Labor and the Greens have locked in behind the tribunal which sets minimum pay rates for truck owner-drivers, setting the scene for a stoush with the government when parliament is recalled and during the election.

On Tuesday evening Guardian Australia reported the government would bring forward legislation to abolish the road safety remuneration tribunal in the week parliament is recalled on 18 April, instead of attempting to abolish it after the election.

Related: Coalition pushes for immediate abolition of truck driver pay tribunal

On Wednesday the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the employment minister, Michaelia Cash, formally announced the government would bring on two bills: one to abolish the tribunal; and a second bill to delay its minimum pay order as a fallback.

“Tens of thousands of owner truck drivers, many of whom have taken out mortgages to buy their trucks, face being driven out of business by the [tribunal],” they said in a statement. “Any threat to the industry will have large flow-on effects on consumers.”

On Wednesday Greens industrial relations spokesman, Adam Bandt, said it would “not be party to the government’s push to make the roads less safe”.

“If the government believes that the only way of dealing with any problems [arising from the] tribunal’s order is to abolish the legislation then it’s clear what the government’s true motives are,” he said.

“Faced with one small group of people who complain about now potentially having to pay fair rates of pay to the people who work for them, the government’s response is to strip people’s rights at work and attack safety on the roads. That gives you an indication of what’s coming up at this election.”

Related: Labor truckie proposal 'colossal admission of fault', Malcolm Turnbull says

Opposition leader, Bill Shorten, backed setting minimum pay rates because if pay is too low “you increase the chances for fatalities and serious injuries in the heavy vehicle sector”.

“The government wants you to believe that somehow owner-drivers who, on average, receive $32,000 a year compared to employee drivers on $56,000 a year, that they want to keep getting $32,000 a year,” he said.

Shorten questioned if Turnbull was prepared to scrap the independent tribunal and truckies’ minimum pay orders, whether he would use it as a precedent if the fair work commission increased penalty rates or shift loadings.

“Labor sees the case that if there’s real angst in the community amongst customers and some of the long distance trucking companies, there’s always [the possibility of] compromise,” he said. Shorten repeated Labor’s offer to consider a compromise on the time taken to roll out minimum pay rates.

“You look at the industry submissions, look at the evidence, look at legitimate concerns about the rollout of a minimum wages order ... That’s the Labor way, common sense, middle grounds.”

Related: Malcolm Turnbull using truck drivers ‘as pawns’ in election strategy, say crossbenchers

The comments from Labor and the Greens mean the government will probably need more crossbench support to abolish the road safety remuneration tribunal.

The government originally proposed to delay the pay order and abolish the tribunal after the election. Senator Glenn Lazarus forced the issue by calling for the immediate abolition of the tribunal, which was backed by Jacqui Lambie.

So far five of eight crossbench senators have expressed support to abolish the tribunal. Senators Dio Wang, Ricky Muir and John Madigan have not supported abolishing it, instead favouring delay of the pay order.

The government also announced a temporary financial counselling hotline to provide advice for owner-drivers who have been negatively affected by the payment order.

Summary: Coalition wants to abolish road safety remuneration tribunal when parliament is recalled on 18 April


These are heady days for owners of bitcoin.

The virtual currency has been surging of late, with the price of one bitcoin rising close to 23% since Saturday afternoon, from $584 per coin to as high as $718 as of late Monday morning.

Bitcoin has been no stranger to whipsawing prices, but there is a concrete reason for the price surge this time around, and that is the fact that the reward bitcoin miners receive for creating new bitcoins is set to be cut in half sometime next month, according to a report in Bloomberg.

The halving of payments to miners is part of the automatic process by which the bitcoin algorithm slowly reduces the number of new bitcoins that will be created, with the total number of new bitcoins ultimately being capped at 21 million.

The price increase is therefore the result of the market anticipating that the supply of bitcoins will soon slow fairly dramatically. “The halving of the supply of Bitcoin is attracting many retail investors,”Jack C. Liu, chief strategy officer at OKCoin told Bloomberg. “More broadly, we continue to see follow-through from the blockchain hype cycle translating to interest in bitcoin the asset.”

Summary: The virtual currency is surging


Former U.S. Senator and 1972 presidential candidate George S. McGovern (b. 1922) died in October 2012 after being admitted to a Sioux Falls hospice six days earlier. He was 90 years old and had been in failing health “with a combination of medical conditions, due to age, that have worsened over recent months,” according to a statement from his family. From the mid-1960s through the early ’80s, he was one of the most prominent Democratic politicians in the United States—a proud liberal, decorated World War II veteran and tireless advocate for the poor and disenfranchised in America and around the world.

Here, LIFE.com remembers the native South Dakotan with a series of photos by LIFE’s Bill Eppridge, made on the campaign trail during the 1972 race for the presidency. Over the course of a few, heady months of that pivotal year, Americans were able to take the measure of the man to an extent that they never had before—and never would again. In November, he would lose to Richard Nixon in an historic landslide for the Republican incumbent; but during his time in the national spotlight, George McGovern articulated the progressive ideals he held dear as forcefully and as consistently as any candidate in the history of American presidential politics.

[Read Howard Chua-Eoan’s McGovern obituary on TIME.com]

Bill Eppridge recently told LIFE.com that, 40 years after that ’72 campaign, he recalled McGovern, the man, much more clearly than McGovern, the candidate. And he liked what he remembered.

“He was the sort of person,” Eppridge said, “that you’d want to have as a next-door neighbor. Friendly. Solid. He struck me as a genuine, down-to-earth person, and that’s not a quality you associate with many politicians. Not today, and not so much back then, either.”

Eppridge had documented Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for the presidency and, famously, chronicled the violence-scarred final moments of RFK’s life as he lay dying in a bus boy’s arms on the floor of a Los Angeles hotel kitchen. Eppridge told LIFE.com that Bobby Kennedy’s death made it difficult for him to care, for years, about politics or politicians. He had grown into a Kennedy supporter while covering the candidate in public and in private, and RFK’s murder in June 1968 left him at a loss. He sought ways to get away from the rough-and-tumble, and the more unsavory aspects, of covering high-stakes politics.

“But four years later,” he went on, “I was back covering a presidential race. McGovern’s campaign had a positive, unhurried feel to it. It ran smoothly, and McGovern himself was an easy guy to be around. The campaign had energy, of course, but it never felt frantic . . . or mean.”

Below is an admittedly incomplete, at-a-glance biography of George McGovern—a man who led an exemplary American life, filled with accolades and victories as well as profound disappointments and searing personal loss. He is, and will always be, missed.

George McGovern married his wife, Eleanor, in 1943, during the Second World War. They remained married for 64 years, until hear death in 2007. (She was also a native South Dakotan, and as a pilot during WWII McGovern named his B-24 bomber the “Dakota Queen” after her.)

Father of five children, including his late daughter, Teresa, who died in 1994 at the age of 45 after a long battle with alcoholism. McGovern later wrote a book, Terry: My Daughter’s Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism, chronicling her struggle and the devastating effect her illness had on his family. In 2012, his son Steven died—after years of fighting alcoholism, as well.

Military Service: Pilot, B-24 Liberator, European Theater, WWII. Flew 35 missions, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and three Air Medals

Congressman (D-SD), 1958-1960; United States Senator, 1963 – 1981

Publicly opposed American involvement in Vietnam as early as 1963

Democratic candidate for president, 1972; lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide, winning only the state of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. After the Watergate scandal destroyed Nixon’s presidency, cars were seen bearing bumper stickers that read, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.”

First-ever director of the United States’ Food for Peace program in 1961

Served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture (1998–2001); named World Food Prize co‑laureate in 2008

Gandhi Peace Award Laureate (1991)

Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000)

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Summary: LIFE.com remembers the native South Dakotan and former senator with a series of photos by Bill Eppridge, made on the campaign trail during McGovern's 1972 race for the presidency.


Each year, the same ritual takes place at Magnum Photos: the agency’s photographers lock themselves in a room for three days to discuss and define its business model and strategy. For the collective, these annual meetings are also an opportunity to connect its award-winning photographers with their audiences through revenue-generating workshops, panel discussions and exhibitions.

