewalk-free design in the name of pedestrian safety, while some council members said there was room to remove a few parking spots to allow for pedestrians to comfortably walk through. Abe-Koga and others noted that the project already had more parking than the city requires. The Safeway would also have rooftop parking.
The manager of Safeway on California Street said their land lease ends in 2016, and the store is counting on the new location. Resident Doug Delong said it made more sense, traffic-wise, for Safeway to move to the California Street side of the shopping center, and said there was no good reason to have Safeway in the project, it just happened to be a place where a piece of real estate became available. Several union representatives and Safeway employees were there to defend the 200 "good jobs" slated for the new Safeway, an increase from the current 120 jobs at the California Avenue store.
Merlone Geier said the new development would employ 900 people, and provide a "net increase" to the city's sales tax revenue of $1.2 million. All of those employees would receive subsidized transit passes for three years from Merlone Geier.


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The PCM has detected a malfunction in the traction control module communication circuit. The traction control module communication circuit delivers data to the PCM and other controllers where it is utilized to calculate engine RPM, fuel delivery strategy, and engine timing, among other things. This code applies to vehicles equipped with electronic traction control systems only.
If the PCM (and/or other controllers) fails to receive an input from the traction control module communication circuit a code will be stored and a malfunction indicator lamp may be illuminated. The traction control malfunction indicator may also be illuminated (or flashing) and the transmission may also be placed in limp-in mode by the PCM.
Symptoms may include failed traction control operation, a lack of traction in slippery driving conditions, an illuminated or flashing traction control lamp, harsh shifting, failure to shift, reduced fuel efficiency, service engine soon lamp illumination, and a stored code.
By far the most common cause of this code is from a defective traction control ON/OFF switch. Liquids spilled into the traction control switch are a very common cause of this type of failure.. Other causes may include open, shorted, corroded, or otherwise damaged wiring and/or electrical connectors. Technicians also report the presence of excessive corrosion in the sensor connector as the cause of this code being stored.
The traction control module (sometimes integrated into either the powertrain control module or transmission control module) is frequently condemned in error when a defective switch, open circuits, or faulty connectors are at fault.


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The Raiders promoted linebacker David Nixon and and placed Ricky Brown on injured reserve, where the season-opening starter at strong side linebacker will finish out the season for the second straight year.
Nixon, an undrafted free agent from Brigham Young, got the nod over Slade Norris, a fourth-round draft pick. Norris missed practices recently with a hamstring injury. Nixon will be active when the Raiders face the Bengals today at the Coliseum, with Jon Alston inactive after landing on the injury report Saturday with an "illness."
Inactives for the Raiders are wide receiver Todd Watkins, linebacker Jon Alston, tackle Khalif Barnes, tackle Erik Pears, wide receiver Javon Walker, wide receiver Nick Miller and defensive tackle William Joseph. Charlie Frye is designated as the third quarterback.
Inactives for the Bengals are running back Cedric Benson, fullback Fui VAkapuna, linebacker Keith Rivers, defensive lineman Jonathan Fanene, tight end Chase Coffman and wide receiver Jerome Simpson. The third quarterback is Jordan Palmer.


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Accounts have been established at Y-12 Federal Credit Union and ORNL Federal Credit Union to benefit Johnny and Karen Longmire and family.
The accounts were established in response to members of the public who have indicated a desire to help the Longmires, whose home in the Ponderosa subdivision burned on Oct. 29.
Donations for the couple and their sons, Hunter Golliher and Johnathon Longmire, can be dropped off or called in to either credit union until Dec. 17.
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the Roane County News, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label.
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The property behind Rite Aid where the facility once operated was deserted Sept. 25, leaving recycling customers to stand by quizzically.
Two signs stated the site had been canceled by CalRecycle — the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery — and there was a CalRecycle contact reference attached to a container.
Three decades ago, Dan Regan, owner of R.B. Enterprises, started OB's only recycling facility at the corner of Voltaire Street and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard before relocating the business to the Rite Aid location in 1998.
Regan also owns another recycling center in Kearny Mesa on Ashford Street.
Having to support a family and house payments with the income from his business, Regan personally oversees operations at both his facilities.
Despite the contention that CalRecycle cancelled Regan's recycling center, CalRecycle officials disagreed.
"CalRecycle did not cancel or close Mr. Regan's facility," said Mark Oldfield, communications director for CalRecycle. "He is in compliance with all program regulations. CalRecycle has absolutely no reason to shut him down. Closing the Ocean Beach facility was solely the owner's decision, based on whether he is able to continue the business and make a profit. Unfortunately, CalRecycle can no longer award the monthly handling-fee payment."
That may be of little consolation to Regan, whose world is now upside-down.
"Besides having to lay off one of my long-time employees, my income has been cut in half for the past three months," Regan said.
In conjunction with less income, he has also not been receiving his monthly handling-fee payments from CalRecycle.
"Their [CalRecycle] reasoning is based on a sudden change of CRV zoning that used to make my facility eligible for the handling-fee payments from the state. Without that help, I won't be able to keep the OB place running."
He said that the lack of funds forced him into making the decision to close the Ocean Beach facility to avoid further financial losses.
Regan also fears his family will soon end up homeless.
"Beginning today, I have 90 days to somehow fix this dilemma before my house goes into foreclosure," he said.
Regan insists that he never received notification from CalRecycle about the recent CRV zone change, which was a result of the closure of the former Appletree Market, exempting his facility from receiving further state funds.
According to Oldfield, however, once the Appletree Market closed, this eliminated the convenience-zone Regan's facility operated in. Oldfield said Regan knew that his business was no longer eligible for state assistance.
"Nonetheless, we have been working with the owner to find ways for him to stay viable at the current location," said Oldman. "We would like to see Regan to continue his Ocean Beach location. We will assist in finding other ways or locations for him to set up and be successful."
California recycling centers are not owned or operated by the state. However, according to CalRecycle's website, www.calrecycle.ca.gov, profit recycling centers — which are certified convenience-zone recycling centers — are eligible to receive the state's help in the form of a monthly handling-fee payment, provided they meet CalRecycle's criteria.
Regan wonders why Rite Aid and Peoples Market in Ocean Beach are not considered by CalRecycle to meet these CRV criteria, since they are a supermarket and/or a full-line service store.
Regan said he would much rather keep his business in Ocean Beach where his services are well known and respected.
He said he takes pride in the fact that most Obecians, as well as local schools and churches, have been recycling at his Ocean Beach facility for the last 30 years.
Regan hopes CalRecycle will decide to help him rekindle his business in Ocean Beach.
"Hopefully, they [CalRecycle] will somehow consider a reasonable compromise. I would hate to see OB folks travel almost five miles out of town to the next recycle center," Regan said.
Consumers who have concerns regarding the closure of a recycling center can call (800) 732-9253, or email email@example.com.
Regan's customer hotline can be reached at (858) 430-6076.


