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Published in the March 2010 issue
War doesn't keep to a clock. It doesn't break for sleep, and it doesn't take weekends. And so that was artillery you heard last night from your bed. The rumble of exploding shells cracking the sky loud as thunder. Which war kept you awake? Well, both. Because Killeen, Texas, is every bit as much a war zone as Afghanistan and Iraq. As the home to Fort Hood, the largest military base in the country, this is where the war starts for thousands of soldiers processing through the readiness center, and it's where the war ends for thousands coming home. But it doesn't really end, because Killeen is always at war.
I served in the infantry in Iraq and could never get over how a country at war could seem so manifestly unaware of it, couldn't get over how our wars could be such a complete abstraction to so many people.
Then I came to Killeen, which is just like any other small city in America, except thousands of its citizens are combatants, and it is impossible to get away from the war. The mural in a local steakhouse shows a languid blond hitchhiker, with cut-off jean shorts and a bared midriff, angling to get a ride from an Apache helicopter; trains laden with battle tanks roll through town; the business marquees advertise military discounts; Guns Galore is crowded with soldiers, many just back from deployment, buying military-style rifles. "Some guys want the guns they shot," a salesman says. "Some want the guns that were shot at them." You see fatigues at the laundromat, fatigues at daycare, fatigues on a walk in the park, fatigues at the grocery, at the tattoo parlor, at school, at mosque, fatigues with eyes clinched shut kneeling in the pew.
Fort Hood, with about fifty thousand soldiers, has sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan than any other military post. One in fifteen hundred Americans is serving in the two combat zones today, but around Killeen that ratio at times is as high as one in seven. One of every four people here is in uniform, more than thirty times the national average. And if they're not in the Army, they work for the Army, they're retired from the Army, they're married to the Army, or they're born of the Army.
Hood has been the lifeblood of the surrounding communities for nearly seventy years. With so many steady paychecks, the town has been insulated from the economic pain that has debilitated so many other places. Soldiers keep the restaurants full and the car dealers busy, and 70 percent of Killeen workers are employed by Fort Hood. The area had withered during the first Gulf war, when many wives and their children returned to hometowns, so Killeen built parks, improved the schools and public safety, helped build houses soldiers could afford, and lured popular restaurant chains so that when the next war came, families would stay. And when the war came, they stayed.
Since then, nearly 550 soldiers from Hood have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every so often, you can see the casualty-notification officers drive into neighborhoods and stir silent pleas: Let them keep driving. Don't stop at my house.
The town now has dozens of recent war widows, who migrate to one another for support. One woman moved from Germany to Killeen after her husband was killed to be surrounded by people who know the same loss. At a Killeen high school just outside Fort Hood, where eight of ten kids come from military families, hundreds of blue-and-silver stars line the hallways, inscribed with the names of deployed parents. Above the entrance hang nine gold stars, for the nine parents killed in action. In some Fort Hood mess hall, pictures of the dead hang on the walls. A soldier sits in a local café and plucks at a guitar and sings a song he calls "Dinner with the Dead."
Killeen is a town built on sacrifice, obedience, and duty. It's a company town, and business has been pretty good.
A long workday done, Chris Gojdycz eases himself onto a stool near the pool table. He woke up at 3:00 A.M. and marched seven miles to a shooting range, fired at targets all day, then marched home. Now he and Sean Villa, a buddy from basic training, drain a couple bottles of Bud Light.
"Did you hear that shit last night?" Gojdycz asks Villa. Nearly asleep, Gojdycz had rolled right out of bed and onto the floor at the first artillery report, sure for a sliver of a second that he was back in Iraq, on the Iranian border. "Over there, it was kind of funny," he says. "Here? That's not cool."
A waitress slides up to the table with a tray of Jäger bombs. Villa buys a round.
When they first came back from Iraq, they were drinking most nights, so they've been cutting back to just weekends, often ending up here, at Ernie's Sports Bar, on the edge of Killeen. They know the bouncers in case things get out of hand. Commanders periodically make some of the local bars off-limits because of the fights. But Ernie's hasn't been on the no-go list in a while, and this night's crowd is mellow.
Villa and Gojdycz spent a year in Iraq at a small forward operating base that regularly attracted mortars and 122mm rockets. The insurgents had a decent spotter, because the rockets landed closer and closer until one exploded in a neighboring tent, just beyond a row of tall concrete blast barriers. Villa ran around the wall and into the tent and found a soldier deconstructed. "There was a vest and a Kevlar, and the rest was just tomato soup," he says. The soldier next to the dead man had only been nicked on the forehead. "We call that military math," he says. Letters and pictures from the soldier's family had scattered across the floor next to a shard of a CD with the words FROM MOM written in marker. Villa was among the soldiers tasked to pick up the pieces, which didn't bother him at the time. As a boy, he helped neighbors slaughter sheep and pigs. And in high school, he worked in a suburban Chicago funeral home. So he was used to blood and bone. "I wasn't trying to be John Wayne or anything, I just didn't know the guy," he says. "If it had been one of my buddies, I probably would have freaked out."
Same with the twelve soldiers and one civilian murdered on November 5 by Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The rest of the country freaked out. For a moment, the war had encroached on their peaceful, oblivious lives. It's not that it wasn't a bad scene at Hood, it was. It's just that here it's war all the time. "If it didn't affect your unit," one soldier told me, "it was business as usual."
Villa downs the Jäger. "We've buried guys," he says. "It happens. You move on."
Nidal Malik Hasan
Soldiers have an unusual line of work. Pressure builds. And this is what can happen when a war goes on as long as this one has.
Several soldiers I met at Fort Hood said they had been expecting somebody to start shooting, and were surprised it hadn't happened sooner. The night before Hasan's rampage, a soldier had gone walking through his neighborhood in Killeen carrying a loaded shotgun; he would tell a fellow soldier the next morning that he'd intended to shoot the first person he saw. And in the years before the shooting, several soldiers had been killed at Fort Hood. Another seventy-five killed themselves since 2003, during deployments or afterward, double the national average. Two of the killings, both in 2008, were murder-suicides. A soldier shot one of his lieutenants, then killed himself, and a sergeant killed his wife, also a soldier, and then himself.
A few weeks after the Hasan shootings, another soldier was murdered, and this one Villa knew. Several soldiers and their wives and girlfriends had gathered to drink at a small house in Killeen on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Among them was David Middlebrooks, a twenty-year-old infantryman who'd returned from Iraq in June and would have been a civilian by Christmas. Soldiers he served with told me he'd been in trouble a few times for drinking. Every unit has a couple guys like that. Some don't have the discipline for military life; others are drinking or smoking away personal problems or combat trauma. They might get ostracized or picked on, and the joking can be brutal. Even if a guy's wife is cheating on him, he gets hazed mercilessly. He'll go along with it, with the guys, calling her a whore, too, but it destroys him.
"In the infantry, they just eat their own," Villa says.
Middlebrooks had already scuffled with two other soldiers that night. Near 3:00 A.M., he argued with a third soldier, who left the party but returned two hours later, when everybody was asleep or drunk. The soldier lunged at Middlebrooks as though to punch him, but instead shoved a knife into his heart. His friends found him outside, bent at the waist and gasping for breath. One soldier pressed a shirt over the hole in his chest, and another breathed for him, but Middlebrooks was soon dead. The next night, another soldier, Private Joshua Wyatt, was shot to death in his apartment in Killeen.
In a long war, they say, military life and real life can be very incompatible. And even the well-adjusted can become unmoored. Throw in a troubled soul, and Nidal Malik Hasan starts to make sense. So when you bring up the Muslim-terrorist theory of the Hasan rampage to the guys at Ernie's, they counter with an explanation far less exotic: the loser theory. "You don't have any friends," Villa says. "You can't get laid. You're a nobody. Of course you're going to want to shoot everyone up. Anyone who's read Freud can figure it out."
It seems plain that Hasan had become radicalized and that the prospect of fighting a war against Muslims had contributed to his derangement. But Hasan also had a pet parakeet, and he loved this parakeet dearly, so much so that he would even let the bird eat from his mouth. And when he rolled over in bed one day as he took a nap and crushed the parakeet, Hasan would never get over it.
And so to the guys at Ernie's Sports Bar, Hasan was a fanatic, yes, but moreover, a loser. And ultimately, the loser theory of Hasan's crimes may be more troubling than the terrorist theory. For in all the wide world, and at Fort Hood, too, there are a lot more losers than terrorists.
Dan Winters
An Army major lives well. On top of an annual salary of about $80,000 — and more for specialty professions, like doctors — the housing allowance exceeds $1,200 per month for those stationed at Fort Hood. A single officer might rent a duplex in Harker Heights or Copperas Cove, two nice areas near base. He'd have two or three bedrooms, a fancy bathroom, maybe a Jacuzzi, and a kitchen with an island — all for less than $1,000. While not military housing — those subdivisions, like Comanche Village and Pershing Park, are reserved for families — most of his neighbors would be soldiers. He'd see them headed to physical training before dawn. Maybe he'd grill with them on the weekends. That's what most Army officers do.
Hasan lived in downtown Killeen, in a dingy one-bedroom apartment, about 450 square feet, for which he paid $325 per month. The Casa Del Norte apartments are made up of two two-story buildings, seven units per floor, that face each other, with a grassy courtyard in the middle. Hasan lived in the eastern building, upstairs, in apartment 9, second from the end. From the covered walkway he could see the fence that separates Killeen from Fort Hood and hear reveille each morning.
As you walk into Hasan's apartment, the first thing that strikes you is that this is a room for an itinerant in an itinerant town. There's his prayer rug in the corner of the front room next to his paper shredder, his shoes piled behind the door, an Army physical-training uniform balled up on a shelf next to an empty box for a laser-pistol sight. There are clothes in the dryer. Walk into the bathroom and it looks as though he'll be right back. Toothbrush, Crest, razor. Towels neatly folded. In a hallway closet sits a stack of personal business cards advertising: BEHAVIORAL HEALTH — MENTAL HEALTH — LIFE SKILLS, with no mention of his military affiliation. In the kitchen, a book on Islamic dream interpretation and a cup of coffee on a small table next to an empty refrigerator and bare cupboards and a stack of papers on the counter, including an old psychiatry exam from his residency at Walter Reed. And next to the test papers, a letter from Texas State Low Cost Insurance for a claim Hasan filed in August when a neighbor, a fellow soldier who had served in Iraq, keyed Hasan's 2006 gray Honda Civic and tore off a bumper sticker that said ALLAH IS LOVE. Hasan told neighbors that, as it was Ramadan, he forgave the man, but he also complained to family and some friends that he was frequently ostracized by fellow soldiers and called derogatory names.
I step out of the apartment and stand at the end of the courtyard, talking with a retired Navy man who used to live nearby. He's heard about the Muslim slurs, too. "I'm black," he says. "I've been called names all my life. But you don't see me going and fucking with people. That's his job, to keep people from doing these kinds of things." We watch people trickle by to see the memorial erected in the grass: thirteen American flags and thirteen candles arranged in semicircles around pictures of the victims. The apartment owner initially had placed a bouquet of flowers in front of the building the day after the shooting. But several people, including an FBI agent, thought someone had left it as a statement of support for Hasan, so the memorial grew into a more obvious expression of sympathy for the dead.
The Navy man tells me about a friend who was shot to death nearby. "This is a bad part of town," he says. "Infested with drugs and prostitution. Why would a major be here? He was a damn good loner for them not to know this."
Patricia Villa lived next to him, in number 8. She moved in a month before the shooting and had spoken to him just a few times, but had more interaction with him than most people. After the shooting, when another local saw Villa and said, "Your neighbor, he killed all those people," she wondered why Hasan didn't start his rampage at Casa Del Norte, and decided that it was because "we never did anything to him," she says. Other people have asked her if she's angry with Hasan. She is not. "I don't have anything bad to say about him," she says. "I'm grateful for what he did for me. He helped me a lot."
The Tuesday before the shooting, as she and her husband sat in lawn chairs on the covered walkway outside their apartment, Hasan approached, with his usual big smile, and handed her a Koran, in Spanish, which she couldn't read. The next morning he knocked on her door. "When you have time," he said, and gave her an En-glish Koran. He asked if she'd like some vegetables and returned with three bags of fresh fruit and frozen broccoli and spinach. He stood in the doorway and peered into the apartment. The front room, which serves as her kitchen, dining room, and living room, was empty, save for a table and two chairs and a portable stereo sitting on the floor.
"It looks like you need some furniture," Hasan said. "I have some shelves, and they match your table." He also brought folding chairs, an alarm clock, a microwave oven, a clothes steamer, and clothes for her husband. "Are you moving?" she asked.
"I'm going to Afghanistan," he said. "I leave on Friday."
"Are you ready?"
"Oh, yes."
Dan Winters
Let it not be a Muslim, Osman Danquah muttered to himself as he watched the first TV news reports about a gunman shooting soldiers at Fort Hood. Let it not be a Muslim. And then he heard the name, which sounded so familiar: Nidal Malik Hasan. And then he saw the picture of the soft-faced, balding doctor who had recently sat for a meal in his home.
"Devastated, man," Danquah says. "I was devastated."
He and I are sitting on the green carpet in the large gathering space of Killeen's only mosque, a redbrick box on the southern edge of town that, with no minaret, looks disguised as a Masonic Lodge. Fifty men had shown up for Friday prayers. As snowflakes swirled outside, the men collapsed to their knees and brought their foreheads to the floor in supplication. They listened to the imam preach about a Muslim's duty to strive for peace. Now they are moving into a side room for a lunch of curried chicken, lentils, and rice. A man approaches Danquah, clasps his hands, and offers a greeting in Arabic, and then turns to me, hand extended.
"How you doing, man? You new in the neighborhood?"
"Just in town visiting," I say.
"Oh, you're just spying on us," he says. "That's okay. We invite everybody."
Danquah laughs deeply. He has become accustomed to scrutiny.
He moved to Killeen in 1976, driving from Panama, where he had been stationed for two years, through Central America and Mexico into the flatlands of central Texas. He grew up in the lushness of Jamaica but liked the open space of Killeen. He calls it elbow room. He bought land and built the house where he still lives, and he cofounded the Muslim community at Fort Hood. There are still few Muslims in the military today, several thousand, but when Danquah was drafted in 1971, there were basically none, and the Fort Hood congregation numbered fewer than ten. "I considered myself a pioneer in the military. When you're a pioneer, you don't have the ease and comfort. It's chopping down trees, it's running over snakes, it's building log cabins. You're faced with all kinds of trials," Danquah says. Negative reactions were limited in part, no doubt, because America didn't yet know what terrorism was, and wasn't yet at war in two Muslim countries. And for small-town America, Killeen had a well traveled population. Many residents had served overseas in the military. Still, the Muslims were often regarded with suspicion. "You're faced with prejudices. You're faced with ignorance. People fear the things they don't know. So it's an education process," Danquah says. "But it takes courage. It takes moral courage."
The Muslims moved from Fort Hood to an apartment in Killeen, and a decade ago built their present mosque. The community has grown to a hundred families, and among them are several active-duty soldiers and a dozen veterans. For Muslim soldiers newly stationed at Fort Hood, the mosque is a ready-made community, and Danquah reaches out to new arrivals. Late last summer, he invited an Army doctor to his home for dinner. Afterward, Hasan asked Danquah for counsel, as both a Muslim leader and a retired First Sergeant.
"What if a Muslim soldier comes to me with reservations about deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting other Muslims?" Hasan asked. "What should I tell him?"
"I said, 'There's no draft. All the people who come into the military are volunteers. So the question is, Why did he come in the first place?' " But what if the remorse only surfaces after the soldier has joined the Army? the doctor asked, and Danquah, fifteen years retired, gave a military man's answer: The soldier should tell his chain of command.
Danquah did not share Hasan's qualms. He had spent five months in the Middle East during the first Gulf war and says he found no inherent conflict in Muslims fighting Muslims, because the war was just. Explaining this to me, he cited the Koran for emphasis: If two brothers have a conflict, you should make peace between them. And failing that, take the side of the one that is right.
A month after the first dinner, Hasan again asked Danquah for counsel. "What should I tell a Muslim soldier who is reluctant to fight other Muslims?" he asked again.