This year, however, Magnum is looking to appeal to another and much bigger audience: the million of virtual fans it has amassed on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

During a 67-hour window leading up to its 67th annual general meeting, the collective will be selling 6″x6″prints published on the Magnum Photos Instagram feed. “Any image with the hashtag #AGMSquares will be available for purchase for $100,” says the agency.

The line-up of photographers participating in this sale event is impressive. Elliot Erwitt, Rene Burri, David Alan Harvey, Trent Park, Susan Meiselas and Bruce Davidson have all signed up, alongside 35 of their colleagues.

The concept, of course, isn’t new. Earlier this year, photographers Daniel Arnold and Aaron Huey both organized their own print sales using Instagram – to unexpected results. In March, Arnold, a star on the photo-sharing platform, made $15,000 in just one day, closely followed by National Geographic photographer Huey, who raked in $10,000 the following month.

“People had been expressing interest in buying prints for a long time, so I knew it wouldn’t be a total dried-up flop,” Arnold tells TIME. “But I definitely didn’t anticipate that it would go as well as it did.”

For the past three years, Instagram has offered professional photographers a new platform to reach audiences directly, cutting out magazines and newspapers as middlemen. Yet, beyond a few commissions secured thanks to the size of their followings, these photographers have struggled to benefit financially from their online successes. “I think some in the professional world are very reluctant to take Instagram seriously, and I don’t blame them,” says Arnold. “It took me a long time to understand that I was doing something worthwhile on there, or that something worthwhile could be done. I think there’s an off-putting complicatedness about it, especially to a professional who is accustomed to offering a seamless, automated experience. It’s a classic scenario where being a startup, low-rent punk gives you intuition, energy and leniency that can’t exist in a more established world.”

The established photography players have taken note. Earlier this month, the VII Photo Agency offered seven prints from seven of its photographers at the same price point of $100. And now it’s Magnum’s time to test that strategy. “The agency has almost 700,000 likes on Facebook, almost 600,000 followers on Twitter and almost 75,000 followers on Instagram,” says Gideon Jacobs, Magnum’s Creative Director in New York. “The social image making and image sharing revolution seems to have increased visual fluency around the globe and, in turn, increased interest in photographs that possess depth, photographs that strike a glancing blow at some kind of ambitious target.”

Whether that translates in actual print sales for Magnum remains to be seen, but Huey welcomes the agency’s move. “It’s a no-brainer to try to sell images to your audience, especially when that audience reaches into the six-figure range,” he tells TIME. “Discussions about using this outlet to sell pictures were going on long before Arnold or I had our sales. You sell where your audience is; that’s just common sense. For some reason it just took a while for people to pull the trigger. Now, it’s a free-for-all, and I don’t say that in a negative way. I think people are very lucky to have a Magnum or VII or Nat Geo print for $100. This is the first time people have been able to own prints of this caliber for so little.”

There’s no doubt that the photographic community will be watching closely how Magnum fares this week. “There’s something very personal about Instagram,” says Arnold. “It’s a direct communication, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes of a more mainstream approach. I hope it works out for all of us. What an exciting new marketplace that would be.”

Magnum Photos is an agency of documentary photographers, established in 1947. Its #MAGNUMSquare sale event takes place from June 17th at noon EST and runs for 67 hours. Follow the agency on Instagram @magnumphotos.

Daniel Arnold is a freelance photographer based in New York. Follow him on Instagram @arnold_daniel.

Aaron Huey is a National Geographic photographer. Follow him on Instagram @argonautphoto.

Olivier Laurent is the editor of TIME LightBox. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @olivierclaurent.

Summary: Can Instagram offer a new revenue source to photographers? Magnum Photos seems to think so as it offers, for a limited time, an unprecedented selection of prints from its roster of award-winning photographers


Growth in health care has been constant—and that means there’s been an ever-growing number of jobs opening up in the industry. Over the past 25 years, employment in health care boomed from 8.2 million jobs in 1990 to 14.8 million in 2014. Not only have the number of positions grown massively, but wages have also grown faster in health care compared to most other sectors of the economy.

As the industry continues to notch strong growth, we turned to the experts at Great Place to Work to find the companies that rate highest for employee satisfaction. Here are the 20 companies that are attracting and retaining today’s top talent in health care.

*Revenue figures are from the most recent fiscal year and headcount figures are the latest supplied by the company.

Summary: The health care sector is booming—and has an abundance of well-paying and rewarding jobs. These companies have perfected balancing demanding, round-the-clock work with fun and caring cultures.


One of the only graceful moments in "Cradle 2 the Grave," a movie that has the flailing momentum of a defective action toy run amok, comes when the camera pulls back to observe Jet Li leaping from a building and dropping from ledge to ledge in a superhuman exhibition of acrobatic nerve. The scene doesn't last long, but it brings to mind the movie its director Andrzej Bartkowiak might have made had he relaxed his camera and reprogrammed his editorial shredding machine to allow a few more touches of balletic poise.

The poker-faced Hong Kong martial-arts star appears to sense that something's amiss. Throughout the movie, he wears the aloof, vaguely contemptuous expression of a man suffering from indigestion. The human fly sequence demonstrates that Mr. Li can be thrilling to watch when the camera stays still. But the cinematographer-turned-director likes his MTV-style editing so much that in his drive for hyperkinetic overkill he sacrifices coherence to wallow in barely contained chaos.

In teaming Mr. Li (who starred in his first movie, "Romeo Must Die") with the rapper DMX (who appeared in both "Romeo" and the director's second film, "Exit Wounds"), Mr. Bartkowiak perpetuates the unwieldy generic hybrid he helped invent in which chest-beating hip-hop attitude fuses with airy kung-fu magic. As the movie whips you around locations that include a subway tunnel, an extreme fighting club, a poshly appointed jail cell and a warehouse, it never stops to catch its breath. That may be good news for those who enjoy the bumpy thrills of a cheap amusement park ride. For everyone else "Cradle 2 the Grave," whose horror-movie title bears no relation to what happens on the screen, suggests the prequel to a video game.

The film, which opens nationally today, follows several warring factions through the streets and underground fleshpots of Los Angeles in pursuit of a cache of priceless black diamonds that have made their way from Taiwan to the United States. In the opening scene, a crew of jewel thieves led by Tony Fait (DMX), bursts into a vault and steals the stones, but he doesn't keep them for long, and they end up in the hands of a crime lord who runs his operation from inside a prison cell where he lives like a sultan.

Fait teams up with Su (Jet Li), a Taiwanese government agent who has tracked the stones from Asia and is pursuing Ling (Mark Dacascos), his former partner turned gangster, who also wants the diamonds. Ling kidnaps Fait's feisty 9-year-old daughter Vanessa (Paige Hurd) and holds her for ransom in exchange for the stones. Because Fait lives for his little girl, the quest becomes a desperate personal crusade. DMX, who can barely act, at least succeeds in conveying a thudding pseudo-sincerity.

Late in the game the film goes haywire when it crudely shoehorns in a new, extraneous plot twist. The priceless stones turn out to contain enough synthetic plutonium to blow up the world. The silliest scene imagines an auction in which a preposterous assortment of international arms dealers frantically bid for the stones. The radioactive angle at least allows one of the villains to be dispatched through a plutonium force-feeding that lights him up and consumes him from inside out.

Here and there, the movie exhibits a raucous fun house humor. In the wittiest action sequence, DMX roars around Los Angeles in an indestructible all-terrain vehicle that carries him out of windows and across chasms in leaps that Evel Knievel could only dream of. At an underground extreme-fighting club, Mr. Li, coerced by Archie (Tom Arnold), a manically cheery small-arms dealer, goes up against a dozen muscle-bound lugs and blithely dispatches them one by one in a flurry of kicks and lunges. The movie ends with an anticlimactic duel staged inside a ring of fire.

Beneath its hip-hop flash, "Cradle 2 the Grave" works the kung-fu version of the David-and-Goliath myth, in which all the muscle in the world is no match against the agility, discipline and calculation of a martial-arts master. That may be the most refreshing element of movies starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Going against the beefcake aesthetic of popular culture, they insist that size doesn't matter.