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The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand: Prologue released
For those sublime unions of literature and art.
Moderators: SecondTalon, Moderators General, Prelates
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The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand: Prologue released
Hello to everyone here at the xkcd forums. I'm making a post to notify you all about our new graphic novel series, The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand. We released the prologue on Friday, and it's available free of charge in PDF format on our website. I'm quoting the official press release that has all the details:
Centrifugal Stories is happy to announce that the prologue to the graphic novel series "The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand" is now released. The graphic novel is available free of charge online and you can find download mirrors on the official website under the Issues Section.
The prologue features 10 full color pages, introducing the two protagonists of the story, Du'an Stahl and Eőrsike Lato. The former is an acclaimed writer for London-based history journal "The Chronicler". Eőrsike is a young unemployed girl who visits Csór, a small village in Hungary, one week after her grandmother passed away.
The graphic novel is drawn by Ana Santo, a young talented artist from Portugal and the story is written by Dimitris Manos. Centrifugal Stories plan to release the first issue of the series in November. The plot will blend historical events with fiction and it will span different time periods.
So head over to the official website to download the Prologue.
Feel free to post some feedback as this is our first release and we'd like to get better.
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text:
Confidential Addresses
Requesting a "Confidential Address" in New York City Family Court
- What does the law provide?
- How can I request that my address remain confidential in a Family Court case?
- What happens when I get into the courtroom?
- What happens if the Court grants my request to maintain my address as confidential?
- What does it mean to have a confidential address?
- What should I do if my address has changed after my request has been granted?
What does the law provide?
Any person in a Family Court case may ask the court to keep his or her address confidential from the other party. This application may be made when you file your initial papers or at any time during the pendency of the proceeding. If the Court grants your request, your address will not appear on any petitions, pleadings or papers submitted to the court.
If the other party does not know your address and you feel that you or your child(ren) will be exposed to danger or violence if your identifying information were known, you may request that your address be marked as "confidential."
Howcan I request that my address remain confidential in a Family Court case?
The Family Court has procedures in place to keep your address confidential. You may make this application when you file your initial papers. Once you make a request to have your address designated as "confidential," the clerk will give you an "Address Confidentiality Affidavit" (GF-21) which you must complete and sign. You can get this form at the petition room or download it from the court's website at <www.nycourts.gov/forms/familycourt/general.shtml>. If you have questions about the affidavit, the petition room staff will help you complete this form. You will be asked for a reason why your address should not be disclosed. You must choose one of the following reasons:
1. Disclosure of your address would pose an unreasonable risk to your health, safety or your child(ren)'s health or safety.
2. You are in a residential program for victims of domestic violence or a shelter provided for parents accompanying abused or neglected children, or a shelter for homeless persons. (If you are in domestic violence shelter, you DO NOT have to provide your address.)
3. You were previously granted an address confidentiality order from this court or another court.
Whathappens when I get into the courtroom?
When you go into the courtroom, tell the judge you are seeking to have your address remain confidential. The judge will conduct a brief hearing on the first day you appear in court or at a later date. At that time you will have the opportunity to tell the judge why you believe your address should remain confidential. Before the Court can issue an "Address Confidentiality Order," the judge must determine that disclosure of your address would pose an unreasonable risk to you or your child's health or safety. Your address will be treated as confidential until the judge makes a decision on your request.
Whathappens if the Court grants my request to maintain my address as confidential?
If the Court grants your request, you are required to name someone to receive future legal papers, including petitions filed against you in the Family Court. The person you name to accept these papers on your behalf is called your "designated agent for service." You may designate (name) an attorney, any person over age eighteen or the Clerk of the Family Court to be your "agent for service" for future family court proceedings. The Court will notify the person you have named as your agent and will provide you with a copy of the court order.
Whatdoes it mean to have a confidential address?
If the judge grants your request, your address will be listed as "Confidential" in the court file and on all papers filed in the Family Court. The court will mail all Family Court legal process to the person you named as your agent. It is that person's responsibility to provide you with copies of any papers s/he receives from the court.
If your address is confidential and the other party files any Family Court petitions or papers against you, he or she will serve those papers on the person you named as your agent. Your agent will be responsible for getting the papers to you. If you named the Clerk of Court as your agent, the court will mail these papers to the address the court has on file for you.
It is your responsibility to make sure the person you named as your agent has your current address at all times. You will be asked to sign a form in which you agree that you will promptly notify the person you named as your agent of any change in your address.
Whatshould I do if my address has changed after my request has been granted?
You are responsible for providing your correct address to the person you named as your agent. It is extremely important that you notify your agent each and every time your address changes. If you fail to report a change of address or provide a correct address, your agent will not be able to inform you of any proceedings that have been filed against you, provide you with copies of legal papers received on your behalf, or any decisions or Orders issued by the Court.
If you designated the Clerk of Court as your agent, you MUST inform the court of any change of address. You may appear in person to complete a "Change of Address" form or you may download this form from the website and mail it to the court along with a photocopy of your government issued photo identification. If you are unable to download the form you may write a letter requesting a change of address and mail it to the court along with your photo ID.
If you have changed your address but have not notified your agent, that person will not be able to notify you to appear in court. Once your agent receives copies of the papers, you are legally served, and the judge will have the power to decide the case even if you do not receive them from your agent. If you do not appear in court there is a possibility that the case will proceed in your absence and the judge could enter Orders against you that you will be required to follow.