"I said, 'Man, you asked me the same questions the last time we met. Do you think I'm going to have a different answer for you?' " The question riled Danquah, and even in the retelling his voice rises. He thought of the young Jordanian arrested in Dallas a few weeks earlier in an FBI sting after trying to detonate what he thought was a truck bomb. Hasan must be a federal agent, Danquah thought, posing as an Army doctor to trick him, to accuse him of sowing dissent within the military by telling Muslim soldiers their religion puts them at odds with America's foreign policy. Hasan was setting him up.
"I said, 'Something is wrong with you.' I told him, straight to his face. He just looked at me." A few weeks later, Hasan requested to be a lay leader at Fort Hood, ministering to Muslim soldiers, and the mosque president asked Danquah's opinion. "No," he said. "No. There's something wrong with him."
Others at the mosque noticed this, too. Hasan prayed there several times a day, but he made few friends and was painfully reserved. Victor Benjamin had prayed near Hasan the night before the shooting and spoke to him several times after prayers. "You ever see an abused dog? When you move your hand sharply, it flinches," he says. "But even before that, before you raise your hand, you can see it in the eyes." That was Hasan.
Benjamin, a recent convert to Islam, had started praying at the mosque a month earlier and saw the shootings as a test of his faith. He had served in the Army in the late 1990s as a helicopter crew chief and later worked for three years as a civilian contractor repairing helicopters in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He started reading the Koran in Tikrit, to learn something about the men pummeling his base with rockets and mortars. When he came home, he used alcohol and weed to fall asleep and to mellow himself against petty stresses, but he kept reading the Koran, which brought him to the mosque. "If I can't blur my mind with substances because I need to keep my lines of communication with God clear, that's a good thing," he says. He wears long sleeves now to cover his tattoos, though BENJAMIN is still visible across the top of his left hand. He can now say the basic prayers and is learning to read the Koran in Arabic.
Benjamin doubts the depiction of Hasan as either jihadi or traumatized soldier; rather, he sees him as a misfit, the beaten dog, who used Islam as an excuse. "He had a brotherhood. He had somewhere to find peaceful resolution to his issue. But that wasn't his desire. He perverted that," he says. "Islam was a safe haven for him. It gave him a sense of unity and brotherhood that the military wasn't giving him. It's like a man who cheats. He's going after something his wife isn't giving him. For Nidal, Islam was his mistress."
Danquah and I move into a side room at the mosque, sit at a folding table, and eat plates of the spicy curried chicken and lentils and drink 7Up from plastic cups. He tells me about the Koran's teachings on caring for one's neighbors and the imperative to protect life and not take a life without due process. "There is no imperfection in Islam. Muslims, the human beings, have imperfections," he says. "We should never use the people to judge the book. We should use the book to judge the people."
Like other Muslims in Killeen, Danquah feels betrayed by Hasan, the newcomer they had welcomed into their community and homes. But he is also frustrated with the Army, to which he gave twenty-two years. "Clearly he lost his mind. And he lost it before he got here. And they knew it. And they didn't do anything about it. They kicked the can down the road. My mother used to say, 'Taking the shortcut draws blood. The long way only draws sweat. Don't take the shortcut.' I know the military is stretched, and they need all the manpower they can get. But the chain of command should be more in tune with their personnel. We don't kick the can down the road. We deal with the matter."
Danquah sucks the meat from a chicken bone.
"Failure to act," he says, pointing the bone at me. "Failure to act."
Dan Winters
Now it's obvious to everyone that Hasan should have been discharged from the Army. He received terrible performance reviews, colleagues complained about his extreme statements, and he made it known that his loyalties weren't with the Army. But it's also obvious why he wasn't kicked out. A decade ago, fewer than 80 percent of captains were promoted to major. Today, because so many officers leave the military, often burned out by repeated deployments, promotions have jumped to about 95 percent. And because Hasan served in mental health, one of the Army's most critical but most short-staffed fields, there was even less incentive to get rid of him. Between basic training, medical school, and a psychiatry residency, the Army had already invested twelve years and several hundred thousand dollars in Hasan.
When he arrived last July, Fort Hood put him to work interviewing troops headed to and coming from the wars. Hasan would try to have several patients prosecuted for war crimes based on stories they told him in therapy sessions. The Resilience and Restoration Center, the post's outpatient behavioral-health clinic, to which he was assigned, is overwhelmed by the current level of need. Dr. Adam Borah, the RRC's clinical director, told me that "there's no question that the demand for services does exceed capacity." Every day 220 soldiers and family members cycle through the clinic with flashbacks, depression, anger issues, and all manner of disorders. But if you're not among the sixty-five or so daily emergencies — suicide attempts, homicidal thoughts, breakdowns — you'll have to wait up to five weeks for counseling. To ease that pressure, soldiers are regularly sent to doctors and therapists in Killeen and surrounding towns, which some soldiers prefer. The Army has made a serious push in recent years to reduce the stigma of seeking mental-health care, but many soldiers are still hesitant to talk to a doctor in uniform, concerned about professional repercussions or just being perceived as weak in a macho environment. "Soldiers are so terrified that if they ask for help, they're going to get kicked out of the Army. I've seen it time after time," a former cavalry scout at Fort Hood named Chuck Luther says. "They tell me, 'I've got three kids to feed. What am I going to do? I've been an infantry soldier since I was nineteen.' And they're right. The Walmart isn't going to hire this guy with PTSD who's trained to kill people and who got kicked out of the Army because they said he was crazy."
While in Iraq in 2007, Luther was diagnosed with a personality disorder, which the Army said had existed before his enlistment. He was sent home and discharged, with fewer benefits than if he'd been diagnosed with PTSD. "The day they kicked me out of the Army I was thirty-six, and I thought, What am I going to do now? Now I'm just messed up," he says. To protest the way he'd been treated, he planned to kill himself on the steps of the Fort Hood headquarters. But on the way home to retrieve a pistol, he thought of his pregnant wife and three children and figured that, at least for them, he should try to fix himself. He now runs Disposable Warriors, which helps soldiers, many of them with PTSD, navigate military bureaucracy. He still wears desert combat boots, because that feels the most normal, and a cell phone holstered on his hip that vibrates constantly. He lets most calls go to voice mail, but the names marked with asterisks, the suicidal soldiers, those he always takes.
Luther deals with a tiny minority of soldiers, but it is these individuals who are the most vulnerable and the most volatile, creating quite a problem for the Army. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stretch on and the cases of combat stress mount, the Army has undergone a cultural shift, forced to pay closer attention to the needs of individual soldiers. For an institution that recruits and trains huge groups of young men and women — about seventy thousand a year — sameness and an ability to perform a task with competence and without complaint are prized qualities. Soldiers with discipline problems — let alone homicidal thoughts — absorb a disproportionate amount of a commander's attention, draining time and resources from the others, which can degrade group readiness and performance. The Army can ignore the soldier and hope the problem goes away, as it did with Hasan, or it can discharge the soldier for the health of the organization, or it can help him work through the problem, so he can return to his job.
In recent years much more effort has been put into the third way, with programs like the Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program. The three-week course helps soldiers overcome PTSD symptoms like anger and hyperarousal through individual and group counseling and nontraditional therapies like cranial massage, tai chi, and acupuncture. But space is currently limited to twelve per class, and figuring out which soldiers are worth the extra effort and which problems can be overcome is hard. Is the soldier a poorly disciplined troublemaker, or is he acting out because of combat stress or maybe a marriage hobbled by repeated deployments? "They go out and start drinking, and they start getting in fights, and they start getting angry, and beating people, and killing themselves. The ugly comes out and they say, 'Well, he was just a bad soldier,' " Luther says. "No, he wasn't a bad soldier. Before you deployed him, he had commendations in his file talking about what a great soldier he was. Now all of a sudden he's a dirtbag because you broke him and you didn't try and help him?"
Dan Winters
Military medicine thrives during conflicts, and those with broken bodies have fared better during these wars, outfitted with composite skulls and robotic limbs. But a mangled leg is far easier to recognize, and treat, than a fractured mind. When a soldier breaks, the pieces are hard to reassemble. So Fort Hood wrestles with a puzzle: How can it keep its soldiers from breaking?
Train their brains.
"People who get PTSD usually don't have the coping skills to deal with what they have to deal with, so their mind did the best it could and put walls up," says Jim Ruesch, a former Army Ranger and Special Forces sniper. "But if you go through proper preparation and anticipate every contingency, you tend to be more resilient in how you handle it." From a warren of old offices and classrooms Ruesch runs the post's Army Center for Enhanced Performance, which helps soldiers set goals, build confidence, and control their bodies' reaction to stress. If the mind works better under duress, soldiers might avoid situations that lead to lasting psychological trauma — shooting a civilian, for instance — or deal better with trauma that does occur.
In a nearby hallway, Specialists Jason Langston and Gregory Sibley, loaded with combat gear, trot on two treadmills. Sports psychologist Beth Athanas yells, "Stack!" and the two jump off, grab M4 rifle simulators that fire laser beams, and stack against a cement wall next to a metal door. Their chests heave, sucking in breath. Another soldier kicks open the door and Sibley and Langston rush into the room and shoot dead two video-game insurgents firing at them from two giant flatscreen TVs hanging on the walls.
"Did you have a chance to do the tactical breathing?" Athanas, who is running the exercise, asks them. She had taught them to calm themselves by breathing four seconds in, holding one second, and four seconds out.
"Your mind and adrenaline are going," Langston says. "It's hard to remember to breathe like that."
Sibley and Langston catch their breath as two more soldiers run through the exercise. Sergeant Daniel Scott, their team leader, follows behind and laughs when one insurgent doesn't fall dead. "Shoot the fucking dude," he says.
The performance lab is housed on Fort Hood's Resiliency Campus, the first of its kind, a city-block-sized compound that shows just how frustrated the Army was with its old approach to mending minds. In a former chapel converted into a spirituality center, soldiers can meditate or relax in plush chairs as classical music or Buddhist chants play softly. A small library has books about finding inner peace and the effects of battle on the soul. Outside, the Army built a reflecting pool with a gravel walking path, little waterfalls, and an arched bridge over pools filled with fish. The campus also offers counseling for marital and financial problems, two of the biggest sources of soldier stress. The commandant of the Resiliency Campus, a colonel who led an artillery battalion in a violent pocket of Baghdad, now sifts through résumés for yoga instructors and sketches designs for a massive rock-climbing wall in the campus's gymnasium, where fitness classes are taught. His latest interest is the stress-reduction powers of transcendental meditation.
Traffic is light in the spirituality center. Soldiers like Sibley and Langston still aren't sold on meditating and reflection pools, but they love Ruesch's brain training. The Fort Hood police officers who shot Hasan had trained at ACEP as well, and Ruesch runs me through an exercise they had done to improve attention and focus.
Ruesch hands me a rifle simulator and stands me in front of a large blank projection screen. Small targets appear one at a time, randomly across the screen. Some are marked with red x's, designating noncombatants. Into the others I fire two rounds, which show up as red laser dots. The exercise is mentally exhausting. As each new target pops up, I shift my attention to determine whether or not to fire. Another target appears and my eyes dart to the other side of the screen. All the while, a sensor connected to my earlobe measures the rhythm of my heart. The wild fluctuations jump across a laptop screen, like seismograph readings during an earthquake. I try to remember the tactical breathing but soon forget. I can feel my heart beating faster, my breathing ragged. When I focus on my heart rate or breath, I stop paying as much attention to the targets. I fail badly.
"You were too narrow in your focus," Ruesch says, which means that while focusing too intently on one target, I lost sight of the bigger picture, leaving myself open to being killed by another threat. Intense focus is extremely exhausting, and a body can maintain that level of intensity for only so long before something bad happens. Ruesch teaches "soft focus," watching the center of the screen while using peripheral vision to scan and acquire targets. He compares it to a lifeguard's ability to spot the struggling swimmer at a crowded beach. For soldiers, it could mean spotting a thin wire running across a road or a man peeking around a corner holding a detonator. And by controlling breathing and heart rhythm, soldiers can both conserve energy and stay more clearheaded in a moment of crisis.
"That little edge," he says, "can be the difference in coming back on your feet or on your back."
Dan Winters
It's odd to think of peaceniks in Killeen, but they're here and have been since Vietnam. Back in the day, the gathering spot was a coffeehouse call Oleo Strut, named after an aircraft shock absorber, meaning that this was the place to come for a soft landing, the place to come talk about your problems. Today, it's been reincarnated as Under the Hood Café, opened last year by a longtime Army wife.
On Veterans Day, I sit with a dozen men and women at a long table under a shade tree outside Under the Hood Café and listen to Bridget Chamberlain read a story about her ex-husband's nightmares. After Iraq, he had soothed himself with liquor and drugs, and at night she often sat in bed and watched him thrash in his sleep. "You never talk about why this happens," she says, her voice small. "You say there's nothing wrong and everything will be okay. Someday, you tell me, this will all just go away. It persists. It is real. It does exist. I beg and plead for you to get help. You go along, still pleading nothing's wrong. You pushed me away. I wanted to help. You broke down and finally went. Diagnosis: PTSD."
Several nod in agreement. "It's been five years since I was deployed," Aaron Hughes tells Chamberlain, "but I just think about how deep the ripples are, how blind I am to how I affect the people around me."
Hughes works for Iraq Veterans Against the War, which organizes the writing workshops to help veterans process their experiences. He served in Iraq as an Army truck driver in 2003 and 2004. "In military culture, you follow orders. It's not about your feelings or your reactions to things. You're taught to react the way the Army wants you to react. That's what makes you a good soldier," Hughes says. "This is a different tool for tackling things outside of what we're given by the military. Either you take some drugs or you go see a counselor. There are very few options for self-healing."
"When everything else fails," says Malachi Muncy, a local Iraq vet, "you can still get a pen and paper."
Three in the group are active-duty soldiers and members of IVAW, which puts them in a lonely minority at Fort Hood. Chance Mills, an artilleryman who spent a year in Iraq, sought help from military mental-health services for combat stress.
"I grew up a very angry person," Mills tells the others. "I felt powerless, and I felt I could use all this rage I had in a good way." He reads a paragraph about the beginning of his Iraq deployment: "Ready to kill ... I've wanted to be here all my life. I can't wait to see a dead body. I can't wait to make a dead body. I can't wait to be a dead body. Which way to the war?"
Dan Winters
Which way? Any way you want, because all paths lead to the same place, where the war over there and the war at home become one. And on Veterans Day, the paths lead downtown, where a parade winds along streets lined with families, kids waving small flags. A color guard of Fort Hood soldiers leads a procession of Cub Scouts, Shriners in go-karts, marching bands, dance troupes, politicians, beauty queens, firefighters, and a dozen veterans groups. The parade seems vast and endless. I ask a man wearing a 1st Cavalry baseball cap if it is bigger than usual, if more people had turned out because of the shooting. "Nope," he says. "It's about like this every year."
A dozen Vietnam veterans, gray and soft, ride on a trailer led by two men hoisting a Welcome Home banner. Learning the lessons of war sometimes takes decades. Farther back, a glimpse of the future: Tomorrow's veterans, hundreds of them, march in dark-green dress slacks and light-green shirts, ribbons and pins across their chests. In many high schools, the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs are small; around Fort Hood, they are enormous. The students are ordered by height, tall to short. Some of those in the back are barely five feet tall, belts cinched around beanpole waists. They were no more than seven when America went into Afghanistan. Student platoon commanders march beside them and call out cadences. The cadets thunder back in response. Coming from military families, many of these boys and girls will soon join the military and march to the same cadences at basic training. They already know more about war than almost anyone else. They know something about sacrifice, too, and they've heard the thunder of the big guns at night. But on this day, they are still children.


