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The personal details of more than a fifth of Facebook's estimated 500 million users have been "leaked" to the internet by campaigners highlighting its "terrifying" privacy fears.

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On Wednesday, the list was rapidly spreading across the internet being distributed and downloaded by more than 1,000 users, the BBC reported. One user described the list as "awesome and a little terrifying". But its publication provoked concern from privacy experts who said it proved Facebook’s “confusing” privacy settings were still apparent. But the company defended its privacy settings and denied any “private data” had been made available or comprised, saying the information was already available. Last week Facebook reached 500 million members – the equivalent of connecting with eight per cent of the world’s population. If it were a country, its 500 million members would make it the third-largest country in the world. The list was “leaked” to the site by Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, who reportedly used a simple piece of code to collect the data from the site. He told the broadcaster that he published the data to highlight privacy issues. Simon Davies, of Privacy International, a campaign group, said:"Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it," he said. "It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn't have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there's an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence.” He added: "This highlights the argument for a higher level of privacy and proves the case for default nondisclosure. "There are going to be a lot of angry and concerned people right now who be wondering who has their data and what they should do." In a statement to the BBC, Facebook said the list’s information was already freely available online. "People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want," a spokesman said. "In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook. "No private data is available or has been compromised.” He added: “It is similar to the white pages of the phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook. "If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications." Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has said he believes the company has got its privacy settings right “on the whole”. The site recently faced a storm of international protest over its over-complicated privacy settings, which users said led them unwittingly to make personal information public. It forced the social networking site to announced last month that it would “drastically simplify” the controls that let users set how much of their personal information is visible to other users.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2010072919id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7915572/Facebook-security-fears-after-private-details-of-100m-users-leaked-to-web.html

Wes Craven’s classic scary movie, ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street,’ uses the common street name to heighten the horror

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When director Wes Craven dreamed up “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” his classic horror film, he picked an address that would evoke a kind of Everywhere, U.S.A. “It really fits what he was going for, which is that horror can happen anywhere, even in residential neighborhoods that we all think are safe,” says Thommy Hutson, author of “Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy—The Making of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street,” a chronicle of the film that incorporates interviews with Mr. Craven, who died in August. In real life, the house where Freddy Krueger invaded Nancy Thompson’s dreams is on North Genesee Avenue in Los Angeles. But the ubiquity of Elm Streets is indisputable. Seventeen of the country’s 25 largest cities have them, and there are 2,376 Elm Streets across the U.S., with a total of 92,225 homes, according to real-estate listings website Zillow. (The October data is based on Elm Streets, including its directional variants, with at least 10 homes.) If you want your own slice of the American nightmare, you can choose from 1,410 homes for sale with a median listing price of $129,900—less than the country’s median price of $227,400, Zillow said. The most expensive, at $4.75 million, is a five-bedroom house in Greenwich, Conn. The street is among the town’s most desirable, says listing agent Richard Breglia. So, too, is Chicago’s East Elm Street, an enclave of rowhouses in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood. A townhouse there priced at almost $2.7 million recently went into contract, says listing agent Brad Lippitz. Elm Streets pop up in areas where developers want to evoke stability and community, says Mitchell L. Moss, an urban-policy professor at New York University. With its echoes of thick leaves and arching branches, Elm is a much more popular street name than Spruce or Birch, he adds. It may also explain why a horror movie on Elm Street is so chilling. “The elm tree represents a kind of Americana,” says Mr. Hutson. “It was really about the kind of protection that an elm tree provided.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015102919id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-neighbor-on-elm-street-why-freddy-kruegers-haunt-is-so-popular-1446129817

Geeky fun, from robotic dogs that bark at your Nintendo DS to tiny cars that interact with iPad.

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Given the iPad's sky-rocketing popularity, it is only natural that toy companies would mimic that popular tablet. The result is some good, cheaper alternatives to the $499 iPad for families with young children. Here's a closer look at the top two: — LeapPad. From Leapfrog, best for ages 4-9, $99.99. Rating: 3.5 Stars (out of 4). For only $99.99, parents can purchase a tablet device designed for kids. Featuring a 5-inch touch-sensitive screen encased in a durable frame, Leapfrog's version of a kiddie tablet plays Leapfrog downloadable apps, games, e-books, flashcards and videos. The device also supports games that come in cartridges, and is compatible with those playable on last year's Leapster Explorer handheld gaming system. The LeapPad houses a camera and video recorder, and has a microphone that supports voice commands and recordings. While it comes loaded with lots of apps to explore, the best thing about this system is that it plays the new LeapPad Ultra eBooks, robust interactive books that feature cinematics, learning games, the defining and highlighting of words as read and the adjustment of reading level based on the child's ability. Parents will welcome the connection to the Leapfrog Learning Path, a service that tracks what kids are learning and then offers suggestions about new apps and games to play next. This is our favorite kiddie tablet. — InnoTab. From Vtech, best for ages 4-9, $79.99. Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) Similar in size and functionality to the LeapPad, the InnoTab is $20 less because it doesn't include the camera and video recorder functionality of the LeapPad. The device comes loaded with apps, games and books, and can connect online to the Vtech store to download additional content. The InnoTab also plays separate cartridge game ($25 each). This kiddie tablet is good, but we like the LeapPad's built-in camera functions. Also, the initial quality of software is better on the LeapPad than on the InnoTab. That said, this is still a nifty choice for kids. TOYS WITH A GAMING COMPONENT —Life of George. From The Lego Group, best for ages 7 and up. $29.99, requires iPhone or iPod Touch and free app. Rating: 4 stars (out of 4) This box of 144 Lego bricks comes with a special playmat and a guide on how to play this game using an app downloaded onto an iPhone or an iPod Touch. The concept is that the app challenges you to build a specific design (like a car or a pineapple) as quickly as you can. When you are done building, you place your creation on the special playmat and use the camera on your iDevice to scan your creation. The app rates you on how well you built the requested item within the time used. For one or two players, this toy-plus-app combo blends fun Lego building with cool technology that can accurately register your Lego building skill. It is playable on two levels of difficulty. You can also photograph your own creations and then challenge others to build them. For all Lego builders, this is one competition you don't want to miss. There is a special Christmas album offered as an in-app purchase ($1.99) which gives you 30 new holiday-themed challenges. —Wappy Dog. From Activision, best for ages 6-10, $49.99, requires a Nintendo DS. Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) Wappy is a white robotic dog with blue trim that comes packaged with the "Wappy Dog" video game for the Nintendo DS. The robotic toy responds to human touches, but it is most fun when played using the Nintendo DS software. The Nintendo DS acts as translator by letting children select questions to ask Wappy. The dog responds by barking and moving its body (it doesn't walk) and then the Nintendo DS translates this "doggy speak" into English. The puppy may tell you it is hungry, or that it wants to play a game with you. You can even play "Rock, Paper, Scissors" with it. In addition to providing kids with a series of questions and commands to which Wappy will respond, the software also allows for a virtual version of Wappy to appear in the game so that kids can play a virtual pet simulation game on the DS. With this adorable robotic toy at their side, kids will love owning a virtual pet. — Cars 2 AppMATes. From Disney, best for ages 5-9, $19.99 for two-vehicle pack or $12.99 for single car, requires an iPad and a free app. Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) This new toy line has a high "Wow" factor. Sold in packages of two cars each, AppMATes are little Matchbox-like toy car versions of "Cars 2" movie stars, including Mater, Lightning McQueen, Holley Shiftwell, Finn McMissile, Shu Todoroki and Francesco Bernoulli. These toy cars come to life when placed on top of the iPad that is playing the free AppMATes app. By holding the car with two fingers on either side of its windows, and placing a hand on the side of the iPad, kids cause the car to trigger animations beneath the car. It appears as if the car is driving all around Radiator Springs. It is a magical experience. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work and can take some experimenting to figure out how to make the cars connect to the playmat on the iPad. Even so, the game is lots of fun to explore with races, mission, and collectibles waiting around every bend. Gudmundsen is the editor of Computing With Kids (www.ComputingwithKids.com) magazine. Contact her at [email protected] .

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011121219id_/http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/jinnygudmundsen/story/2011-12-11/kids-tech-toys/51764220/1

By failing to confirm scores of qualified nominees, Senate Republicans are giving credence to the view that official Washington is irreparably broken.

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The refusal by Senate Republicans to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court vacancy has rightly prompted indignation. But it is only the most glaring example of unreasonable intransigence by lawmakers who have turned the process of appointing senior federal officials into a political game. The nominations of many of the 143 people awaiting confirmation for nonjudicial federal jobs are stalled in the Senate as committee heads and the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, dither and delay. The result is a federal bureaucracy with an ever-growing number of corners subject to paralysis and indecision. It’s clear that for Republican lawmakers, carrying out political vendettas and thwarting the president’s prerogatives are more important than having a functioning government. Take, for instance, the case of Adam Szubin, the Treasury Department lawyer nominated to serve as under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. The under secretary is tasked with enforcing American sanctions against North Korea and Iran and cutting off funding for terrorist groups. Mr. Szubin, who has served under Republican and Democratic administrations, waited 325 days for a Senate banking committee vote, which was held on March 10. The full Senate has yet to consider his nomination. The blockage has deprived a critical division at Treasury of a leader who is fully empowered to make decisions and coordinate a unified response to international challenges. Mr. Szubin’s experience is not an isolated case. The banking committee has moved forward only one of 19 nominations put before it since the beginning of 2015. Meanwhile, the post of secretary of the Army has been vacant since Nov. 1. Eric Fanning, who has had a swift rise at the Department of Defense, was nominated for the job in September. The Armed Services Committee didn’t schedule a hearing for him until January and waited until early March to vote in favor of the nomination. The full Senate has yet to schedule a confirmation vote. That has left the Army, which has a $140 billion yearly budget and more than one million soldiers, without a civilian leader with the authority to set priorities and address the needs of a force that has been at war since 2001. At the State Department, Roberta Jacobson, one of the government’s foremost Latin America experts, has been waiting since last summer to be confirmed as ambassador to Mexico. The embassy, one of the largest in the world, has been without an ambassador since June. Ms. Jacobson, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, had a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July. The panel waited until November to approve her nomination, which the full Senate has not yet voted on. There are few diplomatic jobs more crucial than that of the ambassador to Mexico, who has to deal with border security initiatives, the influx of Central American immigrants and counternarcotics efforts. Ms. Jacobson is exceptionally qualified to tackle that long list of challenges and opportunities in Washington’s fraught relationship with Mexico, America’s third-largest trading partner. Mr. McConnell could put an end to these inexcusable failures to conduct routine Senate business. But, of course, he and the rest of the Republican leaders long ago stopped doing anything in the interest of the country. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush got 528 and 545 officials confirmed during their last two years in office. Mr. Obama has managed to get only 193 nominees confirmed since early 2015. Mr. McConnell and his colleagues are driven by a desire to retaliate against the administration when they have lost policy debates. So we have Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas holding Mr. Fanning’s nomination hostage over the administration’s efforts to shut down the prison at Guantánamo Bay. There’s Senator Marco Rubio petulantly blocking Ms. Jacobson’s appointment because she had a role in negotiating the change in relations with Cuba. And Mr. Szubin is being punished for the Iran nuclear deal. Beyond having crucial positions unfilled, the bruising nomination battles are making senior government jobs unappealing to the most qualified and sought-after individuals. Understandably, fewer people are willing to become collateral damage in Washington’s political feuds.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016032219id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/opinion/a-partisan-prescription-for-paralysis.html

Greta's 'Off the Record' commentary, 5/8/15: With all the turmoil in Baltimore, let's never forget police officers, like slain NYPD officer Brian Moore, have difficult, dangerous jobs.

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Let's all go "Off the Record" for a minute. It's with great sadness that I show you video of the funeral of slain NYPD officer Brian Moore. A very young man, only 25 years old, whose father, uncle and cousins all wore the uniform, Officer Moore was shot in the head last weekend after stopping a man suspected of carrying a hand gun. He died on Monday. And today, thousands and thousands of police officers from around the nation in a sea of blue all with broken hearts lining the streets of Long Island to say goodbye. And to think, as you look at all those brokenhearted police officers filling the screen, that is only a small percentage of police officers around the nation tonight, they are risking their lives for you, for me. I don't know about you, but I never forget police have a very difficult job and a very dangerous one. With all the recent upheaval and controversy, from Ferguson to Baltimore, I know that many good police officers and their families are feeling pretty unappreciated by all of us tonight. So let's do something about it. A small gesture can make a big impact. The next time you see police officer or the family member of one of them, just say something to show you appreciate that police officer. How about just a nice "thank you." It only takes three seconds and it can make a huge difference. That's my "Off the Record" comment tonight. On the Record, hosted by Greta Van Susteren, airs on Weekdays at 7PM ET on Fox News Channel.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015051119id_/http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/05/08/greta-show-appreciation-next-time-see-police-officer/

Live coverage and analysis of the World Cup Round of 16 game between Brazil and Chile in Johannesburg.

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Brazil prevailed over Chile, 3-0, in a Round of 16 showdown in Johannesburg of two stylish South American sides. With an organized defense, Brazil counterattacked against an overeager Chilean team and cruised for a relatively easy 90 minutes. The win for Brazil sets ups a mouthwatering quarterfinal meeting with the Netherlands Friday in Port Elizabeth. Brazil worked its game plan to perfection to start the game, absorbing Chile’s early advances while looking for an opening of its own. That chance came in the 34th minute, when Juan found himself free in the box to head in a corner kick from Maicon, putting Brazil ahead, 1-0. Just three minutes later, with Chile trying to muster a forceful response, Brazil scored again on a perfectly executed counterattack. Robinho started the play with a striding dribble down the left side, before passing to Kaka, who was trailing the play down the middle. Then, with one touch, Kaka released Luis Fabiano into the box, and the striker just had to dribble past Claudio Bravo, Chile’s keeper, to double Brazil’s lead. Robinho added a goal in the 59th minute, after Ramires made a slicing dribbling run through the heart of Chile’s defense. The defensive midfielder, having done all the work, laid the ball perfectly to Robinho, waiting at the top of the box, who curled a shot inside the right post. Chile struggled to create chances all game, and was frustrated time and again by the stacked lines of Coach Dunga’s defensive formation. Chile has now lost its last eight matches against Brazil. Read on for an account of how it all happened. Michel Bastos, another player who had a fine match for Brazil, gets forward into the box from his left back position but he toe-pokes it wide. And there’s the final whistle! Brazil wins 3-0! It wasn’t always pretty for them, but now the Brazilians get to face the Netherlands in the quarterfinal. It’s a disappointing loss for Chile, but few teams could have handled Brazil today. We’ll be back in a few minutes with a full recap. Meanwhile, share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you live with a more conservative Brazil if it keeps winning games like this? What could Chile have done differently today. Who played well? Who didn’t? The Brazilian fans in Johannesburg are utterly enraptured. There’s shot after shot on television of happily dancing supporters. Ramires gets an open look, but he shoots high and wide. He had a great game. It’s a shame he’ll be suspended for the quarterfinal against the Netherlands after picking up that unnecessary yellow card. Beausejour shoots wide right of the goal. Chile worked the ball around the top of the box, and Valdivia made the final pass, but there wasn’t much an angle to work with there. Brazil is keeping its shape extremely well. Robinho is off for Brazil. Gilberto is on. All smiles and handshakes on the Brazilian bench. Nilmar heads a ball well over the crossbar. Bastos had found him free in the box with a curling cross from the left flank, but he couldn’t get his forehead on the sweet spot. Kleberson is on for Kaka. Kaka had a relatively quiet match, besides setting up Luis Fabiano’s goal, but he’s got a huge smile on his face. His team’s going to the quarterfinal! and it hits the crossbar! A corner from the left side fell to Suazo’s right foot. He took a wild swing at it and shanked it, but it bounced over Julio Cesar and off the top of the bar. Brazil’s defending has been really, really impressive. This is one of the best team performances of the tournament so far. Robinho gets a great chance to score on a breakaway, but his shot from the right side of the box is saved by a diving Bravo. Tough angle for Robinho there. The ensuing corner is cleared by Chile. A minute later Suazo of Chile has a shot saved on the other end. Julio Cesar makes an athletic diving stop, on a ball that may or may not have been headed toward goal. Nilmar enters for Luis Fabiano. He’s an exciting player to watch. Valdivia is looking to be the creator for Chile, but Brazil is shutting down his passing lanes so quickly every time he gets the ball. Tello takes a short corner for Chile, but it amounts to nothing. Ramires picks up an unneeded yellow for chopping down Sanchez at midfield. That’s an unnecessary place to pick up a card, and now Ramires, who did all the work for Robinho’s goal, has to miss the next match. Chile is throwing five and six men forward in the box, as it must do. Brazil, meanwhile, is playing keep-away whenever it gets the ball. I think we’ll see another goal or two in this game. Oh! Valdivia volleys from the top of the 18-yard box but he blasts it over the bar. He had plenty of time, and he should have done a better job placing it. Dani Alves unleashes a swerving shot from 40 yards out. It just misses over the right end of the crossbar. Jabulani! Isla is subbed out for Chile. Rodrigo Millar is on in his place. Things are looking bad for the team in white. Ramires picked up the ball at midfield and made a beautiful run through the heart of Chile’s defense. He lays the ball off to Robinho, who curls a one-touch shot inside the right post. Beautiful stuff! Robinho earns a corner for Brazil, after Lucio tackled to win the ball in his own end and ran the length of the field with it. What other central defender does that? The corner is wasted. Again, it’s not the prettiest soccer for the Brazilians at the moment — passes are a bit off, and there’s not much movement. But the scoreline is far in their favor. Chile is working hard to work the ball toward Brazil’s goal, but there’s so little space to work with. Brazil is packing it tight. And when Brazil has gotten the ball, it hasn’t looked overly eager to get forward. You guys leaving comments are correct. Brazil won its fifth title in 2002, not 2004, like I erroneously wrote in my pregame thoughts. Thanks! There’s so much debate about Dunga’s new, defensive Brazil. But how can you argue with how Brazil played in the first half? The players clearly retain all their creativity, but its expressed in a controlled manner and at appropriate times. And on the defensive side, they’ve looked really hard to break down. Chile has a lot of work to do. What kind of offensive magic can Coach Marcelo “El Loco” Bielsa conjure up in the second half? There’s two halftime changes for Chile: Jorge Valdivia is on for Mark Gonzalez and Rodrigo Tello is on for Contreras. Chile came out attacking (too much perhaps?), and Brazil picked its spots to take advantage. Juan put the Brazilians ahead in the 34th minute, when he rose up uncontested to knock in Maicon’s looping corner kick past Bravo and just under the crossbar. Three minutes later, with Chile pressing forward in numbers, Brazil put together a piece of classic counterattacking play: Robinho started the move down the left side, with a few long, striding dribbles, before passing a square ball to Kaka trailing down the middle. Kaka, with one touch, set Luis Fabiano free in the box, and all he had to do was dribble around the keeper to score. Chile’s defenders through it all were running backwards, utterly helpless. Possession in the first half was basically even, with Chile keeping the ball 51 percent of the time. Chile took seven shots. Brazil took nine and made them count. Chile is struggling to respond here. Brazil is showing a lot of swagger now, swinging the ball around the field, as its players make crisscrossing runs. One minute of added time. The game was tight, tense and tentative until the first goal, which blew play wide open. Brazil’s second goal was textbook counterattacking play, taking advantage of Chile’s intent to equalize. Luis Fabiano has 28 goals in 42 games for Brazil. That’s his third goal of the tournament. Luis Fabiano scores for Brazil! Robinho starts a sweeping counterattack on the left side. He passes to Kaka, who lays off a perfect one-touch pass down the middle to Luis Fabiano. All the striker has to do is run around the keeper to score. 2-0! Joga Bonito! Pretty stuff from Brazil! Juan scores for Brazil! He rose up to meet a looping corner from Maicon. There were no Chileans near him, and he popped it over Bravo. It’s 1-0 Brazil! goes to Kaka, who tripped Vidal with a kick on the shins. Chile’s free kick, from about 30 yards out, is wasted. In the 25th minute, Lucio, Brazil’s captain, has some words with Fuentes, who climbed on his back to try to reach a corner kick from Suazo. A foul was called on the play, but Webb tells Lucio to calm down. Then Lucio — a center back, mind you — earns a corner for Brazil on the left side, with a tricky dribbling move. On the ensuing corner Lucio makes another tricky move with the ball in the box and gets tripped by Contreras, but there’s no call! That could have been a penalty! with a hard tackle and sends Sanchez through, but his early shot is ill-advised. Sanchez has yet to score in this tournament. He’s an exciting player and has done everything but put the ball in the net in three games so far. Brazil, so far, is settling for shots from the outside. It’s hard for them to push too far forward, because Chile looks so willing to pressure them in the other direction. The Chilean’s willingness to attack in numbers is an admirable trait, which could produce an exciting match for us neutral observers. The play is still a bit sloppy and tentative, but all the intent seems to be there, for both sides. Ramires, Brazil’s defensive midfielder, takes a shot from 25 yards out. It’s a dipping effort that falls right into the arms of Bravo, Chile’s keeper. There isn’t a player on Brazil that would pass up a chance on goal, it seems. Times reporter Jeff Z. Klein, who more and more seems to prefer Spanish commentary, tells me that this is how Univision’s play-by-play man Pablo Ramírez called Luis Fabiano’s early miss: “¡Luis Fabia… No! ¡Luis Fabia… No! ¡Luis Fabia… No!” Suazo, meanwhile, takes a weak shot for Chile that Cesar saves easily. A corner for Brazil from the right side in the eighth minute. Dani Alves takes it, and its cleared by Carmona for another corner, this one on the left side. Gonzalez clears that one. Then Gilberto Silva forces Bravo to make a diving save! He shot a curler from 30 yards out. Another corner, and that one’s cleared as well. Brazil is on the front foot here, as they say. Chile, we’re told, last made the quarterfinal in 1962. Brazil can’t get the ball out of its own half! Cesar is called into action on a couple of early crosses. Then Luis Fabiano gets sent through on a long ball from Robinho, but he drags his shot wide to the left. In the first minute, Beausejour earns Chile an early corner kick on the left. Suazo takes it short, Sanchez ends up with it atop the box, but his shot is blocked. Chile looks determined, if two minutes of play can tell us anything. Chile kicks off! Game on! Be sure to chime in below with your own thoughts and comments. This should be a great match. The teams make their way onto the field, which appears at first glance to be in good condition. The anthems are played, first Brazil’s, and now Chile’s. Brazil is in its traditional canary yellow shirts and blue shorts. Chile is in all white. Howard Webb of England. The 38-year-old former police officer did well in his first two games, Spain-Switzerland and Italy-Slovakia. He refereed the Champions League final last month. Webb is sure to have a lot of eyes on him. Referees, as always, have been under the spotlight this World Cup. The winners of this match get to face the Netherlands, which produced another workmanlike performance to top Slovakia earlier today. The losers head to the airport, where they’ll pass the time doing Sodoku and crosswords, like normal people. Kaka and Robinho are back in Coach Dunga’s starting lineup. Contrary to what had been widely reported, Elano will sit out another game with his ankle injury. Here is how the Brazilians will start the game: GK: Julio Cesar; DEF: Maicon, Lucio, Juan, Michel Bastos; MID: Ramires, Gilberto Silva, Dani Alves, Kaka; FWD: Robinho, Luis Fabiano. As usual, their exact positions, particularly going forward, are more fluid than these designations might suggest. GK: Bravo; DEF: Isla, Contreras, Jara, Fuentes; MID: Vidal, Carmona, Beausejour; FWD: Sanchez, Suazo, Gonzalez. These player are tasked with turning it around for Chile, which has lost seven straight matches against Brazil. The Chileans were outscored in those games, 26-3. With one hour to go, I’ll add my own two cents to Mr. Longman’s fine pregame assessment… Brazil has won the World Cup five times — in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, and 2002 — always with a stubborn devotion to beautiful play. But if they claim the trophy again this year, it will be with a markedly different philosophy. The team continues to produce an attractive brand of soccer — the raw talent of its players ensures that. But Coach Dunga has also instilled in his squad a sense of pragmatism, an idea that “winning and losing” can supersede “how you play the game.” For a Brazilian, such talk borders on blasphemy. Dunga fired a warning to his squad last week when he suggested the established international soccer power structure was coming undone: “Forget the notion of traditional teams,” he said. “If you don’t play well, you’ll be eliminated.” Those words could embolden Chile, which faces an uphill task in this South American showdown. Jere Longman writes in from Ellis Park in Johannesburg to set the scene for this match: The winner of tonight’s Brazil-Chile match will advance to face the Netherlands in a quarterfinal Friday in Port Elizabeth. Chile has been remade into a swarming, attacking team under Coach Marcelo Bielsa. But it has struggled mightily against Brazil, losing the last seven times they met while conceding 26 goals. Chile lost both World Cup qualifying matches to Brazil, by 3-0 at home and 4-2 away. It has also lost both World Cup meetings to Brazil – 4-2 in the semifinals in 1962 and 4-1 in the second round in 1998. Chile will attempt to do against Brazil what it could not do in its final group match against Spain – charge forward without leaving itself vulnerable to the counterattack. But Bielsa, an Argentine, will be without two defensive starters in Gary Medel and Waldo Ponce, who have received yellow-card suspensions. And counterattacking is Brazil’s speciality. “They are always a team to be feared,” Bielsa said of Brazil, but he also promised, “We will play an all or nothing game.” Expected to start at forward is Humberto Suazo,who led South American scorers with 10 goals in 18 qualifying matches. But Suazo has played little over the last two months while recovering from hamstring and shoulder injuries and it remains to be seen what kind of stamina he will have, especially at altitude. Brazil will have the services of playmaker Kaka, who is returning from suspension, and will also have forward Robinho and midfielder Elano back in the lineup after they missed the final group match against Portugal with injury.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2010062819id_/http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/world-cup-live-brazil-vs-chile/

Jewel tone dresses and classic tuxes dominated the red carpet at the gateway to the 2016 award season on Sunday.

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Before you go, we thought you'd like these... 2016 Golden Globe Awards red carpet arrivals Jennifer Lawrence was an absolute knockout in a red Dior dress with sleek cutouts along the waist. She topped off her classic and glamorous look with a diamond choker, red lips and swept back locks. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) They might be the hottest red carpet couple ever! Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum looked incredible in their fancy ensembles -- with Channing in a classic tux and Jenna in a midnight blue dress with starry detailing. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Sexy mama! Kate Hudson snapped up the opportunity to show off her flawless physique in a nude, sparkling two-piece ensemble. She added a touch of extra sexiness with a nude choker and tousled locks. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis were near picture-perfect on the red carpet, but we could have done without Sudeikis' eyesore sneakers. Wilde absolutely stunned in an oxblood sequin gown with a plunging neckline and eye-catching necklace. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) First-time Golden Globe nominee Lady Gaga didn't mess around for her first turn on the Globe red carpet and looked stunning in a black, velvet gown from Versace. Her look screamed old Hollywood glamour. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) "The Martian" actor Matt Damon kept it simple in a black tuxedo, which really left the spotlight wide open for his stunning wife, Lucy. She dazzled in a lavender, one-shoulder frock with diamond accents. Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Talk about a jaw-dropper! Rosie Huntington-Whiteley nearly stole the entire fashion show when she hit the red carpet in this stunning gold dress with a cinched waist and sparkling details. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Taraji P. Henson didn't disappoint in a strapless white dress with a dramatic cape. Alicia Vikander is easily one of the stars of this year's award season and she cemented her status as someone to watch ont in the fashion department in a classic white, Louis Vuitton dress. She continued her ethereal look with a braided updo and light lips. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Jaimie Alexander stunned in a plunging, emerald and black gown with geometric details. An edgy updo and emerald earrings completed her flawless look. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Leonardo DiCaprio continued to show he's a man of timeless taste in this elegant suit. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Jennifer Lopez was on-trend this award season with a bright yellow gown with draping that showcased her killer curves and featured a thigh-high slit and cape. She finished off her old Hollywood glamour look with a deep burgundy lip color and a blingy necklace. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Queen of the sparkles! Kate Bosworth looked sexy and sparkling in a rose-colored dress with full sequins and a silver design. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Katy Perry went the 1960s mod route with sky-high locks and a bubblegum pink dress that fit her like a glove. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith were right on-trend with the jewel toned theme of the evening, with Jada looking absolutely gorgeous in a bright green gown and Will in a classic tux. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Kate Winslet was spot-on in her classic blue dress with a tie neckline. The Ralph Lauren dress was simple, understated and pretty. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) "Trainwreck" star Amy Schumer was anything but a trainwreck in a black and white dress with a billowing train. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) "The Danish Girl" star Eddie Redmayne revealed he almost missed the red carpet after his flight ran behind -- but he got their just in time to wow us with his Gucci suit. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Hunky! Orlando Bloom rocked a classic tux and the no muss, no fuss look was a hit. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) "Empire" star Terrence Howard reminded us how cool he is with his shades and tuxedo, while his lady Mira Pak looked soft and sweet in a nude gown with floral appliques. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) Sweethearts! Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart made their rare red carpet debut at the Golden Globes and -- no surprise -- looked amazing. The "Star Wars" hunk looked slick in a tuxedo while his ladylove stunned in a turquoise silk dress. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) "Orange Is the New Black" star Taylor Schilling gave us a sexy surprise with her black, sparkling tuxedo jacket and pants. It was a sexy and sophisticated look for her, indeed! (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Amy Adams showed off her colorful side in a tangerine gown with sparkling detail on the mid-section. The fruity-colored frock was gorgeously complemented her pretty locks. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Everything came up roses for Rachel McAdams, who stunned in floral dress with a strapless sweetheart neckline. She finished off the phenomenal gown with red lips. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Amber Heard went for a whimsical and sweet look with a cotton-candy colored gown from Gucci. The sienna and nude silk tulle multi-layered gown featuring silk flowers featured an open back and dramatic train. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Malin Akerman showed off her flair for the fun side in a periwinkle lace Vivienne Westwood gown with peplum detailing. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) "Grinder" str Rob Low and his lovely wife and Sheryl Berkoff were looking good at the Globes. How do you like their gray and black ensembles? (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Kirsten Dunst and her main squeeze Garrett Hedlund were the essence of cool in classic black ensembles. Dunst went for the plunge with her Valentino gown and Hedlund kept it slick in his tux (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Emilia Clark went for an offbeat look in a black gown with sheer draping, cape-like shoulders and buttons down the bodice. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Awards season darling Brie Larson shimmered in a gold sequined halter dress with ab-exposing cutouts. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) If looks could kill ... Kirsten Dunst was a showstopper in a flawless black gown with a plunging neckline and sexy, strappy accents. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Heidi Klum had a bit of fun in a shimmery, beaded fringe gown with a waist-accentuating black belt. (Photo by Alberto Rodriguez/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Actor Damian Lewis looked fapper and chic in a form-fitting tux. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Sophia Bush was near-perfect in a simple black gown with a plunging neckline. A fun box clutch, garnet cocktail ring and diamond necklace added a touch of glam to her sleek look. Actress Rachel Bloom rocked one of the night's hottest colors in a fab off-the-shoulder gown. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Natalie Dormer looked straight off the set of "Game of Thrones" in a red gown with draped shoulders and a black choker detail. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) Maggie Gyllenhaal went the avant garde look with a golde and black dress with a flower pattern. She punched up the classic colors with a red lip color. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Julia Louis-Dreyfus kept it simple this year in a black, lace, strapless dress. (Photo credit:Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Patrick Stewart and his wife, Sunny Ozell, went the classic route with all black ensembles. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Felicity Huffman threw us for a loop with her new dark 'do, but she was a knockout with the vampy new style. The "American Crime" star showed off her incredible physique in a burgundy Sarbu gown with fire-like details along the top. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) America Ferrera had us chirping with praise with this canary-colored Jenny Packham gown complete with jewel-details along the bodice. She polished off the bright dress with bright red lips and a slicked back hairdo.(Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Former Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo packed a serious punch of color with his plum-colored tuxedo with a tight checkered pattern. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Golden Globe nominee Christian Bale escorted his gorgeous wife, Sibi Blazic, to the award show. Sibi nearly outshined her man in a black dress with gold details. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) We adore the two-toned Elizabeth Kennedy dress that Maura Tierney donned. She polished off the aquamarine and black dress with a simple choker, minimalist makeup and gold bangles. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Greek goddess! "Brooklyn" star and Saoirse Ronan looked lovely and whimsical in a white Grecian-inspired dress with delicate draping and a long, column train. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Viola Davis was sparkling in a midnight blue Marchesa dress with starry-like detailing. The "How to Get Away With Murder" actress was absolutely beaming on the red carpet and completed her look with bright lips and a matching clutch. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Soon-to-be newlyweds Lady Gaga and Taylor Kinney totally gave us the Bogie and Bacall vibes with their classic old Hollywood looks. Gaga donned Versace and her man went for a classic tuxedo. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) Cate Blanchett went for a surprising look in a Givenchy dress that combined tassels, sparkles and an ombre pink fade. WHat do you think of the look? (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Bryce Dallas Howard donned a navy lace gown with a three-quarter sleeve and plunging neckline. A simple sleek 'do completed her look. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Golden Globe-nominated singer Sam Smith went for a classic tuxedo and bow tie -- the perfect look for his Golden Globe debut. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Actress Jane Wu turned heads in a silver metallic gown with geometric detailing. A sleek, middle-parted updo completed her futuristic ensemble. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Gussied up! "Stiches" singer Charlie Puth looked handsome in a navy tuxedo and black bowtie. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) "Cinderella" star Lily James showed off her soft and sultry side in a white gown with draping along the back. She added a little oomph with tousled locks and smoky eyes. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) 'Empire" hottie Bryshere Y. Gray was all kinds of cute in a classic black tux and super cool shoes. The actor was all smiles at the award show. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) "Outlander" producer Maril Davis rocked an LBD with sheer inserts, black peep-toe pumps and tousled locks. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) "Penny Dreadful" star Eva Green looked absolutely stunning in a gold dress with sparkling details from Elie Saab. The dress, which had a vintage vibe, worked perfectly with her light skin tone and bright red lips. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Navy hottie! Gerard Butler looked sleek in a blue tuxedo. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Alan Cumming looked dapper in a navy jacket with black lapels, chic glasses and fun black and gold sneakers. Ricky Gervais set the tone for the night by rocking mirrored sunnies on the red carpet. Nancy O'Dell looked fabulous in a coral, one-shouldered gown with a sexy, hip-high slit and a sleek 'do. Natalie Morales opted for a breezy, purple spaghetti-strap gown. Simple, pinned-bac curls, drop earrings and a metallic clutch completed her look. "Today" hosts Al Roker and Matt Lauer donned their best suits for the big night. What a handsome duo! (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) White hot! Laverne Cox was absolutely stunning a white dress with a long train and Lorraine Schwartz jewels. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) "Transparent" star Jeffrey Tambor looked slick in a black suit next to his striking wife, Kasia Ostlun who rocked a red dress with modern cutouts. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Judith Light wowed in a chic white organza tux, crisp shirt and layered locks. Silver pumps and glam makeup completed her sophisticated look. Sparkles are everything! "American Crime" actress Regina King shimmered on the red carpet with a Krikor Jabotian gown with silver and gold sparkles and a white train. She polished off the look with a set of chandelier earrings and a light pink lip color. Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) Paul Feig switched it up in a groovy, blue-and-purple jacket. "Mr. Robot" actress Carly Chaikin opted for an edgy, sequined halter dress with a green and black organic print. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) "Jane the Virgin" actress and nominee Gina Rodriguez wowed in a navy satin ballroom gown with a gorgeous off-the-shoulder neckline. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Bernadette Peters rocked a scarlet strapless dress with floral embroidery and a matching bracelet. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Actor Ken Jeong and Tran Jeong looked perfectly coordinated in their black and white best. The "Dr. Ken" star rocked a crisp tux, and his wife wowed in a black and white gown and floral appliques. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis donned a simple navy gown with bell sleeves and dramatic train. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Maria Menounos opted for a simple, form-fitting white gown and a unique, braided haristyle. A box clutch and drop earrings added a touch of sparkle to the easy look. She's shamelessly gorgeous! "Shameless" actress Emmy Rossum went for a classic red Armani Prive dress paired with a deep, red lip color. The touch of razzle dazzle around her neck completed the glam look. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Actor Richard Cabral rocked a double-breasted jacket with smoking loafers ... Classy! (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) "Downton Abbey" actress Joanne Froggatt was pretty as a picture in a flowing blue gown with a plunging neckline. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Actress Saffron Burrows kept it simple in a black tan fress. Actress Sarah Hay donned a sheer gray gown that complemented her red locks perfectly. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Chris Tucker and Cynne Simpson were on-point with their classic black-tie ensembles. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) "Supergirl" Melissa Benoist her husband, actor Blake Jenner were very adorable in one of their first major red carpets since tying the knot. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Michael Shannon kept his look contemporary and cool in a navy suit and skinny tie. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Miss Golden Globes 2016 Corinne Foxx stunned in an ethereal off-white gown with sheer bell sleeves. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) Actress Amy Landecker kept it casual in a simple striped tank dress and platform sandals. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images) Keltie Knight was ultra-glam in a striking emerald gown with a sweetheart neckline and flattering ruching. Screenwriter Phyllis Nagy donned a classic black and white ensemble, complete with a dressy black topcoat. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Actor Tobias Menzies donned a chic satin suit in all black. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Patrick Wilson and his wife, Dagmara Dominczyk, looked sparkly and glam in midnight blue and black ensembles. (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) Tiziana Rocca rocked a black dress with ruffled and sparkling details. Wow! Jane Fonda showed off her fun and funky side with a white gown with a ruffled top. The cloud-like top showed off her incredibly slim physique underneath. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Actress Uzo Aduba was one of many stars to try out the cape trend. The "Orange is the New Black" star opted for a black sequin iteration of the look. John Krasinski smoldered in a slim-fit tux and fresh facial hair. Aziz Ansari went for a classic black tux with a little twist .... we spy that cool striped pattern. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Michelle Schumacher, left, and J. K. Simmons looked classic in a black and red combination. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) Giuliana Rancic rocked an orange gown with sexy cutouts and dramatic floor-length sleeves with a swipe of pink lipstick. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Can these two do any wrong? Steve Carell and his wife, actress Nancy Carell, had us in awe with their elegant ensembles. Nancy's black ballgown screamed sexy yet sleek while Steve was all kinds of handsome. (Photo by Alberto Rodriguez/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) Welcome to award season, 2016! The Golden Globes kicked off on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016 and the fashion was absolutely stunning with leading ladies pulling out their most glamorous looks for the occasion. Jewel tones dominated the red carpet this year with gals rocking bright red, orange, emerald green, and deep azure blue gowns. "Shameless" star Emmy Rossum dazzled in a red dress with a column-like silhouette while "Blindspot" star Jaimie Alexander packed a gorgeous punch in an emerald green and black ball gown. "Jurassic Park" star Bryce Dallas Howard also went for a bold color in a midnight blue, sequined gown with peacock-like detailing. "Jane the Virgin" star Gina Rodriguez was a stunner in a navy classic ballgown from Zac Posen. For the gents, it was all about the tuxes! The two actors behind Netflix's hit "Narcos" Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook got all gussied up for their big evening in classic black and navy tuxes and bow-ties. "Stitches" singer Charlie Puth was perhaps one of the most handsome men on the red carpet with a tuxedo and an oversized bowtie. And of course, there were a couple ringers like Alan Cumming who opted for offbeat ensembles like his bright blue dinner jacket. Check out all the red carpet fashions above!

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160526095323id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/01/10/2016-golden-globe-awards-red-carpet-arrivals/21294980/

Hannah J Davies: How the film that made Lindsay Lohan a household name skewered the social hierarchies of American high schools and spawned a rabid cult following

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Plastic fantastic ... Mean Girls. Photograph: Paramount/Everett/Rex Features Ten years ago this week, the film that would transform Lindsay Lohan into a teen movie queen premiered in the US. Lilo's ticket to adolescent idolatry was handed to her by future 30 Rock creator Tina Fey – then Saturday Night Live's head writer – and director Mark Waters. Mean Girls would gross $129m, and although it didn't exactly revolutionise the high-school comedy genre, it injected sass at a time when the biggest hitters were largely samey Hilary Duff vehicles. With a plot that embraces and busts cliche in equal measure, a highly quotable screenplay and a killer cast, it gained a fanatical cult following. Fey, who wrote the script, plays the film's moral compass, Ms Norbury. She drew inspiration for the screenplay from her own teenage years, as well as a self-help book (Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees & Wannabees), and as a result the social hierarchy at North Shore feels real and decidedly mean. Fresh-off-the-boat high-schooler Cady Heron (Lohan) subverts her role in the Plastics clique as she manoeuvres her way through the school, showing up its superficial social hierarchy for what it is. As for those knockout quotes, from the bizarre ("Karen, you can't just ask people why they're white"; "You go Glen Coco!"; "Too gay to function") to the brutal ("You smell like a baby prostitute"), they're all instantly recognisable, and live on in everyday parlance and frequent online memes. It's a fitting legacy for a film that, as Daniel Franzese (who plays Damian) recently told Cosmopolitan, was "the first one of those [high-school] movies that also had the internet. Mean Girls is dissected on the internet." He went on to talk about how diehards use any opportunity to fling him quotes and pics of Damian-inspired getup via Twitter. Mean Girls might be true to life, but it's bonkers too. There's plenty of screen time for Kevin G's mathematical rapping, Karen's meteorologically talented breasts and the gym teacher who warns that sex will lead to certain pregnancy and death. Even the Burn Book, the tome of rumours, secrets and lies penned by the Plastics, is meta to the max: it's an improbably huge, lipstick-stained diary with its name spelled out on the cover in ransom-note-style cuttings. The acting isn't half bad, either. Rachel McAdams never falters as sweatpant-wearing sociopath Regina George, and Franzese and Lizzy Caplan (Janis) play their outsider roles to perfection. Like many teen movies pre- and post-, Mean Girls has all the hallmarks of high school Americana, with bullying and bitching taking centre-stage. As a whole package, however, it's a standout look at adolescence that has managed 10 years as a pop culture mainstay without feeling like a MySpace-era throwback. Reading on mobile? Click here to view 1) The rules of feminism: Poor Cady. She's failing maths as an excuse to chat up cute classmate Aaron. But he's off limits, because Betty Friedan says so... Reading on mobile? Click here to view 2) God, Karen: A triple whammy. Former "half virgin" Regina cries to taco fan Karen, who has a not-so-special hidden talent. Reading on mobile? Click here to view 3) What's so great about Caesar?! Her dad might have invented the Toaster Strudel, but Gretchen Wieners has had a pretty rough ride in Regina's shadow, barred from simple pleasures like wearing hoop earrings. One day, the parallels between North Shore and ancient Rome send our favourite fetch one into a frenzy. Reading on mobile? Click here to view 4) You can't sit with us: With Regina's "popularity" on the wane, the head Plastic's own nonsensical rules come back to bite her. Reading on mobile? Click here to view 5) She doesn't even go here! Ms Norbury's group therapy gets a dose of baking metaphors and feelings courtesy of a tearful trespasser, but Damian's not buying it.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014042119id_/http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/apr/19/mean-girls-10-birthday-tina-fey-comedy

(*No, that's not a typo.) How smart small businesses are keeping their insurance bills down and their employees smiling.

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To look at its offices, you would not expect RD Systems to be the site of one of the most far-reaching social and economic experiments in the country. Housed in a featureless metal box in an industrial office park about 20 miles north of Rockford, Ill., the 30-year-old manufacturing company is the very picture of old-fashioned, traditional business. It has also been the picture of stability: Half of its 40 employees have worked there for more than five years. So it came as a shock to president Jo Ribordy-Christofferson, 41, when four years ago Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois, her insurer of ten years, announced that the premium for the plan she offered employees was going to shoot up 60%. RD Systems had always paid 100% of its employees' premiums, and Ribordy-Christofferson knew that she risked losing her highly sought-after engineers if she offered less. To cut costs, she switched from her preferred-provider organization, or PPO, to a high-deductible plan from another insurer, but found that its customer service was unacceptable. Something else had to be done. That's how old-economy RD Systems came to offer an innovative, newfangled kind of coverage. Known as "consumer driven" health insurance, it gives her employees more responsibility for managing their spending and will save the company $49,000 this year, a reduction of about 30% from what she estimates it would have paid under the old arrangement. And while Ribordy-Christofferson no longer pays all of her employees' costs, the new plan offers perks to keep her workers happy and healthy. "There just isn't a downside," Ribordy-Christofferson says. "This is health insurance pushing in the right direction." It's easy to see why small businesses are looking for new answers. Health insurance premiums for all companies went up 14% on average last year, continuing a trend of double-digit annual increases. For small businesses, the problem is particularly acute: In 2003 almost half saw hikes of more than 15%, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2003 Employer Health Benefits Survey. Desperate for solutions, some small businesses have turned to government- or nonprofit-sponsored programs (see the companion story, Home Remedies) or pursued self-insurance (see Heal Thyself); some have even dropped health insurance altogether (see Working Without a Net). But more and more entrepreneurs are turning to consumer-driven plans, which typically combine a high-deductible health insurance policy and a tax-advantaged, employee-managed medical account that covers some or all of the deductible. Any money left in the account at the end of the year generally rolls over to the next year, an incentive for employees to spend prudently. Consumer-driven plans are controversial; critics say that they simply shift more costs to employees, especially sicker ones. But proponents argue that not only are they good for individual businesses but they also may help fix our nation's broken health-care system. "Right now, if a company's employees are in a PPO, there's no upside for them in saving money and using it wisely," says Ray Herschman, national practice leader for consumer-driven health care at Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Why worry about whether you really need to go to the doctor when all you're ever responsible for is a $20 co-payment? By giving employees a pot of money of their own to spend on health care, consumer-driven plans aim to make them smarter and more cautious health-care users. The hoped-for result: They'll spend less, and premiums will finally begin to come under control. Last year about 500,000 employees were covered by consumer-driven plans. Up from 100,000 in 2002, that was still a minuscule percentage of the 175 million who had health insurance. But health policy experts expect that health savings accounts, which were created in January under the new Medicare law, will give consumer-driven plans an enormous boost. The accounts, in which contributions and interest are tax-free, must be paired with a health plan that has a deductible of no less than $1,000. "We're getting lots of calls," says Jeremy Claeys, spokesperson for the National Small Business Association, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. "People are saying, 'I want to know more. How do I get one?' " By day Larry Johnson works as an assembler at RD Systems, building and installing the automation equipment designed by the company's engineers. But after work hours, he's South Beloit's version of Body by Jake. Over the years Johnson, 41—a man of medium height with a pinched waist and powerful shoulders—has become something of a gym ambassador to his fellow employees. "I teach them how to use the weight machines," he says. So why are RD Systems' employees getting so interested in pumping iron? Because they like movies, for one thing. Their health plan from Destiny Health includes a "wellness" program called Vitality, under which employees accrue points when they visit a gym (25 points a visit), quit smoking (3,000 points), or maintain a healthy weight (5,000 points). Ribordy-Christofferson, a longtime distance runner, earns 2,000 Vitality points every time she competes in a race. The points can be redeemed for movie tickets, airline miles, and special deals at hotels. The hope is that the program will make employees healthier and help keep premium costs low.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2004050119id_/http://www.cnn.com/fortune/smallbusiness/articles/0,15114,614385,00.html

Trump sued Univision for $500 million for canceling the airing of Miss USA following Trump's derogatory remarks about Mexicans.