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Sep 08, 2011
The 5 K race was lead from start to finish by the freshman runner. She won the race with a time of 21:38 and an 8 second lead over the 2nd place UNE runner. Coach Case is excited that Paige has gotten off to such a great start to the season. He believes Paige is certainly deserving of the honors from the USCAA.
"Paige has the right mindset though; she knows that she can improve, wants to improve and understands that she needs to work harder now because the runners close to her are going to try to close that gap." says Coach Case.


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The Wikileaks founder is set to step on to the embassy's balcony for only the second time since he suddenly arrived on June 19 as part of his campaign to avoid extradition to Sweden.
The 41-year-old is wanted for questioning in Sweden over allegations of sexual assault, but he fears being sent to the United States to be quizzed over the WikiLeaks website for publishing top secret US government documents, including dossiers on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His supporters are expected to pack into the street outside the embassy in Central London, close to Harrods in Knightsbridge, to hear his speech.
Mr Assange gave a speech from the balcony in August, watched by officers from the Metropolitan Police, which has mounted a round-the-clock guard on the embassy.
Police will arrest Mr Assange if he steps outside the embassy after he broke bail conditions.
Ecuador's government has granted Mr Assange political asylum, but there has been no sign of a resolution to the impasse.
He gave a briefing to a handful of journalists last month, revealing that a block on processing donations by credit card companies to WikiLeaks had cost the whistle-blowing website over £30 million, with staff having to take a 40% pay cut as a result.
He described the block as an economic "death penalty" after the European Commission said it was unlikely to have violated EU anti-trust rules.
Mr Assange said WikiLeaks had lost 95% of its revenues, claiming that documents he had obtained showed that hard-right politicians in the United States were behind the blockade.


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Machine-Tool Builder's Training Center Earns NIMS Accreditation
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Monday, July 1, 2013
DMG/Mori Seiki University (DMSU), Hoffman Estates, IL, has joined the network of NIMS (National Institute for Metalworking Skills) accredited training programs. DMG/Mori Seiki is the only machine-tool company to achieve the accreditation, which focuses on CNC machining and machine maintenance. It requires that all trainers gain credentials in a variety of NIMS skills certifications.
Related Enterprise Zones: Tool & Die, Training
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Ryan Seacrest announced on the Today Show that he's "joining the NBC family" and his first assignment will be covering the London Olympics this summer.
"I've worked with the E! network for years and NBC Universal and E! are in the same family," Seacrest told Matt Lauer on the Today Show. "The plan is for me to join the NBC family and continue to have role at the E! network. The first assignment will be to join the primetime team for the Olympics on NBC."
He did not give any specifics about his role or when he would start with NBC.
As for American Idol, Seacrest said, "I plan to say there."
Laurer later jokingly asked Seacrest how long it would be until he took Laurer's job.
"I see you doing this as long as you want to," Seacrest said. "So the question is: How long will you be on the Today show?"


