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Top White House officials are refusing to comment on a Washington Post report that Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser who is under FBI scrutiny, wanted to set up back-channel communications with Russians before the election. CBS News has confirmed that when Jared Kushner met with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December, Kushner discussed setting up a 'back channel' for communications between the Trump transition team and Russian officials. This is according to a source familiar with the intelligence gathered at the time. As the Washington Post first reported, communications were intercepted between Kislyak and Moscow describing the talk. Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox "We're not going to comment on Jared," White House Economic Council Director Gary Cohn told reporters in an off-camera press briefing Saturday. "We're just not going to comment." That remark came after more than one question from the press about the president's son-in-law, who has broad influence in the White House and is under scrutiny in the FBI investigation of any Russian election meddling or ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said he doesn't find back-channel communications with Russia concerning. McMaster said the report about Kushner's request for back-channel communications with Russians is "not something that we've been involved with or that I have any knowledge of," adding that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer could address the matter later. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, center, and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, right. Andrew Harnik, AP Generally speaking, McMaster said he wouldn't be concerned if administration officials had back-channel communications with the Kremlin. "I mean, we have back-channel communications with a number of -- with a number of countries," McMaster said. "So generally speaking about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is to communicate in a discreet manner. So it doesn't predispose you toward any sort of content of that conversation or anything. So no, I would not be concerned about it." On his first trip abroad, the president has been unable to escape ongoing developments back home related to the FBI Russia investigation. Kushner is under scrutiny -- not necessarily the subject of any investigation or suspected of any wrongdoing -- in the FBI's probe. Federal investigators are looking into meetings Kushner held in December with Russia's ambassador and a banker from Moscow, CBS News' Scott Pelley reported on "CBS Evening News" on Thursday. The banker, Sergey Gorkov, is the head of VEB Bank, a state-owned Russian entity that is the subject of U.S. government sanctions. Gorkov was trained by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. The FBI's Russia investigation gained increased attention after the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recently appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to head the Russia investigation as a special counsel. The Russia story continues to plague the Trump campaign. CBS News reported earlier this week that Mr. Trump asked top intelligence officials to defend him against claims that his campaign collaborated with the Russian government.

A House GOP lawmaker frequently at odds with leadership is trying to find a way around what he believes is retribution for his actions. Rep. Walter Jones Walter Beaman JonesExperts warn Georgia's new electronic voting machines vulnerable to potential intrusions, malfunctions Georgia restores 22,000 voter registrations after purge Stacey Abrams group files emergency motion to stop Georgia voting roll purge MORE (R-N.C.), who voted against John Boehner for Speaker in January and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for Speaker last month, claims House GOP leaders are deliberately preventing a vote on a bill he authored earlier this year as a form of payback. ADVERTISEMENT He's now taken his name off the bill in the hope that having Rep. G.K. Butterfield George (G.K.) Kenneth ButterfieldCongress must protect kidney disease patients during the COVID-19 pandemic The time for HELP is now: Senate should pass bill to expedite recovery following natural disasters Rep. Clyburn on Confederate statues: Mob action is no answer MORE (D-N.C.) as the lead sponsor instead will improve its chances. The legislation would rename a courthouse in Jones's district after Randy Doub, a federal bankruptcy judge who died earlier this year. Jones introduced the bill in March, but it stalled despite support from the state's entire delegation. Butterfield introduced an identical measure on the House's last day of session before this week's recess. ADVERTISEMENT “You can despise the individual, but for God’s sakes, this actually is hurtful to the family,” Jones complained to The Hill in June, adding that he was considering dropping his name as lead sponsor to help it. “I’ve been told that any bill that I have of consequence, that if my name’s on it, it’s probably not going to get moving,” Jones said at the time. Jones spokeswoman Maria Jeffrey confirmed the same bill was introduced in Butterfield's name because of the alleged leadership squabble. House GOP leaders have denied intentionally holding up Jones's bill. Jones said he confronted Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about it during the California Republican's short-lived bid for Speaker last month. And according to Jones, after he made his concerns public to The Hill, a top McCarthy staffer warned his office that he "shouldn’t have said that." The 11-term libertarian has been the target of punishment from leadership in the past. GOP leaders in 2012 booted him from the House Financial Services Committee, a slot coveted by many lawmakers. With the second version now unveiled, Jones and Butterfield hope that changing the name on the bill will speed its passage. "It was agreed, because of Mr. Butterfield’s past work in Greenville and the eastern North Carolina region as an attorney and later as a judge, that Mr. Butterfield would take the lead on the legislation," Butterfield spokesman Saul Hernandez said. "Mr. Butterfield hopes for an expeditious markup and quick consideration by the whole House."

OTTAWA — A controversial government survey designed to gauge public appetite on reforming the electoral system has concluded that two-thirds of Canadians are satisfied with this country’s democracy. The findings indicate, however, that while 17 per cent are “very satisfied” with the state of Canada’s democracy, half the respondents are only “somewhat satisfied.” MyDemocracy.ca was launched on Dec. 5, 2016. Invitations to participate in the online survey were sent to 15 million Canadian households. Six weeks later, approximately 383,074 unique users had taken part in the poll, the survey’s creator, Vox Pop Labs, said in a report released late Tuesday. Karina Gould is sworn in as Minister of Democratic Institutions during a cabinet shuffle at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Tuesday, Jan 10, 2017. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP) The results, which were weighted to the census to increase the representativeness of the findings, found Canadians are generally satisfied with the current electoral system, Clifton van der Linden, the founder and chief executive officer of Vox Pop Labs, suggested in the report. “Though satisfaction does not necessarily preclude a desire for reforming the electoral system, a majority of Canadians (67%) report being somewhat or very satisfied with the way democracy works in Canada,” he stated. The survey’s responses could give the Trudeau government an excuse not to push forward with changes. The online consultation was celebrated by former Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef as a way to consult directly with Canadians on the values they wanted to see reflected in a new electoral system. The Liberal party promised during the 2015 election campaign that it would be the last under the first-past-the-post, or winner-take-all, system. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau pledged he would “make every vote count.” Since forming the government, however, the Grits have not shown as much enthusiasm for reform. Maryam Monsef speaks in the House of Commons on Dec. 5, 2016. (Photo: Fred Chartrand/CP) Critics panned the survey because it didn’t ask Canadians what electoral system they would prefer, nor did it ask simple questions such as: “Do you believe a political party that obtains 30 per cent of the popular vote should have 30 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons?” Van der Linden wrote in his report that many Canadians value different features associated with different types of electoral systems. For example, 58.6 per cent of respondents said having the ability to hold governments to account was important — a feature often associated with the first-past-the-post system, where lines of party accountability are clear. At the same time, 55.7 per cent of respondents said collaborating with other parties should be a priority in Parliament — this is often a hallmark of legislatures with voting systems that are more proportional. This could embolden advocates of proportional representation, such as the NDP and the Green party, which have long championed having more disparate voices in Parliament and, likely, more minority governments.

next click OK button. 4.Go to C:\Users\profile name here\AppData\ to delete some files related to the virus, next go to registry editor to delete the infected files at: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run Video Guide to Remove FBI CyberCrime Division Virus Moneypak Scam/ ICSPA Virus Malware From Registry Editor Manual Removal Guide On Mobile Devices(Android Phone, Android Tablet) Guide to put your android phone or android tablet in safe mode. For Samsung Galaxy S6 S5 S4 and Samsung Note 2: 1. Power down. 2. Turn on and repeatedly tap the soft-button for “Menu.” For Samsung Galaxy S3 S2 and others: 1. Power down. 2. Turn on, then press and hold Volume Down (Galaxy S3 and others), Volume Up (HTC One, ZTE and others), or Volume Down and Volume Up together (various Motorola devices) when the vendor’s logo appears. 1. If you have managed to select Safe Mode, you will see the text “Safe Mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen. 2. Now you can remove the virus away from your mobile device, but if you are not computer savvy, to safely fix the problem, you are recommended to contact an online expert for further removal help. FBI CyberCrime Division Virus Moneypak Scam/ ICSPA Virus mainly targets computers and mobile devices like android phone, android tablet with IP addresses located in United States. This threat is distributed through several means. Malicious websites, or legitimate websites that have been compromised, may drop the threat onto a compromised computer or mobile device. When it is downloaded, the virus locks the desktop in accordance with the law in trying to impede illegal acts. Additionally, FBI CyberCrime Division ICSPA Virus Scam demands you to pay a fine of 300 dollars within 72 hours through Moneypak card. Recently, so many computer users have suffered from various faces of this fake desktop warning. This type of virus has spread rapidly through the Internet. In reality, there is no need for you to hand over your money on the ransom. Even though you got the code to unlock your computer after you paid the fine, your computer will still be locked at that time because the code is invalid at all. What happens if the FBI Cyber Crime shuts down your computer and when you select safe mode with networking a screen comes up saying a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to protect your computer (blue screen)? And how to unlock mobile device when FBI cyber crime occurs? Considering this is a scam, also an aggressive virus, it is suggested users to remove FBI Cybercrime Division malware instantly. All for your sake: If you are not computer wiz and really don’t know how to unlock your computer or mobile devices (Android phone, tablet) from FBI Cybercrime Division Virus Moneypak scam International Cyber Security Protection Alliance ransomware, to avoid causing further damage, please contact YooSecurity experts 24/7 online in time for instant help.

The Buccaneers finally admitted what we all knew back in the spring of 2016: Using a second-round draft pick on K Roberto Aguayo was a colossal mistake. Tampa Bay waived the struggling kicker Saturday after he missed two kicks in the preseason opener against the Bengals. He finishes his Bucs career with 12 field goal misses and four more on extra points. Some cruel person decided to put together a lowlight reel. It’s ugly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF455bGsGU8 Making the decision to draft a kicker even worse, the Buccaneers actually traded up to take him. Tampa Bay not only wasted a second-round pick, but also the 74th and 106th overall picks, which it traded to Kansas City for the right to take Aguayo. That’s a lot of draft capital to waste on a player who couldn’t stick around for more than a season. And it didn’t really matter if Aguayo had developed into a great kicker. This would still be considered a terrible move. The difference between a Hall of Fame kicker and an average one just isn’t big enough to justify the pick, as we wrote last summer when Aguayo was struggling: Even if Aguayo was nailing these kicks, it would have been difficult for him to live up to his draft position. The greatest kicker in NFL history, Adam Vinatieri, has an average AV — which is similar to baseball’s WAR stat — of 3.3 over his 20-year career. Noted bust Trent Richardson, who isn’t even in the league, has an average AV of 6 over three seasons. Former Chargers kicker Nate Kaeding, a perfectly mediocre kicker, averaged 2.5 AV over ten years — only 0.8 less than the GOAT. The Bucs taking Aguayo is one of the worst picks in NFL draft history, but it’s not the worst pick. And Tampa can thank their divisional rivals for helping them avoid that distinction. In 1979, the New Orleans Saints used the 11th-overall-pick on kicker/punter Russell Erxleben. Like Aguayo, Erxleben struggled in his rookie season and ended up losing his place-kicking duties. So the Saints used a top pick on a punter. And he wasn’t even very good at punting! The first-round pick lasted just six seasons in the NFL. Erxleben wasn’t just terrible on the field. He was also a terrible person off it. Erxleben became a financial advisor after his football career fizzled out. In 2000, he was convicted for conspiracy to commit securities fraud. If that wasn’t enough, Erxleben was arrested again in 2013 for his involvement in a Ponzi scheme. Until another team takes a bad kicker with a high first-round pick who ends being a despicable white collar criminal, the Saints are still on the hook for the worst draft pick ever.

— A Cary High School student has been released on bond after allegedly spiking a science teacher's water bottle with acid. Zachary Midgett, 17, was arrested Monday on a charge of assault on a government official. The misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of 150 days in jail. Police said Midgett admitted putting hydrochloric acid and zinc chloride from the school science lab in his teacher's water bottle last Friday. Wendy Beeler said her students were taking a test and she was drinking a bottle of water that she noticed tasted funny. She realized something was wrong only when one of her students warned her not to drink any more water. "I felt flushed all over. I broke out in a rash and felt weak," Beeler said, adding that a student got her help. "Fortunately, I must not have had enough consumption because it can close your esophagus and you can die from both of those substances." Hydrochloric acid is a highly corrosive liquid that, if concentrated, can cause severe burns on the skin and can be deadly if swallowed or inhaled. It's also a main component in stomach acid, aiding in breaking down and digesting food. Zinc chloride is a white powder that is considered highly toxic if ingested. It is used in processing textiles and soldering metals. "We are treating it as a crime, as a very serious offense against an individual, and it's something we won't take lightly and school officials won't take lightly," Said Sgt. Randy Byrd of the Cary Police Department. Beeler was treated at Western Wake Medical Center and released. But she remains shaken by the incident. "I'm hurt, angry. A lot of emotions are involved," she said. "She was explaining it to us (Monday) in class. She was looking like she was going to cry, but she didn't. She looked like, why me, and she didn't think anything about it while she was drinking it," student Sheena Amy said. Students also were upset by the poisoning. "How do you do something like that, put acid in somebody's drink? That's just cold-hearted," student Kailin Daniels said. "I think it's messed up. I think they shouldn't do that to their teacher. Why would he want to put someone's life in danger like that?" student Crystal Thompson said. Midgett, whose family couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday, is serving an automatic 10-day suspension pending further action. He could face long-term suspension or expulsion or be moved to an alternative school, according to Wake County school system policies. The school punishment is made independently of the criminal investigation. Beeler said she hopes the courts and the school district make the punishment fit the crime. "I think that, if something doesn't happen now, there will be something more serious down the line," she said. More On This

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn received substantial paychecks from Russian entities in the year before joining Donald Trump’s campaign as a surrogate, newly released documents reveal. The payments include previously reported disbursements from the Kremlin-backed RT network, as well as from two separate Russian companies, and are likely to renew questions about the Trump campaign’s friendliness toward Russia. Flynn attended a 10th anniversary gala for RT in December 2015, for which the government-funded network paid him $45,386, according to documents published Thursday by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Flynn, who had then most recently served in government as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, sat a few seats away from Russian President Vladimir Putin at the event. Flynn’s final cut was $33,750, after his speakers’ bureau, Leading Authorities, took a 25 percent commission. The documents also show that in July 2015, Flynn received two separate payments of $11,250 from Volga-Dnieper, a cargo airline, and Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, a cybersecurity firm. Both companies are privately owned and based in Russia, though Flynn appears to have given talks to branches based in the U.S., according to Yahoo News. Read the documents: House Democrats quickly seized on the documents as evidence that Flynn may have violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits top government officials from accepting payments from foreign governments. “I cannot recall any time in our nation’s history when the President selected as his National Security Advisor someone who violated the Constitution by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from an agent of a global adversary that attacked our democracy,” Cummings wrote in a statement. “I also cannot recall a time when the President and his top advisers seemed so disinterested in the truth about that individual’s work on behalf of foreign nations ― whether due to willful ignorance or knowing indifference.” Cummings also sent a letter to Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis and FBI Director James Comey asking for clarity on whether Flynn had disclosed during his vetting process his communications with foreign agents and financial involvement with other foreign sources. Cummings has also requested that the Defense Department take steps to recover all foreign funds accepted by Flynn that may have been in violation of the Emoluments Clause. Flynn resigned as Trump’s national security adviser in February, amid controversy over his characterization of discussions he had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December. Although Flynn ultimately admitted to discussing U.S. sanctions against Russia with the ambassador, he’d previously told Vice President Mike Pence that the topic hadn’t come up. Last week, Flynn filed lobbying disclosure forms revealing that he was paid more than $500,000 last year to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government in its effort to discredit the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen. The White House has claimed Trump was unaware of Flynn’s work on behalf of a foreign government when he selected Flynn to serve as national security adviser.

show about a quarter of mobile device users don’t use any security technique at all. So, if you utilize any of the above procedures, you’re already a step ahead of those who take no precaution. For the best protection, though, don’t rely on just one method. Use a combination of biometrics and PINs, passcodes or passwords to provide an extra layer of security in case one fails or is compromised. Setting up two-factor authentication for your accounts also goes a long way in protecting you. Tap or click to learn more about how 2FA works. When creating a password or PIN for two-factor authentication or just to lock your phone, it’s crucial you follow a few guidelines: Do not create a password or PIN with all the same letters or digits. Use letters, numbers and special characters whenever you can. Make your passcode longer than four digits if possible. The longer, the better. Do not use easy-to-guess information like your birthday, name or address. If you’re concerned about remembering longer and more complex passcodes and PINs, it may help to store them in a password manager. Although using multiple forms of security requires a bit more effort than relying just a single technique, it does safeguard against their individual weaknesses. This ensures your device — and your data — are protected. BONUS TIP FOR EVEN MORE KNOW-HOW: Secret way to dig up dirt on anyone online We’ve probably all done this at some point. You meet someone in person or online, like on a dating site or at work, and you’re compelled to do a little “research” to dig up potential dirt on them. You can find out a lot about someone online. But there’s only so much info you can glean if the person you’re looking for has locked down his or her social media profiles or erased all the info collected on shady online directories. That’s why you need to stick with sites you can trust. Don’t get sucked in by those creepy people search sites that charge you for often outdated or incorrect information. Here are three methods to find reliable info on just about anyone. Tap or click here for my insider trick to learn more about anyone. What digital lifestyle questions do you have? Call Kim’s national radio show and tap or click here to find it on your local radio station. You can listen to or watch the Kim Komando Show on your phone, tablet, television or computer. Or tap or click here for Kim’s free podcasts. Copyright 2019, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved. Learn about all the latest technology on The Kim Komando Show, the nation's largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today's digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.

Image copyright Ariel Gonzalez Image caption A Galaxy Note 7 reportedly caught fire shortly after its charger was unplugged Airline passengers have been warned by US authorities not to switch on or charge their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones when on board the plane. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also advised against packing the phones into any checked-in luggage. Samsung recalled the phone last week after reports emerged of the device exploding during or after charging. Qantas and Virgin Australia have also told customers not to charge or use the phone during flights. Samsung said it would speed up shipments of replacement Galaxy Note 7 phones to ease safety concerns. Earlier this week, US TV channel Fox 10 reported claims that a faulty Galaxy Note 7 had set fire to a family's Jeep. Battery problems Samsung has said that battery problems were behind the phones catching fire, but that it was difficult to work out which phones were affected among those sold. "In light of recent incidents and concerns raised by Samsung about its Galaxy Note 7 devices, the Federal Aviation Administration strongly advises passengers not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage," the FAA said. Following Samsung's recall of its Galaxy Note 7, Qantas said on Thursday it was "requesting that passengers who own [the devices] do not switch on or charge them in-flight." The phone was launched last month and has been otherwise generally well-received by consumers and critics. Some 2.5 million Note 7s have been shipped globally. Samsung has said customers who have already bought the phone will be able to swap it for a new one and that it would take about two weeks to prepare replacement devices. Image copyright Getty Images Analysis: Dave Lee, BBC North America technology reporter This is precautionary advice and not understood to be in reaction to any incident on a plane. But it does continue the headache for Samsung - even once the company goes through the motions of getting the device recalled, the Note 7 will forever be the exploding smartphone. This is not the first time the FAA has warned about the dangers of lithium batteries on flights. Earlier this year, it urged airlines to assess the risk of transporting lithium batteries as cargo. And the administration also insists that any spare lithium battery be kept with the passenger rather than kept with luggage in the hold - though as a person who regularly travels with big lithium batteries for camera equipment, I can tell you this is inconsistently enforced. What makes lithium batteries catch fire? The US trade group Airlines for America said it was "closely monitoring" the Note 7 issue and that carriers in the US would make their own ruling over the use of the phone on board. "Each individual carrier makes determinations, in compliance with FAA safety rules and regulations, as to what is permitted to be carried on board and in the cargo hold," an Airlines for America spokesperson said in a statement. South Korea-listed shares of Samsung Electronics were down close to 3% in early Friday trade.

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. WASHINGTON — The Republican senators whose votes are crucial to the fate of health care in America have faced a $15 million barrage of TV advertising from outside groups opposing the GOP legislation — and no air cover from any group backing the bills. According to ad-buying tracker Advertising Analytics, groups opposing the GOP health care push have spent $14.8 million since May on TV ads targeting 13 key senators, with even more ad buys rolling in daily as the debate in the Senate reaches fever pitch. No groups have run ads in those states in support of the ever-evolving Republican legislation to repeal and replace parts or all of Obamacare. Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings. This site is protected by recaptcha More than a third of the spending has been aimed at Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., widely viewed as the most vulnerable GOP senator in next year's elections and an early critic of proposed rollbacks of Medicaid expansion. To date, $5.6 million in anti-repeal ads have aired in Nevada. Heller slammed a version of the Republican health care bill last month, saying it was “simply not the answer.” A pro-Trump outside group, America First Policies, responded by placing TV ads skewering Heller for breaking his “promise” to voters, only to cancel them almost immediately after an angry backlash from Heller’s fellow Republicans. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who is also up for re-election in 2018, has been the target of an additional $1.8 million in TV ads. Other GOP senators who have faced more than a million dollars of TV ads are Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. ($1.7 million spent), Rob Portman, R-Ohio (1.6 million spent), Cory Gardner, R-Colo. ($1.3 million spent), and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska ($1.1 million spent). Outside groups have also spent about $428,000 to target Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has continued to buck her party as a reliable no vote against the repeal effort. Other recipients of ire over the airwaves so far are: Iowa Republicans Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John Boozman, R-Ark., Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn. About half the spending to date — $7.5 million — has come from the retirees advocacy group AARP. One of the most vociferous opponents of the GOP bills, AARP has promised to print every senator’s vote in its bulletin, which the group says is read by over 30 million people. Save My Care, another pro-Affordable Care Act outside group, has shelled out $2.9 million on the airwaves, while Planned Parenthood has spent about $1.7 million.

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eMagin Corporation, or the “Company” (NYSE MKT:EMAN), a leader in the development, design and manufacture of Active Matrix OLED microdisplays for high resolution imaging products, today announced that it has been selected as a sole source provider of OLED microdisplays for a major US Army helicopter helmet upgrade. The program will retrofit high brightness, monochrome green microdisplays into the current fielded helmet. In addition to procuring displays, the initial contract will provide funding for engineering of production tooling as eMagin will be responsible for a higher-level display, taper, and lens assembly. “This award reaffirms eMagin’s vision that high brightness OLED microdisplays represent the future technology in the markets we serve, including Military, Commercial and Consumer,” said Andrew Sculley, eMagin CEO. “Whether it involves surpassing the rigorous requirements of the aviation market, or creating truly immersive virtual reality experiences in the consumer segment, we believe that high brightness, OLED microdisplays are essential and that eMagin is well-positioned to capitalize on this evolving trend with the brightest OLED microdisplays available in the market today.” After ground and flight testing have been completed, it is anticipated that full production will commence in 2018 and continue for several years to complete retrofits for over 1000 airframes. About eMagin Corporation A leader in OLED microdisplay technology, OLED microdisplay manufacturing know-how and mobile display systems, eMagin manufactures high-resolution OLED microdisplays and integrates them with magnifying optics to deliver virtual images comparable to large-screen computer and television displays in portable, low-power, lightweight personal displays. eMagin’s microdisplays provide near-eye imagery in a variety of products from military, industrial, medical and consumer OEMs. More information about eMagin is available at www.emagin.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including those regarding eMagin Corporation’s expectations, intentions, strategies and beliefs pertaining to future events or future financial performance. Actual events or results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those described in the Company’s most recent filings with the SEC. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that such forward-looking statements will be achieved. The business and operations of the Company are subject to substantial risks which increase the uncertainty inherent in forward-looking statements. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In light of the foregoing, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.

Dan Loeb, one of the most respected activist hedge fund managers out there, is telling his clients how he positioned his portfolio for the administration of President Donald Trump. "The U.S. Presidential election was the most significant event of the year and the most important paradigm shift since the financial crisis," Loeb wrote in the investor letter Wednesday. "Starting the morning after the election, we took immediate steps to reorganize the portfolio around investments that we believe will benefit from Trump's stated policy objectives." Similar to billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller, Loeb is optimistic on the U.S. economy under Trump. "In the immediate term, we believe we will see an acceleration of economic growth at home. Electing a President who is seen as pro‐business (ignoring his protectionist views on global trade) has awakened animal spirits," he added. To take advantage of Trump's agenda, Loeb increased his fund's financials exposure to 11.8 percent one month after the election, compared with its 4.4 percent exposure on Nov. 8. "These [exposure] figures actually understate the magnitude of the shift, however, as we reallocated half our initial holdings from high multiple, FCF businesses in Payments, Ratings, and P&C (which traditionally outperform during periods of deflation), to more traditional reflationary exposures in Banks, Brokers, and, geographically, in Japan," he wrote. "Our conviction has only increased since we first initiated these investments; we have added exposure to each of the names in 2017." Loeb cited positive tail winds for bank equities such as rising interest rates, increased fixed income and currency trading revenue, and the "operating leverage" inherent in financial companies. He said his bank stocks are valued at less than 10 times earnings and will be able to expand earnings per share at a "high-teens" percent growth rate going forward. The hedge fund manager also discussed his Trump economic agenda expectations: "Trump's election has accelerated the end of QE. The baton is now passing from the Fed to the Treasury, which will provide fiscal stimulus via comprehensive tax reform and infrastructure spending. We expect a significant reduction of corporate and individual taxes, the elimination of the interest rate deduction, and the removal of the deductibility of state and local income taxes from federal returns. To stimulate investment, we see an immediate deduction for capital spending and a dramatic pullback in government bureaucracy, red tape, and regulation." Loeb's hedge fund Third Point Offshore was down 1.1 percent in the fourth quarter, bringing its performance for 2016 to 6.1 percent compared with the S&P 500's 12 percent return, according to the investor letter. From inception in December 1996 to the end of 2016 the fund generated annual net returns of 15.7 percent. In regard to Loeb's investment strategy, Third Point materials describe its philosophy as "event-driven, value-oriented," with an "emphasis on special situation equities." The firm "seeks to identify situations where we anticipate a catalyst will unlock value."

