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Mars Observer was one of three NASA Mars missions lost in the 1990s because of technical errors, and not as part of a broader conspiracy. The dark side of space disaster theories Space disasters attract so much public attention and often involve such complex and subtle sequences of events that there’s an entire Internet literature of “crackpot causes” on par with JFK assassination myths. To the degree that innovative analysis is often critical to reconstructing—from partial and often garbled evidence—a shocking causal sequence leading from goodness to disaster, the initial investigation period demands that critical judgment be held somewhat in check so as not to discourage imagination. However, once a logical reconstruction gels, is tested, and then is ultimately verified by being implemented and hence reducing future flight hazards, that official explanation achieves a substantial level of authenticity. But not to everyone’s satisfaction, apparently, as a search of still-thriving non-traditional explanations of the Apollo 1 fire, the Apollo 13 breakdown, the Challenger disintegration, and the Columbia catastrophe, whose fifth anniversary now approaches. For example, in the case of Columbia, YouTube is full of videos from self-styled experts still convinced a freak bolt of ionospheric lightning crippled the spaceship. A famous photograph supposedly shows that bolt, even though space experts have long been satisfied that the bizarre image was merely the result of camera jiggle during a time-lapse exposure. Apart from the comic relief value of such crackpot ideas, there’s a darker aspect of this kind of cultural pathology, just as there are serious analyses pointing to the socially toxic effects of the JFK assassination “alternate theories”. For spaceflight, being distracted by the wrong cause means being tempted by the wrong fix. That’s never amusing, and often can be expensive. For spaceflight, being distracted by the wrong cause means being tempted by the wrong fix. That’s never amusing, and often can be expensive. As an egregious “bad example” of wrong causes, a recent book (Dark Mission, by Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara) spent a lot of time muddying the waters over a series of NASA Mars mission failures in the 1990s. This isn’t just some remote corner of an intellectual ghetto on the Internet—the book came within one tick mark of making it onto the New York Times bestsellers list for paperback non-fiction (it reached #21 nationwide). So as an exercise in cultural self-defense and in proselytizing sound “space safety” history, here is a detailed look at the claims, the delusions, and the errors in that book’s treatment of these space accidents. Mars Observer (1993) Dark Mission portrays the failure of the Mars Observer probe in 1993 as a deliberate act by NASA to prevent the publication of its expected photographs of artificial Martian ruins. But the description of the events is inconsistent with well-documented accounts, reports non-existent events, and omits well-known explanations for important features of the probe’s flight plan. All of this can be easily confirmed through Internet searches. Dark Mission, pp. 87–88: “NASA, in another unprecedented move, had inexplicably ordered Mars Observer to shut off its primary data stream prior to executing a key pre-orbital burn… Because NASA had violated the first rule of space travel—you never turn off the radio—no cause for the probe’s loss was ever satisfactorily determined.” Actually, whether a radio is turned on or off, practically all orbital insertion burns on lunar and planetary missions occur out of radio contact. This is a result of the geometric alignment of the probe passing behind the planet (or moon) and hence having its radio signals blocked. So keeping a probe’s radio turned on during these periods is about as useless as installing windshield wipers. To my knowledge, there is no “first rule of spaceflight” about never turning radios off. Interplanetary probes do this all the time. The “rule” is imaginary. I can’t find any documentation anywhere that provides this “rule”. I suspect that the Dark Mission authors just imagined it. The maneuver that Mars Observer was to perform was not even, as Dark Mission claims, a “key pre-orbital burn”. It was not a burn of any kind. Instead, it was the firing of explosive bolts to open two pressurant tanks that would allow the fuel to be pushed into the probe’s engines several days later. There is nothing “inexplicable” about turning off the radio for the firing of the pyrotechnic bolts. The sharp shock of the detonations was thought to be a hazard to the hot filament in a key radio component, which is much less brittle when cold. Hot filaments can shatter under shocks that cold ones wouldn’t even notice. This is clearly explained in on-ine documents, including the accident report. You only have to search “Mars Observer accident report” to be led right to the 313-page “Failure Investigation Board Report”. Keeping a probe’s radio turned on during orbit insertion burns is about as useless as installing windshield wipers. Why was the radio turned off? “In accordance with the mission’s published flight rules, the transmitter on the spacecraft had been turned off during the propellant-tank Pressurization Sequence on 21 August… To protect the spacecraft radio frequency transmitter from damage during the Pressurization Sequence (albeit a very low probability), the software included a command to turn off the Mars Observer transponder and radio frequency (RF) telemetry power amplifier for a period of ten minutes. This was a standard procedure that had been implemented several times earlier during the mission.” The report gave further details: “This sequence included the firing of two normally-closed pyrotechnic valves, that would allow high-pressure gaseous helium to pressurize the nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer tank and the monomethyl hydrazine fuel tank.” More on p. 25 of the report: “Concern existed in the Mars Observer project team that the pyro-firing event might damage the traveling wave tube amplifiers in the spacecraft telecommunications system if the amplifiers were left on.” Nor is it true that “no cause for the probe’s loss was ever satisfactorily determined”, as Dark Mission claims. To the contrary, in hindsight it was excruciatingly clear what almost certainly happened. “The Board was unable to find clear and conclusive evidence pointing to a particular scenario as the ‘smoking gun’,” the report explained, but “the Board concluded through a process of elimination that the most probable cause of the loss of downlink from the Mars Observer was a massive failure of the pressurization side of the propulsion system. The Board also concluded that the most probable cause of that failure was the unintended mixing of nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) and monomethyl hydrazine (MMH) in the titanium tubing on the pressurization side of the propulsion system. This mixing was believed by the Board to have been enabled by significant NTO migration through check valves during the eleven-month cruise phase from Earth to Mars. This conclusion is supported (but not proven) by NTO transport-rate data acquired by JPL, by NTO/MMH reaction simulations performed by [the Naval Research Laboratory], and by NTO/MMH mixing tests performed by AFPL [Air Force Propulsion Labs].” As to why the propulsions system hardware, adapted from a military prop module that normally needed a lifetime of only 12 hours, was used for a year-long mission, the report added that “Too much reliance was placed on the heritage of spacecraft hardware, software, and procedures, especially since the Mars Observer mission was fundamentally different from the missions of the satellites from which the heritage was derived.” It specifically criticized the propulsion system for “Inappropriate isolation mechanisms between fuel and oxidizer for an interplanetary mission.” “The original [money-saving] philosophy of minor modifications to a commercial production-line spacecraft was retained throughout the program,” the report continued. “The result was reliance on design and component heritage qualification that was inappropriate for the mission. Examples of this reliance were the failure to qualify the traveling wave tube amplifiers for pyro firing shock [and] the design of the propulsion system.” Whether or not this particular proposed failure mode is plausible (and from my own research I’ve concluded it was very plausible), it remains untrue to state (as Dark Mission does) that turning off the radio was “inexplicable” (and a violation of a “rule number one”) and that no satisfactory explanation for the failure was ever determined. Leaving out these easily-available views resulted in a passage that I think was incomplete and misleading. Mars Polar Lander (1999) I noted several Dark Mission references to me personally that deal with the 1999 failure of the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) probe. On page 316: “James Oberg published a story on UPI that accused JPL employees of knowing full well that the MPL was doomed (due to software problems related to the spacecraft’s landing legs) from very early on in the mission.” On page 317 this is called a “bizarre UPI accusation”. The brief account of the UPI article is garbled almost beyond recognition, casting serious doubts on the reading comprehension level of the author who did this section. In the one-sentence summary (“James Oberg published a story on UPI that accused JPL employees of knowing full well that the MPL was doomed due to software problems related to the spacecraft’s landing legs from very early on in the mission”), practically every word is wrong. Alleged foreknowledge of the impending failure had nothing to do with software. The article stated: As explained privately to UPI, the Mars Polar Lander vehicle’s braking thrusters had failed acceptance testing during its construction. But rather than begin an expensive and time-consuming redesign, an unnamed space official simply altered the conditions of the testing until the engine passed. “They tested the [engine] ignition process at a temperature much higher than it would be in flight,” UPI’s source said. This was done because when the [engines] were first tested at the low temperatures predicted after the long cruise from Earth to Mars, the ignition failed or was too unstable to be controlled. So the test conditions were changed in order to certify the engine performance. But the conditions then no longer represented those most likely to occur on the real space flight. “I’m as certain as I can be that the thing blew up,” the source concluded. That potential failure mode was not known “from very early on in the mission”, but only at the very end: “Following the September loss of the first spacecraft due to management errors, NASA had initiated a crash review of the Mars Polar Lander to identify any similar oversights. According to UPI’s source, the flaws in the [engine] testing were uncovered only a few days before the landing was to occur on December 3. By then it was too late to do anything about it.” The brief account of the UPI article is garbled almost beyond recognition, casting serious doubts on the reading comprehension level of the author who did this section. The specific software problem with the landing leg sensor scenario was not known before the landing at all, and the UPI article clearly states that it was discovered after the crash: “The Mars Polar Lander investigation team has also reportedly identified a second fatal design flaw that would have doomed the probe even if the engines had functioned properly. Post-accident tests have shown that when the legs are initially unfolded during the final descent, springs push them so hard that they ‘bounce’ and trigger the microswitches by accident. As a result, the computer receives what it believes are indications of a successful touchdown, and it shuts off the engines. Ground testing prior to launch apparently never detected this because each of the tests was performed in isolation from other tests. One team verified that the legs unfolded properly. Another team verified that the microswitches functioned on landing.” In a simple reading comprehension verification test, this one incident indicates a severe problem with the book’s authors’ ability to understand, and restate, simple English about space technology. In one sentence, there were three swings, and three misses—three strikes. By the way, after NASA’s official denunciations of the UPI story I had written (I have the honor of being the only journalist ever denounced by name in an official NASA press release), the story turned out even worse than I had written. Space engineers hadn’t fudged the test results, after all. My source was wrong about this, this time, the first occasion in a long sequence of accurate leaks. What was far worse was that NASA had decided that any such tests weren’t even necessary. The engine ignition system was never tested at temperatures expected out at Mars, because (JPL said) the engine had already flown in space on some other mission and so didn’t need to be requalified. But NASA press officials, despite repeated inquiries from me and promises of cooperation from them, never disclosed the space mission(s) that these special engines had been originally flown on. The same design engines are installed aboard the Mars Phoenix lander now on route. Hopefully, improvements have been made. page 2: Mars Climate Orbiter >>

Johnson did what he clearly had to do after perhaps the most epic collapse in the Jets’ collapse-filled history. But the uninspiring news conference by Johnson and General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, who seemed to lack detail or conviction about why they fired Mangini and what they wanted in the next coach, certainly did not instill confidence that the Jets were now headed in the right direction. If nothing else, it suggested that Bill Belichick, mocked when he bolted the Jets just as he was about to become their coach, might be even smarter than previously thought. Still, at least Johnson took some action. Jones, incredibly, is sticking to his guns. After his team failed to show up with so much on the line Sunday, he reiterated that Phillips would be back, saying that continuity was the best way to fulfill the team’s potential. That point will be debated from now until the Cowboys go to training camp — they want continuity from this season? — but Phillips was one of the lucky ones on the darkest day of every season for coaches. He learned his fate quickly, as did Mangini and Lions Coach Rod Marinelli, who was dismissed early Monday. (Mike Singletary, the coach of the San Francisco 49ers, was given a contract extension Sunday.) Consider Cleveland Coach Romeo Crennel. General Manager Phil Savage was fired right after the Browns lost to the Steelers on Sunday afternoon. Crennel did not get word of his dismissal until Monday morning, spending one final sleepless night with the Browns. Worse, it appears Bill Cowher, Cleveland’s prime target, is not interested in the job. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. In Kansas City, Herm Edwards’s wait for a resolution must feel interminable. Carl Peterson is already gone and the search is on for a new general manager, who will almost certainly want input on who should be the coach. But with no hire on the horizon, Edwards is in the agonizing position of beginning off-season preparations with no assurance he will be part of the team much longer. The St. Louis Rams have started their coaching search and Jim Haslett is among the candidates, reportedly even getting a letter of support from his players. But the team’s somnolent finish after winning two games when Haslett first took over from Scott Linehan cannot help, and so Haslett will join the rest of the state of Missouri in the waiting game. Tom Cable might have gotten the Raiders to beat just enough teams, and just enough of the ones Al Davis hates (Denver and Tampa Bay, with Jon Gruden) to hold on to the job. Hanging over all this carnage are the golden boys of the hiring season: Cowher and New England’s vice president for player personnel, Scott Pioli. Everybody wants them. Nobody knows if they will leave their current jobs, but one thing is certain: they will get a vote of confidence, no matter where they land. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Playing to the End Last year the Giants charmed the N.F.L. by playing all-out in their meaningless regular-season finale against the Patriots. The Giants, with their starters playing the whole game, gave the Patriots a scare on the way to a perfect regular season, and they gave themselves a shot in the arm that energized them throughout their playoff run. It was a monument to pure competition and a lesson in how to build momentum. But on Sunday the N.F.L. saw the frightening flip side of that decision. The Steelers played their starters in the meaningless finale against the Browns. And near the end of the first half quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was slammed to the ground. He spent at least 10 minutes there, before being removed on a back board with a concussion. The Steelers have a bye in the first round and Coach Mike Tomlin did not want his starters to get rusty, so he played all but two of them (both were injured). But Roethlisberger has been banged up much of the season, and now the Steelers will spend the bye week sweating out the concussion. Fans have seen what happens when teams rest their starters too long before the playoffs, only to be unable to regain their rhythm when the action starts again. It happened to the Colts in years past (on Sunday Peyton Manning played one series in a meaningless game against the Titans) but now fans are seeing what drives such caution. Still, with the initial prognosis that Roethlisberger will be available for the playoffs, Tomlin was satisfied with the dominating victory over the Browns. “It was a productive effort,” he said.

3rd R Davis doubled to deep left center, A Avila scored. 0 1 4th A Jackson singled to center, V Martinez scored, J Martinez out at third. 0 2 5th O Infante singled to left, A Escobar scored, N Aoki to second. 1 2 5th B Butler doubled to deep center, N Aoki, O Infante and E Hosmer scored. 4 2 6th O Infante homered to left (392 feet), A Escobar and N Aoki scored. 7 2 7th L Cain singled to left, B Butler scored, A Gordon to third, B Hayes to second. 8 2 7th M Moustakas grounded into fielder's choice to pitcher, A Gordon and B Hayes scored on throwing error by pitcher E Reed, L Cain safe at third on throwing error by pitcher E Reed. 10 2 7th A Escobar singled to left, L Cain scored, M Moustakas to third. 11 2 9th R Davis singled to left, N Castellanos scored, A Romine to third, E Suarez to second. 11 3 9th V Martinez reached on infield single to third, A Romine scored, E Suarez to third, R Davis to second. 11 4

Pin 0 Shares I recently found out that one of my associates uses her Roth IRA as an emergency fund. Rather than put money into a low yield savings account, or some other cash account, she uses her retirement account as an emergency fund. Technically, the basics of a Roth IRA are conducive to this arrangement. However, you do want to be careful. Think things through before you use your Roth IRA as an emergency fund. Why Your Roth IRA Could, In Theory, Be An Emergency Fund In theory, your Roth IRA works as an emergency fund because of the withdrawal rules. You are actually allowed to withdraw your contributions to a Roth IRA at any time, and for any purpose – no matter your age. This means that you can take money out of your Roth IRA with no penalty or tax, as long as you are only withdrawing money that you have sent to the account through regular annual contributions. As long as your withdrawal amount doesn't exceed your overall contribution amount, you don't have to pay a penalty or taxes. Keep in mind that previous withdrawals count against your overall contribution amount. Continues after Advertisement You do have to be careful, though. Withdrawing from your Roth IRA can cost you if you don't do it right. If you are under 59 1/2, and you exceed your contribution amounts (except in certain cases), you might be subject to a 10% penalty and to paying income taxes on the amount. Make sure you know what you are doing before you withdraw money from your Roth IRA to shore up your finances in the case of emergency. Opportunity Cost While you might not have the expenses associated with penalties and taxes when you withdraw your contributions to your Roth IRA, you are still subject to opportunity cost. Remember: The money in your Roth IRA is working for you. You are earning interest at a pretty good rate (depending on your asset allocation and market conditions), and if you withdraw principal, you miss out. You can't replace the time that your money might have spent in your Roth IRA, growing with the power of compound interest. On the other hand, though, some insist that the opportunity cost comes when you put that money in a low yielding cash account as an emergency fund. Because your money (theoretically) grows faster in the Roth IRA, the power of compounding interest at a higher rate makes up for the fact that you withdraw some of your contributions for emergencies. Bottom Line What you decide to do depends on what you think is likely to work best for you, and provide for your needs. If you plan ahead sufficiently, it should be possible to get quite a bit built up in your Roth IRA. Of course, for it to work, you need to make sure you only withdraw contributions in cases of true emergencies. If you use your Roth IRA as an ATM, you could easily remove all of your contributions quickly — and then move into penalty areas where it starts costing you more. Make sure you carefully evaluate your situation before adopting this emergency fund strategy. Pin 0 Shares

Greetings fellow Agonians! Today we wanted to present a development update on the progress of our Early Access Road Map, discuss the contents of our upcoming patch, and give some marketing updates as we prepare ourselves for launch. We will be releasing our next community competition tomorrow where you will be able to submit unique mob names and lore backstories that we will tie into our new unique rare mob spawn mechanics described below. We are at a very exciting time in the development of Darkfall: Rise of Agon as we get closer to our official launch, and all of us at Big Picture Games look forward to the coming months. Without further ado, let's get into it! Marketing Update: Playthrough Convention The marketing team has been gearing up for the upcoming Playthrough gaming convention that Brad and Michael will be attending this weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina. There have been many things we have been working on from banners and fliers to even some giveaways for those who stop by and say hello. This will be the first time that we publicly show off Darkfall: Rise of Agon and we cannot wait to talk about the project and what we have in store for the upcoming launch. Speaking of launch, our official launch date will be announced at the convention on Saturday. We hope to get to meet some of you in our community and invite everyone on Saturday to join us at the Crank Arm Brewing Company at 10:00 P.M. EST only a block away! Lighting the Fuse We want to ensure that when the game launches we can provide our players with as many friends and enemies to fight alongside with as possible. In the coming weeks we will be starting our external marketing campaigns that we have been planning internally and will not be letting up until we officially launch. We also have some things planned where you in our community can lend a helping hand to us in this endeavor. Stay tuned for more information as this train is about to leave the station. Next Patch Update The development team is currently working on our next Early Access patch which is currently scheduled to land at the end of February or beginning of March. This next patch will focus primarily on our new PvE spawn mechanics and the other changes listed below. Champion Spawn PvE Mechanics In the next patch we will be implementing our Champion Spawn PvE mechanics. This is a new system that changes the way certain mob spawns will function and provides a way for players to test their mettle against waves of enemies. This is the way that the system will work: Upon entering a Champion Spawn the player will notice a new UI at the top of their screen where they can choose to begin the spawn mechanics Players must kill a certain number of mobs within the allotted time to clear that wave of monsters and move onto the next stage Players that fail to complete the wave in time will have the spawn reset to the beginning of the challenge The first wave will consist of numerous monsters of lower difficult, and each wave afterwards will add in new threats and challenges The final stage will consist of a named Champion Spawn with stronger attributes and a better reward, although they will be guarded by a set number of minions as well For the initial iteration we will have these mechanics on a few mob spawns, but plan to add more throughout Early Access and after launch. The loot tables will be getting an overhaul as well once we begin to implement our unique recipes and rare items to the game. Named Unique Rare Mobs We also will be implementing the mechanics for our new Named Unique Rare Mobs. Although we may only get a few in with the next patch, our upcoming community competition will provide you with the opportunity to create some of the additions we will add throughout Early Access. Once the mechanics go into the game, it becomes much easier for us to add to this system and continuously implement new unique mobs. These mobs will be named, have stronger attributes as well as better loot tables, and will have a rare chance to spawn at certain mob locations. Eventually we plan to implement backstories to these new monsters where players can unlock the lore of each one in the game. As with champion spawns, we plan to add new unique items to these mob's loot tables at a later date. Respawn Scaling Another mechanic coming with this patch is our first iteration of respawn scaling. This will eventually be applied to all new player spawns to help with spawn rates for players who can clear spawns quickly. The faster that you kill mobs, the faster that they will spawn, as well as potentially increase the amount of spawns that occur. This is not dependent on how many people are present at the spawn, rather how efficient you are at clearing the spawn itself. Decreasing Tedium in Gearing There are multiple changes coming with this patch to how you can gear and de-gear in the game. The following is a list of what to expect: One button on the paperdoll to completely degear yourself Faster equipping of armor Ability to queue up armor pieces to equip by double clicking on multiple pieces Cooking Update We have completed our initial overhaul of the cooking profession and have added around 20 new cooking recipes, as well as many new ingredients. Mana regeneration is also now a benefit that can be found on some food, along with some other benefits. Other Changes There are some more changes coming with the patch such as new system messages for skins that do not produce items, changes to Digging, mount/ship/warhulk ownership changes, and a new staff seen below. Road Map Update Task System and NPX We are finalizing the list of tasks and actions that new players will be guided through for initial guidance. There is a lot of work required in order to get the Task System implemented, as it needs new tracking of mechanics and a brand new UI, along with the flexibility to expand it past the new player guidance. This system is currently being designed, along with some changes we can make outside of it to help ease new player experience (such as spawning in Action mode instead of GUI mode). Wilderness Portals Our artist Demo has been creating some new assets for our upcoming Wilderness Portal network. We are currently planning to have over 100 portal locations throughout the lands that will be providing one-way travel throughout the world of Agon. We have been working through some issues with placement of these new assets but are on schedule to have the system implemented for launch. Here are a few teasers of some of the new wilderness portals that have been created: Deployable Player Vendors The developers have begun working on the mechanics of the deployable vendors, but the brunt of the work on the coding side still needs to be accomplished. This system is still planned to be implemented for launch, but is not planned for the upcoming patch or the one thereafter. In the meantime our artist Adam has put together the initial draft of the art asset which you can see below: Crafting Updates After this patch we will have gone through the initial crafting changes of most of the professions in the game. We will be focusing on some of the combat updates that we want to work on after the game launches, and part of that will tie into the professions of Armorsmithing, Tailoring and Shieldcrafting. For this reason we will be holding off on making our changes to these professions until we can tie them into the changes we plan to focus on after launch. Economy Updates We are currently going through a pretty massive overhaul of the in-game economy, focusing on resource sinks and faucets as well as loot tables and resource locale. This will be a task that we will be working on all throughout Early Access to ensure that we can have a good starting point for the in-game economy when we launch. These changes, along with our persistence changes and monitoring tools we have implemented, will provide us with more insight and control of the economy. It is imperative to have a strong balance of risk vs reward when this game goes live, as that is one of the pillars of this game. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for our upcoming community competition! Join us for the discussion! Sincerely, - The Team at Big Picture Games

Mar 8, 2015; Newark, NJ, USA; New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur (30) is honored as part of the 20th Anniversary of the 1995 Stanley Cup championship team before the game between the New Jersey Devils and the Philadelphia Flyers at Prudential Center. Mandatory Credit: Ed Mulholland-USA TODAY Sports Kevin Weekes released this article today on NHL.com regarding the release of 6 stamps by Canada Post that will feature six great Canadian NHL goalies of the past. We’re going to take a stab at guessing at least four of the six. We’ve been given some hints that should make figuring this out a little easier. Let’s see if we can fill out the entire six slots. “Only a few goaltenders can be considered to be among the best of the best.” “Hundreds of goalies have laced up the skates, put on the mask, pads and blocker, and had the courage to get in front of the net with pucks coming right at them, with the shots sometimes topping 100 mph. Equipment or not, that’s no easy feat and isn’t cut out for everyone.” “Not only did each elite goalie make an impression, each left a legacy. Our game is so much better for them having played it. Each has raised the standard and helped change the perception about not only how critical but also how dominant goalies can be in the NHL.” “Each of these goalies left his stamp on the game. Now six Canadian goalies will be honored in a collection of Great Canadian Goalie stamps, which debuts Oct. 1.” “While I can’t tell you who the six will be, I’ll say this: Five of the six are in the Hall of Fame, four have won the Calder Trophy, and each has won the Stanley Cup (a combined 20 times). Not to mention two have won the Conn Smythe Trophy. That’s pretty impressive, so clearly each is deserving of the honor.” “The confidence that each of these men gave their respective teammates, coaches and fans while taking it away from the opposition is immeasurable. They were game-changers. They were Game Savers.” Well time for speculation folks as I dig through some old records and awards to see if we can’t identify who the six Canadian legend NHL goalies are. We know 5 of them are hall of famers, with 4 of them being Calder trophy winners. That makes things a little easier. Going from most recent to oldest Canadian goalies to win the Calder. 08-09 saw Steve Mason win it. Obviously too young to be considered and things got a little rocky after his rookie season. 03-04 saw Andrew Raycroft win it, but it’s definitely not going to be that bust of a goalie. The first guaranteed is the 93-94 Calder winner Martin Brodeur, future hall of famer and Stanley Cup winner. There’s an easy one. Another guy who might be featured is 90-91 Calder Trophy winner Ed Belfour who had a lengthy successful career. Here’s another no brainer. The 71-72 Calder Trophy winner Ken Dryden is an absolute legend amongst goaltenders in NHL history. You can probably pencil his name in. Another Canadian hall-of-famer who is another NHL goalie legend won his Calder Trophy is 69-70. Tony Esposito had a great NHL career. Going back a little further, the 55-56 Calder Trophy winner Glenn Hall went on to win 3 Vezina Trophies during his career with 1 Stanley Cup coming in 1961. Delving back even further, how about 52-53 Calder Trophy winner Gump Worsley? He went on to win 4 Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens. Lastly in 50-51 legend Terry Sawchuk won the Calder Trophy, and also went on to win 4 Stanley Cups. Now we know only four of the six being featured on these stamps were Calder Trophy winners. So which four of the above do you think are going to be featured by Canada Post?