"Cradle 2 the Grave" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has violence and strong language.

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak; written by John O'Brien and Channing Gibson, based on a story by Mr. O'Brien; produced by Joel Silver; director of photography, Daryn Okada; edited by Derek G. Brechin; music by John Frizzell and Damon "Grease" Blackman; production designer, David Klassen; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Jet Li (Su), DMX (Fait), Anthony Anderson (Tommy), Kelly Hu (Sona), Tom Arnold (Archie), Mark Dacascos (Ling), Paige Hurd (Vanessa) and Gabrielle Union (Daria).

Summary: Jet Li and DMX team up in a movie that has the flailing momentum of a defective action toy run amok.


Tyga just got a new jewelry store ... in his mouth.

Celeb jeweler Ben Baller just hooked Tyga up with the chompers ... dripping in 1400 diamonds.

At $45,000 and 18 carats ... it's the most expensive grill Baller's ever made.

On the other hand ... never a good idea to have more diamonds than your girl.

Summary: Tyga just got a new jewelry store ... in his mouth. Celeb jeweler Ben Baller just hooked Tyga up with the chompers ... dripping in 1400 diamonds. At…


06/28/2016 AT 12:20 PM EDT

sat down for his first public interview since news of his

went public – but made no mention of his legal battle or

Depp, 53, appeared on the

radio talk show on Sunday alongside a few of his fellow

bandmates – Matt Sorum, Robert DeLeo and Bruce Witkin.

And while the actor has remained silent about his now-highly publicized divorce from Heard, he was more than happy to talk about music while on the show. They discussed everything from their origin as a band to behind-the-scenes stories of their European tour.

During the interview, Depp revealed that he stumbled into acting while trying to pursue music as a teenager.

"I've [been a musician] since I was little – since I was 12 I've played," he said. "I started playing clubs when I was like 13 in Miami."

Depp said he became an actor by "accident."

"I needed to pay rent," said Depp. "Somebody said, 'Why don't you go meet an agent. My agent is with Nick Cage,' so she sent me on an audition for something and I got it."

The actor said it wasn't until his band broke up that he considered acting full-time. "It seemed like a good way to pay the rent for a minute," he said.

Even as his divorce battle with Heard continues, Depp plans to take the stage with his band during their U.S. tour, which kicks off July 1 in Pennsylvania.

A Los Angeles court hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 15 and 16 on Heard's request for a permanent restraining order against Depp amid

has been reissued in the interim.

In a response to Heard's allegations, Depp's lawyers claimed in court documents that the actress was "attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse."

Summary: Johnny Depp appeared on the Jonesy's Jukebox radio show alongside his Hollywood Vampires bandmates


06/13/2016 AT 01:50 PM EDT

tragically died far too young Friday night when a

reached out to Grimmie's family to help out with funeral costs, her brother revealed on Facebook.

"I found out this morning, that Adam Levine personally called my mother and said he will pay for the funeral and her plane flight, and I was blown away,"

, Marcus, shared in a post about the touching news.

In the same post, Marcus thanked fans for their support over the last few days, including generous donations on a

set up by Grimmie's longtime manager Brian Teefey.

"Now a friend just told me to look at the gofundme page and I see it is at 100k. Words cannot express...literally I have no words," he wrote. "Please do not feel the need to donate anything at all. Please. Just leave a kind word, message or picture in the comments."

He also urged fans to sign a

petition so Grimmie can "be remembered in the next legend of Zelda game, her favorite game of all time."

In a statement to PEOPLE, Levine

to the 22-year-old singer's family and

"[My wife] Behati and I are absolutely devastated and heartbroken by Christina Grimmie's tragic death," says Levine in the statement. "Our hearts go out to her family. Christina was a natural, a gifted talent that comes along so rarely. She was taken from us too soon."

"This is yet another senseless act of extreme violence. I am left stunned and confused how these things can conceivably continue to happen in our world," he continued.

Summary: The Voice coach has also offered to pay for Grimmie's mother's plane ticket, according to Markus Grimmie


If you're chomping at the bit for another social site to tell the world what you think about things, then you're in luck. Plinky, which launches today, provides a cute twist on content creation and status updates by providing you with smart prompts to inspire your microblogging machinations.

Plinky's prompts are in the form of a question, a request, or a challenge, and your responses incorporate rich media like playlists, photos, and maps.

For example, I was given the prompt, "Name three songs you'd put on a road trip mixed tap?" The response boxes provided auto-generated suggested options as I typed my answers, so typing "Re" brought up a list of artists with similar names and I was able to select Regina Spektor and enter the desired song title in much the same manor. Once you're answer is added, you can then add a pre-populated image or map to your entry and continue on your way.

Plinky addicts can follow people and answers, save favorites, leave comments, and of course overly promote their plinks (like tweets?) across Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, or grab the embed code to showcase elsewhere.

One thing I love is the caustic and witty tag line, "Hey, didn't you used to have a blog?" But, Plinky is to microblogs as Plurk is to Twitter, a nice idea with a pretty interface but a bloated sense of self. I personally find prompts to stagnate my thought process, and prefer free form for open expression. I also believe FriendFeed to be a great place for these types of threaded topic-based conversations.

Obviously I don't get it, but that doesn't mean you won't love it. Realistically, Plinky is a site that you'll grow to love the more you follow people, get comments, save favorites, and build community. I haven't used the site long enough to really grasp the interactive elements, plus I didn't get Twitter two years ago, and now I love it. Of course if celebrity matters to you, Robert Scoble and Louis Gray are both there.

Editor's Note (1:20PM pt): The site doesn't appear to have opened just yet, but is expected to be live this afternoon.

-10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009

-WRITER'S TOOLBOX: 35 Best Tools for Writing Online

-Blogging Toolbox: 120+ Resources for Bloggers

-HOW TO: Build Community on Twitter

Summary: If you're chomping at the bit for another social site to tell the world what you think about things, then you're in luck. Plinky, which launches today, provides a cute twist on ...


This is what it looks like to lose your parachute midway through a skydive.

Pro skydiver Daniel Herdon was forced to make an awful choice when his parachute became tangled as he plummeted earthwards above Oklahoma City on Tuesday.

"Get it off," Mr Herdon can be heard saying after failed efforts to untwist the parachute.

"It came out just spinning," he later told TV station KOCO.

"It was spinning in such a way I couldn't get stable from it and had to go into emergency procedure and activate my reserve parachute."

But after a few seconds he managed to break free and open his reserve parachute.

Eventually Mr Herdon reaches the ground at a stadium, where a crowd cheers him unaware of just how close to death he had come.

He had been hired to land on the field at Taft Stadium as entertainment at a soccer game.

Summary: Professional skydiver Daniel Herdon's helmet camera filmed the moment his parachute began tangled after he jumped from a plane above Oklahoma City on Tuesday.


is LIVID over video footage currently being shopped to media outlets -- depicting the Vegas icon sexually assaulting his caretakers -- and now, he's threatening legal action if the tapes aren't turned over.

TMZ broke the story ...

-- who's been going through rehab since a tiger mauled him in 2003 -- surfaced recently, showing Roy groping his caretakers against their will. The video is now being shopped around to the highest bidder.

We've seen the 2010 footage -- and it shows several instances of inappropriate behavior ... including Roy forcibly kissing a caretaker, grabbing two caretakers' penises, tweaking one's nipples ... and more.

Now, Roy's legal team is on the offensive -- firing off a cease and desist letter to the caretaker allegedly behind the tape deal, demanding the footage be turned over STAT.

According to the letter, the caretaker in question signed confidentiality agreements with Roy before his employment, and those agreements prohibit any kind of surreptitious video recording. It's interesting, because we're told Roy was the one who wanted the cameras because he thought people were stealing from him.

Roy claims the agreements also prohibit sharing such recordings with the media.

If the tapes aren't turned over stat -- Roy says he'll make the caretaker's life a legal hell.