Advertising Read more Bucharest (AFP) Romania's beleaguered left-wing government risks collapse in a no-confidence vote Thursday, just weeks before a presidential election and amid controversy over the country's nominee for EU commissioner. Prime Minister Viorica Dancila lost her parliamentary majority in August when the junior coalition partner of her Social Democrats (PSD), Romania's biggest party, withdrew support, citing major disagreements. That followed hard on the heels of the PSD's shock losses in May's European Parliament elections and the jailing of its once all-powerful leader, Liviu Dragnea, on corruption charges. The opposition says the no-confidence motion has the support of at least 233 MPs in the 465-seat parliament, just enough to pass it, though some might yet side with the PSD, leaving the outcome in the balance. "This motion won't pass. I trust the good sense of MPs who value the country's stability," Dancila told PSD lawmakers Tuesday. The motion demanding the government's sacking had received 237 signatures. - Lobbying lawmakers - Dancila has since instructed her own party lawmakers to abstain from voting to prevent possible "betrayals" and has tried to woo support, promising to pay local communities 300 million euros ($330 million) this Friday to make sure their MPs back her. Lawmakers likely to change sides have also been offered public service posts and spots on party lists for next year's legislative elections. The result of the vote is eagerly awaited in Brussels after Dancila's candidate for EU commissioner was rejected. Newly-elected European Commission head, Ursula von der Leyen, has requested a replacement. Dancila -- whose PSD has been in power since late 2016 but has seen massive protests over controversial judicial reforms -- is also due to run in presidential elections with the first round scheduled for November 10. Incumbent centre-right President Klaus Iohannis already looks set to be re-elected for a second term, and an overthrow of Dancila's government would weaken her chances even further. If the motion succeeds, Iohannis will consult parties before appointing a new prime minister to run the poor, corruption-plagued EU member until legislative elections scheduled for the end of next year. Undermined by internal dissent, the opposition has so far failed to agree on an alternative candidate to Dancila. One option is former transport minister Ludovic Orban, leader of the Liberals, which Iohannis used to head, but he enjoys far from unanimous backing. Whatever the outcome of the vote, the government -- current or new -- will have the delicate task of writing the budget for 2020, complicated by an explosion of public spending in recent months as the PSD struggles to stay in power. The International Monetary Fund has already warned that Romania risks surpassing the three percent public deficit ceiling imposed by the EU, urging Bucharest to give up on a PSD promise of doubling pensions by 2022. © 2019 AFP

Hackers are breaking into private code repositories, wiping them, and asking their owners for a ransom to restore their projects. Ransomware, a type of attack where hackers infect computers, encrypt their content, and ask for money in exchange for a decryption key that will restore their data, has been around for decades. This new attack is a little different, but it’s unclear how successful it will be since one victim has claimed to have found a way to recover their code without paying the ransom. The hackers are breaking into code repositories hosted on GitHub, one of the world’s largest software development platforms, and BitBucket, a similar service owned by Atlassian. GitHub did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Do you know anything about this incident? You can contact this reporter securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at [email protected], or email [email protected] On Thursday, a Reddit user wrote a post warning about the attack, saying his repository got hacked and his code removed. The intruder left a message: “To recover your lost code and avoid leaking it: Send us 0.1 Bitcoin (BTC) [around $570] to our Bitcoin address 1ES14c7qLb5CYhLMUekctxLgc1FV2Ti9DA and contact us by Email at [email protected] with your Git login and a Proof of Payment. If you are unsure if we have your data, contact us and we will send you a proof. Your code is downloaded and backed up on our servers. If we dont receive your payment in the next 10 Days, we will make your code public or use them otherwise.” Jeremy Galloway, a security researcher at Atlassian, which owns BitBucket, told Motherboard in an online chat that the company has seen a lot of users’ repositories getting hit by these hackers. Galloway said he estimates the victims to be at least 1,000, based on internal numbers and online reports. That seems to be a good estimate considering that a search on GitHub for the hackers’ address returns 392 projects, as first reported by ZDnet. At this point, it’s unclear how the hackers are breaking into all these accounts. Galloway told Motherboard that Atlassian is investigating the incidents to try to figure that out. Despite the hundreds of victims, for now, the hackers are not making a lot of money. The hackers’ Bitcoin wallet, for now, has only received one payment of around $2.99 in Bitcoin. The hackers did not respond to a request for comment sent to the email they’re providing victims. If your project has been hit, there’s some good news. One victim claims to have figured out that the hackers aren’t actually deleting the code, and shared a relatively easy way to recover the files, as long as the victim has a clone of the code on their machine.

agram, and Facebook You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook, although I'm not nearly as interesting or attractive. Sometimes when I get frustrated with a lack of good movie material to watch, I begin desperately searching for a project to restore my faith in the creative film making process (along with something to occupy my notoriously fickle/short attention span).Unfortunately, most film projects that you run across on Kickstarter look like someone asking to get paid a few thousand dollars for a pimped out food cart while a few friends mess around with their new video camera. But a couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon something that looked like it might actually good: A fan film based off of Nintendo's Metroid franchise called Metroid: Enemies Within The film looked like it was in very capable hands with Christian Cardona, who in addition to having a great track record with limited budget special effects also really seemed to love the Metroid universe with every fiber of his being.But at 1:34, my entire world froze when Rebecca Marshall came on screen to introduce herself as the film's lead actress and a producer.I mean sure, she's (INSANELY) beautiful. But so are a lot of actresses in Hollywood. What struck me, however, was the aura of badassness that she exuded while discussing her reasons for wanting to take on the role of Samus.There were probably more than a few basement dwellers that began to scream "NERD PANDERING" when she described her affinity for the Metroid franchise (because some people don't like pretty girls developing passionate hobbies, apparently), but I never felt even a twinge of "fake geek" paranoia while she spoke. Instead, I began to look up more of her work...and discovered all types of awesome.Rebecca had previously starred in a short film (which was also directed by Christian Cardona) called 'Y: The Last Rising'. Despite being based on a comic book series that I love, it had somehow slipped my radar (probably due to my rage over writer Brian K. Vaughn's cop out "we said the plague result would be revealed, just not when you saw it" ending).Rebecca played the role of Hero, Yorick's sister...and left me desperately wanting to see her carry on the character's messed up story arc well past the film's ending.Rebecca's range of roles during her short career go from being a horrifically executed victim (Warning: NSFW/Graphic) in the final Saw film to making me able to sit through more than 30 seconds of Two and a Half Men without wanting to slam my head against a wall.Unfortunately, the Metroid: Enemies Within Kickstarter was shutdown by Nintendo, who filed a DMCA notice complaining about a free (and awesomely produced) commercial for a flagging franchise that they seemingly have no interest in ever turning into a film franchise themselves.But despite Nintendo's asinine decision, there was a silver lining to all this: I had discovered Rebecca Marshall...who I later asked if she would be willing to do an interview with RamblingBeachCat.com.Because she's one of the coolest people in the universe, she agreed.

increased farm income across the Corn Belt, this weekend’s spectacle at Iowa State Fairgrounds makes sense. There were other issues that came up when I talked to Iowans and politicos about this meeting: immigration, GMO labeling, the farm bill. But the RFS was the focus, because it’s so effective in delivering government cheese to Iowa. A missed opportunity for Democrats? Former secretary of state and uber-cautious presumptive candidate Hillary Clinton rightly viewed speaking at the summit as an all-risk, no-reward prospect. The crowd at the event wouldn’t likely vote for her and Democratic ticket holders are alleging they were denied access. But someone else eyeing the Democratic nomination (or a run in 2020) could have made a name as the “food candidate.” The candidates who spoke were given time and space. A Democrat unconstrained by the shackles of conservative ideology could have easily acknowledged in the affirmative the issues giving Republicans fits like the RFS, farm subsidies, and immigration. Then they could have knocked the RFS off its political axis and focused on issues championed by the “good food” movement like farmworker justice and better access to healthy food. Ricardo Salvador, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment Program, keyed in on an important demographic shift, even in what is derisively labeled as “flyover” country. “It is important to remember that the majority of the population of Iowa is urban, and that those urban citizens have an outlook and concerns more similar to those of their counterparts in cities throughout the nation, than to the narrow interests of concentrated crop and livestock operations that are polluting their water and air,” Salvador said. Iowa Republicans like Craig Robinson, founder and editor-in-chief of the Iowa Republican blog, agreed. “Iowa has not been kind to Hillary Clinton. If I was Democrat, I would have come to this, not to kowtow to Republican talking points, but to have discussion about agriculture and really set themselves apart.” Though some Democratic activists like Bleeding Heartland blogger Des Moines Dem viewed the summit as a trap with little consequence for skipping. “I don’t believe that skipping the Iowa Ag Summit will hurt Democrats seeking support in the Iowa caucuses or from Iowans in the general election,” said the blogger, who writes anonymously. Conventional farm interests with tangential connection to ethanol just want more political conversation about the future of Iowa agriculture. “Whoever the Democratic nominee is, whether its Hillary Clinton or someone else, something has to cause them to have a deeper conversation about agriculture issues. Once you get to the general election, it’s very difficult to do,” said Kirk Leeds, CEO of the Iowa Soybean Growers Association. The sad fact is that by blowing the opportunity to talk food and agriculture to a group of farm country voters — Republican or not — the move underscores the common yet erroneous theme that Democrats don’t care about rural America.

I "discovered" a scale about a month ago when playing with the Ionian b2 (which is now, by the way, part of my regular improvising vocabulary). At the time I thought it was just a curiosity but I liked the sound and since then I've seen it pop up in a few other places. I was surprised when I saw Adrian Galysh describe it as "the scale that'll change your life": and even more surprised when I heard something very similar from Jack Zucker, saying he took it from Joe Pass (he actually plays one extra note in here, but it's a closely related sound): Finally, here's an explanation of the scale on piano: The scale is spelled 1 #2 3 #5 b7, which might not look like much. In Arpeggio and Scale Resources it's listed as the "Phrygian Pentatonic b4", which doesn't suggest anything very exciting. I discovered it because its fingerings look just like those of the Major Pentatonic with a flattened 6, or the Minor Pentatonic with a flattened root (which sounds a bit weirder but is very easy to find). One thing to notice is that it's a subset of the Altered Scale that jazz guitarists like so much: 1 b2 b3 (=#2) b4 (=3) b5 b6 (=#5) b7, with the b2 and b5 taken out. So a first use of it is just as a sub for that scale. Personally I always found the Altered Scale too cluttered with different kinds of dissonance for my taste, and this one suits my style much better. I can always add the b2 or b5 or both when I feel like hearing them. Next we can look at its modes. The Major Pentatonic b6 is, in fact, a lovely sound over major 7 chords; it's a subset of the Harmonic Major, which is a scale that everyone ought to know, and this is a good step towards learning it. It's also a subset of Latangi, an Ionian b2 mode that has a similar kind of sound but is a little more angular thanks to its #4. The other three modes all sound great too. Dorian b5 Pentatonic is bluesy but also works well over minor or half-diminished chords. Myxolydian Pentatonic b2 suggests a major 7 sound to my ears, bringing to mind the Ionian b2 itself. Altered Pentatonic III also works well over major 7s and has a sound that's reminiscent -- for good reasons -- of Coltrane Changes. Check out this interesting and easy-to-learn scale and see what you think. [UPDATE: Spectral Analysis of Scales is now out, and completely free to download. The 7-spectrum of this pentatonic contains Melodic Minor and Neapolitan as well as Harmonic Major and a bunch of very exotic scales, so (as always) there's a lot more to explore here.]

and rapping to a light show, the CDC released two tools to hack into computers running Windows. Back Orifice and its sequel Back Orifice 2000 were condemned as reckless by some. But the idea was to cause enough chaos and scrutiny to force Microsoft to work harder to secure its products, and the stunts worked, company veterans and outside security experts said. Like O’Rourke, not everyone in the CDC pursued careers in the computer industry. Wheeler ran music venues in Texas and produced records in New York before turning to currency trading. Campbell is a freelance researcher near Seattle. When Campbell left the email group for CDC members in 2006, she asked everyone to keep O’Rourke’s identity secret, because he had just been elected to the El Paso city council. They did so, and a few stepped up in late 2017 and early 2018 to hold some of O’Rourke’s earliest out-of-state fundraisers for the Senate race. The first in San Francisco was co-hosted by CDC member Adam O’Donnell, an entrepreneur and a security engineer at Cisco Systems, and Alex Stamos, then the chief security officer at Facebook, who had worked under CDC members at a security provider in the previous decade. Both said that technology was playing an increasingly fundamental role in national and personal security, the economy and everyday life, and that O’Rourke’s background in the industry, no matter how unconventional, would be a huge advantage in office. “It’s really exciting,” Stamos said. “I have to support this guy, someone who has been active in this world since he was a teenager.” Chris Wysopal, a L0pht veteran who founded tech company Veracode with a friend from the CDC, said he had been happily surprised to hear last year of O’Rourke’s history. “We need people at his level who come from the hacking community and get it,” Wysopal said. “But it’s rare to see someone from that background have the leadership and communications skills. It’s hard to believe that we might even see a hacker run for president.” Back during one of his college summers, O’Rourke crashed at Carrie Campbell’s house when his punk band toured her area. She saw him in 1997, too, when he was working at a New York internet provider and the CDC came to the Hackers on Planet Earth conference. The next time was two decades later, at a Seattle fundraiser for the Senate race. O’Rourke singled her out in the crowd and told everyone she was a great person who didn’t complain that his band once had eaten all her cereal. But there was one thing he didn’t mention: how they met. (This article is adapted from a forthcoming book by Reuters reporter Joseph Menn: “Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World”.)

UN chief calls climate change ‘the defining issue of our time’ and appeals for urgent action from world leaders. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned the world is facing “a direct existential threat” and must take action in the next two years to avert the disastrous consequences of runaway climate change. Speaking in New York on Monday, Guterres said climate change was “moving faster than we are” and decried the lack of global leadership to address the issue. “If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us,” he said. People everywhere are experiencing record-breaking temperatures, he continued, and extreme heatwaves, wildfires, storms and floods “are leaving a trail of death and devastation”. As examples, Guterres pointed to India’s worst monsoon flooding in recent history in Kerala, almost 3,000 deaths from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, disappearing Arctic sea ice and wildfires so big that they send ash around the world. {articleGUID} Guterres said scientists have been warning about global warming for decades, but “far too many leaders have refused to listen – far too few have acted with the vision the science demands”. ‘Greatest challenge of our time’ World leaders who signed the Paris agreement on climate change in 2015 committed to a series of measures to limit global temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius and to below 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. But recent studies show the world is off track and likely to miss that target. Guterres said that when he addresses world leaders at the annual UN General Assembly gathering in two weeks, he will tell them “that climate change is the great challenge of our time” and what is missing is leadership and a sense of urgency to respond. US President Donald Trump dealt a setback to the UN push for climate action when he announced last year that his country was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. But UN officials fear backsliding from other countries such as Australia, one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas polluters, which has scrapped plans to enshrine targets for reducing carbon emissions into law. Poland, which will host the COP 24 climate summit in December, is struggling to break free of coal as its main source of energy. A recent UN study said commitments under the Paris Agreement represent just a third of what is needed to meet the target of a cooler planet, said Guterres. “The mountain in front of us is very high,” he said. “But it is not insurmountable.” The UN chief described the upcoming COP 24 summit in the Polish city of Katowice as a “key moment” when leaders will be asked to “show they care about the people whose fate they hold in their hands”.

Just in time for March Madness, Apple has added a new channel dedicated to ACC Sports to the Apple TV. The channel, called ACC Sports, features sections dedicated to many of the ACC colleges (Atlantic Coast Conference). It is unclear if the application will be able to live stream games from the major basketball tournament as March Madness is a CBS-branded event. Nonetheless, it’s likely that ACC Sports will at least offer highlights and updates after the games. News from other NCAA divisions will likely to be found in the already-existing Watch-ESPN app. (More images and details below). Update: The conference just put out a press release: Charlotte, N.C.–March 17, 2014: Just in time for the most exciting part of the college basketball season, the ACC Digital Network (ACCDN) announced today the launch of “ACC Sports” on Apple TV. As tournament time commences, the new service makes available the ACCDN’s extensive highlights and feature programming to Apple TV users in the US. The ACC Digital Network, the ACC’s official home for game highlights and insider programming, will entertain fans with hundreds of videos to choose from including in-depth coverage and analysis updated daily. Specifically for March, host Jeff Fischel, along with former ACC basketball greats Drew Barry and JR Reid, will follow ACC teams as they advance throughout the tournament with game previews, analysis and a “Road to Texas” feature series. “We are pleased to announce this partnership that will allow our fans access to the ACC Digital Network on their Apple TV,” said Commissioner John Swofford. “We have seen terrific success in fans enjoying the ACC Digital Network, and bringing this content to Apple TV is an exciting next step.” As a bonus to college sports fans everywhere and exclusive to Apple TV, “ACC Sports” will feature access to Campus Insiders, the leading digital college sports network covering all major collegiate conferences. As part of its March programming, Campus Insiders will cover the NCAA basketball post-season from start to finish with daily reports from top tier talent including Bonnie Bernstein, Seth Davis and more than 100 insiders reporting from campuses across the nation. As part of the launch, Campus Insiders will publish more than 70 videos today including team previews of all 68 teams selected for the tournament. “Our goal since we launched the ACC Digital Network is to deliver ACC fans immediate access to their school video highlights wherever they want to watch it,” said Dana Golden, EVP Strategic Partnerships of the ACC Digital Network. “Through Apple TV, fans will be able to go directly to their favorite school content and have all of their game highlights, school features and classic tournament games on demand in the comfort of their living room. In addition, our partnership with Campus Insiders will give fans access to college highlights and news from schools across the country for a comprehensive view of the college sports landscape.” FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

BRAVE BOY: Michelle Lemon with her son Elijah, 16 months.He suffers from Prune Belly Syndrome, which has resulted in severe damage to his kidneys. Elijah Lemon's happy face belies his rare condition, Prune Belly Syndrome, which saw him born without stomach muscles. As a result, urine is forced back to his kidneys, which have been severely damaged. One kidney does not function at all and the other is failing. The 16-month-old is also deaf, possibly as a result of drugs administered to treat his condition. Solo mum Michelle Lemon, from Lyall Bay, says life is a battle at the moment as the family wait for a kidney donor. She is calling for a change to legislation to make it easier to harvest organs from braindead patients. "We are playing a waiting game on keeping him alive. I could keep him wrapped in a plastic bubble but I and his two siblings [Michael, 4, and Sophie, 7] have to have some sort of life. "He has moderate to severe hearing loss. He doesn't speak and is learning sign language." Because Elijah's syndrome was pre-existing, he falls outside guidelines for dialysis treatment and will eventually require a kidney transplant. That will not happen until he puts on weight – he is 9kg – and has had surgery to improve his overall health. "He would need muscle transposition surgery, which is done in the US, probably between the age of two and four. "They take the thigh muscles, leave them attached at the hip, and flip them across the stomach to make abdominals." Elijah has developed strong back muscles in place of his abdominals to control breathing and hold up his internal organs if he stands. He is monitored while sleeping, as he often stops breathing. He has been admitted to hospital "dozens of times", usually to have his bladder drained or to be treated for urinary tract infections. Early ante-natal scans detect Prune Belly Syndrome and pregnancies are usually terminated. But Ms Lemon planned a home birth and had a scan only about six weeks before Elijah was due. "I wouldn't have terminated and I wouldn't have done anything differently." In most Western countries, braindead patients are kept alive on the assumption they are donors. In New Zealand, medics assume the patient has opted out of donating until the family prove otherwise. And even if a patient registers on their driver's licence their wish to be a donor, it is not legally binding on their family. "People tick a box on their driver's licence and think that's enough. So many people die needlessly believing their organs will be used and they're not. It is just wrong," Ms Lemon says. There were 43 deceased donors of organs last year, 31 in 2008 and 38 in 2007. Elijah's condition is so rare – Ms Lemon is aware of three cases in New Zealand – that there is no national support group that could help raise funds for overseas trips, operations and transplants.

A group of 11 U.S. House Republicans has introduced articles of impeachment against deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference and President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. The Republicans who introduced the resolution have criticized Rosenstein for not being responsive enough as they have requested documents related to the Russia investigation and a closed investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails. It is unclear whether there will be enough support in the party to pass it, as Republican leaders have not signed on to the effort. The articles were introduced by Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, frequent critics of the Justice Department. "The DOJ is keeping information from Congress," Jordan said, referring to the Department of Justice. "Enough is enough. It's time to hold Mr. Rosenstein accountable for blocking Congress's constitutional oversight role." Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended his top deputy Thursday. Speaking in Boston, Sessions said he has the "highest confidence" in Rosenstein and described him as "highly capable" when asked about the impeachment effort. The former Republican senator from Alabama suggested that lawmakers should instead focus on "legal challenges," such as reforming the nation's immigration system. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives' intelligence committee, said on Twitter the articles of impeachment "were filed in bad faith and show extraordinary lengths to which House Republicans will go to protect Trump." The introduction does not trigger an immediate vote, but Meadows and Jordan could make procedural moves that could force a vote when the House returns in September from a five-week recess. The House was scheduled to leave for that recess Thursday. The five articles charge Rosenstein of "high crimes and misdemeanours" for failing to produce information to the committees, even though the department has already provided lawmakers with more than 800,000 documents, and of signing off on what some Republicans say was improper surveillance of a Trump adviser. The resolution also goes directly after Rosenstein for his role in the ongoing Mueller investigation, criticizing him for refusing to produce a memo that outlines the scope of that investigation and questioning whether it was started on legitimate grounds. It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for lawmakers to demand documents that are part of an ongoing criminal investigation. In a statement, Meadows said Rosenstein's conduct is "reprehensible." "It's time to find a new deputy attorney general who is serious about accountability and transparency," Meadows said. The move came about two hours after Republicans met with Justice Department officials who have been working to provide documents to several congressional committees about decisions made during the 2016 presidential campaign. Support unclear Republican leaders, however, have said in recent weeks they are satisfied with the Justice Department's progress. House oversight and government reform chairman Trey Gowdy said after the meeting that he was pleased with the department's efforts and wouldn't support Rosenstein's impeachment. House Speaker Paul Ryan has also said he is satisfied with progress on the document production. Democrats have criticized Republican efforts to pressure the Justice Department in recent months, saying they are attempts to undermine Mueller's investigation.

Christchurch’s investment in improved cycling facilities is paying dividends, with the number of cycle trips recorded in the city jumping by 11 per cent in the past 12 months. In all there were 887,266 cycle trips recorded in the last 12 months from the seven cycle counter sites spread across the city - with at least an extra 88,500 cycle trips recorded from the year before. That data provides a snapshot of cycle activity throughout Christchurch. The cycle counter at the Antigua Bridge ticked past the 100,000 mark this week - a milestone that took only 97 days to reach. It does not include the number of cycle trips captured by the visual cycle counter recently installed at Christchurch’s Antigua Bridge as part of Christchurch City Council’s Smart Cities programme. That Counter, which displays real-time information about the number of people biking past, this week ticked past the 100,000 mark. With over 1200 cycle trips per day over winter, it has taken only 97 days to reach the milestone. “We have been working hard to make Christchurch a safe city for people biking so it is really pleasing to see such strong growth in cycle trip numbers,’’ says Cr Pauline Cotter, who chairs Christchurch City Council’s Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Committee. “We expect that growth to continue as the weather warms up and work is completed on more of our major cycleways. The increasing number of cycle trips being recorded in the city suggests people are beginning to understand how easily and safely they can get around the city by bike and are seeing that there is an alternative to going by car,’’ Cr Cotter says. Work has recently been completed on the Linwood Park to Dyers Road stage of the Rapanui-Shag Rock Cycleway and on the first stage of the Quarryman’s Trail, which links central city to Hoon Hay. Work on the second stage of the Quarryman’s Trail – the section from Hoon Hay to Te Hapua – will start in later this year. Construction is also under way on the Wilsons Road to the Tannery section of the Heathcote Expressway. The Council’s investment in new cycleways has earned it national recognition. Earlier this month the new 5.6km cycleway connecting central Christchurch and the University of Canterbury – dubbed the Uni-Cycle – was named the Supreme Winer at the New Zealand Bike to the Future Awards. It also took out the Built Excellence Award. Judges described the cycleway as an “exemplar project”. Council Transport Planning and Delivery Manager Lynette Ellis says it is great to see more people using bikes as cycling has health benefits, reduces congestion and is good for the environment. “An extra 88,500 cycle trips year means less cars on the road and less demand for parking spaces so it is of benefit for all road users,’’ Ms Ellis says.

Whether we work in cubicles, the C-suite, or a home office, we’re always navigating the people and cultural norms shaping our workday. Recently, economists had students at an elite MBA program answer questionnaires about their ideal job placements: salary, hours worked, and so forth. One group was told that individual responses would be discussed in class; the other was told the answers would be kept anonymous. Between the two settings, something remarkable happened (pdf) to the career ambitions of single female students. When single women thought their responses would be shared with male counterparts, they said they wanted $18,000 less per year in salary, to travel seven fewer days each month, and work four hours less per week than women who thought their responses would stay private. They also valued their work less, taking a hypothetical 18% cut in pay for an 8% cut in working hours. In a separate experiment, when researchers asked if participants would prefer a job with long hours and a big salary over a lower-paying one with fewer hours, 68% of single women in all-female groups wanted the better-paid one. In a mixed-gender group, only 42% did. When asked to choose between a job on a fast track to promotion with lots of required travel and one on a slower career trajectory but less travel, 79% of single women in all-female groups wanted the high-travel job. If men were in the room, that dropped to 37%. The effect wasn’t there for women in relationships. Nor for men, attached or not. Only single women—even ones with a vested interest in business and are at a prime launching point in their careers—felt compelled to hide their ambitions in the presence of potential partners. The findings echo what Harvard Business School administrators discovered when they analyzed why female students consistently received lower participation grades than male peers. Multiple studies have found that female traits consistent with professional success—intelligence, ambition, and high earning potential—are a turn-off for men. Unattached female students feel caught, as The New York Times put it, “between academic and social success.” Consciously or not, single female students are making assumptions about what men want based on—well, based on what a lot of men say they want. The Times quoted a female student ambivalent about dating male classmates after hearing comments like, “She’s kind of hot, but she’s so assertive.” Meanwhile, demographics suggest that men are less attracted to classmates than women are: 31% of married female HBS grads aged 25 to 30 are married to fellow alums, compared with 16% of men. For married alums aged 31 to 47, 23% of women and just 9% of men are partnered with business school classmates. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has repeatedly admonished women not to curtail their goals prematurely to accommodate future family responsibilities—in other words, don’t “leave before you leave.” But some women, it seems, are leaving before they even begin.

A newly discovered mechanism behind reduced insulin production in type 2 diabetes is now being presented. In an article in Nature Communications, researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy describe how insulin-producing cells regress in their development, become immature, and do not work properly. A finding that opens the doors to new clinical treatments. "If you can affect things at the cellular level and restore the body's own rapid regulation, you can more accurately adjust blood sugar compared to what is possible with insulin injections," says Anders Rosengren, associate professor who is active at the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology as well as the Wallenberg Centre for Molecular and Translational Medicine at the University of Gothenburg. It has long been known that the insulin-producing cells fail in type 2 diabetes. The body does not get enough insulin and blood sugar rises. One theory argues that the insulin-producing cells become fewer in number, while another argues that their function is impaired. The new explanation, which combines the debated theories, states that the insulin-producing cells regress in their development and become immature. This reduces the number of functional cells. The gene that drives the process With the help of 124 tissue samples, of which 41 were from people with type 2 diabetes, the researchers were able to determine which genetic changes in the cells affected the course of the disease the most. Anders Rosengren describes the analysis by comparing it to the world of air travel. advertisement "All airports are connected in a large network, but a disruption at a hub like Frankfurt Airport is much more serious than a disruption in Gothenburg. We searched out the hubs, i.e. the key genes, and the major links. Of almost 3,000 genes that were changed in diabetes, 168 could be described as Frankfurt genes. It was these we focused on," he says. As the analysis continued, it showed that the gene SOX5, which was previously unknown in a diabetes context, affects the disease. "If you experimentally suppress and deactivate SOX5, the function of the 168 genes deteriorate and the cells decrease in maturity. If you then increase the levels of SOX5, the 168 genes also increase and insulin delivery can be normalized," explains Anders Rosengren. "It's very exciting to see. It was almost like a volume control, where you could increase or decrease the maturity level of the insulin-producing cells. Existing medicines According to Anders Rosengren, it will not be long until we see medicines that restore the maturity of insulin-producing cells. They may already exist in the form of medicines used for other diseases. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance that healthy lifestyle habits play in type 2 diabetes. Current research shows that SOX5 decreases if you eat unhealthy foods or exercise too little. "It is important to remember that everyone is different. Some manage a long time despite unhealthy lifestyle habits. For others, the tipping point is much earlier. But, regardless of genetic conditions, you can do something about your disease," says Anders Rosengren.