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jparlie necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 98 diseños de 17 diseñadores freelance.
Cutco Cutlery - Vector Marketing
We are a company that sells High quality Kitchen Cutlery called Cutco, Made in the USA. There are 36 division in our company. We represent the Los Angeles Division. We want to differentiate our division from the other divisions by creating our own logo and theme. We recruit, train, and develop college students and young adults to be sales reps and managers with the company. Our company has a large focus on personal growth, and we provide opportunities for developing life experiences.
The People in our company are young, fun, and energetic. Our company is growing and will continue to grow over the next decade.
The logo is being created for internal purposes as a source or pride. I manage 14 offices and 100's of sales reps that are mostly college students. The logo should appeal the younger generation.
Our Slogan is Create Leaders. Our core principles are Learn, Achieve, Develop. Which is also the acronym for our division, the Los Angeles Division (LAD).
Our Websites are Cutco.com, and Vectormarketing.com. You should probably check our websites and our company logos to give you some direction or spark creative ideas.
Our Division color is "LA Dodger Blue," but we are open to creativity and brilliance.
We work with mostly college students and young adults so it should appeal to the younger generation.
Think Simple and modern like a Mac Store.
We would like a logo that includes our Slogan, acronym (LAD), Learn, Achieve, Develop, and Dark Blue color (LA Dodgers)
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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I've just started playing around with Spotify, a service which would seem to hit the 'too good to be true' warning, and would have done so if I hadn't seen it covered in the mainstream press.
Spotify is a free audio player available from www.spotify.com. Unlike other audio players, such as winamp, iTunes1, Media Player or Songbird, Spotify will not limit you to playing just your own music; it will allow you to play any music. Well, any in its library, something which I'll come to later. While this may sound like a dodgy file-share front end, it is in fact legitimate, fully legal and licensed. The service is ad supported, although so far they appear to be less regular, and less annoying than radio adverts. You can't skip them, and they pause if you mute your system. However, if the ads annoy you, and you decide you want to go ad free, you can do so for £9.99 a month.
The interface is clean, fast and smooth, especially in contrast to the positively clunky Songbird. It's styling are clearly inspired by Apple, although the window doesn't look out of place on my Windows system. Its easy to search for and find tracks, however the interface feels a touch limited at times. For example, if I search for tracks by Queen it successfully finds 4862 tracks, these cover the band, other bands with the word Queen in them (eg. Queen Latifah) as well as albums and tracks containing the word Queen. At the top of the search it provides links, which look as though they should narrow your search, but instead link you to a page about the band/album. This detail is a nice addition, and you can add tracks from these pages, but it can make searching a touch cumbersome. Fortunately it is possible to write quite detailed search strings, and gain control that way. It is also the case that once you have sorted your search results, new results are no longer appended to the bottom. While this is understandable when it comes to maintaining the sort, it could cause problems if your track makes a later appearance.
The interface also has limitations when it comes to playlist management. It is possible to get a track playing in two ways, double clicking it, or queuing it to the playlist. The former begins it playing immediately, and adds the remainder (or a subsection thereof if there are lots of results) of the current search to your playlist in a greyed out fashion. These will be played automatically once the currently playing track has ended. However any tracks that you add manually following this will be highlighted in white, and added immediately after your last manually queued track, or whatever is playing currently. This behaviour is excellent, as it allows for a quick dive into a genre or band, or more careful queing up of songs. The interface also allows you to easily re-order playlists, including bringing the grey, automatically queued tracks to the front, or middle, of your manual playlist.2 However it is not possible to modify this automatically generated playlist, meaning that if I notice it has queued up a track I don't like, I have to wait for it to play and skip, rather then removing it from the playlist. However this approach does allow one to be listening to, say, a random selection of Rock from 1960-1980, and then easily add a track of interest to begin playing immediately after whatever is currently playing, or at least after the last manually added track.
Spotify will live and breathe on the diversity of its library. Limited selections is a major issue with many digital music retailers, and Spotify suffers similarly. While I was able to find any Queen song I so desired for instance, the selection of Pink Floyd was limited to a few covers and tribute bands.3 Some bands sit in the middle of this continuum, with the odd few tracks being picked up due to collaborations, of compilation albums. I imagine this situation is one which will improve with time, but as it currently stands Spotify will not be replacing many people's media libraries. However, it is far from a useless selection, and includes a mix of mainstream and Indie labels. A nice touch is that the library also includes a few interviews and other shows, which are sorted into suitable categories and thus will occasionally crop up in automatic playlists. I haven't yet found out if it is possible to control whether this happens or not.
As well as the few limitations of the library size, it also has a few problems with annotation. For example, clicking the screenshot above and you'll see that it classes Atomic Kitten as rock, which seems a bit of a stretch, even for categories which are often subjective.
So how does Spotify compare to something like Last.fm? Well firstly Spotify give you far much more control over what you are playing, and is far less dependent on having a browser. It makes it theoretically possible to use Spotify to entirely replace your music library, a task for which last.fm is neither designed nor suited. Both feature mechanisms of being introduced to new music, although only Last.fm's system dynamically responds to your tastes. Spotify doesn't even allow you to rate tracks, and I feel it could gain significantly by replicating Last.fm's Love/Hate ratings, allowing you to completely forbid tracks, or make them easy to find in future. While it is possible to add favourite tracks to a playlist, a favourites system would allow users to easily find 'my favourite 1970s Rock tracks' for example. The other major area is the social side of things, one in which spotify is surprisingly lacking. While it is possible to share music and even colaberate on playlists, this is all achieved outside the Spotify player, and even the website. This isn't perhaps a failiure, but does seem a surprising oversight in this age of social media. However it is possible to scrobble Spotify tracks to Last.fm, so ther use of one certainly doesn't preclude the other. Overall though the two systems currently perform different functions, last.fm being a site for discovering new music and sharing what you are interested in, while Spotify is attempting to replace the local media library.
One final feature I feel could benifit Spotify is support for local media libraries. While its eventual goal may be to entirely replace local media collections, or at least digital ones, it is not there quite yet. This feature would encourage people to abandon their current local media players more regularly in favour of Spotify, and would also help ease bandwidth for tracks which are already stored locally.
In summary, Spotify may very well be the future of digital music, but that future isn't quite here yet. However, Spotify is still in beta, and makes a very impressive present.
- Which annoyingly I keep Malaproping on and calling iPlayer. [↩]
- I realise this talk of automatic and manual playlists is confusing. What I've dubbed the automatic playlist is a list of songs cued up through selecting a radio station or by double clicking a track in a search result. This playlist is greyed out and located at the end of any manually queued up tracks; it will only begin playing if it gets to the end of the manually queued playlist, and will automatically extend itself using the same search parameters if it nears the end. [↩]
- This does't actually appear to be a label problem as EMI, Sony, Warner, and Universal are all signed up, among others. [↩]