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Billionaire real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is suing Univision for more than $500 million in New York Supreme Court after the Spanish-language network cancelled plans to air the July 12 Miss USA pageant, according to Variety. Trump declared his candidacy for president last week with a press conference in which he derided President Barack Obama and made several disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants. Since then, various media outlets have distanced themselves from Trump. Those outlets include his former employer, Comcast’s CMCSA NBCUniversal, which canceled plans to air Miss USA and Miss Universe — the network’s joint venture with Trump — while also opting not to invite Trump back for another season of his reality show The Celebrity Appearance. In his speech last week, Trump said of Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” he said, adding: “some, I assume, are good people.” After Univision cut ties with Trump’s Miss USA Pageant, the billionaire threatened legal action, claiming: “They’ll have to pay me a lot of money.” Trump also threatened legal action against NBC, but the Univision suit is the first to actually be filed. Tuesday’s lawsuit accuses Univision of breach of contract and defamation. In a statement, Trump says his recent remarks hue closely to opinions on immigration he’s held and stated publicly for years. “Nothing that I stated was different from what I have been saying for many years,” Trump said. “I want strong borders, and I do not support or condone illegal immigration. There is a high level of crime occurring in this country due to unchecked illegal immigration. This is a major security issue for the United States.”

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160609222824id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/06/30/donald-trump-lawsuit-univision/

First production hydrogen fuel cell vehicle now available for the public to order – but it won’t come cheap

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Hyundai has announced that its new ix35 Fuel Cell is now available to members of the public. The ix35 Fuel Cell is the world’s first mass-produced fuel cell vehicle, and has been available to selected customers for trial purposes since 2013. However, Hyundai has now opened up the order books to anyone able to stomach the £53,105 asking price. That figure includes a partial rebate from the HyFive project, a consortium of five car manufacturers and 10 other companies with ties to hydrogen production and supply, that aims to boost the uptake of fuel cell vehicles in the coming years. Without the rebate, the ix35 Fuel Cell would cost an even-more-eye-watering £67,985. So, what do you get for your money? Well, at the Fuel Cell’s heart sits a 134bhp electric motor which can power it to a top speed of 100mph. The motor is powered by a fuel cell fed by two hydrogen storage tanks with a total capacity of 5.64kg, giving a total range of 369 miles. Energy is stored in a 24kWh lithium-ion battery, and as with all hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the only exhaust emission is water vapour. Hyundai adds that the ix35 Fuel Cell can ‘reliably start’ in temperatures as low as -25C, highlighting the fact that the technology still has some way to go before it can be used by everyone, everywhere. Nevertheless, early adopters and keen environmentalists can now order a fuel cell vehicle of their own – though they’ll have to do so directly via Hyundai UK, rather than through their local dealership.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015050519id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/hyundai/news/ix35-fuel-cell-goes-on-sale.html

Johanna Derry: High-end breadmakers, coffee machines and mixers were a big hit this Christmas. But do people often get them just because they look good on their worktops?

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There was a time when the only kitchen appliances we kept on our counter tops were kettles and microwaves. But these days most of us probably have a whole plethora of appliances on view: stand mixers, coffee makers, grinders, popcorn makers, slow cookers, toastie makers … the list goes on. This Christmas, foodies and wannabe kitchenistas snapped up small kitchen appliances like hotcakes. According to John Lewis we bought 46% more stand mixers and 30% more breadmakers at their stores than we did last year. Coffee machines were even more popular: we bought 51% more bean-to-cup machines and 58% more pod coffee machines this year than last Christmas. And then there's the fryers, rice cookers, and juicers which John Lewis also report as popular Christmas gifts. Where on earth are we going to put them all? According to a recent customer survey by Currys & PC World, instead of hiding all our newly purchased kitchen kit away in a cupboard, we're increasingly making space on our work surfaces to show our appliances off. Obviously not everyone has a vast kitchen, so for some that means making a trade to prioritise the machines that matter most. Market researchers Mintel found earlier this year that 20% of us have ditched our kitchen kettles in favour of coffee machines. So how do you decide what to leave out in your kitchen? There seem to be three deciding factors for moving appliances from the cupboard to the counter. The most obvious reason to keep an object on your worktop is because you use it so frequently it's more hassle to tidy it away. You don't put your kettle away in the cupboard if you're a regular tea drinker, or your coffee machine if you're a caffeine addict. If you're a prolific baker you'll want to keep your mixer out, ready for action when you are: kitchens are increasingly becoming showrooms that reflect our interests and hobbies. Currys & PC World found that 60% of shoppers splash out on premium-branded kitchen products over basic kitchen tech. Small electricals buyer for John Lewis, William Jones has observed this trend. "What was once a habitual pastime has become a true hobby." Taking coffee as the example he continues: "Consumers are choosing to grind their own beans and mix their own blends at home." Kitchen kit is no longer purely utilitarian. For some, appliances have become to kitchens, what changing the colour of your cushion covers was to living room sofas. They have to look good and be in the right colour to match your decor if you're going to leave them out on the counter. KitchenAid is the obvious candidate for bringing colour into the kitchen, but they're not alone. The demand for stylish gadgets that look smart in the kitchen have prompted companies such as Dualit, for example, to collaborate with luxury paint and wallpaper company Little Greene, to create six special-edition Heritage toasters, and De'Longhi has made its bean-to-cup coffee machines available in nine different colours. "The products look great, so people want them out. They're like pieces of art on their kitchen counter," says Jones. John Lewis has found people investing in two coffee machines: one pod-to-cup that's quick in the week, and then a full blown machine, built with a commercial standard of technology, for the weekends. The catch to the kitchen-appliance-as-status-symbol idea is that you have to be able to do more than just use the equipment to earn your bragging rights. By having a powerful piece of kitchen kit on your counter this year you'll be implying that you're an expert yourself. Maybe you are. But if you're more wannabe than actual expert the retailers are prepared for you too. Sage, for example, will send an engineer with its high-end Dual Boiler coffee machine to your home to help you set it up and show you how to work it. It seems that fortunately, there's no need to lose face as well as kitchen work surface. How many appliances do you have on your kitchen counter, and are they there for their form or their function? Be honest …

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014010619id_/http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/jan/06/kitchen-gadgets-status-symbols-breadmakers-coffee-machines

She is the most honest, uninhibited filmmaker of our time. Or: She’s twee, precious and maddening. Discuss. Nicely.

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Sam Taylor-Wood for The New York Times Miranda July stood in her living room in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, apologizing for the sunflowers. It really was a copious amount of sunflowers. They sprouted from Mason jars and vases, punctuating the austere, Shaker-like furniture in the sunny home that July, who is 37, shares with her husband, the filmmaker Mike Mills, who’s 45. Noticing me noticing the sunflowers, she interjected: “We just had a party. We don’t usually have sunflowers everywhere.” In person, July was very still, with ringlets of curly hair falling over her wide blue eyes like a protective visor, and she seemed perceptively aware of the “precious” label that is often attached both to her and to her work. At a different point in our time together, I followed her into a hotel room in San Francisco, where Mills had left her a knitted octopus wearing a scarf and hat on the couch. She laughed when she saw it but also appeared a bit mortified: “Oh, God,” she said. “It’s kind of a joke. . . . It’s not. . . . Really, this isn’t us at all.” At their house, Mills emerged from his office; in contrast to July’s measured composure, Mills seemed in constant motion, often running his hands through his Beethoven hair. Both he and July have directed new films being released this summer. His film, “Beginners,” is loosely based on the true story of his father’s coming out at age 75. July’s film, “The Future,” is her second feature as a director, and it’s a funny, sad portrait of a couple at a crossroads. Sophie, played by July, works at a children’s dance school, and Jason, played by Hamish Linklater, provides tech-support by telephone from their sofa. The couple is weeks away from adopting Paw-Paw, an injured cat and a symbol of impending adulthood who is also the film’s narrator. A talking cat is exactly the kind of detail that might endear people who are endeared by Miranda July and infuriate people who are infuriated by her. There are plenty of both. “You’ve met us at a weird time,” Mills said. “We’re usually just two workaholics in our separate corners.” July and Mills first crossed paths in 2005, when July’s debut feature, “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” made its premiere at Sundance at the same time as Mills’s film “Thumbsucker.” They met at a party — “She wore a yellow dress,” he recalls — and he watched her do a Q. and A. the next day. “She was so strong and declarative. I fell in love instantly.” They married in the summer of 2009 at Mills’s house in the Nevada hills. In one sense, July has been enjoying the Platonic ideal of creative success in the age of the hyphenate artist. She publishes short stories in The New Yorker. The seven-year Web project, “Learning to Love You More,” which she produced with Harrell Fletcher — in which more than 8,000 people submitted material in response to online assignments like “Make a protest sign and protest” and “Take a picture of your parents kissing” — was recently acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “Me and You and Everyone We Know” won the Camera d’Or at Cannes and was named by Roger Ebert as one of the best films of the 2000s. She inspires a devotion among her fans that is positively swoony: “I love Miranda July, and everything she does is so subtle and sweet and bizarre and necessary,” is a fairly typical sentiment. July is preoccupied with intimacy — she habitually uses the words “you” and “we” in her titles — and this demands, and inspires, an intense engagement from her followers. After a screening of “The Future” at the San Francisco Film Festival, a small crowd surrounded July, pinning her against the back wall of the movie theater, wanting to tell her, with palpable urgency, how much her work mattered to them. Her office has an entire room filled top to bottom with boxes of letters and objects from fans around the world. One man printed every e-mail he ever wrote and sent them all to July, because only she would understand. Yet despite this (or perhaps because of it) she has also become the unwilling exemplar of an aggravating boho archetype: the dreamy, young hipster whose days are filled with coffee, curios and disposable enchantments. “Yes, in some ways Miranda July is living my dream and life, and yes, maybe I’m a little jealous,” wrote one Brooklyn-based artist on her blog. “I loathe her. It feels personal.” To her detractors (“haters” doesn’t seem like too strong a word) July has come to personify everything infuriating about the Etsy-shopping, Wes Anderson-quoting, McSweeney’s-reading, coastal-living category of upscale urban bohemia that flourished in the aughts. Her very existence is enough to inspire, for example, an I Hate Miranda July blog, which purports to detest her “insufferable precious nonsense.” Or there is the online commenter who roots for July to be exiled to Darfur. Or the blogger who yearns to beat her with a shoe. Katrina Onstad is a Toronto-based author and columnist for The Globe and Mail. Her novel "Everybody Has Everything" will be published in 2012. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An article on Page 24 this weekend about the film director Miranda July reverses, in one instance, the first two words in the title of one of her movies. It is “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” not “You and Me.” An article on Page 24 this weekend about the film director Miranda July reverses, in one instance, the first two words in the title of one of her movies. It is “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” not “You and Me.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011072119id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/magazine/the-make-believer.html

People in Kenya are hoping for a boom in Obama-related merchandise when he makes his first visit there as president this week.

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KISUMU, Kenya—Kenyan street hawker Enokh Mulure and two friends recently spent about $1,300 on a truckload of Barack Obama mugs, calendars, baseball caps and T-shirts. Mr. Obama is making his first trip to Kenya as president this week, and to Mr. Mulure that means one thing: “Business.” He isn’t the only Kenyan betting on an Obama cash bonanza. Across this east African nation, entertainers, hoteliers, safari companies and even some of the commander-in-chief’s distant family members are trying to profit from Kenya’s ancestral ties to the 44th president. Articles in Kenyan dailies are offering tips on how Kenyans can cash in on the visit. The commercial buzz ahead of Mr. Obama’s arrival is crowning a seven-year boom for all things Barack: Kenyan radio stations have long blasted pop hits invoking Mr. Obama’s name. A company that sells mobile phone add-ons offers seven Obama-themed ringtones ranging from inspiring quotes to excerpts from his 2008 victory speech. Tourists coming to see the wildlife in Kenya’s safari parks book “Obama tours” that include a day in the village where his father was born. The bottom line: In Kenya, Mr. Obama is more than a visiting dignitary—he is a symbol of opportunity and a brand that generates serious capital. His visit is shining a spotlight on a dynamic and bizarre industry—those cashing in on the Obama name. “He’s got a blood connection with Kenya,” said Kenyan tourism board chief Muriithi Ndegwa, who stressed Obama-themed excursions are a “niche product” that complement the country’s big animal safaris and beach vacations. “That’s a product we’re supporting so people can pay pilgrimage to the place where he traces his roots,” Mr. Ndegwa said. Kenyans know Mr. Obama was born in the U.S., but they still look upon him as a native son. Mr. Obama will be in Nairobi this weekend to discuss policy, security, and entrepreneurship with Kenyan political and business leaders. If the Obama-namesake enterprises are any indication, the Kenyans have the entrepreneurship covered. Towns across the country are planning parties and cottage business ventures irrespective of whether the president is scheduled to visit. Kisumu—the closest city to the Obama family’s ancestral village—hasn’t been mentioned as part of Mr. Obama’s itinerary, but locals are planning street parties and selling Obama-emblazoned T-shirts they say will be the “uniform of the festival.” The T-shirts show Mr. Obama’s face and the Kenyan and American flags blending into one. Helping to organize the Kisumu party is a comedy duo who make a living mimicking Mr. Obama. Lawrence Oyange, 32, began impersonating the president back in 2006. With his partner, Milton Obote, he has built a nationwide following with his Obama-themed act—hosting mock U.S. elections, doing club routines and performing at corporate events. The jokes are rather different from Mr. Obama’s patter at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Many of the yarns revolve around fishing—the traditional livelihood of the area’s Luo people. One joke suggests Mr. Obama run pipes from Lake Victoria to the Mississippi so Americans can turn on their faucets and watch Kenyan fish pour out. Seeing a reporter’s quizzical reaction, he explained it brings down the house in Kisumu. About an hour’s drive away in the village of Kogelo—where Mr. Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was born—the president’s close and distant relatives are cashing in on the family name. One distant cousin, Nicholas Rajula—who says he shares “some grandfather” with Mr. Obama, has created a thriving hotel business off his presidential connections. Opened in 2010 with 17 rooms, the now 60-room Kogelo Village Resort boasts a meeting hall called the White House, a cement statue of Mr. Obama and bungalows named after Obama family members including Sasha, Malia and Mr. Rajula himself. The 55-year-old arranges for guests to meet with Barack Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah—commonly known as Mama Sarah—and to visit the gravesite of the president’s father. “I understood the deal that we could sell here was America,” Mr. Rajula said, explaining his decision to open the hotel in Kogelo and outfit it with Obama references and paraphernalia—including a holographic photo that shifts between a picture of Mr. Obama and one of Martin Luther King Jr. For Kenyans, he said, Mr. Obama means that they too can be part of the American dream. He declined to say how much he was making, but said “we are doing well.” During a recent week, rooms were booked solid with county officials. He is also expanding: building a pool and “luxury” cottage, where he hopes President Obama will one day spend the night. About 2 kilometers down the road, American and Kenyan flags fly outside the Barack H. Obama restaurant, owned by the president’s half-brother Malik Abongo Obama, who also has started a foundation in their father’s name. Gary Zimet, a Los Angeles-based owner of a website called Moments in Time, said Malik Obama has offered to sell some of the president’s old letters, including a 1995 missive in which the U.S. president talked of his reservations about a career in politics. Mr. Zimet, whose website trades in such letters, estimates the letter’s value at $15,000 and said Malik Obama offered to sell it to him before selling it elsewhere. Malik Obama made a failed attempt to enter Kenyan politics in 2013, invoking a familiar slogan: change. He declined to be interviewed for this article. County tourism chief Charles Akelloh said about 600 visitors a month come to the village because of its Obama connections. They have opened a tourism office in the village in the hope of getting more accurate information, and to set some sort of schedule for people going to see Mama Sarah—who is also the major attraction for visitors on the Obama tours. Mama Sarah appears to take fame in stride. The 94-year-old has used her celebrity to attract funding for area schools and women’s programs. She talked about Mr. Obama going to market with her, carrying vegetables on his back, when he visited as a young man. She even joked about fixing up a Wall Street Journal photographer with the president, suggesting she could make a good second wife. Asked her opinion of her step-grandson, Mama Sarah responds with a politician’s acumen: “I am just wishing him well with what he is doing in America as president.” Write to Heidi Vogt at [email protected]

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015072119id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/kenyans-are-ready-to-greet-obama-with-open-cash-registers-1437437772

Oil could bottom around $40 a barrel but if it does, it won't linger there long, oil trader Andrew Hall said in an investor letter.

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Crude has been on a volatile streak in recent days, and fell nearly 9 percent Wednesday amid reports of a multi-decade high in U.S. oil supplies. Just the day before, oil had experienced a huge rally, leading some traders and analysts to think that the bear market was fizzling. And on Thursday, the domestic oil market rallied again, crossing the psychologically significant $50 mark. Brent crude, the global benchmark, closed at near $57. Read MoreOil expert: This is a 'dead cat bounce' Oil traders and analysts have differed on where crude is likely to go this year, with some saying price could fall substantially further as the global markets face considerable oversupply in the first half of the year. The London-based Merchant Commodity Fund co-founder Doug King, for instance, told CNBC recently that oil prices could pierce the $30 floor and trade into the high $20s before recovering. Even so, exchange-traded funds that track the West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude markets have seen money pile in so far this year, suggesting that smaller investors are betting on a nascent recovery. Oil-related stocks, like drillers and oilfield equipment companies, have suffered huge declines since last summer. But, like current market commodity prices, those stocks could be close to their nadir, Hall wrote in his investor letter. "Oil-related equities have been trying to find a bottom," he stated. "It's not clear whether they have found it yet, but we think it's probably close…. Well-positioned shale oil operators and other domestic producers could prove to be attractive investments."

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http://web.archive.org/web/20150824000942id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/05/oil-prices-crude-will-go-to-40-or-lower-oil-trader-hall.html

SmartyPig online program helps savers reach a savings goal by making savings automatic and by letting others chip in through social media.

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WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – A 2008 start-up called SmartyPig has combined social networking and banking to offer a new way to save, and in four years has helped people reach almost $3 billion in savings goals. The business was created by Des Moines natives Michael Ferrari and Jon Gaskell in 2008 as a high-tech way to encourage people to save for specific goals. Ferrari came up with the idea when his first son was born and he needed to save money for his son's college education. He wanted to save for other goals in a program similar to the college 529 plan, and SmartyPig was born. The program creates an online savings account for goal-directed purchases that can range from travel to consumer goods to a down payment on a house. Money can be transferred automatically from account holders' savings or checking account at their regular banks. Account holders can then use Facebook, Twitter and other social media to allow friends and family members to contribute to the goal. The deposits are FDIC insured. Once the goal is reached, the saver can choose from a selection of merchant-provided discounts when making the purchase. The idea caught on. By the end of 2009, it carried deposits of $212 million. "They actually sort of jump-started the whole goal-based savings account thing," said Stessa Cohen, a financial services analyst for Gartner in Philadelphia. "A lot of banks in the U.S. and Canada are looking at providing that." Social Money, the company behind SmartyPig, thinks banks are far enough behind, and eager enough to connect with customers on social media, that they'll pay someone else to do it for them. Every Monday for six weeks, USA TODAY will look at how fast-growing companies rely on innovation to thrive. The company is now starting to sell the SmartyPig concept to banks, with the idea of letting them brand it themselves. That product was rolled out this spring. More than 115 financial institutions have approached Social Money about its GoalSaver program, Gaskell said, and the bank has already signed on ICICI, the second-largest bank in India by assets. Social Money expects to announce new bank customers throughout the year, Gaskell said. "We've basically taken the heart and soul of what we've learned at SmartyPig and pointed it at the scale," said Gaskell. Gaskell won't say what Social Money makes each year, but he said the company has been operating on its own revenue for three years. In April, Social Money announced it would hire 35 new employees, bringing its total workforce to 50. SmartyPig was part of a shift toward savings and personal financial management during the recession, Cohen said. People were ready to save money, when they may not have been three years earlier. Like Kiva, the online microfinance organization launched a couple of years earlier, SmartyPig also tracks your progress for all to see. "You can see how far along you are," said Nathan Robertson, 26, who's saving for a three-month trip to South America later this year. "It's a little bit more fun than just a regular bank account." By Maxine Park, USA TODAY Social Money co-founders Mike Ferrari (left) and Jon Gaskell. Robertson said it's easier to save with SmartyPig because he doesn't see the money. It's automatically deducted, and unlike with a separate savings account at a bank, he doesn't see it all the time and isn't tempted to pull a couple of hundred dollars out. He also shares his progress with friends occasionally, though he doesn't expect anyone to contribute. "I'll throw it on my Twitter page every now and then," he said. "The idea is to share that with your family and friends, and keep up the social pressure to reach your goals." Banks might want their own version of it, Cohen said, because it gets them into social media, a world that's been difficult for financial institutions. Instead of just tweeting about their earnings or their latest charitable giving using Social Money, banks can get connected to consumers via Twitter and Facebook. "They're collecting a lot of information that I give voluntarily," Cohen said. "I give a lot of information to Social Money about what I'm doing." Banks can track their customers better and offer financial products to them when it makes sense for the customer. They can also make deals with merchants based on what consumers are saving for, and tailor advertising to them. "This attracts non-banks who want to partner with Social Money, who say 'We want to know what people are saving for,' " Cohen said.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2012072319id_/http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-07-22/smartypig-social-money-michael-ferrari-jon-gaskell/56369606/1

Nick Cohen: The most effective method of hurting those who murder their own people is to recover the wealth they have amassed

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The guards who tortured Sergei Magnitsky at Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison, and refused to allow doctors to treat the pancreatitis that eventually killed him did not understand that they had fashioned a weapon for democracies to wield against dictatorships. Until that moment, on 16 November 2009, all the talk of globalisation had missed one obvious fact – the wealthy could indeed move their money across national borders in ways that were once unimaginable. However corrupt a communist was in the cold war, his wealth had to stay in the old Soviet Union or in China or eastern Europe. From 1991 on, oligarchs or red princelings could hide their money where they wanted. But the options for those who robbed or murdered their own people were not limitless. They did not stash their loot in their own countries, as a rule. They feared revolutionaries taking power and taking back the stolen goods. They could direct wealth to Russia, the new capital of global reaction. But trusting the Putin regime and Russia's corrupt banking system and judiciary has never been wise. Instead, they wanted what oligarchs and the willing servants of dictatorial regimes have always wanted: a town house in Mayfair, an apartment in Manhattan or a villa on the Riviera, where they could be safe; and City, Swiss or Wall Street lawyers and bankers, who could protect their wealth. The democratic world was their bolt hole and pension plan. On Thursday night, Ukrainian liberals and journalists reported that private jets were taking off from Ukraine as fears grew – and let us hope they are not groundless – that President Yanukovych and his death squads were entering their last days. The charter manifest at Kiev's Zhulyany airport on 20 February, said one, read like a Who's Who of Ukraine's richest men. Which way would they head – east or west? As far as Ukraine's planespotters could tell, they wanted to head west to countries with the rule of law and protections for private property, rather than east into the hands of the rapacious Putin and his officials. Just like the families of Chinese communists, who store their wealth in the British Virgin Islands, when the moment of choice comes, they prefer financial security to ideological conformity. For instance, one of Ukraine's richest men has paid more than £100m for a luxury apartment in London. We should not be surprised if such men decide to delight us with their company if the old regime falls and its unreasonable replacement takes against them. Bill Browder, the investment fund manager who had hired Sergei Magnitsky, has become one of the most important human rights innovators of our time because he understands money's limits. The Russian state murdered Magnitsky because he revealed how officials and gangsters had used Browder's investment funds to perpetrate a $230m (£138m) fraud. Browder lobbied with a polite determination that those of us who have come to admire him know not to underestimate. He collected evidence against officials complicit in the fraud and murder. He then began persuading western governments to deny visas to the men on his list and freeze their western assets. The fury with which Moscow responded to the threat to its plunder ought to have alerted the world to the Magnitsky Act's potential. The authorities disinterred Sergei Magnitsky's corpse and put it on trial – a desecration of both the dead and the judicial process not even Joseph Stalin attempted. To be fair, French politicians and judges have learned the lesson. Understandably ashamed that their country provided a refuge for Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier of Haiti and "Emperor" Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, they have seized property belonging to Uzbekistan and Equatorial Guinea's ruling clans. . Overall, western governments have shown little inclination to follow the money, however. Barack Obama has chartered his inability to stand up to Putin in his reaction to Magnitsky laws. The US Congress had to force him to impose sanctions against Russian officials in 2012. The administration ought to have supplied a new list of targets on 16 December last year. Nothing happened, because Obama and John Kerry did not wish to offend Putin before his games in Sochi. In their desire to be polite, you can see the treacheries of the dominant strand of liberal-leftism of the last decade rebounding on others. Rather than just say they did not wish to repeat the foreign wars of the disastrous Bush administration, Obama and his many admirers convinced themselves that authoritarian threats were phantoms of the neoconservative imagination. If only they could ignore dissenters and "reset" relations with the Kremlin, Russian and western governments would snuggle up to each other as friends. As Michael Weiss, of Institute of Modern Russia, pointed out last week, Moscow advises its allies to unleash "hell when the moment is right" and then present the bloody aftermath "as a warning of what happens if the status quo is not maintained". As I and many others have written, Putin wants to create a "conservative international" to unite the world's repressive governments and movements against liberalism. If Obama and his "progressives" can't oppose a united authoritarian front, the time has come for them to curl up into a ball and drop themselves into history's dustbin. Not that the European Union has been much better. The European parliament is so annoyed at its failure to enforce Magnitsky sanctions that it is preparing to compel it to act. European governments, including Britain, only threatened sanctions against the organisers of murder in Kiev at the last minute when the time for effective threats had passed. I am sure there are legal difficulties, although the French judiciary has said that the law does not protect stolen money. I am sure that diplomats in London and Washington are whispering warnings about dictatorships the west supports in Bahrain and Egypt. Against them lies the effectiveness of the best modern response to state terror. "You complain about 'western imperialism'," we should say. "Allow us to show you what modern imperialism will do to you if you even think of sending snipers to shoot peaceful demonstrators. We will change the locks of your apartments on Fifth Avenue, the Avenue Montaigne and Kensington Palace Gardens. We will shutter your villas of Cap Ferrat. Then we will empty your bank accounts so completely you will realise that all your thieving has been for nothing."

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014022319id_/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/22/stop-state-terrorists-seize-assets

In a letter to a federal judge, the Justice Department said it still required help despite its success in gaining iPhone data in a separate case.

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WASHINGTON — With the legal battle over one iPhone now behind them, lawyers for the Justice Department and Apple resumed their sparring in another case on Friday, as prosecutors told a federal judge in Brooklyn that they still needed the company’s help to unlock a drug dealer’s iPhone. While prosecutors described the demand in the Brooklyn case as routine, Apple said it reflected an attempt by the government to establish a precedent that could help unlock dozens or even hundreds of other phones. Indeed, a judge in yet another case revolving around a locked iPhone — one in Boston involving a violent gang conspiracy — has directed Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation extract data from the phone, according to documents unsealed on Friday. The cases in Brooklyn and Boston represent the latest battlegrounds in the unusually prominent dispute between the government and Apple over the F.B.I.’s difficulties in breaking into encrypted phones. The Justice Department said it was proceeding with its appeal of a February ruling that rejected its demand for Apple’s assistance in the Brooklyn case, even after the F.B.I. managed in recent weeks to unlock, without the company’s help, an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. “The government’s application is not moot and the government continues to require Apple’s assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant,” prosecutors said. Emily Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the technological solution found in the San Bernardino case would not work to get into the phone of the Brooklyn drug dealer, which has a different operating system. “In this case, we still need Apple’s help in accessing the data, which they have done with little effort in at least 70 other cases when presented with court orders for comparable phones running iOS 7 or earlier operating systems,” she said. Apple’s lawyers are skeptical of the F.B.I.’s claims that it cannot simply use the San Bernardino method to get into the Brooklyn phone. The fight over the San Bernardino phone ended abruptly last month after the F.B.I. paid an undisclosed outside party to demonstrate how to get around two defense mechanisms built into the iPhone 5c. It is unclear whether the F.B.I. got much of use out of the phone. In the Brooklyn case, prosecutors want to open an iPhone 5s owned by Jun Feng, 45, a methamphetamine dealer who claimed to have forgotten his passcode. Mr. Feng has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the case, but prosecutors say his phone could hold information leading to other suspects. In a stinging rebuke five weeks ago, however, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein said in a 50-page ruling that the Justice Department had overstepped its authority in trying to use a 1789 statute called the All Writs Act to compel Apple’s cooperation. The technology company has been locked in a major legal battle against law enforcement officials over privacy and security. Apple had previously agreed without objection to help unlock dozens of phones in federal investigations, but it changed its position late last year, saying that the F.B.I.’s demands could cause “reputational harm” as it promotes the security of its devices. An Apple lawyer said the company was disappointed but not surprised by the government’s decision to press ahead in Brooklyn. The lawyer, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity because of company policy, argued that prosecutors were pushing the case not because of the value of the information in the phone, but rather to set a precedent that could be used to get into other locked iPhones. A ruling in the government’s favor in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn would not be binding in other cases, but if it were appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and upheld there, it would become precedent for other federal courts in the region. Justice Department lawyers point to Apple’s past cooperation in arguing that it should be compelled to unlock Mr. Feng’s phone. But Joseph DeMarco, a former prosecutor who is not involved in the case, said that alone would not be enough to overturn Judge Orenstein’s order. “Apple can still argue that it doesn’t have to comply with this order,” he said. “The fact that it has done so before is relevant but not, as a technical matter, legally binding.” The method used by the F.B.I. to get into the San Bernardino phone has been a topic of furious speculation at Apple and among encryption experts. The Apple lawyer said on Friday that the company had decided not to sue the F.B.I. to find out how it got into the phone, in part because Apple’s regular product updates would probably give the method a short shelf life. The company works constantly to find and fix vulnerabilities, and its lawyers said they were confident that it would render useless the tool used by the F.B.I. in the San Bernardino case, even if it never knew for sure the method involved. The company’s lawyers plan to argue that the San Bernardino phone used a new operating system and was much harder to break into than the phone in the Brooklyn case would be. With a higher bar set, the company will question why the government cannot turn to the same marketplace of technicians that helped it crack the San Bernardino phone. Apple executives, including Timothy D. Cook, the chief, argue that Congress, not the courts, should set broad policies on investigators’ access to encrypted data. A bill being drafted by the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Richard M. Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat — would compel companies to provide “technical assistance” to law enforcement officials in such cases, according to the newspaper The Hill. But many officials in Washington doubt that a divided Congress will be able to reach agreement on such a complicated issue, and the draft bill drew quick protests even before its release, with the American Civil Liberties Union calling it “a clear threat to everyone’s privacy and security.” Eric Lichtblau reported from Washington and Katie Benner from New York. A version of this article appears in print on April 9, 2016, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: New Push to Unlock an iPhone in Brooklyn. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016041019id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/technology/us-presses-bid-to-force-apple-to-unlock-iphone-in-new-york.html

J.P. Morgan Chase reported this morning that it earned $2.7 billion in the second quarter as the massive success of its Wall Street trading activities outpaced its rising losses on consumer loans.

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The giant bank topped by 36 percent the $2 billion it earned during the comparable period last year, but earnings per share fell to 28 cents from 53 cents because of heavy issuance of new shares. The strong earnings exceeded the predictions of most financial analysts, two days after Goldman Sachs also reported better-than-expected results. The combination is likely to increase the confidence of investors that the healthiest banks are once again reliable bets to make money. Most of the good news came from J.P. Morgan's investment bank, which benefited from the absence of former rivals such as Lehman Brothers and the weakness of others, such as Citigroup. The company said, for example, that it doubled its revenue from helping companies sell shares to investors. It also nearly doubled its revenue from buying and selling financial instruments. The New York company's retail businesses had a much tougher quarter. J.P. Morgan's credit card division, among the nation's largest, lost $672 million as more borrowers defaulted on loans. Problems were particularly severe in a portfolio the bank acquired with the failed Washington Mutual, which had focused on lending to customers with credit problems. The company's retail bank, also among the nation's largest, eked out earnings of $15 million. J.P. Morgan's strong performance is creating distance between the bank and its largest rivals. The company repaid $25 billion in federal aid last month, freeing it from restrictions on compensation that still apply to Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. By repaying the money, J.P. Morgan also escaped restrictions in hiring foreign workers. But perhaps most important is the perception that the bank is free from government meddling. Bank of America and Citigroup both are operating under elaborate and restrictive agreements with federal banking regulators that affect everything from executive appointments to corporate strategy. Bank of America and Citigroup are scheduled to report earnings tomorrow. Other banks, including Wells Fargo and Capital One Financial, report earnings next week.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2009071819id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071600782.html

Cambridge professor inspired by her own experience discovers abnormal cells can be eliminated and develop into healthy children

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The researchers developed a mouse model of "aneuploidy" - where some cells in the embryo contain an abnormal number of chromosomes. Normally, each cell in the human embryo should contain 23 pairs of chromosomes - 22 pairs of chromosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes, but some can carry multiple copies that can lead to developmental disorders. For example, children born with three copies of chromosome 21 will develop Down's Syndrome. Pregnant women - particularly older mothers, whose offspring are at greatest risk of developing such disorders - are offered tests to predict the likelihood of genetic abnormalities. Between the 11th and 14th weeks of pregnancy, mothers may be offered chorionic villus sampling (CVS), a test that involves removing and analysing cells from the placenta. A later test, known as amniocentesis, involves analysing cells shed by the foetus into the surrounding amniotic fluid. That test is more accurate, but is usually carried out during weeks 15 to 20 of the pregnancy, when the foetus is further developed. Study senior author Prof Zernicka-Goetz, said she was inspired to carry out the research following her own experience when pregnant with her second child. A CVS test at the time found that as many as a quarter of the cells in the placenta that joined her and her developing baby were abnormal. When Prof Zernicka-Goetz spoke to geneticists about the potential implications, she found that very little was understood about the fate of embryos containing abnormal cells and about the fate of these abnormal cells within the developing embryos. Fortunately for the Professor, her son, Simon, was born healthy. She said: "I know how lucky I was and how happy I felt when Simon was born healthy. Many expectant mothers have to make a difficult choice about their pregnancy based on a test whose results we don't fully understand. "What does it mean if a quarter of the cells from the placenta carry a genetic abnormality? How likely is it that the child will have cells with this abnormality, too? This is the question we wanted to answer. "Given that the average age at which women have their children is rising, this is a question that will become increasingly important." Co senior author Professor Thierry Voet, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "In fact, abnormal cells with numerical and/or structural anomalies of chromosomes have been observed in as many as 80 to 90 per cent of human early stage embryos following in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and CSV tests may expose some degree of these abnormalities." • World's oldest living man with Down's Syndrome celebrates 76th birthday

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160604105238id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/science/science-news/12207037/Abnormal-cells-not-a-sure-sign-of-baby-defects-finds-academic-who-had-healthy-child-at-44-despite-risk.html

The biggest threat to Iraq's long-term stability isn't ISIS, according to Gen. David Petraeus, who led the U.S. surge during the Iraq War.

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Instead, Petraeus said the Iran-backed Shiite militias who are helping to fend off ISIS are "the foremost threat" to long-term stability in Iraq, according to an interview with the Washington Post. The comments provide the most expansive glimpse yet into how Petraeus may be helping to shape the Obama administration's strategy in Iraq as he continues to advise the National Security Council on the issue. Those militias, many funded and trained by Iran, have been an important part of efforts to push ISIS out of Syria, but they have also been accused of war crimes -- allegedly murdering not just ISIS fighters, but also Sunni civilians. "They have, to a degree, been both part of Iraq's salvation but also the most serious threat to the all-important effort of once again getting the Sunni Arab population in Iraq to feel that it has a stake in the success of Iraq rather than a stake in its failure," Petraeus told the Post. "Longer term, Iranian-backed Shia militia could emerge as the preeminent power in the country, one that is outside the control of the government and instead answerable to Tehran." Petraeus' comments come as the U.S.'s strategy to defeat ISIS is facing increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill as lawmakers debate how to enshrine the U.S.'s war against ISIS into legislation formally authorizing military force. Lawmakers pressed the U.S.'s top national security officials during a hearing last week on the growing influence of Iran in the region and the long-term implications for security -- something Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Marin Dempsey said raised legitimate concerns. "We are all concerned about what happens after the drums stop beating and ISIL is defeated," Dempsey said. Iran's growing influence in the region dates back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime and put Shiite Muslims -- the country's dominant group -- in power. Iran, also a Shiite-majority country, seized the opportunity to rekindle ties with its formerly rival neighbor. And the ISIS threat also gave Iran an opening to expand its influence in the region, sending its elite Revolutionary Guards to Iraq to train, advise and fight ISIS, whose advances into Iraq sounded alarm bells in Iran. Despite ongoing negotiations with the U.S., Iran, which supports destabilizing terror groups in the region, remains a threat to U.S. allies and the U.S.'s strategic interests -- like Iran's support of the Assad regime in Syria. The situation in Syria is also one Petraeus said he is "profoundly worried about." "Until it is capped, it is going to continue to spew radioactive instability and extremist ideology over the entire region," said Petraeus, who also served as President Barack Obama's CIA director. "Any strategy to stabilize the region thus needs to take into account the challenges in both Iraq and Syria. It is not sufficient to say that we'll figure them out later." The Obama administration's strategy in dealing with the still-ongoing civil war in Syria has been just one of the many magnets for criticism from GOP lawmakers, the most prominent of which is Sen. John McCain, who has argued the U.S. should do more to stem the violence in that country -- notably, arming moderate rebels fighting the Syrian regime. The Obama administration has trained and armed some opposition forces and is still trying to identify the ideal partners for the U.S. on the ground in Syria, but those efforts would only be aimed at defeating ISIS, not the Assad regime. And the U.S. has focused on fighting ISIS, leading a coalition that is pummeling the extremist group from the air while coordinating with local forces on the ground. Those efforts have spared the Syrian regime.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015032119id_/http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/20/politics/petraeus-greatest-threat-iraq-isis-shiite-militias/index.html

As the Democrats touted job policies among blue-collar workers courted by Republicans, the GOP nominee’s latest controversy exploded, stage right

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Protesters stood in the rain, waiting to greet the daughter of a drapery salesman and the son of an iron welder as they rolled into western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Related: Trump has 'black soul', says Khizr Khan, father of fallen Muslim US soldier Coal Country, a region where Donald Trump expects to win over blue-collar workers and cultural conservatives, isn’t friendly territory for Democrats. That was precisely why Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine had come. “Lock her up!” a few dozen protesters jeered as they stepped off the bus into a rainy haze on their fourth stop of their post-convention tour, at Johnstown Wire Technologies factory in Cambria county, which is 93% white and has a median household income of $42,000. Some waved Trump 2016 signs and American flags. Others held homemade posters with phrases like: “Send her a$$ to jail!” Across the road a smaller group huddled. Their signs read: “Steelworkers for Clinton.” With 100 days to go to the presidential election, Clinton and Kaine have made clear they are going to fight for working-class voters. On their first campaign trip together, the two Ivy League-educated political insiders drew on their modest midwestern upbringings in an effort to connect with voters now frustrated with their lot. We have the most productive, competitive workers in the world, we just need to give our people the chance to succeed There, Clinton recalled in detail how she would spend hours in her father’s dimly lit printing plant, dragging a squeegee across the silk screen laid on top of the drapery fabric. In the factory, Kaine said he recognized some of the machinery from the days spent in his father’s iron-working shop. “We are visiting places that prove what Americans can do,” Clinton told 200 or so mostly unionized workers during her remarks at the factory. “We have the most productive, competitive workers in the world, we just need to give our people the chance to succeed. So from Philadelphia to Hatfield to Harrisburg and now here in Johnstown, that’s exactly what we’re doing.” For decades, Democrats have lost out to Republicans among blue-collar workers and white Americans with a low education. Trump has capitalized on this trend and is counting on making a battleground state out of Pennsylvania, which has not voted for a Republican for president since 1988. The state is central to Trump’s Rust Belt strategy, along with success in the Great Lakes states such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Polls show a tight race there. In a head-to-head race, Clinton leads Trump in Pennsylvania by 46% to 42%, according to the realclearpolitics.com average. In Ohio, she leads by less than 1%, 42.6% to 41.8%. Under gauzy marquee lighting at a market in Harrisburg, Clinton appealed for help convincing ambivalent voters that the stakes are now too high to sit out. “If somebody is not interested in voting,” she said, “if somebody has given up on politics, if somebody says it won’t make any difference, ask them to give us a chance.” Through the weekend, the Clinton-Kaine motorcade wound through faded factory towns in hilly green landscapes. “If you’re looking for a kind of pessimistic, downbeat vision of America, we’re not your folks,” Clinton said at toy manufacturing factory in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, on Friday. “We do not buy into that dark, divisive image that was presented at the Republican convention last week.” In her first 100 days in office, Clinton said, she would push through a gridlocked Congress the biggest jobs agenda since the second world war, a plan to create more jobs by investing in new infrastructure and clean energy. “We’re going to create jobs in Pennsylvania and across America,” she said in Johnstown. “Especially in places that have been left out and left behind.” Related: Clinton blames Russia for DNC hack as Trump seems to back annex of Crimea While Clinton tried to keep the focus of the tour on her economic agenda, she was once again forced to respond to a controversy generated by Trump. In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Trump insulted the family of Humayun Khan, a 27-year-old Muslim US army captain who died in a suicide bombing in Iraq in 2004. At a cheese shop in Ashland, Ohio, Clinton told reporters: “He has throughout the course of his campaign consistently insulted and demeaned individuals, groups of Americans, people around the world and one doesn’t know where the bottom is. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has ever run to be president of the United States saying any of what he said. The accumulation of it all is just beyond my comprehension.” Amid widespread criticism on Saturday, Trump released a statement which addressed the speech given by Khan’s father at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia last week. “While I feel deeply for the loss of his son,” Trump said, “Mr Khan who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things.” On Sunday, however, Trump relapsed, using Twitter to say: “I was viciously attacked by Mr Khan at the Democratic Convention. Am I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!” On her bus tour, Clinton earned her second major endorsement from an ideologically independent billionaire when Mark Cuban hailed her as a “true leader” at a rally in his native Pittsburgh. “In Hillary Clinton’s America, the American Dream is alive and well,” Cuban said, electrifying the crowd. Earlier in the week, Michael Bloomberg offered a sharp rebuke of Trump at the Democratic convention. Such support could help Clinton and Kaine appeal to disillusioned Republicans like Malynda Lee, who runs a small tech business in Pittsburgh. “Normally I’m a conservative but as a woman I feel compelled to vote for Clinton,” Lee said, noting some of the derogatory comments Trump has made about women. She added that she hoped successful businessmen like Cuban and Bloomberg backing Clinton would undermine Trump’s reliance on his own business record while keeping pressure on the Democrats to support small business owners and entrepreneurs. “[Trump’s] not a good businessman,” Lee said. “That’s just wrong. What he is, he’s a bully.” Trump seized on Clinton’s visit to Johnstown, saying it was akin to a “robber visiting their victim” and blaming the loss of manufacturing jobs in such towns on international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he has railed against. Clinton has said she does not support the TPP, but Trump has cast doubt on the sincerity of her opposition. “A vote for Hillary is a vote to destroy American manufacturing,” said Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to the Trump campaign, “and to surrender to the global special interests bankrolling Hillary’s life.” You don't encourage a foreign nation to commit espionage on our national security. That was it for me … the last straw On the defensive after the Democratic convention, Trump announced that he would visit Columbus and Harrisburg, tracking some of the stops Clinton made on her tour. Youngstown, Ohio, is another place that has suffered terribly since its industrial heyday. At a rally there that kicked off about 10.15pm on Saturday, two hours late, Sean Cornelius said he had waited for seven hours to see the woman he only decided to support last week. “You don’t encourage a foreign nation to commit espionage on our national security,” said Cornelius, who described himself as a moderate conservative, referring to Trump’s call on Wednesday for Russia to find “30,000 missing emails” from the private server Clinton used while secretary of state. “That was it for me,” Cornelius said. “That was the last straw.” Cornelius said his vote for Clinton would not be cast entirely in protest. He was impressed by her jobs agenda, he said. And while he said he did not fully trust Clinton – a perception the candidate herself has admitted is a challenge – he said he trusted her more than Trump, and that was enough. “A lot of my Republican friends are the same,” Cornelius said. “We’re crossing the line because we just can’t believe the stuff he’s saying.” Trump is betting that the battle for America’s working class will decide the election. In Johnstown, though, a man stood apart from the huddle of protesters. He was drenched by the rain but he managed a thin smile as the buses arrived. He held above his head a red poster featuring the most memorable line of Bill Clinton’s 1992 acceptance speech: “I still believe in a place called Hope.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016080119id_/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/01/trump-clinton-kaine-rust-belt-pennsylvania-ohio

China's wobbly property market has kept investors on edge, but the country's recent rate cut is expected to bring stability into the sector in 2015.