Well we are now over a month into lockdown here in the UK, and whilst the disadvantages certainly outweigh the advantages, one of the plus points to being stuck at home for me has been having the time to dive deeper into the World of Bitcoin Cash and so I thought I would share a few of my favourite Bitcoin Cash related podcasts. My favourite medium for information is podcasts, they really are a great way to learn about a wide range of topics, and are short enough that they aren't too intimidating like an audiobook sometimes is. Coinspice https://open.spotify.com/show/5JNoI4qT3uH1bW38Zogka3?si=nVDaBAutSkeLYYqN54I06Q Coinspice is probably my favourite BCH related Podcast right now, there are over 70 podcasts available so plenty of listening material for you to expose yourself too! Humans of Bitcoin https://open.spotify.com/show/5fGtjPQt92RF9ygxz2A5iq?si=ieI6bD0PR-aG_cIo6UhvoA If this podcast was still running then this would probably have taken top spot. Sadly Matt Aaron (@mattaaron) left Bitcoin.com and no longer does produces podcats however there are plenty of episodes in the archive for you to listen to, from interviews with high profile guests such as Vinny Lingham, Erik Voorhees and Jeffrey Tucker you will definitely take something away from each episode. The Agora https://open.spotify.com/show/5VnKYUBsCAZP5mrN0MKDaz?si=OGvmJaAQSDejBzPLSoEvUQ Although not specifically a Bitcoin Cash or Crypto related podcast, The Agora podcast by Sal Mayweather (@SallyMayweather) touches on Bitcoin Cash and Austrian Economics in a lot of episodes and is definitely worth a listen! *Also, if you are not following Sal on Twitter you are doing it wrong! This guys memes are hilarious and I don't think he is ever not online! Bitcoin.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCetxkZolEBHX47BqtZktbkg Although not a Podcast persay, the Bitcoin.com YouTube channel consistently puts out BCH related videos and allow you to keep your finger on the pulse with what is happening in this space. Roger Ver also has his own YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZyrn1awtEVne0bdryfuI6A However, there is a lot of crossover between these two but it is worthwhile subscribing to both! I hope I have given at least a few of you some new Bitcoin Cash related listening material and if there is any others you think I should check out then please let me know in the comments!

bag did very little to prevent drying of the bread: room temperature, "breadbox", and refrigerator samples were all very hard, though surprisingly in this test the refrigerator sample was not quite as stale as the others (this was the one result that diverged from my expectations, but in any case none of the paper bag samples were good so I still wouldn't recommend it). The paper-bag freezer sample fared about as well as the unwrapped one. The plastic- and foil-wrapped room-temperature samples were about the same, showing slight firming but still retaining a good degree of give and tenderness throughout. The plastic- and foil-wrapped refrigerator samples, while still retaining some give and tenderness, were significantly more firm than the room temperature versions; this remained true even after they had warmed to room temperature. The plastic- and foil-wrapped freezer samples, once defrosted to room temperature, had retained more of their original fresh-baked softness than any of the other samples. Reheating Based on my above results, what's clear is that the refrigerator is just a plain-old bad idea for bread. But I wasn't done yet: What about reheating the bread? I set my oven to 350°F and toasted all the samples simultaneously on a baking sheet. Hands-down, the best reheated bread came from the plastic- and foil-wrapped freezer samples, almost indistinguishable from its fresh self a day earlier. But what's interesting is that the wrapped room-temperature and refrigerator samples, which had staled at remarkably different rates, were indistinguishable from each other once reheated. As it turns out, even after bread has been baked and cooled, after the starch has recrystallized to create a stale texture, you can actually reverse that crystallization process through reheating and return the stale bread to a state much closer to its original glory (assuming you didn't allow much moisture loss during storage). Not as good as frozen, but still much improved. Conclusion So here's my practical advice. In lieu of acts of god and any other kind of divine intervention, the best way to store bread is well wrapped in plastic and/or foil in the freezer, whether sliced or not, then reheated in the oven. If you don't want to deal with reheating the bread, wrap it well in plastic and/or foil and keep it at room temperature; it won't be as good the next day, and it will only get worse from there, but you should be able to eke some extra life out of your bread before it's no longer enjoyable. And if you do let it sit for too long (or if you make the mistake of refrigerating your bread), pop it in the oven and you should be able to reverse a fair amount of the staling, assuming you had it wrapped well enough to prevent drying. Now that really is squeezing water from a stone. All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.

Many of the world’s most successful brands don’t produce their own content. It takes a few moments to get your head around, however this notion really says something. Take eight year old Airbnb, the well-known and much-loved homestay marketplace, and Uber, the online American-grown hail-a-cab company – neither of these multi-million dollar businesses are actually producing or offering their own services. Instead, they provide a platform for individuals with the same interests, needs and desires to connect. There is a trend developing exponentially, and now we are overwhelmed with a number of businesses that are doing the same. It appears that businesses are aiming to meet this demand; acting as the intermediary and giving the users a chance to have a voice, and offer their own services. User-generated content isn’t just social media and blogging platforms, it’s becoming much more about user-generated services. Many of our most-favoured non-social media apps and sites are adapting this method and are not only being provided with free marketing, but are able to stay current and fresh, without the need to produce new content. For example, on-demand handyman app Bizzby allows locksmiths, plumbers, electricians, personal trainers and more to sign up and provide their services whenever people need them in London, within 60 minutes. Apart from maintaining and developing it’s user interface and experience on their site and app, Bizzby’s reputation is almost entirely managed by user’s experiences from other users. It’s clear that the nature of branding is changing, and for businesses similar to the above, brand image and reputation is increasingly being taken into the hands of our users. As a Brighton web design and branding agency we understand brand design as much more than just a logo or a colour scheme, but as a personality. It’s the outfit that your business wears to give the world a little piece of what it’s like, what it stands for, and what it does. Therefore these user-generated services are just as risky as they are beneficial – it can take just a few bad experiences for a user to disregard you. Customers have the power to spread praise and complaint at a few taps of a button and are taking to social media to review you. The ease of online communication has built company reputations, and ruined them and so it’s now imperative that on-demand companies are heavily regulating and monitoring their users and partners. There is now a huge reliance on their user-provided services, as London venture capitalist Fred Dustin mentioned about food-delivery service Deliveroo, “if some riders are unhappy, the company cares about it, because we live by our riders.” It appears brand management is not as simple as it used to be. The landscape is quickly changing, and the rise of user-generated services means branding design needs to take into an account a new side of user experience, catering for it’s customers, and it’s partners who ultimately, support the infrastructure of their success.

Tickets go on sale Monday via Tock, an online system launched last year by Chicago restaurateur Nick Kokonas (Alinea, Next). The price of the Shaw Bijou ticket includes only the meal; diners will pay tax and gratuity upon checking out from the Tock site. AD AD Drinks will be billed separately at the restaurant. Onwuachi says diners interested in wine will receive a call before their meal from sommelier and wine director David Blackburn (formerly of Del Posto and Babbo). "The wine pairings will be tailored," Onwuachi said. "You'll explain exactly how much you're willing to spend for a wine pairing... and we'll tailor something for you with the information you give us." The minimum wine pairing will cost $50. Which means that, with the cheapest wine pairing, the final price tag at Shaw Bijou will hover around $300, making it one of the highest-priced restaurants in the District. By comparison, the four-star Pineapple and Pearls charges $250 per person, but the price includes drinks, taxes and gratuity. The chef has already developed an opening menu, but he's not sharing many details, other than the menu will offer globally inspired dishes inspired by Onwuachi's personal history, including a two-year stay with his grandfather in Nigeria. The tasting menu will also be customized for each diner's diet and allergy restrictions. (A second food and drink menu will be available at a members-only bar on the second floor, overseen by bar director Benjamin Long.) AD AD The only menu tease Onwuachi will offer is an opening-day seafood dish: a Norwegian king crab cooked in a roasted-garlic beurre monté, dusted with shavings from house-made uni bottarga. "It's really sweet and briny," Onwuachi said. The Shaw Bijou has encountered more than the usual delays as it inched its way toward opening night. The District, for example, required Onwuachi and business partner and general manager, Greg Vakiner, to rezone the Shaw rowhouse as a commercial property before the owners could start construction. During the downtime, Onwuachi traveled extensively and worked on various projects: He cooked at the James Beard House, offered Washingtonians a small taste of his fast-casual Philly Wing Fry concept, wrote an autobiography-cookbook and even prepared a layered red velvet crepe-cake at the annual White House Easter egg roll. But he also lost some cooks hired more than a year ago for Shaw Bijou. AD AD “That’s what happens when projects take so long to open," Onwuachi said. "People drop off.” This post has been updated. The Shaw Bijou, 1544 Ninth St. NW. Opens Nov. 1 for dinner. 5:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. $185 tickets go on sale Monday via Tock.

The St. Louis Blues seem like your prototypical “one player away” team. One that needs that added veteran forward who’s been through the wars and, more importantly, has thrived under pressure. He doesn’t have to be another David Backes; he just needs to be tougher than his weight class would indicate. Which is to say the Blues could use someone like Danny Briere of the Philadelphia Flyers, a versatile forward and over a point-per-game player in the postseason. Like many of the other Blues, he’s a total pain in the ass to play against; your “hate him until he’s on your team” guy. Frank Seravalli of the Philadelphia Daily News reports that both the Blues and the Boston Bruins have been sniffing around Briere as the Flyers’ ship sinks this season. The 35-year-old has two years left on his deal, and his $6.5 million cap hit is elephantine; but in terms of real dollars, he’s only owed $5 million over the last two seasons. From Seravalli: Briere makes sense for a lot of reasons for a team like St. Louis - and even for the Flyers to be intrigued enough to move him. Currently, Briere isn't the type of player who will get a team into the playoffs, but getting there isn't likely the problem for the Blues. (They could use a boost up front, especially after Andy McDonald left practice Tuesday with an injury.) He claims the Flyers’ target could be defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk. A one-for-one deal would get Paul Holmgren laughed off the phone with Blues GM Doug Armstrong, but the Flyers have other assets to toss in if they covet the Norris contender. But that’s all conjecture, because the reality is that Briere determines his future. From the Daily News, on Briere’s full no-movement clause: Understandably, Briere doesn't have interest in moving. This isn't a rental situation, where he'd only have to gut it out this season before becoming a free agent. His family is rooted here, including his three hockey-mad sons, Caelan, Carson and Cameron. He earned his right to veto any future deal when signing his 8-year, $52 million pact to join the Flyers in 2007. The no-move clause was a necessity for the Flyers to sign Briere back in 2007, as they were in a bidding war with other teams. If they wanted him, they had to give the keys to his future to him. It’s understandable. But as the Flyers look at their roster and see a blueline that needs to get younger and better – and roughly $2.225 million in cap space next season – shipping out Briere makes sense for the right return. Save for the fact he doesn’t want to leave. Then again, neither did Simon Gagne back in the day.

the line of scrimmage for no gain. With the running start he had, Coleman should have been able to bust through the contact, but he does not get low enough and is unable to generate the proper power. He falls forward on many of his runs, but against NFL defenders he may struggle to consistently win unless he is able to gain better leverage at the point of attack. Left-handed One interesting observation you make when watching Coleman play is that he always carries the ball in his left hand. Most running backs will initially put the ball in their outside arm on plays run off tackle. This frees up their inside arm to ward off tacklers and keeps the ball away from the interior of the defense. Yet Coleman always holds the ball with his left hand and that can be a detriment at times. On this stretch run to the right, you see Coleman unable to stiff arm the defensive tackle who makes the play. If Coleman had carried the ball in his right hand like most tailbacks, he may have been able to fend off the defender and gain a chunk of yardage. Passing game Coleman has shown the ability to block effectively in pass protection, though he still has work to do. He displays promising technique by attacking and extending his arms against defenders to maintain leverage. As a receiver, he has soft hands and uses his speed to his advantage in the open field. He produced 25 receptions for 141 yards last season. Pro comparison Coleman's high-cut running style and lightning speed reminds many of Darren McFadden, the fourth overall pick by the Oakland Raiders in 2008. NFL.com draft analyst Bucky Brooks noted, "When I look at Tevin Coleman I see the same running style (as McFadden), the same flashes, the same teases of brilliance." NFL Network's Mike Mayock also sees McFadden when watching Coleman, while others have mentioned newly signed Philadelphia Eagles back DeMarco Murray. Final thoughts Coleman has a second- or third-round grade on most draft boards because of his rare ability to make game-changing plays anytime he touches the football. Indiana ran almost exclusively from the shotgun in the spread offense, so there would be some projection in his ability to run from under-center. This is a minor concern, yet it is fair to question how he may transition to a pro-style running scheme. The Lions were interested enough in Coleman to host him for a visit last week, and they certainly could use his big play ability to complement the physical Bell and shifty Riddick. Last season, the Lions finished tied for 27th in the NFL with only six runs of 20 yards or more, and gained 40 yards or more on the ground just once. With Coleman's prolific playmaking ability, he would give the team some much-needed juice in the backfield. Credit to Draft Breakdown for the game film. All GIFs were created by Marlowe Alter. Follow Marlowe on Twitter, check out his other film review articles for the Free Press and his Lions blog.

The end result of a trained deep learning algorithm is a model file that efficiently represents the relationship between input data and output predictions. A neural network is one of the most powerful ways to generate these predictive models but can be difficult to build in to production systems. Most often, these models exist in a data format such as a.pth file or an HD5 file. Oftentimes you want these models to be portable so that you can deploy them in environments that might be different than where you initially trained the model. ONNX Overview At a high level, ONNX is designed to allow framework interoporability. There are many excellent machine learning libraries in various languages — PyTorch, TensorFlow, MXNet, and Caffe are just a few that have become very popular in recent years, but there are many others as well. The idea is that you can train a model with one tool stack and then deploy it using another for inference and prediction. To ensure this interoperability you must export your model in the model.onnx format which is serialized representation of the model in a protobuf file. Currently there is native support in ONNX for PyTorch, CNTK, MXNet, and Caffe2 but there are also converters for TensorFlow and CoreML. ONNX in Practice Let’s imagine that you want to train a model to predict if a food item in your refrigerator is still good to eat. You decide to run a a bunch of photos of food that is at various stages past its expiration date and pass it in to a convolutional neural network (CNN) that looks at images of food and trains it to predict if the food is still edible. Once you have trained your model, you then want to deploy it to a new iOS app so that anyone can use your pre-trained model to check their own food for safety. You initially trained your model using PyTorch but iOS expects to use CoreML to be used inside the app. ONNX is an intermediary representation of your model that lets you easily go from one environment to the next. Using PyTorch you would normally export your model using torch.save(the_model.state_dict(), PATH) Exporting to the ONNX interchange format is just one more line: torch.onnx.export(model, dummy_input, 'SplitModel.proto', verbose=True) Using a tool like ONNX-CoreML, you can now easily turn your pre-trained model in to a file that you can import in to XCode and integrate seamlessly with your app. For a working example, checkout this excellent post by Stefano Attardi on building a ML-driven iOS app from start to finish. Conclusion As more and more deep learning frameworks emerge and workflows become more advanced, the need for portability is more important than ever. ONNX is a powerful and open standard for preventing framework lock-in and ensuring that you the models you develop will be usable in the long run.

The Sharks have named a trial match team with 10 players from their 2017 NRL squad, a handful of 2018 new recruits and a selection of young guns for their first hit out of the pre-season on Saturday night. The Sharks play the Manly Sea Eagles in a trial match scheduled to get underway at Southern Cross Group Stadium at 7.30pm. Newcomers Matt Moylan, Braden Uele, Ava Seumanufagai and Aaron Gray will have their first games in Cronulla colours, with the Sharks potential round one ‘spine’ of Valentine Holmes, Chad Townsend, Jayden Brailey and Moylan set to get some valuable game time as they try to work on combinations ahead of the round one clash with the Cowboys. Saturday night will feature three games, beginning with a Jersey Flegg under-20’s trial at 3.05pm, followed by an Intrust Super Premiership match between Newtown and Blacktown Workers Sea Eagles at 5.05pm. Sharks Trial Team v Manly 1 – Valentine Holmes 2 – Sosaia Feki 3 – Jesse Ramien 4 – Aaron Gray 5 – Sione Katoa 6 – Matt Moylan 7 – Chad Townsend 8 – Braden Uele 9 – Jayden Brailey 10 – Ava Seumanufagai 11 – Kurt Capewell 12 – Jayson Bukuya 13 – Joseph Paulo 14 – James Segeyaro 15 – Kyle Flanagan 16 – Edrick Lee 16 – Jack Williams 17 – Kurt Dillion 19 – Billy Magoulias 21 – Scott Sorensen Additional players 1 - Will Kennedy 2 - Isaac Lumelume 6 – Trent Hodkinson 7 – Jack Williams 12 – Briton Nikora 13 – Bronson Xerri 17 – Blayke Brailey 20 – Cruz Topai-Aveai 22 – Daniel Vasquez 23 – Josh Tuilagi 24 – Brock Ilett *All names and numbers subject to change Sharks Jersey Flegg Team List Jackson Ferris Josh Delailoa Chris Tupou Jonah Ngaronoa Cooper Bowen Jayden Millard Braydon Trindall Tom Hazelton Lachlan Scarpelli Fine Kula Tomas Harris Tom Caughlan Jackson Stewart Evander Swann Mason McCarthy James Russell Mat Massen Luke Polselli Bronson Xerri James Roumanos Monty Raper Teig Wilton Harrison Smith Kalani Pewhairangi-Charlie Dredin Sorenson-McGee *Numbers to be made available on Saturday. Check website for updates.

A gay adult-film actor is speaking out after a community college in New York state canceled a talk he was scheduled to give, and allegedly sought to silence a student who tried to move the lecture off-campus. The lecture, which was part of a week of events on sexuality and sexual health, was canceled just over a week before Conner Habib was scheduled to speak to students of Corning Community College. Habib brought the story to BuzzFeed's attention with an essay he submitted called "Why Are We Afraid to Talk About Gay Porn?" inspired by these events. Last Wednesday, the college's president, Katherine Douglas, met with members of the LGBT student group that invited Habib to campus and told them she would be canceling the talk. According to Brandon Griewank — president of the group, Equal — Douglas said that Equal followed all of the proper channels to bring Habib to campus, but that it was her own fault for not vetting his credentials. "She said she in no way was about to let porn rights and LGBT rights become intertwined on her campus," Griewank says. As part of Habib's contract, his speaking fee and airfare costs were honored, so he suggested making a plan to speak off-campus in Corning. "That's when things started getting worse," Habib says. Griewank, who had sought Habib out and invited him to campus, says he was pulled into an impromptu meeting by an administrator last Friday. Griewank told BuzzFeed that Dean of Student Development Donald Heins told to him not involve himself with any further plans for Habib's visit. It was an "absolutely intimidating conversation," Griewank says. "He told me I wasn't allowed to speak to the press, told me I wasn't allowed to help Conner. He told me this in a closed room, there was no advisor to Equal there, and it wasn't scheduled, so I had no time to prepare." Griewank says he intends to file a complaint with the school over Heins' alleged actions. Habib also alleges that Douglas and Heins spoke to a hotel and local businesses to find out whether Habib was coming to Corning, and Griewank says Heins told him that he couldn't go to Habib's talk even if it was off-campus. "He said, 'I hope you grasp this, Brandon, that this issue is bigger than you and bigger than Equal.'" The school's administration denies restricting student attendance. In a statement to BuzzFeed, the school's spokesman, William Little, wrote, "Corning Community College has no intention of interfering in any way with our students' protected rights. Our students are free to express themselves and attend any events they choose." Little told BuzzFeed that Habib wasn't an appropriate speaker. "Mr. Habib's celebrity status as an adult film star is inconsistent with the educational theme of this program. Mr. Habib's contract was paid-in-full, yet we respectfully declined his participation. Our students are free to express themselves and attend any events they choose."

PLT Scheme provides a graphical toolkit for implementing GUIs called MrEd. At least on Windows, the result looks like a native application and was used to implement the IDE, DrScheme. As usual, the documentation is excellent. When an application is running, it can be useful for it to output diagnostics that report on what it is currently doing, e.g. which database it connected to, or the id of a transaction that may have failed. This is normally output to a file, but it can also copy the output to a logging window, e.g. the Transcripter in Squeak, or the Java Web Start Console. How easy is it to implement a simple transcripter in PLT Scheme? As usual, it is a good idea to decide on your API first as encapsulating everything behind an API means that we can easily change the implementation later on. I will simply provide a function (log s) where s is a string but you would probably want to have various logging levels which can be enabled or disabled at runtime. (require (lib "42.ss" "srfi")) ;; First of all, create a text area inside a window (frame) (define *frame* (instantiate frame% ("Transcript"))) (define *text* (instantiate text-field% () (label "") (style '(multiple)) (parent *frame*))) ;; We need the editor belonging to the text area in order to append text to it (define *editor* (send *text* get-editor)) ;; The 'API' for accessing the Transcripter ;; This is a somewhat unrealistic implementation, but good enough for a quick example (define (log s) (send *editor* insert s)) ;; A test method, displaying 200 numbers on the transcripter ;; - this is the same as we did in Squeak (define (200-nums) (time (do-ec (:range i 1 201) (log (string-append (number->string i) "n"))))) (instantiate button% () (label "Execute") (parent *frame*) (callback (lambda (button event) (200-nums)))) (send *frame* show #t) A couple of things. First of all, performance: When I ran this initially, the display numbers test took ~60ms. However, when I expanded the Transcripter window to a reasonable size, it took ~2000ms (2 seconds!) When I retried the same in Squeak it took around 5700ms although I’m certain it had earlier taken more than 10 seconds. This is a different computer and a different image but maybe the Squeak Transcripter isn’t so bad after all. Secondly, it was fairly straight-forward to construct the GUI. Of course, such a simple example doesn’t really give any idea how hard it is to use MrEd to create moderately complex GUIs, but the existence of DrScheme indicates that it is at least possible.

have our self-image); gender role (how we present ourselves in speech, dress and gesture); and sexual orientation (homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual). With respect to gender in any individual, there can be variation in each aspect resulting in gender compositions in a population that are quite diverse. Moral judgements on homosexuality hinges on this being a chosen lifestyle rather than a biological determination. Not many, however, are able to recall the particular point in their lives when they made a conscious choice to be sexually aroused by one sex rather than the other. Moral judgements are also predicated on a view of sex as two polar opposites; a male sex and a female sex, placed on earth to multiply. There is, however, considerable variation in humans with respect to sex. This reality presents itself to physicians who, not infrequently, are called upon to assign a sex to a child whose sex organ is neither a penis nor a vagina. One must assign a sex of rearing for this child. In these uncertain cases, assigning one of the two accepted sex types (male or female) during infancy is an important social emergency. This child's internal sex organs may consist of either testis (male) or ovary (female), or a mixture of both. Where a mixture exists, that child is neither male nor female but falls in-between. There may be significant variation in the child's genetic sex, including XX (genetic female), XY (genetic male) or a wide variety of possibilities in-between including XYY, XXY, XXYY and XXXYY. Assigning a sex to a newborn can become problematic, particularly after puberty. Success in sex assignment depends on whether the sex one assigns is in keeping with the child's gender identity, a characteristic that is fixed, though unknown at birth. The sexual ambiguity of these intersex children and their unpredictable gender makeup preclude moral judgements on their sexual behaviour. In short, humans manifest wide variation in sex, gender role, gender identity and sexual orientation. Although the vast majority of persons are gender conforming and are at opposite ends of the gender spectrum, approximately 10 per cent of mankind are gender non-conforming (lesbians, gays, cross-dressers, bisexuals, transgender) persons and should not be treated as people who brought this situation on themselves. Tolerance of individual differences is not natural to mankind. Tolerance grows in an environment of empathy, education and civilisation. Variation exists in all aspects of life, and human sexuality is not spared. Diversity is the first law of creation. Haiti recently lynched two gay individuals in the midst of a religious rally. Jamaica, by adopting Jim Crow tactics against gender non-conforming persons, joined Haiti along a dark road that leads to an unknown destination. Newton D. Duncan is professor of paediatric surgery and head of Department of Surgery, Radiology, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, UWI, Mona. Email feedback to [email protected] and [email protected].