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Everyone knows it isn't a good thing to be out in the sun, fully exposed. The more skin you have exposed, the more sunscreen you will need and the greater the risk of excessive exposure to the sun. When you are a lifeguard, you need to be out in the sun for your entire shift. You may have an umbrella to offer you a little protection from the sun, but for the most part, you are out in the open. Therefore, it is important to cover up as much as possible. This includes wearing the best guard tee to help protect your upper body.
Guard Quick Dry Tech T-Shirt
This option for the best lifeguard t-shirts can help your lifeguards stay cool and dry throughout the day in the hot sun. This t-shirt is made from 100 percent polyester and offers a lightweight option for lifeguards who are looking for a little reprieve from the heat of the summer sun. The material is completely breathable so you don't need to worry about feeling as though you are sweltering in the sun from wearing too much clothes. These shirts also offer UV protection, helping your sunscreen do its job. With the lifeguard logo, everyone will know you are the one to come to for help.
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Choosing the best guard tees for your team of lifeguards comes down to two basic choices. If you want something that will help keep your crew cooler, the quick dry tech t-shirt can provide breathability and comfort for those long hours in the sun. However, if you want something that costs a little less but still provides the best coverage for your guards, the cotton guard t-shirt can be the right option for you. No matter which one you choose, your guards will have a t-shirt that shows everyone on the beach who to trust.