A downtown councillor will ask the city to extend the deadline for heritage grants available to preserve 1800s-era Gore Park storefronts set for redevelopment, even though the owners have no interest in applying for the money. The city is offering up to $1.1 million for restoration of the facades of the buildings along the south leg of King Street, but the developer says it would take double that to preserve them and he isn't interested unless someone else comes up with the additional money. They want to keep the facades, fine. Someone will have to pay for that. - Dave Blanchard "The buildings are collapsing as we speak," said David Blanchard, who is a partner in the development company that bought the buildings in 2000. "They want to keep the facades, fine. Someone will have to pay for that." It's been a year since Coun. Jason Farr pushed forward an urgent call to designate the buildings historic and halt their impending demolition. The developers appealed that decision to the provincial Conservation Review Board, which pushes the debate over the properties' status to at least March. And now the buildings are set to head into a second winter with their interiors exposed, their condition worsening. The city had pre-approved $1.1 million in grants if the developers would designate the buildings historic. Those grants have not yet been applied for. On Wednesday at city council, Farr will push to extend the deadline for the developers to take advantage of those grants up until the end of 2015. "We're all trying to work this thing out," Farr said. Blanchard estimates the restoration of the facades to cost at least double what the city is offering, more like $2.5 million. "We don’t want the historic parts particularly — other people do," he said. "Because it’s expensive. ... If someone’s willing to pay to keep it up and fund it, fine, we’ll try to work with that." 'They’ve been sitting there for two years with water running through them' Farr said the council already changed and enhanced the historic designation grant process in a way that would raise the amount available for the Gore Park buildings to the $1.1 million. The Royal Connaught project also benefited from that change, Farr said. Council was "very generous to help the issue along by changing that previous condition," he said. "I think that speaks volumes." Blanchard toured city officials through the buildings when he first bought them in 2000. "We bought the buildings knowing they were a tear-down. Everybody knew that," he said. "Then we nursed it on for another 12 or 14 years. They’ve been sitting there for two years with water running through them." Blanchard said the buildings are full of mould and unsafe to send his staff into. When he thinks back, he said, "We should’ve demolished it immediately." Blanchard said he was grateful to hear about Farr's intention to extend the grant deadline. But he laughed at questions about how soon he might try to restore the facades and comply with the city's historic designation rules. "They gave us a demolition permit to rip it down!" Blanchard said. "So, I mean, it’s a little schizophrenic."

By the end of 2017, every smartphone manufacturer has embraced the 18:9 aspect ratio screen model. The users too have shown these new displays a lot of love and this trend will probably evolve in 2018. However, a minor adjustment that comes with the new aspect ratio is the positioning of the navigation keys. Earlier, handsets used to have the physical keys just below the display. Whereas now, they’re on-screen buttons. But not everyone loves on-screen navigation buttons. So, some phone makers like Apple and Vivo have opted for gestures on the iPhone X & Vivo X20. Now it’s OnePlus 5T. Fresh news is that the OnePlus 5T is also soon going to join their ranks and completely do away with navigation buttons. OnePlus CEO, Pete Lau (Liu Zuohu), in Chinese OnePlus forums, talked about the virtual navigation keys. And it seems that many users too want them to get replaced by gestures. Pete Lau said that the feature is in the works and a future update will see it arrive. He hasn’t mentioned what kind of gestures will the OnePlus 5T have. Will they be exactly like the iPhone X or they will mimic the Vivo X20? This remains to be seen. It seems we might even see this new feature in the Oreo stable update. However, we’re not sure about it. Meanwhile, Android Oreo development is ongoing for both the OnePlus 5/5T and we’re hoping to see stable builds start dropping in January.

Look on the bright side: This’ll make for one hell of a Slate column once he gets back. I can only assume they didn’t recognize him, as the opportunity to scalp one of the world’s foremost atheists surely would have been irresistible. I dont know if you find this as news worthy or not, but Christopher Hitchens is currently in Beirut sponsored by the same group that owns that crap NOW Lebanon. He got in a few nights ago and surprisingly went out drinking. On his way out of the bar he saw an SSNP poster and wrote on it “Fuck the SSNP”. There just happened to be some SSNP thugs near by–most likely asking people for their ID, and most likely to no avail–and saw him write on the poster and kicked his ass. He is still walking with a limp. Abu Muqawama says he’s confirmed the story. The SSNP is, of course, a Hezbollah ally that advocates a Syrian anschluss of Lebanon (and Israel, natch). Consider Hitch a minor martyr to the cause of the Cedar Revolution here. Exit question one: More or less unpleasant than being waterboarded? Exit question two: Er, isn’t Ace there with him? Has anyone heard from Ace recently? Update: Belated exit question three: Is it time for me to organize a mighty atheist army and lead it on a march to Damascus for justice? Yes. Update: Forbes says Totten was in the mix. But later that night, three of our “scoop” brigade–Jonathan Foreman, Michael Totten and Christopher Hitchens–got involved in a street brawl with some thugs of a Syria-loving skinhead party called the SNPN after Hitchens rather gallantly insulted their swastika flag. On our way to a meeting with Minister of State Nissib Lahoud, Hitchens showed me the gashed knuckles and bruises suffered during the punch up. The attackers had apparently come out of nowhere on posh Hamda Street, where they had gone to buy shoes. “I was on the ground,” Hitchens said, “and getting it in the head.” It was a miracle they didn’t pull Kalashnikovs. Note: I changed the headline to reflect that the attackers were pro-Syrian, but not necessarily Syrian in origin. Update: Ace sets the record straight.

Tata Group boss Ratan Tata launches the purifier The Indian industrial conglomerate Tata Group has launched a new low-cost water purifier, aimed at lower-income households in rural areas. The Tata 'Swach' purifier is less than one metre tall, and does not need running water or electricity to work. The firm is hoping to revolutionise the business of providing clean water, a lack of which affects almost one billion people globally. Tata says the device is the result of a decade of research and development. The Tata Group includes India's largest carmaker Tata Motors, and also has interests in steelmaking, IT, and chemicals. Major hurdle Its Swach water device - named after the Hindi word for clean - will cost under 1,000 rupees ($21.50; £13), according to one Indian report. This is opening up a complete new market Tata Chemicals' boss R. Mukundan Water shortages forge huge market According to the latest Indian government survey of rural wages, in 2007/08, daily pay in rural areas can range from about 45 rupees a day for herd-keeping, to about 110 rupees a day for well digging. The Swach uses ash from rice milling to filter out bacteria, and also uses tiny silver particles to kill harmful germs that can lead to diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid. The health consequences of poor water quality are enormous for developing countries like India, with millions of people affected. Trying to provide safe drinking water for them has cost the government billions of rupees, but it continues to be a major hurdle.

The birth of the Traveling Wilburys was a happy accident. Warner Bros. Records’ International Department had asked that George Harrison come up with a B-side for “This Is Love,” a single from his Cloud Nine album. At the time it was customary to couple an A-side with a never-before-heard track, giving the single extra sales value. This was mid-1988. Cloud Nine was just out. George, along with cowriter Jeff Lynne and their friends Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison, had been hanging out in Dylan’s studio. I suppose George figured that as long as his pals were on hand, why not use them to knock off this flipside? A couple of days later George came by my office to play the new “B-side.” We went next door to A&R head Lenny Waronker’s office so he could hear it too. George played us “Handle With Care.” Our reaction was immediate. This was a song we knew could not be wasted on some B-side. Roy Orbison’s vocal was tremendous. I really loved the beautiful guitar figure that George played. The guys had really nailed it. Lenny and I stumbled over each others’ words, asking, “Can’t we somehow turn this into an album?” (I also had a suspicion that perhaps George had been hungering for another band experience.) We urged him on. George felt the spontaneity of it, felt its driving force. He always had great instincts. Being as smart as he was he had a remarkable ability to pull people together. Think about The Concert For Bangladesh — only George Harrison could have made that happen. Once the idea of a full, collaborative album was in front of us, George took over. The five frontmen (Harrison, Lynne, Petty, Dylan, and Orbison) decided not to use their own names. George and Jeff had been calling studio equipment (limiters, equalizers) “wilburys.” So first they named their fivesome The Trembling Wilburys. Jeff suggested “Traveling” instead. Everyone agreed.

The return of point guard Mo Williams to the Cleveland Cavaliers was news that made sense on a number of levels, especially in regards to financial and depth issues related to the team. Williams, who will turn 33 in December, will have a new role in this comeback, one that will hopefully protect the team from the disaster that very likely cost the Cavaliers their first NBA title. Williams can still put points on the board, which is one reason why signing him appealed to the Cavs’ front office. Still, the question about exactly what Williams can provide to the team’s offense is one that remains. During his previous two-plus seasons from 2008-11, Williams was a fixture in the team’s backcourt. In his first season, he was part of a squad that won 66 regular season games, a record for the franchise. That season, Williams reached a peak in scoring by averaging 17.8 points per contest. Those numbers would begin to decline until hitting bottom during his one year with the Portland Trail Blazers in 2013-14, when his scoring average dipped to 9.7 per game. However, a resurgence took place this past season, when he again became a part-time starter and averaged 14.2 points while playing for both the Minnesota Timberwolves and Charlotte Hornets. The clearest indication of what Williams could still do with the ball was shown during the Timberwolves’ January 13 game at Indiana. Connecting on 19 of 33 shots from the field, Williams torched the Pacers for 52 points, one of eight games with Minnesota in which he tallied more than 20 points. After heading to Charlotte, he had a 12-game stretch that began in late February that saw him average 21 points a game. Outside of his rookie year and the aforementioned 2013-14 campaign, Williams has always averaged double-digits in scoring, and has never been shy about launching up shots. He also still has a knack for being able to effectively dish the ball to teammates, something LeBron James can attest to from their two previous seasons together when Williams averaged 4.6 assists per game. That year with Portland and his only full season with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2011-12 were years in which Williams was strictly a reserve, which will be his role with the Cavaliers. In that season with the Clippers, he averaged 13.2 points per game. Combining those two seasons means that Williams was good for approximately 11.5 points a game. While that doesn’t overwhelm anyone, compare them to the average production of Matthew Dellavedova during his two seasons with the Cavs: 4.7 points. Williams averaged roughly 26 minutes per game in those two reserve years, compared to Dellavedova’s 19 per contest. Even taking into account the additional time on the court that Williams spent still makes him a more productive option. Plus, Williams does have experience as a shooting guard, which could allow head coach David Blatt to shift the guard over on those inevitable nights when J.R. Smith (assuming he re-signs) is ice-cold with his outside shot. Of course, the underlying idea behind giving Williams more minutes is to keep Kyrie Irving refreshed, and more importantly, healthy. Irving’s scary injury history and the impact it had on the NBA Finals is etched into the mind of every Cavalier official, player and fan. In many ways, Williams is like Smith, a free-wheeling shooter who can fall victim to cold spells when it comes to his shot. However, Williams won’t be looked upon as an integral part of the lineup, just a potentially valuable chip to have when needed. Plus, Dellavedova will still be around to inject some fire into the team when necessary. The NBA Finals unfortunately showed that Dellavedova’s threshold for effectiveness reaches a certain point before quickly diminishing. Using him as a third option will allow his all-out energy to be maximized. Williams gives the Cleveland offense just a little more push, with the starters providing much of the support in that area. Whatever he can give will undoubtedly be more than what was provided last year, which in turn will hopefully lead to a happier ending. Comments comments

Coding ● May 2016 The unintended byproducts of refactoring code Whenever I start on a large refactoring, I need to justify that the exercise is truly worthwhile. Am I objectively and unequivocally improving the understandability of the codebase? If I’ve finished and the codebase is no more readable or maintainable than it was when I began, I’d argue there were better ways to have used my time. While the goal might seem obvious, executing on it is often trickier than you’d think. The two goals of any refactoring Every refactoring has two goals. The immediate goal is technical. I have something in my code that doesn’t feel quite right. Perhaps it’s a leaky abstraction, a convoluted dependency, repeated code, or a poorly encapsulated concept that festers throughout the entire application. I then start laying out the roadmap to get from the code-at-present-moment to the glorious vision of my future code. With the completion of each small step, I re-run my automated tests, commit, then move on. After enough iterations, my plan slowly begins aligning like the pieces on a Tetris board. Eventually, I get to that one final, satisfying refactoring step—the long piece, if you will. Ahhh….the long-awaited completion of a refactoring It is at this point where the abscess has been removed and whatever smelled in my codebase no longer smells. I’m ready to pull the fresh new code into our master branch. However, It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming the work is done. That’s because the second goal of a refactoring is the more important one. Has the understandability of the codebase actually improved? If you’ve achieved the technical goal (the leak is gone!), then, you’d think the codebase would automatically be more readable and maintainable. But, I’ve found that the tunnel-vision attention required to achieve the technical goal-at-hand can blind me to this second—more critical—goal. That new refactoring smell If refactoring is like carpentry, then, accomplishing its technical goals will leave some unwanted byproducts— discarded pieces left unknowingly on the workbench or a film of sawdust hovering over the entire body of work. In order to make a refactoring truly complete, we need to go back, wipe up our workspace, and apply some polish. After you celebrate the technical achievements of your newly-updated code, look back at your work holistically to see if you haven’t inadvertently introduced some new smells. Make sure you haven’t simply traded off old technical debt for new technical debt that you’ll need to pay back later. Code appendages A refactoring sometimes introduces a bunch of appendages into your code. Are there any no-longer-necessary parameters passed into refactored methods? Are there local variables that are now lying around with nothing specific to do? For instance, if you’re moving a piece of functionality out of a method that’s doing too many things, it’s very likely that the original method now has extra references that just aren’t needed anymore. In the midst of the refactoring, you may be so focused on the extraction, that you forget to clean these bits up. And, by cleaning it up, you may uncover a trail of other code that can go into the trash bin as well. Without this cleanup, you’ve just added the debt of useless code to your system. That might make the newly refactored codebase just as hard to read. Misleading names When you’ve moved code around your application to get the pieces fitting just right, revisit how you’ve named the methods, properties, and classes that have undergone the facelift. Do these names still make sense? Do the comments around these methods still apply? When you’re in the same code daily, you might not even notice that the name of a variable or method is misleading because you’re so familiar with it. But, to someone coming into the codebase fresh (or, if you happen to take a few weeks off and come back later), misleading names will be detrimental to their understanding of the system. Uncovering other smells Often, a refactoring of one thing uncovers other code smells that weren’t as obvious before. In a recent refactoring I did, my end goal was to standardize how we handle business-level permissions. The technical goal was to consolidate this code to a single class and move the responsibility of using this class from lower-level classes to higher-level classes. By doing so, I also exposed some places in our code where the same permissions checks were now being done multiple times in these higher-level class. This redundancy was always there. It just wasn’t obvious—it had been hidden because the calls were done lower in the chain by separate methods. Had I stopped the refactoring without taking another look at the code after the fact, I may have missed the opportunity to keep the code DRY. I’d be leaving in (now more obvious) technical debt. For most of the unintended cruft left after a refactoring, there are tools at our disposal that can help us. As a .NET programmer, a tool like Resharper can detect these common smells so we don’t have to go hunting them down ourselves. In the end, a refactoring isn’t truly complete until we’ve re-assessed our work and can objectively say the code is now more understandable.

Dr Samuel Brisbane becomes first doctor in west African nation to die, as second US healthcare worker is infected One of Liberia's most high-profile doctors has died of Ebola, a government official said on Sunday, and a second US healthcare worker has been infected in what the World Health Organisation (WHO) is calling the largest outbreak ever recorded of the disease. Dr Samuel Brisbane is the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak, which the WHO says has killed 129 people in the west African nation. A Ugandan doctor working in the country died this month. Brisbane, who once served as a medical adviser to the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, was working as a consultant with the internal medicine unit at the country's largest hospital, the John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia. After falling ill, he was taken to a treatment centre on the outskirts of the capital, where he died, said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister.Under the supervision of health workers, family members escorted the doctor's body to a burial location west of the city, Nyenswah said. He said another doctor who had been working in Liberia's central Bong County was being treated for Ebola at the centre where Brisbane died. The situation "is getting more and more scary," Nyenswah said. Last week Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor fell ill with the disease and in Liberia, Samaritan's Purse, a Christian charity, announced at the weekend that an American doctor was infected. Dr Kent Brantly had been isolated at the group's Ebola treatment centre at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. A second American, Nancy Writebol, later tested positive for the virus at the same medical compound, said Ken Isaacs, of Samaritan's Purse. Isaacs said Writebol, who works with the allied aid group SIM, was in a stable but serious condition at a hospital near Monrovia. Brantly received intensive treatment on Sunday and was talking to his medical team and working on his computer, said Melissa Strickland, a spokeswoman for Samaritan's Purse. "We are hopeful, but he is certainly not out of the woods yet," Strickland said. In Nigeria, officials announced on Friday that a Liberian official had died of Ebola after flying from Monrovia to Lagos raising fears that other passengers could take the disease beyond Africa. The WHO says the outbreak has also killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone. Liberia's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, used her Independence Day address to discuss a new taskforce to combat Ebola. Information minister, Lewis Brown, said: "It will go from community to community, from village to village, from town to town in order to increase awareness." There is no known cure for Ebola, which begins with symptoms including fever and sore throat but then escalates to vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding. Experts believe the west African outbreak could have begun in January in south-east Guinea, though the first cases were not confirmed until March. Since then, officials have tried to contain the disease by isolating victims and educating populations on how to avoid transmission, though porous borders, satellite outbreaks and widespread distrust of health workers have made the outbreak difficult to bring under control.

The Samsung Group is a South Korea-based conglomerate company that includes a number of subsidiaries. It's one of the largest businesses in Korea, producing nearly one-fifth of the country’s total exports with a primary focus in the electronics, heavy industry, construction, and defense industries. Other major subsidiaries of Samsung include insurance, advertising, and entertainment industry businesses. Samsung History With only 30,000 won (about $27 USD), Lee Byung-chull started Samsung on March 1 in 1938, as a trading company based in Taegu, Korea. The small company of only 40 employees started as a grocery store, trading and exporting goods produced in and around the city, like dried Korean fish and vegetables, as well as its own noodles. The company grew and soon expanded to Seoul in 1947 but left once the Korean War broke out. After the war, Lee started a sugar refinery in Busan that was called Cheil Jedang, before expanding into textiles and building the (then) largest woolen mill in Korea. The successful diversification became a growth strategy for Samsung, which rapidly expanded into the insurance, securities, and retail business. Samsung was focused on the redevelopment of Korea after the war with a central focus on industrialization. Samsung entered the electronics industry in the 1960's with the formation of several electronics focused divisions. The initial electronics divisions included Samsung Electronics Devices, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Corning, and Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications. Samsung built their initial facilities in Suwon, South Korea, in 1970, where they started producing black and white television sets. Between 1972 and 1979, Samsung began selling washing machines, changed to Samsung Petrochemical and then Samsung Heavy Industries, and by 1976, had sold its 1 millionth B&W television. In 1977, they started exporting color TVs and established Samsung Construction, Samsung Fine Chemicals, and Samsung Precision Co. (now called Samsung Techwin). By 1978, Samsung had sold 4 million black and white television sets and started mass producing microwave ovens before 1980. 1980 to Present In 1980, Samsung entered the telecommunications hardware industry with the purchase of Hanguk Jenja Tongsin. Initially building telephone switchboards, Samsung expanded into telephone and fax systems which eventually shifted to mobile phone manufacturing. The mobile phone business was grouped together with Samsung Electronics which began to invest heavily in research and development throughout the 1980's. During this time Samsung Electronics expanded to Portugal, New York, Tokyo, England, and Austin, Texas. In 1987 with the death of Lee Byung-chull, the Samsung group was separated into four business groups leaving the Samsung Group with electronics, engineering, construction, and most high-tech products. Retail, food, chemicals, logistics, entertainment, paper, and telecom were spun out among the Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, and Hansol Group. Samsung grew as an international corporation throughout the 1990's. The construction division of Samsung secured several high-profile construction projects, including one of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the half-mile tall Burj Khalifa Tower in the UAE. Samsung 's engineering division also includes Samsung Techwin, an aerospace manufacturer that manufactures aircraft engines and gas turbines as well as supplying parts used in jet engines on Boeing and Airbus aircraft. In 1993, Samsung began to focus on three industries — electronics, engineering, and chemicals. The reorganization included selling off ten subsidiaries and downsizing. With a renewed focus in electronics, Samsung invested in LCD technology, becoming the largest manufacturer of LCD panels in the world by 2005. Sony partnered with Samsung in 2006 to develop a stable supply of LCD panels for both companies, which had been an increasing problem for Sony, which had not invested in large LCD panels. While the partnership was nearly a 50-50 split, Samsung owned one share more than Sony, giving them control over the manufacturing. At the end of 2011, Samsung bought Sony's stake in the partnership and took full control. Samsung's focus in the future is centered on five core businesses including mobile, electronics and biopharmaceuticals. As part of its bio-pharma investment, Samsung formed a joint venture with Biogen, investing $255 million to provide technical development and biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in South Korea. Samsung has budgeted nearly $2 billion in additional investment to pursue their bio-pharma growth strategy and leverage the advantages of their joint venture. Samsung has also continued to expand in the mobile phone market, becoming the largest manufacturer of mobile phones in 2012. To remain a dominant manufacturer, Samsung has earmarked $3-4 billion to upgrade their Austin Texas semiconductor manufacturing facility. Samsung announced the Gear VR in September 2014, which is a virtual reality device developed for use with the Galaxy Note 4. Also in 2014, Samsung announced that they would begin selling fiber optics to glass manufacturer Corning Inc. By 2015, Samsung had more US patents approved than any other company, being granted over 7,500 utility patents before the end of the year.