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Beijing recently introduced measures to prop up the housing market – which accounts for 15 percent of China's economy and impacts more than 40 industries – including lower mortgage rates and down-payments for some home buyers and cutting interest rates. Last week, the People's Bank of China unexpectedly eased monetary policy. The central bank lowered its benchmark lending rates by 40 basis points to 5.6 percent and deposit rates by 25 basis points to 2.75 percent. Read MoreWhy China's property slowdown isn't so scary: Goldman Johnson Hu, analyst at CIMB believes the move is an inflection point for the housing market that could drive a sustained sales recovery. "The PBoC's (People's Bank of China) rate cut is a strong catalyst for the China property sector as a) there is room for further cuts in mortgage rates, b) home buyers may see it as a signal of property market stabilization and thus boosting home sales and lowering housing inventory," he said. Read MoreChina's home price decline appears to be easing Historical patterns show that the first rate cuts in a cycle – September 2008 and June 2012 –helped drive a pickup in sales that lasted 1-1.5 years, according to CIMB. Home prices also started to rebound in 1-2 quarters after the first interest rate reduction. Moody's is less optimistic recent easing will halt the decline in prices, however. "High inventory levels will continue to pressure developers' working capital and profit margins, and weaken their pricing power," Moody's said, noting prices will continue to decrease as developers offer promotions and discounts to boost sales and liquidity. Read MoreSigns of a floor in China's property market Average new home prices in China's 70 major cities fell 2.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the second consecutive month showing an annual fall, according to Reuters. Moody's declined to provide specific guidance on price declines.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20150824104054id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/25/will-chinas-property-market-unravel-in-2015.html

The midfielder Brek Shea entered the game with Mexico in the 78th minute and promptly made a smooth move that led to the only goal in a historic victory.

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Was the United States’ unprecedented victory over Mexico on Wednesday significant or merely a meaningless exhibition played at the cavernous and half-empty Azteca Stadium? “I think it’s a confidence builder,” midfielder Brek Shea said in a telephone interview from Salt Lake City, where he was preparing for Saturday’s Major League Soccer match between his Dallas club and Real Salt Lake. “This team went to Italy and beat Italy, which it had never done. It doesn’t matter which players are there, that it might not have been our best team. It’s still a national team game. Now we know if we have to go there we can win. We did it.” Shea, 22, an early favorite of the national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann, fell out of consideration and had not appeared with the national team since February’s game in Genoa. And to say that his M.L.S. season so far has been tumultuous would be an understatement: he served a three-game suspension after kicking a ball at an assistant referee on May 17; was benched by Coach Schellas Hyndman for arguing when he was pulled from a game July 18; and Dallas is in danger of not making the postseason. Shea was also part of a pre-Olympic debacle that kept the men’s team from going to London. As Klinsmann took what some people called an experimental team to Mexico City — without players like Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley — Shea (6 feet 3 inches, 180 pounds) got the call. He entered Wednesday’s game in the 78th minute for Herculez Gomez. Two minutes later, Shea, on the left flank, took a pass from Kyle Beckerman, neatly put the ball through a defender’s legs and centered to Terrence Boyd, who backheeled a pass to Michael Orozco Fiscal, who scored the game’s only goal. Before Wednesday’s game, the United States had never won in Mexico, a stretch of 24 games since 1934. “I was in like 45 seconds when I got the ball,” Shea said. “All week long the staff told me to take on players, especially all the guys who play in Mexico saying to take on their outside backs. My biggest strength is running at defenders, and that’s all I had on my mind. After I put it through his legs, the ball got away from me, I think it hit my right foot and popped left. I thought I had a shot, but there was no angle, so I put it in a dangerous area.” There is no guarantee Shea will be back with the national team for next month’s home-and-away World Cup qualifiers against Jamaica. For now, Shea hopes the victory in Mexico can wash away the struggles of recent months. “I don’t think there’s ever been a friendly between the U.S. and Mexico,” he said. “It’s never friendly because of the big rivalry. The players don’t look at it as a friendly, we look at it as an international game. We’ve done what we’ve never done before.” Looking back at England the day before the start of the Premier League season, the Red Bulls’ Australian midfielder Tim Cahill sees Robin van Persie’s jump from Arsenal to rival Manchester United for a $38 million transfer fee as sadly inevitable. “He’s a great player, and it’s just too bad he couldn’t stay the rest of his career at Arsenal because he would have become a living legend,” Cahill, who played 15 years in England, said after training Friday at Red Bull Arena. “People have been a bit harsh on Wenger; he didn’t have much choice because the player didn’t want to stay,” Cahill said, referring to the Gunners’ French coach, Arsène Wenger. “There’s nothing you can do.” Wenger’s decision to sell van Persie contrasts with the stance taken at Fulham over the similar transfer demands of the American international Clint Dempsey. Dempsey, 29, wants out but still has a year left on his contract. “You have to respect our view that we can’t let Clint go on the cheap,” Manager Martin Jol said Friday. “And we won’t.” In response, Dempsey wrote on Twitter: “There are two sides to the story. The truth will come out soon.” After losing van Persie, Wenger told The Associated Press: “Time heals all things, and of course at the moment people are hurt, which I understand, but what is important for us is to focus on the season in front of us. Players have gone, life goes on, and the football club is 125 years old, and other big players have left this club and we have always gone from season to season in a strong way.” At the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup in Japan, the United States opens play against Ghana in Hiroshima on Monday, then plays China on Thursday and ends the first round with a match against the defending champion Germany on Aug. 27. The American midfielder Vanessa DiBernardo is the daughter of Angelo DiBernardo, who played for the United States in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and for the Cosmos.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2012081819id_/http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/midfielder-makes-timely-return-to-u-s-national-team/

In today's must-read links for your lunch break: the unemployment rate is down, but the trailer for the final installment of 'The Hangover' trilogy is up.

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Job seekers speak to representatives of employers at a job fair at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan on March 6 in New York City. Unemployment Rate Falls to 7.7%. The drop is due to the addition of 236,000 jobs in February, in spite of sluggish GDP growth. (TIME.com) Growing Up in the World’s Deadliest City. 10,000 men, women and children have died in Juarez, Mexico since 2007 (BuzzFeed) Ten Great American Novel Contenders from the Last Decade. Nothing written by Snooki is on the list, but that’s probably because she didn’t want to peak too early in her writing career. (Flavorwire) Justin Bieber Made Poor Wardrobe Choices. While the yellow hat with spikes has gotten most of the attention this week, his pants aren’t really any better. Those wondering about the possibility of an adult diaper are well within their rights. (Go Fug Yourself) Afghan Graffiti Artist Makes Mark in Mumbai. 23-year-old Malina Suliman has taken her work to the Indian city in the wake of threats from the Taliban in Kandahar. (Divanee) Nine Historical Methods for Determining the Sex of an Unborn Baby. For those of us living in the 21st century, however, an ultrasound is probably still best. (mental_floss) Baseball’s Biggest Breakouts? With the start to the Major League season just weeks away, here’s a look at some of the game’s brightest phenoms. (Grantland) Forget Apple, It’s All About Pear. Apparently, anyway. Maybe they’ll be the ones dropping the next iPhone? (The Daily What) The Hangover Part III Trailer Is Here. The third and final installment of the trilogy hits theaters Memorial Day. (YouTube via FilmDrunk)

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https://web.archive.org/web/2013031319id_/http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/08/reading-while-eating-for-mar-8-jobs-for-everyone/

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen shot dead and slit the throats of 68 residents of a village in northeast Nigeria, according to survivors and vigilante sources.

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The attackers then burned down the entire village of Njaba, the sources said. Dozens of gunmen invaded the remote northeastern village before dawn Tuesday, singling out boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 19 and killing them alongside their parents, witnesses said. Njaba village lies about 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. Karimu Lawani, who escaped to Maiduguri after hiding with eight other people behind the barn of a neighbor, said the attackers came into the village at around 5 a.m. "They shot dead anyone that tried to flee but spared children younger than 13 years old," Lawani said. He and other survivors counted the victims of the massacre before leaving the village some hours later. His account was supported by Faltama Bisika, 62, who lost four grandchildren in the attack. "They hurled petrol bombs into homes and opened fire on anyone trying to flee. They particularly targeted teenagers and elderly people," Bisika said. News of the attack was slow to emerge due to lack of communication following destruction of cell phone towers in the region in previous Boko Haram attacks. "I only got information of the attack on my village last night," said a civilian vigilante from Njaba who asked not to be named. The vigilante said his father was among those killed. The vigilante said he left Njaba for Maiduguri in June to join others fighting against the Islamist radical group. He said he believes the attackers came from Gwoza -- a town on Nigeria's mountainous border with Cameroon that Boko Haram seized last June -- because Njaba "lies on the route to Gwoza from Maiduguri."

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015030519id_/http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/world/boko-haram-nigeria-raid/index.html

Japan's exports grew the most in a year in December, helped by a weak yen and pickup in overseas demand, an encouraging sign for the economy.

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"Exports have bottomed out but I doubt whether they will accelerate from now on due to growing uncertainty over the global economy," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute. The MOF data showed exports to the United States rose 23.7 percent in the year to December, while those to China rose 4.3 percent. Read MoreA busy week ahead for Japan, Asia's central banks Shipments to Asia, which account for more than half of Japanese shipments, grew 11.0 percent year-on-year in December. EU-bound exports rose 6.8 percent. Overall imports rose 1.9 percent on the year in December versus a 2.3 percent gain expected, as sharp falls in crude oil prices cut into the value of purchases. That helped trim a trade gap by 49.5 percent from a year ago to 660.7 billion yen ($5.62 billion), still marking a record 30-month run of deficits. Cheap oil also compounds the challenge for the BOJ's aim of hitting its 2 percent inflation goal around the coming fiscal year from April, which analysts see as impossible to achieve. Indeed, on Wednesday the BOJ sharply cut its inflation forecast, and Governor Haruhiko Kuroda conceded it may take longer than expected to hit the price target. The yen has fallen sharply against the dollar although it has pulled back from recent lows. The dollar was at around 118 yen on Monday, off a 7-year high of above 120 yen hit last month, but still about 35 percent higher since Abe took office in late 2012. Despite the yen's depreciation under Abenomics stimulus policies, exports have been slow to pick up as Japanese firms shifted production overseas, while others have sought to boost profits rather than export volume.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20151013085131id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/25/japan-exports-grow-most-in-year-signalling-steady-recovery-from-recession.html

THE simple act of becoming relaxed can have surprising health benefits, new research is showing. In addition to the obvious psychological effects of relieving stress and mental tension, the new findings indicate, deep relaxation, if practiced regularly, can strengthen the immune system and produce a host of other medically valuable physiological changes. In asthmatics, for example, relaxation training has been found to widen restricted respiratory passages. In some diabetics, relaxation can reduce the need for insulin. In many patients with chronic, unbearable pain, the training has brought about significant relief. Moreover, the research shows, relaxation may help ward off disease by making people less susceptible to viruses, and by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

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In research at the Harvard Medical School, associates of Dr. Benson found that regular sessions of a simple meditation technique decreased the body's response to norepenephrine, a hormone released in reaction to stress. Although the endocrine system continued to emit the hormones, they did not seem to have their usual effects. ''Ordinarily, norepenephrine stimulates the cardiovascular system,'' Dr. Benson said. ''But regular relaxation training resulted in less blood pressure increase to norepenephrine than is usually seen. Relaxation seems to mimic the action of the beta-blocking drugs used to control blood pressure.'' Research by Dean Ornish, director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in San Francisco, has shown that relaxation training improves blood flow to the heart. Silent ischemia, which chokes off that blood flow, can damage the heart without causing noticeable pain. He also found that relaxation lowered cholesterol levels and lessened the severity of angina attacks. In 1984, a National Institutes of Health report recommended the use of relaxation, along with salt restriction and weight loss, as the first therapy for mild hypertension, before resorting to drug treatments. Nevertheless, many cardiologists have been slow to use the relaxation techniques. ''Most cardiologists still can't believe that stress has much to do with heart disease, or that relaxation can help in more than a minor way,'' Dr. Ornish said. ''They don't learn about relaxation techniques in medical school, so they ignore them. But, slowly, relaxation is making more sense to them.'' Diabetes and Chronic Pain Diabetics can benefit from relaxation, according to research by Richard Surwit, a psychologist at the Duke University Medical Center. In a series of studies, Dr. Surwit found that relaxation improved the body's ability to regulate glucose in patients with the most common type of diabetes, which has its onset in adulthood. It is the body's inability to control glucose, or blood sugar, that ultimately leads to the damage done by the disease. Relaxation seems to offer relief to many asthmatics by diminishing both the emotional upsets that can trigger attacks and the constriction of air passages that chokes breathing, according to a report by Paul Lehrer of Rutgers Medical School in the current issue of the Journal of Psychosomatic Research. The effects have been more pronounced for those who suffer chronic asthma, rather than those whose asthma is seasonal. One of the major boons of relaxation training has been in lessening or alleviating chronic, severe pain. Such pain can arise from many different causes, including backache and chronic migraine or tension headaches, diseases such as cancer, and even as the unintended outcome of operations to control pain. In a recent article in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Dr. Kabat-Zinn reported a sharp decrease in pain and related symptoms in patients trained in relaxation at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. The patients in the study, who included the full range of those typically seen in pain clinics, were able to lessen or, in some cases, stop altogether their use of pain drugs. Four years after their training ended, the majority of patients were still faithful in their use of the relaxation practice, and still reported a decrease in pain and less reliance on drugs to control it, Dr. Kabat-Zinn said. Relaxation is being used clinically in a much larger range of medical problems than the research so far has been able to assess. These include the management of the side effects of such medical procedures as kidney dialysis and cancer chemotherapy, gastrointestinal problems like irritable bowel syndrome, and insomnia, emphysema and skin disorders. Evaluating Overall Effectiveness Although clinical successes have been reported in individual cases with these disorders, research is now under way at Harvard and other centers to evaluate the overall effectiveness of relaxation in their treatment. ''It's not yet clear that relaxation will help with every kind of stress reactivity,'' Dr. Kabat-Zinn said. ''And we've just begun to sort out which relaxation techniques work best with which medical problems. Most may be interchangeable, because of their general neuroendocrine effects, but we do not know yet for sure.'' In research at Harvard, students who were identified as being easily engrossed in thoughts and images were trained in muscle relaxation and then asked to visualize certain specific images. Relaxation alone increased defenses against upper respiratory infections. The added imagery, however, enhanced the effect. The research was done by Mary Jasnoski, a psychologist, who reported the findings at a recent meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in San Francisco. Although their biological effects are essentially similar, the relaxation techniques are very different. In Dr. Kabat-Zinn's ''mindfulness'' training, for example, patients pay careful attention to the sensations in their bodies, sweeping slowly from head to foot. They do not try to change those sensations, but note them precisely, with a neutral awareness. They are also taught a set of gentle yoga movements and stretches, which they do with the same careful attentiveness. Patients are encouraged to extend a relaxed mindfulness into the rest of their daily lives, especially when stressed. In progressive relaxation, Dr. Lehrer's patients learn to recognize the often-subtle signals of tension in the major muscles of the body, and to systematically release that tension, leaving their whole body in a state of deep relaxation. And Dr. Benson has found that for many of his patients the relaxation response can be evoked by their sitting quietly with eyes closed for 15 minutes twice daily, and mentally repeating a simple word or sound. ''Eighty percent of patients choose a simple prayer to repeat,'' Dr. Benson said. The experts caution that intensive training, followed by regular use of the techniques, may be required before many medical benefits appear. Most training programs last several weeks. And, according to Dr. Lehrer, relaxation may be better when it is taught in person rather than learned from a tape. The benefits seem to come from the physiology of relaxation rather than from mere suggestion, according to Dr. Lehrer. In a recent study, he found that asthmatic patients who were highly open to suggestions and hypnosis actually benefited the least from his relaxation training. ''Just feeling relaxed may not be the same as being truly relaxed physically,'' Dr. Lehrer said. Not everyone is helped by the relaxation training, said Joan Borysenko, who directs the relaxation program for outpatients at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. ''Some people don't change much, some do a little, some a lot. And there are a few whose lives turn around totally.''

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160704154649id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1986/05/13/science/relaxation-surprising-benefits-detected.html?pagewanted=2

Two convicted sex offenders, charged with raping and murdering 4 women in Southern California, wore ankle monitors at the time of the alleged crimes, police say

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updated 7:00 PM EDT, Tue April 15, 2014 (CNN) -- Two registered sex offenders are accused of raping and killing four women in Southern California while the men were wearing GPS ankle-bracelets, authorities say. "The GPS was in fact intact, attached to these suspects during the commissions of the crimes," Anaheim Police Chief Raul Quezada told reporters Monday. Steven Dean Gordon, 45, and Franc Cano, 27, were scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, but the hearing was postponed until May 19 at the request of a defense attorney, authorities said. The two men were arrested Friday night. Their ankle monitors and the women's cell phone records helped authorities link the cases to the suspects, police said. The body of Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, 21, of Oklahoma, was found at an Anaheim recycling plant on March 14, Anaheim police said. The disappearances in Santa Ana of the three other women are being treated as homicides, although their bodies have not been found. Kianna Jackson, 20, was last reported seen on October 6; Josephine Vargas, 34, on October 24; and Martha Anaya, 28, on November 12. Both men had been convicted of sex crimes involving children: Gordon in 1992 and Cano in 2007. Each man had checked in with police every 30 days, as required, and authorities had no reason to watch them more closely, Anaheim Police Department spokesman Lt. Bob Dunn said. A state Department of Corrections official would not say what authorities may have known about the suspects' activity. "Due to the complexity of the investigation, we are not at liberty to speak on those, but, however, the questions are coming forth to headquarters in Sacramento and, as time permits or we're allowed to, they will respond to your questions," Charles Dangerfield told reporters. All the women are believed to have worked as prostitutes, police said. Sex offenders routinely released from California jails, records show CNN's Michael Martinez and Stella Chan contributed to this report.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014041519id_/http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/15/justice/california-killings/index.html

As the investigation continues into the actions of officer Cynthia Whitlach, activists say police department’s apology is ‘too little, too late’ and want her fired

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The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has launched an investigation into an incident in which an officer arrested an elderly veteran who was using a golf club as a walking stick. The arrest has sparked outrage in the city and calls for the officer, Cynthia Whitlach, to be fired. She has been put on desk duty while the investigation continues. On Thursday, Mayor Ed Murray discussed the incident with police chief Kathleen O’Toole, who took up her post last summer promising reform. Officer Whitlatch, who is white, arrested 70-year-old William Wingate, who is black, in the city last July on charges of obstruction, after accusing him of “swinging” the golf club at her. But a video and audio recording of the encounter on the sunny street, captured on the police cruiser’s camera, showed Wingate did nothing of the sort. Related: Seattle activist pepper-sprayed while talking on phone sues city and police News of the investigation follows an incident earlier this month, in which a member of the public shot footage of a Seattle police officer pepper-spraying a male teacher and a middle-aged woman who were walking away from a protest march. In 2011, a US Department of Justice investigation into the SPD found a pattern of excessive force and possible bias. Whitlatch was one of more than 100 officers who filed a lawsuit last year to knock down the agreement between the city and the DoJ, although that lawsuit failed in October. Whitlatch also made widely reported comments on Facebook about “black racism” and African Americans blaming their problems on whites. Seattle police released video footage of the encounter between Whitlatch and Wingate. In the video, Whitlatch is seen encountering Wingate on a street corner. He is leaning on the golf club, and the officer can be heard calling from her cruiser for him to put the club down, because it is a weapon. In a surprised and puzzled tone, Wingate asks “What?” He then tells Whitlatch he has been using the club as a cane for 20 years. She starts shouting at him to “set down” or “shut down” the club – the audio is not entirely clear. Wingate is holding a small shopping bag in one hand and the club in the other – he raises his arms in a slight shrug of apparent confusion and irritation. At that point, Whitlatch shouts: “You swung that golf club at me.” The exchange continues until another officer arrives and an arrest is made. Wingate spent the night in jail. The case against him was later dismissed; the police have apologised. In November, Wingate’s attorney, Susan Mindenbergs, filed a claim against the city. The claim, which seeks at least $750,000 in damages, says Wingate’s civil rights were violated and his only crime was “walking in Seattle while black”. The Seattle King County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People said the actions by the SPD were “too little, too late”. It has called for Whitlatch to be fired.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015020119id_/http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/31/seattle-police-officer-arrest-man-golf-club-cane

Far better than a movie night? A movie getaway. Boutique film festivals in Savannah, Austin, Marin County and Woodstock are runaway hits

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EVERY SCORSESE-IN-TRAINING and ardent movie fan knows about the marquee film festivals like Sundance and Telluride. But while those draw the masses, they can also feel like conventions: mobbed, schmoozey and overproduced. Throughout October, smaller, boutique festivals offer an altogether different moviegoing experience. Attendees get to screen likely Oscar-contenders as well as pictures from up-and-coming cineastes often overlooked by the big fests’ selection committees, said Joana Vicente of the Independent Filmmaker Project, a nonprofit that helps small filmmakers find an audience. Even better, many screenings take place in delightfully atypical venues—such as Woodstock’s Bearsville Theater, a cathedral to ’60s folk rock, or Austin’s gilded 1915 Paramount—places visitors might otherwise miss. And if you get stuck watching an art-house flick that’s too arty for most human eyeballs, you can always duck out and take advantage of the many real-life diversions in each of these destinations. Known as the Writers Festival, with programs dedicated to both TV and film, this weeklong event draws heavy screenwriting talent and features panels geared to writers, including one this year called “Deconstructing Jane Austen.” Attendees travel on foot or by pedicabs between downtown venues like the red-and-gold Paramount, where Houdini performed, and the multisensory Texas Spirit Theater (rumbling seats and all) at the Bullock state history museum. Some short films are screened at a coffee bar. Coming attractions: Among the festival’s most widely anticipated films is “Loving,” a drama about a mixed-race couple whose relationship spurred a U.S. Supreme Court case. Intermission: When not viewing films, bar hop on Rainey Street or in SoCo, South of Congress district. Stay at the Driskill Hotel (from $271 a night, driskillhotel.com), a grande dame of a hotel and the festival’s hub. Admission: Passes range from $12 for individual showings to $675 for an all-access pass, front-of-the-line privileges and entry to parties like the “Hair-of-the-Dog Brunch” and a Texas barbecue supper (austinfilmfestival.com). The Birkenstock beau monde have been hosting A-listers and their fans at this Marin County film festival since 1978. “We’ve come a long way from artsy films [shown] in dumpy places,” said founder Mark Fishkin. This year’s lineup includes some 200 movies screened among four towns, many of which are shown in winsome Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. You can follow viewings with live music at Mill Valley’s Sweetwater Music Hall, where much of the nightly performances will be tied to the film lineup. One headliner for example is Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, the subject of festival film “The Groove is Not Trivial.” Coming attractions: “ La La Land,” a musical featuring Emma Stone and directed and written by Damien Chazelle (of “Whiplash” fame), which won high praise at the Toronto Film Festival and will be shown in Mill Valley’s art deco CinéArts at Sequoia theater. Intermission: When your legs need stretching, take them to nearby Muir Woods. Stay at Mill Valley Inn tucked away among the redwoods (from $279 a night, marinhotels.com/mill-valley-inn/home) or Cavallo Point Lodge, in Sausalito, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge (from $479 a night, cavallopoint.com). Admission: Single tickets are $15, while big spenders can opt for a $2,500 membership pass, which guarantees a great seat at all screenings, as well as entry to the most exclusive, celeb-studded festival parties (mvff.com). “Fiercely Independent” is the fitting theme for the 130 films and related events shown among five small towns in a rustic setting. “It is less the red carpet than a thoroughly green one,” noted Canadian film distributor Ron Mann, of Films We Like. The festival pulls talent from New York City, two hours south, to mingle with an engaged, often socially conscious audience. Some films are screened at the Bearsville Theater, part of a homespun wood-and-glass complex built by Albert Grossman, legendary manager of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and others. Coming attractions: This year’s most provocative top picks, according to the festival’s executive director Meira Blaustein, include “Junction 48,” a love story of two Palestinian hip-hop artists, and “ Neruda,” about the Chilean poet. Intermission: For a screen break, visit Opus 40, a sculpture park revealing one man’s artistic obsession with rocks, or on Sunday afternoon you can join the drum circle, a regular spectacle in Woodstock’s downtown. The Bear Café, next to the Bearsville Theater, has white-linen dining overlooking a stream and for more casual fare, outdoor picnic tables surrounding a fire pit (295 Tinker St., bearcafe.com). Stay at plush Emerson Hotel (from $229 a night, emersonresort.com) or rent a cottage on the grounds of Woodstock Inn on the Mill Stream (from $375 a night, woodstock-inn-ny.com). Admission: Most tickets are $10 with all-event passes at $750 (woodstockfilmfestival.com). Sponsored by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), this quirky film festival has a free-spirited student vibe—organizers boast about welcoming “below-the-line talent” (the costumers, editors, cinematographers who work behind the set to make the actors look good). Venues include the Trustees Theater, circa 1946, and the 1921 Lucas Theatre, a former vaudeville stage showcasing some of the 150 film screenings. Coming attractions: SCAD’s picks for the year’s 10 best documentaries; a global short-film series; and, in the spirit of Halloween, its “after dark” horror series. This year’s top-billed feature films include “Bleed for This,” a boxing comeback story, starring Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart, and the artfully intense “Moonlight,” a coming-of-age film. Intermission:Leave space in your schedule to sample the reinvented Southern cuisine at the Olde Pink House (23 Abercorn St., plantersinnsavannah.com/the-olde-pink-house), or join the communal tables for more classic regional fare at Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room (107 West Jones St., mrswilkes.com). After the horror series, those who want a double dose of chills can stay at the Marshall House (from $173 a night, marshallhouse.com), known for its ghostly guests as well as its lovely wrought-iron facade. Or for modern edginess, the Brice Hotel, (from $204 a night, bricehotel.com). Admission: Individual tickets are $10 and all-event passes range up to $750 (filmfest.scad.edu).

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016100319id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-four-october-film-festivals-movie-lovers-should-know-sundance-isnt-one-1475183941

Russia has powerful surveillance and censorship capabilities, this is how it will use it to monitor the Internet in Sochi.

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As athletes, spectators, journalists and government officials descend on Sochi for the Winter Olympics in February, they will enter what experts are calling the most surveilled Olympics of all time. Over the past several months, we've learned — the hard way — that surveillance starts online (and not just in the United States). Internet freedom activists fear that the Russian government, along with the Federal Security Service (FSB), will use Russia's vast array of spy tech and Internet censorship to restrict Internet freedom during the Olympics. The most important piece of the puzzle is Russia's system of lawful interception, which some have labeled as "Orwellian" or "PRISM on steroids." This system, which has origins in the Soviet era, allows the FSB to access Internet servers and telecommunications providers directly, allowing the government to eavesdrop on all online and phone communications that go through their networks. The online snooping through Russia's system, called SORM (System for Operative Investigative Activities), differs from that in the U.S. In Russia, the FSB can access the servers directly, thanks to mandatory "black boxes" that companies are compelled to install in their data centers at their own cost. According to a 2012 investigation published on Wired, the FSB is directly connected to local ISPs and telecom providers with protected underground cables. In the U.S., under the legal regime imposed by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), wiretapping is conducted indirectly: After obtaining a warrant, authorities must ask companies to tap someone's communications. They themselves do not have unfettered access to the servers. "From the beginning, [SORM] was more totalitarian, more invasive, more flexible, and in some ways even more effective than the Western approach," said Andrei Soldatov, an independent journalist who has written extensively about Russia's surveillance powers. This system has another "freaky" feature, Soldatov said. Although Russia's FSB has direct access at the tech level, they still must request a warrant before wiretapping an individual's communications — but they don't need to show that warrant to anyone. It's more of a formality. SORM was born in the 1980s for the sole purpose of monitoring phone calls. Since then, the system has expanded to cover all kinds of communications. SORM-1 monitors phone and cellphone communications; SORM-2 monitors Internet traffic; and SORM-3 collects information from all sources and stores it away, as Soldatov and his colleague Irina Borogan explained in research published in the World Policy Journal in October 2013. In the run-up to this year's Olympics, according to Soldatov and Borogan's investigations, Russia is ramping up its system, trying to combine it with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), a filtering technology that has legitimate uses like stopping viruses or spam, but can also be used for censorship or surveillance. With DPI, Russian authorities could potentially monitor networks to detect the use of certain words, perhaps to anticipate the beginnings of a protests or to keep an eye on discussions involving politically controversial issues. The implication is that all online communication at Sochi will be monitored. For Soldatov, such a scenario means that once the public and journalists are aware of the country's spying capabilities, they might restrain their actions online or what they report on. "There might be a big deal of self-censorship as a result," he told Mashable. It's as though Russia is saying, "We're watching you, so think twice about what you're doing during the Olympics." The International Olympic Committee (IOC), on the other hand, has already said that it will not "police the Internet" and specifically social media. The IOC has well-defined social media rules and guidelines, and for the London Olympics in 2012, many feared those rules would prove too restrictive. In the end, however, no major problems were posed. Russia's surveillance capabilities are so powerful that the U.S. State Department issued a warning to all Americans planning to travel to Sochi: No online communications are safe. "Business travelers should be particularly aware that trade secrets, negotiating positions, and other sensitive information may be taken and shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal entities," reads a document released last fall by the department's bureau of diplomatic security. But it's not just surveillance. Russia has powerful censorship tolls as well. Perhaps the most well-known is the Single Register law, which was enacted on Nov. 1, 2012. The law allows the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (in Russian, simply Roskomnadzor) to put any website that it deems contains "harmful material" related to child pornography, drug abuse or suicide, on a blacklist without any judicial oversight. Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia and the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare can also request that sites be blocked. ISPs then have 24 hours to comply. Despite its good intentions, critics claimed the law was too broad and would lead to abuse. So far, and among many others, the blacklist includes websites of Caucasian separatists and Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as blogs on the Russian social network LiveJournal. These examples prove that concerns were warranted. Whenever a country enacts such a law, it will be abused, argues Laura Reed, a Freedom House researcher who focuses on Russia. "With any policy by the government to block websites you're going to end up with legitimate content being blocked as well, either because the legislation is worded in such a way that a vast amount of material can fall under the content that can be restricted, or because the way that it's implemented isn't specific enough," Reed told Mashable. Even worse, Reed said, is that the Single Register law is not the only way to block websites. The Ministry of Justice has its own blacklist to block "extremist" websites; more recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill allowing prosecutors to block websites that promote riots or extremism without a court order. The result, Reed concluded, is that "more Russians citizens are likely to find their communications activities under surveillance." With more than 200,000 visitors expected for the Games in Sochi next week, it won't be just Russia's citizens who will be subject to this kind of surveillance. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014012819id_/http://mashable.com/2014/01/28/russia-internet-olympics/

When Patrick J. Kennedy’s eighth term in Congress ends next month, no member of his family will hold national office for the first time since 1947.

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“My family legacy was never just about government service,” said Mr. Kennedy, who talked for more than two hours in an empty room at the Cannon House Office Building, where John F. Kennedy also worked as a House member from 1947 to 1953. “It was about giving back, and the branding of President Kennedy’s call for Americans to give back to their country.” And yet it was politics that made the Kennedys a de facto royal family, giving them a vein of power in Washington that spanned generations. The Kennedys have been woven prominently through the political and social history of the last half-century, from the assassinations of John and his brother Robert, to Edward’s 1969 car accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass., that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, to the 1999 plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. Recent forays into politics by other family members, like Caroline Kennedy’s brief run for the Senate in New York in 2009, have also fascinated the nation. “It’s not as if a Kennedy presence in Washington is an indispensable ingredient for the survival of the republic,” said Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. “But for people whose memories harken back to the earlier Kennedys, especially as American politics got more fractious and contentious, there was something reassuring about the element of continuity.” Mr. Kennedy was 21 when he was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1988, winning on his name alone. He never considered a life outside politics, he said, because he was so intent on emulating his father. But he always struggled in the legislative shadow of one of the most influential senators in history. The younger Kennedy had his own signature achievement with a 2008 law that requires equal insurance coverage for treatment of mental and physical illness, and he became a strong proponent of removing American troops from Afghanistan. In recent months, he has advocated more research and treatment for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury. Still, he was as well known for his family name and brushes with addiction as for his legislative work. “Whereas his uncles and father were people whose footprints were indelible on the terrain of American politics,” Mr. Baker said, “Patrick was not.” Other Kennedys may yet enter politics — Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Edward Kennedy’s widow, is seen as a possible Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts, and Joseph P. Kennedy III, 30, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, briefly considered running for an open House seat there this year — but to date, most of Patrick Kennedy’s cousins have pursued different kinds of public service. Timothy Shriver, a son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, runs the Special Olympics, for example, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an environmental activist. “I know it fits some narrative that, ‘Oh, I’m the last Kennedy,’ ” Patrick Kennedy said, his tone verging on sardonic. “But any one survey of what my family is doing out there in a million different ways fits with my family legacy.” His way of giving back, Mr. Kennedy said, would be to continue as an advocate for ending the stigma of mental illness. He will draw attention and resources to brain research, he said, in hopes of improving how disorders from addiction to Parkinson’s disease are treated and understood. His interest is personal, not least because he was treated for cocaine addiction as a teenager, was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder after he got to Congress in 1994, and then became addicted to painkillers. In 2006, he crashed his Mustang convertible into a barricade outside the Capitol in the middle of the night, and then went public with his addiction and sought treatment. He is planning to detail his struggles in a memoir, “Coming Clean,” to be released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt late next year. “Ultimately, I see telling my own story as a more palatable way to get out the story of the neuroscience,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I don’t want to be talking about salacious details for the purpose of salacious details, but for the purpose of fitting it into a context to describe a bigger story.” Mr. Kennedy said he was closing down his campaign committees and not keeping any campaign money. He might keep an office in Washington, he said, but would consider Rhode Island home. After he leaves the Hill, his immediate goal will be organizing a brain research conference in Boston in May. Not by coincidence, it will be the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s speech to Congress proposing to send a man to the moon. He is enlisting scientists and sponsors, and stressing that the initiative could prove as historic as the race to space. He has set up a Web site, www.moonshot.org, and singled out veterans as urgently needing the kind of scientific breakthroughs he envisions. With his father’s death in August 2009 still an open wound, Mr. Kennedy said he also had a more personal goal. “I lost the most important person in my life,” he said. “So I’m looking forward to developing those emotional relationships with others, because there’s more to life.” Norman J. Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, said that while Mr. Kennedy’s departure was minor in the scheme of things, the fact that he and his father were being replaced as the only father-son team in Congress by Representative Ron Paul of Texas and Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky, who hail from the libertarian Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, was indicative of “the kind of sea change we’re going through” on Capitol Hill. “To go from the Kennedys to the Pauls,” Mr. Ornstein said, “I would say that’s a pretty big difference.” A version of this article appears in print on December 17, 2010, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: The Capitol’s Last Kennedy. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2010121719id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/us/politics/17kennedy.html

A month of worrisome headlines has markets believing in a more dovish Federal Reserve, according to the latest CNBC Fed Survey.

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However, market participants do not seem to be factoring in much risk to the U.S. economy from the recent round of negative headlines. Participants still see 2.9 percent growth next year, unchanged from the September survey, and about 70 basis points better than this year. They also forecast a very low probability of recession—just 15 percent—in the next 12 months. The rosy outlook has its doubters, including Thomas Costerg from Chartered Bank, who writes, "The consensus has tended to overestimate U.S. GDP growth and my worry is that expectations for 2015 are starting from a high point; there is a risk of disappointment, once again. The U.S. consumer may be in a more fragile state than expected.'' Market participants rate the European economic slowdown as the biggest global risk. They are twice as worried about Europe as they are about the economic threat from the spread of Ebola. After Europe, the next biggest risk is seen as a slowdown in Asia, followed by ISIS and troubles in Ukraine and Russia. Read MoreS&P warns Europe crisis not over, France output falls Three quarters of respondents to CNBC's October Fed Survey see the European Central Bank launching an outright quantitative easing program, with the average respondent believing it will come as soon as February. European economic weakness has catapulted into the No. 1 threat facing the U.S. economic recovery as well, eclipsing both slow job growth and tax and regulatory issues. But the Street is still attaching a low probability to QE 4; just 18.4 percent believe the Fed will launch a new QE program in the two years after the current one ends, up 4 points from the September survey. A full 97 percent say the current QE program will be ended at the meeting this month. Fed policy still appears to enjoy modest support from this group of respondents, with 49 percent saying policy is "just right," up from 43 percent in the September survey. Still, a substantial 44 percent say the central bank is too accommodative. Market participants seem unconcerned with the risk either of inflation or deflation, with both ranking low on the list of risks to the U.S. recovery. The Consumer Price Index is seen rising by 2 percent in 2015, down from the forecast in the prior survey of 2.3 percent. Read MoreWorried on low inflation, Fed seen offering soothing words "The Fed has consistently missed its (2 percent) target on inflation,'' said Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial. "The Fed will have to more aggressively combat slowing inflation going forward; this is yet another reason for gradualism.'' Recent market turmoil has taken a toll on optimism for equities. Respondents shaved 38 points off their outlook for the S&P 500 for the end of 2015, and now see a 2,111 level. The outlook for the 10-year yield also was marked down to just 2.9 percent by next June, compared with the prior average of 3.16 percent.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20150907210648id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/28/market-pushes-back-fed-rate-hike-expectations-survey.html

Dozens of inventions would have improved or ended the use of chains to measure for first downs, but they endure.

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On a first down, one end of the chains is placed along the sideline by one member of the seven-person chain gang — hired for game-day duty by the home teams — six feet from the field, supposedly even with the front tip of a football that will be snapped at least 25 yards away. When a play ends, an official estimates the spot, usually marking it with a foot and tossing the ball to another official to set for the next play. When a first down is too close to call, the chains are trotted onto the field. Sometimes the drive continues by an inch. Sometimes it ends by less. “There must be a better way,” said Pat Summerall, the longtime N.F.L. player and broadcaster. “Because games are decided, careers are decided, on those measurements.” There are two sides to the equation. The spot of the ball, now reviewable under the N.F.L.’s replay rules, is often a subject of great consternation. Rare is the debate over whether the chains, not the ball, are in the wrong place. But every couple of years an inventor patents an alternative to the chains intriguing enough to warrant an audience with the N.F.L.’s competition committee, which debates rules changes. “I bet you there is some type of technology that comes along in the next five years that creates that change,” said the Falcons’ president, Rich McKay, co-chairman of the committee. “I’m just not sure we have it yet.” Past ideas have been dismissed, sometimes because of cost, mostly because they were unproven and deemed unnecessary. Tradition is an issue, too. The ritualistic on-field measurement can be a dramatic, momentum-swinging event as anticipated as any pass or handoff. An official protectively holds the ball against the ground, because precision is suddenly important. The chains arrive from the sideline. An official slowly pulls the chain taut. Breaths are held. “When we measure, we make sure the players are clear so that TV can get a good shot of the actual measurement,” Pereira said. Suspense would be lost if every first down were determined instantly. “There’s a certain amount of drama that is involved with the chains,” said the Giants’ president, John Mara, who is also on the N.F.L.’s competition committee. “Yes, it is subject to human error, just like anything else is. But I think it’s one of the traditions that we have in the game, and I don’t think any of us have felt a real compelling need to make a change.” In 1906 the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (now the N.C.A.A.) changed several fundamental rules to reduce football’s violence. Among them were the advent of the forward pass (it remained highly restricted and not a popular option for another couple of decades) and the requirement of 10 yards, not 5, for a first down. “To assist in measuring the progress of the ball it is desirable to provide two light poles about six feet in length, connected at their lower ends with a stout cord or chain 10 yards in length,” read Spalding’s Official Foot Ball Guide in 1907. Improvements were imagined almost immediately. In 1929 Luther More of Seattle received a patent for something called Measuring Device for Football Games. It was a contraption with a telescopic “sighting device” that used wheels and pulleys to move along a sideline track. Early inventors were keen on sights, like those on rifles. Subsequent patents focused on keeping those sights aimed properly, like one in 1967 called a “football liner up device,” using an array of mirrors. The focus turned toward lasers after a portable hand-held laser system was patented in 1968. In 1973 Willis Pioch of New Jersey received a patent for a “visible line marker” for football fields. Ten yards could be determined by laser beams emitted from boxes along the sideline that slid on rails. Thirty-five years later, the chains persist. And inventors like Alan Amron, a 60-year-old from Long Island, plan their extinction. In 2003, with the help of Summerall, Amron presented a sophisticated laser system to the competition committee. Using lasers permanently mounted into stadium lights, a green line — visible to players, coaches and fans in the stadium, and to television viewers — would be projected onto the field to mark the line for a first down. Amron said it would be accurate to within a sixteenth of an inch. The N.F.L. was intrigued but not interested — yet. There were safety concerns (“I just have visions of lasers being sent all over the place, a ‘Star Wars’ kind of thing,” Mara said last week), although Amron said fears were unfounded. More problematic is that the system costs $300,000 to $500,000 to install in each stadium, Amron said, and has not been tested in an actual game. Attempts have failed for trial runs in an N.F.L. preseason game, or in college football or the Canadian Football League. “What often happens in these cases when there’s a new proposal, we’re a lot more comfortable if they’ve tested it somewhere else,” Mara said. Rogers Redding, the secretary-rules editor for the N.C.A.A. football rules committee, said the chain method “may not be superaccurate, but it’s as accurate as you need.” After all, spotting the ball with an official’s foot and then setting it down across the field is hardly precise, either. The offense’s center often moves the ball before the snap. And, Redding pointed out, who’s to say that the yard lines on the field are perfectly measured in every stadium? “It’s kind of a diminishing returns thing,” Redding said of reinventing the chains. “How much do you want to invest in this form of accuracy?” That does not deter Amron and his company, First Down Laser Systems. Amron has a patent for a laser system embedded into the actual sticks attached to the chains. A built-in gyroscope and an automatic level keep the beams pointed straight. He sees it as a way to prove the validity of the laser concept, perhaps an intermediate step to the stadiumwide system. He hopes for an invitation from the competition committee next spring. Change, if it comes at all, is years away. But the issue presents itself almost every game. Trailing the Green Bay Packers late in the fourth quarter of a recent Monday night game at Chicago’s Soldier Field, the Bears faced a fourth-and-1. Running back Matt Forte bulled straight into a scrum. The ball was placed on the ground and the chains arrived from the sideline. The tip of the ball peeked just past the marker. Forte scored on the next play, sending the game to overtime. The Bears kept their playoff hopes alive for another week with a winning field goal. In the aftermath, there was some debate about where the ball was marked on the fourth-down play. No one wondered if the chains were in the right place. After 100 years, why wouldn’t they be? A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In High-Tech Game, Football Sticks to an Old Measure of Success. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2009010119id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/sports/football/01chains.html

Investors are waiting to hear how the big department stores and retail chains fared, in order to take the pulse on consumer confidence and spending as the holiday shopping season takes off.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Black Friday, the first major shopping day of the holiday retail period, has come and gone. Now stock investors searching for clues about consumer spending will look closely at how the big stores fared. The holiday period accounts for about 35% of an average retailer's revenue, and 10% of holiday buying takes place on Black Friday alone, said Chip Brian, founder or SmarTrend. Last year, the major indexes gained an average of 5% from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1. Of course, domestic consumer spending isn't the only factor driving the markets. Fears that the debt problems of the hardest hit European economies will spread throughout the euro zone have taken the spotlight in recent weeks. Greece and Ireland have accepted bailouts, and investors are worried that Portugal and Spain may be next. In fact, concern about Europe overshadowed the flurry of Black Friday shoppers hitting the stores: Stocks ended sharply lower after a rollercoaster week. But barring any new developments overseas, investors are likely to turn their attention back to the United States this week, which will bring a full plate of new economic data. And they will "take cues" from Black Friday, said Matt Kaufler, equity market strategist and portfolio manager at Federated Clover Investment Advisors. "If there's a strong showing from the retail community getting out of the gates for the holiday shopping season, that will only reinforce the data we've seen that has shown consumer spending ticking up, unemployment ticking down and consumer confidence remaining at a higher level," Kaufler said. Along with retail performance, investors will be looking closely for improvement in jobs. Several key readings are due out in the coming week, culminating in the government's widely-anticipated monthly employment report on Friday. Tuesday: The November reading of Chicago PMI, a regional manufacturing index, is due shortly after the start of trading. Economists expect that it fell to 59.8 from 60.6 in October. Any index reading over 50 indicates expansion. The Case-Shiller index of September home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas is also due after the opening bell. Analysts forecast a 1% rise after the previous month's 1.7% gain. At 10 a.m. ET, the Conference Board will release a reading on consumer confidence for November. The index is expected to have ticked up to 52 from 50.2 in October. Wednesday: The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for November will be released in the morning and is expected to have edged down to 56.4 from 56.9 in October. Any number above 50 indicates growth in the sector. Construction spending is forecast to have ticked down 0.5% in October, following a rise of 0.5% in September. A report from payroll services firm ADP is expected to show that employers in the private sector added 58,000 workers in November after boosting payrolls by 43,000 in the previous month. Separately, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas issues its report on planned job cuts in November. In the afternoon, the Federal Reserve will release its Beige Book report on economic conditions across the central bank's 12 districts. Meanwhile, the U.S. government's weekly crude oil inventories report and readings on mortgage applications, unit labor costs and third-quarter business productivity are also on tap. Auto and truck sales are due throughout the day. Thursday: The government's weekly jobless claims report comes out before the start of trading, with 423,000 Americans expected to file new claims for unemployment, after 407,000 were filed in the previous week. After the bell, the National Association of Realtors releases its pending home sales index, a measure of sales contracts for existing homes. The index is expected to be unchanged in October after slipping 1.8% in September. Friday: The week's most closely-watched reading on employment is due Friday. Employers are expected to have added 130,000 jobs in November after adding 151,000 jobs in October. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 9.6%. Factory orders are due from the Commerce Department after the start of trading. Orders are forecast to have declined 1.2% in October after increasing 2.1% in September. The ISM services sector index for November is expected to have edged up slightly to 54.5 from 54.3 in October.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2010112819id_/http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/26/markets/stocks_lookahead/index.htm

To get the most out of your workout — before and after — Peggy Kotsopoulos shares her quick and easy exercise snacks!