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SHOW NO. 24 Tax Town Hall Show – Part 1 (Sept. 11th, 2019)
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Join Alabama Attorney Larry Becraft, FreeEnterpriseSocietyServices.org Founder Shawn O'Connor, Researcher and Talk Show Host Gary Thomason and Former IRS Special Agent and AgentForTruth.com Founder Joe Banister for an hour-long discussion of various income tax topics, including a Q&A segment.
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Pressure switches are designed and manufactured to exacting standards to meet the needs of original equipment manufacturers and instrument makers for low cost, stable switches and good repeat accuracy. Field adjustable using the hex head set screw at the center of the pressure switch. Pressure switch microswitches are in the open state before actuation point is reached. All switches are 100% tested at high and low settings and at proof pressure.


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3 staff members stabbed at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen
Patient arrested, under police guard at hospital
Holy Family hospital and police in Methuen say three people have non-life-threatening injuries after a stabbing in a locked unit at the hospital.
A spokeswoman for Steward Health Care, which owns the hospital, said Wednesday night that a patient in one of its behavioral health units "inflicted superficial wounds" on three staff members.
Brooke Thurston said all are in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery. She said the hospital is "fully cooperating" with authorities in their investigation.
Yan Carlos Nunez, 20, of Lawrence was arrested and charged with three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Nunez was being held under police guard at the hospital.
It's not the first time the hospital has been the site of a violent attack.
In 1999, Dr. James Kartell fatally shot his wife's lover, Janos Vajda, while both men were visiting her at Holy Family Hospital, where she was recovering from pneumonia. Kartell was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served seven years in prison.


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December 5th, 2013
Vatican unveils commission to combat sexual abuse
By Hada Messia, CNN
Rome (CNN)–Pope Francis is creating a commission to prevent the abuse of minors and to support victims of abuse, Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley announced Thursday in Rome.
The new commission is expected to tell church officials to collaborate with civil authorities and report cases of abuse, O'Malley said.
But he also said that the church has focused on the judicial aspect of sexual abuse in the past, and that Pope Francis now wants to focus on the pastoral side, and caring for victims.FULL STORY
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About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.