CTV British Columbia A Vancouver woman is selling her used Volkswagen in exchange for the trendy new online currency known as Bitcoin. Sarah Yu is making headlines for listing her white 2006 Jetta for just eight Bitcoin. That may not sound like a lot, but with one Bitcoin currently valued at $932, the asking price amounts to nearly $7,500. But why not just ask for cash? “I believe in Bitcoin, I really do,” the 30-year-old told CTV News. “I think that cash is on its way out, cash is very devalued and Bitcoin is the future.” The crypto-currency is an electronic way for people to pay each other or retailers for goods and services either over the internet or a mobile network. Bitcoins can be bought in a number of places – a special ATM opened up at Waves coffee shop in Vancouver in late October – and through online and in-person meetups. Yu said she considers Bitcoin an investment, despite the currency seeing high volatility over the last few months. In late October, one Bitcoin was worth more than $200. One month later it skyrocketed to $1,200, then plummeted back down to $500 in December before rising back up to $932 per Bitcoin. “It does have a reputation for being volatile, but I’m not worried at all. For me it’s a long-term strategy,” she said. “I’m not looking to buy some Bitcoin and sell it at a profit…it’s not like the stock market. It’s another form of currency to me.” Bitcoin expert Graham Williams said more and more people are getting into using Bitcoin as the number of retailers who accept the online currency rises. According to Williams, everywhere from pizza parlours to shoe retailers to online gambling sites are beginning to accept Bitcoin. “I think we will start to see people sell houses for Bitcoin,” he said. “It has intrinsic value to it, so seeing people who actually make transactions for high-value items – not surprising at all.” But Williams doesn’t consider the currency to be mainstream yet – saying it must overcome a number of hurdles before that happens. Because Bitcoin isn’t backed by a mint, transactions are not subject to the same regulations as other currencies. While every single transaction made using Bitcoin is posted publicly, the identity of the user remains anonymous -- making it hard to track perpetrators in the case of theft. The now-defunct online drug market Silk Road was an early driver in Bitcoin’s growth, taking advantage of the currency’s ability to provide anonymity to users. “I think that overcoming that stigma is going to be one of the main challenges for Bitcoin,” Williams said. “I think you’re going to see it stabilize as more ways for people to use Bitcoin come onboard…In the meantime it will be a little bit volatile, but I mean, even the dollar is volatile.” According to Williams, only 21-million Bitcoins will ever be available. Despite the risks, Yu said she’s sticking to her asking price and hopes she’ll get a buyer soon. “It’s here to stay, so it’s just a matter of time before everyone else jumps on board.” With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Shannon Paterson

For much of his life, former South Carolina defensive back Andre Goodman had a purpose to blanket wide receivers and make tackles and interceptions. Now the 10-year NFL veteran, who will be introduced as part of the 2015 SEC Football Legends Class in December, has a different purpose as the Gamecocks' Director of Football Student-Athlete Development. "My job has a lot to do with grooming players for life after football and helping them transition from high school to college, and then from college to the real world," Goodman said. "We talk a lot about career development, job placement, time management and balancing your personal life with school, academics and your profession. We want the (student-athletes) to maintain that sense of balance once they leave the playing arena and enter into the real world." Goodman played cornerback for South Carolina from 1998-2001. He earned second-team All-SEC honors by the league's coaches as a senior and was named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll during his career. He was selected in the third round of the 2002 NFL draft by the Detroit Lions, and also played with the Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos during his decade in the NFL. Now in his fourth year on the job with his alma mater, Goodman knows that a professional playing career is short, and that most student-athletes won't be playing professional football. "Managing expectations and helping student-athletes remain realistic is key," Goodman said. "It is tough, even if they do make it to the pros. They have to be realistic because it's a violent sport, and it doesn't take much to go from playing to not playing in the matter of just one play. Helping them become realistic is the toughest challenge, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm not here to kill their dreams. I'm here to give them tools and resources to help them transition." As he focuses on off-the-field activities of the student-athletes and serving as an important resource in balancing the demands of academics, athletics, community outreach, and their personal lives in their transition in and out of college athletics, Goodman noted that one of the most important factors for being successful in his role is trust. "When they can actually sit down and have a conversation outside the game of football that they normally wouldn't have with someone else, it means a lot," Goodman said. "It can be tough for some of them to talk about personal issues, so anytime they can trust you enough to open up, that trust is probably the most gratifying thing. If they can see my sincerity so that they can open up to me and trust the reason why I am here, which is solely to help them, then I feel like I'm doing what I should be doing." It's so easy and natural for athletes to overcome adversity, but handling prosperity can be a lot tougher. Andre Goodman Goodman understands the difficulty in making transitions from personal experience, and he wants the student-athletes to know that he's been there. "You want to be great at everything you do, but you don't realize how tough it is," Goodman said. "Staying centered and keeping a mental balance is always the toughest part. Since I retired (from the NFL), it's a daily challenge because my intensity and my energy are still at the NFL level, but the world doesn't move as fast. The NFL is daily evaluations and competition. We can use that in the real world, but we don't get up with that same intensity every day. It's hard because if I ever feel like I can't be great today, then I feel like I'm wasting my day." Goodman saw highs and lows during his Gamecock career, which included a 1-21 record during his first two seasons, followed by back-to back Outback Bowl victories in his last two years. "It's so easy and natural for athletes to overcome adversity," Goodman said. "But handling prosperity can be a lot tougher because when you feel like you have ‘arrived,' what keeps that fire burning inside of you? Not becoming apathetic is tough. I try to relate it in football terms to the guys because it is all about life after football. "Whatever your goals may be, once you get there, if you don't set another goal then you're really just going through the motions. That's not what the journey is about. The journey is where the energy should be; not the destination. The journey is endless." Among the 37-year-old's best memories of his playing days at South Carolina are beating top-ten ranked Georgia in 2000 and a victory over rival Clemson as a senior in 2001. Goodman will represent South Carolina as part of the 2015 SEC Football Legends class, which includes 14 former stars who excelled on the gridiron and helped write the rich history of the sport at their respective institutions. "It takes a lot to get me excited, but I am very excited," Goodman said about being named to the Legends class. "I've never been big on accolades, but any time someone appreciates your efforts, it's always rewarding. I don't need a lot of fanfare, but this feels like a nice ribbon on my career. I'm very humbled and appreciative. It means a lot." Always thinking ahead, Goodman looks to apply this honor to his work with current student-athletes. "Any bit of credibility you can get with these kids, so I can gain trust with them and have conversations with them, gives me purpose," Goodman said. "My life now is all about purpose" The Legends class will be honored at the 2015 SEC Football "Weekend of Champions" December 4-5 in Atlanta, Ga. The annual SEC Legends Dinner presented by AT&T will be held December 4 at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, and the group will also be recognized prior to the SEC Football Championship Game, which will be held at the Georgia Dome on Saturday, December 5. Goodman and his wife, Shana, have four children, Fabian, Andre, Kennedy and Mason.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Taliban’s reliance on extortion and kidnappings, along with narcotics and illegal mining operations, is transforming it from a group driven by religious ideology into a criminal enterprise hungry for profit, U.N. sanctions monitors said in a new report. Taliban fighters pose with weapons at an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan in this May 5, 2011 picture. REUTERS/Stringer/Files The latest annual report by the U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team on the Taliban was distributed to reporters on Friday, a day before Afghans vote in a run-off presidential election. “In addition to voluntary or forced donations from Afghan businesses outside the country as well as voluntary donations motivated by religious or ideological convictions, the Taliban have established a fairly sophisticated system to generate resources inside the country,” the report said. “Increasingly Taliban finances also rely on abductions of wealthy businessmen for ransom.” The report said executing civilians and aid workers helps the Taliban reassert their power, block security improvements and prevent economic development 13 years after it was ousted from power by a U.S. invasion. It also creates new funding sources for the Taliban, hardline Islamists bent on toppling the Afghan government. “However, these activities increasingly change the character of parts of the movement from a group based on religiously couched ideology to a coalition of increasingly criminalized networks, guided by the profit motive,” the monitors said. Taliban revenue generation is uneven. In provinces such as Nimroz and Kandahar, the Taliban are financially self-sustaining, while others depend on payments from the central leadership. In Kandahar, the Taliban raise $7 million to $8 million a month from narcotics, extortion and mining, the report said. 20 PERCENT GOES TO FIGHTING GOVERNMENT The report includes details on Helmand, which it said is the Taliban’s main province for generating funds. Helmand is the top opium-producing region in Afghanistan, with some 100,000 hectares of land cultivated with poppy in 2013. In the worst case, it said, Afghan officials expect $50 million yield from this year’s Helmand poppy harvest. Most of Helmand’s poppy farmers can expect to pay 10 percent of their opium production as tax for the Taliban. Another lucrative Taliban business is illegal marble mining, which the monitors said is the second major revenue source in Helmand. “The illegal and unlicensed mining sector in the province appears to be several times larger than the legal mining sector,” the report said. “The Team has currently identified from 25 to 30 illegal mining operations in southern Helmand.” Most of the illegal mines are near the Pakistani border, enabling the illegal miners to quickly smuggle the marble across the frontier and move it onto the international market. “The Team’s preliminary assessment is that this Taliban revenue stream is significantly larger than $10 million a year,” the monitoring team said about marble mining. The monitors recommended that the Security Council sanctions committee warn U.N. member states about the Taliban’s use of illegally mined marble for financing. In Helmand, the Taliban’s “Financial Commission” transfers its funds to the Quetta Shura, a group including the top Taliban leadership, who arrange for the transfer of narcotics to Pakistan for sale. The money is then transferred back to the Quetta Shura in cash or via “hawala” agents, an informal system based on trust used to transfer money without actually moving any physical currency. The monitors said the Taliban spend 20 percent of the money on fighting the government in Helmand, while the Quetta Shura get 80 percent to redistribute to needier Taliban elsewhere. The Taliban has been under U.N. sanctions since 1999. The sanctions include an international asset freeze. Many individual members face U.N. travel bans and asset freezes.

I didn't think I would be writing about this, but, then again, I seem to say that fairly frequently. Be that as it may, on Friday I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz's promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions. When I wrote my post, my first reaction was somewhat supportive, but with reservations. However, as I read your comments and thought about it some more, I started having second thoughts. Then, over the weekend, I had a rather prolonged exchange on Twitter during breaks in the action at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Meeting in Philadelphia, which I'm attending now. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this letter, written by Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution, and signed by several doctors with ties to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), was an incredibly bad idea. This evolution in my thinking was helped along by other developments over the weekend. I'll explain. I also might regret having continued my commentary, but, then, when did that ever stop me before? (Actually, you'll never know when, if, or how many times that's ever happened.) In my post, I also described my discomfort with Dr. Miller and the signatories of his letter. For instance, the Hoover Institution isn't exactly known for its promotion of good science, given its history of denialism with respect to human-caused global climate change. Then, of course, I'm not exactly a big fan of ACSH, either. It's frequently on the right side of science, but seemingly only when that position aligns with industry positions. It's the reason why I didn't accept an offer to be on the board of scientific advisors of ACSH a few years ago. Before I go on further, in the interests of full disclosure, I must confess my own issues with the approach Dr. Miller and his cosignatories took. As many of you know, there have been several attempts by quacks and antivaccinationists over the years to make trouble for me at my place of work. Not too long ago, a patient of Stanislaw Burzynski complained to my dean about my posts deconstructing her testimonial that she has been telling as "evidence" that Burzynski cured her of advanced breast cancer. As odd as it seems given how vociferously critical I have been of Dr. Oz's promotion of quackery on his TV show (remember, I'm the one who coined the term "America's quack" to describe him), I must admit that seeing Miller make trouble for Oz at his job over his extracurricular activities rubbed me the wrong way. True, I suppressed my distaste when I wrote my post last Friday, so powerful is my dislike for Dr. Oz and what he does on his TV show. But it didn't stay suppressed for very long. It has been argued that with Oz it's different, because Oz promotes quackery while I promote (or at least like to think I promote) good science and medicine, but even if that's true I can't help but remember that a key purpose of a letter to a person's employer is intimidation into silence or, in Oz's case given his popularity and the security of his position, to cause embarrassment and to provoke a response. Now here's the problem. Regardless of whether I think it's a good idea or not or simply an attempt at bullying to write a letter like this, and even though Miller's letter was correct from a scientific standpoint about Dr. Oz, if you're going to write a letter like this it's generally a good idea to know what your goal is in doing so. What, exactly, is it you're trying to accomplish by writing a letter like this? Is it to get Dr. Oz fired? That's never going to happen, given that Dr. Oz has tenure and, unfortunately, it would take a hell of a lot before a university would try to remove a tenured professor. Indeed, as I've sarcastically mentioned, given that Dr. Oz is the director of the "integrative medicine" program at Columbia, promoting the "integration" quackery with science-based medicine is basically a big part of his job description! In a real world, that wouldn't be the case and what Oz does would be a problem, but, thanks to quackademia, it's no longer shameful to do that; whole divisions and departments in various academic medical centers are devoted to it. Oh, sure, quackademics like Oz wouldn't accept that characterization of what they do as valid, but I would counter that, other than featuring psychics like John Edward or Theresa Caputo on his show, what Oz does on his show is not really much different in terms of message than what he probably at Columbia: Promote acupuncture, naturopathy, homeopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine, among other things. Again, surely Dr. Miller must know this. so I assume that his goal was not to actually get Dr. Oz fired. Indeed, Columbia issued a statement supporting Oz on the grounds of academic freedom very rapidly, and, even in the unlikely event that Columbia were to fire Dr. Oz over his show, it would remove one of the likely strongest restraints that keeps Dr. Oz from going even deeper into the woo. So what was Dr. Miller's goal? Obviously, it was to create embarrassing publicity for Dr. Oz and Columbia University. After all, if Dr. Miller were really looking to cause problems for Dr. Oz he should have at least mentioned that Dr. Oz did a "made for TV" clinical trial he dubbed the "Green Coffee Bean Project" without bothering to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval, something that is a direct violation of Columbia University and New York Presbyterian Hospital's (NYP) Human Subject Research Protection Program, which explicitly requires IRB approval for any clinical trial done by any Columbia University faculty member and NYP-affiliated faculty regardless of regardless of the location where the research is done. Now, as I pointed out, there is a slight gray area here, because clearly Oz's dubious green coffee bean clinical trial was not federally funded, but institutions that receive federal funding are required to abide by the Common Rule, which requires IRB approval of all human subjects research. Miller was either unaware of this issue, didn't realize that this was really the only "in" skeptics have to get Columbia to pay attention, or didn't care about it because what he really cares about is Oz's attack on GMOs. Mentioning that Oz conducted a dubious clinical trial for TV that was not approved by the Columbia/NYP IRB would have been a far more damning thing to mention with respect to possibly forcing Columbia to do more than issue a brief statement full of bromides about "academic freedom" than his pointed mention that Dr. Oz trashed GMOs on one of his shows. In any case, as thoughtlessly as Miller and the ACSH acted, they did managed to get a fair amount of national press coverage, and the ACSH is virtually giddy over the press reaction: Although, for years, Oz has been criticized in countless blogs and opinion pieces, which have appeared on a wide variety of websites, this is the first time that a coordinated effort to expose Oz for who he really is has generated a massive and unified response. It also puts Columbia University in the position where they have to either take action or defend their actions, or lack thereof. ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom, a long time, vocal critic of Dr. Oz said, “Every once in while the right thing happens. This is one of those times. The line between ‘doctor’ Oz and ‘TV personality’ Oz has been blurred for a long time, leading many American’s to equate the two, and, in doing so perpetuating the ‘fame equals credibility’ myth. Dr. Miller’s letter has done much to dismantle this myth. It is well past the time that people finally learn the difference between real medicine and entertainment.” Um. No. Dr. Miller's letter created a momentary press kerfuffle that is fading. One little letter to Dr. Oz's dean is not going to "dismantle" the myth that "fame equals credibility." To claim otherwise is the height of hubris. In fact, if there was a recent event that did more to tarnish the Dr. Oz brand, it was Senator Claire McCaskill's magnificent roasting of Dr. Oz in front of her Senate panel over his breathless promotion of various dietary supplements as the latest, greatest weight loss miracle ever. Then, late last year, the British Medical Journal published a study that showed that half of what Oz recommends on his show has either no or little evidence to support it. Indeed, if you want to see how far Dr. Oz's star has fallen, just witness what happened last November, when Dr. Oz's social media team asked Twitter to ask him questions under the hashtag #OzsInBox and Twitter went wild mocking him for his promotion of quackery. In fact, part of the reason I've come to conclude that Dr. Miller's letter was a spectacularly bad idea is that it appears ready to backfire on him. That's because one thing Miller accomplished without a doubt is to piss off Dr. Oz. (No doubt that was intended.) Don't get me wrong. I'm all for pissing off Dr. Oz over the TV snake oil peddler he's become, but, I wonder, did Miller stop to think what the consequences might be if he actually succeeded in publicly embarrassing Dr. Oz in the national media without a clear idea of what his endgame would be? I don't think so, and Dr. Oz is in the process of responding. First, Dr. Oz released this statement on Facebook: I bring the public information that will help them on their path to be their best selves. We provide multiple points of view, including mine which is offered without conflict of interest. That doesn't sit well with certain agendas which distort the facts. For example, I do not claim that GMO foods are dangerous, but believe that they should be labeled like they are in most countries around the world. I will address this on the show next week. Basically, you can see where this is going. Dr. Miller is a huge booster of GMOs, having served as the founding director of the FDA Office of Biotechnology, and you can bet that it didn't pass unnoticed that what provoked Miller to write his letter was not so much Dr. Oz's promotion of quackery but rather a specific fear mongering segment on The Dr. Oz Show about GMOs, in particular the non-browning apple. Not suprisingly, in his response, Dr. Oz is painting himself as not being anti-GMO but only "pro-information." What will Oz say in his show next week? I think there's a good hint in the insinuations in his brief statement above. While Dr. Oz is, for the moment, predictably taking the high road, his admirers and fellow travelers, equally predictably, were not. Predictably, they were attacking Miller and his cosignatories as industry shills. The batshit crazy version of this shill gambit comes from—who else?—Mike Adams, in a pair of posts, entitled Vicious attack on Dr. Oz actually waged by biotech mafia; plot to destroy Oz launched after episode on glyphosate toxicity went viral and Mainstream media FAIL: Sleazebag doctors attacking Doctor Oz have histories of criminal fraud and ties to Monsanto's "Discredit Bureau". Indeed, if you want to see a textbook example of an ad hominem attack, look no further than to Adams' repeating allegations against John Entine that he physically abused his wife, which, even if true (and I haven't been able to find any source other than Mike Adams to back up this claim, although the court documents look authentic), has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not his arguments about GMOs are correct from a scientific standpoint. Mike Adams was, as far as I could tell, first out of the gate with the shill argument, and, Mikey being Mikey, he turned the crazy up to 11. However, there are people who are much more in control of their impulses and whose business model doesn't depend on being as incredibly outrageous and incendiary in his rhetoric as Mikey's does. For instance: It is important for physicians who invoke their medical degrees while endorsing products to make their allegiances and financial ties very transparent — and Dr. Oz deserves to be held to this standard. But by that standard, Dr. Miller and other self-described “distinguished physicians” on this letter also have some explaining to do. Miller, whose employer, the Hoover Institution, is often described as a “Republican-leaning” or “conservative” think tank, has interests of his own. A molecular biologist by training, Miller spent 15 years at the FDA before his fellowship at Hoover; throughout both jobs, he has been a consistent and ardent promoter of genetically engineered foods (or GMOs — the “O” standing for “organism”). And in his advocacy, Miller is positively prolific. A quick web search reveals dozens upon dozens of articles and opinion columns touting the benefits of GMOs to consumers, developing economies and agribusiness — and a seemingly equal number attacking those that warn about the possible risks of what are sometimes called “Frankenfoods.” Miller was a leading voice in opposition to California’s Prop. 37, the 2012 ballot initiative seeking clear labeling of products containing GMOs, and, in the 1990s, was an equally prominent voice in a tobacco industry-backed campaign to discredit the science linking cigarette use and cancer. You get the idea. The same meme is showing up in even mainstream media accounts. For instance, in this segment Bob Arnott, former NBC Chief Medical Correspondent echoes the very same "shill" argument, saying that all ten signatories have "industry ties" and that the industry is "furious that he's [Dr. Oz] has taken on genetically modified crops" and described the letter signatories as "industry henchmen who are after Dr. Oz." He even mentioned that the current acting president of the ACSH, Gilbert Ross, spent time in prison for Medicaid fraud. Heck, Arnot even accused ACSH and Miller of astroturfing. True, he does say that Dr. Oz peddles misinformation that would be like a "Brian Williams scandal" if it were on network TV and unfavorably compares Dr. Oz with Sanjay Gupta on CNN, but his attack on Miller and company is devastating. And, yes, this is the way that Dr. Oz is going to go, as shown in this story on CNN Money (appropriately enough). Dr. Oz is planning to devote a full episode, probably Thursday's, to a response to the accusations of quackery. In other words, he's taking advantage of the letter to gin up his ratings, and his attacks will resemble, no doubt, a toned down version of Mike Adams' attacks. No, he won't mention domestic violence, but you can bet that he'll mention Dr. Ross' conviction for Medicaid fraud and Dr. Miller's past advocacy. You'll be amused at the rationale: The special episode "is the last thing we want to do," a person associated with the show said on Sunday. But Oz and his representatives have concluded that it is necessary because of the "intimidation" they perceive from the doctors. Nonsense. Dr. Oz's producers see a chance to take advantage of the publicity and to strike back at the same time. Dr. Miller threw his best punch, and now Dr. Oz is going to punch back: Oz won't just read the one-paragraph statement he issued last Friday. Instead, he'll devote the majority of the episode to his response. "We plan to show America who these authors are, because discussion of health topics should be free of intimidation," a spokesman for the show said. The details, including the Thursday air date, are subject to change. The episode will be taped on Tuesday or Wednesday. Can Miller take what Oz dishes out? Probably. Does it matter? Probably not. Is Miller's message about Dr. Oz's promotion of quackery and pseudoscience going to get lost in the counterattack that will paint him and his cosignatories as industry shills seeking revenge on Dr. Oz for having questioned whether GMOs are safe? Almost certainly. In fact, I'll go even further and suggest that Miller's letter, after the initial embarrassment it caused Dr. Oz, is probably now seen by him and his producers as a godsend that gives them the pretext to counterattack and to tar all the physicians—not just Dr. Miller and company, but other bloggers, me, and all the rest of us who have been criticizing Dr. Oz for the last five years over his promotion of quackery and pseudoscience—as being industry shills of some kind and to make it stick in the public mind. I'm sure he'll find a way to go after Julia Belluz over at Vox.com as well, given that her excellent article on the making of Dr. Oz as a quack (my interpretation) was published the same week as Miller's letter. That's the narrative Dr. Miller has handed to Dr. Oz on a silver platter. I tend to be a bit conservative in my preferred tactics taking on pseudoscience like that promoted by Dr. Oz, tending to prefer countering his misinformation and supporting activities like Ben Mazer's careful documentation of patients who have been harmed by Dr. Oz's medical advice. More recently, Ben has been working to persuade the AMA to issue a public statement that "reiterates the importance of evidence and transparency to the profession" while asking the AMA "to craft guidelines on how doctors can ethically use the media to help the public" and "to issue a report on what disciplinary pathways might be available for doctors who continue to spread bogus medical information in the media." I'm not opposed to splashy PR moves in general. I just think that they should be smart and thought through, with a definite goal in mind other than stirring up trouble. Dr. Miller's little publicity stunt failed this test on every level, and, worse, could wind up backfiring spectacularly, leaving the rest of us who care about all the quackery Dr. Oz spreads, not just his fear mongering about GMOs, to deal with the consequences.