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Try these tasty and low-maintenance snacks to get a good energy boost before you get your sweat on! :::Pre-workout snacks | Steven and Chris::: http://www.cbc.ca/stevenandchris/content/images/__common/_slideshow/_fullslide/pre-workout-energizer-drink.jpg::: This drink has ALL the energy you need to fuel your workouts! If you're feeling sluggish, or just really need a boost to help you push through to get the best workout possible, drink this immediately before you start. Just mix all the ingredients with water and you're ready to go! 1 cup Coconut Water 1 cup Green Tea 1 tbsp Coconut Oil 1 tsp Coconut Sugar 2 drops of Ginseng Shake ingredients in a shaker cup and drink before workout. :::Pre-Workout Energizer Drink | Steven & Chris::: http://www.cbc.ca/stevenandchris/content/images/__common/_slideshow/_fullslide/post-workout-snacks.jpg::: After a tough workout, you've depleted your muscle glycogen stores. So what you eat right after your workout determines your progress and efforts for your next workout. There's a window of opportunity to properly replenish your glycogen stores and fuel muscle growth immediately following your workout. Therefore it's best to have a simple (high GI) carb + protein immediately following your workout. Think of your muscles as a balloon that has just had all the air release from it, which is the same effect after glycogen stores have been depleted. In order to refuel as quickly as possible to prevent catabolism, we need to refuel as quickly as possible. The quickest way is high GI, or simply, carbs. Not only do these replenish muscle and liver glycogen stores, but they also cause an insulin release which helps push large chain amino acids straight to muscle cells, helping to build and repair exactly where and when we need it! It's best to have a higher-carbohydrate snack right after your workout to fuel muscle glycogen. These fruits are a great option: :::Post-Workout Snacks | Steven and Chris::: http://www.cbc.ca/stevenandchris/content/images/__common/_slideshow/_fullslide/vega-sport-vanilla.jpg::: Working out causes tearing and breaking down of muscle fibers (which is a good thing!) so long as you meet your protein requirements. Protein is the ONLY way muscle cells can build and repair themselves. So if you want to see results and start re-building as soon as they tear, it's best to get amino acids straight to muscle cells immediately following a workout. Look for a plant-based protein that is stacked with BCAAs (Branch Chain Amino Acids). BCAAs are made up of three amino acids (leucine, isoleucine and valine) which make up 1/3 of the body's lean muscle and are required for protein synthesis. Because BCAAs are not metabolized in the liver (like other amino acids), they are sent directly to the muscle for building and repair, or be immediately used as fuel — significantly increasing muscle energy and endurance during your workout. 1 scoop Vega Sports Protein (vanilla) 2 cups almond milk 1 frozen banana ice :::Post-Workout Protein Shake | Steven and Chris:::

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015061019id_/http://www.cbc.ca/stevenandchris/health/workout-snacks

As Monroe and Rosalee prepare for their long-awaited wedding day, Adalind hatches a scheme to throw Nick's entire world into utter chaos.

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While Monroe and Rosalee make the final preparations for their wedding ceremony, Captain Renard is hard at work tracking Adalind's whereabouts. He knows she's up to something, but what? In a storage unit across town, Adalind is putting the final touches on a potion that will temporarily transform her into Juliette so that she can place a curse on Nick that will rid him of his Grimm powers. Disguised as Juliette, Adalind pays a visit to Renard's condo and tries to seduce the captain. Renard doesn't fall for the ruse, but he knows that something isn't right. She has to cut her plan short when she begins to transform back to her normal self. Her transformation potion only has a limited lifespan. That's no problem, though; the seed has been planted, and her plan is well on its way. Nick and Juliette return from the rehearsal dinner to find Trubel in the kitchen, still settling in. Juliette receives a call from Adalind, who tells her that Captain Renard's infatuation with her has returned. Adalind is playing both sides of the coin, and so far she's winning. Juliette is now suspicious of Renard. Renard calls Juliette the next morning and asks her not to drop by his condo anymore. Juliette is confused, which makes Renard confused. Everyone is confused, but so far nobody is drawing a line back to Adalind. Wu interrupts Renard to inform him that Adalind's mother has a storage unit across town. Renard decides to investigate on his own. Elsewhere, Nick and Trubel go about moving the weapons trailer to a remote location in the woods. They relocate the trailer and unload Rolek's trunk of Grimm paraphernalia. During the unpacking, Trubel asks Nick if he would ever want to live without his Grimm powers. Nick acknowledges that there are a lot of downsides to being a Grimm, but he could never imagine living a normal life. Back at the house, Trubel tells Nick that, as much as she appreciates his support, she can't keep living with him and Juliette. Eventually, she'll have to head out on her own. Meanwhile, Renard arrives at Adalind's storage facility and discovers a cauldron and a witch's hat. She's up to her old antics again, and it's more important than ever that he find Adalind immediately. Nick heads up to his room to get ready for the wedding, only to find Adalind (disguised as Juliette) waiting for him. Adalind seduces Nick, and the two of them take a steamy roll in the hay before Nick heads to the shower to get ready. Adalind sneaks out just before the real Juliette returns home, but Trubel sees both of them. Shortly after Nick and Juliette leave for the wedding, Renard arrives to warn Nick about Adalind's scheme. Trubel tells Renard where the wedding is being held, because he has a potion that Nick needs to drink in order to keep his Grimm powers. As Renard heads out to save Nick, he's shot in the chest by Weston Stewart, the FBI agent and Verrat assassin. Weston and Trubel exchange blows in Nick's house for a bit, and eventually Trubel decapitates Weston with a machete. She snatches Renard's potion from the floor and races to the wedding to help Nick. Wu and a fleet of Portland P.D. officers arrive to rush Renard to the hospital. Upstairs, Wu investigates Trubel's room and discovers one of Rolek's Grimm books, which features a drawing of a creature that bears a striking resemblance to the Aswang that he saw. Wu though he'd suffered a psychotic break, but is it possible that the Aswang was real? At the wedding, Monroe and Rosalee exchange their vows while Nick dons sunglasses to hide his Grimm identity. Just as the ceremony comes to a romantic close, Trubel rushes in to deliver Renard's potion. All of the Wesen wedding attendees see Trubel and immediately rush to attack her, knocking the potion to the ground and shattering it. Nick attempts to help Trubel, but his sunglasses are knocked off in the melee. Surprisingly, none of the guests appear in Wesen form when Nick looks at them. They don't seem to be responding to his eyes, either. Monroe and Rosalee rush Nick and Trubel to a backroom while their parents calm the crowd. Monroe investigates Nick's eyes to discover that Adalind's wicked scheme was a success. Nick is no longer a Grimm! Will Nick ever regain his Grimm powers? Will Renard survive his gunshot wounds? Will anyone ever find Adalind? Will Wu finally learn the truths of the Wesen world? So many cliffhangers!

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014071119id_/http://www.nbc.com/grimm/episode-guide/season-3/blonde-ambition/321

By supercharging PCs that seem past their sell-by date, one company wants to put more working machines in classrooms and in developing world countries.

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These days, virtually every new gadget we buy seems destined to become obsolete faster than we can tear it from its shiny packaging. New smartphones and tablets are released barely months after their previous versions, and the hardware and software quickly become incompatible. Tablets won’t allow you to swap out parts, new laptops won’t let you remove batteries, and the whole lifecycle of technology is becoming shorter, less sustainable, and more expensive for consumers. But what if you could help extend the lifespan of technology that already exists? Give it a little boost, perhaps? That’s the solution a New York City-based startup called Neverware is proposing. Its Juicebox promises to make “old computers run like new”. Now, I know what some early adopters may be thinking. For those who believe that the age of tablets, smartphones, Google Glass and the “cloud” has heralded the demise of desktop PCs, there’s still one place you’re guaranteed to find a growing need for them. And that’s in schools. Robert Hornik, Assistant Principal at East New York Family Academy in Brooklyn, remembers weekend trips to far-flung corners of New York City to hunt for old desktops from other city agencies – like the Police Pension Fund – that were giving them away for free. “We had about 20 computers working, at best, out of about 100,” for a school with 450 students and 50 teachers, he recalls. “They were mostly the big, boxy computers, like the Dell GX270, all about 8-10 years old.” With an entire technology budget of just $12,000 per year, including one part-time IT person (an undergraduate at a local university), new desktops at around $500 a pop was not an option. “Schools usually acquire computers in big batches all at once in hope that they don’t have to get them anytime again soon, “which of course, never happens,” says Steven Hodas, Executive Director of Innovate NYC Schools, part of a broader initiative by the NYC Department of Education to adapt technologies in classrooms for learning. Computers eventually breakdown, wear out, or become overloaded with junk and must be replaced over time with spare parts and hardware on a limited budget – resulting in a jigsaw puzzle of infrastructure, like at Hornik’s school. Then, when the computers start to get sluggish, preventing even basic browsing and application use, getting them all back up to the same speed becomes practically impossible. Neverware’s Juicebox fixes this problem by turning school PCs into a “thin client”. Inside the physical box is a server with virtual machines and computing power that many computers share across a single network. So, instead of each computer being stuck with ageing components, suddenly all the computers have access to this powerful central store that does all the “heavy lifting”, allowing the computers to run like new. The Juicebox can supercharge any PC or even laptop – even if it’s missing a hard drive – and the whole system is completely wireless. Since Hornik installed Neverware’s Juicebox over a year ago, East New York Family Academy now has over 100 working computers – almost four in every classroom, with two fully functioning computer labs. They haven’t slowed down a bit. “The Neverware system gave us a big break. We were able to make all those old computers work,” Hornik says, adding “and lightning fast.” This idea of “desktop virtualization”, has been around for over a decade, says Neverware’s 27-year-old founder Jonathan Hefter. “This is something banks and Fortune 500 companies around the world are using,” he says, and something that cloud computing now offers. “But no-one has created a simple cost-effective methodology, and automated it, so that you can operate without expensive IT departments.” Currently, Neverware is piloting their solution around New York City’s public school system, which is one of the more autonomous and innovative school systems in the country. “We planned to set up five schools in the first half of this year, but we had such a huge demand, we quickly went into double digits,” Hefter remarks, “now there is this incredible race on our part to scale up to meet the demand.” But, Neverware does not promise to improve education. It is simply a hardware solution. “What Jonathan is doing with Neverware is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient,” worries Steven Hodas. “Every school will be where it was 5 years ago when it got that brand new shipment of computers. Basically, it’s a great point of departure,” he explains. “But now that you’ve got the tool, what are you going to do with it?” Just because computers are working better and kids can browse, research, and use programs faster, doesn’t necessarily mean they will learn better. That doesn’t lessen its promise beyond New York City classrooms. Demand for desktop PCs may be declining in developed countries, yet developing countries are incredibly hungry for PCs, says Jim Lynch, Director of Green Tech at TechSoup Global. “With the growth of internet and electricity in Africa, demand for PCs is going through the roof,” he says. Believe it or not, the actual hardware lifespan of a PC is around fifteen years – because most of the weaker parts are interchangeable. In developed countries PCs often get tossed after a few years of use because they slow down, or newer, better technology comes out – creating a tremendous amount of e-waste, and wasted opportunity. “Life extension, or adding life onto an expensive piece of equipment like that, is by far the most environmental way to recycle – keeping both the function and materials alive as long as possible,” says Lynch. Many organisations facilitate the donation of millions of PCs each year from developed to developing countries. But the process is not so easy. “[The PCs] are quite often non-functional. They are slow, sluggish, they’ve been used for a few years” Lynch says. “To get a second life out of these things, you’ve got to clean it out, test it, put a new OS on it, and then it will run like it came out of the box.” International organisations, like World Computer Exchange and TechSoup Global, facilitate the refurbishing, but Neverware’s Juicebox could also play a new, more localised role, in this ecosystem as well. Africa has a paltry recycling rate for mobile phones (just 1% in Nigeria, for example), and a similar recycling rate for PCs, says Lynch. The number of obsolete PCs generated in developing regions is expected to exceed that of developed regions by 2016−2018, according to recent research – creating an enormous amount of wasted hardware. By boosting the performance and extending the lifespan of old PCs in developing countries, Juiceboxes might help technology recycling become a little more sustainable, especially in schools that spend loads of time, money, and effort in sourcing and shipping in new or donated PCs. “One of the problems with donated computers is that getting them through the port isn’t straightforward. It makes it much more expensive,” says James Tooley, an expert on education in developing countries, and author of The Beautiful Tree, which explores how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves. “If you can just bring in a Juicebox, it might be easier,” But, there are practical challenges. “The biggest challenge is electricity,” says Tooley. In off-grid areas with low power, or even urban areas with unreliable power sources, the Juicebox – which as the name might suggest, requires a lot of energy – would have a hard time. Jonathan Hefter agrees, but believes that down the road, they could offer a low-power version that runs off solar for regions like Africa. Yet he admits this is a long-term aim. “We’re achieving a certain amount of operational expertise working close to home, then moving forward,” he says. Wherever the potential impact of Neverware’s promise to make old computers run like new lies, for Hefter the bottom line is clear. “It seems silly that schools are replacing their computers every 4 years when technology exists to fix them. At the end of the day Neverware is just doing something that makes sense.” If you would like to comment on this video or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160523132937id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/future/story/20130717-squeezing-new-life-into-computers

A Times critic admits to feeling envy in response to readers’ picks of the best actors they ever saw perform in William Shakespeare’s plays.

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The many reader responses to a tantalizingly tough question – which are the greatest Shakespeare performances you’ve seen? – left me with a mild case of theatergoer’s envy, which is unusual for a critic who gets to see a lot of plays. I have run into people at parties who gently — or not gently — suggest that, yes, so-and-so was quite a good Othello or Lear or Hamlet, but (nostalgic sigh, peer into the distance), you really should have seen so-and-so. Get me another drink, please! But I do wish I could time-travel for a year or two, zipping back to catch some of the performances mentioned in response to my article. Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins in “Antony and Cleopatra” sounds fascinating, but if I had to choose one Dench blast from the past, I think I’d go with another production a reader singled out: her Lady Macbeth opposite Ian McKellen for the Royal Shakespeare Company. More than one of the people I interviewed (including Mark Rylance himself) mentioned Mr. McKellen’s Macbeth as a vital high point in their Shakespeare-watching experience. Then again I should be grateful for what I have seen: Mr. McKellen’s Lear and Richard III. And while I have only seen Ms. Dench in two comparatively small Shakespeare roles – as the Countess in “All’s Well That Ends Well” and as Titania (through the guise of Queen Elizabeth) in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — her performances were marked by a clarity of thought, a simplicity of speech and a warmth of humanity that I still recall with wonder. Zipping back across to America, and moving back a couple of decades or so, I would definitely like to have checked out the Prospero (or the Shylock) of the great Morris Carnovsky, which were singled out by a couple of readers, at the Stratford, Conn., Shakespeare festival. (I was fascinated, too, to learn that Katharine Hepburn played Cleopatra during the same 1960 season as Carnovsky played Prospero: what a colossally strange piece of casting!) I’d love to have had a chance to see the Rosalind of Maggie Smith (in Stratford, Ontario). Or would I prefer to go with Vanessa Redgrave? Paul Robeson’s Othello — with Uta Hagen as Desdemona — is an almost unimaginably enticing prospect. But if I had to choose only one performance from the past to bear witness to, it might be Paul Scofield’s Lear, which more than one reader mentioned as a life-changer. (He was mesmerizing even in the small role of the ghost of Hamlet’s father in the Mel Gibson movie – pretty much wiping any recollection of poor Mr. Gibson from my memory bank.) I was glad to be reminded of a couple of great Shakespeare performances I actually did see, including Brian Bedford and Martha Henry in “Much Ado About Nothing.” And for the reader who wondered why so few supporting performances were mentioned, I concur with the high praise for Philip Bosco’s Malvolio, along with Max Wright’s Andrew Aguecheek and Brian Murray’s Toby Belch, in the Lincoln Center Theater production of “Twelfth Night” from the late 1990s; they handily outshone the young leads. (I hope to return to the subject of Shakespeare’s great secondary characters in a later post.) Obviously, I could go on endlessly, but if I begin to ruminate on what might have been (but couldn’t be, obviously), I’ll never get up off the couch. Still, there is something pleasurable both in conjuring these performances in the mind’s eye, and in realizing how deeply they have ingrained themselves in the memories of readers. I was glad, too, that a couple of you mentioned Laurence Olivier’s King Lear. As it happens that performance, which I saw as a teenager on PBS, constituted my own moment of Shakespeare conversion. By this time I had read a few of the plays, but never seen a live performance. I can still remember the shock of feeling that overwhelmed me as Olivier staggered forth in the final scene, with Cordelia in his arms. Thanks to all of you who took time to respond: that mild case of envy was soon transformed into fascination.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2013112119id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/theater/best-shakespeare-performances.html

The Crimea crisis does not necessarily imply that Russia poses a danger to Kazakhstan, despite the large numbers of ethnic Russians in that country.

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People holding Russian flags gather at Lenin Square in the Crimean city of Simferopol following Sunday’s referendum. (Yuri Kochetkov/ European Pressphoto Agency) The following is a guest post from Galymzhan Kirbassov, a doctoral candidate in the political science department at Binghamton University. When Russia mobilized troops to the Crimea and eventually occupied it, many analysts were quick to suggest that the crisis had implications for Central Asian countries with significant number of ethnic Russians, particularly Kazakhstan. The general rationale is that Russia has intervened in Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians who were the majority in the Crimea. Thus the large ethnic Russian population in Kazakhstan and some other countries would potentially serve as a tool for Russia to legitimize intervention there, should it so desire. However, there are important counter-arguments to be made to this line of reasoning, particularly in the case of Kazakhstan. To understand why the crisis does not keep Kazakh leaders up at night, we need to understand Russia’s two recent military interventions: Ukraine and Georgia. Both in Ukraine and Georgia, the new leadership that came to power through the Orange and Rose revolutions featured pro-Western rhetoric. They pursued foreign policies that brought rapid and fundamental changes in the directions of their countries, particularly in the security sphere. The new leadership of both countries sought to join NATO, which was perceived by Russia as a threat given that Ukraine and Georgia are both bordering Russia. As we now know, Russia intervened in Georgia in 2008 (legitimized by claims of humanitarian intervention and protection of Russian and Ossetian population) and recently in Ukraine (legitimized by claims of protecting ethnic Russians in the Crimea). Russian troops stationed in these countries after the interventions have played an important role in preventing NATO expansion due to a high risk of becoming involved in a military conflict with Russia. As a consequence of the interventions, most of the NATO member countries have been reluctant even to start the formal negotiations with Georgia and Ukraine for membership. What does this mean for Kazakhstan with its large ethnic Russian population? Is there any threat of Russian intervention in the future? I argue there is none as long as the government of Kazakhstan sticks to the same foreign, economic and social policies. Here are the reasons why: 1. The leadership in Kazakhstan, particularly the president Nursultan Nazarbayev, has pursued a balanced, multi-vector foreign policy that never gave a totally dominant preference to any specific major power. Kazakhstan neither recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia nor Kosovo in favor of either Russia or the West respectively, a strong indicator of a multi-vector foreign policy. Kazakhstan has cooperated with the United States, European Union, Russia and China in both economic and security issues. It joined the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a security alliance led by Russia, which indicates that Kazakhstan is not even near joining a Western alliance. Kazakhstan is also a member of the Customs Union with Russia and Belarus. So both in terms of security and economic issues, Kazakhstan is close to Russian interests although it tries to reduce dependency on a single country. Russia therefore should not perceive Kazakhstan as a potential threat, at least in the short to mid-term. 2. According to a survey conducted by Gallup in 2011, the majority (56 percent) of Russians in Kazakhstan said that their local areas were good places to live for them, and only 25 percent said they wanted to move to some other country. According to the poll, although the percentage of ethnic Russians suffering increased over one year, it was not associated with employment. This poll is just one of the indicators that ethnic Russians are unlikely to be provoked against the government and become a tool for the legitimization for Russian intervention. Moreover, in the lower house of the Kazakh parliament (Mazhilis), 21 members out of 107 are ethnic Russians, which indicates that the Russian population in Kazakhstan (23.7 percent) is fairly well represented in the parliament. Similar levels of representation can be found in academia and sports. 3. Both South Ossetia in Georgia and the Crimea in Ukraine are/were autonomous regions. However, there is no such autonomous region in Kazakhstan. That being said, although ethnic Russians live all around Kazakhstan, the majority of them live in the North and the East. 4. Right after the crisis in the Crimea, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry issued a very balanced statement that stressed the importance of negotiations in resolving the crisis without further escalating it. President Nursultan Nazarbayev had phone conversations with President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to mediate the conflict and resolve it with diplomacy and negotiations, rather than by military force or sanctions. This mediation efforts and a statement clearly signal that the leadership of Kazakhstan sleep well at night. If they had kept a low profile during the crisis, it would imply that there was a similar danger of Russian intervention and that it would be a good idea to stay low. Surely this is not to say that Kazakhstan’s leaders are comfortable in their beds. But as long the current policies of non-discrimination against the minorities including Russians, assuring equal participation and representation in economy and politics, and pursuing a balanced and multi-vector foreign policy continue, the likelihood of Russian intervention should remain low.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014031719id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/03/17/why-the-leaders-of-kazakhstan-are-not-yet-losing-sleep-over-crimea/

A wildfire outside Yosemite National Park more than tripled in size Thursday, shutting down businesses in surrounding communities and leading scores of tourists to leave the area during peak season.

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A raging wildfire along the northwest edge of Yosemite National Park is gaining strength Saturday morning as firefighters scramble to protect nearby mountain communities. The fire held steady overnight at nearly 200 square miles, but a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says firefighters didn't get their usual reprieve from cooler early morning temperatures Saturday. The Rim Fire started in a remote canyon of the Stanislaus National Forest a week ago and is just 5 percent contained with more than 2,600 firefighters on the lines. A half dozen aircraft are being used to battle the blaze. The Yosemite Valley, the part of the park frequented by tourists and known around the world for such iconic sights as the Half Dome and El Capitan rock formations and Yosemite falls, remained open, clear of smoke and free from other signs of the fire that remained about 20 miles away. But the blaze was reverberating around the region. It brought a governor's declaration of emergency late Friday for San Francisco 150 miles away because of the threat the fire posed to utility transmission to the city, and caused smoke warnings and event cancellations in Nevada as smoke blew over the Sierra Nevada and across state lines. And the fire had established at least a foothold in Yosemite, with at least 17 of its 196 square miles burning inside the park's broad borders, in a remote area near Lake Eleanor where backpackers seek summer solace. Park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said that the park had stopped issuing backcountry permits to backpackers and had warned those who already had them to stay out of the area. She emphasized that the skies over Yosemite Valley were "crystal clear," however. "Right now there are no closures, and no visitor services are being affected in the park," Cobb said. "We just have to take one day at a time." The blaze did, however, pose a threat to the lines and stations that pipe power to the city of San Francisco, so Gov. Jerry Brown, who had declared an emergency for the fire area earlier in the week, made the unusual move of doing the same for the city across the state. San Francisco gets 85 percent of its water from the Yosemite-area Hetch Hetchy reservoir that is about 4 miles from the fire, though that had yet to be affected. But it was forced to shut down two of its three hydroelectric power stations in the area. The city has so far been able to buy power on the open market and use existing supplies, but further disruptions or damage could have an effect, according to city power officials and the governor's statement. The declaration frees funding and resources to help the city and makes it eligible for more federal funds to help with power shortages and outages or water problems. The fire continued to grow in several directions, although "most of the fire activity is pushing to the east right into Yosemite," said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In Nevada, the smoke forced officials in several counties to cancel outdoor school activities and issue health advisories, especially for people with respiratory problems. The fire was threatening about 5,500 residences, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The blaze has destroyed four homes and 12 outbuildings in several different areas. It closed a 4-mile stretch of State Route 120, one of three entrances into Yosemite on the west side. Two other western routes and an eastern route were open. Officials issued voluntary evacuation advisories for two new towns -- Tuolumne City, population 1,800, and Ponderosa Hills, a community of several hundred -- which are about five miles from the fire line, Forest Service spokesman Jerry Snyder said. A mandatory evacuation order remained in effect for part of Pine Mountain Lake, a summer gated community a few miles from the fire. "It feels a little bit like a war zone, with helicopters flying overhead, bombers dropping retardant and 10 engine companies stationed on our street," said Ken Codeglia, a retired Pine Mountain Lake resident who decided to stay to protect his house with his own hoses and fire retardant system. "But if the fire gets very hot and firefighters evacuate, I will run with them." Officials previously advised voluntary evacuations of more than a thousand other homes, several organized camps and at least two campgrounds in the area outside the park's boundary. More homes, businesses and hotels are threatened in nearby Groveland, a community of 600 about 5 miles from the fire and 25 miles from the entrance of Yosemite. Usually filled with tourists, the streets are now swarming with firefighters, evacuees and news crews, said Doug Edwards, owner of Hotel Charlotte on Main Street. "We usually book out six months solid with no vacancies and turn away 30-40 people a night. That's all changed," Edwards said. "All we're getting for the next three weeks is cancellations. It's a huge impact on the community in terms of revenue dollars." The fire is raging in the same region where a 1987 blaze killed a firefighter, burned hundreds of thousands of acres and forced several thousand people out of their homes. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2013082419id_/http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/08/22/yosemite-area-wildfire-triples-in-size/

President Bush will take part in high-visibility deliberations on Iraq next week in an effort to chart a new course in the war.

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Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Bush was still awaiting results of three major reviews on Iraq policy from within the administration before announcing his plans — one at the State Department, one at the Department of Defense and one at the National Security Council. Addressing growing anticipation in Washington for the president’s new Iraq policy, Mr. Snow warned reporters on Friday, “What you look for may not be splashiness or boldness, as you may call it, but what you look for is a serious proposal that addresses the real concerns of many Americans about, are we pursuing victory, and if so, how?” After a meeting with Mr. Bush on Friday, several Democratic leaders said they remained skeptical that he was ready to embrace a substantially different approach. “Someone has to get the message to this man that there has to be significant changes,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the incoming Democratic majority leader. He said Mr. Bush, through his comments and demeanor at the session, indicated that he was not receptive to the report, which Mr. Reid said was not the work of “do-gooders” but was written by “Democrats and Republicans with wide-ranging experience.” Mr. Reid’s top deputy in the Senate starting next year, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said Mr. Bush had compared himself in the meeting to President Truman at the start of the cold war. But Mr. Durbin noted that Truman was working with a broad range of NATO allies at the time while keeping negotiations open with the Soviet Union and others — a jab at the administration’s decision so far against including Syria and Iran in talks on Iraq. Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush did indeed refer to Truman in his meeting with the Democrat, but, Mr. Snow said, “The president was really not trying to compare himself to Harry Truman so much as to talk about the duration and nature of the struggle.” The administration has so far preferred to work with allies in the region like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, as Mr. Bush showed again Friday by speaking by telephone with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After the meeting, attended by leaders of both parties, Mr. Bush pledged to continue to consult with Congress as “we fashion a new — a new way forward in Iraq.” But Mr. Snow indicated later that in pledging bipartisanship Mr. Bush was only willing to go so far. “What the president said clearly was that he intends to consult with Congress, and that he — the door is open,” Mr. Snow said. “There’s a flip side to that question,” Mr. Snow added, “Which is whether those who say, ‘Mr. President, as commander in chief, we listen to you,’ bend to support him.” Flexing their own muscles, Democratic leaders promised heightened scrutiny of a forthcoming request from the administration for as much as $150 billion in new emergency spending for the war. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate have generally approved the administration’s previous requests, though they enforced some changes. Given the increasing number of employees working for private contractors in Iraq and the federal money flowing to Halliburton, a company Mr. Reid described as the “poster child for what is bad about this war,” Mr. Reid said the new Congress would not simply sign off on the request. A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: With 3 Iraq Reports to Come, Bush Plans Week of Scrutiny. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2006121019id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/world/middleeast/09prexy.html

Boomtime for skiing and fishing as the periodical weather phenomenon brings rain and snow – but California’s drought is far from over, say experts

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The El Niño climate phenomenon has been blamed for fuelling a spate of recent natural disasters around the world, from flooding in northern England and Paraguay to bushfires in Australia to storms in Texas. But, for many people in California, the current El Niño has been eagerly anticipated. Related: UK floods and extreme global weather linked to El Niño and climate change The state, which is in the grip of a four-year-long drought, received a welcome dose of rain and snow in December. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides about 30% of California’s water, now measures above average for this time of year – a stark turnaround from April, when it measured just 5% of the long-term average. Many Californians hope that a strengthening El Niño signal during January and February – the state’s rainiest months – will bring precipitation that will help ease the worst drought in 1,200 years. However, experts have warned that El Niño is unlikely to be a drought breaker, with water likely to run off the parched land, even risking mudslides in some places. “El Niño has got a lot of attention. There are a substantial number of Californians who believe that El Niño is like the cowboy in the white hat who comes to the rescue of someone in peril,” said Greg Webber, executive director of California Urban Water Conservation Council. “But a single El Niño event will not overcome all of the drought. Even an event of historical magnitude will not refill the aquifers that have been substantially depleted.” Michelle L’Heureux, climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate prediction center, said El Niño brings a 50% probability of above-average rainfall. “We expect some drought relief. It won’t be a drought breaker .There should be caution when people say that,” she said. Nevertheless, some Californians are already seeing the benefit. The recent snowfall, coming just months after scientists declared the Sierra Nevada snowpack at a 500-year low, has attracted skiers and snowboarders back to the slopes. Heavenly Mountain Resort, in Lake Tahoe, has received 175in of snow already this season and opened its slopes a week earlier than planned. The blanketing of snow already surpasses the 89in received in last year’s season, which ran until April. “It’s been a really good start and generated a lot of momentum,” said Pete Sonntag, chief operating officer of the resort. “There’s a lot of excitement out there, there’s plenty of pent-up demand from people who want to get out there and ski and snowboard. “We’ve endured four lean years but we’ll be pushing the record prior to the drought, for sure. There’s cause for a lot of optimism for those who operate ski resorts.” The drought was tough for all ski resorts in the region – Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows saw a 30% drop in visitor numbers. But Squaw is seeing the rebound, with record visitor numbers over the two-week Christmas holiday period, along with 17 feet of snowfall so far this season. Andy Wirth, chief executive of the business, said climate modelling he’s seen suggests there will be El Niño-driven snowstorms every three to five days over the next two months, meaning the record snowfall of 832in in 2010-11 is under threat. “It’s been a phenomenal start to the season, this is only the third time in our 60-year history that we’ve had the entire mountain open,” Wirth said. “There’s a real benefit to the small businesses of Lake Tahoe, the retailers and restaurants. I’m thrilled for them because the past four years have been remarkably challenging.” Wirth is keen to point out that he is “grounded in the truth” of climate change, pointing to the $8m spent on snow-making technology as evidence that the industry accepts snowfall volumes will be increasingly uncertain in the future. “I don’t want people to think we’re here rolling around in the snow, like we’re Donald Trumps,” he said. “That man is a buffoon, an absolute buffoon. My view is grounded in science.” El Niño typically brings increased moisture to the southern half of the US, meaning that Oregon and Washington state are expected to be drier than California. Its key characteristic, however, is the warming of the Pacific Ocean, which is bringing an unusual influx of marine animals, such as hammerhead sharks and red crabs to California’s coast. The boom in warm-water species has proved fruitful for fishing tour operators such as Marine Del Rey Sportfishing, which is based in Los Angeles. “This year has been unprecedented for the number of large yellowtails we are getting,” said Rick Oefinger, owner of the business, who has been running fishing trips in the area since 1970. “In previous El Niños we’d get 2-10lb fish, this year they are 20-40lb. There’s unbelievable fishing just a couple of miles off the coast. “We’ve seen hammerhead sharks, black and blue marlin, a lot of sea turtles. There’s a lot more of them than in the past. I’ve seen people out fishing that I haven’t seen in 20 years. It’s definitely brought people out of the woodwork.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016010119id_/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/31/el-nino-blamed-weather-chaos-california-upside-still-drought

Document: Read the questionnaire that Gov. David A. Paterson of New York asked candidates for the appointment to fill out.

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You, too, could be the next United States senator from New York. But first, Gov. David A. Paterson has some questions for you. Ever been fired from a job? Ever been disciplined by a bar association, suspended from school, or audited by Uncle Sam? Ever belonged to a club that restricted admission based on race, skin color, or religion? Ever employed a nanny or maid who was in the country illegally? And are you now, or have you ever been, a blogger? Those are just a few of the dozens of topics covered by a questionnaire that Mr. Paterson is requiring the top contenders for the Senate job [pdf] to submit to his office by the end of the day. Though the questionnaire was sent to candidates last week and its existence reported on Monday, the Paterson administration has so far denied all requests from the news media for more information on the forms, declining to release the raw questionnaire and saying they will not release even partly redacted copies of the completed documents. “The vetting process is confidential,” Risa B. Heller, the governor’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. But the copy provided to The Times provides a detailed glimpse of the kind of sensitive information being sought by the governor. In some respects, the questionnaire is a kind of survey of every scandal that has afflicted state and federal politicians in recent history. If answered truthfully, the questionnaire would screen for those candidates who hired illegal immigrants, wrote controversial blogs on the side, or did not file their tax returns. There are also more current questions. The candidates must disclose, for example, any affiliation they or family members have with any financial, insurance or mortgage firms that have been the target of investigation or aid during the current fiscal crisis. (Recall that James A. Johnson, the former Fannie Mae executive, was forced to resign from Barack Obama’s vice-presidential search committee when Fannie Mae’s loan business came under scrutiny.) The questionnaire effectively provides a thorough background check of all the contenders for the Senate job — and, potentially, place an extraordinary amount of information in the hands of Mr. Paterson and his aides. Contenders must agree to have their finances audited by the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance and to release to the administration any findings by any law enforcement agency or disciplinary body. A spokesman for Caroline Kennedy, a top contender for the job, said Ms. Kennedy had completed the questionnaire. But the questionnaire does not specify who in the administration would have access to the completed document, which would provide ready-made opposition research on any contender who completed it. Those said to be interested for the job include nearly all of Mr. Paterson’s potential rivals within the Democratic Party, including Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general. A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo declined to say whether Mr. Cuomo had received the questionnaire or had returned it to Mr. Paterson. Barbara Bartoletti, the legislative director of the League of Women Voters, harshly criticized the governor’s decision to keep the questionnaires secret. “That is extraordinarily troubling,” Ms. Bartoletti said. “There is no reason why the governor’s office doesn’t release this type of form, before it’s completed and after it’s completed.” She added: “The problem we’ve been getting into is that there is not enough transparency in vetting of high-level positions. It would have gone a great distance in mitigating many issues that have befallen senators from Alaska to Illinois. I don’t understand why the governor wouldn’t release this.” Questionnaire for prospective Senate appointees

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https://web.archive.org/web/2009010919id_/http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/so-you-want-to-be-senator-first-fill-this-out/index.html

Mogul’s 21st Century Fox likely to consider renewed offer for owner of CNN, HBO, Warner Bros and other media brands. By Mark Sweney

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Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has been rebuffed in an $80bn (£46.7bn) bid to buy rival US media and entertainment giant Time Warner. Together Fox and Time Warner would own a huge range of assets including CNN, Fox News, HBO and movie studios 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Time Warner rejected the $85-a-share cash and stock offer, a 25% premium on the company’s share price, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. Murdoch is likely to consider a renewed bid, the New York Times reported. The octogenerian has long been keen to secure a final mega-merger before handing the reins of his media empire to the next generation of the Murdoch family. The bid, which would create a combined company with total revenues of $65bn, could prompt a new spate of media consolidation. Fox has indicated that to push the deal through regulatory scrutiny it would sell off Time Warner’s CNN, which competes directly with Fox News, with rivals CBS and Disney’s ABC likely suitors, according to the New York Times. 21st Century Fox said in a statement: “21st Century Fox can confirm that we made a formal proposal to Time Warner last month to combine the two companies. The Time Warner board of directors declined to pursue our proposal. We are not currently in any discussions with Time Warner.” Time Warner issued a robust defence of its rejection of Murdoch’s offer, including questioning Fox’s ability to manage the enlarged business. The company also questioned the value to shareholders of the non-voting stock portion of the deal – the cash part of Fox’s offer was $32.42 a share. “There is significant risk and uncertainty as to the valuation of 21st Century Fox’s non-voting stock and 21st Century Fox’s ability to govern and manage a combination of the size and scale of 21st Century Fox and Time Warner,” the company said. The company’s board said it was “confident” that its own strategic plan was “superior” to any offer Fox could make. “The board is confident that continuing to execute its strategic plan will create significantly more value for the company and its stockholders and is superior to any proposal that 21st Century Fox is in a position to offer,” it said. “The unique value of Time Warner’s industry-leading businesses including its portfolio of networks and its film studio and television production business is only going to increase.” Claire Enders, founder of media research firm Enders Analysis, said: “Time Warner been a real laggard in stock market terms for a long time with a lot of great assets that can be plucked like a chicken. Even for 21st Century Fox this is a colossal deal. They are making a big play for more content and Time Warner has some of the best global franchises you could hope to have – look at Harry Potter, Batman and HBO.” Time Warner’s lucrative cable channel business includes TNT, TBS and HBO, home to shows including Game of Thrones. Murdoch’s TV channel operations include FX and the Fox broadcast network, which airs programming including The Simpsons and American Idol, until it was cancelled earlier this year. Bringing Warner Bros – maker of films including The Hangover, the Batman and Harry Potter franchises, and one of the biggest hits of 2014 The Lego Movie – together with 20th Century Fox, home to Avatar, X-Men and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, will create a Hollywood studio powerhouse. 21st Century Fox currently has more than $5bn cash on its balance sheet. The company could also potentially add $10bn-plus more if BSkyB, in which Fox owns a 39% stake, successfully completes a buyout of Fox’s Italian and German pay-TV businesses to create Sky Europe. Time Warner rejected the deal over issues that include the stock portion of 21st Century Fox’s offer would only be for non-voting shares, which would keep the enlarged business firmly controlled by the Murdoch family. While Murdoch has made numerous audacious “bet the farm” moves to build his media empire over the years, the 83-year-old is determined that his last major deal is capped by a safe transition of power to his sons. Earlier this year he laid the groundwork by bringing back eldest son Lachlan, the heir apparent who walked away from the empire almost a decade ago to set up his own investment company and move to Australia. The 42-year-old was named as non-executive co-chairman of the entertainment and publishing companies, alongside his father. At the same time, younger brother James was also elevated to co-chief operating officer, with direct responsibility for developing Fox’s pay-TV aspirations globally. The 41-year-old moved to New York to consolidate his position within the company, but also to distance himself from intense criticism of his handling of phone hacking as executive chairman of News UK. Murdoch has been focused on building the scale of 21st Century Fox’s TV and film business, after freeing it from the drag of the publishing assets which were spun off into a separate listed company last year. The separation of the businesses has insulated the highly-profitable 21st Century Fox operation from the phone-hacking scandal that has dogged some of his publishing assets. The publishing business, News Corp, primarily consists of newspaper assets such as the Sun, Times, Wall Street Journal and the Australian, book firm HarperCollins, and also Murdoch’s Australian pay-TV business. Analysts and investors have been tipping wider consolidation among the major US media players following Comcast’s move to take over Time Warner Cable. Time Warner has spent years trimming its portfolio – including AOL, Time Warner Cable and, most recently magazine publishing division Time Inc – to focus on TV and film, which has made it an attractive target. Time Inc, the largest magazine publisher in the US with titles including Time, Sports Illustrated and Marie Claire, was spun off last month as a corporate manoeuvre to protect Time Warner from the continuing decline in the publishing sector. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014071719id_/http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/16/rupert-murdoch-time-warner-bid-21st-century-fox

On Thursday at the Berklee Performance Center, trombonist and pedagogue Hal Crook played a farewell concert featuring some of his now-famous students.

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“What do you call a trombonist with a pager?” goes the old joke. “An optimist.” Trombonist and master educator Hal Crook joined the Berklee faculty in 1986 when pagers were still a thing, having himself graduated from the school a decade earlier. On Thursday night the college celebrated his announced retirement with a sold-out, star-studded concert at Berklee Performance Center. Joining Crook for the evening’s first set was an advertised crew of big-name Berklee alumni whose paths had crossed Crook’s: Esperanza Spalding on upright bass and vocals, her frequent collaborator Leo Genovese on piano, Chris Cheek on tenor sax, and Lionel Loueke on guitar. Drummer Antonio Sanchez, fresh from a Grammy win for his “Birdman” score earlier in the week, was a late addition to the lineup. They opened by stretching out on Crook’s “Set Me Free,” whose title was the event’s theme and whose structure interspersed restatements of the melody — Spalding’s wordless vocals acting like a third horn — with bouts of free soloing by everyone save Sanchez. Crook didn’t solo much through the night; when he did, his trombone had a trumpet-like brightness as he demonstrated that he can very much keep pace with the famous acolytes surrounding him. The opening set ended on another highlight, “Domestic Violets,” a Crook bouquet for a pet cause: a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Spalding, who introduced and sang it, said, “We’d like to dedicate this to anyone with a bruise or a cut or a busted lip.” Crook entertained the audience during an intermission, blowing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” on a kazoo, reminiscing, and cutting up. (One joke mined the pager vein: “Soon I’ll be a retired trombonist. I know a lot of you are thinking, ‘What’s the difference?’ ”) Then he brought out his band Behind These Eyes for a set of jazz-inflected pop featuring the ebullient vocals of Berklee alumna Deborah Pierre, Wesley Wirth’s electric bass (his solo on “What Is Going On” a particular crowd-pleaser), three keyboards, drums, and a tight four-piece horn section. Crook, who wrote the band’s music and lyrics, skipped soloing the second set. Nor did he solo on the night’s final number — but most everyone else did when the first set’s stars joined Behind These Eyes for “Hide and Seek,” Cheek switching to soprano sax, Genovese launching his piano solo into orbit with palms and forearms. Then Crook, confirming his optimism, reminded the audience that “Life is the greatest prize” as he bid them adieu. The Music of Hal Crook: Set Me Free At Berklee Performance Center, Thursday

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160221085741id_/https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/02/19/trombonist-crook-takes-starry-final-bow-berklee/yJGoFMWdxgSwyUc0c5vb7I/story.html

A group of millionaires calling for the rich to pay more in taxes is worried about the middle class. So why aren’t the middle-class people in their orbit so fearful?