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The Ladybug5+ offers the highest quality in spherical 360° imaging and accuracy. It is able to acquire an impressive 8k30 or 4k60 of content. With its patented calibration and superior global shutter sensors, the Ladybug5+ has an accuracy level of 2 mm at 10 m. The Ladybug SDK provides a wide range of functionality, allowing users to record, process, and export spherical content with ease. Ladybug5+ has an IP65 rating making it ideal for outdoor use including street mapping.
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It is understandable that you only want the best for your wedding and this is why you are very meticulous when it comes to wedding planning. Times are hard and you never know what is going to happen with the country's economy in the future. What has this got to do with your special day? With this thought in mind, you should actually be thinking of ways on how to cut down on your expenses as you go about the planning phase. You are going to start your own family after your wedding and it is only practical to think about those years as you create your plans.
If you already have a checklist of what you want to happen and the things you need to acquire for your wedding, look at it again and see if there are ways on how you can lower the total expenses. Here are some tips that you can think about as you go about this quest.
1. Allot time on focusing on the things that you have to deal with when it comes to the event. If you can go and visit certain places yourself, then do it. If you are thinking of hiring a wedding coordinator, you must first think about their tasks. Yes, things are going to be a lot easier on your part if there is someone who is managing everything for you and your only job is to approve or reject their choices. But if you have time on your hands, you might as well use a little exercise to proceed on these tasks on your own. You can search for the right church, venue, providers of the materials that you will need on the wedding among other things.
This may sound like a lot of hard work, but this is going to be a special event. It will be more memorable if you are going to manage things on your own. By personally attending to your needs, you will have an idea of how else can you save in the process. Your guests do not have to know that you are on a tight budget. As long as you can provide them with good food and good fun, they won't notice that you did not serve desserts during the event. They will be there for you not for the food or anything else, but to see you finally marry the person whom you want to spend the rest of your life with.
2. Scout for various providers of the different materials and other things that you will need during the event. This can be accomplished online. There are many websites that contain database of different providers of what you are looking for. By browsing at these sites, you will have an idea of how certain packages would cost and you will be able to compare the given prices of the different stores and service providers.
3. Ask your friends who have been into this kind of preparation for tips and advices about how you can save. If you have limited friends who have experienced this kind of event, you can go online and participate on public forums that tackle this subject.
By saving up more money during the wedding planning, you will feel good about what you have accomplished.


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Product Name
|freshwater pearl loose baroque pearls
Item No
Pearl Category
Freshwater Pearl
baroque pearl
Pearl color
Any Color You Can Choose
Place of Production
Pearl size
50 pieces
Grade (quality )
High quality material+ Excellent techniques
Nickel free and lead free, more than 20 years rich experience
Poly bag/Jewelry pouch/ Jewelry box
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Mass production: 7-30 days
1.DHL/Fedex/UPS/TNT/EMS/Airmail, any request feel free to contact me
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Payment term
1.Bank transfer/ Paypal/ Western union/ Alipay
2.Terms of Payment: EXW, FOB Shanghai
3.The buyer is responsible for shipping fee
Daking Jewelry Co.Ltd. Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province, located in the famous port city of Zhangjiagang, near Shanghai. Is a collection of pearl production, processing and sales in one of the specialized jewelery companies. Since its establishment in 1992, committed to the breeding and processing of freshwater pearls, while the design and export of fashionable pearl jewelry, gold and silver jewelry, semi-precious stone jewelry and fashion accessories, the products are exported around the world.
The company has specialized in pearl farms, with a total water area of 1,000 acres, and has specialized in the manufacture of jewelry factory. After 20 years of development, the company introduced advanced pearl polishing, drilling, dyeing processing technology, formed a set of strict norms of quality control and management system as well as production, supply, marketing integration of the modern business structure. Products rich structure, species diversity, production of necklaces, bracelets, bracelets, bracelets, pendants, earrings, rings, anklets, suits nine major categories, a total of more than 8,000 models of products.
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As long as you tell us your specific demand, we will make a technical assessment and reply you in detail.
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We are not only factory, but an integrated enterprise. We run factory, design studio, wholesale center, and foreign trade. We will provide high quality products and excellent export service for you.
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6: Do you attend Jewelry Exhibition? When and Where?
Yes. We have booth in Hong Kong Jewelry Show on March, June, September every year, please ask our merchant for booth number or invitation.


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The United States Department of Justice (Department) initiated this matter as a compliance review of the Deschutes County, Oregon 9-1-1 Service District (Deschutes 9-1-1), under title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131-12134, and the Department's implementing regulation, 28 C.F.R. Part 35. During a routine inspection of a related governmental entity, the Department of Justice determined that Deschutes 9-1-1 violates in part the Title II regulation by failing to respond adequately to "silent/no voice contact" calls.
The review was conducted by the Disability Rights Section of the Department's Civil Rights Division and focused on Deschutes 9-1-1's compliance with the following title II requirements:
C to ensure that communications with applicants, participants, and members of the public with disabilities are as effective as communications with others, including furnishing auxiliary aids and services when necessary, 28 C.F.R. § 35.160; and
C to provide direct access via TTY (text telephone) or computer-to-telephone emergency services, including 9-1-1 services, for persons who use TTY's and computer modems, 28 C.F.R. § 35.162.
As part of its compliance review, the Department reviewed Deschutes 9-1-1's policies and procedures regarding providing effective communication to persons who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
1. The ADA applies to Deschutes 9-1-1 because it is a "public entity" as defined by title II. 42 U.S.C. § 12131(1).
2. The Department is authorized under 28 C.F.R. Part 35, Subpart F, to determine the compliance of Deschutes 9-1-1 with title II of the ADA and the Department's title II implementing regulation, to issue findings, and, where appropriate, to negotiate and secure voluntary compliance agreements. Furthermore, the Attorney General is authorized, under 42 U.S.C. § 12133, to bring a civil action enforcing title II of the ADA should the Department fail to secure voluntary compliance pursuant to Subpart F.
3. The parties to this Agreement are the United States of America and Deschutes 9-1-1.
4. In order to avoid the burdens and expenses of an investigation and possible litigation, the parties enter into this Agreement.
5. In consideration of, and consistent with, the terms of this Agreement, the Attorney General agrees to refrain from filing a civil suit in this matter regarding all matters contained within this Agreement, except as provided in the section entitled "Implementation and Enforcement."
6. Deschutes 9-1-1 has ensured that each 9-1-1 call station is equipped with the computer equivalent of a TTY.
7. Deschutes 9-1-1 has developed procedures for answering 9-1-1 calls that include training all call takers to use a TTY to take 9-1-1 calls.
8. Within three months of the effective date of this Agreement, Deschutes 9-1-1 will develop procedures for answering 9-1-1 calls that include training to recognize a "silent" open line as a potential TTY call and to respond by TTY.
9. Deschutes 9-1-1 will monitor its incoming 9-1-1 TTY calls to ensure they are answered as quickly and accurately as other calls received.
10. Deschutes 9-1-1 will incorporate correct TTY call-taking procedures into 9-1-1 call takers' performance evaluations and will amend its personnel policies to include written disciplinary procedures for call takers who fail to perform TTY call-taking consistent with the training and procedures. Deschutes 9-1-1 will implement and report to the Department its evaluation and procedures within three months of the effective date of this Agreement.
11. Except as otherwise specified in this Agreement, at yearly anniversaries of the effective date of this Agreement until it expires, Deschutes 9-1-1 will submit written reports to the Department summarizing the actions Deschutes 9-1-1 has taken pursuant to this Agreement. Reports will include copies of adopted policies.
12. Throughout the life of this Agreement, consistent with 28 C.F.R. § 35.133(a), Deschutes 9-1-1 will maintain the accessibility of its programs, activities, services, facilities, and equipment, and will take whatever actions are necessary (such as routine testing of accessibility equipment and routine accessibility audits of its programs and facilities) to do so. This provision does not prohibit isolated or temporary interruptions in service or access due to maintenance or repairs. 28 C.F.R. § 35.133(b).
13. If at any time Deschutes 9-1-1 desires to modify any portion of this Agreement because of changed conditions making performance impossible or impractical or for any other reason, it will promptly notify the Department in writing, setting forth the facts and circumstances thought to justify modification and the substance of the proposed modification. Until there is written Agreement by the Department to the proposed modification, the proposed modification will not take effect. These actions must receive the prior written approval of the Department, which approval will not be unreasonably withheld or delayed.
14. The Department may review compliance with this Agreement at any time. If the Department believes that Deschutes 9-1-1 has failed to comply in a timely manner with any requirement of this Agreement without obtaining sufficient advance written agreement with the Department for a modification of the relevant terms, the Department will so notify Deschutes 9-1-1 in writing and it will attempt to resolve the issue or issues in good faith. If the Department is unable to reach a satisfactory resolution of the issue or issues raised within 30 days of the date it provides notice to Deschutes 9-1-1, it may institute a civil action in federal district court to enforce the terms of this Agreement, or it may initiate appropriate steps to enforce title II.
15. For purposes of the immediately preceding paragraph, it is a violation of this Agreement for Deschutes 9-1-1 to fail to comply in a timely manner with any of its requirements without obtaining sufficient advance written agreement with the Department for an extension of the relevant time frame imposed by the Agreement.
16. Failure by the Department to enforce this entire Agreement or any provision thereof with regard to any deadline or any other provision herein will not be construed as a waiver of the Department's right to enforce other deadlines and provisions of this Agreement.
17. This Agreement is a public document. A copy of this document or any information contained in it will be made available to any person by Deschutes 9-1-1 or the Department on request.
18. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the parties on the matters raised herein, and no other statement, promise, or agreement, either written or oral, made by either party or agents of either party, that is not contained in this written Agreement (including its Attachments, which are hereby incorporated by reference), will be enforceable. This Agreement does not purport to remedy any other potential violations of the ADA or any other federal law. This Agreement does not affect the Deschutes 9-1-1's continuing responsibility to comply with all aspects of the ADA.
19. This Agreement will remain in effect for two years and two months.
20. The person signing for the Deschutes 9-1-1 represents that he or she is authorized to bind Deschutes 9-1-1 to this Agreement.
21. The effective date of this Agreement is the date of the last signature below.
For Deschutes 9-1-1:
By: ____________________________
LAURA WOLFE, Director
Deschutes County 9-1-1 Service District
63333 Highway 20 West
Bend, Oregon 97701
Date: ___________________________
For the United States:
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
JOHN L. WODATCH, Chief
JEANINE WORDEN, Deputy Chief
MARY LOU MOBLEY, Senior Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Disability Rights Section - NYA
Washington, DC 20530
Date: ______________________________