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Two female shoplifters were filmed attacking a sales assistant so violently at a Holland & Barrett store that they smashed the front doors in. The shop worker had tried to stop the thieves from leaving the shop in Croydon, south London, when they attacked. The victim, in her 40s, was pinned into a corner and repeatedly punched before witnesses burst through the shattered doors of the shop to help. Both attackers, who are thought to be aged between 16 and 20, managed to get away after running into the crowd. In footage of the assault, screams of ‘help her’ can be heard from the group of witnesses that gathered outside. The video was posted to Twitter by @UncleFreeze, who wrote: ‘I witnessed this today in Croydon, these kids are just running wild. ‘I’d be gutted if my mum came home from work saying this happened to her.’ The teenagers were filmed launching the attack inside the shop after the sales assistant tried to prevent them leaving At one point during the incident one of the shoplifters kicks so hard at the door to the shop that her foot comes through it. Holland and Barrett said they were ‘extremely saddened’ by the attack. A spokeswoman added: ‘We will be working with the authorities, alongside our HR department, to ensure our employee wellbeing continues to be protected, and this colleague is provided with the support they need at this time. ‘As a responsible employer, the safety of our colleagues is a primary concern, which is why we put in steps to protect our staff, such as minimising lone working, and increasing security in stores.’ The Metropolitan Police are investigating the incident and said enquiries are ongoing. A spokeswoman said: ‘Police were called at 4:52pm on Tuesday, 23 July, to reports of an assault at a shop in North End, Croydon. Officers and London Ambulance Service attended. Witnesses eventually stormed the shop to help ‘At the scene, a female member of staff at a commercial premises, aged in her 40s, had been assaulted and was suffering from a head injury. ‘The injured woman was taken to a south London hospital where her condition is not life threatening. ‘Police believe that the member of staff challenged two female shoplifters who responded by assaulting the victim by repeatedly punching her in the head. ‘They also smashed glass at the front of the premises before leaving in the direction of west Croydon. ‘The suspects are both black females aged 16-20yrs, one of whom is described as Albino.’ Got a story for Metro.co.uk? Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected]. For more stories like this, check our news page.

to record personal notes, lectures, meetings, interviews and song ideas, and access them from iPhone, iPad or Mac. Stocks delivers curated market news alongside a personalized watchlist, complete with quotes and interactive charts. Group FaceTime Demo of multiway FaceTime application on MacBook Group FaceTime makes it possible to chat with multiple people at once and participant views are resized based on how active they are. Group FaceTime makes it easy to chat with multiple people at the same time. Participants can be added at any time, join later if the conversation is still active and choose to join using video or audio from an iPhone, iPad or Mac — or even participate using FaceTime audio from Apple Watch. All-New Mac App Store Demo image of the new Mac App Store The Mac App Store is completely redesigned and features rich editorial content and new tabs for easier app discovery. Since its launch in 2011, the Mac App Store has transformed the way users download and install software for the Mac, and today it remains the single largest catalog of Mac apps in the world. In macOS Mojave, the Mac App Store gets a complete redesign with a new look and rich editorial content that makes it easy to find the right Mac app. The new design highlights new and updated apps in the Discover tab, while tabs for Create, Work, Play and Develop help users find apps for a specific project or purpose. A number of apps from top developers are also coming soon to the Mac App Store, including Office from Microsoft, Lightroom CC from Adobe and more. As always, users can download apps from the Mac App Store with confidence that Apple has approved them for safety and security. Privacy and Security As with all Apple software updates, enhanced privacy and security remain a top priority in macOS Mojave. In Safari, enhanced Intelligent Tracking Prevention helps block social media “Like” or “Share” buttons and comment widgets from tracking users without permission. Safari now also presents simplified system information when users browse the web, preventing them from being tracked based on their system configuration. Safari now also automatically creates, autofills and stores strong passwords when users create new online accounts and flags reused passwords so users can change them. New data protections require apps to get user permission before using the Mac camera and microphone or accessing personal data like user Mail history and Messages database. Sneak Peek of Developer Framework for Mac Apps The News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home apps were brought to Mac using iOS frameworks that have been adapted to macOS. Starting in late 2019, these additional frameworks will make it easier for developers to bring their iOS apps to macOS — providing new opportunities for developers and creating more apps for Mac users to enjoy. Other New Features Screenshots deliver new on-screen controls for easy access to every screenshot option and new video recording capabilities. A streamlined workflow enables easy screenshot sharing without cluttering the desktop. Continuity Camera allows Mac users to take a picture or scan a document nearby with their iPhone or iPad and have it appear instantly on their Mac. Markup tools are now integrated into Finder, Quick Look and Screenshots, making it fast and efficient to add comments to content and share with others.

he doesn’t know what went on behind the scenes, but suggests that the allegations might not be enough to sway the court. “By the time the decision was made, I’m fully confident that our prime minister, the cabinet had all of the information that they required, in order to make a decision. Now, there’s a lot of people in my riding that aren’t happy about the decision that was made, which is fine. But in terms of whether or not they followed the process, I believe, 100 per cent, that they did,” he says. “There’s a fine line between making sure that something follows an appropriate process and (saying) let’s find a way to make sure this happens under the appropriate process. Right? "So what were those conversations? I wasn’t in the room. I don’t know what reporting you’ve done. I don’t know who you were talking to. All I can say is that I have a tremendous amount of respect for the minister of natural resources, I have a tremendous amount of respect for our minister of the environment and climate change (Catherine McKenna) and I have a tremendous amount of respect for our prime minister. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that when I come to caucus with concerns from our community, our cabinet and our caucus not only listen, they respond… It’s hard to ask for much more than that.” Natural Resources Canada said in a statement that the government is waiting for the court to rule on whether it will accept new evidence in the case. The process could add several weeks to the ongoing uncertainty about the future of the project, and possibly months of delays if the court agrees to review new evidence. Trans Mountain didn't respond to a request for comment, but it has said in a legal submission that it opposes the motion to reopen the case, noting that this has already caused some unnecessary delays. The federal government also opposes the motion, arguing that the documents would be irrelevant. Meantime, Beech said he’s hard at work trying to address the range of issues on the Liberal agenda, including affordable housing, protecting the oceans and fighting climate change. “You have to do that from within government in a way that you can be personally be effective," he adds. "So that’s why I went through all the panel hearings. That’s why I presented, when the detailed route hearings came through. I’m the only member of Parliament that’s in those meetings. That’s what I think my constituents expect of me, so I’m going to continue to do that.” with files from Dylan Sunshine Waisman Editor's note: This article was updated at 5:25 p.m. ET to clarify that Terry Beech has previously voted against a motion in the House of Commons that said the Trans Mountain project had a social licence to proceed and would be good for both the environment and the economy.

George Soros, the billionaire who earned fame by betting against the pound in 1992, said Britain was approaching a tipping point that would see the economy slow to such an extent that Brexit might be reversed. In 1992 Soros bet successfully that sterling was over-valued against the Deutsche Mark, forcing then-Prime Minister John Major to pull the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) and netting him a $1billion profit. Soros, who was born in Hungary but made his way to London as Communists consolidated power in Budapest, said economic reality was starting to catch up with a United Kingdom that voted 52 to 48 percent to leave the European Union in the June 23 referendum. George Soros (pictured) used Quantum Fund in 1992 to bet successfully that sterling was over-valued against the Deutsche Mark, forcing then-Prime Minister John Major to pull the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) 'The moment of truth is fast approaching,' Soros said. 'The fact is that Brexit is a lose-lose proposition, harmful both to Britain and the European Union. It cannot be undone, but people can change their minds.' Britain's $2.5trillion economy has shown resilience since last year's referendum although sterling fell 25 cents against the dollar in the hours immediately after the shock vote. But Britain went from being one of the fastest-growing economies of the Group of Seven leading economic nations in 2016 to the slowest in early 2017, as the fall in the value of the pound after the Brexit referendum pushed up inflation and hit consumer spending. The combination of rising prices and slowing wage growth represents a challenge for the Bank of England and its top policymakers, three of whom voted last week to raise interest rates to head off the acceleration of inflation. Soros said the Bank had underestimated the impact of inflation and was now catching up. 'Households will realise that their living standards are falling and they will have to adjust their spending habits,' Soros said. 'To make matters worse, they will also realise that they have become over-indebted and they will have to pay back their debts.' Britain has less than two years to negotiate the terms of the divorce and the outlines of the future relationship before it is due to leave in late March 2019. Both sides need an agreement to keep trade flowing between the world's biggest trading bloc and the fifth-largest global economy. Soros said that if Prime Minister Theresa May wanted to stay in power, she would have to change her approach and take account of young people who he said wanted to find well-paying jobs. Soros said Theresa May should try to keep Britain in the European Union's single market She should, Soros said, seek to keep Britain in the EU's single market as the UK tried to extract itself. 'The divorce process would take at least five years to complete, and during that time new elections would take place,' Soros said. 'If all went well, the two parties may want to remarry even before they have divorced.'

Fire experts are warning that $512m in congressional budget cuts could leave communities dangerously exposed in an early and active fire season. Such warnings have sharpened with the early onset of this year's fire season, and the record-setting outbreak in New Mexico. Experts fear the shortfall will leave fire crews scrambling for resources, and force government agencies to dip into other non-fire budgets to cover the gap. "A person has to wonder. Is this going to be the new norm – frequent record-setting fires, while the number of federal firefighters and air tankers continue to shrink?" wrote Bill Gabbert, a former fire management officer in the Black Hills of South Dakota who now runs the blog wildfiretoday.com. A strategic review in 2009 warned the government to step up its fire fighting capabilities to deal with an escalating rise in wildfires, covering up to 12m acres of terrain each year. "The current budget environment for federal and partner fire management is at best uncertain and difficult," the review said. It noted government agencies had already over-shot their budgets five years in a row, because of escalating wildfires. But the economic downturn and a Congress dominated by Republicans who want to shrink the role of government make it extremely complicated to divert more funds to forest fighting. Instead, funding for preventing and putting out wildfires has fallen by $512m, or about 15%, since 2010. Campaigners say that leaves the federal government agencies responsible for preventing and putting out wildfires under-funded – especially given projections suggesting a rise in wildfires over the next 20 years. They also worry the government agencies responsible for fire protection are putting capital projects on hold – such as updating its fleet of air tankers. The number of active air tankers fell from 44 to 14 over the last decade, prompting a group of western Senators to demand the government update the fleet for the coming fire season. "Concerns have increasingly been raised that the federal agencies responsible for responding to wildland fires – the Forest Service and four agencies in the department of interior – do not have the appropriate number and mix of aircraft that will be needed for wildland fire suppression operations," the letter said. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who raised the alarm, told reporters the federal government needed to act quickly to update the fleet for the coming seasons of bigger fires. "The alternative is to sit around and watch things burn; watch another round of infernos rip through the west," he told reporters. Fire scientists and conservationists are also demanding the government devote more funds to preventing fires, by reducing the dense forest growth that leads to the super-sized outbreaks of recent years. The forest service received $317m this year for programmes to reduce dangerous forest growth. That was down from $350m in 2010, and also represents less than one-fifth of the budget for putting out fires. "The federal government should be investing more money in fire prevention and removing hazardous fuel," said Christopher Topik, director of forest projects for the Nature Conservancy. "That is not an area where we should be reducing."

Some of the proposed changes to Europe's data protection laws would strip citizens of their privacy rights, a coalition of international civil liberties organizations said Thursday.The European Parliament is currently considering proposals from the European Commission for a complete overhaul of the E.U.'s data protection laws. The original laws date from 1995, the pre-Internet age, and are arguably in great need of an update. However, the debate about how to update them has been intense. Creating one regulation to replace national data protection and privacy laws in the 27 E.U. countries obviously requires compromise, but many parliamentarians report never seeing lobbying on such a scale before. In an effort to reach some sort of consensus, more than 4,000 changes to the draft text have been proposed. [ Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter. | Read Bill Snyder's Tech's Bottom Line blog for what the key business trends mean to you. ] The civil liberties coalition, which includes Access, Bits of Freedom, EDRI, La Quadrature du Net and Privacy International, has set up a website, nakedcitizens.eu, to help concerned citizens contact their representatives in the Parliament. The groups have also presented a report based on their analysis of the proposed amendments. "Among the thousands of amendments tabled are a large number that threaten to severely weaken privacy rights in the U.K.," the report said. "These damaging amendments are largely the result of an unprecedented lobbying storm by big U.S. tech companies, the U.S. government and the advertising industry. Some of the lobbying positions were published earlier this year at LobbyPlag.eu, a website that compares amendments put forward to the text submitted by lobbyists such as Amazon, eBay and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. One suggested amendment would alter the way Web companies could define "consent" to gather data, according to the coalition. Rather than "informed, specific and explicit" consent, companies could "assume consent has been given or to include consent language in hard to understand terms and conditions" the report said. Another contentious issue is the right to be forgotten. Much of the concern is over the role of search engines. Privacy advocates want to see the burden of proof shifted from consumers justifying why data should be deleted to businesses having to prove why it should be kept. "Without effective privacy protection, our personal lives are laid bare, to be used and abused by business and governments," said Joe McNamee of European Digital Rights and spokesperson of the coalition. The final committee vote in the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament is due to occur on May 29. Once the committee has given its opinion, the proposal will be voted on by Parliament. Only then can it be signed by the member states. Ireland, which currently holds presidency of the European Union, is keen to see the new law signed before the end of its term July 1. Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @BrusselsGeek or email tips and comments to [email protected].

After a Chinese envoy arrived in South Korea, the two sides have agreed to take “strong action” against North Korea if the North continues to test nuclear and ballistic missiles, according toVOA News. Joel Witt, the cofounder of 38 North, a website that brings together experts on North Korea, told Business Insider that the country’s progress in developing nuclear and ballistic missiles had appeared to rapidly increase over the past year. With each test, North Korea gets closer to its goal of creating an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten the US mainland. US President Donald Trump’s administration has been clear it is open to taking military action to try to prevent this. Trump, in an interview with the Financial Times before his meeting last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, said “if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.” It remains to be seen whether South Korea and China’s vision of unacceptable behavior matches the US’s, as the US has signaled growing impatience with the North’s nuclear posturing. - ADVERTISEMENT - Now, with the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and strike group redirected to the Korean Peninsula, South Korea and Chinese diplomats seem to have struck an agreement on handling the North Korean missile threat that does not involve a US strike. North Korea called the Vinson’s deployment an “outrageous act” and said it was “ready to react to any mode of war desired by the US.” While the US certainly sent a message with a recent salvo of 59 cruise missiles directed at a Syrian air base, it faces far more limited options in striking North Korea, which has an array of missile launchers and artillery that could effectively level Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 10 million people. Experts have told Business Insider that while China disapproves of North Korea’s nuclear threats, it has a much deeper interest in preserving a North Korean state as a buffer against Western influences, fearing a strong, united Korea complete with democracy and US military installations. Furthermore, the Chinese appear to have been spooked by a recent deployment of advanced missile defenses to South Korea, which the US put in place after a particularly provocative missile test from the North. Trump reportedly discussed the north Korean issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, with the two reaffirming their commitment to denuclearizing the peninsula and adhering to all UN sanctions against the Hermit Kingdom. More from Business Insider: A photographer captured these dismal photos of life in North Korea on his phone MEET THE NEW EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Here’s who Trump has chosen for senior leadership positions NASA will destroy a $3.26 billion Saturn probe this summer to protect an alien water world How the US could prevent a North Korean nuclear strike — according to a former Marine and cyberwarfare expert ‘The Daily Show’ made a mashup of a Sean Spicer press conference and kindergarteners [revad2]

Read more: 5 Saints who could fly St. Joseph of Cupertino was a holy Franciscan saint who lived in the 17th century. He was so close to God that he often experienced extraordinary graces, such as levitation during Mass and heavenly aromas surrounding him wherever he went. However, he tried to hide these spiritual gifts from his fellow Franciscan brothers and often referred to himself as “brother ass.” Even though people would flock from all over Italy to see him, St. Joseph never liked the attention. He loved and craved solitude and wanted to have the most mundane tasks in the monastery. An episode from his life highlights this humility and how he feverishly tried to keep himself from being overly prideful. One day he was instructed by his superior to visit the home of a woman who was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis (today known as the Secular Franciscans). A biography of St. Joseph of Cupertino written by Angelo Pastrovicchi details the humorous exchange that happened next. While there, another Tertiary came on a visit with her child, about three years of age. Joseph caressed the child, placed it on a chair, and said, “Little one, repeat after me: ‘Brother Joseph is a great sinner and, when he dies, he will go to hell.’” But the child, hardly able to speak distinctly and unable to understand the meaning of the words, replied clearly and distinctly, “Brother Joseph is a great saint and, when he dies, he will go to Paradise.” The saint rejoined with seeming anger: “Will you not speak as I prompt you? Now, say as I do, ‘Brother Joseph is a great sinner.'” But the child repeated his former words, “Brother Joseph is a great saint.” Joseph [then] said, “Will you not say as I do?” and again prompted, “Brother Joseph is a great sinner and, when he dies, he will go to hell.” But the child repeated a third time, “Brother Joseph is a great saint, and, when he dies, he will go to Paradise.” Those present were touched unto tears and convinced that God had wished, by the mouth of an innocent child, to reward and exalt Joseph because of his humility. While St. Joseph didn’t think very highly of himself, others could see clearly through his attempts to avert people’s attention away from him. They knew that he was a saint and his sanctity could not be kept under a bushel basket. His holiness was an inspiration and even the littlest child could see it. This exchange also reminds us to never think too highly of ourselves, lest we be puffed up with spiritual pride. While we don’t always have to go as far as St. Joseph of Cupertino and think we are going to Hell, we should acknowledge our own sinfulness and constantly strive to attain perfection.

ISLAMABAD: Federal government approved a supplementary grant of Rs410 million for the repair and maintenance of two VVIP Gulfstream aircrafts. Although budget documents don’t mention the dignitary in use of these luxury planes, officials privy to details said they are in use of Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Dr. Arif Alvi. The supplementary grant was sanctioned in March this year by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) and has now been reflected in the budget document for its formal approval from the Parliament. Defence Production Division is responsible for the maintenance of these aircrafts. While the ECC okayed grant in its March meeting, it failed to resolve differences between Ministry of Defence Production and Pakistan Air Force regarding transfer of funds, an English daily reported last month. According to the ECC meeting’s minutes, Directorate General Defence Procurement had purchased two VVIP Gulfstream aircrafts (one brand new and one used) at a whopping cost of $58, 550,924 ($58.55 million) in September 2005 on the directions of Ministries of Finance and Defence. Payment of their repair and maintenance used to be made through the Ministry of Defence Production in favour of air headquarters. Ministry of Defence Production proposed that an amount of Rs410 million ($2.9 million) for payment relating to repair and maintenance of VVIP Gulfstream aircrafts may be provided through supplementary grant for onward transfer to the air headquarters. It was, however, pointed out that allocation for this purpose is presently made out of grant number 27 of Ministry of Defence Production (sub-head A09-A09503-other) which may be allocated directly to Ministry of Defence which is the controlling Ministry of air headquarters as this Ministry has no record/details of maintenance needs/ToR of usage of these aircraft, reported an English daily. Thus in keeping with the principles of financial discipline allocation and in view of the fact that both aircraft are presently on maintenance in the air headquarters, it would be in the fitness of things to streamline allocation mechanism once and for all by making it directly between the Finance Division, Ministry of Defence and the air headquarters with effect from July 1, 2019. The meeting was apprised that Finance Division agreed to allocate Rs410 million ($2.9 million) for payment relating to repair and maintenance of VVIP Gulfstream aircrafts through supplementary grant under demand number 27 for onward transfer to Pakistan Air Force (PAF). The issue relating to transfer of allocation of funds for this purpose from Ministry of Defence Production to Ministry of Defence/PAF may be settled between these two ministries. After discussion, the ECC approved the summary of Ministry of Defence Production regarding supplementary grant of Rs410 million ($2.9 million) for payment relating to repair and maintenance of VVIP Gulfstream aircrafts through supplementary grant under demand number 27 for onward transfer to air headquarters. The ECC further decided that the issue relating to transfer of allocation of funds for repair of two VVIP aircraft from the Ministry of Defence Production to Ministry of Defence/PAF may be settled between these two ministries.

“If you just ban people, you will never change their behavior,” Chelsea Chairman Bruce Buck was quoted as saying by Britain’s Sun newspaper on Thursday, providing details about a project the club announced at the beginning of the year. “This policy gives them the chance to realize what they have done, to make them want to behave better.” AD Although similar visits organized by other institutions have yielded some positive results in the past, the effort can be risky. This is all part of a more concerted push by the club to tackle anti-Semitism. While club officials have repeatedly stressed that it’s about the rise of anti-Semitism globally, the club specifically has faced criticism for discriminatory chants by fans. The club is owned by Roman Abramovich, a Russian-Israeli Jewish billionaire. In November 2016, Chelsea fans made headlines when they chanted anti-Jewish slogans, targeting fans of rival club Tottenham Hotspur. AD The club’s new measures to combat anti-Semitism began about a year later, in January, with a video campaign. “Historically, we reacted with punishments, with bans of one sort or another. But over the last year or so, we’ve come to the view that discrimination can best be dealt with through education,” Buck told the Jerusalem Post in January. Besides the planned visits to concentration camps, Chelsea is also holding workshops and movie screenings at schools or during fan forums. A hotline has been set up where fans can report discriminatory incidents. AD “We’re not naive to think that our little program is going to solve anti-Semitism, but we are hopeful that if we do something and it’s just a little bit successful, then other sports clubs and other institutions like ours will also pick up the cudgel and engage in similar activities,” Buck said. AD In fact, Chelsea isn’t the first institution to offer educational Auschwitz trips to tackle anti-Semitism. In April, Germany’s most prestigious music awards were scrapped after rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang won with lyrics in which they claimed that their bodies are “more defined than those of Auschwitz inmates.” In a different song, the rappers boasted that they’ll “make another Holocaust.” Months later, the two agreed to visit Auschwitz for an educational trip, where guides described their reaction as “shocked.” Kollegah, recently recalling the trip, said he would “never use words like those again.” But other visits took a very different turn. In July, historians urged Germany’s domestic spy agency to place the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party under surveillance, after supporters had doubted the existence of Nazi gas chambers during a visit to the former concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. The Nazis killed tens of thousands of prisoners in Sachsenhausen during World War II. The trip to the former concentration camp near Berlin was taxpayer-funded, but had to be interrupted as anti-Semitic remarks by participants mounted.

By Blaise Jones Many sharks occupy spaces near the top of their ecosystem’s food chain. This means that they are able to prey upon many different species of animal, while only a few can prey upon them. By hunting all the species below them on the food chain, sharks are able to help maintain healthy ecosystems. Breaks in the Chain Over thousands of years ecosystems have evolved into highly specialized structures. Each organism that lives in an ecosystem has a niche it fills; primary producers, herbivores, carnivores, or scavengers. Certain niches are big enough that multiple different species can fill them. Others are so specific that only one or two species fill it. Sharks occupy one such tiny niche: the highest level of apex predator. The ecological niche of top apex predator is vitally important to the health of ecosystems, and if they are removed then it can lead to a total collapse of an ecosystem. Opportunity Calling When sharks hunt, they go for the easiest meal possible. This means they hunt the animals that are easiest to find and easiest to catch. Therefore, sharks focus on species with high abundance, and focus on the members of these species that can’t get away from them, namely the sick and old. By removing the sick and the old fish from the ecosystem, sharks allow the younger fish to grow and reproduce by eliminating competitors, increasing genetic diversity of the populations. By removing the sick fish, sharks help control diseases and prevent infection from spreading from fish to fish. Increased Biodiversity Sharks encourage high levels of biodiversity in the ecosystems they inhabit by feeding consistently on the species with in the most numbers. By hunting the most abundant species, sharks allow the other species a chance to expand their populations. But when the first species population reaches lower numbers than the other species, sharks will stop focusing on them and hunt the other species. Do Not Eat the Grass Sharks don’t even have to hunt to regulate their ecosystems. Their presence alone is enough to keep certain ecosystems in check. Sea grass beds are sources of habitat and nurseries for many different species of fish. They’re also the primary food source for manatees and sea turtles. Manatees and turtles avoid the areas that sharks frequent, leaving the sea grasses to prosper. But if there are no sharks around, sea turtles and manatees will eat all of the sea grass, leaving dozens of other species without homes. SOURCES: http://oceana.org/sites/default/files/reports/Predators_as_Prey_FINAL_FINAL1.pdf https://www.insidescience.org/content/threats-sharks-threaten-entire-ecosystems/1351 “The Encyclopedia of Sharks” by Steve Parker“Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide” by Gene Helfman and George H. Burgess “Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide” by Gene Helfman and George H. Burgess

The congressional investigations into possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia seem to be going nowhere fast. The Hill committees have been at it for many months now and haven’t come up with much of anything. Things have reached the point where the New York Times, in an above-the-fold piece yesterday, is clearly signaling that the investigators are coming up empty-handed. But while the Times offers numerous reasons why the probes are stalled, there is no mention of another possible explanation: that there isn’t much there to find. Now I don’t know exactly what the committees have found. And I don’t know what Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors have found. People like Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort appear to have problems, and just yesterday came an NBC report that the special counsel is investigating Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta. (His firm says it’s fully cooperating.) But potential charges about improper payments and lobbying aren’t the same as the core question of whether Trump aides and associates colluded with Moscow to influence the election. The one instance we know about, the meeting with Russian lawyers arranged by Donald Trump Jr., didn’t lead to anything. And the White House by all indications is cooperating with Mueller. Again, I draw no premature conclusions. But administration officials, addressing what the president calls a “witch hunt,” have privately wondered what the media will do if it turns out there’s no there there. The Times piece says the Hill investigations suffer from some common maladies: “All three committees looking into Russian interference — one in the House, two in the Senate — have run into problems, from insufficient staffing to fights over when the committees should wrap up their investigations. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry has barely started, delayed in part by negotiations over the scope of the investigation. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while maintaining bipartisan comity, have sought to tamp down expectations about what they might find.” Could the media be tamping down expectations as well? “Nine months into the Trump administration,” the Times says, “any notion that Capitol Hill would provide a comprehensive, authoritative and bipartisan accounting of the extraordinary efforts of a hostile power to disrupt American democracy appears to be dwindling.” The story has an opening anecdote about Jared Kushner offering to stay beyond his allotted time when questioned by the House Intel committee. Republican congressman Trey Gowdy said he was in a no-win situation: If you leave now, Democrats will say you did not answer all the questions. If you stay, they will keep you here all week. Congressional investigations are often stymied by partisan politics, as the president’s party plays defense and the opposition party plays attack dog. But there’s also the possibility of hitting a dry hole. “If there’s not something there,” Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intel panel, said recently, “I’ll be the first to acknowledge that.”

The three recovered bodies were flown to a hospital in the capital Sanaa Germany has "strongly condemned" the killing of two German nurses who were recently kidnapped in Yemen. The bodies of the two women, along with that of a South Korean aid worker, have been flown to the capital Sanaa from Saada, a remote area in northern Yemen. Yemeni officials say they are searching for six other foreigners in the group - including three children - who were kidnapped while picnicking on Friday. There have been conflicting reports about what has happened to them. "This is very sad news and we strongly condemn this crime," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in reference to the two German nurses. They have been presumed dead by German officials although Yemeni authorities have not officially identified the bodies. "The foreign ministry's crisis centre is trying to investigate the fate of the other hostages. So far there is no concrete information and it is important not to speculate," Mrs Merkel added. Also on Tuesday, Seoul confirmed that a South Korean national had been murdered after being kidnapped in Yemen. Officials named her as Eom Young-Sun, 34. A Yemeni government spokesman said on Tuesday that the whereabouts of the other six foreigners was unknown. The group comprised seven Germans - including a family of five - a British national and a South Korean woman. The kidnapped adults all worked at a hospital in Saada, the state news agency said. Yemen's interior ministry earlier said they had been kidnapped while on a picnic on Friday in the area. Shepherds found the three bodies on Monday morning in the mountainous northern Saada province near the town of el-Nashour, according to local officials. There is confusion about the fate of the missing hostages. One unconfirmed report on Monday said all nine hostages were dead, while another report - also unconfirmed - quoted officials saying two children had been found alive. Militant groups More than 200 foreign nationals have been kidnapped in Yemen in the last 15 years, often for ransom. But most have been released unharmed. FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. More from BBC World Service No-one has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The Yemeni government blamed a local Shia rebel group, led by Abdulmalik al-Houthi, for the kidnapping, but it has denied any involvement. The group has fought a sporadic insurgency in the Zaidi Shia heartland between Sanaa and the border with Saudi Arabia. A local tribal leader in the area, speaking anonymously to the Associated Press news agency, blamed al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is known to have operated in the area, and analysts say it may be regrouping in Yemen after coming under pressure in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. CIA Director Leon Panetta said last week that Somalia and Yemen may have become safe havens for the group. Yemeni authorities said on Sunday they had arrested Hassan Hussein Bin Alwan, described as al-Qaeda's financier in the region and one of its "most dangerous members". Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Show caption The packets of 15mg and 45mg pills found by a Swiss wholesaler contain only paracetamol. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA Cancer WHO warns of fake cancer drug made from paracetamol Pills that resemble Leukaemia drug Iclusig sold in Europe and Americas for £5,000 a pack Sarah Boseley Tue 12 Feb 2019 12.50 GMT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email A global alert has been issued by the World Health Organization, warning patients, doctors and pharmacies of a fake cancer drug circulating in Europe and the Americas. The fake medicine is packaged to look like the cancer drug Iclusig, which contains the active ingredient ponatinib to treat adults with chronic myeloid leukaemia and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. The labels are in English, as if destined for use in the NHS. The boxes of 15mg and 45mg pills contain only paracetamol. “There’s no active ingredient so it’s a really high value product,” said Michael Deats, who leads the vigilance group on fake medicines at WHO in Geneva. “It’s dangerous. We’re concerned about this one.” The drug was “slightly unusual” because it was made solely of paracetamol. Deats said although it is more common to see falsified or ineffective antibiotics and antimalarials, reports of fake cancer drugs are not infrequent. “We see breast cancer, prostate cancer, leukaemia products being reported with some regularity, unfortunately, from all regions,” he said. The fake drugs in packs of 30 x 45mg tablets and 60 x 15mg tablets aroused the suspicions of a wholesaler in Switzerland. The Swiss health authorities then informed the WHO and lab analysis confirmed that the pills were fake. Deats said the market would be people with cancer and their families in countries where the drug was not made available for free or who did not have enough health insurance to pay for it. “If you are involved in the manufacture and distribution of this falsified version, you are going to be making it available on the internet to people in countries that haven’t got an NHS and it’s not subsidised,” he said. “This one is being picked up by patients in other parts of the world and it’s people who are desperate to get a medicine to treat their disease and they’re getting paracetamol.” The drug is expensive, priced at around £5,000 a pack in the UK in 2017 and currently around $13,500 – or $450 a pill – in the US. Deats said there was a risk, although very slight, that it could get into the NHS. Medicines are sometimes legally bought by UK pharmacies for NHS use from other countries where they are on sale at a cheaper price – a practice called parallel trading. Everybody needs to be on the alert, he said.