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“It is going to be really bad for rich people,” said Charlie Fink, 51, a former AOL executive, imagining an American financial collapse that could wipe out his wealth. “It’s going to be [bad] for everybody. But most people are living close to the bone anyway. So they have less to lose.” In another part of Fairfax County, the man who teaches Fink to swing a golf club is not nearly as panicked. Tom Melideo’s country club is not hurting for members, and many of them have government contracting jobs that don’t seem likely to disappear soon. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about” the future of the economy, said Melideo, 45, the club’s PGA head pro. “I’m too busy working.” Last month, when President Obama called for increasing taxes on the rich, his Republican adversaries called it “class warfare” — an attempt to turn a recession-plagued middle class against the rich. But, in the orbit of one Fairfax millionaire, the reality is different. The middle-class people Fink knows, the golf pro and the personal trainer, are fairly confident about their futures. It’s the millionaire who’s worried. Fink has joined a group called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, arguing, Buffett-like, that the government should raise his taxes — because he’s scared of what will happen if it doesn’t. “It’s maddening to just sit here in . . . Virginia and let the world unravel,” Fink said. “Which is a huge, huge threat to my personal wealth.” At a town hall that Obama held in Mountain View, Calif., on Sept. 26, a member of the same millionaires’ group asked, “Would you please raise my taxes?” Doug Edwards, who got rich at Google, said that he worries for the future of federal student loans, infrastructure projects and job-training programs if the government does not obtain new revenue. The millionaires’ group was founded last year, to press for the end of a George W. Bush-era tax cut for people making more than $1 million a year. Made up of both Democrats and Republicans, the group includes only about 200 millionaires, in a country where an estimated 3.1 million people have wealth greater than $1 million. Clearly, Fink may not represent the bulk of those 3.1 million: Billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), for instance, has criticized Obama’s proposal as “theatrics.” But in Fink’s small orbit, the guy with the most worries is the guy with the most — period. “We’re doing okay, because we’re around the Beltway,” said Melideo, who gives Fink lessons at Fairfax’s International Country Club. Business at the golf shop dipped a bit when the recession began, but now it’s improving. The club attracted more than 40 new members recently. Melideo, a slim, bald man with an easy manner, doesn’t agree that millionaires ought to be taxed more. He thinks the economy would benefit if the rich could keep that money and spend it. But he also doesn’t worry that a little extra tax on the wealthy would kneecap his business.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011100519id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-some-of-the-rich-budget-and-tax-battles-bring-worries--of-paying-too-little/2011/09/26/gIQAqWbhLL_story.html

Mets to face the Chicago Cubs after Murphy’s solo homer in the sixth, while Jacob deGrom allows runners in all six innings but just two runs

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Daniel Murphy just hoped no one was watching. Murphy shocked the sleeping Dodgers by stealing an uncovered third base and went on to score the tying run. Two innings later, Murphy hit a go-ahead homer off Zack Greinke that led the New York Mets over Los Angeles 3-2 Thursday night and into an NL Championship Series matchup with the Chicago Cubs. After getting past ace pitchers Clayton Kershaw and Greinke, the Mets will try to reach the World Series for the first time since 2000. “Something doesn’t go right and we bounce back,” said the Mets’ Terry Collins, managing in the postseason for the first time at age 66. “We’ve done it all year long. Tremendous heart.” New York and pitcher Jacob deGrom trailed 2-1 in the fourth inning of the decisive Game 5 of their NL Division Series when Murphy singled and the Dodgers shifted three infielders to the right side and left no one near third with left-handed hitting Lucas Duda at the plate. When Duda walked on a 3-1 pitch with one out, Murphy jogged to second and suddenly sprinted to third. Rookie shortstop Corey Seager, the closest infielder, was almost all the way toward second. “You’ve got to give a peek and hope that nobody calls timeout, because then I go sprinting to third base and somebody calls timeout, I look like a buffoon,” Murphy said. No worries. He made it without a throw and scored on Travis d’Arnaud’s sacrifice fly. “An incredible play and a game-changer for us,” Mets captain David Wright said. And for the Dodgers, too. “Just a breakdown right there,” manager Don Mattingly said. Murphy had just two steals during the regular season. “I’m not fleet afoot,” he said, “but I was just fast enough to be able to get in there and make it.” Murphy’s opposite-field RBI double in the first drove in the game’s first run. Murphy homered in the sixth for a 3-2 lead, driving a 93 mph pitch about a dozen rows into the right-field seats. Murphy, who had three hits, batted .333 in the series and homered three times off Greinke and Kershaw. He can be a free agent after the season ends. “Daniel was a tough out all series,” Mattingly said. “He’s always to me been a guy that’s been a tough out, pretty much hits everybody’s fastball.” DeGrom (2-0), the 2014 NL Rookie of the Year with the long, shaggy hair, struck out seven and walked three to earn his second road win of the series. He allowed four straight singles in the first, when Justin Turner and Andre Ethier drove in runs for a 2-1 lead. Fellow starter Noah Syndergaard started warming up as early as the second inning, and deGrom pitched his only 1-2-3 inning in the sixth. “I think I was a little amped up, and I just tried to make my pitches,” deGrom said. Syndergaard threw a hitless seventh in the rookie’s first big league relief appearance, and Jeurys Familia was perfect in the first six-out save of his big career. Familia retired pinch-hitter Chase Utley — who earned the Mets’ wrath after his takeout slide broke shortstop Ruben Tejada’s leg in Game 2 — on a flyout leading off the ninth. After Familia struck out Howie Kendrick to end the game, the Mets swarmed the mound, jumping up and down in unison. They quickly donned black T-shirts and exchanged hugs and high-fives while a small group of orange and blue-clad fans shouted, “Let’s go Mets!,” the only noise in a stadium that emptied quickly. “What a team win,” Murphy said. “It felt like everybody got a piece of this one.” Greinke (1-1) gave up three runs and six hits in 6 2/3 innings. The right-hander, who led the majors with a 1.66 ERA, struck out nine and walked one. He could opt out after the season ends and as a free agent would likely command even bigger bucks than the guaranteed $71 million left on his contract. “I was pitching good, I was feeling confident,” Greinke said. “I decided to challenge him. Looking back at it, it was the wrong decision.” New York quickly will turn its attention to the Cubs. The NLCS, which starts Saturday night at Citi Field, is the first postseason meeting between the teams. Matt Harvey will start Game 1 for the Mets against Jon Lester. Playing on the 27th anniversary of Kirk Gibson’s World Series home run, Los Angeles failed to come up with a big drive, going 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position after Ethier’s first-inning single. “There are really no words to describe how you feel right now,” said Mattingly, who could be out of a job after this latest postseason failure. Despite a record $289 million payroll, the Dodgers remained without a World Series title since 1988. “We have a good team here,” first baseman Adrian Gonzalez said. “We just need to keep working at it.” Los Angeles failed to capitalize with two runners on in both the second and third. After Turner doubled leading off the third, Ethier popped out to left. Ethier returned the dugout and began yelling at Mattingly while simultaneously walking away from him. Mattingly followed, and twice Ethier turned toward Mattingly and yelled at him while gesturing angrily with his arms, pointing twice at the field and twice directly at Mattingly. “There was nothing there other than he was mad about the ump’s call,” Mattingly said. “I was trying to settle him down.” Turner doubled twice for a franchise-record six in one postseason series. But the Dodgers’ fell to 4-1 in elimination playoff games since moving to Los Angeles in 1958. New York will be in the NLCS for the first time since 2006, when the Mets swept the Dodgers in the Division Series. “Back in 2006, it was a little less stressful because we ended up sweeping them,” Wright said. “So this is probably more gratifying and sweeter, just because we went through the pitchers we did to get to this point.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015101619id_/http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/oct/15/new-york-mets-dodgers-nl-daniel-murphy

Nigeria has launched a major offense to finally bring back their girls from the clutches of Boko Haram but many of the women are still enduring the horror of being held captive by the militant extremist group including being stoned to death.

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Women and children rescued by Nigerian soldiers from Boko Haram extremists at Sambisa Forest wait for treatment at a refugee camp in Yola, Nigeria. Boko Haram fighters stoned captives to death, some girls and women were crushed by an armored car and three died when a land mine exploded as they walked to freedom. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba) A major offensive by Nigerian forces has freed nearly 700 captives from Boko Haram in the last week, while also further exposing the Islamist terror group's bottomless propensity for evil. As many as 10 girls were stoned to death last week as rescuers closed in on the terrorist group's stronghold in the Sambisa forest in the northern Borno state. Survivors told of their harrowing escape from the terror group, which claims to be aligned with ISIS. "Boko Haram came and told us they were moving out and that we should run away with them. But we said no," 27-year-old Lami Musa, a former captive who recently gave birth while being hostage, told The Associated Press. "Then they started stoning us. I held my baby to my stomach and doubled over to protect her.” It is still unclear if any of them were among the so-called "Chibok girls," whose mass abduction from their school a year ago sparked outrage worldwide and a campaign for their freedom under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Musa said that she believes about 10 women may have been stoned to death, but official numbers were not immediately known. Musa was in the first group of rescued women and girls to be transported by road over three days to the safety of the Malkohi refugee camp, set up at a deserted schoolhouse near military barracks on the outskirts of Yola, the capital of northeastern Adamawa state. She said that last week's rescue saved her from a forced marriage to one of the killers of her husband. "They took me so I can marry one of their commanders," she said of the Boko Haram militants who snatched her away from her village after killing her husband and forcing her to abandon their three young children five months ago in Lassa village. "When they realized I was pregnant, they said I was impregnated by an infidel, and we have killed him. Once you deliver, within a week we will marry you to our commander," she said. The horror that the girls have endured while held captive by Boko Haram is nothing new. “We were screaming about the atrocities that Boko Haram has been inflicting for the past five years,” Pastor Laolu Akande, of the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN), told FoxNews.com. “Since Chibok happened it’s brought more attention, but this is one group that has been committing horrendous atrocities, especially against young schoolgirls and women.” When nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in the Borno State town of Chibok, it garnered international attention with social media campaigns demanding their safe return. Then-President Goodluck Jonathan proved unable to stop the rampaging terrorist army, an issue that contributed to his re-election loss to Muhammadu Buhari. “Just before the election, we met with some members of the [Nigerian] military and they had told us how the president had not given them a single order to go and rescue the Chibok girls,” Akande recalled of a recent trip CANAN had made to Nigeria. “President [Jonathan] was never really committed until the election was at stake.” Buhar, a military man who led the nation for two years following a coup in 1983, will take office at the end of May and, some believe, will ramp up the offensive against Boko Haram. “The new president dealt with these problems before when he was a general in the military,” Akande said. “He is known to be an outstanding military commander. He was highly respected for getting the job done.” The women and girls who were stoned at the hands of Boko Haram militants were not the only one to perish during the rescue efforts. Some, who could not fit onto packed military vehicles, were forced to walk, according to Musa. Although they were told to walk in the tire tracks made by the convoy because Boko Haram militants had mined much of the forest, some strayed from the ruts and died when a land mine exploded, killing three, she said. Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @perrych

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015050519id_/http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/05/04/new-offensive-frees-captives-from-boko-haram-exposes-group-bloodlust/

The Suicide Squad star has criticised the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign but has ‘faith in America’ about November’s outcome

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Will Smith has criticised Donald Trump and the “absolute collective insanity” of his support. Related: Four films that predicted the rise of Donald Trump The actor, currently promoting his role in Suicide Squad, spoke about the Republican candidate’s many divisive statements in an interview with news.com.au. “For a man to be able to publicly refer to a woman as a fat pig, that makes me teary,” he said. “And for people to applaud, that is absolutely fucking insanity to me. My grandmother would have smacked my teeth out of my head if I had referred to a woman as a fat pig. And I cannot understand how people can clap for that. It’s absolutely collective insanity.” Smith also said that if any of his children said what Trump had about a woman, there would be severe consequences. “If one of my sons – I am getting furious just thinking about it – if one of my sons said that in a public place, they couldn’t even live in my house any more,” he said. The Oscar nominee spoke about his concerns over the “separatist, non-inclusive, xenophobic, racist wave that is sweeping the globe” but believes that, ultimately, the US will see sense. “I have faith in America,” he said. “America has had really critical times, but the good [people] tend to make their way to the top.” Smith is one of many actors speaking out about Trump. More than 120 stars, including Julianne Moore and Lena Dunham, have signed a pledge urging Americans not to vote for him on 8 November.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016080319id_/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/03/will-smith-donald-trump-supporters-collective-insanity

“Our Lot,” by W. David Hancock and Kristin Newbom, centers on the stepchildren of a man who collected objects he said belonged to famous people.

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W. David Hancock’s “Race of the Ark Tattoo” caused a small sensation downtown about a dozen years ago, partly because of its intriguing conceit. Inside a flea market a man spun stories about his foster father, who had died, by randomly picking up the man’s belongings and musing on them. It was a little bit of a gimmick but it worked. Our Lot with Paul Niebanck and Mariann Mayberry, whose characters go through their dead stepfather's belongings, playing at Here. This time around Mr. Hancock is not so lucky. His new play, “Our Lot,” which is part of Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2011 festival at Here, shares a similar organizing frame about a dead father figure. Once again a life is told through objects. The objects that Karl, the deceased eccentric, collected in plastic containers belonged to famous people, he would say, including Michael Jackson, John Wayne and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The play, which Mr. Hancock wrote with Kristin Newbom, follows Karl’s stepchildren, who view this claim with a proper mix of amusement and exasperation as they clean out his stuff. The effect of May Adrales’s staging is a little like watching someone move out of a house: people carry around boxes, empty them, toss items away, pause to argue or trade quips. Unlike “Ark Tattoo,” “Our Lot” does not have stories that build so much as they assemble together uneasily. The script has a one-thing-after-another structure. Most of the characters do not distinguish themselves and instead become mouthpieces for quick tangents packed full of trivia or references that have appearances of profundity. When Kathy (Joanna P. Adler) refuses to reminisce, Alice (Mariann Mayberry) compares her to “the guy in the Bible who wouldn’t look back,” which begins a discussion about Lot that segues to a question about the sex of God. I suppose this fits into the theme of the dangers of analyzing the past, but mostly this oddly humorless dialogue comes off haphazardly. Someone picks up a box labeled Charles Darwin, and that inspires chatter about how he died. The John Lennon box leads to an impression of Howard Cosell announcing that Lennon is dead. At the end there is some melodrama and a hint of violence, but these are merely the coda to what has turned into a series of long, droning, random notes.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011061519id_/http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/theater/reviews/our-lot-at-here-in-summerworks-festival-review.html

Police are trying to identify a man they believe could help their investigation into the death of a Melbourne teenager outside a pub on the weekend.

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Tears flowed as the family and friends of murdered Melbourne teenager Patrick Cronin's gathered at his local football club to mourn to a life taken too soon. His parents Matt and Robyn, brother Lucas and sister Emma hugged well-wishers as they arrived before moving inside the clubhouse to address the community. At the same time, police announced they had arrested the man they say is responsible for the teenager's death. "He was the heart and soul of our family... Our hearts are just blown apart," his mum Robyn told the crowd. The teenager, who was hit on Saturday night outside the Windy Mile pub in Diamond Creek, will be remembered with a minute's silence at all Northern Football League games this weekend. Patrick, 19, played for the Lower Plenty Football Club with his brother, Lucas, on Saturday before going to the Windy Mile. It's understood the Eltham teenager wasn't involved in a brawl outside the pub but was attempting to help a friend when he was struck about 11pm on Saturday. He walked home but was rushed to hospital soon after where he remained in a critical condition until his family made the heartbreaking decision to switch off his life support on Monday. The Northern Football League and Lower Plenty officials met on Tuesday and decided a minute's silence would be held before every game this weekend. Players will also wear black armbands. "The Northern Football League is deeply saddened by the tragic passing of Patrick Cronin," it said in a statement. "The league offers its sincere condolences to Patrick's family and friends (and) the Lower Plenty Football Club." The Windy Mile reopened on Tuesday but has cancelled all live entertainment for the week as a mark of respect. Diamond Creek man Andrew William Lee, 33, has been charged with Patrick's murder and was remanded in custody to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016041919id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/04/19/03/40/hunt-for-clues-in-fatal-punch-attack

The impact of the stimulus package will be felt within weeks once the final version becomes law, but estimating its effectiveness is far more complex.

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But estimating how effective the huge program of tax cuts and spending will be in getting America’s economic engines humming again is a far more complex calculation requiring almost line-by-line scrutiny of the 647-page bill, lawmakers, economists and policy analysts say. While it may be difficult to predict how well the overall plan will work, it is easier to draw conclusions about its individual components, gauging them against the basic goal of any stimulus: to promote economic activity and create jobs as quickly and efficiently as possible. Devising any economic stimulus plan is tricky: initiatives that can be carried out relatively fast, like tax cuts, tend to provide less bang for the buck in terms of generating jobs and economic growth, while initiatives likely to spur more robust activity, like public works projects, can take so long to get under way that they arrive too late. The provisions intended to have the swiftest impact are the tax cuts, totaling $275 billion, roughly a third of the package. Republicans say the cuts are too small, some Democrats say they were ill designed in a vain effort to appease House Republicans, and some economists say both sides are right: that the plan should include more effective tax cuts and more of them, and also address specific problems like the weak housing market. Mr. Obama’s signature tax cut would provide a credit of up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples. It won praise in an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group, because it could be carried out quickly, by reducing the amount of money withheld from paychecks. But the same group also criticized it because it would help families earning as much as $150,000 a year, who are more likely to save than spend. (Saving, or paying off debt, might make sense for individual households, but what the economy needs most is for people to spend money, helping stores to sell more, factories to produce more and employers to avoid cutting additional jobs.) Some experts say adjusting withholding rates could prove complicated, delaying the money. But the White House says the plan would work even better than a lump-sum rebate; some research suggests that rebate checks are more likely to be saved than tax reductions spread out over a length of time. Even some economists who generally support the stimulus think that the main tax proposal would provide limited economic lift. “People are going to spend 30, 40 cents on the dollar, so the multiplier is going to be low,” said Adam S. Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. One area where analysts say the bill would be relatively effective is in providing assistance to states, many of which, to comply with balanced-budget requirements, are facing the prospect of steep cuts in jobs and services. Aid to states does not expand economic activity, but it helps prevent cuts that would make the downturn even worse. An $87 billion provision increasing the federal contribution for Medicaid costs is expected to go a long way to help states close their budget gaps. But there has been little discussion so far on a proposal by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that aid to states be provided in the form of loans, encouraging them to spend the money wisely and, once the economy rebounds, obligating them to help reduce the national debt. The bill would also create a $79 billion state fiscal stabilization fund, disbursing half the money in late 2009 and half in late 2010. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that little of that money would be spent this year. The greatest prospect of delay in spending is on infrastructure. The bill provides $30 billion for highway construction and tens of billions more for other transportation projects, water projects, park renovation, military construction; local housing projects and more. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that only 64 percent of the bill’s spending would be completed within 19 months, and spending on construction projects was among the slowest. If the economic recovery is slow, that timing could work out perfectly, giving the economy a jolt just when faster-acting components are wearing off. But if there is a quicker-than-expected rebound, many of those projects could start just in time to compete with renewed private spending. Then there is the risk that the projects themselves have little or no long-term economic value and simply drive up the budget deficit. Democrats bowed to Republican pressure on Tuesday and stripped from the bill a $200 million provision for National Mall restorations. A look at more than $140 billion in the bill’s spending on education finds some that can move quickly — for instance, $13 billion each over two years for Title I schools, which serve impoverished students, and for special education under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. But also included are programs that even under the most optimistic timetable will take longer to complete, like $20 billion for school renovations. These would provide little near-term help for the economy. Similar scrutiny could be trained on health care and especially on alternative energy programs. Like some of the education spending, a large chunk of health care spending would not start until 2012 or later, when, most experts think, the recession will be over. Unemployment benefits and food stamps are such useful stimulus tools that budget analysts refer to them as “automatic stabilizers.” They are built into the system, allowing money to flow quickly to people who need it and likely to spend it. The House bill would spend $20 billion over five years on added food stamps. If the recovery legislation is adopted by mid-February, officials say, the first added food stamps will be delivered in April and nearly all of that aid used that month. The legislation would also devote roughly $43 billion over two years to extend and increase unemployment benefits. The provision would add as much as 33 weeks of benefits, for states with the highest unemployment rates.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2009013019id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29assess.html

Overhunting affects seed dispersal and thus survival of hardwood trees, resulting in drastic reduction in Earth’s natural carbon storage, study finds

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Large fruit-eating monkeys and birds in tropical forests have been revealed as surprising climate change champions, whose loss to over-hunting is driving up carbon emissions. This is because their seed-spreading plays a vital role in the survival of huge, hard-wooded trees. Tropical forests store 40% of all the carbon on the Earth’s surface and the slashing of trees causes about 15% of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming. Long-lived, thick and hard-wooded trees are especially good carbon stores, but they have large seeds that can only be dispersed via defecation by large animals. These big creatures have suffered huge losses from subsistence hunters, meaning hardwood trees are being replaced with softwood trees, which have smaller seeds but store less carbon. “In much of the tropics these [large] animals are pretty much gone, outside of protected areas and sometimes even inside protected areas,” said Prof Carlos Peres, at the University of East Anglia, UK, one of the international team behind the new study. “[Hardwood trees] require these big beasts to disperse their seeds. This is what is being lost.” “Policies to reduce carbon emissions from tropical countries have primarily focused on deforestation,” Peres said. “But our research shows that a decline in large animal populations poses a serious risk for the maintenance of tropical forest carbon storage.” The new research was led by scientists at São Paulo State University in Brazil and published in Science Advances. It focused on the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil, where 95% of all trees rely on animals to disperse seeds, and analysed the interactions between 800 animal species and 2,000 tree species. It found losses of large animals like woolly spider monkeys, tapirs and toucans leads to the loss of hardwood trees. These are replace by softwood trees, whose smaller seeds (less than 12mm long) are spread by small fruit-eating marsupials, bats and birds which are not the target of hunters. The scientists estimated that 10-15% of the carbon stored in the original mixed forest is lost. Related: Scientists reveal there are 3tn trees in the world Peres said the same effects were likely to apply to other tropical forests, including the Amazon. “This is a fairly universal process,” he said. “It is happening across the tropics, in Africa, southeast Asia, everywhere there are these species-rich forests.” The scientists concluded: “Our result highlights the fragility of carbon storage service in tropical forests under the current global change conditions. Halting the ongoing, fast-paced [animal loss in] tropical forests will not only save large charismatic animals and the plants they disperse but also have effects on climate change, carbon markets, and reforestation.” In November, the first comprehensive estimate of threatened species in the Amazon rainforest found that more than half of the myriad species could be heading for extinction. Among the species expected to suffer significant falls in numbers are the Brazil nut, and wild cacao and açai trees, all important food sources.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015121819id_/http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/18/carbon-emissions-loss-of-monkeys-and-birds-in-tropical-forests

Forensic experts have found the remains of Muslim victims in what could be the biggest mass grave uncovered since the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

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Specialists said on Monday that the bodies and body parts had been moved to a remote grave near the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik to hide traces of mass killings. "We have found dozens of bodily remains - some complete, some incomplete - and for now we are sure that this is a secondary grave," said Murat Hurtic, head of an expert team from the Commission for Missing Persons. Hurtic said experts had found one skull with a bullet hole which meant the victim was shot from close range. They also found the remains of women and children. "We think it will also be one of the biggest mass graves by the number of the remains found" Murat Hurtic, head of expert team, Commission for Missing Persons "We believe it is one of the biggest, by area it certainly is, and we think it will also be one of the biggest mass graves by the number of the remains found," Hurtic added. Experts believe Muslims from Zvornik and Srebrenica, captured by Bosnian Serb forces early in the war in a wave of ethnic cleansing, may have been dumped at the Crni Vrh mass grave. Forensic specialists and court officials are working in the 40-metre by five-metre grave, deep in woodland, removing earth from dozens of piles of clothes, bones and shoes. The week-old exhumation is expected to last at least another month. The biggest primary mass grave uncovered so far was near Glumina, which contained 274 bodies. More than 500 remains of Muslims from Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb forces killed up to 8000 boys and men in 1995, were found in Kamenica, the biggest secondary mass grave. About 1300 Muslims died in Zvornik and the bodies of some 500 have been found, including 130 exhumed last month. Of 28,500 people missing from the Bosnian war, mostly Muslims, around 16,500 have been exhumed and 11,500 identified.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20150518074734id_/http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/08/200849155832479213.html

The Red Bulls, flustered early by the atmosphere, gave up the first goal. But the team calmed down and started creating chances that led to the win.

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The chant began in the 23rd minute: “We want Pirlo! We want Pirlo!” New York City F.C. was leading, 1-0, in its second game against the Red Bulls, and Pirlo, a World Cup-winning Italian midfielder who is renowned for his free kicks and seems to excel wherever he goes, had just appeared on the Jumbotron overlooking the field, watching the game with Frank Lampard. Pirlo, the fans probably knew, is set to become N.Y.C.F.C.’s latest high-profile acquisition, following the paths of Lampard and David Villa. The light-blue contingent of fans welcomed him, loudly. But as the Red Bulls scored three second-half goals to win, 3-1, in front of an announced sellout crowd of 48,047 on Sunday at Yankee Stadium, it was tough to imagine, even for the most avid N.Y.C.F.C. supporters, that the arrivals of Pirlo or Lampard would provide a surefire fix to the team’s problems. The Red Bulls’ goals came from Bradley Wright-Phillips, who netted both goals in the Red Bulls’ 2-1 win in the teams’ first matchup on May 10; Chris Duvall; and Matt Miazga. “I don’t think we got a real, honest effort out of all of our players,” N.Y.C.F.C. Coach Jason Kreis said in a somber postgame news conference. Kreis’s squad had entered Sunday on a three-game winning streak and four-match unbeaten streak. “The players had started to feel as if they had made it,” Kreis said. The start of Sunday’s game buzzed with energy as N.Y.C.F.C. fans piled out of packed subway trains and jostled their way into the Stadium. Many of them wore Villa and Lampard jerseys, and some wore Pirlo’s No. 21 jersey from the Azzurri, the Italian national team. In the sixth minute, after Villa’s curled ball into the box was headed away by Red Bulls midfielder Sacha Kljestan, Mix Diskerud tracked it down and floated a searching ball back into the scrum inside the 18-yard box. Andrew Jacobson headed the ball onto the chest of Thomas McNamara, who expertly brought it down and half-volleyed a shot into the lower right corner, past a diving Luis Robles, for the game’s first goal. McNamara, a thick midfielder with a mullet, sprinted toward the sideline to celebrate, with open arms and a broad smile. The crowd, electric from the start, erupted. “The message before the game was that it may take a while for the game to settle down, and it might be crazy early on and there’s going to be a lot of emotion,” Red Bulls Coach Jesse Marsch said. “The message to the team was it may not settle down until the second half.” The Red Bulls calmed down even earlier, around the 25th minute, when they started creating chances. They became more alert and attack-minded, closing down opponents more quickly and pushing forward. In the 31st minute, midfielder Mike Grella slipped the ball to Wright-Phillips, who pushed a left-footed shot across the face of the goal. Then, in first-half stoppage time, an open look for Wright-Phillips in front of the goal was deflected away. Neither chance went in, but the message was clear: The Red Bulls were coming. They carried that momentum into the second half, and two minutes in, Kljestan sent a looping cross into the box from the left wing. Wright-Phillips met it and sent a first-time, left-footed volley into the back of the net to tie the game. Five minutes later, Mike Grella popped the ball into the box, Anatole Abang headed it to the back post and Duvall powered a volley past goalie Josh Saunders. The Red Bulls led, 2-1. “I think the second half was a continuation of the first half,” Kreis said. “We got away from everything that we’ve been trying to do over the past several weeks and months.” To cement Kreis’s misery, Miazga, who is 6 feet 3 inches, jumped over a defender and headed the ball past Saunders in the 73rd minute for the game’s final goal. After scoring, Miazga ran to a patch of baseball infield dirt near midfield and pretended to hit a home run. After the game, Kreis said he was excited that Lampard and Pirlo would soon join the team. “But right now,” he said, “I’m just extremely focused with being disappointed with this game, so it’s hard for me to see past that right now.” A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 2015, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Budding Rivalry Changes Venue, but Not Result, as Red Bulls Roll. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

newsroom-57

https://web.archive.org/web/2015062919id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/sports/soccer/red-bulls-win-second-nycfc-rivalry-match-with-dominant-second-half.html

In the world of the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” it’s not just the fire-breathing dragons which drive the plot, but gold dragon coins.

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(SPOILER ALERT: There's a lot of plot details for season 4 ahead.) "The Iron Bank will have its due," is not as widely recognized a phrase as the Stark family motto "Winter is Coming," but it may end up being almost as important to the outcome of the series. "Whether history or fantasy, the game of thrones prevents the spread of sound economic ideas, and precludes good economic policies," Matt McCaffrey, a post-doctoral academic in Liberal and Integrative Studies at the University of Illinois who has written previously about the economics of "Game of Thrones," told CNBC via email. These countries are winning the 'Game of Thrones' The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros is pretty much a basic feudal economy, generating very little income of its own. Instead, it has turned to the nearby Free Cities—each of which has a bank and a thriving trade in spices, cloths or slaves—for loans to fund its campaigns. The Iron Bank, located in city state Braavos, seems to be the most powerful. The Bank appears to be an example of a "too big to fail" lender—so if one king or another doesn't start paying its debts, there could be trouble ahead. This is a real case of example of "sovereign debt." Tycho Nestoris, the most prominent envoy of the Bank, is being introduced to the TV show this season—earlier than in the books. He is played by well-known British actor Mark Gatiss. HBO confirmed "this part of the story is quite integral" to season 4, which begins Sunday. Game of Thrones and Walking Dead face-off It can be said that Cersei Lannister's hold on the throne starts to weaken not when rumors start about who is the real father of her children, but when she stops paying the Iron Bank. Unfortunately for her, the throne is distinctly sub-prime at this point, and the Iron Bank quickly transfers allegiance to her enemy Stannis Baratheon. So is the Iron Bank a little like the International Monetary Fund or World Bank in backing particular horses in one country? Well, for example, there were rapid changes of governments in the euro zone's stricken countries as they struggled to impose austerity measures imposed by international lenders like the International Monetary Fund during the region's debt crises.

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Where to eat, sleep, shop and play, with recommendations from actor John Leguizamo, artist Olga de Amaral, designer Nancy Gonzalez and Nascar driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

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THIS 8,700-FOOT-HIGH Andean city has supported a thriving television industry for years. But over the last half-decade it has become an international entertainment center, drawing jet-setters with a taste for gourmet eateries, chic boutiques and contemporary galleries. Though it's still a bit gritty, Bogotá is no longer a poster child for drug-fueled violence—and residents are living it up. They party with abandon, hitting bars and clubs in formerly shady areas like Zona Rosa. Local hipsters listen to indie bands at the roof terrace of nightclub Armando Records before hopping over to El Coq, a bar built around a tree. Even the historic quarter of La Candelaria—home to gothic churches and centuries-old Spanish-tiled houses—is now a bohemian enclave where you'll find graffiti murals, unexpected hybrids (like hair-salon-cum-gallery La Peluquería) and modern architecture, such as the Rogelio Salmona-designed Gabriel Garcia Márquez Cultural Center. Up north, wealthier neighborhoods have transformed from strictly residential quarters into high-design culinary zones. Choose between Peruvian or French, tapas or comfort food in the gourmet district known as the Zona G. Or sit at one of the open-air cafes surrounding Parque de la 93, a grassy patch that is a popular meeting place for the well-heeled. Bogotá's cultural calendar is perpetually full. The Bogotá International Book Fair just began. Rock al Parque, the biggest rock festival on the continent, heats up the end of June. The Bogotá Film Festival and Bogotá International Art Fair—ARTBO—will liven things up in October. But don't feel limited to major events; the city's cool year-round climate makes any season a welcome one. Olga de Amaral Colombian textile artist Modern Art // Galería La Cometa. An exceptional gallery space—well-illuminated and large. The owner and director, Esteban Jaramillo, is really knowledgeable about the art scene here. He has shown my work before. Carrera 10 No. 94A-25; galerialacometa.com History Lesson // Museo Nacional de Colombia. The museum was built in a colonial prison, with cells functioning as galleries. Permanent exhibitions focus on Colombia's art and history. There's also a nice cafe with seating in the courtyard. Carrera 7 No. 28-66; museonacional.gov.co Gem of a Jeweler // Lee Wasson. A reputable emerald dealer, Lee is an American who has been in business for nearly 40 years. He offers good prices and does custom orders. Lee will come to your home or hotel. leewasson.com Café Date // Il Pomeriggio. I usually order an espresso at this European-style cafe. They have Italian and Colombian coffees, as well as pastries and finger sandwiches. It's in the Centro Comercial Andino, a shopping mall with domestic and international brands. Centro Comercial Andino, Carrera 11 No. 82-01; 57-1-616-8616 Restaurant Row // Usaquén. A small town that was annexed by Bogotá, it has colonial architecture and pedestrian roads crowded with restaurants. We like 7,16, which specializes in steak and has a solid wine list. You enter through a garden. 7,16: Calle 119B No. 6-28; 57-1-213-4271 John Leguizamo Bogotá-born actor, producer and comedian Live Music // El Sitio. Parque de la 93 is surrounded by bars and cafes. This place is small and gets packed, but people don't get aggro about space. Bands play reggae, cumbia and salsa, and everyone sings to the music. Carrera 11A No. 93B-12; elsitiobar.com Cultural Hub // Casa Ensamble. Actress Alejandra Borrero runs this big, trippy house where music, theater and visual arts converge in creative ways. They have exhibitions, comedy troupes, performance art—real avant-garde stuff. Carrera 24 No. 41-69; casaensamble.com Luxe Leather // Mario Hernandez. He makes bags for women and men. The leather is buttery and the linings are cool. It's all really well constructed and made to last. Multiple locations, including Centro Comercial Andino, Carrera 11 No. 82-71; mariohernandez.com Neighborhood to Watch // La Candelaria. The colonial part of Bogotá has colorful old homes with terra-cotta roofs, giant doors and balconies. A lot of artists have moved there. Global Plays // Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá. This biannual spring festival takes over the city. You can see theater groups from all over the world—every genre, from free street theater to Broadway-type shows. Colombians are really into live performance. That's where I get my love of storytelling. festivaldeteatro.com.co Juan Pablo Montoya Nascar driver, founder of the Bogotá-based Formula Smiles Foundation Tee Time // San Andrés Golf Club. I play a lot of golf in Colombia; the Bogotá area has some incredible courses with views of the mountains. Kilómetro 2, vía La Punta, Funza; sanandresgolfclub.com Authentic Fare // Club Colombia. Chef Harry Sassón has a bunch of really good restaurants in the city. But this is where I go when I want typical Colombian food—hearty soups, arepas, empanadas. It's inside a beautifully restored old house. Carrera 9, Avenida 82, No. 9-11; 57-1-249-5681 No Frills Dining // La Mazorca. A hole-in-the-wall restaurant located 20 minutes outside of the city—and worth the trip. People sit outdoors on tree trunks and order from a smoky grill. Whatever you get—carne asada, longanisa, plantains—it all arrives piled high on a big aluminum tray. Kilómetro 8, vía La Calera; 57-1-860-9286 Party Central // Andrés Carnes de Res. I don't go out much at night, but when we have friends in town and want to show them a good time we take them to Andrés. The décor is really eclectic, with all sorts of trinkets hanging from the ceiling. There's a dance floor, but people like to get up on the tables. Calle 82 No. 12-21; andrescarnederes.com Day Trip // Guatavita. This colonial town is a couple of hours from the city center. We have a farm there, where I love to play with my dirt bikes and ATVs. Explorers thought the lake was the site of the legendary El Dorado. Nancy Gonzalez Luxury handbag designer, born in Colombia Old World Inn // Charleston Casa Medina. Bogotá's grand hotel—it was built in 1946 and elegantly decorated in colonial style. Presidents have stayed here. The service is impeccable. Carrera 7 No. 69A-22; hotelcharlestoncasamedina.com Gobs of Gold // Museo del Oro. My favorite museum is full of pre-Columbian gold pieces. You can see how indigenous people were able to work with gold in such an artistic way. Their designs were so advanced, and the level of detail is inspiring. Calle 16 No. 5-41; banrepcultural.org/gold-museum Affordable Jewels // Galeria Cano. If you're looking for a great, inexpensive gift, this store sells gold and gold-plated replicas of pre-Columbian jewelry. Carrera 17 No. 33-24; galeriacano.com.co Uninterrupted Views // Cerro de Monserrate. This mountain in the center of Bogotá has incredible views of the city and the peaks that surround it. You get there on a funicular. At the top there's a church and a cozy restaurant, Casa San Isidro. cerromonserrate.com Cool Crafts // Artesanías de Colombia. The shop carries crafts made in different regions of Colombia. They have rings made from tagua nuts, macramé shawls, black pottery, sisal baskets. As everything is handmade, no two items are the same. And it's all very refined and sophisticated. El Retiro Shopping Center, Calle 82 No. 11-75; artesaniasdecolombia.com.co Museo Botero Home to Fernando Botero's private collection, this colonial mansion displays the work of the Colombian maestro alongside canvases by the likes of Miró and Monet. banrepcultural.org/museo-botero // Mercado de las Pulgas Usaqén is liveliest on Sundays, when this flea market is held. Carrera 7, Calle 118 // La Puerta Falsa Open since 1816, this family-owned eatery serves up a typical breakfast of tamales and chocolate santafereño (hot chocolate with a side of cheese). Calle 11 No. 6-50; 57-1-286-5091 // Catedral de Sal A massive underground church carved out of a former salt mine, an hour north of Bogotá. catedraldesal.gov.co A version of this article appeared April 20, 2013, on page D9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Bogotá.

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Manuel Pineiro, ruthless but urbane spymaster who for more than 30 years led Cuba's intelligence apparatus and directed its efforts to export revolution to third world, dies in car crash in Havana; photo (M)

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From 1961 until 1974, as Deputy Minister of the Interior, Mr. Pineiro was in charge of the state security apparatus that both protected Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders from assassination attempts and infiltrated spies into the Cuban exile movement here. In that post, he also supervised the establishment of the internal security organs that monitored and severely punished any sign of domestic opposition to Mr. Castro's rule. By the mid-1970's, Mr. Pineiro had been placed in charge of the innocuously named Americas division of the international relations department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. Unofficially known as the ''Ministry of Revolution,'' that entity supplied arms, money, intelligence, guidance and a rear base to a variety of leftist guerrilla movements in Latin America that wanted to duplicate the Cuban model. When the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979, its leaders privately described as indispensable the role played by Mr. Pineiro, who spent several months in Managua as an adviser to the new Government. A period of intense activity followed into the early 1980's, with Mr. Pineiro helping to organize and direct revolutionary movements in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and Grenada. In recent years, with a cash-strapped Cuba intent on improving relations with the rest of Latin America in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Mr. Pineiro had become somewhat superfluous, and his activities diminished. Officially retired, he became a fixture on the Havana diplomatic party circuit, the luxuriant beard that gave him his nickname now a snowy white. Diplomats in Havana said today that Mr. Pineiro had attended a reception at the Mexican Embassy on Wednesday and apparently lost control of the car he was driving as he returned home. Though both Cuban and foreign officials today cited unconfirmed accounts that he had suffered a heart attack, the brief official Prensa Latina report announcing his death offered no details, saying merely that he had perished ''as a result of an automobile accident.'' Manuel Pineiro Losada was born on May 14, 1934, the son of the Bacardi rum representative in the province of Matanzas. He had a privileged upbringing, and when it came time for him to enroll in college, his father sent him to study business at Columbia University in New York, where he met and married his first wife, an American ballet dancer named Lorna Burdsall. But after his return to Cuba, Mr. Pineiro joined Mr. Castro's 26th of July Movement, smuggling arms and supervising urban bomb attacks before he took to the Sierra Maestra to become a guerrilla fighter. He was quickly assigned to the staff of Raul Castro, Mr. Castro's brother, on the eastern front and, according to Mr. Castaneda, ''began building the Cuban intelligence and security apparatus even before the revolution had triumphed.'' The low point of Mr. Pineiro's career, most intelligence experts agree, came in 1967, when Che Guevara was captured and killed in Bolivia while leading a revolutionary insurgency that Mr. Pineiro was supervising and supplying from Havana. As recently as October, as Cuba was commemorating the 30th anniversary of Mr. Guevara's death, Mr. Pineiro was still defending his decision not to send a rescue team to extract the Argentine-born guerrilla hero, with whom he had often disagreed on ideological and strategic questions. In recent years, Mr. Pineiro continued to cultivate his contacts with his former proteges in the Cuban intelligence and security apparatus and with foreign diplomats, intellectuals and journalists, many of whom remain unconvinced by his assurances that he was then out of the intelligence business. Those who met him in Havana found him to be elegant and cultured, a connoisseur of food, wine, the opposite sex, conversation and literature. ''He was one of the last of the old hard-liners, a true-blue, unrepentant revolutionary and Fidelista,'' Mr. Anderson said. ''But as a person, he was extraordinarily perceptive, a great raconteur, a roue almost, very personable and blunt, with an endearingly roguish way about him.'' Mr. Pineiro is survived by his wife, the Chilean journalist, writer and Marxist theoretician Marta Harnecker, and a daughter. He was buried this afternoon at Colon Cemetery in Havana with President Castro in attendance and with the full official honors due him as a Commander of the Revolution.

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After selling off its financial arm, GE Capital, General Electric is poised to once again become one of the best dividend growth stocks around.

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For the better part of a century, General Electric was the king of all dividend stocks. It returned money to shareholders every quarter since 1899, and increased its payout for 32 years in a row, making it one of the S&P 500’s “Dividend Aristocrats.” But it gave up its crown in 2009 when the toll of the financial crisis forced it to cut its dividend by more than two thirds—its only reduction since the Great Depression. Now, after the industrial conglomerate said Friday it would sell off its financial unit GE Capital, it’s poised to retake its position as a dividend growth stock for the ages with a promise to return more than $90 billion to investors by 2018 through share buybacks and dividends. Following the market crash in 2008, GE began raising its dividend again in 2010. Since then, it has almost doubled its quarterly payout from 12 cents to 23 cents per share. While that amount is still lower than the pre-recession distribution of 31 cents per share, investors expect that the dividend will only accelerate from here—especially after GE rids itself of its financial arm. “The dividend history of the company is important in judging management’s commitment to paying a dividend and sharing their success with shareholders,” says Jack Leslie, a portfolio manager at Miller/Howard who helps oversee $9 billion, including the Touchstone Premium Yield Equity Fund. “But investors need to be forward-looking and not focused exclusively on what happened in the past.” Leslie bought GE shares after the company resumed increasing its dividend after the cut – and after appearing to be healthy enough to sustain that growth for a long time to come. Already, the stock has more than doubled in value since he bought it. “You want to make sure that [a company] can pay its creditors, pay its taxes, and have enough left over to pay and increase its dividends,” he says. “You want to see that the business is improving, and has the growth to support the dividend increases. “ Although GE said Friday that it does not plan to raise its dividend until after 2016 (it aims to complete the sale of GE Capital over the next two years), the company is expressing an almost unprecedented amount of shareholder friendliness. The $90 billion it intends to return to investors includes a $50 billion stock buyback that ties Apple AAPL for the biggest share repurchase ever. Besides, without its financial businesses, GE will be able to loosen its purse strings and give away a lot more cash. Cutting ties with GE Capital means the parent company can likely free itself of the restrictions government regulators imposed on GE in the wake of the financial crisis—effectively treating it like a bank that is too big to fail. The “systemically important” status (which regulators also slapped on AIG AIG , among others) has required GE to keep more money in its coffers than it otherwise might, and subjected its dividend and buyback plans to government approval. GE said in its a statement that it is already working with regulators to remove the yoke of GE Capital’s designation as systemically important. While GE shares GE rose nearly 11% Friday, the stock still has a dividend yield of 3.2%, and some investors see it as a value play, in addition to a sure-fire source of income. “I just think a lot of investors have written them off and say to themselves, why own something that’s half industrial, half financial, when they can go out and recreate that by buying individual stocks?” says Tom Huber, manager of the $4.8 billion T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund, who just recently bought GE again after avoiding it following the recession. “I guess that’s essentially what the opportunity is: As that business makes changes, the earnings stream is, in my opinion, more dependable and more durable, and there’s room for the valuation to improve.”

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Drug companies taking aim at Alzheimer’s disease face big obstacles but see huge demand for therapies that would help milllions of patients.

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You could fill a small book with all the medical problems that overtook my mother in the last year of her life. Some of her illnesses, like cancer, became increasingly grave, while others were robbing her of something as important as life itself. She couldn’t remember things and got easily mixed up. Soon a lot of routine chores became too hard to manage. Sometimes she confused me with my father, who had died nearly two decades earlier. The person I knew was fading away right in front of me and the drug we tried didn’t seem to do a bit of good. This is not an unusual story. In fact, I’m telling it now because it’s become so common; so many of us have seen a person we know or love afflicted that way. Most also know that modern medicine offers little in the way of help. So an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s has become a kind of holy grail of biotechnology, a goal that has proved difficult to achieve but would surely could change millions of lives and be worth untold fortunes. “It’s one of the biggest health challenges in the world for the next couple of decades,” said Rajiv Kaul, the portfolio manager of Fidelity Select Biotechnology Portfolio, who invests more than $13 billion in life sciences companies. The experimental drug showed “extremely positive” results in slowing the mental decline of a small number of patients with the disease. Consider the recent news from Biogen Inc., the Cambridge company that last week showed real promise for slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s. To be sure, Biogen tested the drug among just a small group of patients with early or mild cases of the disease. But the showing was strong enough that the company said it planned to jump ahead to advanced clinical trials, a process that could take several years. So what is news like that worth? Many billions of dollars. By one simple measure, the stock of Biogen has boomed by more than 50 percent since December, when it first released a summary of those early test results. In less than four months, Biogen’s total market value has increased by some $38 billion. Stock prices don’t go up or down in a vacuum. The biotech business has been riding high lately; a broad biotech industry stock index, for example, was up 23 percent over the same period. Biogen, already the most valuable company in Massachusetts, operates a big drug business with products treating other diseases such as multiple sclerosis. But $38 billion is a lot of money. It’s more than the total value of other big companies, such as Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Boston Scientific Inc., and State Street Corp. Clearly, the stock market is ready to put huge sums of money into companies with promising treatments for Alzheimer’s patients. Biogen, which tested its drug on fewer than 200 people, has a long way to go to prove the therapy can help a big patient population. Other Alzheimer’s drug candidates looked good in the early stages of development, only to disappoint later. Failure has been the expensive norm for drug companies attacking the disease: By one account, more than 100 different efforts to develop a treatment for the disease have failed since 1998. For all the pressing needs of patients and families dealing with Alzheimer’s today, drug companies and investors look to the future and see something much bigger. Simple demographics tell you that America’s Alzheimer’s population, perhaps 5 million people, will multiply in the years ahead. Some estimates suggest as many as 30 million. Beyond personal suffering, growth like that has important economic implications. It will cost a fortune to take care of all those people, so drugs that at least slow the progression of the disease will be very valuable. “It’s not only the devastating nature of the disease but, frankly, there’s an intrinsic threat to a society that isn’t well equipped to deal with an aging population with a cognitive disability,” said Jonathan Gertler, managing partner and chief executive of Back Bay Life Science Associates, a Boston consulting company. It’s important to note that no one is talking about drugs to cure or stop Alzheimer’s in its tracks. Even Biogen’s drug, the therapy embraced so enthusiastically on Wall Street, is only hoped to slow the progression of the disease. Sadly, there is no shortage of terrible diseases and some of them afflict large numbers of patients around the world. All compete for the attention of scientists and investors. One of them — cancer — was once spoken about as a single all-encompassing disease. Years of progress in labs and hospitals changed that. Now there are many different types of cancer, and each needs its own specific treatment. Patients think of themselves dealing with this particular kind of cancer, or that one, benefiting from much better science to help them. In the future, I would bet that the world’s Alzheimer’s patients will be treated the same way. Better medicine will help identify their problems and treat each one of them with much greater precision. Like many cancer treatments, management of a disease will be the main goal. And that would be real progress.

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The all-wheel-drive concept was joined with revisions of popular models such as the Chevrolet Equinox, Honda Pilot and Acura RDX. And a surprising Mitsubishi.