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FBI investigating attempted breach of mobile voting app
Authorities: No evidence of votes being changed
Authorities: No evidence of votes being changed
Authorities: No evidence of votes being changed
One or more people tried to penetrate West Virginia's mobile voting system during the Midterm election, the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit has confirmed, leading to new worries about the security of certain election platforms ahead of next year's general election.
The Mountain State was the first to use mobile voting for military and overseas voters. Tuesday's announcement in the state capital of Charleston by state and federal authorities of the attempted breach came on the first day of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, Mike Stuart, says the case has now been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for investigation. Sources tell the National Investigative Unit the attempted intrusion of the mobile voting app is believed to have come from inside the U.S., not from overseas.
At a news conference Tuesday afternoon at the federal courthouse in Charleston, Stuart delivered a warning to anyone who may attempt to breach an election system. "Don't do it. Don't even think about it. We're serious about maintaining the integrity of our election system and we will prosecute those folks who violate federal law," Stuart said.
West Virginia uses an app designed by Voatz, a Boston-based company that enables some voters to cast ballots electronically. In the 2018 Midterm election, 144 people returned ballots to the state using the app, West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner told the National Investigative Unit. The return rate was 97% compared to 13% for those overseas voters who requested paper ballots that had to be returned through foreign postal systems, the state said.
Opening the current federal investigation into the attempted hack "is to caution people to not even attempt to mess with an election," Warner said Tuesday. Both Warner and Stuart stressed no votes were changed in this case.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures and the West Virginia Secretary of State, precincts in eight states are considering using mobile voting in 2020. Those states include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, and Utah.
Nineteen states currently ban mobile voting, including New Hampshire, site of the nation's first primary in four months.
Criminal charges in the West Virginia case could still be filed, state election officials said.
Travis Sherwin contributed to this report.
Have an election security-related tip? Send information and documents about this topic to the National Investigative Unit at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Editor's Note: An update to this story clarifies that precincts in eight states are considering using mobile voting in 2020, not the states themselves.


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text:
Paul Schwartz of the New York Post writes that the Giants will have to address the contracts of a number of their veteran players if they intend to keep some of their 22 free agents on their roster next season.
The Giants are projected to be $4.7 million over the projected salary cap next season, so adjustments need to be made before the start of the next league year. Players like WR Victor Cruz (restricted), LT Will Beatty, G Kevin Boothe, TE Martellus Bennett and S Stevie Brown (restricted) all need new contracts and are coming off of productive seasons for the Giants.
Schwartz specifically mentions LB Michael Boley ($4.25 million), DE Justin Tuck ($4.5 million), and Ahmad Bradshaw ($3.75 million) as players that are likely to be back next season, even though they come with question marks of their own.
In regards to players who could be out in New York, Schwartz mentions that CB Corey Webster ($7 million), DT Chris Canty ($6.25 million), G Chris Snee ($6.45 million), C David Baas ($4.25 million) and S Antrel Rolle ($7 million) as a few options for being released or asked to restructure their current deals.
The Giants are in a position to shed salary after they missed the playoffs this season. A number of these players are coming off of disappointing years and have a good deal of money coming to them, so it makes sense that New York would strongly consider weeding out some of these players and look for younger replacements in the draft.
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Be sure to follow NFL Trade Rumors on TWITTER and FACEBOOK for breaking NFL News and Rumors for all 32 teams!


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NBA teams began negotiating with free agents at 12:01 a.m. Here is what's on the New York Knicks' to-do list:
Re-sign J.R. Smith. The Sixth Man Award winner agreed, along with his family, to first meet with Knicks coach Mike Woodson and the team's front office on Sunday night to discuss Smith's future in New York.
Two factors that would keep Smith from returning are if he wants to start and if he wants to make more than $5.58 million, the max the Knicks can offer him with early Bird rights. The Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns are prepared to bid for Smith's services.
Keep Pablo Prigioni and Chris Copeland. Both players are now restricted free agents after receiving qualifying offers from the Knicks.
In an ideal world, the Knicks would split up their mini mid-level exception of $3.18 million to sign both players, but Copeland could demand more than that amount alone. He could have up to eight teams making offers. At least two, the Bucks and New Orleans Pelicans, are prepared to make attractive bids for Copeland, according to a league source. When free agency officially tipped off, the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Lakers were the first two teams to inquire about Copeland, a league source told ESPNNewYork.com.
Retain Kenyon Martin. A source close to K-Mart told ESPNNewYork.com that he's "confident" the power forward wants to return. The biggest hurdle is the Knicks likely only being able to offer the veteran's minimum.
Add another point guard and big man. Point guards could include Aaron Brooks, A.J. Price, Sebastian Telfair, Jamaal Tinsley and Earl Watson. A league source said the Knicks are interested in Brooks, who was recently waived by the Rockets and is represented by Leon Rose, whose clients include Andrea Bargnani, Carmelo Anthony and Smith.
Bigs could include Andray Blatche, Elton Brand, Samuel Dalembert, Lamar Odom, Shavlik Randolph, Anthony Tolliver, Chris Wilcox and Brandan Wright.
A league source said Spurs big man DeJuan Blair will not be a candidate for the Knicks because of their limited financial flexibility. Chris Andersen is another intriguing prospect, but he wants to return to Miami.
Though they don't have much room to spend, "the Knicks never do what you think they will do," another league source said. As the Andrea Bargnani trade proved, that's certainly true.
You can follow Jared Zwerling on Twitter.


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In a case similar to the gang-rape of a paramedic student in New Delhi, a 29-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by seven persons here.
The victim, a resident of a Ghukla village under Kahnuwan police station, was on way to her village in a bus when the driver and conductor kidnapped her and took her an undisclosed location where they and their five accomplices gang-raped her last night, SSP Gurdaspur Raj Jeet Singh told reporters.
The SSP said five of the seven accused had been arrested while two unidentified persons were still absconding.
He said that based on the interrogation of the five accused, efforts were on to arrest the remaining accused.
The victim in her complaint said that she was coming from her parent's village Jagatpur district Pathankot in a bus but the driver Daler Singh did not stop the vehicle at the bus stand in the village.
Her request to conductor Ravi to ask the driver to stop the bus went unnoticed.
They took her to some place near Gurdaspur, where five of their friends joined them and gang-raped the woman in a house, the police official said.
The next morning, the driver dumped the woman in a near her village, he said adding, first she went to her house and them came to the police station to make her complaint.
A case under section 376 of IPC (punishment for rape) was registered against the seven accused, Singh said.
The five arrested were identified as Daler Singh, Ravi, Jaswinder Singh, Jagpreet Singh and Satwant Singh, he said.
The two absconders will be soon arrested and teams have been formed to nab them, he said.
Police said that the FIR was registered this evening.
The woman would be sent for medical examination, they said adding in the preliminary interrogation, the accused confessed to their crime.
Related articles
- Gang rape of a tribal woman by five Special Police Officers (SPO's) in Jharkhand #Vaw (kractivist.wordpress.com)
- Kashmir: Girl gang raped by at gun point by her neighbour and his friends (kashmirsolidaritymumbai.wordpress.com)