Summary: Roy Horn from Siegfried & Roy is LIVID over video footage currently being shopped to media outlets -- depicting the Vegas icon sexually assaulting his…


When I was growing up in Queens, my family celebrated Christmas in a traditional manner. We saw the latest flick at the local movie house, drank a boatload of eggnog that I started lacing with Captain Morgan spiced rum, then chowed down at Chinese restaurant Joy Teang on spare ribs and pork lo mein.

Hey, we were Jewish, not kosher. Low-fat and sober? I don’t think so.

I hate to be the one to sound the alarm, particularly after leftist TV talker Bill Maher tried to shame me into believing the “War on Christmas” was a figment of right-wing imaginations, but there seems to be a concerted effort by Grinches who don’t suck down enough rum to strip the “oy” out of “joy.”

I want my Christmas cups back, Starbucks!

The coffee giant fired the first shot in this season’s annual skirmish by stripping any evidence of Christmas (or winter) from the cups on which hostile baristas tend to mis-scrawl my name as “Adrian.”

Gone are the pictures of wreaths we’ve seen in Christmas seasons past. Forget about stars, which might remind customers of the Nativity scene. Terrified of offending anyone who’s not Christian (or doesn’t live in the frigid North), Starbucks removed renderings of snowflakes and snowmen from the cups, opting for a uniformly red design — an irreligious insult broken up only by the company’s green-and-white logo.

I’m not down with Joshua Feuerstein, an Arizona evangelist who declared in a viral video that Starbucks “hates Jesus.” But I can see how a fear of lawsuits has driven a corporation into atheistic paroxysms.

My Spidey sense perked up as I read the statement from Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks’ vice president of design and content. (This exists.)

“This year, we wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories. We’re embracing the simplicity and the quietness of it.” Aside from this politically correct rubbish about inclusivity (and creepy “purity”), Fields avoided the word “Christmas” as if it might bite him in the butt.

Each year, it seems that we fight a War on Christmas that the left claims doesn’t exist. At Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey, kids for the first time this year were charged $35 to $50 a pop to sit on the lap of someone in a Santa Claus suit and take home photos or videos of the privilege. Customer fury prompted greedy mall overlords to make Santa-sitting free again.

At the Roosevelt Field shopping mall on Long Island, terror of offending those who abhor Christmas trees prompted retail brass to dump the shrub and Santa’s Village and deposit St. Nick in a “glacier” that looked like something out of “Star Trek” rather than the North Pole.

After The Post published a story about the absurd ode to multiculturalism and sci-fi, the mall’s president announced this month that Santa’s sleigh was flying back to Roosevelt Field, along with the tree.

The McBurney YMCA in Greenwich Village five years ago fired Santa from its annual holiday luncheon, replacing him with a nondenominational Frosty the Snowman.

Schools in South Orange-Maplewood, NJ, banned religious music from concerts in 2004, silencing kids from singing “Silent Night” or “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.” This was tied up for years in a suit filed by a dad before the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2010. The music died. Bah humbug.

As a lifelong Hebrew, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ isn’t my thing. But in these days of international terrorism and domestic moral decay, we need religion now more than ever. I am thankful that a day exists that brings happiness and peace to the goyim I love.

Put faith back in Christmas. Bring back the music and decorated cups.

Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to grab java at Christmas cup-friendly Dunkin’ Donuts while singing carols at the top of our lungs in a Starbucks. Anyone who fails to take this threat seriously has clearly never heard me sing.

Words matter. CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott took to Twitter Thursday like a famished reporter to a free buffet. “House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees,’’ she wrote. “Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish.” She tweeted an apology. The TV news network suspended her for two weeks.

She should have been fired.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday said that, unlike the Nov. 13 slaughter in Paris, there exists a “rationale” for the January murders at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. He apparently meant that the butchers’ rage was justified by the mag’s depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. Insane! After an outcry, Kerry walked back his remarks the next day, saying “there’s no excuse’’ for the slaughter.

He should have been drummed out of his job.

All three Democratic presidential candidates — Hillary (no longer Rodham) Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley — refuse to call the bloodthirsty Paris attacks the work of “Islamic” militants — as if failing to acknowledge the truth will make it vanish.

We need strong leaders and smart reporters to defeat ISIS. Both are in short supply.

In the old days, one stalked an ex-lover by obsessively calling him or her on the phone and hanging up, or repeatedly driving by the jerk’s house. But with social media, an ex hangs around perpetually, like bad breath. So Facebook this week is testing tools on mobile devices that allow dumpees to hide posts and updates from their exes, and make it easier to untag posts without having to unfriend or block the losers. Also, a user can limit the information that a clingy ex sees after the dumper changes his or her relationship status to “single.’’

When did smartphones start ruling our love lives?

I miss the days when we actually dealt with each other.

Don’t call her Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Per the Clinton campaign, the preferred first reference is ‘Hillary Clinton.’ No Rodham,’’ Post columnist Richard Johnson quoted from a tweet by a Washington Post reporter.

She went by her maiden name, Hillary Rodham, until 1982, then added “Clinton’’ when husband Bill Clinton became president in 1993.

The new, anti-feminist moniker seems intended to make her more palatable to conservative presidential voters. I don’t think it’ll work.

Summary: When I was growing up in Queens, my family celebrated Christmas in a traditional manner. We saw the latest flick at the local movie house, drank a boatload of eggnog that I started lacing with Capt…


The Parks Department is gouging homeowners, builders and the MTA for tree removal and replacement — collecting $2.7 million in the last fiscal year, The Post has learned.

The total haul came from 275 trees that were removed or damaged, averaging about $10,000 in restitution fees per tree, agency data shows. But the cost of removing and replanting trees to replace an older or thicker tree can climb much higher.

“They’re robbing you without a gun,” said Staten Island builder Jerry Bivona, 55, who said the Parks Department fleeced him over a rotten oak tree in Annadale last year.

Bivona said he faced a $58,000 charge to take down the tree and have the agency replant an equivalent number of trees — or was told he would have to plant 48 trees on his own and guarantee them for two years.

Although he said arborists from the Parks Department examined the tree’s roots and branches when determining the value, Bivona discovered the tree was actually rotten on the inside when it was torn down.

“It was a danger to the community,” he said, noting it could have crashed down on anyone walking past it. “I was shocked.”

When he reached out to the Parks Department to tell them the tree was actually hollow — the agency only cut his costs down about 16 percent despite the tree’s decrepit condition, Bivona said.

He still had to plant a 40 trees for knocking down the rotten tree, at about the cost of $500 to $600 a tree.

Builders who want to construct affordable housing have been hit with five and six-figure bills for as little as one tree because of such calculations, according to the Building Industry Association of New York City.

They include a home built in West Brighton last year that led to a $31,000 bill for one tree removal, and an Eltingville home charged $29,000 for two trees.

The Parks Department says they use a formula based on local law that calculates the value of the tree’s loss by looking at how many trees must be planted to replace its square inches, the health of the tree, its species, and other factors.

Replacing the square inches of a tree with a 24-inch diameter in good condition can, for instance, take as many as 46 young trees to replace. The agency then charges almost $1500 for each replacement tree.

“It’s an aggressive formula,” said frustrated builder Bob Kelly, of Staten Island.

Not just builders and home buyers are getting hit.

The Parks Department initially tried to charge the MTA $520,550 to remove and replant 16 trees near the RFK Bridge–or nearly $33,000 a tree, so the authority could work on the bridge.

The trees had to be replaced with a mind-boggling 359 trees.

MTA board member Jonathan Ballan opposed the procurement as a waste of money. The Parks Department lowered the cost by $200,000 after negotiations with the MTA– but transit riders and taxpayers will still be on the hook for $320,550.

“I was appreciative that the parks department reduced the cost to the MTA,” said Ballan. “And I hope a further look at the health of the trees, under their formula, could lower costs even more.”

Summary: It’s grand theft arbor! The Parks Department is gouging homeowners, builders and the MTA for tree removal and replacement — collecting $2.7 million in the last fiscal year, The Post has learned. Th…


Nov 18, 2015 1:58 PM EST Entertainment

By Lauren Moraski / CBS News

Martin Sheen says he's proud that his son Charlie Sheen went public with his HIV diagnosis.

Actually, he says he urged him to do it.