Overview (3) Mini Bio (1) Widely regarded as one of greatest stage and screen actors, both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery Lois (Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer. He is of Scottish, Northern Irish, and English descent. During his early childhood, his parents moved with Ian and his sister Jean to the mill town of Wigan. It was in this small town that young Ian rode out World War II. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theater, which was encouraged by his parents. They would take him to plays, those by William Shakespeare, in particular. The amateur school productions fostered Ian's growing passion for theatre. When Ian was of age to begin attending school, he made sure to get roles in all of the productions. At Bolton School in particular, he developed his skills early on. Indeed, his first role in a Shakespearian play was at Bolton, as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night". Ian soon began attending Stratford-upon-Avon theater festivals, where he saw the greats perform: Laurence Olivier, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Paul Robeson. He continued his education in English Drama, but soon it fell by the wayside as he concentrated more and more on performing. He eventually obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and began his career in earnest. McKellen began working in theatre over the next few years. Very few people knew of Ian's homosexuality; he saw no reason to go public, nor had he told his family. They did not seem interested in the subject and so he saw no reason to bring it up. In 1988, Ian publicly came out of the closet on the BBC Radio 4 program, while discussing Margaret Thatcher's "Section 28" legislation, which made the promotion of homosexuality as a family relationship by local authorities an offense. It was reason enough for McKellen to take a stand. He has been active in the gay rights movement ever since. Ian resides in Limehouse, where he has also lived with his former long-time partner Sean Mathias. The two men have also worked together on the film Bent (1997) as well as in acclaimed stage productions. To this day, McKellen works mostly in theater, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for his efforts in the arts. However, he has managed to make several quite successful forays into film. He has appeared in several productions of Shakespeare's works including his well received Richard III (1995), and in a variety of other movies. However, it has only been recently that his star has finally begun to shine in the eyes of North American audiences. Roles in various films, Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Apt Pupil (1998) and Gods and Monsters (1998), riveted audiences. The latter, in particular, created a sensation in Hollywood, and McKellen's role garnered him several of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod. McKellen, as he continues to work extensively on stage, he always keeps on 'solidifying' his 'role' as Laurence Olivier's worthy 'successor' in the best sense too, such as _King Lear (2008)_ directed by Trevor Nunn and in a range of other staggering performances full of generously euphoric delight that have included "Peter Pan" and Noël Coward's "Present Laughter", as well as Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", both in acclaimed productions brilliantly directed by Sean Mathias. McKellen found mainstream success with his performance as Magneto in X-Men (2000) and its sequels. His largest mark on the big screen may be as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, which he reprized in The Hobbit trilogy. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Peacham Trade Mark (2) Rich and flawless voice, combined with Shakespearean bearing. Distinctively calm style of speaking. Trivia (71) He was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 1991 Queen's New Year Honours List for his services to drama. Has played the vampire in the music video "Heart" by Pet Shop Boys Originated the role of Antonio Salieri in the Broadway production of "Amadeus". Had a tattoo of the Elvish character for 9 along with seven other members of the fellowship in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Was offered the part of Mission Commander Swanbeck in Mission: Impossible II (2000). He was not able to accept the role, due to a prior theatre engagement in London. The part eventually went to Anthony Hopkins He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1979 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama. According to an interview, one of the last things Margaret Thatcher did as Prime Minister was recommending him for a knighthood. The original Lord of the Rings books, and X-Men comics, both feature a character named Sauron, and a book entitled "The Return of the King". The X-Men graphic novel "The Return of the King" is, appropriately, about the return of Magneto. He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1985 (1984 season) for Best Actor in a Revival for "Wild Honey". He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1991 (1990 season) for Best Actor in "Richard III" at the Royal National Theatre. Before performing the role of Gandalf, he listened to a recording of J.R.R. Tolkien reading Gandalf lines from the novel. He used this as a base for creating the character, and imitated the accent used by Tolkien in the recording. Began acting as a means of escape from mourning after his mother's death and constant bullying at school from fellow students. He was awarded the 1989 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance in "Othello". He was awarded the 1984 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance in "Coriolanus". He was awarded the 1989 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) for Best Actor for his performance in "Othello". Graduated with a 2:2 in English from Cambridge University. Studied at St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge, when he was 18, with Sir Derek Jacobi , and with whom he had been "desperately in love", as he confessed on Inside the Actors Studio (1994). In an article in "The Advocate", issue dated December 11, 2001, he further explained that what he had felt for Jacobi in their youth was "a passion that was undeclared and unrequited". Originally aspired to be a journalist. Was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon at the same time as Patrick Stewart Wore a prosthetic nose to play Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Has played cult characters in two of the biggest franchises; he played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Magneto in the X-Men film series. Won Broadway's 1981 Tony Award as Best Actor (Play) for originating the role of Antonio Salieri in "Amadeus". He was nominated in the same category in 1984 for "Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare". He used the phrase "old friend" in both the X-Men film series and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In both cases (to Christopher Lee as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings and Patrick Stewart as Xavier in X-Men) it is said to an ally who has become a nemesis and "old friend" is said mockingly. Has worked with two Faramirs. Prior to appearing in the Lord of the Rings films with David Wenham , he appeared in the film Plenty (1985), with Andrew Seear . Seear played Faramir in the BBC radio adaptation, opposite Ian Holm He said that appeal of the X-Men films to him was the concept of mutants being shunned, something he says he identifies with as he was repeatedly shunned as an open homosexual. Like his The Da Vinci Code (2006) character, Sir Leigh Teabing, he has been knighted. As such, prior to being cast, he spotted two errors in the book's portrayal of Knighthood. Knights neither receive ID badges nor are granted any of the special privileges Teabing demands as a result of Knighthood. Only performer to receive an acting Academy Award nomination for Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the Independent of Sunday 2006 Pink List - a list of the most influential gay men and women - he came no. 1, up from no. 2, knocking Elton John from top spot. He was awarded the Companion of Honour in the 2008 Queen's New Year Honours List for his services to drama and to equality. Ranked #45 in the 2008 Telegraph's list "the 100 most powerful people in British culture". Was Head boy at Bolton School. Marched at London's Gay Pride Parade July 5, 2008. Had not read either "The Golden Compass" (aka "Northern Lights") by Philip Pullman , or any of the Lord of the Rings books by J.R.R. Tolkien before he was cast in the movie adaptations. Played Magneto in three consecutive films - the only other actors to play comic book criminals in three films, as of 2008, are James Franco as Harry Osborn, Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor and his X-Men (2000) co-star, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique. Received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ulster on February 3, 2013. Had Maggie Smith play his mother in Richard III (1995), and then played her on an episode of "Saturday Night Live". In the BBC Radio production of "Goldfinger", he worked with her real son, Toby Stephens . Smith's former husband, Sir Robert Stephens , also played Aragorn in the BBC Radio version of "The Lord of the Rings". Has English, Northern Irish, and Scottish ancestry. At 74 years old, he is the oldest actor to be cast in the role of Sherlock Holmes. Revealed in December 2012 that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. "The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling" (with Gregory Peck ) in 1966 would have been his feature film debut but for the hostile snowy Swiss location weather. The production, a World War I film with a script by Roald Dahl to be directed by David Miller , was abandoned after 5 weeks filming. Although he was 56 when he played the title character in Richard III (1995), King Richard III was only 32 years old when he died on August 22, 1485. Although he played Maggie Smith 's son in Richard III (1995), he is less than five years her junior in real life. He was offered the role of King Charles VI of France in Henry V (1989) but he turned it down. Paul Scofield was eventually cast. Was considered for the role of Clayton in Tarzan (1999). Turned down the role of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). He was quoted saying "I had enough trouble living up to one legend. Two would be too much to hope for." (referring to his role as Gandalf in "Lord of the Rings"). Was considered for the role of Judge Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). He was awarded he 1998 Back Stage Garland Award for Outstanding Performance for "An Enemy of the People" in a Royal National Theatre production at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Was offered $1.5 million by Sean Parker to officiate at his Tolkien-themed wedding in 2013, in costume as Gandalf, but declined, saying "Gandalf doesn't do weddings". His grand grand father on his mother side, Robert Lowes had been an active member of a institution, that campaigned to get "half of a day" holiday on Fridays for workers of industrial age in Manchester in 1890's. This campaign, that had got successful and underlie weekend concept of modern times. Strangest career encounters usually involve avid fans who tell him that they've seen and love all the Harry Potter films. Ian's mother Margery died when he was 12 and his father Denis died when Ian was 24 . Began and abandoned work on his autobiography, returning a million dollar advance from his publisher, after he found the experience of researching his life too painful. Of Clan McQuillan. Personal Quotes (41) [on his first theatre experience, "Peter Pan"] I wasn't over-impressed. For one thing it wasn't a real crocodile and I could see the wires. I think it's one thing to declare your sexuality, if you care about what that is. It's another thing to start talking in public about what you do in private and who you do it with. It's not that they [my significant others] don't want to be identified as gay, but that they don't want to be identified as ... with me. Many unthinking people just don't like the idea of gays joining in their games, nor in the military and, it would seem, in the movies. When I, as Gandalf, meet Bilbo or Frodo at home, I bump my head on the rafters. [ J.R.R. Tolkien ] didn't think to mention it. I am encouraged by the theatricality of [ J.R.R. Tolkien 's] readings - full of rhythm and humor and characterization. Without question Gandalf is like Tolkien but then so, I suspected, are Frodo and Aragorn. I've had enough of being a gay icon! I've had enough of all this hard work, because, since I came out, I keep getting all these parts, and my career's taken off. I want a quiet life. I'm going back into the closet. But I can't get back into the closet, because it's absolutely jam-packed full of other actors. I ... think of the Bible as great literature rather than great history; great imagination rather than reliable witness. Whatever, it is not as a law book that I respect the Bible. Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy. "The Lord of the Rings" is a mythology, it is a fairy tale, it's an adventure story. It never happened. Except somewhere in our hearts. It wasn't exactly a mistake, but if there's anything I regret, it's probably having disguised my own native accent. Actors of my generation all tended to speak RP [received pronunciation]. Of course, it's all different now and drama students are encouraged to keep their regional accents and be able to do RP when required. Even at the BBC these days there's no standardised accent, and I rather think that's a good thing. [12/5/03, about the cheering fans outside the InterContinentel Hotel, where he was staying in Wellington, New Zealand:] It's like several Christmases all come at once. They all love Gandalf, but I'm like Father Christmas in the shop. I'm not the real one. [12/5/03, on initially thinking it crazy to release the LOTR trilogy 12 months apart] I thought people wouldn't remember what happened a year ago. But I hadn't factored that they would be so successful at the box office, and that so many people would buy the DVD and videos in between the release of each film. I had thought the whole enterprise was doomed, because of the release pattern. I'm very happy to have been proved wrong. They'll let me play a gray-bearded wizard, but they still wouldn't cast a young gay actor - who was out - in a straight romantic lead. They didn't call it marriage, although you can call it anything you want. The one thing you cannot mention is God, that is absolutely verboten. I suppose I'm a bit mean-spirited, but I really can't see why the government couldn't just say gay people can get married - that would have been true equality and so much simpler. But that hasn't been done because they couldn't face the furore. So they've passed a law that is not available to straight people - straight people cannot have a civil partnership, they have to get married - extraordinary. If The Da Vinci Code (2006) had been filming in a place where it rains a lot, I probably wouldn't have done it. Quite low down in the list is "How much am I going to be paid?" I'd say I was quite cheap, but my main feeling about money is that I don't want to feel as though I'm being taken advantage of. Certainly, I'm cheaper than Anthony Hopkins . The other actors they asked to play Gandalf wouldn't go to New Zealand on that money for that length of time. I thought it would be a bit of an adventure. Tony Hopkins didn't think it would be an adventure. Tony is part of Hollywood. I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around. If I was a star, it would be difficult to go off and do Coronation Street (1960). So I guess I'm not a star. Nobody has ever looked to Hollywood for social advance. Hollywood is a dream factory. I love the way that conservatives think that Hollywood is a bed of radicalism - it couldn't be more staid and old-ladyship if it tried. The audience don't give a blind whatever about the sexuality of actors. Gay people fancy straight people and vice-versa. It's all in the head, so what does it matter? You're not going to meet 'Heath Ledger'. You're not going to find out . . . It's the image you're looking at and falling in love with. There will be girls who go and see those two unhappy gay cowboys and go home and have fantasy dreams about them. Lovely! It may be my rather puritanical upbringing at odds with my inborn laziness that makes me feel guilty at the end of the day, unless I am able to point at some achievement. But this need be no more impressive than cooking a meal or going for a long walk. I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly. I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer at the front saying, "This is fiction." I mean, walking on water? I mean, it takes an act of faith. It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she's lesbian. It's very distressing to me that that should be the case. The film industry is very old fashioned in California. My confidence only really peaked when I was 49 and said, "Yes, I'm gay." In theatre, I have been able to take parts I didn't think I could do - you have time to rehearse and learn. In movies, they want you to do what they know you can do - there isn't the time. I looked down from my terrace hanging over the Thames one morning. It was low tide and there, stranded on the pebbles, was a four-legged corpse - hairless, white and bloated. Was it a calf or a sheep or a goat or a dog? I stared at it until the tide rose and washed it away. For 24 hours I was off my food. When I started eating again, I couldn't face meat - fresh or tinned. Overnight I was vegetarian and I have been for 15 years or more. I've seen the pictures of factory farming and followed the politics of mad cow disease and felt effortlessly superior. Yet it's not reason or conscience that keeps me off meat and fowl--and these days fish, too--just a memory of that unidentifiable, decomposing body on the beach. About the 2008 death of Brad Renfro : "I first caught sight of Brad Renfro when he was kicking a football around with Bryan Singer on the half-built set of Apt Pupil (1998) in Hollywood. He was a kid having fun and that's how I shall always remember him. But he was more than that. He was a proper actor and when we worked together he was determined to be accepted as such. On set, he was blusteringly confident although it was obvious he would have benefited from training as an actor. Yet, as Todd, the disturbed teenager in Apt Pupil, he tapped into an inner demonic world and carried the film on his young shoulders. He longed to belong in the alien world which perhaps in the end overwhelmed him. He was only 25 and it is dreadful we shan't see all that he might have achieved." I didn't like my character. He didn't seem very deep. He just seemed a representative of evil. - On Apt Pupil (1998). When I act, some people fancy me and some of them are women. There we are! What's the problem? They don't believe me when I say I am in love with a woman?...They don't believe me when I say I am a wizard? They believe me even though they know I am not. It's all nonsense. Everyone knows we are acting. [In a Reuters interview, responding to those who say that gay actors shouldn't come out because then no one will find them believable in romantic scenes with actors of the opposite gender.] Don't give up the projects you really want for some extra time with your girlfriend or because you don't want to miss a holiday with your family. They'll understand. Just don't have any regrets. I often get mistaken for 'Dumbledore'. One wizard is very much like another. [on 'coming out' as being gay] I immediately felt better in every way. I felt relieved that I wasn't lying. You know, when I was growing up in England, there were no gay clubs I knew about. There were no bars. Homosexuals were shamed publicly and imprisoned. You were on your own, looking over your shoulder all the time, hoping in the handshake of a stranger that he might be somebody gay. The first film role I deliberately chose to play after I came out was a raging heterosexual, John Profumo. I was just a little bit worried about whether I could carry out the bed scenes. I'm a snob about standards. But I don't find anything odd at all in being known for playing Gandalf. I couldn't be happier about it. Other people tend to get snobbish on my behalf. 'It must be dreadful to always be thought of as Gandalf', they say. Well I can't always be thought of as Richard III. Peter [Jackson] and I were just so thrilled that Gandalf the White wasn't in 'The Hobbit'. We prefer Gandalf the Grey. He can have a smoke and a drink and a chat , and do a few little tricks. It was a great relief. I don't approve of titles. I think they get in the way. I do however approve of medals for public service, and that's how I choose to look at it.. [But] other actors said to me, 'Please we need a knighthood. Because when a knight knocks on the door of a government office, it has to open'. I like fantasy movies, I like musicals, I like variety shows, I like Tony Bennett - it's all the same to me. The fact that some things are more popular than others doesn't make them better, and it certainly doesn't make them worse. I get offered a lot of parts that require long beards. I've turned down God on a number of occasions. [at a reunion, to observer Michael Fassbender ] I just want to say how lovely it is to be back in California. I feel safe here now that you've got rid of Proposition 8. I'm looking for a husband. It's great to meet you Michael. I don't think I'm top choice. In theatre - for Shakespeare - I'm quite near the top, but not for all directors. In film, I'm way, way down. Spielberg's never asked to work with me, Tarantino has never asked, Sam Mendes has never asked. It isn't as if there's a long list of films I've turned down but there are plenty I wish I'd had a go at. That's the truth. I've always loved dictionaries and encyclopedias. Now you get all that on your computer. It's fantastic. You're looking up something about Dickens and you're invited to explore more and more. I don't know if that's wasting time or not but it doesn't help me to learn lines. [on the Oscars] My speech has been in two jackets ... 'I'm proud to be the first openly gay man to win the Oscar.' I've had to put it back in my pocket twice. [2016] [on the Academy Awards] If you are trying to have a career, as a black or Hispanic actor in a state - California - where white people are now the minority, and you are being judged by an Academy where the vast majority are white, male, middle-aged and old ... well, perhaps that is the wrong yardstick. [2016] Before Michael Mann had devised Miami Vice (1984) he directed The Keep (1983) and produced it and wrote it. He cast me as the heroine's father, a Romanian academic who gets caught up with Nazis and a monster trapped deep in the Keep. Ever-diligent, I had specially made my first trip to Bucharest and then had a couple of lessons from a dialect coach in London. So by the first day of filming I was ready to sound and feel authentically Romanian. Just before my first take as Dr. Cuza, Michael said: "Drop the accent - make him more Chicago." Well, if the writer/producer/director makes a request, you jump to it. [June 2000] Salary (2)

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Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary Nauru is a small island (about eight square miles) half way between Hawaii and New Zealand made largely of bird droppings. If that does not sound particularly promising consider two further points. First, that its European discoverer named it Pleasant Island in 1798: it was once extraordinarily beautiful. And second that the bird droppings can be mined as phosphates, which are worth a lot of money. The following morality tale has, in fact, a lot to do with money… Money… Everyone wanted a piece of Nauru. It is enough to list the island’s owners over the last two hundred years. For most of the nineteenth century the Nauruans ruled themselves and spent a lot of that time fighting each other with firearms brought by European traders. In 1888 Germany intervened to end the war and in an amnesty – and encouraged by the threat that tribal leaders would be executed – over seven hundred guns and rifles were handed over to the new authorities; enough to attempt an invasion of Belgium. The island remained in the German Empire until 1914 when it was occupied by Australians on behalf of the Allies. In 1919 the British created the British Phosphate Commission that ran the island in the interests of Australia, New Zealand and the wider Empire, though not necesarily the Nauruans. In 1923 Australia took over the running of Nauru. In 1942 Japan occupied and Nauru had its worst years: a leprosy outbreak was dealt with by sailing a boat of the afflicted out into the ocean and sinking it. In 1945 a joint New Zealand, Australian and British trusteeship was set up, then in 1968 the island was finally given independence. Nauruans, Germans, Australians, BPC, Japanese, Commonwealth Trusteeship and Nauruans again. Nauru became a kind of Pacific Krakow passing constantly between powers. It would be interesting to see if any other spot in the Pacific rivals Nauruans in terms of the multiplicity of owners. Beach is tempted to quote Kissinger: ‘if they had grown carrots there no one would have given a damn.’ From 1968 the Nauruans should have had a happy or at least wealthy existence. After all, they now had the phosophate for themselves. And for a while the government was immensely rich, particularly given how small the population was. It also proved though immensely stupid and the money was wasted. Nauru is a nice example of the Dutch disease. Never give your kids an oil well. By 2006 the phosphates had run out, as had the money, and the island experienced an environmental catastrophe, much of it having been strip mined to water or rock: note the central moonscape in the image above. The lawyers managed to claw some money back through suing Britain, Australia and New Zealand for overexploitation. But the compensation didn’t last either. And then desperation and creativity set in. In 2003, the island briefly tried to get on the US’s patronage list by helping North Korean defectors escape! 90% of the Nauruans are now unemployed and most of those that have jobs owe them to the authorities: hardly Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Still at least Nauru has survived its colonial masters and the passing of the guano. Here’s to a brighter future for one of the world’s most obscure territories. Let’s hope the birds will return. Beach is always on the look out for ‘forgotten kingdoms’ even when they are republics: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

The funeral of Lian Zaher Nasser was held in the Arab-Israeli town of Tira on Jan. 3. Nasser, 19, was killed in Istanbul’s Reina nightclub when a gunman opened fire on New Year’s Eve revelers, killing 39 and wounding dozens of others. Thousands attended the funeral, among them hundreds of young Arab-Israeli women who came to pay their last respects to Nasser but also in defiance of those who cast aspersions on Nasser’s moral character, claiming her death was divine retribution for celebrating a Christian holiday in mixed company with men at an amoral alcohol-soaked affair. Such claims were first expressed in mosques and then erupted onto social media sites, where stormy arguments developed. “Moderate” posters wondered what a group of Muslim girls was doing in an Istanbul nightclub, and some went so far as to compare the club to a brothel. Her relatives said Nasser was murdered twice: once by an Islamic State (IS) terrorist and a second time by sympathizers of the movement within the Arab-Israeli community. At the end of the funeral procession, her father, Zaher Nasser, reacted to those seeking to sully his daughter’s name. “My daughter was murdered through no fault of her own. All she wanted was to enjoy herself, and that’s not forbidden. The fact that she’s a Muslim does not prevent her from having a good time, and Islam does not call for murder and such violence,” he said. During the funeral procession, Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi said angrily, “We are sad and pained but also angered by the crimes. People who cannot find a kind word should just keep silent and be ashamed of themselves.” The chairman of the Joint List, Knesset member Ayman Odeh, wrote on Facebook that he was deeply shocked that instead of mourning the murder of a young woman in a terror attack carried out by Muslim fanatics, Arab society was concerning itself with the lifestyle of young women unwilling to accept the religious Muslim way of life preached by IS. “I’m surprised to see reactions that are light years away from the spirit of our people, reactions of primitive derision and hatred fostered by the murderous ideology of the Islamic State,” he wrote. Odeh’s fellow Knesset members called for the eradication of extremist Islamist elements that have infiltrated Arab society. The debate generated by Nasser’s choice to spend New Year’s Eve partying at an Istanbul club falls on a fault line within Arab society in Israel — a struggle between religious Muslims and Muslims who do not adhere to a religious way of life. (They tend not to use the term “secular.”) This is largely an intergenerational clash between parents and grandparents and young Arabs born into a traditional, religious and conservative society but heavily influenced by secular Israeli environment. And so, these tensions and confrontations do not just pit religious and nonreligious Muslims against each other, but also the older generation against the younger. These young people are defining a new, unique identity: a minority group intent on throwing off the shackles and isolationism of their society and leading an independent lifestyle. The strict Muslim rules of conduct and morality contrast starkly with those of the pluralistic and individualistic Israeli society in which they live, leading them to see their extended families, the atmosphere in their village or neighborhood and Arab society in general as oppressive. One of the manifestations of this mindset is a strong desire to attend university, which they view as the door to their integration into Israeli society and out of the so-called Arab ghettos. For most, getting a higher education and acquiring a profession is an opportunity to extricate themselves from the stifling embrace of their traditional society and to achieve a modern, independent way of life. Anan Mansour, a 23-year-old from the Arab village of Taibe, told Al-Monitor that he and his friends were not surprised by the disturbing and outrageous comments after Nasser’s murder. They are used to criticism over their lifestyle, which is different from that of other Arab-Israelis, he said. “I know this from home already, and I’m a man. I’m not a woman whose parents guard her and seek a match for her wedding. Lian was a dental assistant who went out to party with her friends, one of them a dentist herself. All of them are young, educated Arab women who have been exposed to Israeli society. We live in an open society with aspirations and desires that are very different from the desires and dreams of our fathers and grandfathers. This manifests itself in a contemporary worldview but mainly in concern over the shape of our future. Should we, too, sit home and cry over our fate?” Mansour added that he has seen and heard the incitement against Nasser, not just from older people but also from young Arab-Israelis who do not lead a religious or conservative way of life and yet cannot accept young Arab women who refuse to behave according to the moral code instilled in them at home. The new film by Arab director Maysaloun Hamoud, a resident of the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, offers a fascinating glimpse of the currents shaking up Arab society. “Not Here, Not There,” which hit Israeli movie screens Dec. 30, revolves around three young Arab women who rent an apartment in the center of Tel Aviv, but are forced to conceal their liberal lifestyle from their families. This feature film's characters are fictional, but the plot is based on the real lives of Arab-Israelis. For most Israeli viewers, it will be their first glimpse of the lives led by young Muslim men and women seeking a free, independent way of life, one in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not take center stage.