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The 2015 Chicago auto show, where press previews were held on 12 February, was all about plausible deniability. The knock on US drivers is that they do not buy hatchbacks or station wagons, but they do – provided they come packaged as crossovers. Kia led the way with a fun, ruggedized version of its Soul model. With off-road tires, a smidge more ground clearance and all-wheel-drive courtesy of an electric motor at the rear axle, the Soul Trail’ster concept is both hatchback and wagon, neatly disguised as a mini-SUV. The Trail’ster boasts increased ground clearance, Pirelli winter tires and the requisite skid plates armouring its underside against rock damage. “This is a near-term look at how a production Soul could easily evolve into an all-wheel-drive machine that can escape the city,” said chief designer Tom Kearns. In place of the Soul’s optional, heavy and expensive panoramic sunroof, the concept Trail’ster wears a cheap, lightweight and outdoorsy canvas rollback roof that evokes Jeeps of old. Kia has made a habit of teasing fans with SUV-themed Soul concept and project cars, without delivering them in showroom form – an unfortunate history that US executive vice president of marketing Michael Sprague acknowledged in Chicago. “It has happened before,” Sprague said. “[Production prospects] largely come down to the feedback we get from media and consumers.” Stronger clues to the Trail’ster’s production potential comes from its mechanical bits. Kia converted the front-drive Soul to all-wheel drive by bolting in an electric drive module that independently powers the rear wheels. This so-called “through-the-road” style hybrid requires no change to the conventional powertrain, but adds 35 horsepower and 100 pound-feet of torque to the rear wheels, for a total of 220hp and 285lb-ft. Using a lithium-polymer battery pack like that of all Hyundai and Kia hybrids, the Trail’ster would achieve 25% to 30% better fuel economy in the city and about 5% percent improved highway efficiency, according to Sprague. Honda, meanwhile, has a longstanding best-selling crossover SUV in the Pilot. But as market tastes have shifted towards more carlike crossovers, the plausible deniability conferred by the current model’s blocky styling is seemingly no longer required. Trucklike qualities of the Pilot have consequently been dialled down for the 2016 model year, though the SUV still rides high on new 20in wheels, a first for conservative Honda. Inside, family-hauler amenities include a “locker” for storing and charging mobile devices, five USB charging ports, a 115-volt AC plug and a rear-seat video system with Blue-Ray disc player and HDMI input. Unfortunately, the Pilot is also saddled with the Honda Display Audio System – whose touch-sensitive controls rank among the trickiest in the industry – and the curious pushbutton shifter seen previously on the Acura TLX sport sedan. The Acura side of the Honda family also bolstered its SUV line in Chicago, with a refreshed RDX compact SUV, reinforcing what the company described as the best-selling pair of SUVs (along with the mid-sized MDX) in the US market. As seems to be the trend, the RDX wears slipperier sheet metal more suited to cruising highways than traversing dry washes. Powertrain tweaks add six horsepower to the 3.5-litre gasoline V6 engine, and a slew of gears to the automatic transmission, as the RDX now has nine forward ratios. Acura is also pressing its case as a safety leader, as the refreshed RDX is upgraded to withstand the much-dreaded severe small overlap offset crash test, introduced in recent years by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a testing centre financed by the US automotive insurance industry. Acura predicts a top score on that an all other tests, which would make the Honda subsidiary the only luxury brand with top scores on all the relevant tests. The Chevrolet Equinox has been a top-seller in the North American mainstream compact crossover market, and parent company General Motors charted a conservative path of sensible improvements rather than wholesale change for a model that has posted its best sales in recent months. In fact, the Equinox is Chevrolet’s best-selling passenger vehicle in the US, its sales trailing only those of the Silverado pickup truck. Revisions reach seat fabrics, trim and instrumentation, as well as headlights and taillights. New safety technologies such as blind-spot warning and rear cross-traffic alert make their debuts. Mitsubishi, on the other hand, has very little to lose, considering the brand’s anemic North American sales. That let the company be a bit daring with its Concept GC-PHEV, a crossover SUV not far removed from the GR-HEV pickup concept shown at the 2013 Geneva motor show, featuring a supercharged V6 gasoline engine, lithium-ion battery-powered electric motor, eight-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive. The concept’s upright, boxy lines buck the trend toward more carlike styling, in a bid to recall Mitsubishi’s popular Montero off-roader. The plug-in electric drivetrain permits an estimated 25 miles of electric-only driving, while the Concept GC-PHEV is said to deliver better than 35mpg in hybrid gas-electric driving mode. Mitsubishi is mum on whether it will actually sell a production version of the Concept GC-PHEV, which is not surprising, considering the brand’s tenuous position in the US market. But whether called an SUV, a crossover, a hatchback or a wagon, such a vehicle would be getting into a very broad family act. If you would like to comment on this or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders he "feels great" and will continue to work during treatments.

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In a letter to Berkshire (BRK.B) investors, Buffett, 81, the chairman and CEO, said he has been diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer and that he will commence daily radiation treatment in mid-July. Buffett, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha for his investment prowess, stressed that his condition is treatable and is "not remotely life-threatening or even debilitating in any meaningful way." The five-year survival rate for the type of cancer Buffett has — a stage 1 tumor, in which the cancer hasn't spread outside the prostate gland — is 100%, according to the American Cancer Society. Even after 15 years, the survival rate for all stages of prostate cancer combined is 91%. Buffett's letter suggests he will continue to run Berkshire as he has for almost 50 years. His upcoming treatment would restrict Buffett's travel but would not otherwise change his normal work schedule. Still, the statement got investors talking about the succession plan at Berkshire. At the annual meeting in February, Buffett said the board had identified the person to succeed him as CEO, but the person was not identified. "When a transfer of responsibility is required, it will be seamless, and Berkshire's prospects will remain bright," Buffett wrote in February in his letter to shareholders. Buffett also said there were two backup candidates. Jeff Matthews, a Berkshire investor and author of Secrets In Plain Sight: Business & Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett, says the news "tells us that he is mortal and also reinforces the idea that the succession planning he has been working on will be needed." More than 200,000 men are diagnosed annually with prostate cancer and about 30,000 will die from the disease. Five-year survival rates: *About four of five prostate cancers are found in this early stage. Source: American Cancer Society Credits: Kevin A. Kepple, Anne Carey and Liz Szabo While Buffett is irreplaceable, investors say he has stitched together a strong group of companies, ranging from railroads to retail, that will prosper long after he is gone. "It's a shock to everybody," says Andy Kilpatrick, author of Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett. "But his life will go on, and Berkshire will go on. There's no need for any emergency alarm. But it's something to watch over the next three to five years." Most prostate tumors grow very slowly, especially in older men, in whom the disease is extremely common. Autopsy studies, in fact, have found that most men will die with cancer in their prostate cancer, although most never knew it. Because prostate cancer is so slow-growing, the medical community has been hotly debating how just aggressively to screen for it and treat it. That's because the treatments — which can lead to impotence, incontinence, and even death — can cause more harm than the actual cancers, says Otis Brawley, the cancer society's chief medical officer, in his recent book, How We Do Harm. In December, an expert panel from the National Institutes of Health said that about 100,000 of the 240,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer annually don't need immediate treatment, and instead could safely opt for "active surveillance" — monitoring the disease with tests and scans to see if it grows, rather than going straight to surgery or radiation. In October, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent expert panel that advises the government on health care, announced that healthy men should no longer be screened with the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test for prostate cancer. The risk of causing harm outweighed the uncertain benefits, the task force said. Studies have failed to clearly show that getting a PSA test saves many lives, if any, Brawley says.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2012041819id_/http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/story/2012-04-17/warren-buffett-cancer-berkshire-hathaway/54367946/1

The doomerangers, unlike the boomerangers, leave their family home for many years (sometimes up to a decade) before returning. Here, they share their stories

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Most people will be familiar with the boomerang generation – a term applied to today’s graduates who choose to return to the family home after university while they pay off their debts and look for a job. But you might know less about the “doomerangers”, roughly defined as those who left home many years before, only to return – sometimes up to a decade later – due to financial circumstances or the sudden loss of their home due to a break-up. According to a survey commissioned by Churchill Insurance, around seven million Britons have found themselves in this situation. On average they spend six months living with their parents. Malachai, 28, from London, falls into this category. He moved back home, after nearly seven years of living independently, when his relationship broke down. “I was living with my girlfriend and felt as though I was somewhat settled,” he says. At 28 your social media feed is full of status updates about home ownership. I felt I had failed. “I initially felt embarrassed and even ashamed about moving back home. The more pragmatic side of me knew it was the right option, however. The worst part of it all was the feeling of isolation ... also at 28 your social media feed is full of pictures of your friends’ babies and status updates about home ownership. I felt I had failed.” The main reason Malachai moved back home was the excessive cost of renting. “I realised that in order to one day have my own place I needed to start saving, a lot.” He adds that it’s becoming more common these days to move out for years and then return, because renting doesn’t seem viable any more and people are now willing to consider all sorts of other arrangements. Financial difficulties also forced Dean, 28, back home, where he stayed for nine months after losing his job. “I moved back to my home country after a period living and working abroad and couldn’t find work for nearly a year. Though I wasn’t broke I had no regular income and I didn’t want to eat into my savings. Living with the parents represented a very cheap way to live while job searching.” He adds: “It was pretty depressing, being jobless, single and living with my parents at 27. I felt like a failure as an adult.” But not everyone returns home for financial reasons. When Kelly, 47, from Lincoln moved back in with her parents after a breakup she found the company more reassuring than anything else. “Of course one of the best aspects of being back at home is not paying rent or a mortgage. However, what I am most grateful for is the companionship, laughter, support and care that is always there for me. Because my parents are now both more or less retired it means I can go out to work, but still come home to pets without feeling guilty. I can also keep an eye on my parents, and I feel a great responsibility and gratitude to them. As the eldest child, and given the fact that my siblings live away, I will be the one who will be taking charge of things when the time comes.” For Jane Fryer, 41, from Ontario, Canada, who moved back home after 13 years, returning to her mum and dad also offered much-needed emotional support. “After separating from my husband of 11 years I lived on my own for not quite a year. I met a man and soon afterwards became pregnant. Shortly before the baby was born I moved into his house. When the relationship broke down I had nowhere to go but back home,” she says. She adds that home was a place of security and refuge: “Exactly what I needed after leaving an abusive relationship unexpectedly.” Then there are those who return, in part, to look after their parents. George Tusk, 40, from Bracknell, Berkshire, did this, bringing his wife back home with him. “My mother was becoming increasingly frail. Even after 20 years of doing quite well I was in no position to buy anything in the south-east of England bigger than a shoebox, and my mother was reluctant to leave the area my father was buried. The obvious solution was for my family to move in with her until she felt it was time to move into an assisted living apartment.” Moving back home, regardless of the situation, is not without its challenges. Fryer, who has three children and is now a single parent, says her parents have been instrumental in making sure she can continue to be there for her kids, but it also meant they were privy to certain aspects of her life they wouldn’t normally be. “That’s hard. It’s a little bit like being a 41-year-old teenager again, trying to balance their ideas of how I should be living my life against the life I would like to lead. I want to be respectful of their space and of the help they offer to me every day, but I feel they see me only as their daughter and mother to their grandchildren – and not necessarily as a woman, someone who isn’t just a daughter and a mother.” The worst aspects of living at home are: having to live in my bedroom, being treated like I am a child again Becky, 39, from the north-west feels like a kid again. “The worst aspects of living at home are having to live in my bedroom, being treated like I am a child again and being asked where I’m going, who I’ll be with and what time I’ll be back. I have lied a fair bit,” she says. Emily, 40, from the West Midlands, who moved home after eight years, says the worst part of it is not having her own space. She moved back to save for a deposit and to requalify and get a masters, something she feels is essential these days. “My friends are welcome but I couldn’t make a mess in the kitchen and leave it until the next day to clear up. It’s not good for dating. I can’t play music. I sort of feel like I am being punished while feeling guilty for being so ungrateful.” Tusk bemoans the impact living with Mum has on his sex life, but says this can be made up for by the fact he and his wife can now afford a hotel room. “We have the money now that we don’t have to pay my whole salary to someone else so that they can pay the mortgage on their second property.” Overall, families such as the Tusks have found the positives far outweigh the negatives and living together is a fulfilling experience – George even says he would choose it over having his own place. “I would actually choose this way of living above others, regardless of the financial reasons. If I had been living in the UK alone (I met and married my wife abroad) I would have lived with my mum for that time too. I don’t see why there is a drive to live alone in the UK; communal life is more fun. Ideally I would buy a mansion and invite my brother and his family to join us, and we have spoken about doing just that when my mum pops her clogs. We can sell her ex-council house and buy a rather large villa with swimming pool and several separate apartments for the same money in my chosen country, with some left over.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016051919id_/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/19/meet-the-doomerang-generation-its-like-being-a-41-year-old-teenager

Save 50% for 16 weeks on a Times Digital or Home Delivery Subscription—Now through Feb 19. Go now! nytimes.com/presidentsday

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What is a digital subscription? What do I get when I subscribe? A NYTimes digital subscription provides ongoing unlimited access to the NYTimes.com Web site from any computer or device, plus access to apps on portable devices. To get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps, you'll need a subscription. When you subscribe, you'll get unlimited access to articles and blog posts, as well as video, slide shows and other multimedia features — on the Web site, on the mobile site, and on our smartphone and tablet apps. With your digital subscription, you'll also get 100 Archive articles every four weeks. (NYTimes digital subscriptions do not include Premium Crosswords or The New York Times Crosswords apps.) Can I get a digital subscription to NYTimes.com only? No. The basic subscription package gives you unlimited access to NYTimes.com, plus the NYTimes apps for your smartphone. Are there digital subscription discounts for colleges and universities? Current college students, faculty and staff can save 50% on individual Times digital subscriptions. Restrictions apply. Visit our college rate page to learn more and begin the order process at this special rate. In addition, your college or university may purchase digital access at the college rate, under one bill, for a group of specific individuals. Group subscriptions are available for all three digital subscription packages. To learn more, please contact [email protected] or call (800) 753-7795. Do you have a group or corporate subscription program? Yes. We offer group subscriptions, which allow companies and organizations to purchase digital access for a set number of authorized users, under one bill, and at a special discount. Group subscriptions are available for all three digital subscription packages. To learn more, e-mail [email protected] or call (800) 753-7795. What is the cancellation and refund policy? You can cancel your subscription at any time. When you cancel, we will stop charging your account the following billing cycle. Each billing cycle is four weeks, so your unlimited access will continue for the remainder of the current four-week period. Afterward, you will still be able to view 10 articles a month on NYTimes.com and read Top News on our apps at no charge, just like any other visitor. What if I don’t want to subscribe — can I still read NYTimes.com for free? Visitors get 10 free articles (including blog posts, slide shows, video and other multimedia features) each calendar month on NYTimes.com, as well as access to browse the home page, section fronts, blog fronts and classifieds. Subscribers enjoy unrestricted access to all of the content on NYTimes.com, and 100 Archive articles every four weeks. Also note that NYTimes apps are free to download and install, and they include the Top News section for free. Subscribers get unlimited access to all sections within the app. With home delivery of The New York Times newspaper, do I get free digital access? Yes, only print subscribers get the added benefit of a free full digital access subscription which includes unlimited access to our New York Times Web site, NYTimes.com and the NYTimes apps for smartphones (iPhone®, Windows® Phone and Android™-powered phones) and tablets like the iPad®. Once I order home delivery, when can I start using my free digital benefits? To start using your free digital benefits, you'll need your New York Times home delivery account number. This will be sent to you in a confirmation e-mail once your order is placed. If you do not receive the e-mail you can call New York Times Customer Care at 1-800-NYTIMES (698-4637) and obtain the number. What time will The New York Times be delivered to my home? In most areas, the NYT will be delivered by 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, and 8:30 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Can I suspend home delivery while I am on vacation? Yes, you can choose to receive credit for the period of your suspended delivery or donate your vacation credit to provide The New York Times newspaper to schools.

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California Chrome fell short in his Triple Crown bid. And co-owner Steve Coburn was not happy about it. Inside a day of horse racing sadness.

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“Hey, Sophia Loren, baby, how are you?” Steve Coburn, co-owner of Triple Crown hopeful California Chrome, called out to a woman he thought resembled the actress, who was standing across from him at Barn 4 at Belmont Park. It was about an hour before race time, and Coburn, wearing a purple shirt, green tie, beige cowboy hat, and a blazer that had a large button reading “Got Chrome” on it, was having a good ol’ time. He was loose and loveable, with his walrus mustache and large personality. “They tell me I’m the next John Wayne,” Coburn said to the surrounding crowd, which included his co-owner Perry Martin, who barely makes a peep. “We can make a pretty good movie together.” But after California Chrome finished tied for fourth in the Belmont Stakes, adding to a maddening Triple Crown drought that is now 36 years old, Coburn was far from ducal. In his post-race interview on NBC, he ranted about the Triple Crown setup, lamenting the fact that horses that don’t run both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness are still eligible for the Belmont Stakes, making them fresh for the tortuous 1.5-mile test. “This is coward’s way out,” Coburn said. “If you’ve got a horse, run him in all three.” His wife looked like she was trying to get him to stop talking. “I don’t care,” he could be heard snarling afterwards, presumably after a chiding from Mrs. Coburn. Not that he didn’t have a point. In most sports, the playing field is level: you play the same amount of games in the regular season before the playoffs. The problem is that Coburn got sour on a sick horse. Tonalist, the Belmont winner, got ill before the Wood Memorial, a key prep race for the Kentucky Derby. Without running in the Wood, Tonalist could not earn enough points to qualify for the Derby. That’s not cowardly, Steve. Also, an injury might have cost Calfornia Chrome anyway. His right front foot had a patch of blood on it after the race. At some point during the run, the shoe of his back right foot overextended and clipped the flesh of his front one. Whatever the rights and wrongs, when a Triple Crown hopeful can’t catch the leader down the stretch at Belmont, the deflation that hangs over the crowd is oppressive indeed. Written on every face is the question, “Will we ever see another Triple Crown in our lifetimes?” “He’s a push-button horse,” said a still hopeful Chrome fan, Amy Arvanitis, while her horse was in fourth at the three-quarter-mile mark. Arvanitis, who is friends with Chrome trainer Art Sherman, was watching near the rail at the finish line. At the mile, he was still in fourth. “Come on, Victor, come on baby!” said Arvanitis, imploring California Chrome’s jockey, Victor Espinoza, to open things up. But the horse just didn’t have it. “Aw f–k!” she exclaimed, just before the finish. Right after, she dropped her lip and made a tragic face. “I’m devastated.” Kathleen Dunagan, an artist and equestrian hobbyist with a close attachment to California Chrome, had tears in her eyes as she left the track. “I thought he was going to be our Seabiscuit,” Dunagan said. California Chrome’s backstory has the underdog elements: Coburn and Martin, who barely knew each other, dropped $8,000 on an unimpressive filly, Love the Chase. A groom said whoever bought Love the Chase was a dumbass, so they named their new ownership group Dumb Ass Partners. Coburn and Martin mated Love the Chase to another underwhelming horse, Lucky Pulpit, and somehow they produced a near Triple Crown winner. “He just came out of nowhere,” says Dunagan. “I thought it was going to just be so wonderful. I’m sorry, I usually don’t get so emotional about that stuff.” Dunagan kept on walking — and crying. Before the race, the California Chrome team could not have been more confident. With more than three hours to go until post time, Chrome’s exercise rider, Willie Delgado, entered the horse’s barn with a case of Coors Light and a bag of ice. Alan Sherman, California Chrome’s assistant trainer — and son of Art — walked outside with a beer in his left hand, cigarette in his right. When asked to describe Chrome’s morning workout, Delgado said he “was like a monster.” He has just been in the horse’s stall, and said “what’s up boy, you going to do this?” California Chrome’s ears perked up, Delgado said. That, to him, was a clear answer. “Hell, yes.” Afterwards, Delgado insisted he wasn’t devastated. “I’m not sad, not sad,” Delgado said back at the barn. “He gave he the ride of my life. He’s still my hero.” If only all those people at Belmont could say the same.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014060919id_/http://time.com/2844279/california-chrome-belmont-triple-crown-tonalist/

John Avlon introduces a new podcast featuring the voices of three CNN Opinion contributors exchanging views on the top three stories of the week

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Part of complete coverage from By John Avlon, CNN Contributor updated 12:37 PM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 (CNN) -- Welcome to The Big Three -- a CNN Radio podcast on the big three stories of the week, featuring three contributors who write for CNN Opinion -- myself, my bride, Margaret Hoover, and political comedian Dean Obeidallah, who is of no relation (as far as we know). We each come to the conversation from a different perspective -- center, right and left -- but we all share a commitment to smart, funny, civil conversation. And we're all big Yalta buffs. To listen, click on the Soundcloud audio player on this page. Or find us on iTunes. The Big Three stories of this week: the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, the Republican Party's attempt to modernize and President Barack Obama's trip to Israel. Iraq: With Margaret as a veteran of the Bush administration and Dean an Arab-American, there are sharp disagreements on the impact of the Iraq War. I remain darkly fascinated by the enduring partisan divide over whether the war was a mistake -- with conservatives and liberals taking mirror image positions, and centrists and independents like myself pushing national opinion over to the mistake side of the ledger. One contemporary question: Is intervention fatigue slowing America's impulse to stop the slaughter in Syria, where more than 70,000 have been killed while the world watches? Become a fan of CNNOpinion Stay up to date on the latest opinion, analysis and conversations through social media. Join us at . We welcome your ideas and comments. GOP modernization: With the Republican Party releasing an "autopsy" report on the mistakes that were made throughout the 2012 election, Margaret is marking the release of the paperback edition of her book "American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party." After the paranoid-style party I saw at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, she's got her work cut out for her -- but with Sen. Rob Portman coming out in support of the freedom for same-sex couples to marry, there just might be some hope at the end of this culture war conflict. Obama in Israel: After being attacked throughout the election as being a weak ally to Israel, Obama was given the red carpet treatment this week. But his newfound friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu masks a time of real tension and high stakes throughout the region -- including the prospect of protests over stalled peace talks, a potentially nuclear Iran and the bloodshed in Syria. Is this the environment in which a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can succeed? The opinions in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon. Part of complete coverage on updated 12:37 PM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 Welcome to "The Big Three" -- a CNN Radio podcast on the big three stories of the week, featuring three contributors who write for CNN Opinion: John Avlon, Margaret Hoover, and political comedian Dean Obeidallah. updated 12:59 PM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 Ruben Navarrette says being a good parent is about teaching adult children to stand on their own two feet. updated 8:41 AM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 Doug Kendall and Tom Donnelly say, with important gay rights and marriage equality cases looming, all Americans should have the opportunity to see the Supreme Court in action. updated 12:51 PM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 CNN columnist John Sutter says the lack of legal protection pushes people back into the closet. updated 11:35 AM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 Peter Sprigg says the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is fraught with moral and legal problems. updated 8:21 PM EDT, Thu March 21, 2013 Dean Obeidallah says presidents have long used humor to reach the public, but Obama has elevated the practice that skillfully flattens adversaries. updated 10:36 AM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013 Arthur Caplan says no drug can shed light on Aurora suspect James Holmes' mindset, despite Hollywood's belief otherwise. updated 2:09 PM EDT, Thu March 21, 2013 "Antiques Roadshow" appraiser Nicholas Dawes says luck, a sharp eye and an understanding of supply and demand are key for the average yard-saler. updated 5:34 AM EDT, Thu March 21, 2013 Rachel Simmons says that to prevent more Steubenvilles, girls need to be taught to be allies, not rivals. updated 7:52 AM EDT, Thu March 21, 2013 Chris Marquardt says immigration reform has to solve the problem of families torn apart due to detention and deportation. updated 10:24 AM EDT, Thu March 21, 2013 Ahead of Supreme Court hearings, CNN creates an "LGBT rights calculator" to help readers explore the issues. updated 12:16 PM EDT, Wed March 20, 2013 He was home drinking tea when armed men came and took him away for reasons unknown. Now, the writer must pay for news of his fate, knowing he may not be seen again. Most popular stories right now

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https://web.archive.org/web/2013032319id_/http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/22/opinion/avlon-podcast-the-big-three/index.html

Smith, the ex-Democratic majority leader, tried to run for mayor in 2013 as a Republican by paying party bosses to get onto the ballot.

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Another one bites the dust. Former state Sen. Malcolm Smith was convicted Thursday of operating a big buck bribery scheme aimed at getting him elected mayor of New York City. A jury convicted Smith and former Queens GOP leader Vincent Tabone in the scheme, which involved getting the once-powerful Democratic majority leader on the GOP line for the 2013 mayoral race. Assistant U.S. Attorney Perry Carbone had described the case to jurors as a story “about a man who wanted to be mayor and the men who were willing to be bought.” He accused Smith of having engineered a $200,000 bribery scheme to get himself on the ballot. Smith’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, had contended that the feds had tried to entrap his client, and that everything Smith did was on the up and up. Prosecutors said Tabone accepted $20,000 during a boozy dinner at Sparks Steak House in Midtown on Smith’s behalf from a man who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. Smith faces up to 45 years behind bars, while Tabone faces a maximum of 25, although neither are expected to get the max when they’re sentenced by Judge Kenneth Karas later this year. The four-week trial was actually the second for Smith and Tabone — the first last year ended in a mistrial for them, but resulted in the conviction of one of their co-conspirators, former city Councilman Daniel Halloran. The case against the dirty pols was brought by the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who has since brought corruption charges against now-former state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015020519id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ex-state-sen-malcolm-smith-found-guilty-bribery-article-1.2104465

Nearly 100 years after the revered artist’s death, he’s getting his first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art — focusing on experimental works on paper.

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“Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty” was organized by Jodi Hauptman, senior curator of drawings and prints, with Karl Buchberg, senior conservator, and Heidi Hirschl, a curatorial assistant. It presents 120 monotypes and nearly 60 related prints, paintings, pastels, charcoal drawings and photos. Three sketchbooks on view can also can be flipped through digitally and underscore Degas’s keen attention to both urban life and the body. Among print mediums, and perhaps all works on paper, monotypes were and remain hotbeds of spontaneity and improvisation. They’re made by composing in ink — with brush, rag, finger, fingernail, stick, just about anything — on a blank plate that is then layered with a damp sheet of paper and run through a printing press. Speed is of the essence. The first impression from each plate is unique; if more versions — cognates — are pulled from the same inking, they will be pale ghosts. Degas’s smaller monotypes can paradoxically be aerial close-ups: We might almost be riding the backs of his hands as they flit across a plate, revising, adding, wiping away while the ink is still wet and printable. The exhibition begins with two etchings from Degas’s youth: an elegantly solemn self-portrait (seen in two states) and an increasingly shadowy portrayal of the engraver Joseph Tourny (three states). Both reflect attention to Ingres and especially Rembrandt. But Degas learned the monotype technique around 1876 from his artist friend Ludovic Napoléon Lepic. After that, what the poet Stéphane Mallarmé referred to as the “strange new beauty” of Degas’s monotypes even destabilizes his more conventional etchings, etching-aquatints and lithographs. Things become increasingly unorthodox and fragmentary as prints devoted to the spectacle of the cafe, concert hall and theater progress along one wall. Images wash out as if lighted by a flash bulb. Space is overtaken by intersecting, nearly monumental, geometries in “At the Café des Ambassadeurs” and its mate, “At the Ambassadeurs.” “Actresses in Their Dressing Rooms,” an etching-aquatint may prompt a double take: Its four vertical sections and truncated figures and shadows uncannily evoke Jasper Johns’s “Seasons” paintings. “Mademoiselle Bécat at the Ambassadeurs,” a lithograph from around 1875, benefits from lights and darks of the monotypes, with the chanteuse illuminated from below. Lepice, a Rembrandt devotee, used plates already etched with images for his monotypes; six examples in the show were made atop a Dutch-looking shoreline scene supplemented by additions of trees, clouds or undergrowth. But Degas immediately realized that a blank plate offered complete freedom to crossbreed print and drawing methods. He was probably the first artist to enhance the pale cognates with pastel. This yielded a series of jewel-like images of singers that surprise us at the beginning of the second gallery. There are clusters of works only glimpsed in previous Degas surveys. One gallery holds 27 landscapes from the early ’90s, in pigmented oil paint instead of ink — another innovation — which created a greater element of chance. Some are tightened up with additions of pastel; others are visionary stains, all but abstract areas of tinted texture and atmosphere that might have been made this year. Another gallery is devoted to Degas’s “dark field” monotypes, made by covering a plate with ink and brushing, wiping or scratching it away, creating a motif by subtraction. A few expert wipes, and the naked, often contorted, bodies of women bathing or reading or going to bed emerge from the darkness. The intense privacy of female solitude acquires a macabre, yet formal power. (Goya’s “Black Paintings” come to mind.) The show concludes with a series of magnificent late bathers and dancers whose saturated colors and rough textures expand the freedoms of monotypes into much larger works in oil or pastel. Here, Degas sometimes finished the figures with broken black outlines, as if to recall the monotypes. “A Strange New Beauty” brings a new logic and coherence to Degas’s experimentation. It also reveals his monotypes as early signs of the 20th-century’s waves of nonacademic figuration — from the Fauves to German Expressionists to American artists like David Park — and abstraction itself. Most of all, it makes the past feel alive and useful, perhaps the most you can ask of any historical show. ­“Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty” is on view March 26 through July 24 at the Museum of Modern Art; 212-708-9400, moma.org. A version of this review appears in print on March 25, 2016, on page C17 of the New York edition with the headline: The Experimental Paper Chase of Degas. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016032519id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/arts/design/the-moderndegas-you-havent-seen.html

Tom Pernice Jr. and Nathan Green dodge forecast of 50 mph winds to share the second-round lead of the Sony Open on Friday.

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updated 11:38 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2009 HONOLULU - On the kind of day where Tom Pernice Jr. kept his head down to battle the wind and rain, he looked up just in time to see his final shot disappear into the hole for eagle on Friday that gave him a 7-under 63 and a share of the lead in the Sony Open. It was a fitting end of a second round that delivered a few surprises, starting with the weather. Those 50 mph gusts in the forecast, which forced school closings across Oahu, never quite made it to this corner of the island, leaving Waialae wet and windy, but no worse than the opening round. Tadd Fujikawa, the 18-year-old who turned pro after his sophomore year in high school, secured his first PGA Tour paycheck by ripping two shots onto the green at the par-5 ninth for a birdie and a 69. But nothing was more stunning than Pernice making eagle into the strength of the wind, tying for the lead with Nathan Green (66). “The finish was spectacular,” Pernice said. “You’re not thinking about holing it from the fairway. It was tough out there today. Luckily, I scraped it around when I needed to and didn’t make any bogeys, and just kind of hung in there.” Pernice and Green, who played in the morning, were at 8-under 132 going into a weekend that could be wide open. Shigeki Maruyama had a 68 and was one shot behind, and the dozen players within four shots of the lead included former Masters champion Zach Johnson, Mercedes-Benz Championship winner Geoff Ogilvy, Boo Weekley and David Toms. Only nine shots separated the top from the bottom. Fujikawa finished his two rounds at even-par 140 and was eight shots behind, the same margin he faced in 2007 when he became the youngest player in 50 years to make the cut on the PGA Tour. He wound up tied for 20th that week, and was hopeful of something similar. “I have a lot of good memories from that year,” Fujikawa said. “I want to keep it going. I’m playing well.” Lorens Chan, the 14-year-old amateur qualifier who was trying to become the youngest player in PGA Tour history to make the cut, lost hope early when he played his first nine holes in 42. He birdied two of the last three holes for a 75 and missed by six shots. The par-5 ninth was the scene of other high drama. Andres Romero, still struggling to find his form from his offseason rust, was headed home to Argentina until he holed an 18-foot birdie on the seventh, then made a 15-foot eagle putt on the ninth to make the cut on the number. Davis Love III wasn’t so fortunate. A runner-up last week at Kapalua that moved him to No. 54 in the world as he tries to qualify for the Masters, had a 12-foot eagle putt to make the cut, but he missed. Johnson finished birdie-birdie-eagle to turn a decent day into a great one with a 65. Even so, Pernice stole the show. After ripping a driver and a 3-wood into the wind, he had 92 yards left to the hole, which typically would be a lob wedge. Pernice went with a punch pitching wedge just right of the hole, and it spun to the left and into the cup. “It’s not necessarily something where you feel like you’re going out and hitting every shot perfect,” he said. “It’s not going to happen, even in these conditions, because your good shots don’t always turn out good. The mentality was to hang in there and keep plugging along. Obviously, the eagle at the last was quite exciting.” Green didn’t have too much excitement except for the fifth hole, when it started raining hard and he hooked his tee shot toward the hazard. It was one of the few times a player is happy to see a tree in the way, for it allowed him to escape with bogey. That was the only glitch on an otherwise solid start to his season. And like so many other players, Green considered it a minor victory that he got to play at all considering the forecast. “All the news that maybe we wouldn’t play had a few of us pretty scared, and that it was meant to blow all day,” Green said. “But you get patches out there where it was not really blowing at all. They have the tees forward on a lot of holes. So as long as you get your tee shot in the fairway, you still have a few fair opportunities to make birdie.” The rain was so strong at times that Greg Kraft had a 25-foot birdie putt on the 16th, and as the ball was not even halfway to the hole, he was running toward his caddie to get under the umbrella. Toms watched the wind carry one shot across the green into the rough, but he chipped nicely to 3 feet for par. Then came the 17th, playing 188 yards, and Toms selected a 3-iron. He came up some 40 yards short of the hole. “I’m hitting into the wind, trying to hang onto the club, everything soaking wet,” he said. “It was tough.” But it could have been much worse. The course was slightly shorter, and the greens a little slower because the greens were cut only once in case of high wind. Ernie Els, a two-time Sony Open champion who has never finished lower than fifth at Waialae, played bogey-free over the final 16 holes to scrape out a 69 and finish at 1-over 141 to make the cut on the number, as did former Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger. © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2009011719id_/http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/28699220/

At the foot of one of Australia’s most famous landmarks, a British artist has created his latest masterpiece.

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Deep within Australia’s vast desert, a tremendous tower of rock has been forming for some 600 million years. For Aborigines, Uluru is sacred, full of ancestral spirits and tales of the past. For tourists, it is a place of historical intrigue and natural beauty. However, for British artist Bruce Munro, this ancient monolith has become the backdrop for his latest work of art. As night falls across the Red Centre, Field of Light comes to life, with 50,000 flower-like lights glowing against the darkness. Since its first iteration in 2004, Field of Light has travelled to many different locations across the globe. However, the concept was first conceived at the foot of Uluru during a camping trip in 1992. “I had this kind of weird experience,” Munro said. “I just felt that there was some sense of power in the landscape. I noticed that when camping on the ground, you can almost feel the heat of the sun radiating back out towards the sky…. It’s odd, because normally a desert space really drains you, but at Uluru, you just felt incredibly alive. I carry this sketchbook around with me wherever I go, so I wrote down what I had felt there and a thought that had come to me: how amazing would it be to have this whole landscape full of light?” For more than a decade, however, that thought remained as scribbles on a page. It was only after the intervening years of parenthood, mortgages and moving houses were over that Munro could finally turn his attention to a project 12 years in the making. Field of Light was first built thousands of miles from the fiery Australian desert, at Munro’s countryside home in Wiltshire, England. “That idea had really got under my skin,” he said. “I just thought ‘Come on, I’ve got to get this out of my system’. So I gathered the materials together and stuck it in my field.” Since then, Munro has shaped and reshaped Field of Light for a diverse range of spaces: a shop front in London’s Harvey Nichols; St Andrews Square in central Edinburgh; the garden of Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. Yet it wasn’t until spring 2016 that the artist finally got the chance to see his vision come full circle. It was like all my Christmases had come at once. After hearing about Field of Light and its inspiration, Ray Stone, a representative at Australia’s Indigenous Land Corporation, gave Munro a call, asking if he would like to travel to Australia to discuss the possibility of installing Field of Light at the foot of Uluru. “I couldn’t believe it,” Munro said, “It was like all my Christmases had come at once.” Working together, Munro and the Indigenous Land Corporation tackled the logistics of transporting the 49,000sqm installation overseas and began talks with the local indigenous people straight away. They also ensured that the artwork did not impose upon the sacred land surrounding Uluru, keeping the cables above ground and using solar energy to power the installation. “All I wanted people to understand was that this was how the land inspired me,” Munro said. “In a sense, Field of Light is my thank you to the land for making me feel so excited when I was there.” Field of Light is open until 31 March 2017, and with it Munro has one simple aim: “it sounds clichéd, but I just love to see people smile. If I can raise a smile, what more can I ask for?” If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016072419id_/http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160720-a-field-of-light-blooms-in-the-australian-outback

A potential deal between CNN and NBC could put Piers Morgan in Larry King's chair at 9 pm.

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Piers Morgan, the mean judge on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” is poised to take over Larry King’s coveted time slot on CNN, thanks to an imminent deal between the two media giants that own the channels. NBC, which attracts 20 million viewers to “Got Talent” each summer, has signaled that it is willing to share Mr. Morgan with CNN. That decision frees Mr. Morgan to directly negotiate with CNN and, according to three people involved in the delicate maneuvering between the companies, a contract could be signed within a few days. If completed, the deal would vault Mr. Morgan, a native of Britain, onto the Mount Rushmore of TV’s top interviewers, alongside Oprah, Barbara and Katie. It will also demonstrate that CNN thinks there is still room in primetime for long-form interviews with public servants and starlets, a stark contrast to the partisan pundits on its higher-rated competitors. “Larry King Live” is the biggest vacancy on television this year and the prospect of “Piers Morgan Live” starring a foreign-born talent show judge has baffled many people inside CNN. Mr. Morgan, 45, is actually an A-list interviewer in his native Britain, and he has essentially been rehearsing for CNN by hosting “Piers Morgan Life Stories,” a series of well-received and high-rated interviews with bigwigs like Gordon Brown and Simon Cowell, on the British network ITV. A former creature of Fleet Street who edited The Daily Mirror for a decade, Mr. Morgan has all manner of critics, from the NBC viewers who dislike his mean-Brit shtick to the television critics who despise his chilling self-confidence. But as his close friend Simon Cowell has demonstrated on “American Idol,” being unliked can be a shortcut to fame and fortune. “Almost every other U.K. TV import has been hugely successful,” remarked Tammy Haddad, a former executive producer of “Larry King Live” who now runs a media consulting company. For CNN, Mr. Morgan’s judgeship on the talent show could be a promotional platform to attract desperately needed younger viewers –or it could be a source of awkwardness for a channel that calls itself “the most trusted name in news.” The 9 p.m. hire is a critically important one for CNN as it tries to rebuild its low-rated prime time lineup. Last month it said it had hired Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker as the future co-hosts of an 8p.m. discussion show. “The 9 p.m. hour is the linchpin of any success in cable news,” Ms. Haddad said. “As a cable channel, it tells viewers who you are and what you care about.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2010071319id_/http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/piers-morgan-a-step-closer-to-larry-king-chair/

As international leaders express outrage over mass killings in Syria -- and lament the inability to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution denouncing the Syrian regime -- questions linger about the...

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Russia is one of Syria's biggest arms suppliers. And China ranked as Syria's third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission. "Beijing's renewed interest in Damascus?the traditional terminus node of the ancient Silk Road ... indicates that China sees Syria as an important trading hub," according to a 2010 report from The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research and analysis institute. Even as reports mounted that the Syrian government was killing protesters en masse, the Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement in August noting the "steady development" of friendly relations "over the past 50 years and more." "China and Syria gave each other understanding and support on issues concerning each other's core and major interests," the statement said. "China showed consistent understanding and firm support for Syria's position on the Golan Heights while Syria remained committed to the one China position and rendered China staunch support on matters related to Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and human rights." Last week, China's permanent representative to the United Nations said the killing of innocent civilians must stop, but also said he is against "pushing through" a regime change. An earlier version of the U.N. Security Council draft resolution called for al-Assad to step down and delegate his powers to his deputy, but that element was not in the draft voted on by members Saturday. "China is of the view that the Syrian people's request for reform and safeguard of their interests should be respected," Li Baodong said Tuesday, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency. "It is imperative to put an immediate end to all violence in Syria and oppose and stop the killing of innocent civilians.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2012020619id_/http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/05/world/meast/syria-china-russia-relations/index.html

The legendary 80s sitcom gets the cafe it deserves, including memorabilia, live music and, of course, cheesecake – plus Betty White at the grand opening

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Get ready for Thank You for Being a Friend Fries, Sophia’s Sicilian Meatballs, and, of course, plenty of cheesecake. Rue La Rue, a Golden Girls themed restaurant, will open in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood in early September. It will be at 4396 Broadway which is, appropriately, known as the Sofia Storage Building. No relation to Ms Petrillo. According to DNA Info the restaurant is being opened by Michael J LaRue, who named the establishment after his best friend Rue McClanahan, the actor who played hot-to-trot Blanche Devereaux on the 80s series about four female roommates of a certain age living in a house in Miami. When McClanahan died in 2010 she left LaRue all of her memorabilia from her acting career, some of which will be on display at the restaurant, including her piano, which will be used for live-music shows. LaRue, who is partnering with McClanahan’s son Mark Bisch for the endeavor, says that he has secured Betty White, who played Rose Nylund, to attend the restaurant’s grand opening. She’s the only living member of the cast, surviving McClanahan, Estelle Getty who played Sophia Petrillo and Bea Arthur who played Dorothy Zbornak. Related: My favourite TV show: The Golden Girls The menu will feature soups, wraps, salads, wine and the Golden Girl’s favorite dessert, cheesecake. LaRue told a community board hearing that he hoped to open a sidewalk eating area by next year. No word yet on whether or not it will be called the Lanai. The biggest challenge will be luring visitors and tourists up to Washington Heights, which is far off the beaten path for many New Yorkers and certainly for visitors who frequently spend most of their time in Midtown near the Broadway theaters or far downtown closer to the Statue of Liberty and other attractions. “I believe I can turn this place into a mini-tourist [hub] in Washington Heights,” LaRue, who lives in the neighborhood, told DNA Info, adding that the show is in syndication in 50 countries around the world and has a significant fanbase. LaRue also claims that Disney, which owns the Golden Girls franchise through its Touchstone Television arm, has given him permission to make memorabilia with the casts’ likeness on it because they love the project so much. What diehard Golden Girls fan wouldn’t want to walk away with a “Picture it: Manahattan 2016” shirt with Sophia’s face on it?

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016062119id_/https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/jun/21/golden-girls-themed-restaurant-to-open-new-york-city

Federal inspectors cited numerous issues at a Pennsylvania warehouse, including live and dead birds and rodents and drainage problems.

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Before you go, we thought you'd like these... A food company that distributes products to Asian restaurants throughout the East and into the Midwest was cited for numerous violations by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after rodents and other pests were found in a warehouse. -- sent earlier this month from the FDA to Brooklyn, New York-based New Yung Wah Trading Co. -- detailed an Oct. 15-30 inspection that found less-than-sanitary conditions including live and dead rodents and birds "landing and defecating on stored food products." The company appears to mainly ship to Chinese restaurants and has distribution facilities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Among the findings in the inspection of the company's McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, warehouse: In addition, FDA inspectors said they found and identified other problems that didn't appear to be addressed, including a floor drain that didn't drain, causing puddles of standing water. Another problem, the FDA said, was the use rodent poison without taking precautions to keep it from contaminating food. Problems Throughout the Warehouse "This rodenticide was placed on plastic plates next to stored food products along the exterior walls of the facility," the FDA said. And the entire warehouse was so densely packed with bags of food, the FDA said, that those working there couldn't inspect for rodents. The FDA letter said: "Pallets storing food products were stacked approximately two high and six to eight deep, covering an area of approximately 3000 square feet. The pallets were stacked directly against one another, which did not allow adequate spacing to inspect or observe possible rodent activity." The FDA noted that the company claimed it had taken actions to fix the violations, yet it provided no evidence of that. "FDA has serious concerns that our investigators found your firm operating under these conditions," the FDA letter said. "Further, your response states that your firm is committed to maintaining and operating a facility which provides the highest quality service to its customers and to the consuming public. We do not consider this response acceptable because you failed to provide documentation for our review, which demonstrates your noted corrective actions. This documentation may include photographs, invoices, work orders, voluntary destruction records, certification of actions performed by a licensed exterminator, other actions performed to control unauthorized entrance of pests, and/or any other useful information that would assist us in evaluating your corrections." Earlier this year, the company was in hot water from Pennsylvania officials after an Ohio-bound delivery truck with 150 pounds of spoiled food headed for Chinese and Japanese restaurants was intercepted by police. The fish, chicken and pork was allegedly at unsafe temperatures, between 58 degrees and 68 degrees, and dripping onto other food causing cross contamination, Pennsylvania officials told the Sharon Herald. New Yung Wah did not immediately respond to a request from DailyFinance to comment.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160609090844id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2014/12/29/chinese-food-distributor-cited-rodents-birds/21122186/?

The rectangular slabs in our pockets could eventually be relegated to 'dumb screens,' if we get all our notifications and connectivity from wearable devices.

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Concept design for an iWatch (Photo credit: Brett Jordan) Mobile technology is breathing new life into devices we once thought were rather boring — like watches. A year ago, who needed to buy a watch when you could pull a smartphone out of your pocket and read the time on a brightly-lit screen? Yet that sentiment may change soon enough. Apple is betting consumers will have found the pulling-out-of-the-pocket manoeuvre too tiring once they realize they can simply glance at their wrist to check the time, along with their email, social media notifications and heart rate. Apple has around 100 people working on a watch-like device that could come this year, according to Bloomberg News and The Verge, and it’s rumored to be called the iWatch, running parallel to that other big wearable device product in the works in Silicon Valley: Google Glass. Where might that leave smartphones? In the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia which are deeply saturated with smart, mobile devices, consumers may eventually decide the smartest machines they own are no longer pocketable slabs for wireless communication, but the watch or glasses they can wear and barely have to handle. One possible result: smartphones are not longer ‘smart,’ but relegated back to their old role of providing basic wireless communication and nothing more. In fact, if the designers of the iWatch and Google Glass can figure out a seamless way to work with earphones and mics, and these devices have their own SIM, who knows if smartphones as we know them will even be needed? For one thing, consumers would still want a decent display for viewing content. In this case, smartphones could be replaced with cheaper, “dumb screens” that can connect, via WiFi or bluetooth, with the more powerful processing power in the wearable device. Another option is that the smartphone as a slab still exists, and remains the wireless “hub” that contains a SIM card and processing power, but it also becomes a device that we don’t interact with as much anymore and therefore becomes cheaper. (The case for a cheaper iPhone in developed markets becomes stronger here too). You can leave the phone in your bag, and not worry about hearing it ring because you have your iWatch on. “It replaces the compulsive need to turn on your phone and check who’s been calling you,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, director of mobile and emerging displays with IHS iSupply. A current example of this idea comes from Pebble, an e-paper watch that has raised $10 million in funding on Kickstarter and is perhaps the most well-known of the forthcoming wave of smart watches. It uses Bluetooth to harness the functionality and processing power of a smartphone to display its notifications. Jakhanwal says a wearable device like Google Glass probably wouldn’t need a second screen, since the device can project a fairly large display. But she also questions how viable a product Glass is, knowing that 3D televisions has struggled to catch on. “Consumers don’t take to wearing something on their eyes very easily,” she says. So if wearable watches rise, could we also see ‘dumb displays’ replacing smartphones? “What’s not very clear right now is what your user interface is going to be with these new types of devices. Google Glass works with voice… but a lot of work still needs to be done to make those kinds of interfaces easy and accurate to use,” says Jakhanwal. “It could also be gesture as a user interface rather than touch.” Some concept devices have even used the blinking eye as an interface method. “How you superimpose your basic iOS and device with user interaction will be critical to making these devices successful,” she says. One thing to note: if wearable devices do send rectangular smartphones the the way of the PC tower, it won’t be for years yet. The mobile market is too huge for that. Roughly 1.2 billion mobile phones were sold in 2012 alone, and around 800 million of them were smartphones, Jakhanwal notes. “The smartphone market will not go away.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2013030519id_/http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/03/04/iwatch-and-google-glass-could-make-smartphones-seem-dumb/

Although most of the planet has been discovered and well-documented, there's still plenty of places that remain relatively unknown, and for no good reason. Read about ten of the most gorgeous a...