"He had been leading up to this sort of story for several months, and we kept encouraging him to do it," Martin said Tuesday night while at The Ritz-Carlton beach resort in Naples, Florida, per the Naples Daily News. "And he kept backing away and backing away because it was like going to his own execution, I guess."

Martin, 75, was there as part of CME Group's Global Financial Leadership Conference and spoke on a panel alongside Kevin Spacey and Bob Schieffer.

Charlie, 50, announced that he his HIV-positive during a visit to the "Today" show Tuesday.

"This morning, as I watched him alone, reveal his deepest, darkest secret, I couldn't believe the level of courage I was witnessing, and that it was my son," Martin said. "I left him a message, and I said that if I had that much courage, I would change the world."

On Tuesday, the former "Two and a Half Men" atar said he would do his part to help raise awareness and assist others who also have HIV.

"It started with what I thought was a series of crushing headaches," he explained. "I thought I had a brain tumor. I thought it was over," he said, adding, "It's a hard three letters to absorb. It's a turning point in one's life."

Martin revealed that the family wasn't sure -- even on Tuesday -- if Charlie would go through with the announcement.

"We didn't know until he walked on the set this morning that he was going to do it," Martin Sheen said. "I saw him Saturday night, my wife and I went to see him, to make sure he knew we were behind him, and if he wanted me to go, I would have canceled this event. He said, no, this was his and his alone."

Summary: The 75-year-old actor says the family "kept encouraging him to do it"


Donald Trump has made a surprise early appearance at the Republican National Convention, telling disgruntled party delegates "we're going to win" the White House.

Making a cameo at the gathering in Cleveland to introduce his wife Melania, the bombastic tycoon showed confidence that belied the day's spasm of public division.

"We're going to win so big," Mr Trump said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great honor to present the next First Lady of the United States."

Mr Trump, who broke with tradition by appearing at the convention before his nomination, was addressing an audience that hours earlier erupted into jeers and yelling as anti-Trump Republicans insisted their voice be heard.

Donald Trump introduces his wife Melania in Cleveland. (AAP)

Many are furious that the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt will be led by a man who described Mexicans as rapists and advocated barring Muslims from entering the country.

"We deserve to be heard, this is the people's convention!" said Diana Shores, a delegate from Virginia, while pro-Trump delegates tried to drown out the rebels with shouts of "Shame! Shame!"

Mr Trump's fans insist delegates should heed the will of the grassroots of the party and make him the Republican nominee without equivocation.

The billionaire won a thumping victory in a series of statewide party elections, garnering more than 13 million votes - the most of any Republican nominee ever.

This was meant to be Mr Trump's moment - the point at which he put the lid on Republican divisions and marched the party toward November's election and the White House.

Ahead of the convention he had tried to assuage conservative critics and bring the party together by naming Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

But it was Mr Trump's Slovenian-born wife Melania who stepped up as his chief advocate on the convention's opening day.

Many rank-and-file Republicans have revolted against Mr Trump's presumptive nomination. (AAP)

Read more: Melania Trump praises 'intensely loyal' husband

She took the stage with all the allure of a former model and in a strong accent made the case for Americans to entrust Trump with the presidency.

"Donald is, and always has been, an amazing leader," said the 46-year-old.

"Now, he will go to work for you."

"He does not give up," she said of her husband during an eloquent 14-minute speech in which she portrayed him as a loving father and successful businessman who would be a strong and compassionate president.

"If you want someone to fight for you and your country, I can assure you, he's the guy," she said.

She also sought to put a more human face on a candidate many voters see as brash and egotistical.

"Donald intends to represent all the people, not just some of the people. That includes Christians and Jews and Muslims. It includes Hispanics and African-Americans and Asians and the poor and the middle class."

After his wife, the candidate's team will send his son and daughters to the convention stage in the coming days.

Read more: Celebrities and former presidents stay away from Republican National Convention

But in a sign of lingering party divisions, several party luminaries are staying away from Cleveland, including the entire Bush family, Mitt Romney and even John Kasich, host state Ohio's sitting governor who was visiting Cleveland but not the convention.

Much now rides on Mr Trump and his supporters focusing on issues that unite Republicans: support for the armed forces and concern about law and order

Amid a spate of racially charged killings in the United States and terror attacks across the globe, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul summed up a core tenet of Mr Trump's appeal: "Are you safer than you were eight years ago?"

But the "Trump card" may be hatred of the presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

On several occasions the convention broke into chants of "lock her up, lock her up."

Mrs Clinton fired back, blasting Mr Trump's candidacy as a "threat to our democracy," and accusing him of stoking racial and ethnic tensions with his rhetoric.

Mr Trump "plays coy with white supremacists, Donald Trump insults Mexican immigrants," she told the NAACP, America's largest black civil rights organization, at a meeting in Cincinnati.

"Donald Trump cannot become president of the United States," she said, to huge applause.

The Republican convention ends on Thursday with a speech from the 70-year-old billionaire real estate mogul. The Democrats stage their own convention next week in Philadelphia.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016


When U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez talks about his ancestry, he routinely mentions that his grandfather was expelled from the Dominican Republic for opposing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the 1930s.

Mr. Perez, in the running to be Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential pick, said in a speech last month that his grandfather “was on the right side of history. And I’m so proud of my grandfather for doing that, even though it was...

Summary: Labor Secretary Tom Perez, in the running to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, regularly says his grandfather was expelled from the Dominican Republic for opposing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Archival records offer a more complicated picture.


A Deathwatch beetle infests old oak timbers that have been previously affected by fungal decay – specifically the oak-rot fungus Donkiopora expansa . So the key to removing, or preventing, an infestation is to make sure that your timbers are dry. The usual problem areas are the ends of joists or rafters, where they are embedded in walls or prone to roof and gutter leaks. Because of their penchant for damp oak timbers, deathwatch beetle infestations commonly occur in old church buildings. The adult beetles’ head-banging antics (used to attract mates) when heard at funerals, gave rise to the insect’s macabre name .

As with all wood-boring insects, damage is not caused by the adult beetles, which live for only a few weeks, but by the larvae burrowing inside the timber. This part of the insect’s life cycle can last for up to 13 years. Surface-applied insecticide chemicals do not reach the larvae but can kill spiders and clerid beetles, the deathwatch beetles’ natural predators. So spraying can actually make matters worse.

The first step is to make sure that you really do have a deathwatch beetle infestation. You should be able to find some flight holes that are about 2mm to 3mm in diameter – slightly wider than those of the common furniture beetle (woodworm). If you can’t find any flight holes and don’t have damp oak timbers, then it is possible that the clicking noises you hear are simply the expansion and contraction of the timbers.

If you really do have them , then the most effective treatment, apart from making sure your timbers are dry (by heating, ventilation and fixing any sources of moisture ingress), appears to be catching the emerging adults in spring with ultraviolet “insectocutors”.

If you are really worried about structural damage, have an experienced structural engineer investigate. Drilling small holes into the ends of joists and rafters can usually reveal any rotted internal areas.

Q Recently I had a leak from a pipe in the loft (overflow) which soaked through an area of plaster ceiling approximately 2ft (600mm) square. The leak has been repaired and the plaster is starting to dry out.

The problem is that the smell of the damp plaster is lingering. The ceiling area affected is made of lath and plaster; the house was built in 1921. Do you have any advice on getting rid of the smell?

A If you are sure that the leak has been properly fixed then the plaster will dry out in time, and there will be no smell.

Old lath-and-plaster ceilings can be quite thick, so it might take a few weeks for the area to dry out thoroughly. You can aid the process by good ventilation or by using a dehumidifier.

Next time you decorate, give the affected area a coat of Polycell Stain Block before painting over, to prevent any discolouration showing through.

Summary: Jeff Howell answers your home maintenance problems. This week: troublesome   deathwatch beetle and eradicating the smell of damp.


Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

07/22/2016 AT 08:30 PM EDT

announced on Friday that Virginia Senator

will be her running mate as she attempts to clinch the White House in November.