A Los Angeles police officer was sentenced to 36 months in jail Thursday for assaulting a South L.A. woman in an incident that was caught on video by a police cruiser camera. Mary O’Callaghan’s sentencing comes amid intense scrutiny and criticism nationwide of police use of force. The last 20 months of her sentence were suspended meaning she’ll likely spend a little more than a year in county jail. A downtown L.A. jury last month convicted O’Callaghan, 50, of assault under color of authority after a prosecutor argued that the video recording showed the officer used unnecessary force during the 2012 arrest of Alesia Thomas. In the video, O’Callaghan jabbed at Thomas’ throat with an open hand and threatened to kick her in the crotch. O’Callaghan then raised her boot and struck Thomas, whose body shook in response. Click here to read the full story on LATimes.com. Clarification: O’Callaghan was sentenced to the maximum term, 36 months, but 20 months of that sentence was suspended by the judge, meaning her sentence comes to 16 months in jail, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

A north Idaho police officer, the target of widespread protest following his shooting of a 2-year-old black lab in July, has had his pay cut.Coeur d'Alene Police Officer David Kelley, a 17-year veteran of law enforcement, shot and killed the dog, named Arfee, through the window of a van parked outside a Coeur d'Alene coffee shop. While Kelley maintained that he was afraid of being bitten by the dog—initially reported by police as a "vicious pit bull"—a review of the incident concluded that his decision to fire on the animal violated the department's deadly force policies.A public records request has revealed that Kelley's hourly wage was cut by nearly 10 percent.Outrage over the dog shooting spilled beyond the North Idaho city onto the internet, where the Facebook page Justice for Arfee served as a hub for anger. Earlier this summer, Internet activist group Anonymous issued a pair of threats to the Coeur d'Alene Police Department, demanding a full investigation into the incident.

RE: Host for POTUS in Miami From:[email protected] To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] CC: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Date: 2016-05-12 13:59 Subject: RE: Host for POTUS in Miami I lean no to hosting but could be ok with attending. He was vetted and passed to host an event on Feb. but I think that was for the event that were cancelled. Coincidentally, it was the same day the article came out. Bobby, Brad? Hello everyone, We were also asked to vet the following for POTUS hosting. The only issue is Roy Black. New issues have come up since his last vet in February 2016. Thanks, Kevin Roy Black- NEW 2016: Black defended Jeffrey Epstein, who was prosecuted this year for multiple charges of sexual abuse against at least 34 underage girls between 1999 and 2007. 2015: Represent Justin Bieber after his 2014 DUI charge; Wild reputation, has defended unsavory characters (Rush Limbaugh, Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis), parties with flagged celebrities, accused of ethical violations by former US Attorney; Represented Alex Rodriguez in 2013 steroid case; unable to locate why he was let go by A-Rod 832 S Greenway Drive Coral Gables, FL 33134 DOB: 2/1945 EMPLOYER/OCCUPATION: Self/Attorney NOTES: Co-hosted a February 2007 Obama fundraiser at his home with wife Lea Black. * See Below NGP VET HISTORY: * 2/12/2016; Passed 6OK; POTUS host * 5/14/2015; Passed 6OK; Revisiting for POTUS * 5/14/2015; Issue 6OK; ok per WH * 1/15/2014 - Issue 6OK; revisit for POTUS * 2/13/2012 - Issue 6OK; OK per VC for FL045, revisit for POTUS * 2/13/2012 - Issue 6OK; Bad News * 10/20/2008 - Pass 3OK CONTRIBUTIONS: Yes FREDERICA S. WILSON FOR CONGRESS 6/10/2011 $250 FRIENDS OF PATRICK MURPHY 3/31/2011 $2,500 KENDRICK MEEK FOR FLORIDA INC 10/6/2010 $1,000 KENDRICK MEEK FOR FLORIDA INC 3/17/2009 $2,300 JOE GARCIA FOR CONGRESS 9/29/2008 $1,000 JOHN MCCAIN 2008 INC. 8/12/2008 $1,000 UDALL FOR US ALL 4/1/2008 $500 TADDEO FOR CONGRESS 3/31/2008 $500 JOE GARCIA FOR CONGRESS 3/25/2008 $1,000 CONYERS FOR CONGRESS 11/29/2007 $450 BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT, INC. 9/17/2007 $500 JOHN EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT 6/22/2007 $500 LAUTENBERG FOR SENATE 5/2/2007 $250 OBAMA FOR AMERICA 4/25/2007 $2,300 RICHARDSON FOR PRESIDENT INC. 1/23/2007 $500 EVENTS: None LOBBYIST/DOJ FARA: None EARMARKS/TARP/ARRA: None LIENS: None JUDGMENTS: None BANKRUPTCIES: None CRIMINAL RECORDS: None LEXIS-NEXIS/INTERNET SEARCH: Yes NEW 2016: * Fred Grimm: Billionaire sex offender from Palm Beach enjoys a special kind of justice. Prosecutors meted out a special kind of justice for Jeffrey Epstein, larded with fawning obsequiousness, secret dealings and an astoundingly lenient sentence. After all, billionaires -- even billionaire sex abusers -- aren't like you and me. Investigators documented that at least 34 underage girls, some as young as 13, were repeatedly exploited by Epstein and his buddies for their carnal amusement at his Palm Beach mansion from 1999 to 2007. According to court documents, the girls were required to administer "topless or nude massage while Mr. Epstein masturbated himself." Occasionally, "the conduct escalated to full sexual intercourse." State and federal prosecutors happily reduced what amounted to hundreds of federal and state sex crimes to two state charges -- soliciting prostitution and procuring a person younger than 18 for prostitution. Meanwhile, the feds not only promised not to ring him up on federal charges, they granted immunity to his various co-conspirators. The federal prosecutors -- who seemed cowed by Epstein's high powered attorneys, including Roy Black, Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz -- worked out the secret plea deal without bothering to inform victims that their abuser would be spared federal charges. The failure to notify the victims has been at the crux of a federal lawsuit filed in West Palm Beach against the U.S. attorney's office in 2008 by two of the young women, identified as Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2. On Wednesday, their attorneys filed a 57-page motion demanding a summary judgment in their favor. Whether or not, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra grants the motion, the document (along with the scores of attachments containing nearly apologetic emails and letters from prosecutors to Epstein's legal team) sure as hell prove that billionaires are treated with special deference in the U.S. justice system. The correspondence shows prosecutors trying mightily to contrive a sweet plea deal that could be finalized before the victims or the media got wind of it. One exchange suggested that he plead guilty in Miami, "which would hopefully cut the press coverage significantly." No wonder. Epstein received a piddling 18-month sentence for a crime that got less exalted sex offenders in Florida 10 or 15 years hard time. His less-than-hard-time amounted to 13 months in the Palm Beach County stockade. Except he was allowed to spend 12 hours a day, six days a week at his nicely appointed office as part of a work-release program. He then served the balance of his sentence under house arrest -- quite an imposition for someone with a luxury mansion on the barrier island. Consider that this occurred at a time when low-rent sex offenders were forced to live like apocalyptic trolls beneath Miami's Julia Tuttle Causeway without water, toilets, electricity. Of course, super rich Epstein, 62, managed to avoid such indignities. Nowadays, the convict is occasionally featured in tabloid photos, snapped as he flits about New York in the company of young, beautiful women. Justice -- the special justice for billionaires -- has been served. [The Miami Herald Feb 12, 2016] 2015: * Justin Bieber Hires High-Powered Lawyer Roy Black in DUI Case: Justin Bieber is bringing in the big guns in a bid to beat his DUI charge. The singer, who was arrested in Miami early Thursday morning for DUI and drag-racing, has hired high-powered lawyer Roy Black to represent him. Black, who is married to Real Housewives of Miami star Lea Black, is a civil and criminal defense trail attorney best known for getting Kennedy family member William Kennedy Smith acquitted of charges of rape in 1991. He has also represented Kelsey Grammer, race car driver Helio Castroneves, Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis and conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh. The 19-year-old pop star, who is Canadian, is being charged with DUI, driving without a valid driver's license out of the state of Georgia and resisting arrest without violence. The police say Bieber admitted that he had consumed alcohol, had been smoking marijuana and had taken prescription medication. [People; Jan 23, 2015<http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20779032,00.html>] * JEFFREY EPSTEIN ATTORNEY ROY BLACK DENIES ALLEGATIONS IN LETTER BY EX-U.S. ATTORNEY ALEXANDER ACOSTA Attorney Roy Black is disputing claims that he, and other attorneys representing Jeffrey Epstein, pried into federal prosecutors' personal lives in attempting to disqualify them from investigating the billionaire sex offender. Black also denies Epstein's attorneys "negotiated in bad faith," while attempting to reach an agreement with federal prosecutors. In a written response Tuesday to the Palm Beach Daily News, Black disputes claims made against Epstein's defense team by former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta. Those and other allegations by Acosta were contained in a three-page letter printed Friday in the online publication The Daily Beast. Acosta was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida at the time Epstein was being investigated on federal charges related to multiple sex crimes with minor girls. Black, the Miami attorney who successfully defended William Kennedy Smith against rape charges, was part of Epstein's legal dream team. Epstein was never charged with a federal crime. He and his attorneys struck a deal with federal prosecutors, which was outlined in a non-prosecution agreement. According to the agreement, Epstein had to plead guilty to two state charges, register as a lifelong sex offender and serve 18 months in jail. If he successfully completed those terms and served one-year of probation, then Epstein would not be prosecuted on federal charges as they related to approximately 30 to 40 victims. In a written response to the Daily News, Black said, "We did present argument after argument why a proposed federal prosecution against Mr. Epstein was unsupported by the evidence. We detailed the so-called evidence during many meetings with prosecutors and agents. "We were quite candid in disclosing all the evidence we had gathered in our investigation and I believe we made a convincing case why charges were not appropriate. I still believe that today." According to Acosta, now dean of the Florida International University College of Law, federal prosecutors and agents met with Black in the summer of 2007. The prosecutors presented Epstein a choice: plead guilty to state felony charges resulting in two years imprisonment, registration as a sex offender and restitution for the victims or prepare for a federal felony trial. What followed, Acosta said, was that Epstein's defense team launched "a yearlong assault on the prosecution and the prosecutors. "I use the word assault intentionally, as the defense in this case was more aggressive than any which I, or the prosecutors in my office, had previously encountered," Acosta said in his letter. Among the "legal superstars" on Epstein's defense team: Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr, Jay Lefkowitz and several others, including prosecutors who had formally worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office and in the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department. Acosta said that one member of the defense team warned him "the office's excess zeal in forcing a good man to serve time in jail might be the subject of a book if we continued to proceed with this matter." Black said he's never heard anyone mention writing a book about the Epstein case. "Mr. Acosta claims we negotiated in bad faith by appealing to the Department of Justice in Washington," Black said. "Any person under investigation by a United States attorney, meaning any of the 94 such offices in the country, has the right to seek review by the Department of Justice and it is so provided for in their manual. Thus I cannot imagine invoking this right could be construed as bad faith. "In our system of justice, people are given the right of appeal and there should be no implication of wrong doing by exercising it. "Finally Mr. Acosta mentions we looked for personal peccadilloes of prosecutors," Black said. "I am not sure what he refers to but this never happened. We did point out misconduct and over-reaching by certain people involved in the investigation. Not only is there nothing wrong with this but it is a necessary part of the process. There will always be people who abuse the great power of the government and we can not stand by silently when it occurs." The non-prosecution agreement was sealed in Epstein's state felony file until victims' attorneys successfully argued to make the document public in September 2009. [Palm Beach Daily News-March 30, 2011] * A-Rod escalates war with Yankees; team responds with a challenge: "Embattled Yankee Alex Rodriguez escalated his war with team higher-ups via comments from his new New York lawyer suggesting the team purposely mistreated him medically, and Yankees president Randy Levine responded Saturday afternoon with a strong challenge for Rodriguez. Levine offered to release all the team's medical records while simultaneously asking A-Rod to release his records of treatment with Anthony Galea, the disgraced sports doctor who treated Rodriguez and was convicted of smuggling HGH... Tacopina, showing no signs of shutting up, came out blasting after he was recently hired by Rodriguez as the latest in a long string of prominent Rodriguez legal people. Rodriguez and noted Miami defense lawyer Roy Black parted ways, but A-Rod is believed to retain sports attorney David Cornwell, plus labor law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon, plus Jay Z's legal group at Reed Smith. Tacopina's comments came a day after 60 Minutes reported that members of the A-Rod camp leaked Biogenesis documents linking Ryan Braun and teammate Francisco Cervelli to Biogenesis, the now-defunct "wellness" clinic that provided PEDs to baseball players and is at the center of MLB's PED case..." (http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/writer/jon-heyman/23196126/arod-escalates-war-with-yankees-team-responds-with-a-challenge) Reputation: * RUSH LIMBAUGH'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY, ROY BLACK, HOSTS FUNDRAISER FOR PATRICK MURPHY "Memo to Patrick Murphy: If you want to win street cred with the 99 percent, don't have Rush Limbaugh's lawyer host your fundraiser. Murphy, the Democratic congressional candidate hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Allen West, has opened himself up to a lot of bad jokes with the fundraiser slated for tomorrow night in Coral Gables. The event is being held at the home of Roy Black, the famed criminal attorney who defended Rush Limbaugh when Palm Beach prosecutors accused him of "doctor-shopping" for pain pills. Black is currently representing John Goodman, the Wellington polo mogul accused of driving drunk and causing a car accident that killed a 23-year-old last year. Guests at Black's home will shell out $500 to $5,000 for the soiree. They'll also get to rub shoulders with a genuine celebrity: Black's wife, Lea, who has been a cast member on The Real Housewives of Miami. Just to recap: Republican Allen West defends tax breaks for the wealthy, and Democrat Patrick Murphy holds a fundraiser at the home of a famous criminal lawyer and a reality-TV star. Ain't politics grand? [Broward/Palm Beach New Times-December 6th , 2011 http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2011/12/rush_limbaugh_attorney_roy_black_fundraiser_patrick_murphy.php] * LET'S GET DRUNK: ROY BLACK, POLO BOSS JOHN GOODMAN'S LAWYER; HOSTS YEARLY SHINDIG "International Polo Club Palm Beach founder John Goodman, whose alleged killing of a 23-year-old man in a car crash last month is still under investigation, was nowhere to be found among those who paid homage to high-profile South Florida attorney Roy Black. Funny thing, because when it comes to celebrities attending The Blacks' Annual Gala in Miami Beach Saturday night, Black and his wife Lea can always count on those he extracted from the criminal justice system. And yes, there may be some of future clients of Black's there, too. Girls Gone Wild's Joe Francis was one of them. He once had tax and public morals problems, but Black made it all better. So he came to the Fontainebleau Miami Beach for the big party. "He wins every case," Francis said. "His approach is different from other lawyers, partly because he never worked for the government as a prosecutor. He believes in your case 100 percent, and I don't know any other who does that." Three-time Indianapolis and Dancing With The Stars winner Helio Castroneves showed up. Black got him out of his little tax evasion issue last year. Yet John Goodman, who could soon be facing DUI and manslaughter accusations but hasn't been charged, was MIA. And who could blame him? Roy Black, after all, kicked off the open bar, three-course fiesta with this announcement to the 1,000-plus guests who'd paid up to $1,000 each: "If you guys don't get drunk and dance on the tables, then this party has failed!" The Blacks party, which could rival most Palm Beach shindigs in the wealth and notoriety of participants, has long been a staple of Miami's social life. And it raises millions for educational charities. It gathers usually well-known figures from all facets of life. The legal community, for example, was represented with the likes of Harvard prof Alan Dershowitz, who represented Palm Beach millionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein with Black; O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, unrecognizable after years of plastic surgery; and Jim Ferrara, a successful local litigation attorney. Also there: rapper Rick Ross; shoe designer Lisa Pliner; TV chefs Ron Duprat and Bobby Flay; The Real Housewives of Atlanta's Kim Zolciak; poker star Noah Schwartz; Bob Seger saxophonist Alto Reed; Gov. Charlie Crist and his lovely bride, Carole Crist; singers Natalie Cole, Paulina Rubio and Gloria Estefan; boxer Lennox Lewis; former Miami Heat star Alonzo Mourning; Girls Gone Wild's Joe Francis; and others. (See them all by clicking here or on the photos) Gov. Charlie Crist, who's running for U.S. Senate, was received like a rock star. Despite the polls showing he's behind Marco Rubio among Republicans, Crist pressed the flesh with a vengeance and showed he's still popular among the beautiful people. And despite stories saying that his wife of a little more than a year is nowhere to be found, the First Lady was glued to her husband. "He's a brilliant attorney who has extraordinary admiration of a lot of people," the governor said of Black. "He's a hard worker, and those usually get lucky." Well, there was one failure that night: the Blacks couldn't auction off a Bugatti Veyron, the world's most expensive car. But then, who in this economy could get someone to bid $2.75 million on anything? [March 1, 2010--http://www.page2live.com/2010/03/01/lets-get-drunk-roy-black-polo-boss-john-goodmans-lawyer-hosts-yearly-shindig/] NOTES: RE: Vet Committee: Roy Black Schmuck, Bobby [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Seems fine. All, Finance would like approval for Roy Black to attend/photo/donate for one of the POTUS events in Miami. His wife Leah passes vet. I'm ok with him but defer to Bobby and others if there are objections. ___________ 8550564 2/13/2012 I'm fine for just meetings with Messina. On Feb 13, 2012, at 3:03 PM, "Rufus Gifford" [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> wrote: The second two issues aren't a concern and the first one seems to be largely hearsay and unsubstantiated. I would say ok. Hello everyone, Teal asked that I send this to VC2 for your input. Let us know what you think. Thanks. I say no, but think it's a question for Vet2. I am ok One more addition: Lea Black - 95398880 Roy Black - 72082869 Hi there, Can we vet the following folks to host POTUS in Miami please. Robert Rubenstein - 100621684 (no spouse) Hala Mnaymneh - 55343632 Sami Mnaymneh - 99673956 Jane Toll - 100762168 Robert Toll - 99817408 Thank you! Karina Marquez Deputy Regional Finance Director South, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest Democratic National Committee 202.488.5018<tel:202.488.5018> | [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

Loans Most credit unions come into their own for loans of smaller amounts, under £3,000. Many people who borrow these amounts would otherwise only be able to resort to doorstep lending or payday loans as an alternative. Compared to those, credit unions have halos. See the loans section below for more info. You can also use the loan to buy white goods via Co-operative Electrical - this scheme's offered through more than 100 credit unions, so ask yours if it participates. Another way to buy electricals is via the Smarterbuys scheme. This is a collective buying project that allows you to pay for goods via a credit union loan as a way to avoid payday loans, weekly payment stores or loan sharks. Savings All unions offer some form of savings account. The difference between these and high street accounts is that credit union savings often pay you a dividend, which is dependent on how well the credit union's done that year, rather than a confirmed interest rate. See the savings section below for more information. Current accounts Around 60 credit unions now offer current accounts. If your union provides a bank account facility, it'll operate very much like a Basic Bank Account. Mortgages These are only offered by a few credit unions, Glasgow, Scotwest & Capital Credit Unions (all in Scotland) and No 1 Copperpot Credit Union (for police staff). However, never pick a mortgage without looking at the whole market. See Cheap Mortgage Finding for how to locate the best deal. Prepaid cards Around 40 unions around the UK offer a prepaid card service. See the Prepaid Cards guide for how the cards work.

The nuclear agreement between the U.S., Iran, and other world powers cleared an important congressional hurdle in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, but don't expect former vice president Dick Cheney to be happy about it. Despite holding no elected office, former vice president Dick Cheney has emerged as one of the most visible—and hawkish—opponents of the Iran deal, delivering a blistering speech Tuesday morning alleging that the accord "will give Iran the means to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland." “I know of no nation in history that has agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction will be in the hands of another nation, particularly one that is hostile," Cheney told the audience at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank, to mark the return of Congress after a summer recess. According to Cheney, the deal—which has garnered widespread support from all corners—will "facilitate and enable the Iranian regime’s support for terror and terrorist groups, including those who have attacked the United States and are threatening our security, our allies and our interests." He also claimed the deal threatens the security of "our Arab allies across the Middle East," Europe, and "the Jewish People." However, just 15 minutes into his speech, Cheney was interrupted by a young woman bearing a different message. "Dick Cheney is a war criminal. We want peace," yelled Michaela Anang, an organizer with the anti-war group CODEPINK. Holding a banner which read: "Wrong in Iraq, Wrong in Iran," Anang was swiftly escorted from the room, but not before momentarily derailing Cheney's speech—and engaging in a game of tug-of-war with an unidentified audience member, who aggressively sought to seize her cloth sign. The incident was captured in the following video footage. "Dick Cheney is a notable war criminal, has committed atrocities during his time as vice president and beyond, and is a known supporter of torture," Anang told Common Dreams following the direct action. "That is something I am not OK with, as a young person and an activist. My generation wants peace. We're tired of war, and we're tired of war mongers like Cheney." Anang was not the only person on Tuesday to question the former vice president's track record. The following video, released by the White House, is entitled, "Vice President Dick Cheney: Wrong Then, Wrong Now." SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts There was another key show of opposition to Cheney's anti-diplomacy agenda on Tuesday. Shortly after the former vice president delivered his speech, three key Senate Democrats declared they will vote in favor of the Iran deal, bringing its total number of public supporters in the Senate to 41. This threshold gives backers of the deal enough votes to prevent passage of the disapproval resolution, meaning there will be no need for a presidential veto. The public commitments followed a grassroots pressure campaign, waged by people in Iran, the diaspora, and across the United States. The development was embraced by backers of diplomacy. "This victory, which countless organizations and individuals contributed to, proves the power of grassroots advocacy," said Rabbi Joseph Berman, government affairs liaison for Jewish Voice for Peace. "This achievement demonstrates that advocates of peace and justice can win over the well-financed advocates of war." Unclear if deliberate or coincidental, but flood of key Senators announcing Iran Deal support right after Cheney spoke is funny either way. — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 8, 2015 However, the deal's backers say that efforts are far from over. "Now that there is sufficient support in Congress to protect the agreement, we should move swiftly to implement its terms," declared Global Zero, an international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons, in a statement released Tuesday. And Phyllis Bennis, who directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, argued last week: "Now we have to look to the future and figure out strategies to win new victories over the existing wars, occupations, and real—not imagined—nuclear weapons, all enabled and furthered by U.S. policies, that continue to create millions of new refugees, escalating violence, and instability across the Middle East and beyond."