THE former chief executive of the Central Remedial Clinic, Paul Kiely, is "extremely ill" and is not in a position to give evidence before the Dail Public Accounts Committee. PAC clerk Ted McEnery told the committee that he has been in touch with Mr Kiely's legal representative who has confirmed that the former head of the charity will not be in a position to attend a PAC meeting next Thursday to answer questions over his €742,025 retirement package from the Clontarf clinic. Referring to Mr Kiely's ill-health, Mr McEnery said: "I think we should accept that and I wish him well." A report into the clinic by administrator John Cregan published last week said that the CRC set up its charitable arm for the sole purpose of ensuring that it maximised the funding it received from the HSE but the fund was used to pay salary top-ups for senior executives. Senator Shane Ross said there were a lot of questions for the old board still to answer and that the report into the CRC mentioned missing files "which we ought to ask them about". Mr McEnery has been in touch with the former board members through a consultant retained on their behalf. However, he admitted to the committee they have not confirmed whether they will be attending. Mr McEnery has also been in touch with former chairman Jim Nugent as well as former executives David Martin and Brian Conlan asking them to attend. Mr Ross expressed concern that there might be some doubt about the former CRC board coming in asking: "What's the problem then?" PAC Chairman John McGuinness, said the only doubt was that the former board members had not replied and said Mr McEnery would check again to determine what witnesses will be before the committee next week. He said a suggestion had been made that Mr Cregan would represent himself and deal with the report on his own but said he didn't believe that should be the case. "I believe he should be here with the new chairman and with the other CRC members and HSE and we can deal with this fully and openly and complete our business," he said. PAC has also written to former chairman Hamilton Goulding asking him to attend and seeking documentation. Officials from the HSE will also be in attendance. Meanwhile, the Rehab Group has commenced a process to recruit new board members "as part of a programme of transformation and change". Applications The body, which has been rocked by money scandals, is seeking applications from volunteers who would like to serve as company directors. It has been engulfed in controversy for months, much of which centred around former chief executives Angela Kerins and Frank Flannery. Group chairman Sean Egan said yesterday: "The Rehab Group is seeking to renew its board membership to ensure that it has in place an effective and robust governance structure that can serve the organisation well into the future. I am confident that there will be many people who are interested in contributing to the important work of Rehab through serving as board members." Irish Independent

It's Friday the 13th, but we're feeling lucky here at Divi. via GIPHY Testnet 2.0 Atomic Swaps Imminent Over the past few months, we have been designing and building the easiest, production-ready version of Atomic Swap technology the industry has seen thus far. What makes Divi's Atomic Swaps different Divi's Atomic Swap implementation is a granular API that allows developers and users to have full control over the transaction process via CLI or gRPC. This factor is a critical difference between what we have built and what is currently available today. To ensure a better developer (and user) experience, we digest the entire process into a simplified REST API server. This REST API enables us to create a user-friendly "light client" interface for users to quickly and easily swap between DIVI and BTC (and later, many other coins) in a decentralized and peer-to-peer manner. For those looking for even more control and decentralization, they can manage and maintain their servers and daemons individually. Getting started Developers can begin utilizing Divi Atomic Swaps now on the Bitcoin and Divi 2.0 Testnets. To get started, follow this link and start reading through the documentation. We're even providing a succinct and easy-to-follow guide for deploying your own Bitcoin network. Ready to test? Developers can get some free Test Divi using our faucet now. Next steps In the coming weeks, light client nodes will be running, allowing developers who want a more hands-off experience to begin building. Additionally, a block explorer that illustrates the comings and goings of funds before, during, and after Atomic Swaps take place will be available. Masternode performance Divi appears twice this week in reports on masternode performance. Mister Node's top performer Mister Node is a writer for the popular masternode publication, Masternode Buzz. He is tracking several coins, and this month, the Divi Silver Masternode appears as his portfolio's highest returning asset. You can read more about it here. Top 10 Masternode Masternode Buzz reports that Divi is the top sixth-best performing masternode of the week in their latest update. Divi is no stranger to this list, and we're always pleased to find our name among the other market veterans. Media World Crypto Con Recap Video Divi Crypto Podcast New episode of the DIVI Crypto Podcast is now live! Should we tokenize everything? with DIVI CEO Geoff McCabe Listen on SoundCloud:https://t.co/cvQ1W82n5Y Listen on Spotify:https://t.co/Iqh4aEKIJB pic.twitter.com/stwpoXzPhg — Divi Project (@DiviProject) December 9, 2019 Bitcoin Ben

In what has become our Halloween tradition going back six years, we're here to once again point out that sometimes truth is stranger (and scarier) than fiction... Most urban legends are just that -- legends. Cautionary tales made up to keep kids on the straight and narrow. But wait, why do we need so many of these cautionary tales in the first place? Well, because the world is a terrifying place out to destroy you in any number of horrifying, ironic ways. In fact, this world is so scary that a lot of the creepy tales you told around the campfire have actually happened to real, very unfortunate people. 5 The Things That Squirm in Your Skull L-Hamilton/iStock/Getty Images The Legend: Us folks from well-off northern countries sure do like to jet down to various tropical countries for a little sun and fun, but we also tend to get a bit weirded out by the Third World conditions that often exist right outside the walls of our hermetically sealed resort destinations. These fears have given rise to all sorts of tales of people returning from trips near the equator with a free souvenir wriggling around inside a particularly sensitive or important area, like, say, their skulls. pxhidalgo/iStock/Getty Images "You asked for the 'deluxe travel package.' Next time read the fine print." Continue Reading Below Advertisement But come on, these stories are just a bit of low-level xenophobia, right? Right? The Truth: Shortly after returning to her native Britain from a vacation in Peru, Rochelle Harris began to hear scratching noises inside her head. Apparently Harris isn't much of a worrywart (or possibly is mildly schizophrenic), because she decided, "Eh, whatever," and went on with her life, as the scratching noises got louder. Then things got worse. Harris started to get headaches and radiating pain down one side of her face, and she'd wake up with fluids on her pillow (and not the good kinds). Then a fly flew out of her ear. Yeah, this story is going exactly where you were hoping it wasn't going -- after the fly incident, Harris finally went to a doctor, and he found that a writhing family of maggots had set up a home deep within her ear canal. If you need a few minutes to go madly dig at your ears with a Q-Tip, we understand. Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images "I should set this on fire first. Just to be safe." Continue Reading Below Advertisement Not surprisingly, Harris didn't take her "head full of flesh-eating worms" diagnosis well. "I was very scared. Were they in my brain?" GOOD QUESTION, ROCHELLE. Thankfully, Harris has since managed to put a positive spin on her ordeal: "I'm not so squeamish around those kinds of bugs now. How can I be? They've been in my ear!"

“I think the American people are very frustrated with Congress’s lack of action. And for years they’ve been all talk and no action. We’re looking for them to step up at this point.” Trump appears to have made the following calculation: that the combined firepower of his outsized celebrity and unholy alliance of rightwing interest groups – evangelical Christians, anti-tax Tea Party diehards, anti-abortion activists and the National Rifle Association and the anti-liberal brigade – can outgun an ageing Republican establishment. After all, during those party primaries, many voters said they were sick of Congressional inaction and the Washington swamp and wanted the outside businessman to shake things up. This week a poll suggested that while one in four Republican voters disapprove of the president, nearly half disapprove of the Republican Congress. Play Video 0:52 Protests erupt after Trump’s rally in Arizona – video Every time Trump – who once declared “I am your voice,” – holds a raucous rally for his base, he is sending a message to senators and representatives that he has an army on his side. But it seems he cares more about bullying his way to another election win than passing legislation. While the divide-and-rule approach works for campaigning, it is hardly a model for governing. He dropped the pretence of cooperation with Capitol Hill when he ousted Reince Priebus, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, as chief of staff. Trump was no Lyndon Johnson when it came to cajoling and deal-making for healthcare reform, not giving a major speech, showing little obvious grasp of policy detail and undermining the House bill by branding it “mean”. Trump's economic chief criticizes Charlottesville response: we must do better Read more He sought to pin the blame for its collapse on Congress and is now doing the same with his Mexican border wall, threatening to shut down the federal government if it is denied funding – even though his party controls both houses. There remains hope for tax reform so long as he stays out of the way and leaves economic adviser Gary Cohn and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin to work with Congress. The Wall Street Journal argued this week: “Republicans in Congress need to think of themselves as governing with an independent president – if they don’t already. This doesn’t mean joining Democrats as ‘the Resistance’. But it does mean acting on their own to fulfil their legislative promises with or without the support of Mr Trump. “If the president goes his own way, at least Republicans can point to votes for legislation that they put on his desk.” Thus, for McConnell and Ryan, Trump is a liability not an asset, someone to be ignored and worked around whenever possible. Hopes that he could normalise have faded fast in recent weeks. Already there is talk of a Republican primary challenger in 2020, for example Ohio governor John Kasich or Nebraska senator Ben Sasse. If someone tries, they will have to succeed where 16 Republicans and Hillary Clinton failed.

How to bypass Windows password without resetting or changing the current password Have you forgotten the administrator password and need to login to Windows without changing or deleting the current password? A brute-force attack could be performed to find out your password but that is the most time consuming approach. In this tutorial we'll show you 3 simple way to quickly bypass Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP password without changing or resetting the password. Method 1: Create a New Admin Account without Logging in Resetting a forgotten password can cause the loss of EFS encrypted files and stored credentials that are encrypted with the old password. If you want to access a locked PC without modifying any existing user, the best way is to create a new admin account before logging in to Windows. This method is also useful when your user profile is corrupted or no user shown at the login screen. Boot from Windows installation DVD. When the Install Windows screen appears, click "Repair your computer" at the bottom left. If you are using a Windows 10/8 install disk, select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt. If you are using a Windows 7 install disk, click Command Prompt under System Recovery Options. When you see a Command Prompt, type the following commands and press Enter. copy d:\windows\system32\sethc.exe d:\ copy /y d:\windows\system32\cmd.exe d:\windows\system32\sethc.exe Once that's finished, restart the computer and remove the install disk. After you see the logon screen, press the SHIFT key five times. Voila! The Command Prompt opens and you can run the following commands to create a new admin account. net user {user_name} /add net localgroup administrators {user_name} /add Reboot and you can then log in to your Windows computer with the new admin account. Method 2: Turn on Automatic Login Every time you boot your computer, it will stop at the login screen, waiting for you to enter (or click on) your login name and enter your password. If you're the sole user of your PC, typing your user password becomes a pure waste of time. Here's how to configure your computer to automatically bypass Windows login screen, without removing or clearing your current password. Press the Windows key + R to launch the Run command box. Type netplwiz and hit Enter. In the User Accounts dialog box, select the user you want to automatically log in to, and uncheck the option "Users must enter a user name and a password to use this computer". Click OK. Type the password of your chosen account and confirm it. The next time you start Windows, it will bypass the login screen and automatically logged in with the user you just selected. Method 3: Bypass Windows Password with PCUnlocker Besides resetting Windows user password, PCUnlocker also allows you to bypass Windows password through temporarily changing the Windows kernel on the fly. The password bypass procedure doesn't overwrite your old password and make any permanent changes to your files.

the United States, is at a crossroads when it comes to dealing with private actors in a historically government-driven industry. While the majority of the commercial space actors within the US have acted responsibly and have built up much needed trust that has allowed the sector to flourish, this private-public relationship is fragile and can be easily damaged with few bad actors. Private sector space activity affects not just civil space activity, but scientific activity and national security discussions. That is to say, there are multiple and often conflicting uses of outer space that are being considered by both private and government entities. Space activities do not need to be considered as a zero-sum game; there does not need to be a “winner” and a “loser” in space. With careful consideration and adherence to regulatory strategies that ensure an even playing field for international participation, space activities can be undertaken by public and private sector alike. Space is big, some argue, and there is plenty of room for everyone. Though this may be physically true, realistically the space we are able to access and utilize is finite. Meanwhile, protecting the right for States, companies, and peoples to explore and study space does not necessarily mean all celestial bodies must remain perfectly pristine. Indeed, perfectly pristine planetary protection measures are likely to be both technologically and physically impossible. Instead, policy should ensure that people who can exercise their freedom to explore do not also contaminate, change, or alter the celestial body in ways that will harm, detrimentally exploit, or impact future missions or future interests in space. In other words, for locations of astrobiological interest, science interests might supersede private commercial interests. A balancing between interests is necessary, and a conversation must be had. Sustainable space exploration should balance the needs and interests of future generations with the desires and interests of the present generation. And while some assert that “those who get their first, make the rules,” this is neither a principle of international law or international relations, nor is it a rational or equitable method of developing norms for emerging behavior. Instead, we think there are other approaches that capture the spirit of adventure and development that is driving a new age of space, while still respecting our common roots on Earth with the rest of humanity. We can also be guided by Article I of the Outer Space Treaty, which requires that the “exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development.” We are entrusted to fulfill this vision. Endnotes See Report of the Legal Subcommittee on its fifty-seventh session, held in Vienna from 9 to 20 April 2018 (A/AC.105/1177), p. 31. See Proposal for the establishment of a working group for the development of an international regime for the utilization and exploitation of space resources: Working paper by Belgium and Greece (A/AC.105/C.2/L.311), published 4 March 2019. Note: we are temporarily moderating all comments subcommitted to deal with a surge in spam. Home

A new idea for ending partisan gerrymandering would have political parties divide up legislative boundaries like two people might slice up pieces of a cake. The proposal, unveiled last month in a research paper by two professors at Carnegie Mellon University, would rely on the self-interest of Republicans and Democrats, who would take turns drawing districts and locking in legislative boundaries. The approach is different from other efforts to reform redistricting, which often call for the creation of independent commissions to draw the lines. "If it's really possible to have an independent commission which is competent and really just has the best interest of society at hand at all times, then that's probably the best thing that you can hope for," said Wesley Pegden, an associate professor of mathematical sciences and one of the authors of the study. "But it's just not clear to me that you can really do that." The system Pegden developed with Ariel Procaccia, an associate professor of computer science, is based on the same principles as cutting a cake in a way that's mathematically fair. If there are two people, the first person cuts the cake and the second person chooses the first piece. The first person will cut the cake fairly so there's a good piece left over when it's their time to choose. "This is envy-free in the sense that every player likes his own piece as much as he likes the other piece," Procaccia said. "It turns out that redistricting has a similar flavor." In the redistricting plan drawn up by Procaccia and Pegden, one party draws all the legislative districts and the other party chooses one of them and locks it in place. Then the second party redraws the remaining districts and the first party chooses one. Sign up for daily news! Stay informed with WPR's email newsletter. That process repeats itself back and forth until all districts are finalized. "The nice aspect of it is that even though the process is handled by politicians and is competitive in the sense that every party works in its own interests, we can still prove that the outcome would be fair to both parties," Procaccia said. Procaccia and Pegden said they're hoping that as people find out about their plan, it will become part of the national discussion on gerrymandering and might be adopted by states in future rounds of redistricting. While some states can rewrite the rules for redistricting through citizen ballot initiatives, that's not possible in Wisconsin, where any change would need originate from the state Legislature. Wisconsin's current legislative map was drawn by Republicans in 2011 after they won control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office after the last census in 2010. Wisconsin's map has been at the center of the national discussion on redistricting. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this year in a lawsuit that alleges Wisconsin Republicans were too partisan when they drew the map, and violated the constitutional rights of Democrats in the process. The court will likely issue a decision in Wisconsin's case in the first half of 2018.

to indoctrinate the kids you’re teaching? Shouldn’t be a teacher. You get the point: one profession after another is closed off. At the end of this, maybe we’ll be allowed to make furniture along with the Amish. But other than that, we’ll be barred from nearly everything. Step 10: Remove All Vestiges of Christianity from the Public Square. Throughout all of this, leave the private square alone. Let people say and believe (just about) whatever they want at church, and in the privacy of their own home. As long as you do this, it’ll look like there’s no persecution. You avoid anything messy, like martyrs. But make sure that these religious views have no acceptable place in the public square. If believers want to participate in public – by holding political office, or a job, or just voicing an opinion publicly – demand that it be strictly secular, devoid of any religious influence at all. In this way, you can ensure that ordinary people are rarely exposed to religious views (and when they are, these views seem irrelevant, because they’re not allowed to influence the public square), and that the culture actively cultivates something contrary to Christianity. Conclusion The whole point of persecuting Christianity is to render it irrelevant. And that, it would seem, can be accomplished more effectively using bloodless means. We need look no further than the Muslim domination of southern Spain, beginning in 709. When the Islamic invaders first conquered southern Spain, they spread their faith by the sword, and were relatively unsuccessful. When they did meet success, it was through a less violent means of coercion, and over several years (even generations). They imposed a system of dhimmitude, in which Catholics could practice their faith if they paid a tax and were subject to a wide series of restrictions. On paper, there was no persecution: just a series of restrictions that isolated Catholics from public office and much of secular society. Over time, the populace simply grew cold towards Christianity, and tens of thousands of Catholics abandoned the faith. It was simply easier to abandon the faith. That example still seems to me to be more extreme than what we’re currently seeing in our country, but it remains instructive. It shows that it’s altogether possible to push Christianity into the fringes of society without any sort of violent oppression of the religion. In the case of Muslim Spaniards, this was more or less an overt thing. In the case of American secularists, it’s often less overt. Indeed, I have no doubt that many of the people engaged in pushing Christianity to the margins would deny that they are doing any such thing. Equally, I have no doubt that some of them really do have this as an endgoal. But can we at least have an honest conversation, and admit that this is what it is going on, and what will continue to go on unless Christians do more to resist it? [Editor’s note: this article first appeared at Shameless Popery.]

【1月25日 AFP】ローマ・カトリック教会のフランシスコ（Francis）法王は24日、聖書の中に出てくる、イブがヘビにだまされて「禁断の果実」を口にしてしまう話になぞらえ、偽ニュースの誘惑に警告を発した。 ジャーナリストの守護聖人フランシスコ・サレジオ（Francis de Sales）の祝日に催された「世界広報の日（World Communications Day）」のメッセージで、法王は、ヘビがイブをだましたことについて「最初の偽ニュース」だと述べた。 「自らを偽って攻撃する者が使う、『ヘビの戦術』とも呼ばれるものの正体をわれわれは暴く必要がある」と述べた上で、「うそのウイルスに対する最も抜本的な対抗手段は、真実による浄化だ」と強調した。 「偽ニュース」は、ドナルド・トランプ（Donald Trump）米大統領が2016年の大統領選挙中や大統領の就任1年目に広めた言葉だ。 トランプ大統領は「偽ニュース」という言葉を、自分自身に偏見を持っているとする主要メディア対して使用しているが、現在では、政治的なプロパガンダの道具としてニュースを作り出している放送局やウェブサイトの増殖を表現する際に使用されるようになった。(c)AFP

Marijuana legalization is pushed to the back burner again in New York. The issue fails to make it into New York’s state budget for 2020 as Governor Andrew Cuomo and state officials grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. In a press briefing, Cuomo was asked if legalizing recreational marijuana would be part of the New York state budget this year. “It’s not likely,” he replied. “Too much, too little time.” Cuomo made his comments during his daily briefing on the coronavirus as the budget deadline approached. New York has a $15 billion budget gap, caused by the fallout from the coronavirus, where New York City is at the nation’s epicenter. The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) was introduced by a longtime advocate for drug policy reform, Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) who said recently that it was not realistic that Gov. Cuomo and the NY state Legislature could negotiate a complicated measure like legal marijuana in the budget amid with all of the distractions caused by the coronavirus crisis. As of April 1, 2020, New York State has the highest number of positive COVID-19 cases in the country, with 83,712 cases and 1,941 deaths. More than half of the positive cases and nearly 80% of the deaths are concentrated in New York City. While news of legalization being pushed to the back burner, again, in the nation’s largest city, advocates say it’s understandable. “I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the circumstances that we would be operating within as we are in the final days of closing the budget here in New York,” said Melissa Moore, Deputy State Director of New York for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). “Not moving to legalize cannabis through the budget process right now … it makes sense,” Moore said. What doesn’t make sense is why Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) extended the temporary closure of the state’s recreational marijuana shops. Gov. Baker told reporters that allowing dispensaries to reopen could exacerbate the coronavirus crisis by attracting visitors from neighboring states where cannabis is still illegal. Negative effect of ruling One Massachusetts mother of two young children, Shannon Venezia, has not had an epilepsy-related seizure in over four years as a result of using cannabis instead of prescription drugs. She told NBC News that she didn’t know what she was going to do if the order to keep dispensaries closed stays in place. “Am I going to have to go to the black market, or am I going to have to try and get my card renewed and potentially expose myself to people who are sick?” Venezia asked. Massachusetts is the only state out of the 11 that have legalized recreational cannabis to deem that cannabis dispensaries are not “essential businesses.” Massachusetts legalized adult-use cannabis nearly four years ago and it became available in 2018.

man who turned normal, quirky teenagers (rather than wizards or vampires or dystopian archery champions) into a national obsession is back with another winner. Turtles All the Way Down features a heroine with obsessive-compulsive disorder: the thoughts in Aza’s mind are not always pretty, but they ring true. That Green himself is a sufferer of OCD might be one of the reasons he’s so good at channeling an anxious teenage girl, but he makes Aza a well-rounded, riveting character in her own right. The story line involves Aza and a friend searching for a missing billionaire, but the details of the plot don’t matter as much as Aza’s achingly tormented voice. Little & Lion By Brandy Colbert Young-adult fiction might be the most socially progressive genre in books today. If you want proof, look no further than Brandy Colbert’s charming novel. It addresses issues such as mental illness, racism, ableism, and sexual identity without pandering or making Big Important Points in place of plot. This is just the world in which her diverse, relatable characters live. Little & Lion is the story of a teenage girl who returns home to L.A. after a semester at boarding school, trying to reclaim her place in her family and friendships, even as she becomes aware of the ways in which she — and they — have changed. Grace and the Fever By Zan Romanoff Yes, Grace and the Fever might sound like a fairy tale of a novel about a megafan who meets the objects of her adoration (members of a boy band that may or may not have a lot in common with One Direction) but it’s more than that. The story is about the magic of fandom, the way a girl who’s always felt a little cut off could experience the thrill of making meaningful connection — even if it’s via a Tumblr account registered under a fake name. Zan Romanoff’s lovely, insightful novel is as much about the passionate communities that form around our icons, even if IRL they’re less glamorous than we imagine. The Hate U Give By Angie Thomas One of the best novels of the year, period. Angie Thomas’s stunner about a Los Angeles teenager who unexpectedly finds herself at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement is a masterpiece because it contains so many layers. It’s nuanced, it’s deeply sad, it’s angry, it’s philosophical, and it’s both funny and more fun than you might imagine, thanks in large part to the beautiful portrayal of the book’s heroine. Starr is both an Every Teen and highly singular in her experiences — she has a father who’s an ex-gang member, an uncle who’s a cop, a white boyfriend, and an unarmed best friend who was murdered by a police officer right in front of her. There are no easy answers in this book, but it asks all the right questions.

Trina Parks, who starred alongside Sean Connery as the dangerous villain “Thumper” in the 1971 Bond film Diamonds are Forever, says that a black woman starring as 007 just does not work. “Lashana is a great actress, but I don’t really agree with her becoming 007,” Parks said. “It is not about her color, but just because Bond, the spy code-named 007, was written by Ian Fleming as a man. So a black James Bond sure, I don’t see why that could not be a move, but as a man. Miss Bond doesn’t have the same ring to it.” Controversy sparked after Lashana Lynch was tapped to star as the next Agent 007, the special agent designation that James Bond has always held. However, Lynch will not star in the next Bond film as Bond. She will only be given Bond’s 007 designation. Bond will still be portrayed by Daniel Craig. But the announcement that the James Bond film series is going with a female 007 has split fans, with some all-in for the new female spy and others leery of the change. Parks is in the latter camp. “I think that there are lots of movies already where you have a woman taking center stage, defeating men – and I like that,” Parks continued. “But I don’t feel that the James Bond franchise has to go there. They set a standard that has remained a classic film with a man as Bond – and that is how I think it should stay.” Parks also said Bond films have already led the industry by showcasing strong female and minority characters since the first film back in 1962. “The Bond franchise has gone out of the box with black actors and women of color more than any other franchise,” Parks told the Mail. “Eon’s outlook on life and the world has always been much broader than many of the big studios,” Parks said. “In Hollywood, production executives were looking at women who were sexually attractive to their societal circles. Cubby was one of only a few who saw beyond that – and they could see black actresses as character actresses.” Parks criticized old Hollywood back in the 70s for having “tunnel vision” on race and gender. But she noted that the British James Bond productions were more open to diversity. “Other cultures too were included in their stories,” she insisted. “People forget Bond married a Japanese woman in You Only Live Twice and then had me as the first black woman in the franchise in 1971.” “The Bond movies really did pave the way for the millions of people who watched the films at movie theaters or on TV to see a kaleidoscope of faces, different to their own. And over time these films do make a difference,” she concluded. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

characters down the road at Manchester's Home theatre. Othellomacbeth is a condensed version of both plays in the title, and the scenes not featuring women have been stripped out. Director Jude Christian, who has adapted the scripts, says it helps us see events from the points of view of characters like Desdemona, who is killed by her husband Othello after he is tricked into believing she has been unfaithful. "I had a lot of thoughts about what it means to direct Othello, which is essentially a play about a man who murders his wife," Christian says. "I knew that I wanted to go into Othello - not to rewrite, but I thought it would be interesting as a blunt instrument to remove all the scenes that didn't have women in them. "I wanted to see what it would be like for the audience to see the story through the eyes of Desdemona, who has so little information about why what's happening to her is happening to her, and why this man she was completely in love with has suddenly turned on her for, as far as she can see, no apparent reason." Image copyright Helen Murray Image caption Othellomacbeth opens at Home in Manchester before transferring to the Lyric Hammersmith Audiences will get a clearer view of how she "tries to engage with him" rather than being a passive victim. Meanwhile, the same process means Lady Macbeth becomes more human, Christian believes. And the director connects the two plays by suggesting a link between the women in Othello - Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca - and the three witches who seem to have a grudge against mankind at the start of Macbeth. It's coincidence that there are two productions focusing on Shakespeare's female characters in the same city at the same time. But they are both tapping into a desire to shift the perspective in the stories we tell. Christian says: "There is an increasing desire on the part of a lot of people to look at sections of the population who feel like they have been unrepresented in the history and the culture of our country. "And [we want] to look at the fact that we reinforce that downplaying of people because we keep performing plays by the same voices with the same characters and the same gender disparities over and over again." Artists have also become more willing to play around with sacred texts, she says. "It's about recognising that the world keeps moving onwards and it's exciting to keep taking things and reinvent them, not just to either stop performing them or to freeze them in the past." Queen Margaret is at the Royal Exchange until 6 October. Othellomacbeth is at Home until 29 September and at the Lyric Hammersmith in London from 5 October to 3 November. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].