"I'm thrilled to announce my running mate, Tim Kaine. Tim is a lifelong fighter for progressive causes and one of the most qualified vice presidential candidates in our nation's history," Clinton captioned a photo of the two fist-bumping at one of her rallies. "But his credentials alone aren't why I asked him to run alongside me. Tim's a man of relentless optimism who believes no problem is unsolvable if you're willing to put in the work."

She continued: "That commitment to delivering results has stayed with him throughout his decades-long career as a public servant. I could give you a laundry list of things he accomplished as mayor of Richmond, governor of Virginia, and in the United States Senate. But here's what's important: Tim has never taken a job for the glory or the title."

I'm thrilled to announce my running mate, Tim Kaine. Tim is a lifelong fighter for progressive causes and one of the most qualified vice presidential candidates in our nation's history. But his credentials alone aren't why I asked him to run alongside me. Timâs a man of relentless optimism who believes no problem is unsolvable if you're willing to put in the work. That commitment to delivering results has stayed with him throughout his decades-long career as a public servant. I could give you a laundry list of things he accomplished as mayor of Richmond, governor of Virginia, and in the United States Senate. But hereâs whatâs important: Tim has never taken a job for the glory or the title. He's the same person whether the cameras are on or off, motivated by the belief that you can make a difference in people's lives through public service. I didnât make this decision lightly. Iâve had the privilege of seeing two presidents and two vice presidents up close, and I wanted to pick someone who will be able to give me their best advice, look me in the eye, and tell me they disagree with me when they do. But what matters most is a simple test thatâs not easy to meet: whether the person could step in at a momentâs notice and serve as president. I have no doubt that Tim can do the job, and I want him by my side on the trail and in the White House. But we're going to need your help to get there. So join me and Tim, and let's get to work and go win this thing. -H

A photo posted by Hillary Clinton (@hillaryclinton) on Jul 22, 2016 at 5:13pm PDT

Clinton's vetting process began over a year ago when she had a list of more than two dozen potential VP picks, but she and Kaine only recently got to know each other better. He was among the

Clinton met with recently, a Clinton campaign official tells PEOPLE. While some of those private meetings leaked, Kaine's managed to slip under the radar.

Although many were under the impression that Clinton was

as a running mate, PEOPLE has learned that Clinton had multiple follow up meetings with Kaine – including one where his wife joined the Clintons and their daughter

and her husband for dinner – and enjoyed his humble persona at her recent campaign appearance in Virginia, which she alluded to in her Instagram announcement.

"He's the same person whether the cameras are on or off, motivated by the belief that you can make a difference in people's lives through public service," she added. "I didnât make this decision lightly. I've had the privilege of seeing two presidents and two vice presidents up close, and I wanted to pick someone who will be able to give me their best advice, look me in the eye, and tell me they disagree with me when they do."

The campaign source said that what Clinton prioritized in picking Kaine was his readiness to do the job and the fact that the pair got along well both personally and professionally.

Clinton asked Kaine to join her ticket – and he accepted – in a phone call Friday evening.

Summary: Clinton made her announcement on Friday, just days before the Democratic National Convention


Recent studies have suggested that condom use is on the decline in South Africa, which has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world.

Some 2,700 young South Africans are infected with HIV every week - 74 % of them girls. The BBC's Pumza Fihlani speaks to some women in Johannesburg about their attitudes towards sex, men and getting them to use condoms.

I'm in a new relationship now and one of the first things we spoke about is condoms. I told him straight, "I don't know where you've been, you don't know where've I've been. I don't know your status so we have to use a condom." He wasn't too happy with the decision but he agreed.

It becomes a bit awkward because at times in the heat of the moment we need to stop what we're doing to grab a condom and it interrupts the whole thing.

We've spoken about getting tested for HIV together so we can stop using them but I've explained to him that because I'm not on any contraception - this is my only way of preventing pregnancy.

I've been in a situation in the past where a guy wanted to have sex without a condom and we had a massive fight about it, he even became physical. He didn't understand why I wouldn't sleep with him without it.

I was blunt. I told him, "If you force yourself on me it will be rape." That scared him and he stopped. I didn't ever see him again.

People say when you're having sex without a condom it's a lot nicer, I agree and I think that's why some people, including women, don't like them. But the reality is that there are many diseases so we're forced to use them so we don't get sick.

It is condoms or no sex at all for me. Guys just don't want to use condoms but in the end they'd rather have sex with a condom than no sex at all - if more women got that they'd actually have more control, they'd feel more at ease with insisting on it.

I don't know that it's a power thing more than it being a case of us wanting to please our partners. I have a white friend who is 25, smart, educated. She's dating a black guy and he convinced her that they didn't need to use a condom and she agreed. She contracted herpes.

I thought she'd break up with him but they're still together. She's smitten with him. I think the issue comes when we fall in love, we become more willing to please, to make our guys happy and that's where the condom fight is lost.

A lot of women when they are in love sadly lose their voice. It becomes all about pleasing the other person. I'm a very strong-willed person, so I'm comfortable with making my case.

I know I don't want to fall pregnant and I don't want to contract any diseases so my motto is simple: "It's condoms or no sex." I'm still young and have my whole life to plan for. I haven't even established myself as a career woman so having a baby isn't a part of my plan just yet.

I'm on birth control but want to be absolutely sure. If a guy wants to be with me, he needs to respect that. He must respect that I always use a condom.

Are young South Africans ignoring Aids message?

The reason there are so many diseases is because we don't use condoms as often as we should. Most of the time when you tell your partner that you want him to use a condom he tells me that it hurts him.

I end up agreeing to sleeping with him without it because I tell myself that I want to make him happy. My partner says it's difficult for him to ejaculate when he's wearing a condom. He actually hates it.

These sort of attitudes are the reason we have so many diseases going around. Yes, you can refuse to sleep with him but then he'll force himself on you and no woman wants that.

Men are more powerful, when they want something they want it. There is a lot of pressure on us women to please them. I know I feel that pressure at home.

In some instances you know he's cheating on you but you'll still agree to sleep with him without a condom but we don't want to lose him. This is why so many women are contracting HIV. We don't know how to stand up for ourselves.

Society even today teaches us that to be seen as a worthy woman you need to be in a relationship or married - that you need to have a man.

Condoms are a big point of conflict in our relationships and we, as women, are not being listened to but what can we do? It's the way things are.

I personally find condoms quite uncomfortable, I've often had to use a douche afterwards. I also don't like how they smell, so yes, I'm not a fan of condoms. The only reason I use them is the prevention aspect.

If I was in a committed relationship and was sure my partner is being faithful I would do without them altogether. I think women are still sheepish about getting their partners to use them.

I've once been in a situation where the guy and I were about to have sex. I asked him if he'd put on a condom. He told me he had - only for me to find out afterwards that he didn't but I felt powerless to raise it.

I think as powerful as we believe ourselves to be as women we are conditioned to be submissive. It's not just in sex.

It even becomes more difficult in situations where the male is older - older men call the shots. I stay away from older guys because I don't want to find myself in a position where I feel like I can't say no because I'm also financially dependant on him - which is what often happens.

These sort of relationships are dangerous because in all likelihood he's not just sleeping with one girl - it's you, his wife and a bunch of other girls. It's a serious problem and perhaps why HIV is still an issue here and why it's affecting young people.

If they are serious about fighting HIV, they need to look at making condoms thinner, which you can barely feel and make it more affordable to everyone.

It would also mean more women would stop relying on men to buy them.

And black parents need to educate their kids more. We live in an age where parents are more aware of just how sexually active their children are and so they should be more open to talking to them about the choices they makes as well as guiding them.

Summary: Recent studies suggest that condom use is on the decline in South Africa - so how do women there get their partners to use condoms?


NEW YORK, July 29 (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a 6- percentage-point lead over Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll with new wording that was released on Friday, the day after she formally accepted her party's nomination for the Nov. 8 election.

Nearly 41 percent of likely voters favor Clinton, 35 percent favor Trump, and 25 percent picked "Other," according to the new July 25-29 online poll of 1,043 likely voters, which overlapped with the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

The poll has a credibility interval of 4 percentage points.