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Photo: Sergei Grits / AP Images
The City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, is investigating claims by a whistleblower that Britain's £300bn wholesale gas market has been "regularly" manipulated by some of the big power companies, exploiting weaknesses that echo the recent Libor scandal.Separately, the energy regulator Ofgem has been warned by a company responsible for setting so-called benchmark prices, ICIS Heren, that it had seen evidence of suspect trading on 28 September, a key date as it marks the end of the gas financial year and can have an important influence on future prices.
The whistleblower, who works for ICIS Heren, raised the alarm after identifying what he believed to be attempts to distort the prices reported by the company. These benchmark prices are critically important because many wholesale gas contracts are based on them and small changes in the price can cost or save companies millions.
The revelations come at a highly charged time for Britain's energy sector, with many of the big six suppliers under public fire for alleged profiteering on household energy bills and mis-selling on the doorstep.
In a statement, the FSA said: "We can confirm that we have received information in relation to the physical gas market. We take market misconduct seriously and will be analysing the material."
Ofgem said it had been given material "relating to trading in the gas market and is looking into the issue". The energy regulator said it had limited powers in this area but would "consider carefully any evidence of market abuse brought to our attention as well as scope for action under all our other powers".
The City and energy regulators are keenly aware of the growing political concerns that high energy prices, which are linked to wholesale values, can increase fuel poverty and undermine economic recovery.
The market abuse concerns were initially raised by Seth Freedman, a former City trader who worked as a price reporter at ICIS Heren for nine months. He told the Guardian he believed problems he spotted in a frenzied half-hour of trading on 28 September were more widespread.
"Traders have made clear to me that manipulation of gas prices is taking place on a regular basis. They name big companies among those they accuse of trying to rig prices and reap profits. Market participants claim the fixing of prices is an open secret," he said.
He also claimed that:
- Big six companies are among those whose names are quoted by traders as being involved in attempts to raise or depress wholesale gas prices.
- The key benchmark indices produced by at least one price reporting agency and used increasingly in massive UK supply contracts are unreliable, undermined by poorly trained staff and over-cozy relationships between traders and price reporters.
- Traders regularly put price reporters under pressure to change prices they disagree with.
- Price reporters struggle to set accurate benchmarks because they lack detailed information about trading in the opaque so-called "over-the-counter" market and are dependent on what traders tell them about market activity.
The disturbing issues raised by the traders he talked to daily in his job at ICIS led Freedman to tape conversations about the 28 September price gyrations, which he has handed over to the FSA.
In one, a trader from one power company says: "There's a feeling among some people that somebody's taking the piss a bit on the day ahead index. Between us I think [Company X] got in a bit of trouble for that about six months ago." (It has not been possible to establish if any company was censured.)
Another trader told Freedman, who has previously been a freelance contributor to the Guardian, in an instant messaging exchange: "There are a few shops that continually try to distort closes from what I see … some of the range of quotes I hear sometimes are criminal."
When Freedman flagged up a series of suspiciously low trades that he believed were designed to depress ICIS's "day ahead" price on 28 September, a senior ICIS manager acknowledged that they appeared to be an attempt to manipulate the price but said "actually we did a bad job investigating it".
ICIS Heren did notify Ofgem about the suspicious trades. But, in another recorded conversation, the manager said there was "no official thing to do" when price reporting agencies saw what they believed to be evidence of price manipulation.
The whistleblower's information handed over to the FSA shows that on 28 September the price at which so-called day ahead gas contracts were being bought and sold dropped sharply at precisely the time – 4.30pm – at which ICIS Heren attempts to take the pulse of the market.
One explanation for this could be that traders were deliberately dealing below the prevailing price in order to drag the benchmark down, perhaps because they stood to gain more from other contracts linked to this benchmark.
It is not possible for price reporters to establish who did the suspicious deals because they were conducted through a third-party brokerage firm.
In a statement, ICIS confirmed that it had detected some "unusual trading" activity on the British wholesale gas market on 28 September, which it reported to energy regulator Ofgem in October.
"The cause of the trading pattern, which involved a series of deals done below the prevailing market trend, has not yet been established. ICIS welcomes the seriousness with which the regulator has so far responded to this information and we have provided all the evidence at our disposal to help the regulator determine what happened."
ICIS said it welcomed the additional powers that are to be assigned to national energy regulators as of 2013 under the Remit regulation and the additional market oversight provided by the pan-European energy regulator ACER.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "The government takes alleged abuse in our markets very seriously. It's important not to pre-empt the work that the enforcement agencies already have under way to assess the detail of the allegations made. The FSA and Ofgem have a range of powers available to them and have our full support in applying the law and ensuring that any wrongdoers are held to account."
It is understood that the energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, will make a statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday about the price manipulation allegations.
In Europe, energy companies have been trying to fight off attempts by Brussels to introduce tighter regulations of the gas market to ensure there can be no repeat of the Libor scandal.
Arlene McCarthy, the North West England MEP, said she feared Freedman had unearthed another case of apparent market abuse and manipulation in gas prices.
"For some time I have feared there is an extensive cartel culture of market-rigging and price-fixing in the commodities markets. Companies guilty of abuse must face the full force of penalties and sanctions and jail for criminal behaviour," she said.
"The FSA must take action but as the UK gas is the benchmark for gas traded at EU level I will be asking European commissioners [Joaquín] Almunia and [Michel] Barnier to take urgent action on cartels and price-fixing and introduce tough rules on the setting of benchmarks and indices in the commodities markets."
Chris Cook, a former compliance officer at the International Petroleum Exchange and now a senior research fellow at University College, London, said the problems highlighted by Freedman in the gas market echoed those in the oil sector.
"There is a structural issue here that over-the-counter markets with low liquidity can be manipulated by traders putting through visible trades at a duff price. We need to make sure the market is more transparent through a transaction registry," Cook said.
The way energy prices, which are used for key benchmarks in much larger multibillion-pound supply contracts, are formulated has been under recent scrutiny from the G20 group of leading global economies.
The price reporting agencies' (PRAs) work in the oil markets was scrutinized by an organisation working for the G20 nations amid widespread concern about oil trader speculation. There is no suggestion that ICIS or any other PRA has been involved in speculation themselves, but there are fears their reporting could be distorted by misleading information provided by energy traders, or by anomalously priced trades designed to move the benchmark price.
A report published last month by the board of the International organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) talks about the "opacity and variations" in PRA assessment methodologies.
"The need for assessors to use judgment under methodologies creates an opportunity for the submitter of data deliberately to bias a PRA's assessment in order to benefit the submitter's derivatives position," it says, adding: "For example, a trader seeking to manipulate a price might attempt to influence the personnel responsible for assessment."
The French oil group Total said in a letter to the IOSCO: "Sometimes the criteria imposed by PRAs do not assure an accurate representation of the market and consequently deform the real price levels paid at every level of the price chain, including by the consumer."
Meanwhile, energy companies have been working hard to fight off any new initiatives from Brussels about the way gas prices are set.