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Located two hours off the coast of Sydney, Lord Howe Island is not only remote geographically, but no more than 400 people are allowed to visit it at any given time. Accordingly, it looks like a literal paradise—from flawless beaches, a lagoon so blue it seems like a joke, a coral reef, volcanic peaks, rainforests, and wildlife that's native only to the island. If dinosaurs were ever holding out in secret, they'd probably pick Lord Howe Island. Any time someone mentions a canyon to check out in the United States, you'd probably drone out and assume they just mean the Grand Canyon. However, most people would consider Antelope Canyon (also in Arizona) to be somewhat more interesting. The canyon was created over thousands of years of rivers and streams eroding the sandstone, and the experience of walking through miles of them would be pretty mind-blowing. "Glen Coe" is located in the Scottish Highlands, and is not only considered among one of the most beautiful places in Scotland, but Europe as a whole. The "Glen of Weeping" contains Bidean nam Bian, one of the highest peaks in Scotland, as well as the winding River Coe. The glen got its namesake from its foggy, grim grandeur, but thankfully you'll probably only weep from the great views. Or running from the Loch Ness monster. Whichever. Translated into English, "pamukkale" means "cotton castle" in Turkish, which seems legit, considering that it looks like a giant pile of cotton balls. Once, the ancient Greco-Roman city of Hierapolis was built atop the stunning hot springs and otherworldly travertines (the layered terraces in the photo above), creating a unique mix of natural and architectural history. And that's without mentioning that it's pretty cool to chill out in the very same pools that the Greeks and Romans did, thousands of years ago. Located across the borders of Namibia and (predominantly) South Africa, Namaqualand encompasses about 170,000 square miles—a few thousand miles larger than the state of California. Throughout the majority of the year Namaqualand looks like most of the region—arid and dry—but in spring it effloresces into something completely mesmerizing. Hundreds of thousands of daisies bloom, transforming the dry, empty land into something that looks like Candy Land. Is this photo from a beautiful, untouched island in the South Pacific? Nope. Plitvice is the oldest national park in Southeast Europe, the largest in Croatia, and most noticeably, it doesn't look like anything out of Europe, much less Croatia. Now that Plitvice is a World Heritage Site, it will remain in a state much like it was when it was first opened in 1949—aside from the occasional walkway. Not only were all these amazing terraces built by hand, but they are more than 2000 years old and cover over 4000 square miles (about the size of Los Angeles's sprawl). The terraces are so old now that they look wholly natural; indigenous Filipino peoples traveled into the Ifugao mountains two millennia ago, seeking a permanent solution to providing enough food for their people. Still, they probably weren't expecting that their rice terraces would be quite this permanent. Though Norway contains the largest number of fjords in the world, Sognefjord is the largest (and second-largest in the world), and probably most beautiful as well. With depths that go down nearly a mile and peaks that go over one into the air, you could spend many years just trying to see everything this 127-mile (205km) long waterway has to offer. And you'd need plenty of help, but thankfully there's dozens and dozens of boats that troll these crystal-clear waters daily. Located in Hunan Province, China, Wulingyuan is known for its approximately 3100 naturally created, towering sandstone pillars. After the release of Avatar, it's pretty hard to think of this place as more than coincidentally a pretty close real-life version of Pandora. You'd have to imagine that walking on the ground floor would be at least as intimidating as running into a Na'vi in the wild. Though Iceland is known for many of its waterfalls, none is perhaps as beautiful as Gullfoss, located on the White River ("Hvítá"). Translated from Icelandic, its name means "Golden Falls." What makes the falls particularly stunning is that they traverse over three massive "steps," plunging onto two stages, and then down a 32 meter (105ft) deep crevice. This creates the allusion that the falls are perching above an abyss—albeit probably much better looking than you'd imagine an abyss.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20120719012652id_/http://www.buzzfeed.com/bbcamerica/unbelievably-beautiful-places-youve-probably-neve

The lives of professional athletes, always a transient band, have become more complicated by the decline in home values.

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“I’ll never buy again,” said the veteran Nets guard Keyon Dooling, who rents the downtown Orlando condominium he bought in 2005 to a Magic player. “That was a learning experience. I’ll never buy again as far as where I’m playing. It’s not a good idea because you can never predict how long you’re going to be in a situation. You could be stuck with a piece of property that you never go to.” Dooling’s teammate Courtney Lee, a rookie with the Magic last season, considered buying in the same condominium building before Dooling advised him against it. Good thing, since Lee is now with the Nets, where he rents on a month-to-month basis from the former Net Bostjan Nachbar, who is playing in Turkey. A word-of-mouth network has developed among players, and often an N.F.L. or an N.B.A. team representative will pass along news of possible rentals to incoming players. The N.H.L. players’ association has a Web site that lists homes the league’s players are trying to sell or rent. It adds a sense of confidence to rent to someone within the sports community. Giants linebacker Danny Clark has rented his unsold mansion in Berkeley, Calif., where he played for the Raiders in 2004 and 2005, to other Raiders, and recently dropped the $4 million asking price by a million dollars. “You know where he works,” Clark said of renting to other players. “You can’t say you know he’s going to have a job, but you know where he works. It’s a fraternity. Word travels fast if you get messed over by somebody in your business.” Some players wind up back in the city they left, in the house they were trying to sell. It happened with the new Devils left wing Dean McAmmond, who left and later returned to Calgary. Jets kicker Jay Feely bought his Upper Saddle River, N.J., home as a Giant in 2005 then returned last season as a Jet. Feely had previously purchased in Tampa, Fla., and Atlanta and said he sold for a profit each time. But his home in Upper Saddle River sat on the market while he played — and bought again — in Miami. After one season, Feely found himself back with the Jets. “Walked in, took the For Sale sign down and moved right back in,” Feely said with a laugh. “Although last year I had no furniture. I didn’t even have a kitchen table. I didn’t know if I’d be back, so I didn’t want to buy any furniture.” Feely rents his Miami home to a Dolphin. Jets linebacker Bart Scott is not interested in renting the Baltimore-area home he just put on the market for $650,000. Scott, who purchased the house for $850,000 in 2005 and put in about $300,000 worth of upgrades, including a home theater, said athletes had other concerns when it came to selling, such as a parade of curiosity-seekers. “You have to guard against that because some people just want to see what’s in your house,” Scott said. “A lot of people have no intention of buying.” Scott said his long-term contract allowed him to buy a similar home in New Jersey despite having another house. The highest-paid athletes can do that, but mid-tier players may have a greater percentage of their equity tied up in the market. Brian Rolston, a veteran left wing who came to the Devils in 2008 from Minnesota, said that financially he “got killed” in order to sell his house quickly when he left the Wild. “We’re obviously paid well but when you’re hanging onto two mortgages, $600-$700,000, that’s not an easy thing to keep up with,” he said. “We took a big hit on it, but we thought it was better to get out of it than hold onto it. There were guys on this team that got traded the year before and they were holding onto their house for three years.” The Jets player development coordinator Dave Szott said he told incoming players that unless they had a long-term contract they should rent. “The last thing you want to worry about is mortgages and loans and cutting the grass,” Szott said. “Why create more stress?” A version of this article appears in print on November 27, 2009, on Page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: For Athletes in Motion, Real Estate Can Be a Burden. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2009112719id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/sports/27homes.html

A man says he arranged a marriage for the Qaeda affiliate leader Anwar al-Awlaki as part of efforts by Danish and American intelligence officials to hunt him down.

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But in one astonishing clip, recorded more than a year before the man, Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike in Yemen, the American-born cleric had a very different mission: to propose marriage to a third wife. “This message is specifically for Sister Aminah,” Mr. Awlaki says in the video to his future bride, a comely 32-year-old blonde from Croatia who he hoped would join him in his fugitive existence. The woman had expressed fervent admiration for Mr. Awlaki on his Facebook page and later made clear in her own video reply that she shared his radical views, saying, “I am ready for dangerous things.” Neither Mr. Awlaki nor his prospective wife knew it, but their match was being managed by a Danish double agent as part of an attempt to help the Danish intelligence service and the C.I.A. find the cleric’s hiding place in Yemen. The attempt failed, but the undercover agent, Morten Storm, 36, a former motorcycle gang member who had converted to Islam, continued to communicate with Mr. Awlaki. When Mr. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike on Sept. 30, 2011, Mr. Storm was certain his efforts had been instrumental in it. But eventually Mr. Storm’s resentment at not getting what he regarded as sufficient credit boiled over. He phoned Jyllands-Posten, the second-largest newspaper in Denmark, and told the bewildered receptionist that he had helped track down one of the world’s most wanted terrorist leaders. The Danish newspaper spent 120 hours interviewing Mr. Storm and verifying his account. Among the evidence that the burly, red-haired Mr. Storm produced to confirm his wild tale, in addition to the video of Mr. Awlaki and e-mail exchanges with him, were postcards from intelligence agents, an audiotape of a C.I.A agent he knew as Michael and a photograph of $250,000 in $100 bills — money he says the C.I.A. paid him for his role as marriage broker. As part of that plan, the suitcase carried to Yemen by the bride, identified only as Aminah in her video messages to Mr. Awlaki, was secretly fitted with a tracking device that the C.I.A. hoped would reveal the cleric’s location, Mr. Storm told the Danish reporters. But a wary associate of Mr. Awlaki’s had her discard the suitcase when she arrived in Sana, Yemen’s capital. She traveled on to meet and marry Mr. Awlaki, but the C.I.A. plan was thwarted. Mr. Storm’s tale shows the lengths to which American intelligence officials went to hunt down Mr. Awlaki, a leader of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen who some counterterrorism officials believed posed a greater threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden did. Their method was a variation on the traditional so-called honey trap, in which spy services use the lure of sex to ensnare male targets. Mr. Awlaki had been arrested during his years as an imam in the United States for hiring prostitutes; his two Arab wives lived apart from him in 2010, and he had asked Mr. Storm to find him a European woman willing to stay with him in hiding. His eloquent calls for violence, scattered across the Web, helped radicalize dozens of young, English-speaking Muslims. He was added to the Obama administration’s “kill list” after intelligence officials concluded that he had helped plan the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. His influence has survived his death. A 21-year-old Bangladeshi man, charged Wednesday with trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in a sting operation by the F.B.I., told an undercover agent that he had formed his jihadist views listening to Mr. Awlaki’s sermons. The killing of Mr. Awlaki, an American citizen, without a trial and based on secret intelligence, set off a legal and ethical debate in the United States. Now, in Denmark, the articles in Jyllands-Posten have prompted some Danes to ask whether their government was complicit in Mr. Awlaki’s death and, if so, whether that violated Danish law. Mr. Storm, whose life has been threatened since he went public, is in hiding and could not be reached for comment. The Danish intelligence service said in a statement that it “cannot and will not publicly confirm whether specific individuals have been used as sources.” A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. said the agency had no comment. In a conversation in October 2011 with Mr. Storm and a Danish intelligence officer, which Mr. Storm recorded on his cellphone and which the Danish newspaper posted online, the purported C.I.A. officer known as Michael praised Mr. Storm’s efforts and even said that President Obama had been briefed on his efforts against Mr. Awlaki. But he said “other projects” by the agency had located Mr. Awlaki. “We were very, very close,” Michael said on the tape, comparing their position to players in a World Cup soccer championship who might have scored the winning goal but did not. Mr. Storm can be heard on the tape protesting that the C.I.A. officer was playing down his own role and Denmark’s role. Pierre Collignon, the editor in chief of Jyllands-Posten, said in an interview that the two reporters who met with Mr. Storm over a period of months, Orla Borg and Carsten Ellegaard, corroborated much of what he said about his dealings with Mr. Awlaki, the Danish intelligence service and the C.I.A. “We were very cautious,” Mr. Collignon said. “We were afraid he might still be a jihadist and might be luring our reporters into a trap, maybe to kidnap them. He was a criminal before becoming a devout Muslim, and it’s difficult to trust him entirely. But we were able to document his story.” The newspaper has examined paperwork showing regular payments to Mr. Storm from the Danish intelligence service and has confirmed that the snapshot of $250,000 spilling from an attaché case — the purported C.I.A. fee — was taken at his mother’s house. Mr. Collignon said the newspaper was planning to publish more articles based on Mr. Storm’s account of his six years of undercover work if it could confirm the details. But he said that Jyllands-Posten, which was the target of terrorist threats after it published a dozen cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, had decided not to post another video that showed Aminah removing her head covering to prove that she had blond hair, Mr. Collignon said. He said it might be considered provocative and invade the woman’s privacy. Aminah is hiding with Qaeda militants in Yemen and helping produce Inspire magazine, a slick English-language publication that offers bomb-making advice and taunts against the United States. She last contacted Mr. Storm a month ago, Mr. Collignon said, and told him her dream was to become a suicide bomber.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2012101919id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/world/middleeast/danes-wild-tale-of-ruse-to-find-anwar-al-awlaki.html

City leaders rejected a deal to overhaul the police force, setting up a court fight over excessive policing in a city that came to symbolize it.

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WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice filed a civil rights lawsuit against Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday, less than a day after the city rejected an agreement to overhaul its beleaguered criminal justice system and address allegations of widespread abuses by its police department. “Their decision leaves us no further choice,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said at a news conference announcing the suit. The federal and local authorities had spent months negotiating a settlement that would have prohibited police officers from making arrests without probable cause, installed a federal monitor and barred officers from using stun guns as punishment. But after city officials raised concerns about the cost of the settlement, the Ferguson City Council voted, 6 to 0, on Tuesday night to change the terms — knowing that the Department of Justice had promised to respond with a lawsuit. For city officials, calling the bluff of the Obama administration was a risky move. Ms. Lynch and her predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., have brought an unprecedented number of civil rights lawsuits against municipal police departments. Ferguson’s own lawyer has said that fighting a suit will probably cost millions of dollars, well more than the city has budgeted. Nevertheless, Mayor James Knowles III said, “It will cost more to implement the agreement than it will be to fight a lawsuit.” He added, “There’s no point in agreeing to something we can’t afford.” Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney general, said on Wednesday that law enforcement decisions in Ferguson, Mo., “were profoundly and fundamentally unconstitutional.” In announcing the Justice Department’s move, Ms. Lynch, who has a reputation for delivering impassive and guarded public remarks, was as animated as she has been in nearly a year as attorney general. “The City of Ferguson had a real opportunity here to step forward, and instead they’ve turned backwards,” she said. “They’ve chosen to live in the past.” A St. Louis suburb of about 21,000 people, Ferguson has been at the center of the national debate over police tactics since 2014, when a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black 18-year-old, Michael Brown. The shooting was deemed justified, but it galvanized protesters, helped start the Black Lives Matter movement and brought the attention of the Department of Justice to the city’s police practices. The result of the federal investigation was a scathing report that concluded last year that Ferguson’s criminal justice system was broken at every level. It said police officers used excessive force almost exclusively against African-Americans and did not know the basic standard for making an arrest. Investigators concluded that the city’s Police Department and court operated not as independent bodies but as a moneymaking venture to pad Ferguson’s budget. After months of negotiating with the Obama administration, city officials tentatively agreed last month on a deal that would have avoided a lawsuit. In addition to new guidelines on arrests and the use of stun guns, the officials agreed that police officers would not shoot at moving cars. The agreement demanded that the municipal court be independent of the Police Department, and called for the repeal of some laws, like a vague jaywalking ordinance that was used almost exclusively against black residents. It was an expensive deal. It called for Ferguson to pay for an independent monitor, provide new training and give raises to police officers in order to attract qualified applicants. Ferguson has been running an operating deficit of about $2.5 million since the unrest of a year and a half ago, but Mr. Knowles said at the time that he was optimistic the City Council would approve the deal. Ms. Lynch said the federal government was sensitive to Ferguson’s concerns. The Department of Justice had agreed to cap the costs and provide free help to the city. But at a crowded public hearing on Tuesday, the agreement fell apart. Council members and some residents said they could not afford the cost, which could have required a tax increase. The city said that giving pay raises to police officers could necessitate similar raises for other municipal employees. With senior Justice Department officials watching from Washington on a video feed, the Council voted to reject the deal as written and send it back with changes. Members of the Council proposed eliminating the pay raises for police officers and, most significant, striking a provision that would have required the city to abide by the deal even if it dissolved the Police Department and turned police duties over to an outside agency. Ferguson’s strategy in the face of a looming lawsuit is unclear. Mr. Knowles told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the city was not trying to reopen negotiations with the federal government, but at a news conference a few hours later, city leaders said that was exactly the goal. They said it was the Department of Justice that had dragged the case into court. Here’s what you need to know about events in Ferguson, Mo. “We hope the D.O.J. is willing to sit down and talk to us and continue negotiations,” Councilman Wesley Bell said. “But if this case goes to court, it will not be because of the City of Ferguson.” The Department of Justice’s top civil rights prosecutor, Vanita Gupta, had made it clear that since city negotiators had already agreed on the terms, anything short of a vote for approval would result in a lawsuit. Dan Webb, the city’s lawyer, said this week that if the deal was rejected, there was “no chance the D.O.J. will not file a lawsuit.” By Wednesday, the city’s specific objections to the settlement were beside the point. Ms. Lynch said that the federal government and the city had negotiated a final deal, and that the city had reneged at the last minute, threatening to delay the process even further. “The residents of Ferguson have suffered the deprivation of their constitutional rights — the rights guaranteed to all Americans — for decades,” Ms. Lynch said. “They should not be forced to wait any longer.” Fighting the Department of Justice in such cases is expensive, which is why it is also rare. In 2012, the Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., over allegations of discrimination against Latino immigrants. Like Ferguson, the county rejected settlement deals and fought the case in court, ringing up about $5 million in legal fees. Three years later, Maricopa County agreed to settle the case. Mr. Webb has put the cost of a lawsuit at $4 million to $8 million. Mr. Knowles, the mayor, said there was about $500,000 in the budget to either fight a lawsuit or overhaul the city government. The multimillion-dollar figures would apply only if the court case drags on; the sides can still negotiate a settlement at any time. While the expense and risk are greater for Ferguson, both sides have an interest in keeping the matter out of court. In civil rights settlements, the federal government typically gets more concessions than it would even if it prevailed in court. The city typically benefits by saving money. Civil rights investigations normally target large cities; rarely do local officials worry that a settlement will require large tax increases or significant spending cuts. So while most who spoke at Tuesday’s Council meeting said they supported the settlement, some urged city officials to take their chances in court. “This consent decree will be viewed as a moral victory by many in the social justice movement,” said Blake Ashby, a city resident. “But it will be an economic defeat for the people of Ferguson.” City officials said they had already begun making changes to Ferguson’s police and court procedures. Mr. Knowles, for instance, has taken steps to form a civilian oversight panel to review allegations of police abuse. And officials said they would continue making changes, lawsuit or not. “We don’t feel that we need an agreement to start making reforms and moving forward,” Mr. Bell said.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016021119id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/us/politics/justice-department-sues-ferguson-over-police-deal.html

After the runaway success of the ‘hip-hop Dynasty’, a new crop of shows are coming to our screens – but do they reflect the African American experience, and will white audiences embrace them?

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Last month, I found myself in San Diego for a wedding party. For those of you familiar with the state of California and its discrete, culturally autonomous regions, you’ll know that San Diego and its outlying suburbs trend to the right of the political spectrum, contrary to the received wisdom that all Californians are atheist, barefoot fornicators. As such, at the aforementioned wedding party, I was prepared to experience one or more cultural misunderstandings. At a point in the evening, a bit of karaoke broke out and someone made the unhealthy decision to perform Gold Digger by Kanye West. Gold Digger contains the dreaded N-word, and the white woman who was soon to be my adversary for the night dropped the variety of N-word that ends with an “a”. I confronted her, as any self-respecting biracial liberal would do, explaining the error. “You can’t say that word. It’s way too powerful, has too much awful history behind it, and is a racial slur when it comes out of the mouth of someone who is not black,” I reminded her. “If you have a problem with it, call Kanye. This is a pop song. I just said ‘nigga’, anyway.” At that point, I took my leave – well aware that there was no getting through to this person – but the incident did make me reflect on just how far black pop culture has come from the days when David Bowie had to complain on air that MTV refused to play music videos from black artists. Black music is so popular that white people from San Diego feel totally comfortable saying the N-word in front of a black person. If I was stoned or brain-damaged, I could pretend like that’s some kind of moral victory for the civil rights movement, but it’s not. At the very least, it’s a sign of how deeply we’ve penetrated the psyche of the nation. And now, with the continued massive success of Fox’s Empire, that domination has spread to television. The show’s success has bred imitators and creative cousins – series that hope to cross over from the black households of Baldwin Hills and Buckhead to the living rooms of white folks in San Diego and elsewhere. The arms race to claim the next Empire is motivated by profit, as anything is in the entertainment industry. There’s no altruistic aim here. These shows are not greenlit for the purposes of extending an olive branch to the African-American community. The #OscarsSoWhite controversy and related boycott by stars like Will Smith remind us that Hollywood is still not fully attuned to the needs of its minority audiences and co-workers. Still, the steady rise in black faces (and Hispanic faces and Asian faces) on TV provides some hope. This year’s pilot season offers a smattering of programmes that aim to push diversity into mainstream television. Fox, continuing to bask in the glory of Empire, ordered something called Shots Fired straight to series. It stars Sanaa Lathan as the investigator of a series of racially motivated shootings in the south. The network is also considering another musical drama from Empire co-creator Lee Daniels, this time focusing on three women who join forces to start a band in Atlanta. Atlanta is also the setting for (and title of) an FX drama series starring Donald Glover. At the Television Critics Association press tour, Glover described the series as “Twin Peaks with rappers”, a provocative pull quote if I’ve ever seen one. Glover plays a Princeton dropout who moves home to manage his hip-hop wunderkind cousin. Glover also referred to rappers as “the most existential people” – not a common way to describe those in that profession. I wouldn’t call Empire particularly existential either. On that show, Lucious, Cookie, Jamal, Hakeem, Andre, and the rest of the main cast stay focused on two basic principles: the importance of family and the need to get paid. It’s a straightforward, bombastic soap opera with broadly sketched characters in flashy clothes. Atlanta might have better commercial prospects in the wake of Empire, but it doesn’t sound very much like it in artistic execution. Whether white audiences embrace shows like Atlanta or Shots Fired is hard to predict. This last fall season, Fox premiered Rosewood, a law enforcement procedural starring Morris Chestnut that is one of the network’s highest-rated shows, but the lead didn’t necessarily have to be black for it to work. What separates a “show starring black people” from a “black show” is that the latter contains the intrinsic cultural DNA of the black experience. Empire’s characters had to be African American, because the show’s story is specifically about the inner-city drug trade, the hip-hop industry, and acceptance (or lack thereof) for LGBT people in the black community. The star of Rosewood could have been Patrick Dempsey and it wouldn’t have been a drastically different program. Rosewood’s creator, Todd Harthan, is also white, which might explain its colorblind approach to storytelling. To find TV shows that reflect the African-American experience, you still have to venture into the cable hinterlands more often than not. OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) and BET retain a strong grip on black-centric programming. By my count, Tyler Perry currently has four series airing new episodes on OWN, though I should be forgiven if I missed any while drowning in his prodigious output. Those Perry shows are soon to be joined by Greenleaf, created by former Six Feet Under writer Craig Wright. Greenleaf focuses on a Memphis, Tennessee, megachurch and the family that runs it. Of course, that family has secrets, as befits its soap opera genre. Wright, like Harthan, is white, but its setting would be one that wouldn’t immediately lend itself to a white cast. In that sense, Greenleaf sounds the most Empire-y of them all, though churchgoing southern folk might be less marketable to mainstream audiences than Terrence Howard pistol-whipping some hapless extra. That begs the question of whether white audiences have an appetite for black stories or just an abiding interest in the myth-making and hubris of hip-hop rebellion. When I think back to my nemesis from San Diego and her rationale for using a racial slur in the midst of a party, I remember that her reason for doing it was simply that she should be able to and I shouldn’t get offended – that it’s a harmless pop song. But those songs, like the word she employed so carelessly, hold more meaning than, say, Surfin’ Safari by the Beach Boys. Gold Digger is imbued with the sexual politics of black America. As popular as Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen was last year, that doesn’t strip it of its origin as an ode to selling crack and trying to earn a living as an oppressed minority in this country. Empire is successful partially because it revels in those same themes, which are thrilling up until the point when you’re actually living that lifestyle. Empire does a fine job of injecting pathos, humor and humanity into those genre tropes, though. That’s partially why it succeeded where 50 Cent and Starz’s similarly themed music industry drama Power did not. But it remains to be seen if a black show can break out without the benefit of a gun and a beat.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2016012219id_/http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/jan/22/tv-show-empire-donald-glover-atlanta-shots-fired-african-american

The anonymous Atlanta masseur who claimed Travolta groped his buttocks, grabbed at his crotch, masturbated in his presence and forcibly hugged him last January submitted the dismissal paperwork early Thursday.

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John Travolta's lawyer has said the mulitple accusers are just looking for fame and money. TWO MORE men stepped from the shadows Thursday to accuse John Travolta of X-rated ambushes — the latest in a line of masseurs claiming randy faceoffs with the movie star. One says he was groped by Travolta while performing a massage at the Eden Roc resort in Miami in 2000. The other said the “Pulp Fiction” star grabbed his crotch at the Westin Seattle following a Qantas event in 2000. Both men contacted lawyer Okorie Okorocha after he filed a $2 million federal lawsuit on behalf of two other masseurs accusing Travolta of sexual shenanigans. Those masseurs have since withdrawn their claims and hired high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred. “Hearing about all the cases now, I regret not saying something sooner,” Jeff, the former Eden Roc masseur, told the Daily News. The 46-year-old described his alleged run-in with Travolta on the condition his last name be withheld. He said Travolta requested extra work on his inner thighs during the massage. “He was putting his hands where he wanted me to work and kind of grinding on the table,” Jeff claimed Thursday. “At one point, he actually pulled my hand between his legs, up to his scrotum.” Jeff said he pulled back and accepted the actor’s apology. “I started working on his other leg, and it all started back up again. He started putting his butt up in the air. I was just trying to do whatever I could to distract him, but he started getting aggressive and grabbed my hand again.” Jeff claimed Travolta started masturbating toward the end of the massage and tried to reassure him, “ ‘It’s okay, you can do it. No one’s going to know.’ ” The massage man said he bolted from the room the instant the hour-long session was over — and received a paltry $20 tip. The Seattle accuser said Travolta cornered him in a two-story Westin suite as he mopped up the bar all alone. “He came up right behind me and grabbed my a--.,” the former catering staffer, 48, said. “I turned around and saw that his penis was out of his pants.” The incident ended when the worker spurned the advance. Travolta allegedly tossed 10 $100 bills on the counter, the accuser claimed. Travolta’s lawyer rebuked the claims by both men, saying it was “evident” they are not “reliable sources.” And he insisted Travolta did not pay any hush money to get the federal cases dropped. “Not one penny has been paid, nor do we have any intention to pay any money for these ridiculous and false claims,” Singer said. The actor’s travails include accusations from a reported masseur who told the National Enquirer he had passionate sex with Travolta at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Laguna Niguel, Calif., in 1997. A separate Enquirer report that claimed Travolta sexually accosted his “Grease” co-star Jeff Conaway in the 1990s was rejected by the late actor’s sister. “It’s total crap,” Conaway’s sister Carla Shreve told The News.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2012051819id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/john-travolta-accuser-withdraws-2m-lawsuit-hires-lawyer-pursue-case-article-1.1079848

A Palestinian man hijacked a taxi in Tel Aviv, drove it to a packed nightclub and ran over policemen at a security checkpoint before emerging to stab several bystanders.

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The revolution in Egypt that resulted in the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February has led to an increase in lawlessness in Sinai, allowing more movement of Palestinian militants to and from Gaza through tunnels under the border. “Even this morning, we are on high alert in the south in the face of a possible attack, which is similar in setup to the one that happened 10 days ago,” the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Monday. Mr. Barak spoke at an Israeli military industrial plant in the southern city of Ashdod, telling his hosts that an additional battery of a new antirocket defense system would be set up soon to intercept rockets fired from Gaza. “By the end of the year we intend to have four sites, as part of a national emergency program that will bring us nine sites in less than two years, with many thousands of interceptions,” he said. “This will change the foundations of the defense of Israeli citizens.” The Tel Aviv attack occurred just before 2 a.m. at one of the city’s most popular nightclubs, which was holding a well-publicized end-of-summer celebration. The police checkpoint and additional security there had been set up for crowd control in anticipation of scuffling unrelated to politics. The man accused of the attack was slightly hurt and, along with the victims, was taken to a hospital for treatment. He was under interrogation. Terrorist attacks, which became relatively common in Israel during the Palestinian uprising in 2002 and 2003, have been rare in Tel Aviv in the last few years, for a combination of reasons, including the renunciation of violence by the West Bank leadership, the construction of a security barrier by Israel and intensive Israeli military activity against militant cells. But the attack on southern Israel this month raised concerns about the renewal of such tactics, especially as peace talks have ground to a halt and mutual recrimination has increased. The Palestinian leadership is planning to appeal in a few weeks for the United Nations to accept the state of Palestine as a member. Israeli officials — as well as some Palestinians — say they are worried that the move, by raising expectations but changing little on the ground, could increase the frequency of violence. In a statement about the Tel Aviv attack issued through its news agency, the Palestinian Authority said it “condemned this attack as well as the ongoing Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and reaffirmed its intention to seek membership and recognition of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as its capital in the United Nations.” It added that “no attempts to divert attention will stop us from achieving our goal.” Israel and the United States have urged the Palestinian Authority not to seek the United Nations vote, and to engage instead in direct negotiations with Israel. The Palestinians say negotiations are pointless because they believe Israel has no desire to see a Palestinian state come into being. Palestinian newspapers on Monday included quotations from an interview that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, gave to Arab newspapers, in which he said that international recognition of a Palestinian state would change the legal status of Palestinians by turning their territory into a “country under occupation” in accordance with international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. A version of this article appears in print on August 30, 2011, on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Palestinian Man Injures 8 at Israeli Club, Police Say. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011082919id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/world/middleeast/30israel.html

Brendan Rodgers may not have been the best Liverpool manager in the club’s glorious history but he should be praised for his bravery even if it led to his eventual exit

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Farewell, then, Brendan Rodgers. “It was a wonderful show of character and resilience.” That was your catchphrase. Also: “Anyone can ask a team to just sit back and defend on the edge of the box.” That was another. By the end it felt as if the final year and a half of Rodgers’ time at Liverpool – in total 40 months, 166 games (one fewer than Graeme Souness) and no trophies (also one fewer than Souness) – was measured out above all in soundbites and noises off, a constant bickering rehash of errors made, political missteps and arithmetically robust transfer denunciations. This was perhaps the oddest thing about Rodgers at Liverpool. Six glorious title-chasing months aside, a modestly engaging team punched at occasionally below and only rarely above their own weight. For the manager, however, it has been a bizarrely fraught and angry ride, a rollercoaster of pointless enmity and oddly personal rage. Related: Liverpool expected to make approach to Jürgen Klopp this week In the end it really does not matter which view you takes. If sacking Rodgers was not exactly essential, it was certainly understandable. Football clubs are urgent, constantly evolving organisms, for whom managers are only ever semi-permanent employees. Rodgers leaves as one of only two Liverpool managers since 1959 to have failed to win any kind of trophy at all (Roy Hodgson, who was there for seven months, is the other). Quite clearly he is not the greatest defensive organiser. Attempts to tighten at the back have already led to a congealment in attack, a team drowning currently in a bog-pit of 1-1 draws. Plus there is nowhere left to hide now. This is quite clearly a Rodgers-era team. Against Arsenal Liverpool fielded 12 players either signed or brought through in Rodgers’ time. And yet there is something about the sheer degree of rancorous detail, the absolute conviction of total failure justly punished that strikes a slightly false note. Asked to pull off a difficult high-wire feat, transforming the Premier League’s fifth-richest club into convincing contenders for the tier above, Rodgers failed but not by a huge amount all things considered. To an extent it was the tone and texture of his time as Liverpool’s manager that soured as much as results. From the start there were the Shankly-lite-isms, the tendency to over-intellectualise systems and tactics, and an increasing resemblance to a slightly desperate regional sales manager delivering a marketing pitch for a contract he already knows is lost but still producing one last sweatily doomed attempt in the lift down to reception to appear far-sighted and magnetic and compelling. Beyond this we’re are left with the wider inconsolable fury at money spent, money made, money wasted. It is probably only a matter of time now before universities start offering a masters course in interminable angry data analysis of Liverpool’s transfer dealings in the Brendan Rodgers era. It is a debate without answers, without an end point, depending basically on whether you likes him or not, Rodgers either spent almost £300m gross on a squad that got worse over time. Or he spent on average £25m net each year trying constantly to rebuild an annually depleted first XI. The key period is June 2014-June 2015, during which Liverpool’s trading can be broken down into the good (£26m spent on Emre Can, Nathaniel Clyne and Joe Gomez) the badly overpriced (Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana came in at £54m) and the look-away-now as Rickie Lambert, Lazar Markovic, Dejan Lovren, Divok Origi and Mario Balotelli were signed for a combined £70m. It is hardly a glorious procession of hits, although the dreaded Transfer Committee played its part and Rodgers is culpable here too, having essentially brought this one on himself following an early wrangle over Andy Carroll’s place at the club. The committee was a response to his twitchiness. It might be a good system in different hands. Forged out of friction, it was never likely to work. And yet the urge to dwell on all this to such a degree is telling in itself. There are plenty of undesirable aspects to the over-pillorying of Brendan. The fact is all clubs in the elite have a large amount of natural wastage in their transfer dealings now. Big- money signings often fail. It is wrong. It is chaotic. It is wasteful. But it is certainly not simply the preserve of Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool. Meanwhile the things Rodgers has been bad at are not the worst things to be bad at: bad at spin and presentation; bad at playing the game; bad at wheeler-dealering. More damning, he has simply been bad at pragmatism, the need to keep the machine winning at all costs. Related: Liverpool still suffering from an identity crisis in Premier League era | David Conn At the same time the things Rodgers has been good at, or aspired towards, are things our Premier League managers ought to be focused on. Yes, Rodgers likes to puff himself up over philosophies and tactical posturing, to align himself with the hip young things of European football – so much so it has at times been easy to portray him as a kind of poor imitation of the real thing, Shakin’ Stevens to José Mourinho’s Elvis. But Rodgers is at least pointing himself in the right direction, aspiring to something progressive, a level of expertise and modernity that might have given him the edge he needed. There were failings. But his strengths, his instincts – the desire to learn, to talk tactics, to attempt to improve players, to coach – are the right ones. If things turn bad for Garry Monk at Swansea presumably English football will direct a similar level of condescension his way too, rubbishing the previously admired methods, the micro-management, the attempts at least to sound modern and ambitious. Rodgers might not have been the greatest Liverpool manager. He might find his level elsewhere, perhaps in a job where he coaches more and deals with the front-line details less. But at times like these, watching the manner of his departure if not the fact, it is not hard to see why the practice and theory of British football remain in a retarded evolutionary state.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015100519id_/http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/05/liverpool-brendan-rodgers-sacked

Amanda Knox, the American convicted in December 2009 of the sexual assault and murder of her British roommate in Italy, is "cautiously optimistic" as she begins the lengthy appellate process in

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The experts' work begins on February 9 and they must conclude their analysis by May 9. Results will be presented to the two-judge and six layperson jury on May 21. Carla Vecchioti and Stefano Conti, both professors of forensic science at La Sapienza University in Rome, will test the validity of the forensic results of two controversial forensic exhibits from Knox's trial. The first is a knife found in Sollecito's apartment with Knox's DNA on the handle and what Perugia prosecutors say is Kercher's DNA in a tiny groove on the blade. The prosecution contends that the knife was used to stab Kercher in the neck and that it had been cleaned and the DNA matter attributed to Kercher consists of flesh, not blood. The sample, however, was so small that forensic scientists investigating Kercher's murder were not able to double test it in accordance with international forensic science norms, which Knox's legal team says raises doubts about its validity. Conti asked the Perugia judge if she and her colleague could disassemble the knife, removing the handle from the blade, to see if there is other forensic evidence that has not been tested. Judge Hellman reserved the right to pass judgement on that decision until a later date, telling Conti that she could petition the court for permission to take the knife apart if necessary. The second piece of evidence the forensic experts will test is the tiny metal clasp from Kercher's bra, which was cut from her body after her murder. Forensic scientists in the investigatory phase determined that Sollecito's DNA is present on the metal clasp. The clasp was identified on an investigatory video tape on November 2, 2007, when Kercher's body was found. But the clasp was not collected until nearly six weeks later, giving the defense cause to question whether the sample may have been contaminated.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011012319id_/http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/01/22/italy.knox/index.html

Rocket tourism may seem flighty. But Richard Branson and others might have the money and smarts to launch us all

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This is, without a doubt, the sexiest setting ever for a meeting of aspiring astronauts: under swaying palm trees on the beach of a private island owned by Richard Branson in the British Virgin Islands. It is the week after Thanksgiving, and Branson is playing host to a "galactic get-together" on Necker Island. Beer and wine are being consumed like so much rocket fuel. Sushi floats in on a boat--to the middle of the pool. (Swimsuits required!) There's a casino party one night, a tennis tourney in the pouring rain and golf off the top deck of Branson's Balinese-inspired house on the hill--which you can do when you own the whole joint. NASA's astronauts have buzz cuts and aeronautics degrees. But this group made its money in hedge funds and Internet ventures. There are babes too, barefoot and bikini clad, millionaires in their own right. Everyone is sitting in a circle on low beach chairs, wiggling toes in the white sand while debating the wisdom of getting into a centrifuge to test vomit potential at the high G-forces needed to soar into space. That's when the merry prankster himself, Sir Richard--master of Virgin Air, Virgin Records, Virgin stem cells, Virgin everything if he had his way--shows up and starts talking about sex in space. A vision of weightless gymnastics at zero G and intricate human docking maneuvers dances briefly in everyone's head. "Of course, if you want to get naked, someone might find out," warns Sir Richard, displaying a wolfish grin. Welcome to the prelaunch program of Virgin Galactic, which hopes to be the world's first private spaceline, with liftoff by 2009. The adventure-addicted British entrepreneur says that over its first 10 years Virgin Galactic will send 50,000 civilians on a thrill ride more than 62 miles (100 km) up into space--to escape gravity and ogle our small fragile planet. Initial cost for the two-hour adventure? $200,000. While Branson was hitting the beach with future passengers, his competitors-- smart, rich and innovative like him--were busily at work plotting to beat him into space. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just tested his first prototype for personal space travel in West Texas. John Carmack, co-creator of the Doom and Quake games, is test-firing rockets for the next generation of spaceliners and lunar landers near Dallas. In California, Jim Benson, founder of Compusearch, is developing a space taxi with a motor that runs on rubber and laughing gas. (Don't laugh. It works.) PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, who has a NASA contract to build a robotic Pony Express to the International Space Station (ISS), is pouring his own millions into a ship for galactic travelers at his factory south of Los Angeles. Robert Bigelow, founder of Budget Suites of America, already has a small-scale, inflatable space station--hotel in orbit, an outgrowth of his curiosity about UFOs. New Mexico wants to become the Cape Canaveral of space tourism, but six other proposed spaceports across the country are vying for business too. There's even an Orbital Outfitters store to provide space suits for civilians--whether portly or petite. Ever since Alan Shepard became the first American in space in 1961, NASA has controlled our mission in space. It became a sacred place, untouchable, a museum open only to select government employees. Fewer than 500 people have reached space since Shepard; Branson plans to double that number in Galactic's first year. NASA's idea of progress is to return to the moon, nearly a half-century later. Last year the agency spent nearly $5 billion sending highly trained astronauts to the ISS, largely to ferry supplies and fix the AC and other sputtering plumbing. The new generation of entrepreneurs is betting it can do what NASA does--only better and cheaper, with cushier seats and cool views for paying customers. Far from fighting these space invaders, NASA is pushing such ideas as FedEx--like service to lunar outposts, private fueling stations in orbit and space tourism. "We're entering a renaissance period of space exploration," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in January. Like the Renaissance, he said, wealthy entrepreneurs will--in fact, must--take the lead in commercializing technology. Many NASA critics take it further. The agency's role, they say, should be to explore the far reaches of the universe by roving robot, leaving Earth's orbit and the moon to the private sector. "We're in this transition zone, where the Lewis and Clark role of NASA has been done on the human side," says space activist and rabble rouser Rick Tumlinson, founder of Orbital Outfitters. "Now it's time for the settlers and shopkeepers to move in." The hyperentrepreneurial Branson, 56, has an unlimited appetite for outlandish promotional stunts, but launching the space-tourism industry with him on board the first Virgin Galactic flight would be tough to top. He is so confident, he plans to take his two kids, his 91-year-old dad and his 88-year-old mother with him. A Virgin Galactic prototype is taking shape on a hangar floor in California's Mojave Desert. New Mexico is negotiating leases with Virgin for its proposed spaceport, where space tourists could do some preflight vacationing. Designer Philippe Starck has been retained to add chic to Virgin Galactic plane interiors, hotels and spaceports. And despite the ticket price, sales are already closed for the first group of 100 passengers, called the Founders. "I'm absolutely sure that millions of people want to go into space," says Branson, "and it's up to us to make it affordable for those people." His success depends on Burt Rutan, a brilliant if iconoclastic aircraftmaker whose unconventional designs can be found in everything from Predator drones to do-it-yourself airplane kits. Rutan's $26 million SpaceShipOne proved in 2004 that a privately built vehicle could reach the edge of space and do it twice in five days safely. The plane, bankrolled by former Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, won the $10 million Ansari X Prize (sponsored by a foundation seeking radical breakthroughs in space travel) that year and removed, once and for all, what Carmack calls the "giggle factor" in private spaceflight. "This is real. We're not dreaming anymore," Branson says, all signs of his Necker Island playfulness gone. "You could argue," he says, taking a swipe at NASA, "that we've wasted 50 years." In 2005 he and Rutan formed the Spaceship Company--a Boeing for the new space age--with Virgin placing orders for the first 12 ships. Branson is betting $250 million just to get Virgin Galactic started. Rutan plans to build at least 40 spaceships and expects to be run ragged by other clients. "I know this is an interim step," says Rutan, 63. "Fifteen years from now, every kid will know he can go to orbit in his lifetime."

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https://web.archive.org/web/2007022619id_/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592834,00.html

You may be tempted to go uninsured, but there are ways to find affordable plans and avoid being totally exposed.

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After coming up with an idea for a smartphone-application business in mid-2012, Josh Lee started building it on nights and weekends, in part because quitting his sales job at a technology firm would have meant losing his employer-sponsored health benefits. Mr. Lee, of New Holland, Pa., suffers from occasional severe headaches called clusters, and his wife depended on the coverage, too. He says he was worried that the cost of health insurance would be out of their reach and he wasn't sure if his business idea would work. But six months later, Mr. Lee's employer handed him walking papers and he found himself having to purchase a health plan on his own for the first time. "It was kind of scary," recalls the 38-year-old. "When you work for someone else, you don't realize what goes into buying health insurance." Taking full responsibility for one's own health-care costs can be daunting. Average annual premiums are $5,884 for individual coverage and $16,351 for families, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care policy nonprofit. What's more, starting in January all Americans will be required to carry health insurance or face a penalty under the new health-care law, the Affordable Care Act. The penalty is a flat amount or a percentage of income, whichever is greater, and it phases in over three years. For 2014, the dollar penalty is $95, rising to $695 as of 2016. The 2014 income percentage is 1%, rising to 2.5% as of 2016. If you have limited startup funds, the temptation to forgo health insurance and pay the fine may be strong. After all, entrepreneurs tend to be risk-takers, and if you're in good health, you may not need to see a doctor very often. But consider the potential harm should you get seriously ill or injured and don't yet have employees who can fill in for you until you recover, warns Bill Brunelle, executive director of Independent We Stand, a movement of locally owned businesses. "Aside from the hours of productivity you lose, the cost of medical care without insurance could mean the lights go out and stay out," he says. The good news is that when shopping for health insurance on your own you can choose a bare-bones plan, instead of the more-comprehensive plans employers generally offer. This means that even if you are eligible for Cobra, the federal program that allows you to buy extended workplace coverage for a limited time, you may be able to save with a less robust plan, such as one lacking nonessentials like vision, chiropractic care and gym discounts. "As an entrepreneur just starting out, you want to be mean and lean," says Steve Roper, a health-insurance broker in Denver. He also suggests seeking out a plan with a higher deductible than what you may have had in the past. This could result in lower monthly premiums and less pressure on your cash flow. Further, if you need to pay the deductible in full but can't afford it, he notes that hospitals typically offer payment plans. A broker can help you find a health-care plan that suits your needs and budget at no charge, as most are compensated by insurance carriers. You can find a broker in your state by visiting the website for the National Association of Health Underwriters at NAHU.org. Of course, you can also shop for coverage on your own, and the new state exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act may be a good starting point, because they offer subsidies to low-income earners. Visit healthcare.gov to find your state's exchange and see if you're eligible for financial aid. You can also find health plans online through free, private marketplaces specially designed for self-employed professionals such as StartupInsurance.com and HealthAviator.com. Plus, note that some insurance carriers have physical storefronts where you can go to shop for coverage offline. Mr. Lee, the Pennsylvania entrepreneur, says his research led him to a bare-bones family health plan that costs $350 a month and has a $3,500 deductible. His startup, called SnapMyAd, has just 10 paying clients. It makes a free phone app that lets users send photos they take of brands to advertisers in exchange for rewards, and charges advertisers $500 to $2,500 per promotion. Despite the slow start, Mr. Lee says he doesn't regret his decision to buy insurance. Two weeks after SnapMyAd made its debut in Apple's app store in April, he experienced a cluster headache. Doctor's orders: a three-day stay in the hospital.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2013102019id_/http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303376904579135322033886680

Plus, American Apparel ditches Dov Charney, NYFW needs a new home and more from the week in style.