See photos from Clinton's DNC speech:

Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton bats balloons after accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys the balloon drop after accepting the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her husband former president Bill Clinton react to the balloon drop after she accepted the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys the balloon drop with her vice presidential running mate Senator Tim Kaine after accepting the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her husband former president Bill Clinton react to the balloon drop after she accepted the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton celebrates with balloons after she accepted the nomination on the last night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton celebrates among balloons after she accepted the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her vice presidential running mate Senator Tim Kaine celebrate among balloons after she accepted the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton hugs her husband former president Bill Clinton after accepting the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton bats balloons after accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (L) waves with Anne Holton, wife of vice presidential running mate Senator Tim Kaine (Back, R) and her husband former president Bill Clinton after accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton walks with her vice presidential running mate Senator Tim Kaine during the balloon drop after accepting the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (L) and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine (R) celebrate with loved ones and supporters after her acceptance speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention July 28, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. / AFP / Brendan Smialowski (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband former US President Bill Clinton watch falling balloons during the 2016 Democratic National Convention July 28, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. / AFP / Brendan Smialowski (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton stands with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, after accepting the nomination on the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Balloons come down on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine at the end of the fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center on July 28, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. / AFP / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton celebrates among balloons after she accepted the nomination on the fourth and final night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

The presidential tracking poll reflects a slight change of wording from previous surveys, replacing the "Neither/Other" option given to respondents with just "Other." An internal review had found the word "Neither" has, at times, siphoned support away from one or the other candidate.

Former Secretary of State Clinton delivered an upbeat keynote address at the Democratic convention on Thursday night, as she became the first woman to accept the presidential nomination from a major party.

In the biggest speech of her more than 25-year-old career in the public eye, Clinton, 68, cast herself as a steady leader at a "moment of reckoning" for the country, and contrasted her character with what she described as Trump's dangerous and volatile temperament.

Trump, a 70-year-old New York businessman and former reality TV show host who has never held political office, responded in a Twitter post late on Thursday that "Hillary's vision is a borderless world where working people have no power, no jobs, no safety."

Both candidates were on the campaign trail on Friday, kicking off what is expected to be a hotly contested general election battle.

A separate Reuters/Ipsos survey that provided respondents with the option to choose from Clinton, Trump, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, has Clinton and Trump tied at 37 percentage points.

Of the alternative party candidates, Johnson came in third with 5 percentage points, followed by Stein at 1 percentage point, according to the July 25-29 survey of 1,426 likely voters, which has a credibility interval of 3 percentage points.

Summary: Nearly 41 percent of likely voters favor Clinton, 35 percent favor Trump, but the number who said neither should worry both candidates.


Change is coming to Instagram.

Since inception, the massively popular photo-sharing app served up users’ friends’ images in chronological order. But Instagram will soon begin using an algorithm to predict which photos its users are mostly likely to like. Those pictures will then appear higher in their feeds. (The system doesn’t have a release date but is being selectively tested.)

This may sounds like relatively a minor shift, but many diehard Instagram users are upset by the idea. Emotions, as they are wont to do online, range from annoyance to outrage:

I'm not liking this new Instagram update. Put it back in chronological order!!

—  Hilary Woods  (@hillieboo) March 28, 2016

I've had the whack Instagram update since last week and it's terrible

— ✨Adrianna✨ (@Queen_Annna) March 28, 2016

Some prolific Instagrammers are going so far as to ask their followers to be notified every time they upload a new image:

Will the change actually hurt Instagram? Probably not. Facebook, the world’s biggest social network (and Instagram’s owner since 2012), has long used an algorithm to serve up content it thinks users will be more interested in. Changes to Facebook’s newsfeed—what users see when they log in—used to elicit similarly strong objections but, lately, fewer seem to mind. And the change hasn’t dinged Facebook’s growth—a billion people check the site every day.

MORE: Review: Oculus Rift Is Expensive, Complicated, and Totally Wonderful

Not that Facebook’s algorithmic feed hasn’t yielded mixed results. On one hand, it gave the social network a sense of order missing from rivals like Twitter. On the other, there’s often a nagging sense that the algorithm has missed something, leaving you in the dark on the updates you really want. But you would be hard pressed to find a Facebook user who longs for the days when the network was more chronological.

The same will be true of Instagram’s update. Some of the app’s 400 million users will undoubtedly be annoyed by the “new Instagram.” But it’s likely they will accept the shift, if begrudgingly. There is just too much good content on the platform to give up on it. Instagram’s change is still in what spokesperson Gabe Madway characterized as a “testing period.” The company will not offer an opt-out during that period, which he added will last “weeks, or even months” before it’s rolled out more widely.

Other users, myself included, will welcome the new Instagram. Instagram is already my favorite social network because it’s a calming babbling brook compared to Twitter’s raging rapids. But I don’t check my feed more than a couple of times a day on average. Instagram’s claim that the average user misses 70 percent of their friends’ photos rings true to me. That’s unfortunate. I would rather see all of my friends’ posts, even if out of order, rather than miss them entirely. That’s what the site’s algorithm promises.

I suspect many other Instagram users feel the same—even if they’re not being quite as loud about the change.

Summary: It solves one of the app's biggest weaknesses


Each page would focus on a different detail – “legs and shoes”, “bare shoulders”, “the denim dress” – in a technique which was later taken up by fashion bloggers on the internet. Cunningham would supervise the layout of the artwork himself, though as a photographer he had few artistic pretensions, insisting: “I’m just documenting what I see.”

Eventually he took his columns online, recording a commentary over his still pictures, but he never adopted digital technology, continuing to use a battered Nikon and sending his film for developing to a one-hour photo shop.

Cunningham had no interest in celebrities (“with their free dresses”), except as subjects for photographs – or in money, possessions or romantic relationships. For many years, until he was evicted, he rented an artist’s studio on an upper floor of Carnegie Hall, where he slept on a bed of foam on a wooden board supported by milk crates in a room crammed with metal filing cabinets. There was no kitchen and the bathroom was down the hall. He never owned a television but went to Mass every Sunday.

Cunningham’s own uniform was unchanging – a blue cotton French worker’s jacket with large pockets, khaki trousers, a flat cap and a smart shirt. For when it rained he had a fold-up plastic poncho, its holes patched with gaffer tape. His latest Schwinn bicycle was his 29th, he said: all the others had been stolen.

Summary: Bill Cunningham, who has died aged 87, was a photographer of street fashion for The New York Times;


WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday stepped up a new bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Libya, conducting its first armed drone flights from Jordan to strike militant targets in the coastal city of Surt.

President Obama, during a news conference, said the airstrikes were critical to helping Libya’s fragile United Nations-backed government to drive Islamic State militants out of Surt, which the group has controlled since June 2015.

Calling the strikes necessary to protect American national security interests, the president promised that the air campaign would continue as long as necessary to make sure that the extremist group “does not get a stronghold in Libya.” He also linked instability in Libya to the migration crisis in Europe.

The new round of airstrikes came as Libyan forces were reported by Agence France-Presse to be making advances in their months-old offensive to oust the Islamic State from Surt. The advances were aided by two American airstrikes on Tuesday, United States officials said. The day before, the United States opened the campaign by carrying out five airstrikes, two of which were announced by the Pentagon then.

A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, told reporters that the targets in Surt included two tanks, construction vehicles, military vehicles, a rocket launcher and an Islamic State fighting position. He said one strike, which destroyed a T-72 tank in the Surt neighborhood of Al Dular, had helped Libyan forces on the ground.

The tank “had really proved to be a menacing problem for the G.N.A.,” Captain Davis said, referring to Libya’s interim government of national accord. Fighters working with the government had asked that the tank be destroyed. Captain Davis said Islamic State fighters had repeatedly used the tank to “beat back advances.”

Once the tank was destroyed, Libyan forces were able to enter the neighborhood, he said.

The Pentagon said on Monday that another T-72 tank and two transport vehicles had been struck.

Pentagon officials declined to publicly identify the sites from which the strikes were being launched. But three United States military officials said they were being conducted by Harrier jets from the amphibious assault ship Wasp in the Mediterranean and by armed Reaper drones from a base in Jordan. The officials said the strikes could provide vital leverage to the Libyan forces.