Most students don't spend their Saturday morning attending a five-hour voter registration training. But with the midterm elections coming soon, getting people to come out and vote is increasingly important. Enter the Power of 18. This voter engagement campaign "builds on our history as the largest Latino-led voter registration organization in the country to energize and mobilize the Latino community to register and vote in November," according to the Power of 18 website. In South Mountain High's school cafeteria on Saturday, participating students sat around tables that were aptly decorated with red, white and blue. ELECTIONS:How to register to vote in AZ's November election — don't get left out The event, hosted by UnidosUS and Promise Arizona, brought in multiple speakers and panelists from different organizations who presented ways to get young people to register to vote. Gloria Montaño, the advocacy director at Chispa Arizona, said that she encourages young people to get out and register to vote even if they don't know everything on the ballot. "I remember when I turned 18 and voted for the first time. One of the things I learned is that you don't have to know everyone on the ballot. Just vote for those that you feel comfortable with, and vote for those that you know represent your values," Montaño said. She continued trying to push the students to not get discouraged. "We live in a democracy, and if we don't use that power to vote, what is going to continue to happen is other people are going to make our life decisions for us. The power of the vote is in our hands, and young people need to understand that there is strength in unity," said Montaño. Alexis Rodriguez, 18, spoke about his own experience as a youth voter. MORE:Arizona's'record' 33% voter turnout is nothing to celebrate. Do this instead "It's not enough that teachers and parents go out and advocate for this movement. It's also important that students, who are the ones affected, go out and vote. Let's change and let's be a part of history," Rodriguez said. When asked by another student about his thoughts on why voting is so important, Rodriguez brought up his ethnicity. "Specifically, in Arizona there is a lot of minority groups that are eligible to vote. It is important for all of us to go and vote because it is going to change our lives as we grow older and enter the work force. In order for people to know they are going to have a sustainable life, they need to go out and vote for people who are going to add to their life successes," said Rodriguez. He continued talking about how the most important way to get one's voice heard is to get involved and to go vote in every election whether it is local or national. "Let the youth build power because we are here to take over," Rodriguez said. The deadline to register to vote in Arizona is Oct. 9. MORE ON ARIZONA ELECTIONS:

situation. I related what I’d learned from Mutchler and he said: “You’ve got the general facts correct.” The problem, Wolfe said, is that TravelAssist “isn’t a reimbursement plan.” In other words, the coverage is based on TravelAssist making all the arrangements on a Good Sam member’s behalf, rather than paying the member back for any expenses incurred. “Everything needs to be approved up front,” Wolfe said. All well and good, I replied, but what if the member is incapacitated? How is he or she expected to get that up-front approval? Wolfe said the terms of the contract are the terms of the contract, although it’s possible Good Sam would waive the preapproval requirement on a case-by-case basis, even though it’s not contractually obligated to do so. He said Mutchler’s appeal is still pending as Good Sam continues to review her case. Amy Bach, executive director of the advocacy group United Policyholders, said she thinks Mutchler — and anyone in a similar position — should consider a lawsuit in the event of a denied claim. “It’s just common sense,” she said. “You can’t seek prior consent if you’re incapable of doing so. I cannot imagine any court disagreeing with that.” Wolfe described TravelAssist not as insurance, but as “an advocacy service” that helps coordinate care for Good Sam members if they run into trouble on the road. In that case, however, they shouldn’t offer what appear to be valuable benefits that could turn out to be worthless in real-world situations. The website for TravelAssist has a little image of a helicopter and promises “emergency medical transportation — to get you the care you need.” If that’s not a pledge that can be fulfilled in a reasonable manner, don’t offer it. Anyway, this story appears to have a happy ending, no thanks to Good Sam. As Mutchler was gathering extra documents this week as part of her TravelAssist appeal, she called Blue Cross to get a copy of the explanation of benefits for her Reno hospital stay. In speaking with a company rep, it turned out that the claim for her treatment hadn’t been processed correctly, and the insurer likely would cover both the hospitalization and the air ambulance. Mutchler said Thursday she was hopeful her health insurer would come through. If so, I can say something unusual for me: Good for you, Blue Cross. As for you, Good Sam: Bad form. David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to [email protected].

The US, Iran and Qasem Soleimani story explained in 400 words Published duration 7 January image copyright Getty Images image caption Qasem Soleimani was considered the second most powerful man in Iran before his death The assassination by the US of Iran's most powerful general caused tensions between the two countries to soar, raising fears of an all-out war. But what lies at the root of the crisis? Here are the basics. The US and Iran have long been foes. Problems can be traced to at least 1979, when Iran's US-backed shah was overthrown and the country became an Islamic republic. That year, amidst the fallout from the revolution, dozens of Americans were taken hostage inside the US embassy in the capital Tehran. Relations have been frosty ever since. There were signs of a diplomatic thaw in 2015, when Iran agreed a landmark deal to limit its nuclear programme, allaying international concerns. It did so in return for the lifting of tough economic sanctions. But the election of US President Donald Trump the following year posed a challenge. He hated the nuclear accord, which he branded "the worst deal ever negotiated". In 2018, he abandoned it altogether and reinstated US sanctions to force Iran's leaders to agree to a new deal - something they rejected, even as the Iranian economy was sent into a deep recession. image copyright Reuters image caption The US blamed Iran for a number of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last year Mr Trump stepped up the pressure in May 2019 by applying secondary sanctions on countries that continued to do business with Iran. Relations further deteriorated when six oil tankers were sabotaged in the Gulf of Oman in May and June. Washington accused Iran of being behind these attacks. Iran denied this. In July, Tehran started suspending some of the commitments it had made under the nuclear deal. Then, in late December, the US blamed an Iranian-backed militia for a rocket attack which killed an American contractor in northern Iraq. Washington retaliated by bombing bases associated with the militia in Iraq and Syria, killing at least 25 fighters. These bombings sparked a backlash in Iraq. The US embassy in the capital, Baghdad, was attacked by crowds of protesters. President Trump blamed Iran for orchestrating the attack and warned it would "pay a very big price". media caption Qasem Soleimani: Who was Iran's 'rock star' general? On 3 January, Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport. The general - who controlled Iran's proxy forces across the Middle East - was regarded as a terrorist by the Americans, who alleged he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops and was plotting "imminent" attacks. Iran vowed "severe revenge" for his death and said two days later that it had abandoned the last limit on its enrichment of uranium imposed by the nuclear deal. Mr Trump, meanwhile, warned the US would respond in the event of retaliation "perhaps in a disproportionate manner".

An American senator has alleged that Russia attempted to undermine the 2016 US presidential election with a propaganda campaign "on steroids". Virginia Senator Mark Warner made the accusations on Thursday during a US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Warner, who was a technology executive before entering politics, described a sweeping Russian campaign using trolls and botnets, or networks of hacked or infected devices, to disseminate large amounts of disinformation. "This Russian 'propaganda on steroids' was designed to poison the national conversation in America," Warner said. Warner, a Democrat, also alleged Russian news organisations such as RT and Sputnik "produced and peddled" disinformation to American audiences in hopes of damaging former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was seen as the frontrunner in the 2016 presidential vote. Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the accusations on Thursday, calling them "lies". When asked if Russia interfered in the US vote Putin said, "Read my lips: No." WATCH: Wiretaps, hacks and spin in Donald Trump's America President Donald Trump should uncover Russian activities during the election, Warner said, even as he criticised the US leader for what he called "wild and uncorroborated accusations" that his campaign was wiretapped. Warner's fellow Democrat Senator Ron Wyden also urged the Senate to "follow the money" on Russia, adding that real estate deals and money-laundering might mean the "Russian government may be only a step or two away" from American institutions. In the same hearing, cyber-security expert Clint Watts said Moscow-directed disinformation campaigns were "strategically leaked" to damage the presidential prospects of candidates from both political sides. Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute told Senator Marco Rubio that his presidential campaign was targeted by Russia. 'Trolling networks' Rubio was one of the rivals of then-candidate Donald Trump in the Republican presidential nomination. Rubio on Thursday confirmed that his former campaign advisers were unsuccessfully targeted by cyber-attacks in July 2016, and again within the past 24 hours. Watts also said that in the past week social media campaigns have targeted House Speaker Paul Ryan. He did not offer details but alleged the recent activities show Russia is continuing to seek further unrest among US democratic institutions, leaders, and their constituents. Later Watts told reporters the "trolling networks", which his research institute monitors, were disseminating propaganda about dissension in the ranks of the Republican Party over the vote for Ryan as Speaker of the House. There was no immediate comment from Ryan's office. Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Washington DC, said "the storm is just growing" in the US capital with different investigations looking into Russian spying and alleged links to the Trump campaign. Putin dismissed what he called "endless and groundless" accusations of Russian meddling in the election. He described the allegations as part of a domestic political struggle in the United States. Trump has also dismissed suggestions of links with Russia as Democratic Party sour grapes after his surprise November defeat of the party's candidate, Clinton.

« about » page of each PeerTube instance (which will now also display new statistics), on the sign-up page… as well as on the joinpeertube.org register! JoinPeertube.org is where you get your bearings! With over 100,000 videos and 20,000 accounts, it is safe to say that PeerTube has become popularized. It was high time we revamped joinpeertube.org so as to turn it into a front door to these videos, hosts and the federation. With the help of UI/UX professionals, we have imagined and shaped two user flows to using JoinPeertube.org : one for people who want to watch videos (and maybe sign-up), and another one for video makers who need a trustworthy host for their videos. Both of these paths may lead you to the register of public instances. You can sort them according to your preferences so as to find the one that meets your needs. This selecting is made possible by the answers given to the form mentioned earlier, which allows admins to better introduce their instance and to explain the project behind it to potential users. That being said the best solution is to have a look by your own means (as a side note, we find the site much prettier now!)… Please note that PeerTube now has its own documentation website, meant for both admins (to ease the software installation, maintenance and administration) or for regular users (whether it be for signing-up, managing your playlists or uploading videos). The future of PeerTube is still YOU! It would be impossible to name everyone who has contributed to the code, funding, design, translation, documentation, illustration and promotion of PeerTube… but the least we can do is to express our gratitude! After one year of development and maturation of the project, we are putting a lot of thoughts into its future. People have different wishes, you guys have given us a lot of ideas. All of the feedback we are receiving from you, particularly on the dedicated section to PeerTube on our forum (the best place for your suggestions!) is invaluable to us. Nowadays, we are imagining new improvements (to the interface, user experience, search engine, plug-in system), important tools, (mobile apps, videos about PeerTube), as well as new, powerful features. Would you like to easily remix online videos from your PeerTube account? to do livestreams? So do we! And we need your support for that! We are allowed to have all types of dreams and aspirations for PeerTube, but what is sure is that making come true will have a cost. The year we have spent developing PeerTube was funded in part by what was left of the June 2018 crowdfunding, but mostly by regular donations we receive for all of our projects. We will probably launch a new crowdfunding campaign just for PeerTube v3 in 2020. In the meantime, feel free to help PeerTube grow, to promote instances and videos you like, and to congratulate the whole community for how far we have come with this v2!

A presidential advisory committee today recommended that the US government stop any efforts to undermine encryption standards or attack commercial software. The panel's report (full text at Whitehouse.gov) comes in response to the National Security Agency leaks of Edward Snowden and makes 46 recommendations. Number 29 should please IT security researchers: We recommend that, regarding encryption, the US Government should: (1) fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards; (2) not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software; and (3) increase the use of encryption, and urge US companies to do so, in order to better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other storage. We reported in September on the NSA's uneasy relationship with encryption researchers, detailing how the agency has helped improve the encryption standards that secure Internet communications while in other cases undermining them. Government officials have routinely joined security researchers at technology conferences—this year, they were asked to stay away from DefCon, one of those annual events. While the White House isn't obligated to accept the advisory panel's recommendations, doing so could end any current or future efforts to insert backdoors into encryption standards. Security experts, including Bruce Schneier, have warned that the NSA's work has undermined the security of the Internet The recommendations wouldn't prevent the US from creating malware to attack its enemies (as it did with Stuxnet) but it would at least prevent the government from weakening commercial software. This could change how the NSA does business. One NSA program, revealed in the New York Times, seeks to "Insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks, and endpoint communications devices used by targets." In some instances, the committee said, it would be OK for the government to take advantage of zero-day vulnerabilities in order to collect intelligence. Zero-day attacks are known as such "because developers have had zero days to address and patch the vulnerability," the report noted. "US policy should generally move to ensure that Zero Days are quickly blocked, so that the underlying vulnerabilities are patched on US Government and other networks. In rare instances, US policy may briefly authorize using a Zero Day for high priority intelligence collection, following senior, interagency review involving all appropriate departments." The panel also said the United States should work with other countries to create international agreements that "increase confidence in the security of online communications." The US and other governments "should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry," and they "should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems." Governments should also "promote transparency about the number and type of law enforcement and other requests made to communications providers," which is something US technology companies have been advocating. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others have called upon the US government to end bulk collection of Americans' communications data, and they have asked for the right to reveal more information about the data requests they receive from the government. You can check out our coverage on the rest of the panel's recommendations here.

According to the sources quoted by Hindustan Times, Pakistan has asked China to lift its technical hold on Masood Azhar’s UN listing as a global terrorist if India agrees for a military de-escalation along the border and resume dialogue with Pakistan on all pending issues including Kashmir. Pakistan based terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad had claimed the responsibility of Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel lost their lives. Masood Azhar is founder and leader of JeM. The motion to designate him in the list of global terrorists was thwarted by China after it used its veto power to stop his listing for the fourth time. The time offered to China to provide a reason for putting its technical hold on Masood Azhar’s listing in ending this week after which the US may seek other means to get the terrorist banned, including an open discussion in the UN General Assembly, that might be potentially embarrassing for China. According to diplomats based out of New York, China has conveyed the Pakistani demands to the US but it has not gone down well with Washington. Echoing the belief that a nation cannot use terrorists in its backyard to negotiate with other countries, the Trump administration has reportedly conveyed that the listing of Azhar and India-Pakistan’s bilateral dialogue are not linked with each other. - Advertisement - Yesterday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had slammed China for its “Shameful hypocrisy” of protecting dreaded terrorists in the UN and subjecting millions of Uighur Muslims to abuse and detention in its territory. With China obstructing Azhar’s listing 4th time now, 3 countries of the P-5 group have asked Beijing to furnish specific reasons for the technical hold in two weeks. The deadline is going to expire this week and as per sources, the US is in no mood to relent on Azhar’s listing this time around. Pakistan’s response to the Pulwama attack had been rather controversial. Initially, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi admitted to Pakistani establishment’s links with JeM in an interview to the BBC. Pakistan PM Imran Khan had asked India to provide evidence of Pakistani involvement in the attack. However, yesterday Pakistan rejected the dossiers presented by the Indian government and denied its involvement in the attack. Following Pulwama attack, India has stationed its troops along its western border. Indian Air Force had also conducted surprise airstrikes deep inside Pakistan, in Balakot and killed hundreds of terrorists belonging to JeM. Most countries have backed India’s stance against terrorism and its response at Balakot. Pressure is mounting on Pakistan from all directions and it finds itself increasingly in an uncomfortable position. The desperation is palpable as Pakistan seeks to utilise its leverage against India by asking its all-weather ally China to force India on to discussion tables and end the hostilities along the border. However, as PM Modi had asserted before, India has been firm on its stand that no bilateral talks will be held with Pakistan as long as it continues to shelter and sponsor terrorists working against India.

Loic Remy: QPR striker missed out on move to Liverpool QPR manager Harry Redknapp has rubbished claims Loic Remy's move to Liverpool broke down over a failed medical. The France striker, 27, was nearing an £8.5million switch to Anfield before the Merseyside club pulled out - amid suggestions there were concerns over his fitness - but Redknapp admitted he is baffled by the news and suggested there were ulterior motives for Liverpool calling off the deal. Harry Redknapp says he's shocked at the collapse of Loic Remy's transfer to Liverpool - and insists that the striker is perfectly fit. Harry Redknapp says he's shocked at the collapse of Loic Remy's transfer to Liverpool - and insists that the striker is perfectly fit. Redknapp, who is pleased at the prospect of having the former Marseille forward back with Rangers, told a press conference: "He'll come back here. I only know what I've seen and heard and I don't really know how he's failed a medical. "He had a stringent medical here, one at Newcastle, one with the French team before the World Cup. He's never had a problem with his fitness - you couldn't meet a fitter lad. "I don't see there could be any issue with his fitness. Their loss is our gain. I've got a fantastic striker. More games that matter Click here to see Sky Sports’ unrivalled schedule of live Premier League fixtures "I said last year he's a striker capable of getting 20 goals in the Premier League and that's what we want him to do. I think he's one of the best strikers in the division. "It can't be a medical one because he's never been unfit. It's not possible. It certainly didn't make any sense - there has to be another reason. It can't be a medical issue. "There must have been some kind of breakdown or they've decided to move in another direction. Sky Sports News' Paul Gilmour reports from Harlington on the collapse of the Loic Remy transfer. Sky Sports News' Paul Gilmour reports from Harlington on the collapse of the Loic Remy transfer. "I'm sorry for the boy that his move to Liverpool didn't happen but from my point of view, I've got a great striker back here. In my opinion, he's one of the best strikers at the Premier League. He's a good lad and a good professional. "Liverpool is a football club that usually handle everything fantastically. I've never dealt with anybody better than them over the years. "However, all the talk of the medical doesn't make any sense to me." QPR had been rumoured to be targeting Watford striker Troy Deeney but Redknapp played down the speculation. He added when asked about the 26-year-old: "He was a player we enquired about and you make lots of enquiries but at the moment, there's nothing happening."

For the first time in nearly 17 years, bright blue Union Jack flags commemorating a pivotal World War II battle will again fly high on Navy ships -- a move meant to symbolize U.S. naval might as adversaries pose new threats across the globe. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson announced the change to the Navy's official maritime flag on Thursday. The blue Union Jack flag, which features 50 white stars representing each state, will return to jackstaffs on June 4 in honor of the historic Battle of Midway. "Make no mistake: we have entered a new era of competition," Richardson said in a statement. "We must recommit to the core attributes that made us successful at Midway: integrity, accountability, initiative and toughness." The Union Jack will officially replace the First Navy Jack, the service's current maritime flag that features red and white stripes with a rattlesnake and the words "Don't Tread on Me." Navy ships began flying that flag in place of the Union Jack on Sept. 11, 2002, while fighting the Global War on Terror. Sailors around the world will raise the Union Jack on all Navy ships at morning colors on June 4, according to Navy administrative message 039/19, which was signed by Richardson and details the changes. There's just one exception: Only the Navy's oldest deployable warship -- the amphibious-command ship Blue Ridge -- will be allowed to fly the First Navy Jack. "The Navy will reestablish the custom in which the commissioned ship in active status having the longest total period in active status, other than USS Constitution, will display the First Navy Jack until decommissioned or transferred to inactive status," Richardson wrote. A version of the Union Jack first flew in 1777 and was updated with new white stars as more states joined the union. It symbolizes "the cumulative strength of our nation and of our Navy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," Richardson said. Displaying the flag is also a nod to the sea service's rich heritage. "A version of the Union Jack flew when Commodore [Matthew] Perry formally established relations with the Empire of Japan. A version of the Union Jack flew in harbors around the world as the Great White Fleet circumnavigated the globe. A version of the Union Jack flew in ports throughout the Pacific as the Navy island-hopped its way across the vast ocean, and in the Atlantic as the Navy supported operations to liberate the European continent," Richardson said. The Navy is a symbol that projects American values to the world, he added. "For more than 240 years, the Union Jack, flying proudly from jackstaffs aboard U.S. Navy warships, has symbolized these strengths," Richardson said. The new policy won't affect those who wear the First Navy Jack patch as an optional component on certain Navy working uniforms, according to the administrative message. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.

James Bond-like spy in the way he’s described by the officials and media people involved in portraying his dossier as a highly credible intelligence product. But the truth is far different. Scrutiny and investigation of his work have demonstrated that much of Steele’s dossier is unprovable and beyond verification, and also revealed the shoddy and slipshod manner in which he compiled it. As I have discussed in previous columns, Steele’s investigative work on his dossier was so incompetent that he was sued for claiming that Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev was involved in the hacking of the DNC emails. Steele’s ‘evidence’ for including that claim in his dossier was–and I’m not making this up, I swear–an anonymous blog post from the now-defunct CNN website “iReports.” How crazy did things get in the run-up to the 2016 election and then afterward, when Trump won, with FBI officials seeking dirt on the Trump campaign from paid political operatives who they must have known were in the employ of Clinton’s campaign? Not only were federal officials, who should know better, soliciting and accepting politically tainted fake evidence from political operatives to use as pretexts for launching investigations, they also appear to have been undermining the laws and protocols that are supposed to prevent intelligence surveillance abuses. There is a very high standard of evidence that must be met to get approval from the FISC to engage in legal surveillance of a U.S. citizen, and it’s become clear that little, if any effort at all, was expended to verify any of this information before it was used in the warrant application against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has seen the full Page FISA warrant and has claimed for more than two years that it contains many of the now-debunked and unverified Steele dossier allegations. It’s abundantly clear at this point that the Steele dossier allegations against people such as Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Page, and Michael Cohen are fake, so how did they end up being used in investigations and FISA warrants? There are safeguards and barriers and laws that are supposed to prevent exactly what happened here. The only way that could have occurred is if the system of safeguards was deliberately subverted. One person couldn’t have pulled this off; this had to have been a group effort. It couldn’t have been a group of low-level staffers, either. I believe this goes straight to the top of the DOJ and the FBI under former President Barack Obama. This is why I expect Horowitz’s next report to hit Washington with a powerful impact. Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Did these celebrities pick outfits that look like Quest bars? Or did our Quest Bars take inspiration from these celebrity outfits? Take a look and you’ll see what we mean… 1. Kourtney Kardashian & Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Image Source: Getty / Tommaso Boddi Kourtney Kardashian’s “oatmeal-chocolate-chic” outfit looks strikingly similar to our brand-new Oatmeal Chocolate Chip bar… 2. Kylie Jenner & Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Image Source: @kyliejenner – Instagram Not to be outdone, Kylie Jenner went one step further with this outfit which is basically a wearable version of America’s Favorite Protein Bar. 3. Rihanna & Strawberry Cheesecake Image Source: Getty / Christopher Polk “Ri Ri’s ravishing red dress at the Grammys was almost as ravishing as Quest’s Strawberry Cheesecake protein bar.” – someone at the Grammys (probably). 4. Vanessa Hudgens & Cookies and Cream Image Source: Getty / Valerie Macon The resemblance between Vanessa Hudgens’ groovy crop top & skirt ensemble and our Cookies & Cream bar is… uncannily delicous. 5. Jessica Alba & White Chocolate Raspberry Image Source: markdsikes.com Jessica Alba went all out with this wonderful pink Reem Acra gown… that is probably, literally inspired by our wonderful White Chocolate Raspberry bar. 6. Hayden Panettiere & Chocolate Brownie Image Source: ouchpress.com Hayden Panettiere of Heroes & Nashville fame dressed in this gorgeous brown gown that is almost as delicious as our Chocolate Brownie bar. 7. Blake Lively & Mixed Berry Bliss Image Source: Getty / Kevork Djansezian Blake Lively’s beautiful red carpet look at the “BAFTA Brits To Watch” event looks berry similar to our Mixed Berry Bliss bar… 8. Emma Stone & Lemon Cream Pie Image Source: Getty / Dave Hogan It doesn’t take much to put two and two together here. Emma Stone’s Atelier Versace dress at The Amazing Spider-Man 2 premiere in London –– clearly resembling our Lemon Cream Pie bar. 9. Maria Menounos & Mint Chocolate Chunk Image Source: Getty / Jeffrey Mayer Last but not the least… mint green may not be the easiest color to pull off –– but Maria Menounos pulled it off much like the wrapper of a Mint Chocolate Chunk bar in the hands of a mint chocolate chip monster. So what do you think came first? These amazing celebrity outfits that look a lot like our Quest Bars, or our Quest Bars that inspired all of these outfits? We have our guess, but let us know your thoughts in the comments below! OR make your own and tag a friend on our Facebook page!