Take action! The principle of integrated education is under attack like never before in this country following the Government’s announcement that it will introduce a new generation of state schools that can religiously discriminate against children for all of their places. We are encouraging everyone to write to their MPs to speak out, and we’ve provided a facility through which it’s possible to do so. In line with its ambition to deliver 500 new free schools by 2020, the Government has given the green light to 11 new religious schools in its latest wave of 77 free school approvals. The schools are the first to be approved since the Government announced that it will move to scrap the requirement that new ‘faith’ schools keep at least half of their places open to local children, irrespective of religion or belief. If these plans go ahead, all 11 schools will be able to religiously select 100% of their places. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has stated that the latest free school approvals are yet another sign of the Government’s backward approach to improving integration in the education system. Of the 11 religious schools given approval, nine are either Church of England or Christian in character. They are: Derby Cathedral School, a Church of England secondary A Level Sixth Form School, Bury St Edmunds, a Church of England school for pupils aged 16 to 19 The Trinity College, an all-through Christian school in Colchester Bishop Arden Church of England Free School, a secondary in Hillingdon Emmanuel Community School, a Christian primary school in Waltham Forest Cathedral Free School, a Church of England primary in Liverpool Cathedral Enterprise School, a Church of England secondary in Bristol East Village C of E Academy, a primary school in Swindon Middle Wichel CE (Primary) Academy also in Swindon In addition, two new Hindu schools have been approved, the Avanti Leicester School and the Avanti Brent School. Both are being set up by the Avanti Schools Trust which currently operates five other existing Hindu schools in England. The approval of these new religious schools comes just days after the Government announced the removal of the so-called ‘50% cap’ on religious selection, meaning that both new and existing free schools may soon be able to religiously discriminate for all of their places when previously they have only been able to do so for up to half. The move has been strongly criticised by a range of individuals and organisations, with Conservative Party grandee Ken Clarke MP asking the Education Secretary Justine Greening to ‘reconsider pretty fundamentally the announcement’, and Professor Ted Cantle CBE of the Institute for Community Cohesion Foundation calling the move ‘retrograde’ and ‘deleterious to integration’. The Catholic Education Service, which has been largely responsible for encouraging the Government to drop the 50% cap, has already announced its intention to open 35 to 40 new religiously selective free schools. This follows the Church of England’s announcement over the summer that they would establish more than 100 new schools in the next four years, equivalent to a quarter of the Government’s target number. BHA Education Campaigner Jay Harman said, ‘In the last few days the Government has stated unequivocally that it wants to tackle segregation in our education system and ensure that children from different religious and non-religious backgrounds are able to learn with and from each other as they grow up. Unfortunately, it has also set out that it intends to achieve this by allowing religious schools to become even more mono-cultural than they are, and approving new religious schools that will divide communities and discriminate against local families. This is quite remarkable. ‘If these policies continue to be pursued by the Government, our education system and our society will become a great deal more divided than they already are. All those who would rather see schools be inclusive, fair, and open to all children, must join us in opposing this entirely counter-productive approach.’ Notes For further comment and information, please contact BHA Education Campaigner, Jay Harman, on [email protected] or 020 7324 3078. See the full list of approved free schools: https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-02-09-List-of-proposed-Free-Schools.xlsx Read the BHA’s previous news item ‘Comment: Government moves to drop restrictions on religious selection in new faith schools’: https://humanism.org.uk/2016/09/09/comment-government-moves-to-drop-restrictions-on-religious-selection-in-new-faith-schools/ Read the Government’s green paper, where it sets out the proposals: https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.pdf Read more about the BHA’s work on ‘faith’ schools: https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/schools-and-education/faith-schools/ The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.

De la forma en que Marita juntaba sus pesitos no quita ni suma nada a la historia, salvo por el detalle que los medios también lo han ocultado para que "la verdad no arruine una buena nota". Todos ganaron con el caso de Marita Verón. Ya había escrito algo sobre la prostitución y la trata aquí: Querido Eugenio Hacia el año 1997se quería poner linda para el jubileo del año 2000. Había plata y las tasas de interés estaban por el suelo.Se pusieron a invertir de tal manera que generaron un boom inmobiliario que hizo que el rancho se les llenara de albañiles turcos (que después se fueron a), africanos y de los países delHubo tal migración que surgió un problema: las putas europeas eran caras para los salarios de los obreros. Por cuanto ante ese desbalance comenzaron a migrar trolas de losque si bien habían dejado la guerra atrás la crisis los comía vivos.Las primeras prostitutas independientes que entraron fueron rumanas y búlgaras, las primeras víctimas de las mafias de trata de personas fueron las albanesas cuyo país aun estaba asediado por la guerra de exterminio.Así comenzó la última ola de trata de personas en Europa, que recién se pudo contener hacia 2005 cuando eldio por finalizada la existencia de mafias relacionadas al secuestro para alimentar el mercado de la prostitución.Una simple y bestial situación de oferta y demanda. Hay que considerar además que la demanda era de baja calidad. Por eso un campesino turco que se pasaba el día fratachando una catedral por 60 euros y dormía en un contenedor podía violarse a una pobre mujer drogada y a veces atada sin muchas vueltas al asunto.A la par del problema surgieron -cuándo no- estudiosos del fenómeno que fueron financiados para tranquilizar las culposas almas europeas. Esos estudios sobre trata de personas tenían su base europea en. Cuando se les acabó el curro de la trata de personas, psicólogos, sociólogos, politólogos y cualquier otra especialidad de esas que no generan nada productivo, descubrieron la "violencia de género", otro regalito que también exportamos oportunamente.La creencia de que enexisten redes al estilo de organizaciones mafiosas, con jerarquías y estructuras mafiosas relacionadas con la trata de personasCuando en realidad. Por cuanto, cuál sería el valor práctico de secuestrar mujeres para obligarlas a prostituirse, con el riesgo legal (bajo, es cierto) que eso conlleva y con, supongo, el disgusto de quienes consumen prostitutas, de tener que cogerse un cacho de carne drogado, atado a una cama. Porque si buscaran eso, me imagino, se cogerían a sus esposas en lugar de buscar prostitutas.El casolo vengo siguiendo desde antes de iniciado el juicio. Me leí el auto de procesamiento, la elevación a Juicio, la mayoría de las testimoniales y seguí vía web, on line, muchas de las audiencias claves. Lo que digo me da paja referenciarlo pero está ahí, googleen en formatos doc y pdf y aparecerán las actas, todo. Busquen en medios locales independientes, entren en los foros de esas provincias.Si creen o no, es cuestión de fe, la misma fe metafísica que tienen algunos en creer el cuentito de la mujer buenaza que salió a buscar a su hija y andaba luchando contra las mafias. Repiten como loritos que liberó 100, 300 mujeres. ¿De dónde sacan esas cifras? Todo verso.Si algo se notó desde el principio es que estábamos en presencia de un gran fraude. Fraude basado en la incorporación de testigos truchos, cuyos discursos se armaron en lacon el asesoramiento de dos abogadas más truchas que la propia Trimarco y que habían sido oportunamente ofrecidas porPor tanto, si quieren putear, puteen al fiscal de Juicio y a la Procuración (que son el verdadero brazo del Poder Político) y no a los jueces a los que les llegan las pruebas cocinadas y deben decidir sobre su veracidad. Principalmente en un caso en que, como se dijo no se pudo componer la prueba con documentales, ni nada. Sólo testimoniales.. La absolución era cantada. El aprovechamiento que se haga de ahora en más del caso, pertenece a otra dinámica pero el juicio tuvo su control de legalidad en los más de 10 abogados defensores. Desconozco la calidad de los jueces que intervinieron pero no hay que serpara estimar que son unos zaparrastrosos, corruptos e influenciables. Pero hay que admitir que hasta el más impresentable queda registrado para la posteridad en sus fallos, sobre todo cuando adquieren esta trascendencia.Imagínense qué burdo ha sido todo que hasta se habrán visto imposibilitados de condenar a esos zopencos para calmar al viejerío.En principio, la fiscalía de instrucción y luego la de juicio compusieron la prueba de la acusación sólo basada en testimoniales, cuestión de por sí ilegal, pero alcanzó para los procesamientos y creyeron que podía pasar en el Oral. Los testigos fueron aportados en su totalidad por Susana Trimarco. No investigaron nada. Es cierto que la primer fiscal intentó avanzar en otras pistas pero fue eyectada de la causa.De parte de la fiscalía, salvo una mujer, el resto de los testigos se encontraban o estuvieron alguna vez, asistidas financieramente por la, que a su vez es financiada por el Ministerio del Interior y antes por el de Justicia. Las asistencias van desde préstamos para microemprendimientos productivos, capacitación, vivienda y cualquier otro rubro que se les pueda ocurrir que es fácil chorearse la plata sin justificarla.¿De donde vinieron esas testigos? de los famosos operativos que realizaba la Trimarco desde 2007 en adelante.. La construcción del personaje de Susana Trimarco como una mujer valiente, que recorría el norte liberando esclavas fue generado por lade la delegación más poderosa que tiene la Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado como es la de(donde además cobran sus dineros la piara de cibermilitantes que rompen las pelotas en las redes sociales luego de haberse desfinanciado el curro que les había armado).Por ejemplo, una mujer que declaró como testigo, al ser impugnada por encontrarse con un contrato de la Fundación Marita Verón, afirmó haber sido liberada de la esclavitud sexual en la que se encontraba por Susana Trimarco. Sin embargo se demostró que vivía a al menos cinco cuadras de ladonde había sido "liberada", que convivía con su marido y vecinos refirieron que diariamente llevaba a sus hijos al colegio. No fue imputada por falso testimonio.Como tampoco investigaron a otra "liberada" enuna tucumana que no pudo nombrar la calle que seguía a la que supuestamente estaba viviendo, no pudo decir de qué color era la Casa de Gobierno provincial (a pesar de domiciliarse a una cuadra del centro cívico), ni identificar datos de la terminal de ómnibus que teoricamente tomaba.Varias testigos afirmaron cobrar $3.000 mensuales de la Fundación por actividades que no pudieron precisar.El procedimiento era más o menos así. La SIDE identificaba algún puterío (que no perteneciera al Poder político), le pasaba el dato a la Trimarco y ésta, sola o acompañada a veces pory agentes de inteligencia, les caían encima.Te allanaban, entraban a las patadas y a los gritos, te tiraban todo el poder del Estado. Las pobres minas en bolas, medio en pedo, solas, pobres, alejadas de sus hijos, explotadas. Trimarco les ofrecía dinero, contratos, subsidios, etc. Imaginen qué iban a decir esas mujeres cuando se les pedía que dijeran que estaban secuestradas?Durante los últimos cuatro años, la fiscalía admitió esa calidad de testimonios para lograr la imputación a todo evento de los acusados, una banda de gordos impresentables que sus buenas cagadas se habrán mandado, pero coincidirán conmigo, amables lectores, que es insoportable pensar que se condene a alguien sin pruebas.Todo el andamiaje legal se basa en la confianza en que las condenas sean producto de pruebas admitidas y validadas en un juicio con garantías constitucionales. Porque podemos aceptar que un culpable se escape del cargo punitivo pero jamás que se condene a un inocente o a alguien que parezca culpable pero no se lo pueda demostrar.Bueno, algunos dirán que estos acusados eran culpables de otras cosas (por eso serán juzgados en La Rioja) o de la misma desaparición de Marita. Pero lo que nos diferencia de otras bestias es que tal vez algunos no queremos vivir en un país que condena sin pruebas y sin garantías.Pero la novelita de, ya había calado en el corazón de las viejas que se habían emocionado y llorado con la historia guionada. El personaje y la épica ya habían sido construidos., como refiere. ¿Si la historia está bien contada y es verosímil, porqué no creerla? Además, si algo de ingrata tiene la verdad (y la realidad) es que depende de las percepciones.El casoy toda la histeria que se observó en las Redes Sociales luego del veredicto ni siquiera sirve para elevar la conciencia crítica de las personas. Porque esa histeria parte de la proyección de miedos infantiles. El abuso, que mamá desaparezca, la violación, el terror a la pobreza propia, etc. Y el miedo, ese gran, gran, gran aliado y socio de la señora manipulación.La Trimarco es una pobre mujer (y era una mujer pobre) a la que le desaparecieron a su hija. Pero lo que tenía de pobre lo tiene de viva. Vio que había una desesperación de la progresía por financiarle sus delirios y matarle la angustia y el hambre y agarró viaje. Fue funcional. Simbiótico.Susana Trimarco, consta en el expediente, en 2003 no tenía $5 (cinco pesos) para prestarle a Marita (que tenía una infección). Y ahora anda con chofer, tiene una casa que no vale menos de U$S 200 mil (en 2003 el lugar en el que vivía no tenía calefón), se viste y viaja como la gerente que es deEso lo sabe todo, por eso es que los medios, pese a instarlo, no lograron que nadie, salvoy algún otro colectivo de colectivizados saliera a protestar por el fallo.Y en medio de este desastre, observamos a los políticos argentinos de la oposición haciéndose los enojados, entristecidos, abrumados por el fallo.. Si nuestra oposición, para logar un "me gusta" eno un RT en, no tienen la pelotas suficientes para enfrentar a la gente y decirles que, qué nos espera., como su madre, era una pobre mina. Pobre, pobrísima. Ejercía la prostitución en elal menos dos días a la semana. Esto consta en el expediente y fue señalado por vecinos, amigas y representantes de ONGs. Una enfermera refirió que le regalaba los profilácticos. Que era prostituta su mamá lo supo en 2005 y prefirió callarse.A Marita la volvieron a desaparecer un montón de veces. Y la peor de ellas, luego de la física, fue la que le provocó su propia madre. La que ocultó y minimizó que una chica instruída, sana y despierta como era ella, debiera tener que entregar su cuerpo a cualquier borracho a cambio de esos pesitos que le permitieran alimentar a su bebé.Perdió su oportunidad de denunciar el mundo de mierda en el que vivía su hija, un mundo de desocupación, miseria, desesperanza y abuso. En una provincia que es una vergüenza y una ofensa al sentido común.Todos menos la pobre Marita Verón.

"I'm here because I have a vote and, basically, I've been told what to do with it," one Irishman told a London reporter. "Thank God they will all shut up now," a Dublin pensioner told a German newspaper. Both had just voted yes in this past weekend's Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, whose passage removes one of the last remaining obstacles to ratification of a document that will, among other things, create a president and a foreign minister of Europe. Both had voted no during the first referendum last year, when the treaty failed to pass. Both had changed their minds because they were tired of hearing politicians endlessly urging them to do so. Some also felt that, during the worst recession in recent memory, they might need Europe's help. Not many Irish seem to have been inspired by the high ideals and lofty aspirations of what is sometimes called "the European project": Although a whopping two-thirds of Irish voters said yes to the treaty, there wasn't much audible or visible enthusiasm. A few politicians in Ireland and across the continent hailed the referendum as a "great victory for Europe," but no one believed them. And thus did Europe take another, limping step toward the creation of a unified foreign policy apparatus, complaining bitterly all the way. Which is not a bad thing: If Europe is to have a single apparatus to make its foreign policy, it is important that nobody has too many illusions about it. When the referendum failed last year, I wrote that it was for the best, since "European" foreign policy has always been most successful when it represents the wishes of the national governments of at least two or three large countries plus several small ones, and has always been most disastrous when carried out by bureaucrats in Brussels who don't represent anyone in particular. I hesitate to use the tainted expression "coalitions of the willing," but actually they work very well, in diplomacy as well as in military conflicts. Still, since I don't feel like railing against the inevitable this week, and since I suspect that there really will be a European president and a European foreign minister in the near future, it's worth contemplating what that might mean. Clearly, the real test of whether Europe's most powerful countries are taking this new treaty seriously wasn't the Irish referendum. The question of whether the recalcitrant Czech president will finally be browbeaten into signing the thing is irrelevant, too (and if he does, it will certainly not represent a "triumph of the European ideal," whatever they say in Brussels). But do watch closely, over the coming months, to see who is selected to fill these jobs, and, more important, how they are chosen. Traditionally, leaders of multilateral institutions are selected through a process of elimination: The person who is the least interesting, least opinionated and least influential gets the job, precisely because nobody else objects. Yet this is not how the president or prime minister of a country is selected: He gets the job because he has convinced the electorate that he is better than somebody else. I'm not saying that democracy always produces the most gifted leaders, but it does frequently produce politicians who are willing to argue loudly in favor of some things and against others. By contrast, people often wind up running multilateral institutions -- and not just European ones -- because they are not willing to argue about anything at all. Here, then, is how to evaluate the Lisbon Treaty: If there really is a coalition of the willing in favor of a common European policy, then it will support the selection of forceful and opinionated leaders. Europe will then have, in Henry Kissinger's immortal phrasing, a phone number to call when America (or Russia, or China) wants to talk. And if there is no such coalition? Then you won't hear much about the president or the foreign minister of Europe again, so it doesn't really matter. [email protected]