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(Reprinted from flex888.com. View original post.)
Finally, GeoWeb is Complete and Born
Posted by Moxie | March 19, 2008 .
What's is the best RIA application ever created? If your answer is something aroundFlex or Flash, then it'll be wrong answer. The right answer is Google Map. It's Google Map makes AJAX known and RIA a reality. Google even goes above and beyond claimed the term "GeoWeb". However, up till now, Google Map is still just the best client, the visualization end, of GeoWeb. The "Geo†part of GeoWeb was missing.
Yesterday, ESRI, the shy, but true and real "Geo†dude behind all, I mean ALL, the web map buzz and technologies, released its very own JavaScript API and REST based Geo Process services to the world. The GeoWeb is finally complete and born.
The JavaScript API has three parts, the ESRI JavaScript API, the Google Map extension, the Virtual Earth extension. That means you can use the top three GeoWeb clients with this simple API to do the real "Geo†things.
What is the "Geo†things and why it's a big deal to GeoWeb?
Well, everyone and his/her grandma knows what Google Map does, plans the trip and shows locations. What's the most mashed up platform? Google Map. What 99% Google Map mashup applications do? Put pins (markers) on the map? But what if we want to ask some questions beyond the pushpins:
- Within 5 minutes driving time, show me the areas that I can reach. Don't fool me with a circle. That is cheating. Because there might be highway, service street, or river among the 5 minutes driving range. The area you can cover by driving is a irregular polygon. But how do you get that polygon drawn on the map to show the 5 minute driving range?
- Three of my friends want to meet for lunch. We want to meet at a Starbucks where everybody has the least driving time to get there. Fair enough? But how do you quickly give me that Starbucks location and provide driving direction for each of us.
The questions can go on and on. How these questions are answered? Through a thing called Geoprocessing, which is provided by the technology called GIS (geographic information system). But why you've never heard of it and it's not well known in the Web 2.0 space? That's because it's a very hard nut to crack and only a few dudes know how to do it inside out. ESRI is the one does it the best, and now, it gets everything figured it out. The whole web can have it.
If I tell you, with three lines of JavaScript codes, plus some regular JavaScript programming you can easily answer the above question visually on either ESRI map, Google Map or Earth Map. Do you believe me?
You don't have to because I'll show you how.
First Line:
var map = new esri.Map("mapDivâ€, { extent: startExtent });
Looks familiar, isn't it. Indeed, it's just like Google Map or Virtual Earth API.
Second Line:
var streetMap = new esri.layers.ArcGISTiledMapServiceLayer ("http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ ESRI_StreetMap_World_2D/MapServerâ€);
Something new here. Well, if you head to ArcGIS Online, a free gwoweb resource from ESRI, you would find out there are lots of good free base maps you can choose. Or, you can use any map published to a ArcGIS Server. It's long story here for those map publishing goodies, I'll tell you later, piece by piece. But just you know this line of code gives you a whole big world of maps to works with. Just remembering that is enough for now.
Third Line:
var gp = new esri.tasks.Geoprocessor ("http://sampleserver1.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ Network/ESRI_DriveTime_US/ GPServer/CreateDriveTimePolygonsâ€);
This is "Geo†part of the GeoWeb. One line, it consumes a geoprocess, in this case, a services called CreateDriveTimePolygons. This geoprocess called is actually via REST API (as the URL reveals) . The returned result can be in JSON, KML or XML. That means you really don't have to use this JavaScript API. As matter of fact, I do have Perl or PHPexamples consume the very same gepprocess, but that'll be another post.
The rest code is really just parse the result and draw the polygon on the map. If you know Google Map API, there are no surprises there.
The following is the true GeoWeb application I've introduced to you. You can zoom in to any city just like you would do with gmap (scrolling mouse, drag the map, etc.). Then click the map. The 1, 3 and 5 minutes driving time polygon will be shown.
Click Here to Run the Application (view source for detail code).
I will post another example to solve that other problem using Flex. Stay tuned.
Tags: 9.3, arc, developer conference, esri, flex, geoweb, gis, google, javascript, KML, Mashup, php, rest api, xml


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Facing My Fear of Flying
Posted on August 22, 2011 by Barbara McDowell
Image by Hisks via stock.xchng My junior year of high school, I wanted to visit my sister for my spring break. She was away at college in Minnesota and my mother, my main mode of transportation, decided to travel to … Continue reading →
Posted in Thoughts on Life | Tagged Aaliyah, Aaliyah Haughton, Barbara McDowell, faith, fear, fear of flying, flying, music, plane crash, prayer | 12 Comments


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Quiz: What's Your Skin Missing?
Find out if your body is perfectly hydrated or in need of some serious TLC
You probably have a standard regimen for your face, but when's the last time you gave a thought to your skin below the neck? It needs attention too, so take this quiz for expert tips on what your skin could use.
Question 1 of 5
How much water do you drink a day?
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Henry, Alexander
Henry, Alexander, two fur traders, uncle and nephew, of the Old Northwest, each of whom left a valuable journal of his travels and experiences.
Alexander Henry, the elder, 1739–1824, b. New Brunswick, N.J., served under Jeffery Amherst in the last of the French and Indian Wars. As a fur trader he barely escaped massacre (1763) by Native Americans at Michilimackinac in Pontiac's Rebellion. Captured by the Ojibwa, he was later adopted and protected by a family and made his way back to Fort Niagara in time to join Bradstreet's army in lifting the siege of Detroit. He returned to fur trading and in 1775 penetrated the Old Northwest to the region of the Saskatchewan. Competition with the Hudson's Bay Company caused a body of the free traders, among them Henry, Peter Pond, and the Frobishers, to unite as the group that eventually became the powerful North West Company. See his Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories (new ed. with biographical notes by James Bain, 1972). The date and place of birth of his nephew, Alexander Henry, the younger, d. 1814, are not known. His journal of 1799–1814, edited by Elliott Coues (together with the journal of David Thompson) as New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest (1897), describes his adventures as a trader of the North West Company on the Red, Pembina, Saskatchewan, and Columbia rivers and is particularly valuable for its account of the native tribes of those regions. Henry was drowned near Astoria, Oreg.
See W. O'Meara, The Savage Country (1960).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies


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Patrick Frischknecht
Phishing websites try to mimic trustworthy sites as close as possible to trick users into passing them sensitive private information like login data.
A typical security tip to protect the users from phishing is to check the URL, especially the domain name of the page before entering data. However phishers can also try to create domains looking very similar to the trusted domain (so called look-alike domains) by changing a few letters of the original domain name, adding additional words etc.
The goal of the master thesis is to study the prevalence of phishing attacks with look-alike domains and how companies protect their domains and more generally their brands from such attacks.


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Provided by: manpages-dev_3.54-1ubuntu1_all
ftok - convert a pathname and a project identifier to a System V IPC key
#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/ipc.h> key_t ftok(const char *pathname, int proj_id);
The ftok() function uses the identity of the file named by the given pathname (which must refer to an existing, accessible file) and the least significant 8 bits of proj_id (which must be nonzero) to generate a key_t type System V IPC key, suitable for use with msgget(2), semget(2), or shmget(2). The resulting value is the same for all pathnames that name the same file, when the same value of proj_id is used. The value returned should be different when the (simultaneously existing) files or the project IDs differ.
On success, the generated key_t value is returned. On failure -1 is returned, with errno indicating the error as for the stat(2) system call.
Under libc4 and libc5 (and under SunOS 4.x) the prototype was: key_t ftok(char *pathname, char proj_id); Today proj_id is an int, but still only 8 bits are used. Typical usage has an ASCII character proj_id, that is why the behavior is said to be undefined when proj_id is zero. Of course no guarantee can be given that the resulting key_t is unique. Typically, a best effort attempt combines the given proj_id byte, the lower 16 bits of the inode number, and the lower 8 bits of the device number into a 32-bit result. Collisions may easily happen, for example between files on /dev/hda1 and files on /dev/sda1.
msgget(2), semget(2), shmget(2), stat(2), svipc(7)
This page is part of release 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.


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Eighty-two percent of dogs travel in the car on a regular basis and on vacations. Fifty percent of dog owners consider their pet's comfort when buying a car. But how many pet owners consider their pet's safety when buying a car?
Bark Buckle UP™ is an organization that collects statistics on pet travel and pet safety. Its originator, Christina Selter, works with police, fire, and hospital first responders to advise them on rescue techniques for pets. And Selter travels around the country to speak to pet owners about the dangers of traveling with un-secured pets.
There is interesting information dotted throughout the Bark Buckle Up website, among which I learned about the impact of a 60 pound dog in a traffic accident: "When driving 35 mph, a 60-pound unrestrained dog can cause an impact of
2,700 pounds, slamming into a car seat, windshield, or passenger."
After that, Bark Buckle Up points out a very interesting point that makes perfect sense, but most people don't consider: The duty of the first responder is to insure the safety and well-being of the human passengers in the car. If a dog or cat survives a crash, that pet is not the priority of the responder and the responder may not even be trained in pet rescue. That's two more reasons to buckle up your pet.
Many automobile manufacturers are installing pet safety features in their cars, for a price. If you're not getting a new car and/or don't want to pay for the fancy auto logos on your pet's safety equipment, Bark Buckle UP has a list of car safety devices for pets that it recommends.
Pet Car Safety Device 1, 2 and 3:
Argo® Petascope Carriers
Argo designs its models of Petascopes to wheel and carry on board
airplanes, cars, and trains. Argo's mesh windows provide plenty of air
and visibility for your pet and the carriers are well padded for their
comfort and safety. Each of the carriers have a flat bottom, important
for the pet's stability. This line is make mostly for small to medium dogs, and they come in a variety of colors.
Teafco Argo AC20638S Petascope Carrier
Teafco Argo Medium Petascope Carrier
Teafco Argo 20-Inch Tally-Ho Wheeled Pet Carrier
Pet Car Safety Device 4.
PetBuckle Harness
The PetBuckle is a strong harness intended for dogs over 10 pounds and chest diameters of at least 14 inches. The PetBuckle Travel Kit comes with a tether, seat belt adapter, PetBuckle seat belt harness and a storage bag for convenient storage under the seat or in the glove box.
Pet Car Safety Device 5.
Bamboo Quick Control Leash with Seat Belt Latch
This leash comes in 3' and 6' lengths. I would recommend using the 3' length because it restricts your dog's movement more, but it may not be preferable as a walking lead. The closer he is to the seat belt the less likely he will get hurt in most accidents. The leash comes with a universal seat belt latch and zippered pocket for personal items. The Bamboo Quick Control 6-Foot Leash With Seat Belt Latch is available in several colors at Amazon.com. The 3-Foot Leash is available here.
Pet Car Safety Device 6.
Petego Pet Tube Travel Station
The Petego Pet Tubes, available in 2 sizes, surrounds your pets while securely fastening them to the car seats. But the Pet Tube is only intended for the car. It's quite portable and easy to carry, but not with your pet inside. Pet Tube is made of heavy duty fabric, is liquid-proof and scratch-proof. The small Pet Tube is approximately 17' with a 17" diameter. The large Pet Tube is approximately 27" long with a 25" diameter, but it can be adjusted shorter to provide more seat space if necessary.
Pet Car Safety Device 7.
The Sleepypod Mobile Pet Bed
The Sleepypod is a plush and cozy little bed for pets up to 15 pounds. It is made with luggage grade nylon with "ultra plush" polyester interior. The padded strap makes the bag comfy for you to carry. The Sleepypod comes in several pretty and stylish colors you can see on Amazon.com. The Mini Sleepypod is also available at Amazon and that is made to hold pets up to 7 pounds.
The Sleepypod fits safely onto a rear seat, attaching to your car's seat belt, as seen in this short YouTube video.
So, buckle-up and keep your pet buckled up in the back seat!
That's the buzz for today!