A European gas hub report just published by ICIS says: "The recent London interbank offered rate (Libor) scandal engulfing major financial institutions also prompted a European commission consultation in early September on the regulation of key indices, including those for coal, natural gas and electricity. However, strong industry resistance to many of the proposals has so far resulted in the watering down of many elements of the current regulatory proposals."
In the past, because there were relatively few "spot" short-term contracts to give ideas about current prices, these British and other European longer-term import deals with the Norwegians or the Russians were tied to prevailing oil prices. But increasingly major long-term and high-volume contracts have been linked to spot prices set by ICIS and other agencies.
Although some deals with corporate customers are specifically linked to benchmark prices such as ICIS Heren's, industry experts say it is difficult to assess what impact wholesale manipulation – if it were going on – would have on household bills.
EDF and SSE, two of the big six, contacted by the Guardian, denied that they would be involved in any attempt to manipulate prices or be involved in other bad practice. Two others, E.ON and RWE, have made similar statements in the past.
A spokesman for the French-based energy group said: "EDF Energy does not participate in loss-leading trading activity and considers it to be against existing market regulation. We make information likely to impact market price formation publicly available on our website in compliance with the European Union's regulation on energy market integrity and transparency (Remit)."
SSE said: "We are entirely confident that our energy portfolio management team operate in a fair and legitimate way."
A spokesman for Centrica, which owns British Gas, said: "Our compliance procedures and trading principles are clear. They require us to comply with all European Union and UK laws and we have done so." Scottish Power, another big six company did not comment.
The political temperature over domestic energy bills is likely to hot up again when a British Gas price rise of 6% for gas and electricity comes into effect on Friday. The average household bill for a dual-fuel British Gas customer will go up from £1,260 to £1,336 a year, according to the energy account transfer service uSwitch.
Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch.com, said: "The timing could not be worse – as winter makes its presence known, the cost of heating our homes will be taking its toll on cash-strapped consumers. With bills reaching an all-time high, it's no surprise that almost nine in 10 households will be rationing their energy usage this winter."
McCarthy, the MEP, said any upheaval in the wholesale markets was dangerous because domestic supply companies cited the rise in wholesale prices as a reason for household prices to increase. "If in the end wholesale prices are being manipulated to increase the profits of the energy companies then consumers will end up the victim of this great gas ripoff. Families have seen gas and energy prices rise on average by between six and 9% this year, adding on average £200 to their bills."
Freedman has worked as an FSA-approved trader in the City and contributed to the Guardian from Israel. He was not working for the Guardian while employed as a price reporter by ICIS Heren.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
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Balanced Search Trees
The story isn't nearly as good for another popular data structure: the balanced search tree. (Important note: This section refers only to balanced trees; unbalanced trees that support localized updates don't suffer from the problems we'll describe next.)
Consider a red-black tree: The tree stays balanced by marking each node as either "red" or "black," and applying rules that call for optionally rebalancing the tree on each insert or erase to avoid having different branches of the tree become too uneven. In particular, rebalancing is done by rotating subtrees, which involves touching an inserted or erased node's parent and/or uncle node, that node's own parent and/or uncle, and so on to the grandparents and granduncles up the tree, possibly as far as the root.
For example, consider Figure 3. To start with, the tree contains three nodes with the values 1, 2, and 3. To insert the value 4, we simply make it a child of node 3, as we would in a nonbalanced binary search tree. Clearly, that involves writing to node 3, to set its right-child pointer. However, to satisfy the red-black tree mechanics, we must also change node 3's and node 1's color to black. That adds overhead and loses some concurrency; for example, inserting 4 would conflict with adding 1.5 concurrently, because both inserts would need to touch both nodes 1 and 3.
Figure 3: Nonlocalized insertion into a red-black tree.
Next, to insert the value 5, we need to touch all but one of the nodes in the tree: We first make node 4 point to the new node 5 as its right child, then recolor both node 4 and node 3, and then because the tree is out of balance we also rotate 3-4-5 to make node 4 the root of that subtree, which means also touching node 2 to install node 4 as its new right child.
So red-black trees cause some problems for concurrent code:
- It's hard to run updates truly concurrently because updates arbitrarily far apart in the tree can touch the same nodesespecially the root, but also other higher-level nodes to lesser degreesand therefore contend with each other. We have lost the ability to make truly localized changes.
- The tree performs extra internal housekeeping writes. This increases the amount of shared data that needs to be written and synchronized across caches to publish what would be a small update in another data structure.
"But wait," I can hear some people saying, "why can't we just put a mutex inside each node and take the locks in a single direction (up the tree) like we could do with the linked list and hand-over-hand locking? Wouldn't that let us regain the ability to have concurrent use of the data structure at least?" Short answer: That's easy to do, but hard to do right. Unlike the linked list case, however: (a) you may need to take many more locks, even all the way up to the root; and (b) the higher-level nodes will still end up being high-contention resources that bottleneck scalability. Also, the code to do this is much more complicated. As Fraser noted in 2004: "One superficially attractive solution is to read-lock down the tree and then write-lock on the way back up, just as far as rebalancing operations are required. This scheme would acquire exclusive access to the minimal number of nodes (those that are actually modified), but can result in deadlock with search operations (which are locking down the tree)." [2] He also proposed a fine-grained locking technique that does allow some concurrency, but notes that it "is significantly more complicated." There are easy answers, but few easy and correct answers.
To get around these limitations, researchers have worked on alternative structures such as skip lists [4], and on variants of red-black trees that can be more amenable to concurrency, such as by doing relaxed balancing instead of rebalancing immediately when needed after each update. Some of these are significantly more complex, which incurs its own costs in both performance and correctness/maintainability (for example, relaxed balancing was first suggested in 1978 but not implemented successfully until five years later). For more information and some relative performance measurements showing how even concurrent versions can still limit scalability, see [3].
Concurrency-friendliness alone doesn't singlehandedly trump other performance requirements. The usual performance considerations of Big-Oh complexity, and memory overhead, locality, and traversal order all still apply. Even when writing parallel code, you shouldn't choose a data structure only because it's concurrency-friendly; you should choose the right one that meets all your performance needs. Lists may be more concurrency-friendly than balanced trees, but trees are faster to search, and "individual searches are fast" can outbalance "multiple searches can run in parallel." (If you need both, try an alternative like skip lists.)
- In parallel code, your performance needs likely include the ability to allow multiple threads to use the data at the same time.
- On parallel hardware, you may also care about minimizing the cost of memory synchronization.
In those situations, prefer concurrency-friendly data structures. The more a container supports truly localized updates, the more concurrency you can have as multiple threads can actively use different parts of the data structure at the same time, and (secondarily but still sometimes importantly) the more you can avoid invisible memory synchronization overhead in your high-performance code.
[1] H. Sutter. "Use Lock Hierarchies to Avoid Deadlock" (Dr. Dobb's Journal, January 2008).
[2] K. Fraser. "Practical lock-freedom" (University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Technical Report #579, February 2004).
[3] S. Hanke. "The Performance of Concurrent Red-Black Tree Algorithms" (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1668:286-300, Springer, 1999).
[4] M. Fomitchev and E. Ruppert. "Lock-Free Linked Lists and Skip Lists" (PODC '04, July 2004).
Herb is a software development consultant, a software architect at Microsoft, and chair of the ISO C++ Standards committee. He can be contacted at www.gotw.ca.