Chuck Ross, DCNF Pete Buttigieg’s struggles with minority voters has sapped morale at his campaign, according to a New York Times report, so much so that a campaign official circulated a survey earlier this month for minority campaign staffers inviting them to air grievances about their white colleagues According to The Times, Buttigieg campaign national engagement coordinator Raven Hollins circulated the survey on Jan. 1 asking minority campaign staffers to describe negative experiences with white staff members. “Please only fill out this survey if you identify as a Person of color,” the survey reads, according to The Times. The responses, the survey said, “will be used to inform our white colleagues about privilege and microaggression.” “Microaggression” is a term popular with liberals and progressives that describes small slights and indignities people experience in day-to-day interactions in public or at work. “In the workplace, have you ever experienced the following from a white colleague,” the survey asks. Its examples of microaggressions includes being “left off a relevant email chain” or having “been interrupted/talked over.” Buttigieg staffers circulated a survey of microaggressions on the campaign. Buttigieg staffers circulated a survey of microaggressions on the campaign. “Please only fill out this survey if you identify as a Person of color,” it read. Answers “will be used to inform our white colleagues about privilege and microaggression.” https://t.co/UulPh9UkaA pic.twitter.com/oCRELaOopT — Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) January 28, 2020 The survey was one example cited in the Times piece of minority staffers voicing frustration with the campaign’s racial dynamics. The article also describes a Jan. 2 meeting about campaign diversity, and the struggles the campaign has had recruiting minority staffers. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has struggled to gain support from black and Latino voters even as he is faring well in national polls, and in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has come under scrutiny for his firing in 2012 of South Bend’s police chief. He also refused to cancel a fundraiser last year hosted by a Chicago lawyer who attempted to block the release of police camera footage of the shooting of Laquad McDonald. The campaign did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment about the results of the survey, including how many staffers participated and whether it revealed widespread microaggressions. “We’re proud of the staffers who stood up and made their voices heard to help our campaign improve and be more inclusive,” Buttigieg said in a statement to The Times. “We realize that we can always do better and these honest discussions are how we make progress, and we will continue to provide our staff the safe space to have them.”

show. With characters. Not just walkbys. It felt great, man. You didn’t really realise for the first couple of episodes. You’re just happy to be working. But then you’re looking round the table one lunchtime, and you’re like: hey, there’s a lot of black people here, wow! And we all have characters. Will it ever be like this again? I don’t know, but you gotta hope.” If nothing else, The Wire’s roll call of well-rounded black characters - making up the majority of the cast - highlights just how clueless most TV shows are on this front... WP: “To see the images of young black folks in the inner city coming from Hollywood? Pfff. Those little paper dolls they send out, those one-dimensional stereotypes of us... That’s bullshit compared to the real in-depth investigation of these people. Sometimes it’s little things, you know? I had a part once on a show, and one of my lines was ‘I came home that day and I saw mother dead.’ That got a rewrite to: ‘I came home that day and I saw momma dead’. And I said, ‘Black people say mother! You don’t have to be afraid of that! It doesn’t have to be momma just because I’m black!” And they were like, ‘Are you sure?’ Now that may seem silly, but I’ve been on shows where we literally had executives ask, ‘Uh, do black men kiss their kids?’ They actually said that! It’s like - do you think we’re not human or something? So if [The Wire] actually changes people’s perceptions, that’s very important.” And now it’s finally over? Clarke Peters describes it as “like experiencing a death”. Lance Reddick admits to “crying like a baby” after his final scene. Sonja Sohn is more upbeat... SS: “We all felt that this was a mission. We all realised how important this show was. And that we got to be a part of it, we got to bring some sort of enlightenment...We got to move people. Just knowing that you served a brilliant purpose in your life for five years - on a television show? It was tremendous.” Pity about the lack of awards, though. WP: “It’d be great to get the awards, but you know man... years from now, when people look back and start calling off the best shows? We’re gonna be on that list. We’re gonna be like The Bicycle Thief of television.” When he says that, everybody laughs, Pierce included. Partly because the tongue-in-cheek way he says it is just naturally funny. But also because it’s true.

A new city report says Edmonton needs $250,000 in new revenue to pay for enforcing the Animal Protection Act, from the cost of peace officers and veterinary technicians to adding capacity to the 311 call centre. City councillors will consider a tax increase, hiking the pet licence fee, or both, to help cover the total expected $800,000 annual price tag. The city took over enforcement from the Edmonton Humane Society in February after the non-profit said it didn't have the expertise to carry out "police-like activities". The report, headed before the Community and Public Services Committee on Aug. 21, puts forward three options to bridge the funding shortfall beginning in 2020: hike the pet licence fee by $2.50 a year; increase the tax levy by 0.015 per cent; or, a combination of both. Councillor Bev Esslinger says she is leaning toward option three. Esslinger, who also sits on the committee, says sharing financial responsibility between pet owners and the general public is "a reasonable approach." "Our responsibility is to make sure we're looking at our city as a whole, so I think the combination made sense to me," she said. In May, council approved a one-time $230,000 funding boost to cover part of this year's enforcement cost. City cut grant dollars to humane society The city has come up with another $550,000 in funding for enforcement this year by cutting funds to the Edmonton Humane Society and reassigning peace officers from cannabis to animal control, the report says. The city reduced its annual operating grant to Edmonton Humane Society by $184,000 — just shy of the $200,000 the agency was spending on enforcement before it pulled out of the contract with the city. A previous city report said the humane society's $200,000 enforcement budget was insufficient to meet the city's needs going forward. The Animal Protection Act is designed to protect mistreated animals and hold negligent owners to account. While provincial legislation, it falls on municipalities to enforce the act. Cannabis officers reallocated to animal control The city has also reallocated three peace officers from cannabis to animal control enforcement this year, shifting about $360,000 worth of funding. Esslinger says the decision reflects the limited cannabis-related infractions and complaints since legalization in October. The city issued just six tickets for cannabis bylaw infractions between October 2018 and April 2019, compared to 231 tickets for tobacco. "It really shows me that we haven't had to enforce cannabis to the extent we were prepared to and that we've been able to re-allocate because of that," Esslinger said. Meanwhile, the city received 2,430 calls related to Animal Protection Act and conducted 876 investigations in the five months after taking over enforcement, according to the report. The city could get over 5,800 calls if those numbers keep pace for the rest of the year. Edmonton Humane Society, by comparison, received 3,513 calls and conducted 761 investigations in 2018.

What is a Men’s Shed? Men’s Sheds are community spaces for men to connect, converse and create. The activities are often similar to those of garden sheds, but for groups of men to enjoy together. They help reduce loneliness and isolation, but most importantly, they’re fun. Find out more about them. Who runs Men’s Sheds? Most of the Sheds in the UK are run by the men that use them, in a bottom-up approach. This grassroots model can often bring about stronger feelings of fulfilment and achievement in the men that develop them, and may lead to better sustainability as they often don’t start with large cash injections. This isn’t always the case though. A small number of Sheds are run by organisations like Age UK and have been around for years. Are Men’s Sheds just for older people? No, but most of the men that attend them are retired. This is because a life after employment can be difficult and men often feel that they’ve lost their sense of purpose and place in the world. They can miss the routine and camaraderie between colleagues that often comes with working life. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation which can be dangerous for their health and wellbeing. However, recognising that age isn’t the only factor in loneliness and isolation, and that there is more to Men’s Sheds, for example sharing skills, informal learning and enjoyment, some Sheds have younger members. Can women go? There are many Men’s Sheds in the UK with female members, but most Men’s Sheds exist for the benefits they bring to men’s health and wellbeing. Therefore, it’s really down to each individual Shed whether they invite women, or have separate days for women to join in. One of the best things about Men’s Sheds is they facilitate conversation about subjects that men might usually find difficult to take about. Some men find it easier to open up when it’s just men, but that’s not always the case. Is there a Men’s Shed near me? You can find your nearest shed using our Find a Shed tool. If there isn’t one nearby, why not start one. We’re here to help! How do I join a Men’s Shed? Find your nearest one using our Find a Shed tool and click the green Sheds to find contact details. Give them a call and arrange a visit. If you get stuck, call us on 0300 772 9626. How old do you have to be to go to a Men’s Shed? It depends on the Shed, but because of the nature of the activities, you’ll usually need to be at least 18. What can I do if there isn’t a Men’s Shed near me? Start one! We’re here to help.

tricky areas. You can also use the touch-screen for the hacking mini-game, using your fingers to progress, and to punch in codes. Meanwhile, for weapons that have a scope, such as the sniper rifle, you can use your telly to centre on your target, then enter a precision mode using the touch-screen, which displays the cross-hair. You have the impression when playing that the Wii U GamePad is part of Adam Jensen and one of his useful augmentations. It doesn't break the pace Deus Ex executive game director Jean-Francois Dugas You can use the Wii U GamePad touch-screen for the hacking mini-game. Some may wonder why Eidos Montreal is even bothering creating a Wii U version of Deus Ex in the first place. After all previous ports of games that released on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, such as Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City, hardly set the world on fire. According to Dugas, though, the development team saw the Wii U as an opportunity to create this "ultimate edition" of the game. "It's a new console," he says. "It has a lot of new interesting features in terms of the controller. "But also in terms of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we had been talking for a long time about creating this ultimate edition where there would be new content and we would have a chance to revisit some of the aspects of the game. We thought with the release of the Wii U it was a great opportunity to do that, to take advantage of this new console but also create the ultimate package for the game." Included in this "ultimate package" is all of the DLC, but it has been retrofitted to slot seamlessly into the main game. The Missing Link DLC is now included in the main story rather than separated out, and the pre-order bonus mission to rescue Tong's son is popped in, too. There's Half-Life 2-style director's commentary, what amounts to some eight hours of chat from Eidos Montreal developers. Icons dotted around the world can activate this voice over, and you're free to continue playing as you listen. "We really did quite a lot to make this package very unique," Dugas says, "and give the old fans who already enjoyed Human Revolution a new purpose to enjoy it again." Will those who played Human Revolution when it released nearly two years ago buy the game again for Wii U? It seems a hard sell, despite what on the face of it is an impressive revamp of what is a brilliant game. But a more important question for many may be whether the Director's Cut will ever make its way to PC, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Of course, the GamePad-specific features will remain exclusive to Nintendo's console, but there seems no reason why much of the additional content, such as the director's commentary, integrated DLC and improved boss battles, couldn't be sold to PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers. Dugas says he can't comment on that at the moment. We shall see.

Do you have any comment, then, on what qualities we might look for in a candidate, so that we maximize our chances of electing a leader of destiny? One thing that we know from history is that the great presidents are never predicted as being great. They are elected in a political crucible. While supporters are convinced he is going to be great—or she; someday we will have a woman—his detractors and opponents will be absolutely convinced that he is going to be a total and utter disaster. Even after he is succeeding, they are going to say he is a disaster. You can never really predict what a president is going to do or how effective he is going to be. Lincoln was considered a total country bumpkin from out there in rural Illinois. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously judged Franklin Roosevelt as having a first-rate temperament and a second-rate intellect. Ronald Reagan was viewed as a failed movie actor who just read his lines from 3-by-5 cards. And all three were great presidents. What idea are you turning to next? I wrote a history of the James Polk presidency [A Country of Vast Designs] and how the country moved west and gained all of that western and southwestern territory, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and then California to Texas. I am fascinated now by the subsequent time in our history when we busted out of our continental confines and went out into the world in the Spanish-American War. I am looking at the presidency of William McKinley and the frothy optimism of the country at that time when we decided to become something of an imperial power. This interview series focuses on big thinkers. Without knowing whom I will interview next, only that he or she will be a big thinker in their field, what question do you have for my next interview subject? I guess a big question I would have in terms of the state of the country is, why is the country in such a deadlock? And how in the world are we going to get out of the crisis that is a result of that deadlock? From my last interviewee, Frank Partnoy, a University of San Diego professor and author of Wait: The Art and Science of Delay: How do you know what you know? What is it about your research and experience and background that leads you to a degree of certainty about your views? With what degree of confidence do you hold that idea? I am not a young man. I have been around a long time. I had certainty when I was young, but I have had a lot of my certitudes shaken over the years. But, if you have enough of that, you tend to accumulate at least a few observations about the world that seem pretty solid and grounded. So, you go with them. You have to take it on faith that you have seen enough and you know enough and you have certain principal perceptions of how things work and how events unfold and how the thesis-antithesis leads to synthesis in politics or government or history. And, so you pull it together as best you can. Ultimately, the critics will determine how successful you were.

SO FAR in this, the second season of Major League Ultimate (MLU), the Boston Whitecaps, last season’s champs, are leading the eastern league, while the San Francisco Dogfish, whom they faced in the first season’s championship game, are once again top dogs in the western league. Will they clash again at next July’s finale? The excitement is almost overwhelming. Yet incredibly, many Americans still do not realise that “ultimate”, or formalised Frisbee-flinging, is now a serious sport: in the championship game, held in Philadelphia this July, leaflets were handed out explaining that games are played seven-a-side, typically on an American football field with the posts removed. Players score by catching a disc (often with an athletic flourish) in the opponent’s end-zone. Plastic discs have been chucked across beaches since before the second world war. Frisbee, still the best-known brand, was registered in the 1950s, and attempts to codify the game’s rules date back to the 1960s. But only last year did MLU begin as the sport’s first centrally managed professional league. “We wanted to create a spectator sport from what has largely been a player-driven experience,” says Nic Darling, an MLU official. However, an older organising body, USA Ultimate (USAU), has also been working to professionalise the sport. It has created the Triple-Crown Tour, a series of tournaments for elite teams (which operates somewhat like European football’s Champions League but is separate from the MLU). Before this, “it was random teams in random cities, no one was ever sure who was going to play,” says USAU’s chief, Tom Crawford. “It was impossible to sell that.” In March ESPN, a big sports broadcaster owned by Disney, bought the rights to broadcast the tour in full, for an undisclosed amount. Now USAU is seeking a big-name sponsor. Small firms are benefiting from the sport’s growth. Five Ultimate makes the official kit (baggy shorts and shirt, made of stretchy fabric) for hundreds of teams worldwide. Started in 2006 by five siblings in a Seattle garage, it now employs 23 full-time staff. Ultiapps is a mobile app that allows coaches to track players’ performance. Its data have been used to power MLU’s online fantasy league. Tushar Singh, one of Ultiapp’s founders, thinks that a whole new economy can form around ultimate. “People can start making livings as funds are injected at a sponsorship level,” he says. Unlike basketball and baseball, ultimate has no millionaire stars—players get modest stipends and travel expenses. But surely this will come. Chucking a Frisbee about may seem frivolous to some—but there was a time when throwing a big orange ball through a hoop was also seen as just a bit of pleasant exercise, and no way to make a living.

I have 268 passwords on 268 different websites. At least that’s what my password manager says. I actually stopped saving new passwords a while back, so the real number of passwords I should change now that Heartbleed has been revealed is even higher than that. How many of those passwords do you think I’m going to change? It took me 10 minutes just to find the change password form for my bank! What about the average computer user who uses the same password for every website and doesn’t understand the details of the exploit? How many passwords will they change? Not very many. Everybody knows that most passwords will remain unchanged. Yet our collective response to Heartbleed has been to patch our servers and email users asking them to do something we know most of them won’t do. Here’s what our response should have been: ALTER TABLE users DROP COLUMN password; It turns out that passwords are obsolete, and they have been for a long time. Like the occasional pay phone you find in the back of a run-down restaurant, passwords have been unnecessary for years. The difference is that everyone laughs and reminisces when they see a pay phone, but nobody does that when they see a password field. But they should. There are two separate technologies that have made passwords obsolete, and they aren’t the ones you would think. You may have guessed fingerprint scanners. Or voice recognition. Or maybe iris scanners. Nope. The technologies that made passwords obsolete have nothing to do with biometrics. And they have been mainstream for much longer. Passwords are obsolete because of email and SMS. Specifically, the ability to send an email or SMS to users reliably and quickly. In theory, we’ve had that ability for a long time. And with the rise of services like Twilio for SMS and Mandrill for emails, it’s incredibly easy. The basic idea is that instead of using a password to authenticate each user, a temporary secret code is sent to them over a secure channel. Email or SMS is that (mostly) secure channel. It’s almost as if the backend server makes up a temporary, one-use password each time a user wants to log in and whispers it in their ear. The interesting thing is that we already use exactly this flow for password reset emails. This is why I previously recommended taking advantage of this so you could stop remembering your passwords. My argument was mostly from the perspective of convenience though. I assume you’re using a different password for every website. There’s no way you will remember all of those passwords, and it is pretty inconvenient to have to put every single one of them into a password manager. Especially on a mobile device. So instead, you make up random passwords, immediately forget them, and use the password reset flow next time you need to log in. But the recent Heartbleed bug highlights the fact that hacking password reset flows for convenience is not good enough. We need to convince websites to stop using passwords altogether.

Advertising Read more Washington (AFP) President Donald Trump said Tuesday that there is no need for FBI involvement in the scandal threatening to derail his pick for a coveted place on the US Supreme Court. "I don't think the FBI should be involved because they don't want to be involved," Trump told reporters at the White House. Conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh appeared set to sail through Senate confirmation for the vacancy on the nation's top court until a California professor publicly accused him of having sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers almost four decades ago. Trump repeated earlier statements that he is in favor of allowing both the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, and Kavanaugh to speak before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The dueling testimony had been expected to take place Monday in a piece of blockbuster Washington theater, putting both Trump's bid to tilt the Supreme Court to the right and political momentum ahead of November midterm congressional elections into play. However, Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Republican-dominated judiciary committee, said Tuesday that Ford's presence was not confirmed. "We have reached out to her in the last 36 hours three or four times by email, and we've not heard from them, so it kind of raises the question do they want to, do they want to come to the public hearing or not?" he told political blog hughhewitt.com. Kavanaugh has strongly denied the incident in which Ford says he pinned her down and covered her mouth while trying to undress her when he was 17 and she 15. - 'Speak up and speak out' - Trump, who has repeatedly brushed off allegations of his own sexual misconduct, has so far stood by the judge and on Tuesday he again called him "outstanding." He added that Kavanaugh was "anxious" to answer the accusations against him, while acknowledging that the testimony would hold up his confirmation. "We will delay the process until it's finished out," Trump said. "We want to get to the bottom of everything. We want everybody to be able to speak up and speak out." Debra Katz, a lawyer for Ford -- who only came forward publicly on Sunday after trying to keep her name hidden for more than a month -- had said earlier she was ready to speak under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Expectations of a showdown have led to comparisons with the lurid and high-stakes 1991 Senate hearing on Clarence Thomas, the conservative Supreme Court justice accused of repeated sexual harassment by a former assistant, Anita Hill. Thomas was eventually confirmed to the court. On Monday, the FBI explained that it had been made aware of the allegation against Kavanaugh, but said it had not taken action because it did not involve "any potential federal crime." "The FBI's role in such matters is to provide information for the use of the decision makers." The agency's exhaustive background checks into Kavanaugh, as a Supreme Court nominee, were aimed at checking "whether the nominee could pose a risk to the national security of the United States," the FBI said. © 2018 AFP

Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday strongly pitched for ending the wretched practice of female foeticide as he adopted Jayapur village in his Lok Sabha constituency, urging villagers to give up dependence on governments for solving their problems. Touching on a host of issues from potholed roads to female foeticide and crumbling social structure, he regretted that condition of villages have not improved in the last 60 years and blamed policies formulated in Delhi and Lucknow for it. He said "big people" in the last 60 years made such big talk that these could not be executed on ground. "I, a small man, will bring about big things through my small talk." Taking note of the presence of large number of women among the crowd, Modi condemned the practice of female foeticide and said "those who look upon the girl child as a liability should ponder as to how will mankind survive if we are left in a world with no women". "If we kill girl child in the mother's womb, then what will happen to the world. If only 800 girls are born against 1000 boys, then 200 boys will remain unmarried. Will government do this job?" he said addressing villagers as he asked them not to depend on government for everything. "Our villagers need to give up the notion that it is the government that is the doer and they are only beneficiaries. The Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana is an effort in that direction. It aims to empower villagers and provide them with opportunities to exercise these choices", he said adopting the village under the MPs Model Village scheme. "I am confident that our villagers have the ability to shape their own destiny through their own entrepreneurial skills and hard work", the PM said, evoking applause from residents of the village who had assembled at the ground several hours before Modi's arrival. The Prime Minister won many hearts when he got up from his seat to adjust the mike for the village head Durga Devi. Referring to a recent report which found that 40 per cent of children died young in a neighbouring country as they did not wash their hands before eating, Modi said villagers should pledge that they would not let their kids eat without washing hands. Recalling his meeting over high tea with top bureaucrats after Diwali, he said he told them to spend a few days in the place of their first posting to see if conditions of these places have improved while they rose to such high positions. "I want to bring about a awakening so that those moving ahead in life should see to it that those who have played a role in their rise should also progress," he said. The MPs' Model Village Scheme will help MPs and government officials understand the needs of villages so that they could know whether policies needed to change and if yes what kind of changes should come about. Dismissing various reports about the "reasons" behind his adoption of Jayapur village, Modi said the only reason was that this was the first village in Varanasi constituency whose name he heard of after BJP announced his candidature for the seat for Lok Sabah elections.

to 24 months in prison for making erroneous statements on an employment visa petition for an alien she claimed was going to work for a local respiratory hospital. … Court documents in the case allege that for nearly a decade Tabafunda used the names of nonexistent companies and non-profit organizations in fraudulent employment-based, non-immigrant visa petitions submitted to USCIS and DOL. According to the indictment, which was handed down in November 2012, Tabafunda falsely claimed her clients were being sought for positions by prominent organizations, including City of Hope, Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Among the jobs listed on the fraudulent employment visa petitions were budget analysts, clinical research specialists and “health educators.” …. According to court documents, Tabafunda charged her clients anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 to file visa petitions on their behalf. Most of Tabafunda’s clients were Philippine nationals who originally entered the United States on tourist visas. US college grads lose jobs, careers & salaries b/c companies' have imported 1.5 million+ low-wage, indentured, non-immigrant, perma-temporary visa-workers. Media ignores their peers' losses but displays noble concern for migrants. Wall St. laughs #HR1044 https://t.co/4TIUFzhC9b — Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) March 2, 2019 The extensive fraud is largely being ignored by Congress, even as it pushes for greater use of foreign workers instead of Americans. For example, North Dakota’s GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer, Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee, and Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck, are pushing a pair of bills — H.R. 1044 and S. 386 — that would fast-track Indian and Chinese OPT students into green cards and citizenship. Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after high school or university. The federal government then imports roughly 1.1 million legal immigrants, refreshes a resident population of at least 1.5 million white-collar guest workers and roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers, and it also tolerates about eight million illegal workers. In 2019, because of catch-and-release rules mandated by Congress and the courts, the federal government also will likely release at least 350,000 Central American laborers into the U.S. job market, even as at least 500,000 more migrants sneak past U.S. border defenses or overstay their visas. This federal policy of using legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth for investors works because it shifts enormous wealth from young Americans towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar graduates and blue-collar foreign labor. This cheap labor economic policy forces Americans to compete even for low wage jobs, it widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Sign up NOW for our daily Villa newsletter direct to your inbox Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email Stiliyan Petrov has politely suggested the claret and blue faithful should end their emotional 19th minute tribute to him, saying: “We all have to move on.” Villa supporters and other football fans have come together in support of the inspirational former captain throughout his brave battle against acute leukaemia. During each home and away game since he was diagnosed with the disease, the 19th minute has been a cue for loud applause and the chanting of his name. Petrov is now in remission and after being forced to retire from playing has taken up a role assisting Gordon Cowans coach Villa’s under-21 development squad. Manager Paul Lambert told fans at a forum last week that the time had come to stop the tribute because ‘Stan’ had won his gruelling fight against cancer. And Petrov has now admitted that “we all have to move on” after admitting how moved and humbled he and his family have been by the warm gesture of goodwill. “Fans have asked me about it and I want to make clear that it was a great thing from the Villa fans, an unbelievable gesture which meant so much to me and my family through some of the toughest periods we had to endure,” Petrov added. “The fans have shown me so much love, support and respect and I will hold this forever in my heart. “But we all have to move on and I have no problem with this. In fact, I know they will always be beside me, they’re with me and I’m in their thoughts. That’s a precious and very humbling thing. “When I went through the toughest times they stood beside me and I’ll never forget this. “I know the fans will support the team this season in the same way they supported me because they showed how united they are and, as a club, we are looking forward together to the kind of exciting season it promises to be.” Petrov will be pulling on his boots for the first time in almost a year and a half as part of a Stiliyan XI against a Celtic XI in a charity match at Celtic Park on September 8. Lambert, his former teammate and midfield partner with the Bhoys, will also be taking part in the game and Petrov said: “I’m really happy that the manager has agreed to play a part in my game on September 8. “The way he looks he might be ready to play the whole 90 minutes!”. “If the training goes well for me, who knows? I’m definitely working hard and getting fitter to play a part in the game and I can’t wait for it. “I’m really excited and I’m really excited about launching my foundation."

I’m not sure.” Mx. Moore urged Pride March officials to hire private security for future marches until relations improve. They invoked the memory of a friend, Layleen Polanco, a transgender woman who was found dead in her cell on Rikers Island in June. She was being held in the jail because she could not afford bail on misdemeanor assault charges. Mx. Moore’s views echoed the organizers of today’s alternative march, the Queer Liberation March, which began at 9:30 a.m. and was organized by groups with the same concerns about the Pride March’s police presence. Image The actor Indya Moore was a grand marshal at the Pride March. Credit... Calla Kessler/The New York Times The dissident group banned officers in uniform from joining its march and asked the department for a “minimum” presence in patrolling the event. Pride March officials have called the police presence necessary to maintain safety, given the large crowds. Police Department officials issued an apology for the Stonewall raid this month. Organizers of the dissident march criticized the Pride March for becoming essentially an advertising showcase for floats sponsored by major corporations that distract from the message of Stonewall. Mx. Moore echoed some of that criticism, and singled out T-mobile, the largest corporate sponsor for this year’s Pride March. “It’s really important,” they said, “for our friends at T-Mobile, and any other brands that are shining bright with our rainbow colors, to make sure they look out for grassroots organizations that are helping the black and trans women that we see every day on the train that we criticize for being sex workers.” Read more June 30, 2019, 12:43 p.m. ET June 30, 2019, 12:43 p.m. ET By Michael Gold and The Pride March steps off. Image What’s a parade without confetti? The Pride March in Manhattan kicked off at noon on Sunday. Credit... Jeenah Moon/Reuters And we’re off! At exactly noon, with the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — a tribute to a far more muted flag than the one lining the streets of New York — the Pride March began. Cheers rang out from the barricades as rainbow confetti was blasted over the crowd that was packed up and down Fifth Avenue. Then a set of rainbow balloon arches, which featured the light blue and pink colors of the transgender pride flag, were lowered, and the marchers moved forward. At the front of the parade were members of the Gay Liberation Front, an early L.G.B.T.Q. rights group that included people who participated in the Stonewall uprising 50 years ago. A sweaty crowd clapped and waved in the humid summer heat as they, and other grand marshals of the parade, passed. One marcher, who was 6-feet-tall and wearing nothing but aqua green shorts and a miniature top hat, applied lipstick dramatically using the reflection of an onlooker’s aviator sunglasses. Read more

Anne Graham Lotz, the evangelist daughter of Billy Graham, warned in an interview with Christian broadcaster Janet Mefferd last month that the terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino and “things that are happening in our weather” are “wake-up calls” from God to Christians who have turned away from Him and failed to stop such things as advances in LGBT rights in America. Lotz told Mefferd that conservative Christians have to “stop being judgmental and stop being self-righteous and stop pointing our finger at them” and instead take on some of the blame for what she sees as a turning away from God. She pointed to the negative reaction to North Carolina’s anti-LGBT bill HB2, saying that it is “evidence of rebellion in the human heart against God.” “When we look at our nation and we are just provoking God’s judgment,” she said, “and He is righteous and that’s how I know we’re coming under judgment, because His character demands that He would judge our sin. But at the same time, He’s loving and merciful and if we would just plead to him, He’s so tender-hearted, I believe that He would turn back to us and He would once again protect us and bless us and give us His favor.” “So I don’t think it’s too late yet, Janet,” she said, “but I believe we’re reaching that tipping point. I honestly believe we’re dangerously close to reaching a point where there’ll be no return and judgment will fall.” She went on to warn that terrorist attacks and “things that are happening in our weather or in our political situation” are God’s “wake-up calls” to the church as He prepares for the return of Christ and “the end of human history as we know it.” “I pray for the revival of God’s people and that God would wake them up,” she said. “And that may be what San Bernardino is about, or Brussels, or Paris, you know, we can’t ignore these wake-up calls, or things that are happening in our weather or in our political situation, they’re wake-up calls. God is telling the church, I believe, to wake up and it’s time to hit your knees and pray because I believe we’re looking at the end of human history as we know it. I believe everything is ratcheting up, preparing for the return of Jesus, but before He comes back, it’s going to get very ugly.” “I believe something is about ready to break and something’s getting ready to blow, and it’s time for God’s people to pre-prayer, it’s time for us to pray before that happens,” she said.