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- من نحن
- منصات التداول
- الأسواق المالية
- تعلم
- اتصل بنا
- الدعم
The key is to spend time learning the basic rules so you can use these methods most effectively with your trading strategy.
While the idea of pattern recognition may seem strange, it's based on carefully tested methods which underline their usefulness to traders. Importantly, patterns are factors to consider when calculating where to enter, set stop-loss orders, and where to set your profit targets. These factors are, of course, some of the key things that all traders will wish to consider when managing their overall portfolio.
- Recognise how price movements can develop into price patterns
- Isolate sensible entry points
- Manage risk with stop losses and set profit targets
Types of trading patterns
Pattern recognition comes from looking for patterns that appear in the prices of traded instruments. You should be looking for shapes such as triangles, rectangles and diamonds. While this may not inspire confidence at the outset, these are formations that arise and track the changes in support and resistance.
Once you have learnt these skills, you will be able to apply them in any financial market that you choose, from shares to indices and forex. Pattern recognition can form the basis of trading strategies for day traders, swing traders and longer-term position traders alike and can be applied to anything from five-minute to weekly charts.
Rectangles and, in particular, triangles, have a wide number of varieties that can be used. In essence, all price patterns are looking at the interaction of supply and demand over time and establishing sensible ways in which to react when these patterns form. This means you will know how you to react in terms of risk management and closing out.
Triangle trading patterns
There are several different types of triangles which can all be very effective for your trading. One advantage is that there is no bias to either the long or short side, and this makes them very useful from the perspective of a CFD trader. Keep in mind that if you are always biasing yourself to the long side of the market, then you could be missing out on some of the most attractive features of this pattern.
Triangles are patterns inside which the price consolidates. However, because there is no long or short side bias, you must keep an eye on triangles for when an eventual breakout occurs. There are two broad categories of triangle that form:
- The ascending and descending triangle (the opposite of one another), and
- The symmetrical triangle
Ascending triangle
The ascending triangle is possibly the best recognised pattern in this category, as it incorporates the use of a resistance line (which traders are frequently on the lookout for) and a rising support line.
The important parts of this formation are the two lines marked in red: the resistance line and uptrend line. You should be mindful of trading volumes during the formation of the pattern, and then how volumes are affected when the breakout occurs.
Typically, you would look for volume levels to decline over the time that the pattern forms. One way to think about this decline is that buyers and sellers gradually get pushed into a narrower and narrower balance of support and resistance, which effectively drives out the interest until price can break out and begin to trend once more. If volume isn't declining, this doesn't necessarily mean that there is a problem with the pattern; however, something you should be on the lookout for is a volume spike when the breakout occurs. This tends to have a beneficial effect on the overall strength of the pattern from then on.
Another effect that can be greatly beneficial to look out for when breakouts occur is a gap in the price. This shows a surge in demand for the instrument (surge in supply if it's a short trade) which adds a great deal of price confirmation for the trader. Traders may sometimes be put off by this because they feel the trade has got away from them, but in reality this is likely to be reinforcement that you have correctly determined a breakout is occurring.
Something that traders all fear when it comes to breakout pattern trades is what is known as the false breakout, or whipsaw. This occurs when price breaches the pattern, which may lead aggressive traders to move straight into the trade. Unfortunately, what happens in the case of the false breakout is that you get what seems to be a genuine signal, only to find out later that the price retreats back within the confines of the pattern, and you are left holding a trade that is not doing what you hoped it would.
The only way you can try to combat this is by applying a filter of some sort, and the most obvious method is to wait until there have been X closes outside of the pattern. If you are looking at daily charts, then you may decide to wait until the price has closed outside of the pattern for two days before entry. There are other means of avoiding this type of false breakout. Some traders choose to wait until the price has moved twice the average true range (2ATR) outside of the pattern. None of these methods will guarantee that you won't suffer false breakouts.
The previous chart demonstrated an example of an ascending triangle with an upward breakout. As there is no directional bias as to which way patterns are going to break out, we also need to look at an example of what a downward break on an ascending triangle looks like.
You can see that the basic setup is exactly the same, except the breakout occurs in the opposite direction which then necessitates a short trade. You should note that in the case of both these examples we have shown a retracement back to the line from which they broke out. This is something that can happen without the signal being considered a failure – however, you should not assume this will always happen. In fact, you would assume that the instances where this does not occur are when you are receiving the strongest signals.
Descending triangle
The flipside of the previously described ascending triangle is the descending triangle, which has very similar characteristics but sets itself up in the opposite direction. As with its ascending counterpart, the breakout can occur in either direction, so you need to watch the direction in which the breakout occurs.
As with all patterns, they rarely look exactly the same as in these examples. These illustrations provide something of a best-case scenario, but most of the time you will want to see the price movements resemble the chart as closely as possible.
Some traders would suggest that the price should drive quite clearly from the support and resistance points and not spend too much time drifting sideways. And when it comes to triangle patterns, you would preferably see the price break out of the pattern before it reaches 75% of the way to the apex. This is because if the pattern continues sideways it's starting to lose momentum and may continue to drift sideways, which is far from what the breakout trader wants.
Symmetrical triangle
The symmetrical triangle has some characteristics in common with the ascending/descending triangle in that the price is being driven into a narrower band of price movement, and the trader is looking for a breakout of the price. In addition, you will probably see the level of trading volume in the instrument decline as it moves throughout the formation, and then subsequently rise significantly above the average when the breakout occurs.
As with other triangles, there is the possibility of false breakouts, so it's worth considering placing a filter on the breakout to reduce your chances of being exposed to a whipsaw entry into the trade. Again, this may be a set number of closes above the breakout level or, alternatively, using a filter like the average true range.
In these trades as with any of the triangles, there are two main choices as to where stop-loss orders are placed. The more aggressive trader might place a stop just on the other side of the breakout line, where the whipsaw is likely to have occurred. This is as close as a stop-loss can realistically be placed, because otherwise you aren't really giving the trade a decent chance of success. The alternative and more conservative method is to put the stop on the far side of the pattern completely, which would show a total failure of the setup if that level is reached.
Rectangle trading patterns
Having looked at setups where the support and resistance levels are moving closer together, the rectangle setup shows where the two levels run parallel to one another. Although the pattern looks very different to any of the triangle family, the behaviours in terms of the setups are quite similar, in terms of the breakout and risk management.
This chart again illustrates the breakout having a subsequent throwback to what was the resistance line, but this will not always be the case. Like the triangle, the best outcome is a strong continuation from this level on high volume from the point of the breakout.
Flag trading patterns
Like the pennant, the flag is a shorter-term version of a similar pattern – in this case a channel. Flags require many of the same characteristics as the pennant in order to be confirmed as genuine.
This pattern is only genuine if the breakout occurs in the same direction in which price entered it. You will also tend to see the direction of the flag move in the opposite direction of the prevailing price movement.
Both the flag and pennant occur after a sharp movement in price – this near-vertical price move forms the 'flag pole' on which the pennant or the flag occurs. It's important to see this in the lead-up because the pattern is not genuine without it. Lastly, you are likely to see a spike in volume in both cases on the breakout, which will add to the confirmation of the pattern.
The placement of stops obeys the same basic rules as above, with more aggressive traders closing trades at the first sign of failure, while a more conservative trader might look for a price to cross the pattern entirely before regarding it a failure.
Price targets
It's possible to use all the patterns discussed to target an eventual profit-taking point. In the case of the triangles and the rectangle, this is done easily by measuring the height of the pattern and then extrapolating the target out from the breakout point.
The same basic premise is applied to the rectangle. In the case of flags and pennants, the target is determined by measuring the height of the flagpole leading into the formation and then added on the way out. These formations are sometimes referred to as measuring formations because they often occur halfway through the price swing.
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تمتع بالوصول إلى مجموعة كاملة من المنتجات وأدوات التداول والميزاتافتح حساب مباشر
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