The attacks are the first time that the United States has flown armed drone missions from Jordan, a staunch ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The Pentagon also conducts drone flights from a base in Sicily, but those missions are restricted to surveillance. A spokeswoman for the Jordanian Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Under the procedures set up for the Surt operation, Libyan ground commanders meet at a Libyan operations center outside Surt with American Special Operations forces who have been in the country for months. The Libyan commanders request targets they want the Americans to hit, such as the T-72 tanks.

The American forces, working with military spotters and officials at the United States Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, analyze the prospective targets using imagery from American surveillance drones and other intelligence. If deemed valid and not too great a risk to civilians, the targets are approved for attack.

Captain Davis said that it was hard to predict how long the air campaign would last, but that it would probably be “weeks, not months,” given the relatively small size of the contested city center of Surt.

He said that the Islamic State fighters now numbered in the hundreds in Surt, down from several thousand, and that many had fled into the desert or other Islamic State enclaves in the country.

The president, during his news conference Tuesday with the visiting prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, expressed regret that the 2011 NATO-led bombing campaign that had driven Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power in Libya had also led to the deterioration of the country.

“I think that all of us, collectively, were not sufficiently attentive to what had to happen the day after, and the day after, and the day after that, in order to ensure that there were strong structures in place to assure basic security and peace inside of Libya,” Mr. Obama said.

A version of this article appears in print on August 3, 2016, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Strikes Help Libyans Move on Surt Against ISIS. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: The new round of airstrikes came as Libyan forces were reported to be making advances in their months-old offensive to oust the Islamic State from Surt.


Lately, he has turned to Mr. Obama, cranking out both eBay-ready conventional portraits — “I hate to say this, but I can do ones like that in about an hour,” he said — and even stranger works that have tended toward portrayals of the 44th president naked on a unicorn, often performing gallant deeds like wrestling a bear on Wall Street or taking the controls of the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River.

“There’s a consistent demand for Obama, both for things that are funny and also for the serious, sort of Aaron Shikler kinds of treatments,” said Mr. Lacey, referring to the artist who painted well-known portraits of the Kennedy family.

Among Mr. Lacey’s eBay customers are Carla Pasley, an administrator for a consumer products company in Kansas City, Mo., who said she is generally apolitical but bought an Obama portrait simply because she found it “really pretty,” and Gary Rogers Wares, a manager at a stationery and gift manufacturer in Culver City, Calif., who has a gold-hued Obama in his office behind his desk and just won another one at auction for $28.

“I wanted a painting because it’s something unique, and as far as I’m concerned it’s unique, just like our president is,” Mr. Wares said. “This is historic and you want something that feels like an heirloom.”

The White House, asked if the president and first lady commonly received gifts of paintings of themselves, responded with characteristic reticence: “On background, I can pass along that among other things, the Obamas are given works of art that include images of the President and symbols from the campaign,” a spokesman wrote.

If Mr. Obama has not yet fixed the country’s economy or solved its security problems, he at least seems to have postponed the withering of original art’s “aura,” or power, in a world of easy reproduction, as famously foreseen by the philosopher Walter Benjamin.

Indeed, a 90-day search by eBay under the category of Obama paintings, most of them original creations, not posters or prints, found 787 works offered for sale from mid-February to mid-May, generating almost $20,000 at an average price of $118 a painting, said Karen Bard, a spokeswoman. Production generally seems to be running well ahead of demand.

High-dollar works by well-known artists seem not to fare as well — an Obama painting by Peter Max listed with a buy-it-now price of $17,000 has had no takers so far. But paintings in a wild variety of styles — Cubist, Pop, post-Impressionist, folk arty, street arty and what might be described as neo-Tolkienesque — have sold in the two-figure and even three-figure range.

Gabriel McGovern, a Web designer in Portland, Ore., who started artofobama.com during the presidential campaign last summer, said he had not intended to continue it past the election but had been receiving such a steady stream of submissions — commercial works, personal works, works photographed on the streets, 300 or so images of paintings and other kinds of art that he has not yet had time to post — that he decided to keep the site going.

“My favorites are the first-time painters,” he said. “It might not even really look like Obama — in fact, not much at all — but they not only paint it, they go out and find a forum on the Web where they can post it so everyone can see it.”

Ms. Boothby said she is now managing to make a little money on the side with her brushes and easel and credits Mr. Obama. “I think that portrait I did of the president was kind of a touchstone for my confidence, painting-wise,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “I’m not sure I would have been able to start doing commissions if I hadn’t gotten as warm a reception as I did for that one painting.”

Mr. Lacey, who admits to parting with paintings for as little as $1 on the Web, said he sold his president-wrestling-a-bear fantasia for $600 and recently received a commission for a unicorn-themed Obama. He intends to ride the surging presidential art wave as long as it will keep him afloat.

During the previous administration, he said, he had also tried his hand at some portraits of George W. Bush but added, in a tone that mingled regret with professional candor, “You really couldn’t sell them.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama’s Face (That’s Him?) Rules the Web. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy has a presidency so fanned the flames of painterly ardor among artists.


Pita Taufatofua just became the world's most irresistible athlete.

Tonga's flag bearer has gone a bit heavy on the oil...https://t.co/VU4WHfIkFr #Rio2016 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/zh4ftv8Oh3

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 6, 2016

Taufatofua, 32, is at the Olympics representing Tonga in taekwondo, and he served as the nation's flag bearer during Friday's Opening Ceremony in Rio. Taufatofua was born in Australia to a Tongan father, who was getting his PhD in agricultural science. His mother is Australian/British. The family moved to Tonga when Taufatofua was young and Taufatofua spent most of his childhood in the island nation.

Taufatofua eventually moved back to Australia and trains in Brisbane. He self-funded his journey to the Olympics, and when he is not practicing, Taufatofua works in youth homelessness. He also models and has an aesthetically-pleasing Instagram.

Sometimes Pita Taufatofua holds a fish instead of a flag pic.twitter.com/RutvkWHK8A

— A (@millvsSPQR) August 6, 2016

The oiled-up muscleman won the 2016 Oceania Taekwondo Olympic Qualification Tournament to become the first Tongan to qualify for taekwondo at the Olympics.

And he just made himself a hot commodity in the Olympic Village.

More Olympics: -- How Gymnastics Star Simone Biles Stays 'Normal' -- Kyrie Irving And Coach K Have 'Unfinished Business' -- How Christen Press Stays Sane Despite Crazy Schedule

Follow Jeffrey Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband.

2016 Olympics, Australia, Brazil, Fitness, Flag Bearer, model, Muscles, oil, Olympics, Opening Ceremony, Pita Taufatofua, Rio, Rio Olympics, Summer Olympics, Taekwondo, Tonga, Training

Summary: Pita Taufatofua, who competes in taekwondo for Tonga, oiled up his hot body for the Olympics' Opening Ceremony in Rio.


A Melbourne woman accused of poisoning her husband's meatballs before injecting him with weedkiller and brake fluid will front a hearing with her co-accused daughter.

Joanne DeBono, 54, is charged with attempting to murder Stephen DeBono in mid-March.

She allegedly crushed up 75 temazepam pills, mixed them with his meatball dinner and watched him eat, before injecting him with about two millilitres of chemical cocktail as he slept.

Mr DeBono woke and asked her what she was doing while the needle was still in his arm, the Melbourne Magistrates Court has heard.

Police have alleged his wife fled and later went to a police station where she confessed.

She said her husband had physically and emotionally abused her for 25 years.

DeBono, of Gowanbrae, and her 19-year-old daughter, Shannon DeBono, are both charged with attempted murder and intentionally causing injury over the alleged incident on March 12.

The duo, who are on bail, fronted court briefly on Thursday and the matter was listed for a committal hearing for a magistrate to decide if there's enough evidence for a trial.

Nine witnesses will testify at the three-day hearing scheduled for April 2017.

Joanne DeBono is due back in court in a month because her Legal Aid funding hasn't been approved, the court was told on Thursday.

Summary: A Melbourne woman charged with attempting to murder her allegedly abusive husband by poisoning his meatballs has appeared in court with her daughter.