Live coverage following Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti, in which tens of thousands are feared to have died and three million displaced. Bodies are piled up on the rubble-strewn streets of the capital. Rescue workers are in a race against time to find survivors. 0000 The BBC is discontinuing this live update page for the night. For the latest developments, please go to our main news page. The BBC is discontinuing this live update page for the night. For the latest developments, please go to our main news page. 2346 Survivor Jackson tells the BBC he has just found his wife under the rubble: "We just got married. I just married my wife, and now I don't know what to do. She spent three days under the rubble of the building, and today I found her." "We just got married. I just married my wife, and now I don't know what to do. She spent three days under the rubble of the building, and today I found her." 2342 Time magazine reporter Saul Schwarz says he has seen at least two downtown roadblocks made out of bodies of earthquake victims and rocks - Reuters. "It's getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help," he tells the news agency. Time magazine reporter Saul Schwarz says he has seen at least two downtown roadblocks made out of bodies of earthquake victims and rocks - Reuters. "It's getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help," he tells the news agency. 2325 Louis Ballinger of Oxfam tells the BBC: "People are pretty calm, I have to say. There were no scenes of chaos or aggressivity or anything else. People are pretty shocked still. A lot of families and friends and neighbours have gathered together in parks in Port-au-Prince, so you can see the ones that are homeless now are sticking together and trying to help each other out, waiting for aid to come along." "People are pretty calm, I have to say. There were no scenes of chaos or aggressivity or anything else. People are pretty shocked still. A lot of families and friends and neighbours have gathered together in parks in Port-au-Prince, so you can see the ones that are homeless now are sticking together and trying to help each other out, waiting for aid to come along." 2319 US mobile phone users send more than $5m to the Red Cross for disaster relief, by texting "Haiti" to the number 90999. US mobile phone users send more than $5m to the Red Cross for disaster relief, by texting "Haiti" to the number 90999. 2308 The BBC's Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince says: "There are more aid flights getting in, large numbers of international personnel are here - they are getting ready before setting out... But it feels as if it could take a very long time for anything to happen." "There are more aid flights getting in, large numbers of international personnel are here - they are getting ready before setting out... But it feels as if it could take a very long time for anything to happen." 2246 Presidents Obama and Sarkozy agree to work together to prepare a conference on reconstruction and development in Haiti, "with Brazil, Canada and other countries directly concerned" - AFP. Presidents Obama and Sarkozy agree to work together to prepare a conference on reconstruction and development in Haiti, "with Brazil, Canada and other countries directly concerned" - AFP. 2240 Bhatiap tweets: "From walking around most of the day I estimate that one-third to half of the houses are or will be demolished." 2235 US National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer tells the BBC: "It's all hands on deck here on this effort to try to make sure not only that the United States is doing all it can but the president himself is working the phones, talking to world leaders, trying to again coordinate international assistance. This is not only a US effort - we have to work with the United Nations, NGOs and the world community to help Haiti in this desperate time of need." "It's all hands on deck here on this effort to try to make sure not only that the United States is doing all it can but the president himself is working the phones, talking to world leaders, trying to again coordinate international assistance. This is not only a US effort - we have to work with the United Nations, NGOs and the world community to help Haiti in this desperate time of need." 2211 The BBC's Barbara Plett at the United Nations says: "The UN says 36 of its personnel were killed in the Haiti earthquake, and 188 staff members are still unaccounted for. UN officials acknowledged that in coming days careful rescue efforts will switch to recovering bodies, and dozens more UN staff could be confirmed dead. It's a huge blow for the organisation, which is scrambling to coordinate a massive relief effort for Haiti." "The UN says 36 of its personnel were killed in the Haiti earthquake, and 188 staff members are still unaccounted for. UN officials acknowledged that in coming days careful rescue efforts will switch to recovering bodies, and dozens more UN staff could be confirmed dead. It's a huge blow for the organisation, which is scrambling to coordinate a massive relief effort for Haiti." 2205 Aid organisation CARE tweets: "The Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic] airport is full of aid workers, rescue teams. It is turning into the humanitarian hub." 2144 Veteran NBC news anchor Brian Williams tells Veteran NBC news anchor Brian Williams tells the Huffington Post the situation is comparable to the 2004 Asian tsunami: "It's very reminiscent of what we saw in Banda Aceh. There were 35,000 dead in our time there. There's no way to express it, no way to explain it, it just becomes other-worldly." 2125 Haitian President Rene Preval says 7,000 victims have already been buried in a common grave - Reuters. Haitian President Rene Preval says 7,000 victims have already been buried in a common grave - Reuters. 2055 Harry Brown in Macau e-mails: "Just getting word - via my sister in Montreal - that 11 family members in Carrefour aged between 18 months and 60 years have survived. To what extent, we don't know yet. The relief is mixed with guilt. I am relieved to have received positive news yet there are thousands upon thousands of families hit by this tragedy." "Just getting word - via my sister in Montreal - that 11 family members in Carrefour aged between 18 months and 60 years have survived. To what extent, we don't know yet. The relief is mixed with guilt. I am relieved to have received positive news yet there are thousands upon thousands of families hit by this tragedy." 2033 The BBC's Laura Trevelyan in New York says: "So many tears are being shed in Brooklyn's Haitian community - information is scarce, communications with Haiti are virtually non existent, and the longer that goes by without contact from loved ones, the harder it is. At the Savoir Faire music shop, a focal point for Haitians in Brooklyn, people are gathering, donating money and supplies for Haiti." "So many tears are being shed in Brooklyn's Haitian community - information is scarce, communications with Haiti are virtually non existent, and the longer that goes by without contact from loved ones, the harder it is. At the Savoir Faire music shop, a focal point for Haitians in Brooklyn, people are gathering, donating money and supplies for Haiti." 2024 The BBC's Andy Gallacher in Port-au-Prince says: "People are starting to get frustrated, and there is a sense that the mood could change. Bodies are starting to pile up ... and there is a stench filling the air... The help really isn't here yet." Andy Gallacher describes his first daylight view of the damage in Port-au-Prince. "People are starting to get frustrated, and there is a sense that the mood could change. Bodies are starting to pile up ... and there is a stench filling the air... The help really isn't here yet." 2001 Fredodupoux, in Port-au-Prince, tweets: "HELP IS NEEDED! People still alive under College Canapé Vert are screaming for help to get them out of the rubble." 1943 US military officials say aid flights to Haiti have resumed after being suspended because of overcrowding at Port-au-Prince airport - Associated Press. US military officials say aid flights to Haiti have resumed after being suspended because of overcrowding at Port-au-Prince airport - Associated Press. 1927 The BBC's Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince says: "The injured lie among those who have already died, in the ditches running along the roadside you may pass a body or indeed several bodies. In the heat, the smell in places is becoming too strong to stomach. Haiti's needs are massive, as ever in an earthquake - food, water and medicine. It also needs bulldozers and heavy lifting equipment, but perhaps more than anything it needs someone to take charge here." "The injured lie among those who have already died, in the ditches running along the roadside you may pass a body or indeed several bodies. In the heat, the smell in places is becoming too strong to stomach. Haiti's needs are massive, as ever in an earthquake - food, water and medicine. It also needs bulldozers and heavy lifting equipment, but perhaps more than anything it needs someone to take charge here." 1859 A spokesman for the A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office says: "We are beginning to repatriate the first British Nationals. They have also located and checked on over 30 other Brits, who have confirmed they are safe and well, and are coordinating with US, Canadian and EU partners to facilitate the evacuation of any British Nationals who wish to leave Haiti. We have no reports at present of British casualties." 1850 The The Red Cross says it believes 45-50,000 people died in the earthquake and another three million have been injured or left homeless. 1826 UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband writes UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband writes in his blog : "We have all seen the horrific pictures from Haiti. I will speak to Ban Ki-Moon later about the terrible loss for the UN... The whole international community wants to do everything it can. The situation is just awful." 1800 "Sometimes, though, you have to wonder if the planet itself is not conspiring against this humble little nation," writes Leonard Pitts Jr "Sometimes, though, you have to wonder if the planet itself is not conspiring against this humble little nation," writes Leonard Pitts Jr in the Miami Herald. 1751 Medecins Sans Frontieres says it has not been able to get in touch with all its Haitian staff or with patients who were in MSF buildings when the quake hit. 1745 Kathy Johnson in the UK, who has relatives in Haiti, told the BBC: "We are desperately worried because my uncle and six of his children are missing in Port-au-Prince. The area is devastated, the church and graveyard near his house destroyed. And I am stuck here thousands of miles away. I feel so frustrated, all I want to do is to jump on a plane and go and help." "We are desperately worried because my uncle and six of his children are missing in Port-au-Prince. The area is devastated, the church and graveyard near his house destroyed. And I am stuck here thousands of miles away. I feel so frustrated, all I want to do is to jump on a plane and go and help." 1721 The BBC's Andy Gallacher at a cemetery in Port-au-Prince says: "It's a mass grave, there are maybe ... 20-30 or more bodies which are just lying there, I'm not sure exactly how these bodies are going to be disposed of but at the moment they are just in a pile, at the edge of this cemetery." "It's a mass grave, there are maybe ... 20-30 or more bodies which are just lying there, I'm not sure exactly how these bodies are going to be disposed of but at the moment they are just in a pile, at the edge of this cemetery." 1710 Joel Achenbach in Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post says rebuilding with reinforced concrete would literally create a more stable country. "Obviously the US will send aid and relief workers, but we should do more than that: for a small fraction of what the United States is spending to bail out banks and auto firms we could help Haiti rebuild with reinforced concrete.... This is the 21st century - and yet people around the world are living and working in buildings that are certain to crumble when the earth moves." 1704 A US rescue team spent five hours freeing one man from rubble in Port-au-Prince. One of the rescuers, Sam Gray said there was "an incredible amount of devastation and an incredible amount of people who will probably lose their lives" in the country. "Honestly the hardest part is knowing how many people aren't going to be saved," he said. A US rescue team spent five hours freeing one man from rubble in Port-au-Prince. One of the rescuers, Sam Gray said there was "an incredible amount of devastation and an incredible amount of people who will probably lose their lives" in the country. "Honestly the hardest part is knowing how many people aren't going to be saved," he said. 1658 Firesideint, in Port-au-Prince, tweets: "Things are usually not as bad as the news says. Sincerely, this is worse Dead bodies everywhere. City starting to smell like rotting flesh. Men are starting to collect bodies off of the streets. Saw a truck piled high. Recovery efforts are underway but SMALL. A person here or there. No heroics. Just desperation. Many people praying as they walk." RAMhaiti in Port-au-Prince tweets: "I'm hearing planes and/or helicopters. Yesterday there were none to speak of. It changes the atmosphere. I hope there is help on the ground." 1654 Cameron Sinclair of Architecture of Humanity, writing Cameron Sinclair of Architecture of Humanity, writing in a blog on the Huffington Post, urged those involved in the relief effort to plan very carefully. "In a developing country like Haiti the biggest danger is the effects of bad post-disaster planning and construction. Waterborne diseases spread like wildfire in temporary camps and dumping sub-standard materials not only is dangerous but undermines an existing yet fragile construction industry." 1651 The BBC's Paul Adams in Washington says: "For the second time in two days, President Obama went before the cameras to outline what his administration is doing. He was flanked by half a dozen senior members of his administration and it's been reported that former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush have agreed to lend their support - a clear sign the president wants this to be a national effort which transcends all partisan politics." "For the second time in two days, President Obama went before the cameras to outline what his administration is doing. He was flanked by half a dozen senior members of his administration and it's been reported that former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush have agreed to lend their support - a clear sign the president wants this to be a national effort which transcends all partisan politics." Obama: "Nothing less than devastating" 1640 Jean Claude Fignole of Action Aid in Haiti tells the BBC: "Conditions are catastrophic - absolutely catastrophic. I have seen some of the most horrible things I have seen in my life. I am putting out a plea to the government, to any of the authorities co-operating with Haiti, to help clean up the bodies on the streets because the health and the sanitation of this situation for the city are potentially of epic proportions." "Conditions are catastrophic - absolutely catastrophic. I have seen some of the most horrible things I have seen in my life. I am putting out a plea to the government, to any of the authorities co-operating with Haiti, to help clean up the bodies on the streets because the health and the sanitation of this situation for the city are potentially of epic proportions." 1633 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says "overall security and public order is being maintained" in Haiti. The 3,000 UN peacekeepers in the country are assisting with aid distribution. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says "overall security and public order is being maintained" in Haiti. The 3,000 UN peacekeepers in the country are assisting with aid distribution. Ban Ki-moon: "Dozens of UN staff still missing" 1625 US broadcaster CBS News has US broadcaster CBS News has footage of the second the quake struck, showing buildings collapsing as people run for cover. 1625 Barbara Jones, a Haitian living in the UK, e-mails: "I have not heard from my mother or my cousins. My aunt is also missing. She gave me my education and I owe her so much, she was a huge part of my childhood. My family live in Port-au-Prince. I haven't heard from any of them." "I have not heard from my mother or my cousins. My aunt is also missing. She gave me my education and I owe her so much, she was a huge part of my childhood. My family live in Port-au-Prince. I haven't heard from any of them." Haiti earthquake: your stories 1614 A-cui from Beijing e-mails: "Sichuan people suffered the pain of earthquake on 12 May 2008, when some hundreds of thousands of lives were taken away. Now people in Haiti suffer the same, I wish them go strongly, and also we others around the world should support them as soon as possible. Pray for people dead in earthquake, wish live people safe, and hope the Haitians overcome this quickly." "Sichuan people suffered the pain of earthquake on 12 May 2008, when some hundreds of thousands of lives were taken away. Now people in Haiti suffer the same, I wish them go strongly, and also we others around the world should support them as soon as possible. Pray for people dead in earthquake, wish live people safe, and hope the Haitians overcome this quickly." 1610 United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says one UN staff member was rescued from under 4m of rubble and sent to Argentina for medical treatment. "It was a small, small miracle during the night which brought few other miracles," he said. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says one UN staff member was rescued from under 4m of rubble and sent to Argentina for medical treatment. "It was a small, small miracle during the night which brought few other miracles," he said. 1608 Jesse Hagopian, a US doctor, was on holiday in Port-au-Prince when the quake hit and is now helping with the aid effort. He told Jesse Hagopian, a US doctor, was on holiday in Port-au-Prince when the quake hit and is now helping with the aid effort. He told Democracy Now: "The injuries just kept coming all day long - head injuries, people with multiple broken legs, people catatonic who couldn't speak. Everybody is asking for medicine. You know, we don't have [the] basics." 1600 United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon confirms that 150 UN personnel are missing - about 100 were inside the UN headquarters, based in a hotel, when it collapsed. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon confirms that 150 UN personnel are missing - about 100 were inside the UN headquarters, based in a hotel, when it collapsed. 1555 Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), says $100m (£61m) will be made available to Haiti "very quickly", in the form of extended loans. 1546 Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero calls on the world to react with "strength and energy" to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. He says Spain, which holds the EU presidency, has mobilised "all the resources and all the capabilities" of the union. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero calls on the world to react with "strength and energy" to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. He says Spain, which holds the EU presidency, has mobilised "all the resources and all the capabilities" of the union. 1540 Volunteer Emerson Tan, heading from the UK with non-governmental organisation Mapaction to provide emergency mapping for aid agencies, e-mails: "Had to unload and check all the kit, then a long sleepless wait for the aircraft to show up. Now it's all go. Dog teams and lightsearch first with heavy rescue to follow this afternoon. Reports from the ground sound bad. Think it will be a long day." "Had to unload and check all the kit, then a long sleepless wait for the aircraft to show up. Now it's all go. Dog teams and lightsearch first with heavy rescue to follow this afternoon. Reports from the ground sound bad. Think it will be a long day." 1540 The BBC's David Loyn in Dominican Republic says: "The UK is one of the few countries whose search teams are classified at the highest level by the UN to do so called heavy rescues - the ability to burrow deep into collapsed buildings and bring out survivors. The most valued members of the party are two Labradors who will go in first. Holly and Echo are trained to sniff out the faintest traces of life amid the chaos and smell of death which will confront them in the devastation of Haiti." "The UK is one of the few countries whose search teams are classified at the highest level by the UN to do so called heavy rescues - the ability to burrow deep into collapsed buildings and bring out survivors. The most valued members of the party are two Labradors who will go in first. Holly and Echo are trained to sniff out the faintest traces of life amid the chaos and smell of death which will confront them in the devastation of Haiti." 1535 UK-based aid agency UK-based aid agency Save the Children says many children in Haiti will be "petrified and in danger". Spokesman Gareth Owen tells Reuters: "Many will have been orphaned or be badly injured themselves and in urgent need of medical help. Thousands more will have lost all contact with their families and friends and are now struggling to survive alone in the rubble." 1525 Landon Yarrington email from Port-au-Prince:Our passports, computers, clothes, and medicine are all buried in the house we were staying. All that we have with us now are the clothes on our backs. Our passports, computers, clothes, and medicine are all buried in the house we were staying. All that we have with us now are the clothes on our backs. 1515 US President Barack Obama outlines a massive aid effort from the US and announces $100m (£61m) in relief funds. He says it will take time for everything to arrive in the quake zone, but emphasises that "help is on the way". US President Barack Obama outlines a massive aid effort from the US and announces $100m (£61m) in relief funds. He says it will take time for everything to arrive in the quake zone, but emphasises that "help is on the way". 1510 Bill Clinton, UN special envoy to Haiti, has Bill Clinton, UN special envoy to Haiti, has written optimistically in Time magazine about Haiti's future: "Before this disaster, Haiti had the best chance in my lifetime to fulfil its potential as a country, to basically escape the chains of the past 200 years. I still believe that if we rally around them now and support them in the right way, the Haitian people can reclaim their destiny." 1455 Former US presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush will help with the disaster relief effort, White House officials tell news agencies. President Barack Obama is expected to make a statement shortly. Former US presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush will help with the disaster relief effort, White House officials tell news agencies. President Barack Obama is expected to make a statement shortly. 1440 Ruth Norbury, in Bristol, UK, writes in an email: "My husband is from Haiti and has a large family that live in Carrefour, which is on the edge of the city. It must be a miracle because although the houses around them are broken, all 11 members of the family are still alive and uninjured and the house is ok too. All I can say to people is don't give up hope just yet because among the darkness sometimes there is a small glimmer of light." "My husband is from Haiti and has a large family that live in Carrefour, which is on the edge of the city. It must be a miracle because although the houses around them are broken, all 11 members of the family are still alive and uninjured and the house is ok too. All I can say to people is don't give up hope just yet because among the darkness sometimes there is a small glimmer of light." 1438 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and European Commission Humanitarian Aid (Echo) have taken Survivors plead for aid International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and European Commission Humanitarian Aid (Echo) have taken photos during an aerial assessment of the capital, Port-au-Prince. 1420 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown describes the earthquake as a "tragedy beyond imagination". British Prime Minister Gordon Brown describes the earthquake as a "tragedy beyond imagination". 1413 The US 82nd Airborne Division will have 100 members in Haiti on Thursday, a spokesman tells the BBC. Another 800 will be there by Friday and the rest of the 3,500-member division is on standby in case they are needed. The US 82nd Airborne Division will have 100 members in Haiti on Thursday, a spokesman tells the BBC. Another 800 will be there by Friday and the rest of the 3,500-member division is on standby in case they are needed. 1411 Elizabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN, tells the BBC World Service: "Firemen have also been trapped in the earthquake so their logistical means are very poor and they cannot cope with the situation. That's why it's very urgent to bring heavy machinery to remove the debris, also civil and military assets like helicopters are needed, given the bad conditions of the roads." "Firemen have also been trapped in the earthquake so their logistical means are very poor and they cannot cope with the situation. That's why it's very urgent to bring heavy machinery to remove the debris, also civil and military assets like helicopters are needed, given the bad conditions of the roads." 1400 Brooke Durbin, a teacher in Port-de-Paix in northern Haiti, e-mails: "The worst part about the whole thing is not being able to know what is happening just 200 miles away. What we hear is all "hear-say." We have limited internet, so we can't even check many news sites. I teach 4th grade, and many (if not most) of my students have some family that they can't get hold of." Brooke Durbin, a teacher in Port-de-Paix in northern Haiti, e-mails: "The worst part about the whole thing is not being able to know what is happening just 200 miles away. What we hear is all "hear-say." We have limited internet, so we can't even check many news sites. I teach 4th grade, and many (if not most) of my students have some family that they can't get hold of." 1353 A senior White House advisor said she was left "speechless" by comments from US TV evangelist Pat Robertson that Haitians had made "a pact to the Devil". Valerie Jarrett told ABC's A senior White House advisor said she was left "speechless" by comments from US TV evangelist Pat Robertson that Haitians had made "a pact to the Devil". Valerie Jarrett told ABC's Good Morning America: "That's not the attitude that expresses the spirit of the president or the American people, so I thought it was a pretty stunning comment to make." 1346 The American Red Cross tweets: "You have donated nearly $3million to Red Cross earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. Thank you. Keep it up." "You have donated nearly $3million to Red Cross earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. Thank you. Keep it up." Haiti: How to help 1338 Yael Talleyrand, in Jacmel, Haiti, has sent this picture to the BBC, showing people gathered at a temporary camp at an airport in Haiti. "There are thousands of people there that need more tents, sheets, and so on, because they have only 3 tents that can only protect 50 people each," she said. 1334 The US army is sending up to 3,500 soldiers to Haiti, officials quoted by Reuters say. The first 100 are scheduled to arrive soon. The US army is sending up to 3,500 soldiers to Haiti, officials quoted by Reuters say. The first 100 are scheduled to arrive soon. 1325 Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, who starred in the Heroes TV series, tells Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, who starred in the Heroes TV series, tells CNN he has not been able to contact his parents in Petionville since the quake. "I don't think people have any idea how terrible this is," he says. 1321 Sebastien Barrau, a Haitian living in Miami, has started up a website for missing persons. He says: "I'm really disappointed - there are so few survivors. I spoke to a friend who helped get five people out of a collapsed supermarket, just five people. I've heard about people being alive one day and stuck under the rubble, but who don't make it." 1319 Troylivesay tweets: "Yesterday there was only one gas station operating in town that I saw and it was a mob scene. No violence but it was very intense." 1315 Churches, barber shops and small shops in Haitian areas of Miami have been collecting donations to send to friends and relatives. "My body is in Miami but my mind is in Haiti," Fletcher Toussaint, a young immigrant, tells the BBC. Awaiting news from home Churches, barber shops and small shops in Haitian areas of Miami have been collecting donations to send to friends and relatives. "My body is in Miami but my mind is in Haiti," Fletcher Toussaint, a young immigrant, tells the BBC. 1310 Two days after the disaster struck, people speak of still hearing voices crying from the rubble. Two days after the disaster struck, people speak of still hearing voices crying from the rubble. 1309 Google and Geoeye have put together some Google and Geoeye have put together some new satellite images of Haiti, taken after the quake and showing the extent of the destruction. 1303 The foreign minister of Indonesia - a country which has suffered natural disasters in the past - expressed condolences to Haiti. "As a country that has been itself devastated by a similar situation, we are absolutely saddened by what's happening in Haiti," said Marty Natalegawa. The foreign minister of Indonesia - a country which has suffered natural disasters in the past - expressed condolences to Haiti. "As a country that has been itself devastated by a similar situation, we are absolutely saddened by what's happening in Haiti," said Marty Natalegawa. 1257 Haitian DJ Carel Pedre tells BBC's Haitian DJ Carel Pedre tells BBC's Newshour he has seen a lot of dead bodies and collapsed buildings. "I've seen thousands of people crying for help, I've seen thousands of people homeless, helpless. I see a country devastated, I see - wow - I have witnessed a disaster and I think that's the biggest disaster I've ever seen in my life." 1254 The UN says up to 200 of its staff, including peacekeepers, are unaccounted for. Between 50 and 100 could be trapped in the UN building in Port-au-Prince. The UN says up to 200 of its staff, including peacekeepers, are unaccounted for. Between 50 and 100 could be trapped in the UN building in Port-au-Prince. 1253 Troylivesay tweets: "Currently experiencing another aftershock - they are still coming - had a couple strong ones yesterday and last night." 1250 Paul Conneally, a spokesman for the BBC World Service that conditions have been appalling. "The devastation is just as impressive from the air as it is from the ground. You mix this with factors such as the already impoverished and under-developed nature of the country, the fact that it was still just recovering from very, very serious weather-related natural disasters in the recent past - this is not a scenario that leads to a very positive prognosis." Paul Conneally, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Haiti, tells theBBC World Service that conditions have been appalling. "The devastation is just as impressive from the air as it is from the ground. You mix this with factors such as the already impoverished and under-developed nature of the country, the fact that it was still just recovering from very, very serious weather-related natural disasters in the recent past - this is not a scenario that leads to a very positive prognosis." 1245: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the death toll will reach "tens of thousands" and the aid will require a "long-term effort". US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the death toll will reach "tens of thousands" and the aid will require a "long-term effort". 1243 RAMhaiti tweets: "The streets are now Haiti's living room and bedroom with everything closed. Money, food, drinks, supplies, rotting bodies, frustration, impatience, despair will all become a problem...Jacmel has had much destruction, school kids caught in collapsing buildings...the devastation is so widespread that the folks who should be helping, are probably taking care of their own issues." 1235 The BBC's Matthew Price at a hospital in Port-au-Prince says: "The smell is nauseating. Bodies lie outside on the lawn, among them lie the injured and inside the screams and whimpers of those in pain echo down the corridors." Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "The smell is nauseating. Bodies lie outside on the lawn, among them lie the injured and inside the screams and whimpers of those in pain echo down the corridors." 1210 David Darg, an aid worker with David Darg, an aid worker with Operation Blessing International on his way to Haiti from Miami, tells the BBC the situation is nightmarish: "I sifted through the internet for reports of damage and couldn't believe the horror unfolding in a nation that has already endured so much. A day that started with us fixing a broken sewer turned into a day of a broken city." Haiti aid worker diary 1202 Steven Watson, in Kingston, Jamaica, emails:"I was sitting in a pick-up truck in Kingston, Jamaica and it shook for about 30 seconds. It felt like a freight train was passing close by. My thoughts and prayers are with the Haitian people at this time." "I was sitting in a pick-up truck in Kingston, Jamaica and it shook for about 30 seconds. It felt like a freight train was passing close by. My thoughts and prayers are with the Haitian people at this time." 1150 Yael Talleyrand, in Jacmel, Haiti, has sent photos of her home town to the BBC, including this one of a newly built hotel now in ruins. 1142 The BBC's David Loyn in the Dominican Republic says: "A team of British fire officers from seven regions have arrived and are now making their way in a light plane to neighbouring Haiti to help in the earthquake rescue. They are carrying sophisticated listening equipment to detect life." "A team of British fire officers from seven regions have arrived and are now making their way in a light plane to neighbouring Haiti to help in the earthquake rescue. They are carrying sophisticated listening equipment to detect life." 1135 Immanuel Kenneth, India, e-mails: "My American friend was in Haiti to see her brother who is a doctor in Haiti. I last spoke to her on Skype on January 12. I have had no contact since then. I pray that she is safe." "My American friend was in Haiti to see her brother who is a doctor in Haiti. I last spoke to her on Skype on January 12. I have had no contact since then. I pray that she is safe." 1126 Haiti's ambassador to the UN, Leo Merores, tells the BBC World Service the government is still functioning - President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are assessing the situation in Port-au-Prince. "The process of finding the survivors and pulling out the dead has begun. But it's an extremely slow process because so many buildings have been completely destroyed," he says. Haiti's ambassador to the UN, Leo Merores, tells the BBC World Service the government is still functioning - President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are assessing the situation in Port-au-Prince. "The process of finding the survivors and pulling out the dead has begun. But it's an extremely slow process because so many buildings have been completely destroyed," he says. 1124 The UN says 100 of its staff are still unaccounted for after the quake, the AFP news agency reports. The UN says 100 of its staff are still unaccounted for after the quake, the AFP news agency reports. 1121 Subash Neupane, Kathmandu, Nepal, e-mails: "I was shocked to learn the news about the devastating earthquake and broken communication channels. Thanks to the internet my uncle, who is working under UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, was able to send me the message that he is safe. May the relief reach the people soon." "I was shocked to learn the news about the devastating earthquake and broken communication channels. Thanks to the internet my uncle, who is working under UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, was able to send me the message that he is safe. May the relief reach the people soon." 1110 The BBC's Jack Izzard says only a trickle of aid flights have arrived in Haiti so far but that will increase as the operation picks up speed. The first flights will be carrying emergency food and medical supplies, then heavy lifting equipment will arrive to move the rubble. The BBC's Jack Izzard says only a trickle of aid flights have arrived in Haiti so far but that will increase as the operation picks up speed. The first flights will be carrying emergency food and medical supplies, then heavy lifting equipment will arrive to move the rubble. Aid flights arrive in Haiti 1052 The Red Cross says that since the quake, 1,360 Haitians - including 148 people in Haiti "saying they were alive" - have registered on its The Red Cross says that since the quake, 1,360 Haitians - including 148 people in Haiti "saying they were alive" - have registered on its website which helps track down missing family members 1047 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived back in the US to deal with the country's response to the quake, after cutting short a tour of the Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived back in the US to deal with the country's response to the quake, after cutting short a tour of the Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. 1028 Countries around the world are scrambling to send assistance to Haiti. Among others, China has sent 10 tonnes of tents and medical equipment, the European Commission has pledged $4.37m (£2.7m: 3m euro), Israel is sending an elite army rescue unit of engineers and doctors and US Navy vessels are making their way there - AP reports. Countries around the world are scrambling to send assistance to Haiti. Among others, China has sent 10 tonnes of tents and medical equipment, the European Commission has pledged $4.37m (£2.7m: 3m euro), Israel is sending an elite army rescue unit of engineers and doctors and US Navy vessels are making their way there - AP reports. 1024 The The Miami Herald has pictures of aid leaving Florida for Haiti and of the local Haitian community holding prayer vigils for the country. 1013 The BBC's Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince says: "It is the sight that awaits you inside the hospital grounds that is most alarming. It is as if a massacre has been perpetrated here." "It is the sight that awaits you inside the hospital grounds that is most alarming. It is as if a massacre has been perpetrated here." Sleeping among the dead 1010 Laura Bickle, an American working in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, tells the BBC World Service the enormity of the disaster is hard to comprehend. "All the parks are filled with people - they either have no home to go to or they are too scared to go home. They are pulling people out of the rubble, literally, blood running in the gutter like water." Laura Bickle, an American working in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, tells the BBC World Service the enormity of the disaster is hard to comprehend. "All the parks are filled with people - they either have no home to go to or they are too scared to go home. They are pulling people out of the rubble, literally, blood running in the gutter like water." 1005 The The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) in the UK has launched an appeal for donations. 0948 Belinda Luescher, a spokeswoman for the Belinda Luescher, a spokeswoman for the World Food Programme (WFP), tells the BBC aid agencies have a "huge task" ahead of them in Haiti. "The people of Haiti need everything, and they need it now. Just in a normal day the World Food Programme will be feeding one or two million people in Haiti and now we need to do even more, because the people have lost everything." 0942 The BBC's Nick Davis in Port-au-Prince says: "There is no mortuary big enough for the numbers who have died. The only sign of anything being done is a commercial flat-bed van onto which police officers are stacking bodies." "There is no mortuary big enough for the numbers who have died. The only sign of anything being done is a commercial flat-bed van onto which police officers are stacking bodies." A devastated city 0933 Carel Pedre tweets: "The last aftershock was short but there are thousands of people homeless and helpless on the streets 70 minutes of sleep since Monday morning!...First aftershock of the day. Haiti is sill shaking!! HELP!!... Now we need to be organised. Let's make it happen, people. Haiti needs you." In the UK: British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Tearfund In the US: Mercy Corps, American Red Cross, Unicef USA, The Global Orphan Project, International Rescue Committee These organisations also have ways to donate: International Red Cross, International Medical Corps, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Save The Children, ActionAid, International Relief and Development We will keep you updated with relief efforts as the information comes in. 0912 Mike Thomas, co-ordinating the UK's rescue response in Haiti, tells the BBC his team's priority will be to identify areas where people are trapped alive in rubble. "We're hoping we can get our dogs there quickly, they'll be invaluable in helping target those areas," he says. Mike Thomas, co-ordinating the UK's rescue response in Haiti, tells the BBC his team's priority will be to identify areas where people are trapped alive in rubble. "We're hoping we can get our dogs there quickly, they'll be invaluable in helping target those areas," he says. 0907 fredodupoux tweets: "People in the streets are chanting as the night settles. People lost their houses and are sleeping on newspapers in the streets." 0850 Tamar Hahn of Tamar Hahn of Unicef tells the BBC that although the media focus has been on Port-au-Prince, other towns in Haiti have been "very, very severely affected". 0832 The The UN says damage to the capital, Port-au-Prince, is "massive and broad," with perhaps hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed - Reuters report. 0830 RAMhaiti tweets: "St Gerard Church and the school behind it are destroyed. People are alive in the rubble. I look at the sky, see the stars, and it's as if nothing was wrong. The singing, the praying and the sirens bring me back to reality." "St Gerard Church and the school behind it are destroyed. People are alive in the rubble. I look at the sky, see the stars, and it's as if nothing was wrong. The singing, the praying and the sirens bring me back to reality." 0816 The BBC's Matthew Price in Haiti says: In places there is barely anything left of this city. And so far the people are largely having to cope on their own. For some, the only hope is to dig with their bare hands. This is a race against time. This country - so often forgotten by the world - now needs its help more than ever. In places there is barely anything left of this city. And so far the people are largely having to cope on their own. For some, the only hope is to dig with their bare hands. This is a race against time. This country - so often forgotten by the world - now needs its help more than ever.