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All the week’s fashion news that’s fit to reprint. Rihanna: Bad girl gone Puma The singer seems particularly invested in her newly announced role as the women’s creative director (and global ambassador) for Puma, touring the company’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, on Tuesday “dressed in a cream ensemble that included a bunch of pearls wrapped generously around her neck and descending softly on a vintage satin bustier, an Yves Saint Laurent hooded sweater, track pants and a brand-new pair of Puma sneakers customized for the occasion with a crepe sole,” reported WWD. She told the trade that Puma-brand suspenders are a possibility; a Puma-brand body stocking covered in 230,000 Swarovski crystals is the limit! American Apparel drops Dov Charney (again) Bye-bye, Dov, bye-bye smuttiness. Hello, longtime retail exec Paula Schneider, the retailer’s new C.E.O. following Charney’s dismissal after being sidelined six months ago. Kate Middleton in the hood Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, stepped out of her castle in a hoodie, J Brand jeans and boots to work with a group of Beaver Scouts. Forty-eight hours spent Stateside can break a person, sartorially speaking. NYFW kicked to the curb The city officially ousted IMG Fashion Week from Lincoln Center, settling a 2013 lawsuit filed by NYC Parks Advocates pointing to the mistreatment of Damrosch Park, located on the south side of the Metropolitan Opera House. The senior VP at IMG Fashion, Catherine Bennett, previously told Pret-a-Reporter, “For September 2015, we will be somewhere new,” adding, “we are working very diligently to figure out what this new neighborhood/venue will look like,” preferably something prewar with a private terrace and laundry in the building. Hedi Slimane headed to Gucci? New York Post’s Page Six claimed that Saint Laurent’s Hedi Slimane could be Kering’s top pick to replace Gucci creative director, Frida Giannini. Get ready for Ucci! (He’d likely be doing away with the letter G.) The human-rights attorney and spouse of George was named Barbara Walters’s Most Fascinating Person of 2014. Walters called her wedding “one of the greatest achievements in human history.” Per the search engine’s data, Kate Upton was 2014’s most-Googled model and normcore was the most-Googled fashion trend (beating out health goth and althleisure). “How to wear a scarf” took the title of most-searched fashion Q. It’s a toughie. Buzz Bissinger bids adieu to his clothes The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and confessed shopaholic penned an essay for GQ explaining that the auction company LuxeSwap is selling about 150 of his garments on eBay. “They asked how much I had,” he wrote. “I told them to bring a U-Haul van. It was pretty much filled by the end.” Clear eyes, nearly full U-Haul, can’t lose. My birthday present from @lenadunham is my new most cherished possession.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014122019id_/http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/puma-rihanna-kate-middleton-hoodie-hedi-slimane-gucci-style-news/

‘Popeye’, responsible for thousands of deaths during reign of Medellin cocaine cartel, out on good behaviour after 22 years

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One of Colombia’s most feared drug cartel assassins has walked free after serving 22 years in jail for scores of murders ordered by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar during the cocaine trafficking heyday of the 1980s. Jhon Jairo Velasquez, known by his alias Popeye, was released early from the high security Combita prison in central Boyaca after completing about three-fifths of his sentence and receiving a reduction for studying and good behaviour. He left the prison heavily guarded by state-provided protection. Velasquez, 52, was Escobar’s chief hitman during the bloodiest days of the infamous Medellin cartel, which shipped billions of dollars of cocaine to the United States and Europe. The prolific assassin, who has admitted to killing hundreds of Escobar’s enemies, was on the frontlines of gangland battles for territory and trafficking routes. He was indirectly behind thousands of deaths by killers on Escobar’s payroll. One of Escobar’s inner circle, Velasquez was allegedly involved in some of the most famous cartel-related crimes – including the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan and the bombing of an Avianca commercial flight later that same year that killed all 107 on board. As Escobar stepped up his battle against the government to avoid extradition to the United States if captured, the cartel waged a bombing campaign across Bogota, Medellin and Cali, with many of the explosive devices planted by Velasquez. He kidnapped both Andres Pastrana, when the future president was mayor of Bogota, and Francisco Santos, who later became vice-president and is a cousin of President Juan Manuel Santos. Perhaps the most shocking of Velasquez’s crimes was the murder of his own girlfriend who was also Escobar’s ex-lover. The woman, looking for revenge after Escobar forced her to have an unwanted abortion, clandestinely contacted US drug authorities in an effort to become an informant, Velasquez told Semana magazine in an interview last year. The drug baron ordered Velasquez to kill her, in what the hitman characterised as one of the most painful episodes of his life. Families of some of the Avianca flight victims have complained that Velasquez has not shared all he knows about the crime and say that his release could mean vital facts never come to light. During his prison stint Velasquez provided evidence that helped jail other criminals – including an ex-senator convicted of involvement in Galan’s murder. Now Velasquez’s work as a government informant may put him at risk for the same kind of revenge hits that he once carried out on Escobar’s behalf. It is not clear whether the state will provide him with protection. Like Escobar, who was gunned down by Colombian agents in 1993, Velasquez comes from Antioquia province, once an epicentre of the narcotics trade.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014082719id_/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/27/jhon-jairo-velasquez-hitman-to-pablo-escobar-walks-free-in-colombia

If you're having trouble understanding Amazon's battles against Disney and the Hachette Book Group, perhaps some wisdom from Jiminy Cricket, Wolverine, and Dr. Doom can clear things up.

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In its storied, revolutionary history, Amazon.com hasn’t been hesitant to employ ruthless strategies in its quest to rule retail. The company’s tactics have been so tough that they’ve inspired consumer boycotts from time to time. Amazon’s latest skirmishes position the world’s largest e-retailer in standoffs against Hachette, a book publisher being pressured to lower its prices, and Disney, which failed to reach some contractual agreements with Amazon, and which is being punished by Amazon’s refusal to sell preorders of some of its movies. We thought it would be helpful—or at least a heckuvalot more fun—to explain more about the ongoing disputes using classic quotes from Disney films and Marvel Comics, which Disney also owns. “I just can’t wait to be king.” These words, sung by Simba in Disney’s “The Lion King,” sum up the ambitions of Jeff Bezos and Amazon: The goal is to be the undisputed king of selling us stuff. As soon as possible, naturally. From one-click ordering to Amazon Prime, and from it forays into everything from groceries to a phone that encourages users to shop more at Amazon, it’s clear that Amazon wants to be the Everything Store—and to so thoroughly dominate the world of e-commerce that it essentially takes over the retail world. In any attempted coup, the grab for money and power can be ugly. Often, the subjects aren’t happy with the policies and terms dictated by the new ruler, especially when they question the legitimacy of the king. In this case, Disney, Hachette, and others are the subjects that aren’t happy with how the self-appointed new ruler is trying to push them around. “If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.” Jiminy Cricket said these words to Pinocchio, who dreamed of being a real boy. Amazon’s dream is different—to be the real boss of retail. To make Jeff Bezos’s wish come true, Amazon has been making some fairly extreme requests, including an insistence than Hachette cap its e-book prices at $9.99. Amazon is also using some extreme negotiating tactics in its standoff with Disney, notably making it difficult or impossible for customers to pre-order some of the company’s highly anticipated movies, including “Maleficent,” “Muppets Most Wanted,” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” “I am but a humble servant of my people!” Amazon’s justification for playing hardball with movie companies and book publishers is that it is merely fulfilling its mission to serve its customers best, by way of figuring out how to offer them the absolute lowest prices possible. “We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices,” Amazon said in a recent statement, regarding its ongoing dispute with Hachette. “We know making books more affordable is good for book culture.” Oh, and where did the quote above about the “humble servant” business come from? It’s a line from Dr. Doom, who was constantly being stopped by the Fantastic Four in his life’s mission to take over the world. “Avengers, assemble.” Whenever the bad guys are doing something bad, Captain America calls his Avenger teammates to join together and put an end to the mayhem. Likewise, more than 900 authors have joined forces in a call to arms to stop Amazon’s attempt to break Hachette. “We feel strongly that no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want,” reads a statement signed by writers such as Stephen King and John Grisham that was published in a New York Times ad over the weekend. Among the other forces that are gathering allies and assembling for war: Google and Barnes & Noble, which teamed up last week in a direct attack on Amazon when they announced they would jointly offer same-day delivery of book purchases. “With great power comes great responsibility.” The famous wisdom of (Uncle) Ben Parker directed his nephew, Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man), to the path of righteousness. Critics say that Amazon is being irresponsible with the great power it now wields, and literature and the publishing world are among those being hurt as a result. In an open letter titled “If I Were Jeff Bezos” published last week on CNN, best-selling author James Patterson wrote that if he was the Amazon founder and CEO—the guy known for the “superhuman confidence of his laugh”—he would not be “so carried away with this success that I am going to lose sight of scale or sanity. Sure, I have ushered in the age of Internet commerce, but, no, I am not now hanging around just to collect my financial reward, or even to bask in the public recognition.” And why not? “You see, I, Jeff Bezos, am actually trying to make this a better world … You think I want to be known as the man responsible for the biggest quality drought in the history of novel writing?” “You give them an inch, they swim all over you.” Retailers and manufacturers enter tough negotiations all the time behind closed doors; what’s unusual here is that these squabbles are repeatedly being fought out in the open, for all to see and judge. “It’s rare in physical retail to have contract disputes become so public. Most retailers just aren’t willing to hurt themselves by cutting off sales,” Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told the Wall Street Journal. “Amazon has demonstrated that they’re not going to be the one to blink in these negotiations.” On the flip side, Disney and the book publishers don’t want to give an inch in negotiations. If they did, the fear is that Amazon would swim all over them, so to speak, in every future negotiation, to paraphrase Sebastian, the crab from “The Little Mermaid.” Sebastian was talking about teenagers, not power-hungry corporations, but you get the idea. “There is a war coming. Are you sure you’re on the right side?” Wolverine hadn’t really chosen a side yet when he said these words to Storm in the original “X-Men” movie. The typical consumer probably hasn’t chosen a side in the Amazon wars either. But essentially we’re all being asked to pick—more money and power for the seller (Amazon) or the producer and manufacturer (Disney, Hachette). By following the X-Men metaphor through, you’re siding with a mutant no matter which way you go. It’s up to you to figure out which side is figuratively being led by Charles Xavier, and which is helmed by Magneto. And how do you decide? Let’s turn back to Jiminy Cricket for an answer: “Always let your conscience be your guide.”

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014081119id_/http://time.com/money/3101218/amazon-disney-hachette-war-movie-quotes/

After Serena Williams's tearful first-round victory on Tuesday, her fashionista sister Venus can put further verve into the previously flagging women's game when she takes on Japan's Kimiko Date-Krumm first up on Center Court.

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LONDON (Reuters) - It was Venus's turn to write the Williams plot line at Wimbledon on Wednesday as she survived a gripping three-set battle with 40-year-old Japanese Kimiko Date-Krumm. Men's champion Rafa Nadal also got his first taste of indoor grasscourt tennis but needed considerably less time to reach the third round by swatting aside Ryan Sweeting 6-3 6-2 6-4. After a frustrating three-hour rain delay, last year's runner-up Tomas Berdych and British hope Andy Murray were exposed to the elements but proved equally ruthless on Court One. Berdych crushed Julien Benneteau 6-1 6-4 6-2 and fourth seed Murray cruised past Tobias Kamke 6-3 6-3 7-5. With the light fading three-times runner-up Andy Roddick beat Romania's Victor Hanescu in straight sets to book a third-round clash with dangerous Spanish left-hander Feliciano Lopez. Nadal will be spared the fury of Canadian Milos Raonic's sledgehammer serve in the last 32 after the 20-year-old slipped awkwardly and retired injured when leading 3-2 in the first set against Luxembourg's Gilles Muller. Once again, however, it was the name Williams that had tongues wagging at the rain-hit championships. On Monday it was a tennis outfit resembling a pair of curtains, on Tuesday Serena's courtside blubbing took center stage and this time it was the sheer ferocity of the 31-year-old Venus's spell-binding duel with a veteran defying her age. With play delayed on all other courts, Williams and Date-Krumm, who on Monday became the second oldest player to win a women's singles match at Wimbledon, provided an early contender for match of the tournament. "I thought she played unbelievable today," Williams, who returned from a five-month injury layoff at Eastbourne last week, told reporters. "I thought she had some luck on her side, too, with net cords, balls hitting lines. I just thought today was a perfect storm for her to try to get a win. "Thankfully I had some answers." Date-Krumm made her Wimbledon debut in 1989 when the Williams sisters were still bashing balls about on park courts in Compton and you have to go back to 1996 for her best Wimbledon performance when she lost to Steffi Graf in the semi-finals before taking a 12-year break from tennis. "She hits a ball that no one else hits. I never played anyone who hits the ball like this," Williams said of the gritty Japanese whose straight-line ball trajectory was a throwback to the days before topspin ruled the courts. Williams certainly seemed bemused as she lost her first three service games to trail 5-1. She fought back to force a tiebreak, went 6-1 down, clawed it back to 6-6 but slipped behind as an inspired Date-Krumm grabbed the next two points. Williams upped her game to level the match and moved 2-0 up in the decider before Date-Krumm launched a final attack, hitting shots unerringly close to the lines and raiding the net at every opportunity. At 6-6, 30-30 former world number four Date-Krumm sniffed a break but Williams scorched a sublime backhand winner and sealed victory in the following game. Play finally started elsewhere around the All England Club at 1430 GMT with organizers desperately hoping to work through a backlog of matches. Fast-track victories like Nadal's will help. Indoors or out the French Open champion has quickly found the grasscourt groove although he would prefer having the sun on his back. "A new experience for me, a good experience." he said. "But the tournament is outdoor, it's not indoor. I prefer outdoors," he said after his forehand put Sweeting to the sword in front of Prince Charles' wife, the Duchess of Cornwall. Women's second seed Vera Zvonareva, runner-up to Serena Williams last year, rolled into the third round after beating fellow Russian Elena Visnina 6-1 7-6 although such is her low profile that she was not even required to give a news conference. Wailing fourth seed Victoria Azarenka, whose sound effects have not pleased the top brass at Wimbledon, crushed Iveta Benesova and last year's surprise semi-finalists Petra Kvitova and Tsvetana Pironkova also advanced. One women's seed to fall was Bethanie Mattek-Sands, the self-confessed Lady Gaga of tennis. She walked on court wearing a white frilly jacket adorned with tennis balls but the 30th-seeded American was bounced out in a delayed first-round match by Japan's Misaki Doi.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011062119id_/http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2011/06/21/nadal-primed-amid-us-onslaught-at-wimbledon/

Republican leaders say only a spotless recruit can make the case to Long Island voters that Republicans should retain their slim majority in the State Senate.

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The corruption trials of Dean G. Skelos and Sheldon Silver, the former leaders of New York’s Legislature, deepened voters’ distrust of state government, and prompted public demands for root-and-branch ethics reform when lawmakers return to Albany next year. But for the Democratic and Republican leaderships, there is a more immediate concern: Mr. Skelos’s conviction has left his politically moderate Senate district on Long Island unrepresented. Political strategists were already gearing up to do battle for control of the Senate, even before the trial and conviction of Mr. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader. His party has only the barest of majorities in the chamber, which is its only toehold on political power statewide. The jury’s verdict two weeks ago suddenly accelerated the pace — and raised the stakes — of the 2016 elections. An off-season race to replace Mr. Skelos would keep corruption front and center as a political issue, with the multimillion-dollar contest serving as a framework for the larger 2016 debate around ethics. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has not yet announced plans to call a special election, but party leaders are preparing for a vote early in the spring. (The governor has indicated he was likely to set an election for the Assembly seat vacated by Mr. Silver, the Manhattan Democrat and former speaker, in April, perhaps coinciding with New York’s presidential primary.) Democrats, viewing Mr. Skelos’s seat as an early 2016 prize, have eagerly leapt into action. They are wooing Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky, a former federal corruption prosecutor, to run for the seat, and party strategists believe he is likely to join the race. Mr. Kaminsky acknowledged on Wednesday that he had been asked about his intentions to seek the seat, and said he was “seriously considering it.” “At a time when Long Island needs Albany to be hard at work for them, the corrupt Skelos machine has been hard at work for themselves,” he said in a statement. “We need change and honest leadership — and we need it now.” On the Republican side, the picture is far hazier: Party leaders have spoken to several possible recruits, and Senator John J. Flanagan, who succeeded Mr. Skelos as majority leader, has conferred with local Republicans in Nassau. But no one potential candidate stands out as an obvious first choice. The overriding imperative, Republicans say, is to find a candidate free of even the slightest ethical stain. That may not be so simple in Nassau County, where Mr. Skelos lorded over local politics from his perch in the Senate. The county’s powerful Republican machine has recently drawn the attention of prosecutors, who have scrutinized contracting practices under Edward P. Mangano, the Republican county executive. United States Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican, said he had spoken with the Nassau County Republican leader, Joseph N. Mondello, about the need to enlist a candidate of unquestioned integrity. Only an utterly spotless recruit, Mr. King said, would be able to make the case to voters that Republican control of the State Senate benefits Long Island. “We’re going to be held to a different standard, the highest standard, because of what happened,” Mr. King said. “There’s no room for error. There’s no room, even, for question marks.” Two local officials, Bruce A. Blakeman, a Hempstead councilman, and Denise Ford, a Nassau County legislator, said party leaders had asked them to consider the race. Republicans have also spoken with Assemblyman Brian Curran. Corruption scandals have battered both parties in Albany, with Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos as the most recent and flagrant case studies. But because of the political map in 2016, the issue is likely to prove far more challenging for Republicans next fall. Democrats hold the State Assembly by a huge margin, while Republicans control the State Senate with only a slim and cobbled-together majority. The Republican party depends on moderate, suburban districts, like the one Mr. Skelos represented, to keep power. Just 31 of 63 Senate seats are occupied by Republican lawmakers. One additional senator, Simcha Felder of Brooklyn, was elected as a Democrat but caucuses with the Republicans. (Five Democratic lawmakers have also broken away from their party to sit as a separate group, the Independent Democratic Conference.) If outrage about corruption is pervasive statewide, recent polling suggests it may be even more acute in the suburbs: In a recent Siena College poll, 54 percent of suburban New York voters said they were less likely to re-elect their own legislators because of recent corruption scandals, about 10 percentage points more than the share of rural and New York City voters who said the same. Senator Michael N. Gianaris of Queens, who heads the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee, said he expected a debate over government ethics to dominate the race to succeed Mr. Skelos. “Corruption and the poor ethical culture in Albany will be front and center for the voters,” Mr. Gianaris said. “If they want the dramatic change that’s necessary, it’s the Democrats that will bring that.” Any conceivable Republican nominee, he said, “would be out of the Skelos machine and will have been ushered into politics at Skelos’s knee.” Mr. Skelos’s legal problems have already been used against Nassau County Republicans, to toxic effect. In a district attorney election last month, the Democratic candidate, Madeline Singas, ran television ads pledging to attack graft and showing her popular Republican opponent shaking hands with Mr. Skelos, who was then awaiting trial. Mostly unknown to voters at the start of the race, Ms. Singas won by 16 points. The corruption issue was a “devastating message,” said Isaac Goldberg, Ms. Singas’s campaign manager. Still, Republicans have proved remarkably adept at maintaining their grip on the Senate, despite New York’s solidly blue political hue. The party has aggressively exploited divisions within the Democratic ranks, peeling off lawmakers like Mr. Felder and, at times, allying with the Independent Democratic Conference. Last year, Republicans captured an outright majority in the Senate, in part by linking Democratic candidates around the state to Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, a polarizing figure who campaigned for a Democratic majority. “We fully expect to hold this seat and grow our majority in 2016,” said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Republican majority in the Senate. Just last month, the party easily won a special election in the state’s conservative Southern Tier, which had previously been held by Thomas W. Libous, the second-ranking Senate Republican until he was convicted in July of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Skelos’s seat is more difficult turf for Republicans. Party strategists cite a few reasons for optimism: They believe Mr. Kaminsky, the likely Democratic candidate, remains relatively undefined in the district, giving Republicans room to recruit a winsome alternative of their own. And a special election that coincides with the presidential primary could be helpful to Republicans, since Democrats are likely to settle on their presidential nominee well before New York votes on April 19. The Republican nomination fight may drag on longer, and help drive conservative voters to the polls. Some Republicans took issue with the notion that Mr. Skelos would prove to be an anchor around the neck of the party’s eventual candidate for the Senate. Howard J. Kopel, a Nassau County legislator who represents part of the Skelos district, stressed that corruption was not a one-party issue. “You say Skelos, I say Silver,” Mr. Kopel, a Republican, said. He added of Mr. Skelos, “He did what he did, apparently, but his record in terms of helping the people of this district was good.” A version of this article appears in print on December 24, 2015, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Stakes Raised for State Senate Seat . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015122419id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/nyregion/skelos-conviction-leaves-key-vacancy-in-nassau-county-senate-seat.html

Rebecca Nicholson: A trip to the coast, and Shoshanna finally tells the others in the group exactly what she thinks of them all. But will Hannah take any notice?

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SPOILER ALERT: this blog is published after the US transmission; the UK broadcasts the episodes a week later. • Read Rebecca Nicholson's episode six blogpost Welcome back, Girls! I know it's only been a week, but I was starting to feel like this season was treading water (though I know from the comments that some of you liked last week's episode more than I did). The first two seasons had provocations and talk-about-this moments scattered throughout, and so far, it hasn't felt so vital. However an away-episode always seems to inject new life, and that after-dinner showdown was utterly brilliant, giving the characters chance to voice a lot of what us viewers have surely been thinking. (I'm team Shoshanna after all that, by the way.) It's as if they have been underplaying Shoshanna on purpose this season. Even for the bulk of this episode, she was virtually silent. Now we know it's because she was quietly, determinedly getting "cruel drunk" – and when she offloaded, it was magnificent. She told Hannah, who has behaved appallingly all season, that she was indeed "a fucking narcissist", she said Marnie's precious duck "tasted like a used condom", and she nailed the group dynamic: they're "a bunch of fucking whiney nothings" who treat her "like a cab driver". It's been a long time coming, but it made a decent point – they are no good for each other and they haven't had fun in years. Plus it was great to see Zosia Mamet diverting Shoshanna's ditsiness into simmering rage. Shoshanna was happy to dismantle Marnie, too – and again, she stepped up because someone had to. "You're tortured by fear and self-doubt and it's not pleasant to be around." Marnie organised the trip, borrowing the house from her mother's friend, but she lost control of it as soon as "the cast of Magic Mike" arrived to party and have non-organised fun. It was excruciating to watch her attempts to stick to her plans "and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group". But she's too uptight to let go – and she's still talking about Charlie – so inevitably, it all fell apart. Jessa came on to one of Elijah's friends, remained on the wagon and backed up Shoshanna, despite being on the receiving end of some martini-honesty herself. I like how rehab has made her unbearably pretentious, too: "You look like someone Mapplethorpe would have photographed." Reader, I rolled my eyes. The insidious thing about Girls is that it never moves on from awkwardness and recrimination, because Hannah, the lead, is incapable of learning anything. Even when she's being taken apart by Shoshanna, all she can do is acknowledge that she's heard it before and it makes no difference: "People have been calling me a narcissist since I was three." Which made the final scene of the episode – a silent resolution in the form of a sad dance routine – quite bleak, actually. Shoshanna is right; they are terrible, toxic friends for each other. And yet as they danced, there's a strong sense that they're stuck together regardless. That dance routine was to Harry Nilsson's episode-appropriate You're Breakin' My Heart. The closing song was The Living Sisters' How Are You Doing?, which got itself a Michel Gondry-directed video in 2011. Elijah's friends were played by bona fide Broadway star T Oliver Reid, Chris Wood from The Carrie Diaries and the ever-versatile Danny Strong, best known for Buffy and Mad Men. • There was a sly pop at J Crew from Marnie. J Crew's creative director Jenna Lyons played Hannah's boss last week. • It was nice to see how Hannah behaves without Adam for a change, but her increasing dependence on him can only end badly, surely? • That subplot between Elijah and his patronising boyfriend Pal (was it Pal? Hal?) was surprisingly touching. Elijah seems to have had his obnoxious edges rounded off. Though he has always been scathing about Marnie, he's now in a similar position of trying to make a relationship fit when clearly it does not. • Blame the washed-out filter, but it did not look warm enough for bikinis. I enjoyed Hannah's refusal to put anything else on all episode, though. • I've quoted a lot of the dialogue this week – the writing really was top-notch.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2014021719id_/http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/feb/17/girls-recap-season-three-episode-seven-beach-house

Kate Upton raged on Twitter with a NSFW rant after Justin Verlander lost Cy Young Award voting to Rick Porcello.

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Kate Upton is not accepting voting results…for the Cy Young Award. The model is the fiancée of Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, winner of the 2011 AL Cy Young Award. Verlander was a finalist for this year's award, but he fell to Red Sox right-hander Rick Porcello, a former Tiger. Verlander actually had more first-place votes than Porcello, but lost in total points: Here's the crazy breakdown of the AL Cy Young voting, via @officialBBWAA, Justin Verlander had six more 1st place votes than the winner. pic.twitter.com/xnQBcUnVbC — Big League Stew (@bigleaguestew) November 16, 2016 Upton expressed her distaste for baseball writers with a NSFW Twitter rant: Hey @MLB I thought I was the only person allowed to fuck @JustinVerlander ?! What 2 writers didn't have him on their ballot? — Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 16, 2016 He had the majority of 1st place votes and 2 writers didn't have him on their ballots?!! can you pick more out of touch people to vote?@MLB — Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 16, 2016 Sorry Rick but you didn't get any 1st place votes? you didn't win. #ByeFelicia @MLB keep up with the times and fire those writers — Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 16, 2016 She even dished some attitude to some fans: @WillBrabrook @MLB he got less 1st place votes then justin. Your the only idiot here buddy — Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 17, 2016 @Pete_BBS oh your cute... check the stats boo justin won in first place votes — Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 17, 2016 @LAPatriot @MLB how many 2nd place votes? huh? he lost to Justin in 1st place votes. If Tampa bay writers weren't paid off... — Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 17, 2016 Upton retweeted Verlander's brother, Ben, a Tigers minor leaguer: Are you kidding me? Most first place votes and doesn't win? #SaltyYoungerBrother Explain this.. pic.twitter.com/RpEb4PPrME — Ben Verlander (@Verly32) November 16, 2016 There is a lot to digest here, but one important point: Verlander and Porcello used to be teammates. Porcello pitched with the Tigers from 2009-2014. Verlander was the team's ace, as he has been since his first full season in 2006. On top of that, the NL Cy Young Award winner was Max Scherzer, another former Tiger, who pitched in Detroit from 2010-2014. Scherzer also won the AL Cy Young Award in 2013. Could Upton be extra salty because two former teammates who used to pitch in Verlander's shadow won Cy Young Awards Wednesday? It's certainly something to think about. P.S. For reference, Upton tweeted this about NFL players kneeling in September. -- Follow Jeff Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband. Like Jeff Eisenband on Facebook. Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Cy Young, Cy Young Award, Detroit Tigers, Justin Verlander, Kate Upton, Max Scherzer, MLB, model, Pitcher, Rick Porcello, SI Swimsuit Issue, Twitter, Washington Nationals

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http://web.archive.org/web/20161118132642id_/http://www.thepostgame.com/kate-upton-twitter-defense-verlander-cy-young

The all-time leading scorer in MLS and for the U.S. national team will step aside after this season with the Galaxy.

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Landon Donovan, the most prolific scorer in U.S. men’s soccer history, announced Thursday that he will retire after the 2014 season with the Los Angeles Galaxy. A day after scoring the winning goal in the MLS All-Star Game, Donovan announced in a written statement: “I am sad to leave a profession that has brought me so much joy. … However, after spending half my life as a professional soccer player, I also am excited to begin a new chapter and pursue other opportunities that will challenge me and allow me to grow as a person.” Donovan, 32, is in his 10th season with the Galaxy and 14th in MLS. He is the league’s career scoring leader with 138 regular season goals and second in assists with 124. The California native is also the national team’s top scorer with 57 goals in 156 appearances, second most in program history. He featured in three World Cups between 2002 and 2010 but, in a stunning move, Coach Jurgen Klinsmann dropped him from roster consideration before this year’s competition in Brazil. “I feel incredibly blessed and lucky to have played a role in the remarkable growth of MLS and U.S. soccer during my playing career,” he said. “And while my career as a player will soon be over, rest assured I will stay connected on many levels to the beautiful game. As we enter a transformative time for the sport, I will do everything I can to help the continued growth of soccer in the United States.” Donovan has won five MLS Cups, two with San Jose and three with Los Angeles. “Landon Donovan is one of the most significant figures in the history of soccer in the United States,” said Galaxy Coach Bruce Arena, who guided two World Cup squads that included Donovan. “His influence on MLS and soccer in this country will continue to be felt for many years to come. As both a player and a person, Landon has been an incredible representative of the L.A. Galaxy, MLS and the U.S. men’s national team and it has been my honor coaching him. We respect his decision to retire at the end of the season and look forward to competing for another MLS Cup and celebrating his outstanding career.” Donovan has posted four goals and seven assists in 17 regular season appearances this year. Steven Goff is The Post’s soccer writer. His beats include D.C. United, MLS and the international game, as well as local college basketball. SECTION: {section=sports, subsection=null}!!! 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https://web.archive.org/web/2014080819id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/wp/2014/08/07/landon-donovan-to-retire-after-2014-season/

For just $100, a headset that combines Samsung hardware with Oculus software addresses hurdles—like nausea—that have kept virtual reality from going mainstream.

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Virtual reality is ready for Christmas-morning reality. Buzz about VR has been building for years, but you can’t stay up all Christmas Eve waiting to rip open a box of hype. Now a Star Trekkish gadget from Samsung SSNHZ 0.00 % and Facebook Inc. FB 1.00 % ’s Oculus called the Gear VR makes a compelling VR experience available under your tree for just $100. The Gear VR is the first 360-degree entertainment system that feels accessible and slick, rather than awkward and sickening. If you’ve only tried freebie VR experiences like Google Cardboard, it’s worth giving it a second shot with this. Gear VR reminds me of the Atari 2600, that affordable game console that brought Pac-Man home. Right out of the box, Gear VR makes it easy to access a surprisingly wide universe of games, videos, journalism and even immersive theater experiences, all curated by VR pioneer Oculus. And without the need for jumbo-sized headsets and price tags, Samsung’s new hardware addresses much of what made earlier VR headgear uncomfortable. There are some constraints. To use Gear VR, you will need one of this year’s compatible Samsung smartphones, like the Galaxy S6 or Note 5. The phone mounts on the high-tech ski goggles to transform, like Voltron, into a VR machine that pumps images straight into your eyes. You won’t mistake what you see in there for reality—you can clearly make out pixels, like when you’d sit too close to an old tube TV. Yet using the Gear VR for a week, I frequently found myself getting wrapped up in its virtual worlds, for longer and longer stretches. That’s thanks, in part, to great strides from Samsung and Oculus in combating the urge to hurl. The nausea, which has made VR largely disappointing to date, is caused by herky-jerky scenery that doesn’t match what your brain is expecting. Inside the headset, you’re bounding this way and that, but your inner ear and your eyes are reporting different things. But unlike other phone-goggle contraptions, the Gear VR headset has its own motion sensors, so it does a much better job of tracking your head movements when you’re turning or looking up. And it pushes the Samsung phone’s processor to cut motion delay to under 20 milliseconds, reducing the nausea-inducing blur. (My test Galaxy S6 Edge Plus worked so hard when mounted, it could blow through its huge battery with an hour or two of intensive VR.) Other improvements also make Gear VR much more comfortable: The headset itself is less heavy—slimmed 19% from an experimental headset Samsung debuted last year. You can comfortably fit glasses inside, and there’s also a focus adjustment that makes the view more pleasurable for aging eyes. Yet there’s still some discomfort. Wearing anything on your face for an hour can get old. Also, I occasionally encountered what appeared to be a flicker in the brightest parts of the screen. (Samsung says that’s rare, and has to do with the way my brain processes the screen refresh itself.) The fact that using this can result in fatigue is a testament to how much you can actually do inside a Gear VR. My biggest surprise was how much real content there is now—well over 100 apps in the Oculus store, with 40 coming in the next few months. After a week using it, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. You can watch LeBron James practice, tour the world’s beaches, even watch Netflix on a TV in a ski chalet. Not all of this content is unique to the Gear VR, but the Oculus interface you use to browse and buy it makes it easy. There are lots of enhanced shoot-em-up games, as you’d expect, but there are also experiences that are exclusive to VR. In “Land’s End,” for example, you float through a beach landscape to unlock puzzles. It’s the most Zen virtual experience I’ve ever had. Directors are also figuring out how to use 360-degree video for a theater-like experience. My favorite, from an app called Vrse, lets you visit the set of “Saturday Night Live” during its 40th anniversary special. You can spin around to watch Jerry Seinfeld’s monologue and the celebrity reactions. (Don’t miss Sarah Palin in the audience.) Oculus also works to keep you away from bad experiences, vetting what goes into its store. On top of that, it adds a “comfort” rating to each app, like a Yelp for queasiness. Rival phone VR headsets lose their immersive quality because they don’t have good ways to let us select, view menus and do things other than look around. The Gear VR adds a touchpad on the right side that’s equally useful for scrolling through movie titles and zapping alien spaceships, though it takes a little getting used to. If you buy a Gear VR, there’s one necessary piece of equipment that doesn’t come included: A chair that can spin 360 degrees. If you don’t have one at home, you’ll miss out on a lot of what’s going on, or just keep accidentally racking your shins on the coffee table. The Gear VR is a no-brainer if you already have one of this year’s compatible Samsung phones. If you’re an iPhone owner and don’t want to switch, you can get close to the comfort of Gear VR with a VR One headset from Carl Zeiss. But you’re on your own for curating and downloading compatible apps. There are a lot of reasons to be excited about this new virtual world, but it’s important to understand what the Gear VR can’t do. Limited by a phone’s processing power, storage and screen, it can’t play complex games. You can wear wireless headphones, but it isn’t a surround-sound experience. Those are the kinds of experiences we can expect from Oculus’s own Rift hardware when it debuts sometime next year. And even the most impressive VR content is a work in progress. Max Cohen, Oculus’s vice president of mobile, told me he thinks of the Gear VR less like an Atari, and more like the first game consoles, from the early 1990s, that were capable of 3-D graphics. In those days, game makers didn’t know how far off in the distance to draw objects, or what a first-person experience should be like. Today, VR content makers are learning what kinds of immersive experiences feel right, like moving in straight lines instead of up and down. “We are still figuring out the medium,” Mr. Cohen told me. Based on what I’ve already seen with Gear VR, though, I’m ready to strap in for the ride. Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at [email protected]. Follow him at @geoffreyfowler.

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https://web.archive.org/web/2015112219id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-gear-vr-review-virtual-reality-finds-its-atari-moment-1448028206

As the late President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday is observed, historians point out that his political successes, not his persona, have been mythologized over the years."Today's Republicans

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"He was never talking about doing away with Medicaid, Medicare, or abolishing HUD," he said. "It had more to do with trimming the federal budget." Upon taking office, Reagan faced a severe recession and double-digit inflation. Gas station lines stretched for miles. Americans simply lost hope in their economic future, historians say. The former governor of California used his experiences in politics and his career in Hollywood -- first as an actor and later as president of the Screen Actors Guild -- to help change the American way of life. But for all the praise by current conservatives for the economic turnaround during his presidency, historians also note that many conservatives of his day weren't exactly big fans of all of his policies, including his negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev over nuclear arms. At the time, many within his own party felt reaching out to the Soviets was a sign of willingness to negotiate with an evil dictator. "What made Reagan different from many of his fellow conservatives -- and different, too, from liberals who looked upon the Cold War as an eternal condition -- was that he really wanted to negotiate and thought he had learned the art of doing so by bargaining with movie producers when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild," Lou Cannon, author of several books on Reagan, wrote in a commentary for AOL News. Journalist Will Bunch, author of the book "Tear Down This Myth," pointed out in an interview with National Public Radio on Thursday that many forget that Reagan was divisive and had "virtually zero support from African-Americans."

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https://web.archive.org/web/2011020719id_/http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/04/reagan.legacy/index.html

Roger Federer and Petra Kvitova won their opening matches at the United States Open, while the qualifier Máximo González ousted 14th-seeded Jerzy Janowicz.

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In the case of Roger Federer, every sign of struggle sets the radar on high alert because he’s Roger Federer and the current downward slope of his career is monitored as if the sport is watching its own electrocardiogram. For one day, Federer brushed aside such larger questions. His first-round match on Tuesday against Grega Zemlja of Slovenia did not go perfectly smoothly, starting with the fact that it was supposed to be played Monday night but was rained out. There were plenty of unimpressive, un-Federer-like moments in his 6-3, 6-2, 7-5 victory at Arthur Ashe Stadium. But worries of his imminent decline could be kept at bay for another round. He even hit the practice courts after the match to sharpen his game. "There wasn’t much rhythm out there, but I was happy the way I played," said Federer, who tied Wayne Ferreira’s Open-era record for consecutive Grand Slam appearances with 56. For No. 7 seed Petra Kvitova, the worrisome moments lasted longer. Her game and mettle went on the fritz for an entire set, but she settled down and finished off a 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 victory over Misaka Doi of Japan. Kvitova, the 2011 Wimbledon champion, who has not found similar love for or success at the Open, explained her struggles with the New York atmosphere by saying, “It’s too much crowdy for myself, I think.” In Jerzy Janowicz’s case, what started as a case of frayed nerves quickly escalated into an emotional emergency. By the time Janowicz, the 14th seed had dropped the first set and called a medical timeout for a back massage in the second, he was yelling at himself, at the line calls and seemingly at the lines themselves. Even the massage could not stop the unraveling, and in a swift, 2-hour, 15-minute match complete with two racket tosses, Janowicz had been ousted by qualifier Máximo González of Argentina, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2. By the end of the afternoon session, the matches had offered up a little bit of everything. Janowicz, 22, was coming off a Wimbledon run to the semifinals, in which he seemed to validate the high hopes his rise in the rankings had spawned. But the fire and spunk that made him such an attraction at Wimbledon was exactly what singed him. While he came undone, González only got stronger. González, 30, is hardly an up-and-comer, having been on tour since 2002, with little success to show for it. But against Janowicz, he painted the lines with shots, while Janowicz sprayed errors everywhere. It was only the fifth match González has won in a Grand Slam, and he hasn’t even qualified for a main draw in one since 2011. The most notable line on his résumé is that he comes from the same town in Argentina, Tandil, as the former Open champion Juan Martín del Potro. It was the most notable upset of the day, mostly for how resounding it was. Also bowing out early was another young player with big prospects, Grigor Dimitrov, the No. 25 seed, who lost to Joao Sousa of Portugal, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 6-2. Two of the top American hopes in the men’s draw survived with relative ease. No. 13 seed John Isner beat Filippo Volandri of Italy, 6-0, 6-2, 6-3, and No. 26 Sam Querrey topped Guido Pella of Argentina, 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-1, 6-2. Kvitova’s match looked like it would follow the pattern of easy first-round affairs. She appeared certain to be off the Arthur Ashe Stadium court before the fans could settle in and finish dabbing themselves with sunscreen. But after a 35-minute first set, Kvitova began having all kinds of trouble with her previously overmatched opponent, Doi. As quickly as she had rolled through the first set, Kvitova stumbled to a 5-1 deficit in the second, nearly every aspect of her game escaping her. But as quickly as it had disappeared, Kvitova’s game reappeared for a 6-1 third-set victory that seemed like several different matches all in one. “I didn’t play my game the whole match,” Kvitova said. “Sometimes it is not easy. The beginning rounds at the Grand Slams are not easy.” Kvitova has not been able to reach the same level here that carried her to the Wimbledon title in 2011. She has never advanced further than the fourth round, the heat and the atmosphere of late summer in New York never seemed to agree with her. Kvitova, of the Czech Republic, had trouble putting her experience at the Open into words, and only partly because she speaks halting English. “For me it’s quite difficult to say,” she said. “I like the Wimbledon, which is very calm. I like big matches on the big stadium, too, but, I mean, the people. It’s too much crowdy for myself, I think.” All around Kvitova, seeded players were having a much easier time in their early matches. No. 6 Caroline Wozniacki pushed aside Ying-Ying Duan of China, 6-2, 7-5. The No. 10 men’s seed, Milos Raonic of Canada, got past Thomas Fabbiano of Italy, 6-3, 7-6 (6), 6-3, with only a bit of messiness in the second-set tiebreaker. Philipp Kohlschreiber, the No. 22 seed, dropped only five games in a 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 victory over the American Collin Altamirano, who had received a wild card after winning the national under-18 junior championships. The women’s No. 10 seed, Roberta Vinci of Italy, had an easy time of her 6-4, 6-2 victory over Timea Babos of Hungary, and No. 14 Maria Kirilenko of Russia rolled, 6-1, 6-1, over Yanina Wickmeyer of Belgium. The former women’s No. 1 Ana Ivanovic hasn’t not been at that level for several years, but she looked plenty dominant in beating Anna Tatishvili of Georgia, 6-2, 6-0. Ivanovic, seeded 13th, has rarely sniffed the level she was at as the world’s top player in 2008, but she still believes she can return there. “It’s my only goal I have at the moment,” she said. “I really want to get back to the top of the game. I believe I have the qualities to do so. You know, once you’ve been at the top, you don’t feel satisfied being in the Top 15. You really want to aim and push yourself.” And if you don’t, people quickly start wondering what’s going on.

newsroom-99

https://web.archive.org/web/2013082719id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/sports/tennis/united-states-open-tennis-day-two.html

Hunting wild turkey, the traditional main course of the US holiday meal, is an adrenaline rush and a learning exercise in food consumption.

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The writer, Jonah Flicker, after bagging his first wild turkey. My hands gripped the barrel of my semiautomatic shotgun tightly, as I sat back against a beech tree, waiting for my prey. Dusk was steadily approaching, the light fading into a dull, autumnal grey over upstate New York. As the fatigue of an eight-hour hunt in temperatures hovering just above freezing set in, it was clear that this would be my last chance of the day to shoot a wild turkey. My guide sat close by, making alternately squawking and warbling turkey calls to lure the hardy birds ever closer. We could see several adult females (hens) and a young male turkey (a gobbler), crossing a clearing about 50 yards away, but the thick undergrowth made it impossible to get a good shot. Suddenly, a stray turkey appeared between two trees in the distance, hesitating as it decided whether to follow the flock or head toward our enticing calls. I squeezed the trigger, and the sudden, deafening shotgun blast left a harsh ringing in my right ear. Given my lack of experience with shooting a gun and the thick foliage obscuring the bird, I assumed I missed . I stood up, resigned to call it a day, even as my guide and his dog excitedly ran in the direction I had shot. A few seconds later, they reappeared, holding an adult hen by the legs as it thrashed about in its dying throes. Adrenaline soared through my bloodstream as I realized that I had successfully hunted and killed a turkey. The turkey is the centrepiece of the US Thanksgiving tradition, though the specimens we eat today are a far cry from their hunted wild relatives, reminiscent of the birds early settlers would have found and Native Americans hunted. Fattened, flightless, farm-raised, store-bought turkeys bear little resemblance to their tough, feral cousins that tromp through the forests, prairies, and scrublands of every state in the US except for Alaska. According to the National Wild Turkey Federation, the widely held belief that Native Americans and Pilgrims (pre-colonial settlers from England) ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621 may not be true. Although the bird thrived in pre-colonial America, the organization claims that turkey did not become a Thanksgiving staple until the 1800s. When Benjamin Franklin suggested that the turkey appear on the nation's first seal, the more regal bald eagle won out. By the early 20th Century, the wild turkey neared extinction as its available habitat decreased. Conservation efforts and trap-and-transfer programs, in which turkeys were caught and moved to under-populated areas, brought the population back to healthy levels by the 1960s. Today, turkey hunting is popular throughout the US, and many hunters claim that the thrill and required skill is greater than that of hunting deer. Each state has different requirements, but generally a first-time hunter must complete a safety education course in order to purchase a permit. In New York state, you must pass a written exam upon completion of a 10-hour class, after which you are required to buy a small game license and a turkey permit. Hunting is allowed on certain public and -- with the owner's permission -- private land, allowing experienced hunters to set out on their own. But a great option for a first-timer is to hire a guide or visit a hunting lodge that offers room and board and experienced guides. I stayed at Turkey Trot Acres, a warm and inviting lodge located in the small town of Candor, New York. Peter Clare and his wife Sherry run this “ma and pa” operation, which has been around since 1987. Sherry rustles up massive amounts of home-cooked food while Peter and his team of skilled guides take hunters out into the nearby countryside. They use a specially bred dog, informally called the Appalachian Turkey Dog, to assist. According to Clare, turkey hunting is much easier in the spring, because that is when the birds mate and males are out looking for females. In autumn, however, the birds are in survival mode and are not as brazen. The dogs help with hunting by running ahead, locating a flock of turkeys, and “busting” or scattering them. At that point hunters hunker down and wait, using turkey calls to lure them back. The turkeys' nature is to return to the area from which they were scattered, but hunters must be as still as possible -- even a small movement will spook the birds.

newsroom-100

https://web.archive.org/web/2011112819id_/http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20111121-shooting-a-thanksgiving-dinner