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WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Congress Thursday security is being stepped up at U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas.
Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee plans call for adding 35 new Marine security guard contingents during the next two or three years, The New York Times reported.
"We are working with [the State Department] now to identify specific locations for the new detachments," Panetta said during a hearing on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
Although Marine security detachments are in place at 152 diplomatic facilities around the world, none was stationed at the Benghazi facility when it was besieged in what the Obama administration has characterized as a terrorist attack.
Panetta told the Senate committee the U.S. military did not have advance intelligence indicating an assault in Benghazi was imminent and no U.S. forces were close enough to Benghazi to be sent there quickly once the attack began.
"The Department of Defense was prepared for a wide range of contingencies, but unfortunately there were no specific indications of an imminent attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi," he said. "Without adequate warning, there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond."
He said Marines guarding diplomatic facilities would have a broader mandate, including "expanded use of non-lethal weapons, and additional training and equipment, to support the Embassy Regional Security Officer's response options when host nation security force capabilities are at risk of being overwhelmed."


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Main Page
From Secure Computing Wiki
Welcome to the Secure Computing Networks wiki. Our goal is to produce a resource for Unix, Mac, and Windows Systems Administrators. You can browse the available topics below:
If there is a topic you'd like me to research and develop some documentation on, or something you'd like to contribute, please feel free to send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com. Also, I'm going to soon open site registrations to outside people, just to see how that goes. I'm a bit weary of all the spam bots out there now, but we'll give 'er a go!
Some important articles, or articles that seem to be of recent interest are as follows:
- Install the SCN-Root Certificate
- IPv6 on FreeBSD 6.2
- Check out our IPv6 DNS How-To!
- Just added: DHCP6 Server
- Just added: Transfer Mail.app between computers or accounts.
Until I get some better organization, some people have been looking for my Postfix queue-clearing how to.