Nasa's New Horizons space probe has spotted possible clouds hovering over Pluto, indicating that the weather on the icy dwarf planet is more complex than thought. Washington: Nasa's New Horizons space probe has spotted possible clouds hovering over Pluto, indicating that the weather on the icy dwarf planet is more complex than thought. "We're excited about the exploration ahead for New Horizons, and also about what we are still discovering from Pluto flyby data," said Alan Stern, principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in the US. "Now, with our spacecraft transmitting the last of its data from last summer's flight through the Pluto system, we know that the next great exploration of Pluto will require another mission to be sent there," said Stern. Stern said that Pluto's complex and layered atmosphere is hazy and appears to be mostly free of clouds, but the team has spied a handful of potential clouds in images taken with New Horizons' cameras during its historic Pluto flyby of in July last year. "If there are clouds, it would mean the weather on Pluto is even more complex than we imagined," Stern said. Scientists already knew that Pluto's icy surface below that atmosphere varied widely in brightness. Data from the flyby not only confirms that it also shows the brightest areas (such as sections of Pluto's large heart-shaped region) are among the most reflective in the solar system. "That brightness indicates surface activity," said Bonnie Buratti, a science team co-investigator from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While Pluto shows many kinds of activity, one surface process apparently missing is landslides. However, they have been spotted on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, itself some 1,200 kilometers across. "We've seen similar landslides on other rocky and icy planets, such as Mars and Saturn's moon Iapetus, but these are the first landslides we've seen this far from the sun, in the Kuiper Belt," said Ross Beyer, a researcher from the SETI Institute and Nasa Ames Research Centre in California. Hubble Space Telescope data suggests that 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) about 1.6 billion kilometres beyond Pluto, is as red, if not redder, than Pluto. This is the first hint at the surface properties of the far-flung object that New Horizons will survey on 1 January, 2019. "The reddish colour tells us the type of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 is," said Amanda Zangari, a New Horizons post-doctoral researcher from Southwest Research Institute. "The data confirms that on New Year's Day 2019, New Horizons will be looking at one of the ancient building blocks of the planets," said Zangari. The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 5.5 billion kilometres from Earth and about 540 million kilometres beyond Pluto, speeding away from the sun at about 14 km every second. New Horizons has covered about one-third of the distance from Pluto to its next flyby target, which is now about one billion kilometres ahead.

A recent rich list survey put Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan at the No. 2 spot as the second-richest actor in the world. Here are the top five wealthiest actors in the world, and a peek at how they made their fortunes. 1. Jerry Seinfeld, 60, US$820 millionThe comedian's eponymous sitcom ended its run 16 years ago, but syndication rights to the show is still bringing in oodles of cash for Seinfeld. The rights brought him some US$400 million last year. 2. Shah Rukh Khan, 48, US$600 millionThe Bollywood actor is the only Asian in the top 10 ranking. He has parlayed his thriving resume of more than 70 Hindi films into a successful business brand, with two production houses - Red Chillies Entertainment and Dreamz Unlimited, a stream of profitable endorsements, profit sharing deals in each movie he stars in as well as a big budget reality TV series built around him. All this plus a Mr Nice Guy reputation too. 3. Tom Cruise, 51, US$480 millionThe Hollywood A-lister is a survivor. From his film debut in 1983 in the comedy Risky Business, he has gone from teen pinup to Oscar-nominated actor to movie producer. Despite his well-known ties to the Church Of Scientology and the media circus known as his marriage to, and divorce from, actress Katie Holmes, he remains a major box office draw, especially in international markets which are increasingly important to Hollywood's bottomline. That means he can command a US$20 million paycheck for 2013's Oblivion. 4. Tyler Perry, 44, US$450 millionOne of the youngest men on the top 10 list (the other is comedian Adam Sandler, also 44), this multi-hyphenate is a brand unto himself. The actor-writer-director-producer started out as a playwright whose populist productions, aimed at the African-American community, struck a chord and built his brand. His plays were recorded and sold as DVDs, and he ventured into film in 2005 with Diary Of A Mad Black Woman, which cost US$5.5 million but grossed US$65 million. With successful films and a partnership deal with Oprah Winfrey to produce shows for her Oprah Winfrey Network, he has proven his business savvy as well. 5. Johnny Depp, 50, US$450 million Who would have thought that the teen idol of 21 Jump Street would mature into a critically acclaimed actor and fabulously wealthy actor? For a long time however, he was seen as a kooky outsider, whose multiple collaborations with director Tim Burton earned critical acclaim, but seldom the kind of box office numbers that make Hollywood executives sit up and take notice. Until, that is, 2003's Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, a Disney movie based on a theme ride which everyone thought would tank but, thanks to Depp's brilliantly eccentric characterisation of Captain Jack Sparrow, went on to gross US$305 million at the box office. The money-making franchise boosted the actor's earnings by up to US$300 million.

of publicly available and commentable standard protocols (http://www.fcc.gov/openinternet; Cerf 2002). The availability of “open source” software (a term first coined in the 1990s) radically democratized and expanded participation in the Internet community in the late 1980s‐early 1990s. “Open source” encompasses not only compilers and applications but also protocols and specifications such as the domain name system (DNS) that allows pinpointing specific networked computers (“hosts”) around the world, and HTTP/HTML specifications that provide the basis for the World Wide Web. Members of the scientific research community were early recipients of these advantages, with the National Science Foundation supporting and nurturing growth of the Internet‐based NSFNET from roughly 1985–1995 (National Science Foundation 2007). In that era, it was scientists who were largely communicating through the Internet (gopher, email), transferring their data (FTP), and running analyses on remote servers (telnet, shell access, X11), often with privileged access to fast networks and accounts on powerful computational servers. Within this computer savvy community, “power users” leveraged the Internet most effectively via learning computational skills that were largely command‐line based. The legendary, free GNU suite of software was standard issue for many computers joining the Internet in the late 1980s, and made that early generation of networked “scientific workstations” (from Sun, SGI, DEC, or NeXT) the sought‐after systems of their day. These early forays into powerful software helped birth the plethora of tools now available to the modern scientist. Today, free, multi‐platform, open source tools from the Linux Foundation (free operating system), the Apache Software Foundation (free Web server), the Mozilla Foundation (free Web, email, and other applications), the PostgreSQL Global Development Group (free enterprise database), the Python Software Foundation (free programming language), and the R Foundation for Statistical Computing (analysis and statistical language) are enabling researchers across the globe to dialog with one another via cutting edge communication, execute powerful data manipulation, and develop community‐vetted modeling and analysis tools at minimal individual cost. Moreover, open science promises many longer term benefits to the scientific community. The adoption of standard best practices and cultural norms for public archiving of data and code will advance discovery and promote fairness in attribution. The use of open‐source tools and open‐access data and journals will help to further democratize science, diversifying perspectives and knowledge by promoting broader access for scientists in developing countries and at under‐resourced institutions, fostering the citizen science that is already a major source of data in some ecological sub‐disciplines (Cooper et al. 2014), and improving the communication of scientific findings both to the general public (Fausto et al. 2012) and to the non‐governmental organizations, managers, and policymakers tasked with putting science into practice. Here, we discuss the changes in mindset and the tools that can help interested ecologists to find the path toward practicing open science themselves, to facilitate its practice by their students and other colleagues, or both.

1. What we are most easily seduced by must tell us something about ourselves, but what if it tells us only about everyone else? If you want to get to know someone (tweets the prolific Kelly Oxford) argue with him, and I considered that wisdom, considering my recent disagreements with you there reading this. Let me here drop too a word on Arthur Conan Doyle’s surrender to the disciples of Madame Blavatsky, or some cognate matter acting as foothold. Let me be the last, in other words, if you can arrange it, the last of the last to plead the colourless autonomy of language houses a will as acquisitive as ours, if not more so, gripped by daydreams of description, unmitigated description even unto argument, argument so humourless it teeters back into the realm of description and drops its mask and spits in every dinner plate. The last, I said. For who would call that seduction? 2. Thinking of Benedict Cumberbatch and his mind (stay with me), I resolved on the importance of character, specifically as a function of the celebrity interview: that it’s not his face propelled him into the skin of a matinée idol but his quips and winning earnest wish to answer every question, and be very very nice. Just so the novelists will not hazard any but the finest manners in their prose, no they won’t, they won’t, they’ve shown they won’t for two maybe three generations, those maestros of exposition, and that may be what’s driven the poets to this bluff of severely impartial impudence. I was thinking this walking home in the dark, the too-early dark of November, shivering, towards my apartment on a promontory, fingers stiff hauling staples, wondering if it was the kind of thing that, were I the second- last person at a party with Benedict Cumberbatch, he’d find worth debating, call a very good question, before proposing we spare each other the embarrassment of being the last to leave and leave in unison. Goodness that shows every sign of being also resourceful has always been so difficult to refuse.

Report: GM bailout saved 1.2 million jobs 24/7 Wall St. | 24/7 Wall St. News of the government's sale of all remaining shares of General Motors followed the release earlier today of a report from a respected industry researcher that the federal bailout and bankruptcy restructuring of GM saved 1.2 million jobs and preserved $34.9 billion in tax revenue. That bailout involved about $51 billion in taxpayer funds overall -- with $49.5 billion going into GM directly for what was originally a 60.8% equity stake in the company. The Treasury Department said late today that it recouped $39 billion from the sale of that stake, for a loss of $10 billion. Here is an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. of the report on bailout benefits in jobs and taxes: In a new report released Monday, the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) reckons that the federal government bailout of General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) saved 1.2 million U.S. jobs and preserved $34.9 billion in personal income and social insurance (Social Security, Medicare) payments. The bulk of those jobs and tax payments would have been lost in 2009 and 2010 and would have recovered (mostly) by now without federal intervention, but the U.S. auto industry would look considerably different had both GM and Chrysler been allowed to go under.... ... Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) did not accept any federal bailout funds, but CEO Alan Mullaly said last year, "If GM and Chrysler would've gone into free-fall, that could've taken the entire supply base into free-fall also, and taken the U.S. from a recession into a depression. That is why we testified on the behalf of our competitors even though we clearly did not need precious taxpayer money." Chrysler received $1.9 billion in federal funds before being taken over by Italy's Fiat SpA. What U.S. taxpayers avoided, according to CAR, was the loss of about $105.3 billion in transfer payments plus the loss of personal and social insurance tax collections to the tune of 768% of the net investment of $11.8 billion in GM and $1.9 billion (none recovered) in Chrysler. Including jobs related to the auto industry, the federal bailout preserved 2.6 million jobs in the U.S. economy in 2009 alone and $284.4 billion in personal income in 2009 and 2010. As we have already noted, the CAR report suggests that many jobs would have been recovered eventually, but the gains would have been made mostly in the southeastern United States, where foreign carmakers like Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) have been building manufacturing capacity. The CAR report notes that the results of such a migration would have had severe consequences in the long term and that unemployment rates in the upper Midwestern states would likely still be in double digits. For the record, CAR gets nearly 80% of its funding from sources other than the auto industry. The full report on the effect of bailing out GM is available here at the CAR website.

Researchers from CWI fixed a bug in the widely used object-oriented programming language Java in February 2015. They found an error in a broadly applied sorting algorithm, TimSort, which could crash programs. The bug had already been known from 2013 but was never correctly resolved. When researcher Stijn de Gouw from the CWI research group Formal Methods attempted to prove the correctness of TimSort, he encountered the bug that could threaten the security. He filed a bug report with an improved version, which has now been accepted. This version of TimSort is used by Android. Java is used for server software, Internet-based banking services and, for instance, in computer games like Minecraft. The programming language is broadly used because it provides a lot of support in the form of libraries. Developers don’t have to invent a function to sort data, for instance, since they can simply get it from the library support. The sorting algorithm TimSort is part of the java.util.Arrays and java.util.Collections libraries. It is named after its creator, Tim Peters, who designed it in 2002 for the Python programming language, where it is now the default sorting algorithm. The sorting function is often used, for example in the analysis of data. De Gouw discovered that a previous fix of the error was wrong. The bug causes programs to crash when used on a large input that is sorted in a specific way. For his research Stijn de Gouw used KeY, a state-of-the-art open source verification tool, to prove the mechanical correctness of TimSort. Then he designed a correction, maintaining performance. Frank de Boer, head of the Formal Methods group says: "So far, it was one of the hardest correctness proofs ever of an existing Java library. It required more than two million rules of inference and thousands of manual steps.” He adds: "With such an important language like Java, it is important that software does not crash. This result illustrates the importance of formal methods for the society." The study was co-funded by the EU project Envisage. Software is one of the strategic themes of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, where the research was conducted. The full analysis can be found on http://www.envisage-project.eu/timsort-specification-and-verification/. More information - the bug report, 'TimSort fails with ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException on worst case long arrays' - the EU project Envisage - CWI Formal Methods group - the used verification tool KeY from Richard Bubel and Reiner Hähnle Update - an Envisage blogpost on this item by Stijn de Gouw was released on 24 February. It had already 70,000 hits on the first day. - Google programming language Go also uses TimSort - top researchers in Formal Methods and developers worldwide refer to this research, such as Moshe Vardi and Peter O’Hearn

Nuzzling up together on the frosty ground in the Falkland Islands, this might seem like the most unlikely of friendships. But this herd of horses took in a lonely penguin as one of their own and snuggled up with their curious new companion. They were also seen playfully chasing after the bird as it stretched out its wings and waddled along the white-topped turf. The horses also craned their necks and touched their noses with the penguin's beak in the heart-warming snaps. Scroll down for video Two horses adopt this lost penguin into their group after he was spotted waddling alone just outside Stanley, in the Falkland Islands A puzzled horse inspects his peculiar new campaign after he went missing in the Cape Pembrokeshire Nature Reserve, in the Falklands A playful horse cosies up with this lonely penguin in this series of heart-warming pictures taken by Sarah Crofts In a scene that could come straight from a Disney movie, the horse rears his neck to catch a closer look of his new found friend Sarah Crofts, of the Falklands Conservation group, took the pictures when she spotted the unusual alliance as she was feeding her three horses. They were taken at the Cape Pembrokeshire Nature Reserve, five miles outside of Stanley, the country's capital city. She said: 'At first I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I think the horses were as shocked as I was. 'I didn't think the horses would take much notice of the penguin but I couldn't believe how fascinated they were with it. I'm really enthusiastic about horses and penguins so it was an incredible moment to witness. 'Horses in Stanley don't normally have contact with penguin so it must have been a real novelty for them. 'At first the herd approached the penguin slowly and with their heads low so they could check him out at eye level. 'But it didn't take long for the horses to become braver and soon they were nose to beak, it was such a lovely moment. She added: 'The horses were genuinely curious about the penguin and it seemed to turn into a game for them where they'd check him out one by one and then run off. 'After a while it was as if the horses didn't want to let the penguins out of their sights.' The Falklands is one of the world's great penguin capitals. There are five penguin species on the islands, including king, rockhopper, magellanic, gentoo and macaroni penguins. Around 500,000 breeding pairs of penguins live on the island, home to a rich array of wildlife. The horse touches his nose with the penguin's beak - the scene was spotted by Sarah Crofts as she was fed her three horses Horses on the frosty ground of the Cape Pembrokeshire Nature Reserve befriend the lonely and lost penguin

I have 268 passwords on 268 different websites. At least that’s what my password manager says. I actually stopped saving new passwords a while back, so the real number of passwords I should change now that Heartbleed has been revealed is even higher than that. How many of those passwords do you think I’m going to change? It took me 10 minutes just to find the change password form for my bank! What about the average computer user who uses the same password for every website and doesn’t understand the details of the exploit? How many passwords will they change? Not very many. Everybody knows that most passwords will remain unchanged. Yet our collective response to Heartbleed has been to patch our servers and email users asking them to do something we know most of them won’t do. Here’s what our response should have been: ALTER TABLE users DROP COLUMN password; It turns out that passwords are obsolete, and they have been for a long time. Like the occasional pay phone you find in the back of a run-down restaurant, passwords have been unnecessary for years. The difference is that everyone laughs and reminisces when they see a pay phone, but nobody does that when they see a password field. But they should. There are two separate technologies that have made passwords obsolete, and they aren’t the ones you would think. You may have guessed fingerprint scanners. Or voice recognition. Or maybe iris scanners. Nope. The technologies that made passwords obsolete have nothing to do with biometrics. And they have been mainstream for much longer. Passwords are obsolete because of email and SMS. Specifically, the ability to send an email or SMS to users reliably and quickly. In theory, we’ve had that ability for a long time. And with the rise of services like Twilio for SMS and Mandrill for emails, it’s incredibly easy. The basic idea is that instead of using a password to authenticate each user, a temporary secret code is sent to them over a secure channel. Email or SMS is that (mostly) secure channel. It’s almost as if the backend server makes up a temporary, one-use password each time a user wants to log in and whispers it in their ear. The interesting thing is that we already use exactly this flow for password reset emails. This is why I previously recommended taking advantage of this so you could stop remembering your passwords. My argument was mostly from the perspective of convenience though. I assume you’re using a different password for every website. There’s no way you will remember all of those passwords, and it is pretty inconvenient to have to put every single one of them into a password manager. Especially on a mobile device. So instead, you make up random passwords, immediately forget them, and use the password reset flow next time you need to log in. But the recent Heartbleed bug highlights the fact that hacking password reset flows for convenience is not good enough. We need to convince websites to stop using passwords altogether.

-and-roll system. Draymond Green is an accident. Teams undermine the search by flinging themselves from one shiny object to another. The Magic since Dwight Howard's ugly departure have stood for hard work, then defense, then pace of play, then Scott Skiles' defense again. Victor Oladipo was the trumped-up tentpole for a lot of that, and now he's gone -- along with more than half the players who began last season in Orlando. The hiring of Frank Vogel makes four coaches in 18 months. Serge Ibaka, Bismack Biyombo and Nikola Vucevic will battle Aaron Gordon for precious minutes up front. Jeff Green clutters up that crowd on a massive one-year deal in Tobias Harris' salary slot, for some reason. There are a lot of interesting pieces here. Vogel is a great coach, and Evan Fournier's five-year, $85 million extension is a home run. But no one in the league has any idea what Orlando's vision is at this point. Chicago's plan is a little more transparent: The Bulls barfed at signing role players to three- and four-year deals under the cap spike, but felt they had too much talent around Jimmy Butler to tear down. Remember, no team has ever bragged as loudly as Chicago about a streak of playoff appearances achieved in a league in which 16 of 30 teams make the postseason. Rajon Rondo and Wade are here on short-term deals to start a new streak while Chicago figures out what in the hell it would like to do once the cap flattens. The Bulls hope their presence might check Butler's ego a bit. Never mind that the signings make no sense. When the Bulls hired Fred Hoiberg, they trumpeted him as the missing piece -- an offensive genius whose pace-and-space system would nudge them one step further than grouchy ol' Tom Thibodeau could. A year later, they have supplied Hoiberg with a group of ball-pounders who form the league's worst shooting starting five outside Philly. Nikola Mirotic, the presumptive starting power forward, is going to look like Stephen Curry next to the other four. The Bulls have talent. The frontcourt is well-stocked with good players, including Cristiano Felicio, a rugged and bouncy prospect the team adores. There just doesn't appear to be a real plan beyond buying time. Butler is off the market for now, per league sources, and it's tempting to read Chicago's all-in splash as an effort to maintain a winner around him. Who in the hell knows? Perhaps if Wade plays well enough to keep them in the postseason race, the Bulls might feel comfortable flipping Butler for picks, triggering a rebuild that would only start in earnest once Wade and Rondo cycle out. That's the fun of the NBA, though: Change is constant. Most of the bad done in the frenzied haze of July's delirium can be undone soon enough. The delirium never really stops anymore.

Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images Bill Gates has an R13.7 billion ($1 billion) fund, collected from a who's who of fellow billionaires, ready to invest in startups and research to solve climate change. On Tuesday, in his annual letter with wife Melinda, he points out that really fixing climate change involves way more than renewable electric energy, though he's encouraged by progress there. Manufacturing and agriculture are overlooked problem areas. He's looking for climate-friendly ways to make concrete and steel, as well as ideas on dealing with methane produced by cows "when they belch and pass gas." "I wish more people fully understood what it will take to stop climate change," Bill Gates laments in his annual letter published on Tuesday. Each year the Microsoft founder and his wife Melinda publish a letter that outlines the areas that cheer, worry and surprise them. The topics in the letter are taken from the couple's experiences trotting the globe to combat poverty, disease and other problems. Bill Gates is tackling climate change through programs funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as through Breakthrough Energy Ventures. BEV is an R13.7 billion ($1 billion) investment fund he's spearheaded, backed a who's who of billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, Richard Branson, Reid Hoffman, Jack Ma, George Soros, Tom Steyer, Meg Whitman and Mark Zuckerberg. BEV is looking to invest in startups and research that tackle five areas, which he calls "grand challenges." These are agriculture, buildings, electricity, manufacturing and transportation. In the letter Gates points out that promising progress has already been made with renewable energy for electricity. But he says there are two areas that account for 21% and 24% of worldwide greenhouse emissions, respectively, that are sorely ignored: manufacturing of building materials and agriculture. Making building materials like steel and cement requires a lot of fossil fuels and processes that belch out carbon, he says. The world is currently on track to double its buildings by 2060 which Gates points out is like building "an entire New York City every month for 40 years." "We need to find a way to make it all without worsening climate change," he says. Agriculture is another gas-producing culprit. Despite the healthy, pastoral image of cows grazing on green rolling hills, Gates notes that cattle "give off methane when they belch and pass gas. (A personal surprise for me: I never thought I'd be writing seriously about bovine flatulence.)" He's not advocating that cattle farming be banned, nor is he saying that we end construction or transportation. He just wants the world to focus more on solutions to all the areas hurting the climate. "Solar panels are great, but we should be hearing about trucks, cement, and cow farts too," he says. For more go to Business Insider South Africa. Receive a single WhatsApp every morning with all our latest news: click here. Also from Business Insider South Africa:

This technology existed long before COVID-19 hit. What are some of its other benefits? Chuck: One of our design teams working on a new residential tower in Boston was able to cut a 6-hour roundtrip from their schedules. Russell: Part of our job is to help teams quantify budget and schedule impacts from using VR. With 2D plans, and even other VR tools, you might miss spotting issues. We’ve found that, on average, teams using InsiteVR can prevent two-and-a-half RFIs for every hour spent in the VR model. That means we can resolve RFIs in minutes instead of weeks and avoid months of possible design delays. Rael: The QA/QC process is better as well. We have a lot more confidence in the designs we hand off to our construction partners. You mentioned end users. How does the platform get them engaged with design? Rael: On the Comox Valley Water Treatment Plant project in British Columbia, we had one of the client’s operators do a VR walkthrough of a new plant before it was constructed. At one point, the operator said, “I can’t reach this valve. I’m going to break my back if I have to get on my knees every time I’ve got to turn this, and I’ve got to turn it twice a day.” So we changed the design and prevented possible worker’s compensation claims. Chuck: And on a hospital project, we had some healthcare providers use VR to review the design models. They said things like, “This shelf is too small” and “You need to put this outlet on the other side because when I need to intubate a patient, I need to plug the machine in over here.” In one review, a nurse pointed to a cabinet in a hospital room that opened up into the room and asked if it could open up into the hallway as well. That way, if there was a sanitation concern with the room, staff wouldn’t have to go into it to restock the cabinet. That actually became a design standard. This type of feedback makes our designers better, makes future designs better for our clients, because these details become part of our institutional knowledge. And Stantec clients? Do they use the platform? Russell: I was in a meeting with a Stantec client, Aera Energy, last week. The entire team, including the client, was working from home as they reviewed an oil and gas facility design. The client liked the process so much that he brought in another member from Aera for the next meeting. That person actually used his son’s Oculus Quest, which we installed our software onto. Not all owners get involved in the design process, but we can support those who need to be involved at every step. Owners love the depth perception and sense of scale the experience provides and find that being immersed in the model makes issues stand out much quicker, especially for maintenance, facilities and operations staff.

Troops airlifted out of Iraq to face Assad’s forces Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Tuesday, December 13, 2011 Following similar reports by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, Israeli intelligence sources confirm that US Special Forces are massing in Jordan on the Syrian border having been transferred from Iraq. On Sunday Edmonds reported that hundreds of foreign troops were witnessed near the Jordanian border village of Al-Mafraq, having moved back and forth between King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq and villages adjacent to the Syrian border. After interviewing an employee in the London-based office of Royal Jordanian Airlines, Nizar Nayouf also reported that, “At least one US aircraft carrying military personnel landed in the Prince Hassan Air base located about 100 km to the east of the city of Al-Mafraq.” According to Edmonds, the mainstream media has been eager to keep the movement of the troops under wraps, with one journalist from a major publication being told by his editor that there would be no coverage of the story. The Israeli intelligence outlet DebkaFile has now backed these reports, stating that, “American special forces troops have been diverted to positions in Jordan opposite a Syrian tank concentration building up across the kingdom’s northern border.” US troops were airlifted out of the Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq to take up positions in Jordan from Thursday onwards, according to the report. A d v e r t i s e m e n t {openx:74} Instead of returning to military bases in Europe or the Persian Gulf, the troops have lined up directly opposite Assad’s forces 10 kilometers from the Syrian border and have constructed “surveillance towers and army posts in the Jordanian villages of Albaej, Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah.” NATO powers are preparing a new “humanitarian intervention” on the back of disputed reports that the Assad regime has killed 5,000 pro-democracy demonstrators. Skeptical voices have pointed out that, just like Libya, the so-called protesters are in fact militants attempting to overthrow the government in the course of a civil war. Just as Al-Qaeda terrorists were used to oust Gaddafi, hundreds of Libyan rebels were airlifted into Syria to aid the opposition in carrying out attacks against government forces. As we reported last week, the United States has deployed a total of three warships to the Middle East, along with several other attack boats, as tensions in the region escalate. Russia has denied reports that warships it sent to Syrian territorial waters last month were for the purpose of discouraging any potential military strike on the country. ********************* Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!