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Notify me when this product is available:
A 14K white gold neckchain in the "1.3mm Ice Cube" design, twenty inches (20") in length.
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About Lenlock (Click for our profile page)
Located in: Calhoun County (see below)
Time Zone: Lenlock lies in the Central Time Zone (CST/CDT)<1>
Telephone Area Codes: (256), (938)<2>
Elevation: 690 feet [210.31 m] above sea level<3>
GPS Coordinates (Latitude/Longitude)<4>
For the purpose of mapping and calculating distances, we have chosen a reference point within Lenlock. The point that we are using is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 33.7279, Longitude: -85.8152 [Map]. In this case, the coordinates for Lenlock have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
DMS - Degrees, Minutes, Seconds
Name of USGS Topo Map:<5> Anniston
Federal GNIS/FIPS Codes for Lenlock
(For more about Federal Codes, see our Misc Page for Lenlock)
About Calhoun County
The community of Anniston is the County Seat for Calhoun County.
From the 2010 US Census (For more detail, see our Census Page for Calhoun)
Total Area:<7> 612 sq. miles [1,585.8 km²] - of which 1.05% is water (6.42 sq. miles [16.6 km²])
Housing Units:<8> 53,289
Official Website: www.calhouncounty.org/
Federal GNIS/FIPS Codes for Calhoun
About Alabama
From the US Census
Websites for State of Alabama
Federal GNIS/FIPS Codes for State of Alabama
Find a Community located in Alabama
Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Lenlock. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.
The official website for Calhoun County: www.calhouncounty.org/
The official website for State of Alabama: https://www.alabama.gov/
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'P' Type Torque Wrenches are designed for the production environment where they will be set and then dedicated to a particular application. There is no scale, the wrench must be set against a torque testing device such as Norbar's Professional Torque Tester. The reversible ratchets on these models are designed with compact dimensions and a narrow engagement angle resulting from the 72 tooth pattern. These features make the wrench ideal for use in the combined spaces of modern motor vehicles and many other applications.
Please select further products to compare.
Technical Specification
Norbar has devised easy-to-use online calculators that support the correct application of torque in three key areas:
Norbar Torque Tools Inc. 36400 Biltmore Place, Willoughby, Ohio 44094, USA


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Albanian to English Translation
Presupuesto $10-30 USD
I need a translation.
9 freelancers están ofertando el promedio de $24 para este trabajo
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I learned Albanian 2 years and English is my native language. I can do it faster than everyone! Just trust me!


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Anyone on here using carbon culture springs and if so how do you find them with standard 17" wheels?Ones in the car now came in from japan,not sure of make but are hard and looking for something more suited to Irish spec roads.
Some places online have them as 50mm and are 55mm,are they all the same or are 2 heights available?
Cheapest i found is €140,doubtful i know but anyone know of a better price?Thanks for any help.


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I am delighted you want to check out my personal website, however
please talk to my agents about commissions as they handle all of that for me.
I look forward to working with you.
His bright, expressive character illustrations and animations are what make Andreas Besser so popular with his clients. With a light, cartoony style, his work is a hit in the children's market, editorial, publishing, and more.
Growing up in the former East Germany – and now based in Berlin - Andreas loved drawing as a child and one of his earliest inspirations was Asterix as drawn by the French comic artist Albert Uderzo. Today, he enjoys the work of Pascal Campion, who works with light in unique ways, and the unique line expressions of Felix Scheinberger.
When he's away from the graphics tablet and sketchpads, Andreas loves to wake up on a campsite in the mountains to the smell of instant coffee. He also takes part in interesting trading games where the objective is to increase the value of your item with each trade. For instance, he started with three bottle caps and now has a Sudoku computer.
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Jackie Chan's Chinese Zodiacs [Movie Trailer]
This is the first official trailer of Jackie Chan's last BIG action movie Chinese Zodiac's official trailer as releases in Cannes on 18 May 2012. Chan says he spent seven years working on the movie writing, producing, directing and coordinating fight scenes.
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
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"The Hangover" star Zach Galifianakis has cut back on his boozing after an altercation with a Jaguar driver and his passenger following a drunken night out in New York City.
The funny man was walking home when the motorist almost hit him on a crosswalk, prompting angry Galifianakis to slap the car with his hand as it whizzed by.
The driver stopped the motor and he and his pal confronted the actor in the street.
He tells Conan O'Brien, "I keep walking … and I turn around and it's two six-foot-six guys … and they both, at the same time, spit in my face … I was so stunned. They walked away … and I remember reaching into a trash can and grabbing a beer bottle, and saying to myself out loud, 'Nobody spits in Zach Galifiankis' face'.
"I threw the beer bottle at the car – and it missed! That's one of the reasons why I decided to cut back a little bit."


text:
May 26, 2016
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text:
Work Step by Step
We know that if $b\gt0$ and $b\ne1$, then $y=log_{b}x$ is equivalent to $x=b^{y}$ (where $x\gt0$ and $y$ is a real number). Therefore, $log_{10}\frac{1}{10}=-1$, because $10^{-1}=\frac{1}{10}$.
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