Please note that this page has not been updated since early 2015. I now recommend stack Rationale I’m trying to learn the Haskell programming language, and I’m tripping over the cabal-install package management system sufficiently often that it’s putting me off putting time into learning the language. Here are my requirements for a development environment I’m willing to learn in: don’t leave Debian Wheezy 32-bit; Debian Jessie will be out soon, but its versions of GHC and the Haskell platform are still very old so upgrading early is not a way out. minimise how often I have to delete all of ~/.cabal and ~/.ghc ; when using cabal sandboxes, again, minimise the number of core libraries that need to get rebuilt in every sandbox; be simple enough to integrate cleanly with the existing ways I manage my OS installation and the contents of my home directory; be simple enough that I can understand everything as a Haskell beginner and can get things working (again) quickly and get back to trying to write Haskell. In this document I will describe the combination of home directory and system-wide installations that fit these requirements, and the workflow for sorting out packages so that I can get on with trying to make my programs do input and output, and other fun Haskell beginner stuff. Alternative approaches The following two approaches don’t satisfy the requirements given above. Do everything manually This involves having nothing installed system-wide, including the Haskell Platform. Install GHC and Cabal in ~/local/src and then install things into their own sandboxes and add the .cabal-sandbox/bin directories to your $PATH . Someone on reddit describes a balance between installing stuff into .cabal/bin and having sandboxes in which related packages are built and then symlinking those directories. But this requires lots and lots of rebuilding over and over and lots of manual $PATH additions. System-wide Debian packages mitigate this. This might facilitate such an approach. Fails (2), (3) and (4). Use a clever automatic sandboxing solution Halcyon and the Nix package manager (which doesn’t require the full NixOS) are the projects I’ve come across that try to do this. They aim to avoid even more rebuilding than my approach avoids. The Halcyon author doesn’t want to support 32-bit Debian, and I don’t want to be a Nix early adoptor at the same time as trying to learn how to get my programs to take input and produce output. Fails (1) and (5). Drawbacks of my approach We’re living very far away from the edge: we’re using GHC 7.4 and a version of the Haskell Platform from 2012. Someone on reddit expresses the view that since Haskell moves so fast, you’ll end up rebuilding everything all the time anyway so you can use your favourite packages from Hackage. The only thing we’re not getting from the Debian apt repositories that we might is haskell-mode and ghc-mod for Emacs, since we can have newer versions of those without repeated building. We’re doing a lot of rebuilding of libraries, and we’re only avoiding rebuilding those that come with Debian, which will become less and less useful as time goes by and Hackage packages depend on newer versions. This is okay because I’m a Haskell beginner, and I’m not a professional software engineer, so even if I stick with learning Haskell it’s going to take me years before I’m writing anything that needs fancy contemporary libraries. And maybe by then the cabal-install ecosystem will have improved. I basically need Hackage only for building fancy things like Propellor and Structured Haskell Mode so it’s okay to sandbox those things and do a load of builds. System setup Debian packages and dotfiles Get all our basic libraries installed system-wide: “` {.nil} apt-get install ghc ghc-prof haskell-platform “` or if you’re using Propellor: {.haskell} workstationAptPackages :: Property NoInfo workstationAptPackages = combineProperties "workstation apt packages" [ Apt.installed ["ghc", "ghc-prof", "haskell-platform"] , Apt.removed ["haskell-mode", "ghc-mod"] ] Put cabal configuration file in place: The most important thing here is require-sandbox: True . We’re not putting anything in ~/.cabal/bin . So we need to include all .cabal-sandbox/bin directories in our $PATH . I build stuff that is to be built on every machine in ~/local/src . So for each binary we have a sandbox in a directory under ~/local/src , e.g. ~/local/src/propellor . This code will prepend those directories to $PATH . It comes from my ~/.shenv which is supposed to be a POSIX-compatible script to set up environment variables that I can source in .zshrc , .bashrc , scripts run from cron, my GNOME and XFCE startup scripts and wherever. {.bash} for bindir in $(find ~/local/src -path "*/.cabal-sandbox/bin"); do PATH="$bindir:$PATH" done export PATH Upgrading cabal-install Before doing anything else, we upgrade cabal-install . The version of cabal-install in Wheezy is so old that it doesn’t know about sandboxes, and we don’t want to pollute ~/.cabal/bin . So we cheat and get it from Jessie: “` {.nil} apt-get install -t testing cabal-install “` Be sure to have set up apt pinning so that this doesn’t pull anything else in from Jessie! Upgrading cabal-install again Since we want the smartest dependency resolution we can get, we now upgrade cabal to the very latest and greatest. {.nil} $ cabal update $ cd ~/local/src $ cabal get cabal-install $ cd cabal-install-* $ cabal sandbox init $ cabal install Restart the shell ( hash cabal isn’t enough because we only just created the sandbox) and type cabal --version to check that the second decimal is higher than 20. Use which cabal to check that it’s the one from ~/local/src . Usage for Haskell projects Installing other people’s programs Maybe you want the ghc-mod or structured-haskell-mode executables from hackage. Follow the procedure just used for upgrading cabal-install for the second time. Getting libraries for your project This section is a WIP. But some tips: - Basic workflow is cabal init; cabal sandbox init; cabal build . - Use cabal repl to launch ghci. - When you need a library, first try to find a debian package (the name will begin with [lib]ghc- ). - If you can’t find it, you can use cabal install blah to install into the sandbox for testing before adding to the .cabal file as a dependency. Try to install all required packages in one go on one cabal install blah1 blah2 command as this gives cabal the best chance of getting the dependencies right. - Don’t be afraid to clear out the sandbox: rm -rf .cabal-sandbox-config .cabal-sandbox; cabal sandbox init . - Try -v3 to enhance cabal’s dependency resolution some more. Sources & further reading

One of the more memorable stories this season was the Dogecoin and Reddit communities pooling together money to sponsor the No. 98 Phil Parsons Racing entry of Josh Wise. Thus far the Reddit and Dogecoin community have rallied behind the car. At the All-Star race in Charlotte, Wise won the fan vote earning entry into the race beating out the likes of Danica Patrick. On Sunday they will return to the Ford Fusion driven by Wise in the Geico 500. The plan for Dogecoin and Parsons is to continue sponsorship into the 2015 season by offering a variety of merchandise. The car driven by Wise will be a little different this week with Chinese characters appearing on the front end of the car. Provident Metals will again serve as an associate sponsor of Wise. (Yes we release the art of this car has Chevrolet logos)

Contrary to fears raised by marijuana opponents, teen use of cannabis is trending downward in most states that have legalized it for adult use. According to new data from the federally-funded National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the percentage of Colorado teens who used marijuana in the past year is down more than two points in the 2015-2016 version of the study as compared to the 2014-2015 edition. The same is true in Washington State. In Washington, D.C., the drop was nearly three points. A smaller decline was seen in Oregon, while Alaska showed a slight rise. Annual teen cannabis use is also down across the U.S. as a whole, but the drop was less significant than that experienced in Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize marijuana. Percentage Of 12-17 Year-Olds Who Used Marijuana In The Past Year STATE 2014-2015 2015-2016 Alaska 18.44 18.86 Colorado 18.35 16.21 District of Columbia 16.55 13.58 Oregon 17.56 17.35 Washington 15.61 13.54 Total U.S. 12.86 12.29 Similar drops were seen in most legalization states for monthly teen cannabis use as well. Percentage Of 12-17 Year-Olds Who Used Marijuana In The Past Month STATE 2014-2015 2015-2016 Alaska 10.64 10.43 Colorado 11.13 9.08 District of Columbia 8.85 8.07 Oregon 9.42 9.77 Washington 9.17 7.93 Total U.S. 7.2 6.75 Colorado and Washington State legalized marijuana in 2012, with Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C. ending cannabis prohibition in 2014. (Four additional states voted to legalize marijuana in 2016, but those programs weren’t running when the new survey was completed.) While legalization opponents have long argued that ending prohibition would lead to skyrocketing use by young people, that doesn’t seem to be happening. Advocates, on the other hand, have maintained that regulating and controlling the cannabis market and instituting strict age restrictions would actually give teens less access to marijuana than they had when it was illegal and there were no checks for age at the point of sale. In a Facebook post, cannabis consulting firm Freedman and Koski, Inc, which is run by Colorado’s former top marijuana official, said that the drop in teen use in the state “coincides with an increase in funding prevention programs from cannabis taxes.” “Colorado is effectively regulating marijuana for adult use. Teen use appears to be dropping now that state and local authorities are overseeing the production and sale of marijuana,” said Brian Vicente, partner at Vicente Sederberg LLC, and one of the lead drafters of Colorado’s legalization measure. “There are serious penalties for selling to minors, and regulated cannabis businesses are being vigilant in checking IDs. The days of arresting thousands of adults in order to prevent teens from using marijuana are over.” The new state numbers are part of a state breakdown of NSDUH data that was released last week.

MORE THAN A TV: Kiwi smart TV owners have been slow to connect their TVs to the internet. The average Kiwi household has three internet-connected devices - and perhaps even more after yesterday - but many other web-capable gadgets in homes are not online, new research suggests. A Colmar Brunton survey, commissioned by wholesale broadband provider Chorus, found laptops, desk-top computers and smartphones were the web-connected gadgets with the highest penetration, appearing in 82 per cent, 63 per cent and 60 per cent of Kiwi homes respectively. Those gadgets had a high level of internet connectedness - at least 92 per cent. But other smart devices are not being connected. Almost 40 per cent of New Zealand households have a smart or web-capable TV, so viewers can browse the web, stream programmes and movies and use applications such as Skype, but half of them are not hooked up to the internet. Similarly, 61 per cent of Blu-ray players, 57 per cent of security systems, 42 per cent of TV hard-drives and 41 per cent of hand-held gaming consoles are not used online. When asked why their devices were not online, 37 per cent of respondents said it was not necessary for them to be, 8 per cent said they did not know how to connect them, 8 per cent said they did not have the capability to connect them and 8 per cent said they did not want to use the devices online. Chorus spokesman Gerard Linstrom said many consumers were not aware their devices could be connected to the web or of the benefits of doing so. People thought Blu-ray players were just for playing high-definition disks, "but increasingly, a lot of Blu-ray disks come with interactive content. There are additional features and programming available". "There's a lot of untapped content that people have already got access to - they've already paid for it." Web-connected home security systems could be managed and monitored remotely, for example, through a smartphone, while TV hard-drives could also be controlled remotely. Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen said awareness was an issue but a lack of content was a big reason people with smart TVs weren't connected - himself included. Movie and streaming service Quickflix had only just become available for TVs through Freeview. "But Quickflix has a fairly limited library, they'd be the first to admit that. Sky doesn't do anything other than replay its broadcasts and with TVNZ and TV3 [online] it's just replay TV. There's really a limited amount of legal digital video content beyond user-generated content." He was surprised by how many households had connected their TVs. "The rest of us will join in once there's a service to connect to." Linstrom said there were usually multiple options for hooking devices up online, and the type of internet connection could make a difference. Homes on the internet delivered over fibre could run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications without them interfering with each other. "Mum and Dad can sit in the living room and watch a movie or a sports programme while somebody sitting in another room plays an interactive game, and somebody else listens to online music." He recommended owners of web-capable devices consult the often-ignored instruction manual to get connected, or they could call in the professionals. "A lot of the retailers have got their own geeks who will come in and install your PC or your TV or your home theatre so that it will actually work the way it's intended to." Teenagers, particularly gamers, were often pretty clued up at connecting devices to the internet, Linstrom said. "So one of the other options is ask your teenager." Fairfax NZ

Three prostitution cases have been thrown out this month by Hennepin County judges and the Minneapolis city attorney, who said Minneapolis undercover police investigators went too far. The officers’ sexual contact with the female suspects also drew a sharp denunciation from the county’s chief public defender, Mary Moriarty. “Do citizens want officers behaving in this manner?” Moriarty asked Wednesday. Two of the cases were dismissed by Hennepin County judges in rulings that found the officers’ actions constituted “outrageous government conduct.” The third was dismissed by the Minneapolis city attorney in light of one of the judges’ rulings. On Wednesday, Minneapolis police said the department has discontinued such undercover investigations pending a full review of its policies. The department declined to comment on the specific cases. None of the three officers involved in the cases is under internal investigation. As far back as 2009, the Minnesota Court of Appeals had addressed such conduct by Minneapolis police when it reversed a prostitution charge, citing similar pre-arrest behavior. At the time, then-Chief Tim Dolan asked for an internal inquiry on how the investigation was handled. In the first of the three recent cases, Moriarty’s office learned of the conduct as it defended a woman charged in March with four misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor charges of prostitution and illegal acts at a massage business, including exposure and unlawful touching. The city attorney’s office said at the time that the case was prompted by community complaints about possible prostitution activity at a south Minneapolis business. When assistant public defender Briana Perry received the case, she e-mailed Moriarity the 36-minute audio recorded during the encounter between officer Steven Lecy and the woman at the massage parlor, saying she found the officer’s behavior “just disgusting.” Moriarity sent the case to City Attorney Susan Segal and asked for a dismissal, but Segal declined. On the recording, after nearly 30 minutes of small talk about tattoos, the weather and his broken hand, Lecy, who also compliments the woman’s anatomy, interrupts the massage and asks the woman if she wants him to flip onto his back. She begins touching his genitals as part of a naked “body-to-body” massage. Lecy can be heard moaning. A few moments later, he says the words “repeat customers,” code to backup officers that it’s time for an arrest. They then enter the room. Moriarty said Lecy arrived two hours late for this week’s dismissal motion hearing and was surly and clearly upset. “The Police Department has undercover female officers who do detail like this,” Moriarity said. “Do you think they would allow themselves to behave in any sort of sexual manner?” In a dismissal order issued in court Tuesday, Hennepin County Judge William Fisher said probable cause for a crime could have been established long before the sexual activity recorded on the tape. Lecy’s attorney had argued that touching was necessary to make the encounter a crime. “What must it have been like for this woman to have this happen and find out it was a police officer?” Moriarty said. Attorney Jeffrey Dean represented the woman charged in the other two eventually dismissed cases. One case involved officer Christopher Reiter, who was found to have engaged in “outrageous sexual conduct” that violated a woman’s due process rights while he was doing undercover work at a south Minneapolis parlor in November 2014. Hennepin County Judge Amy Dawson wrote in her Aug. 7 dismissal order that Reiter “initiated sexual contact that isn’t required for the collection of evidence to establish elements of the offense.” Nearly 20 minutes into his interaction with the woman, court documents say, Reiter pointed to his groin after she asked “if there were any areas she had missed.” She started to rub his genitals and they negotiated a price for further action “that would take care of him,” the documents say. Reiter’s attorney argued that his behavior was necessary to gather evidence and to protect his safety until backup officers arrived. He was merely involving himself in ongoing criminal activity and the woman wasn’t a reluctant participant, his attorney argued, court documents show. “Cases regarding prostitution can have actions that can be offensive or distasteful,” Reiter’s attorney wrote. “That does not make them due process violations.” The third case involved the same woman Dean represented in his other case. She was arrested in May after officer Abubakar Muridi asked her to rub his genitals before he negotiated a price for sex, Dean said. The city attorney dismissed that case Monday. “My hope is that the Police Department will finally stop engaging in the outrageous conduct of having sexual relations with the targets of their investigations,” Dean said. “Women in prostitution are vulnerable and traumatized. They have often been the victims of physical and sexual abuse and suffer from poverty and addiction. When police engage in this unnecessary sexual conduct, the officer worsens the trauma and deepens the damage.” New massage license needed Meanwhile, a city spokesman said Wednesday that Minneapolis’ new massage license ordinance may offer a civil regulatory path to reducing prostitution that wouldn’t require building cases for criminal prosecution. The new rules, which were passed by the City Council in 2013 and went into effect in July, require home businesses to pay an annual licensing fee of $50 and larger massage businesses to pay $140. The new rules also outline a variety of “unlawful acts” that could result in a citation or revoked license. The ordinance is aimed at making it harder for prostitution rings and other illegal outfits to thrive under the guise of the massage business.

Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Pupils are still taught in Shakespeare’s historic 587-year-old half-timbered former classroom today. But if a £1million Heritage Lottery Fund bid is successful, one of the finest surviving old schoolrooms in Britain could become open to the public for the first time. Bennet Carr, headmaster of King Edward VI Grammar School (KES), Stratford-upon-Avon, said: “It became William Shakespeare's classroom when he was educated in the 1570s. “John Shakespeare, William’s father, was appointed Bailiff, or Mayor in 1568, and had the right for his son to attend the school free of charge. There would have been 40-60 boys in the one class. “It is where Shakespeare would have been taught Latin, rhetoric and Greek and was most likely to have experienced theatre for the first time, as 30 troupes came out of London. “We would like to restore the building and open it up for the first time. “We would continue to teach until mid-morning and open the classroom in the afternoons, weekends and holidays. It’s the first time it will ever have been opened. It’s an absolute gem.” The simple timber-framed medieval classroom is on the second floor of The Guild Hall in Church Street and has not changed since Shakespeare’s day. The ground floor was used as a library until last year. School archivist Richard Pearson said: “The Guild Hall has the first authorised painting of the Tudor Rose dating back from 1493.” Mr Carr said restoration work which needs to take place includes a new roof, new timbers and stone preservation work. He said: “The ground floor of the Guild Hall was created in 1420 and the top floor added in 1427. “It was the civic heart of Stratford-upon-Avon pre-Reformation. The last time it was restored was in the 1890s. It’s virtually unique for a Guild Hall and needs to be preserved. It’s had hundreds of boys going in-and-out. “For local people who have never been in it to see where Shakespeare was taught, it’s really exciting. Everyone comes to Straford once – now there would be another reason to come down. It has the wow factor.” The Guild Hall lottery bid will be submitted later this month as Stratford-upon-Avon gets ready for Shakespeare’s 450th birthday celebrations and the school will find out if it has been successful in June. BBC historian Michael Wood has made a film retelling the history of the Guild Hall for a future fundraising appeal. Mr Carr said: “In 2003 Michael did a six-part documentary In Search of Shakespeare tracing his life. As part of that he came to the school and has become a really good friend of the school. "He has very kindly produced a 10-minute film briefly recording the history of the building and launching a fundraising effort. If successful we will be seeking sponsorship to match the lottery bid for anyone who would like to be involved.” KES was founded in 1553 by Henry VIII’s only surviving son Edward VI, who died aged 15. Previously known as the Guild School it was renamed the King’s New School. Shakespeare was born and died on the same day – April 23 – St George’s Day. On Saturday, April 26, KES head boy Christian Van Nieuwerburgh will lead the annual birthday procession celebrating Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. The parade through Bridge Street is followed by The Quill Pageant – where a costume character William Shakespeare hands over a symbolic quill to the head boy of KES who will use it to signal the start of the flag unfurling ceremony. He will then carry it to Holy Trinity Church, symbolising Shakespeare’s journey from the cradle to the grave. Christian will be followed by 600 pupils – and for the first time 39 sixth form girls, who were admitted to the school last September. It was former KES headmaster, Rev Robert de Courcy Laffan, that first initiated the annual birthday procession and laying of flowers on Shakespeare’s grave at Holy Trinity Church in 1893. Mr Carr said: “Robert de Courcy Laffan was a great friend of the Flower family who helped to restore the school building in the 1890s. He was a great education reformer. He, head boy Ralph Garlic and a representative from Shakespeare’s Birthplace decided they would walk from the school to Holy Trinity Church and lay flowers on the grave. The following year was the beginning of what has become the annual procession. “There had been a small parade by counsellors in 1810, but the school initiated the procession. It was reported in the Times of London, newspapers in Stratford, Leamington and the Birmingham Post “The procession has been going 121 years. Until the 1960s the head boy used to carry a quill to replace the old one on the Shakespeare bust at the church. That tradition was reintroduced last year. “We are only a small faith school with 600 pupils and even though it’s their Easter holidays most students want to be there. It’s unfortunate that it’s the holidays – but only three students are unable to attend. “And for the first time this year we have girls parading with us – as 39 girls joined the sixth form. “It’s quite a sight. All the pupils will carry blue and yellow flowers and the youngest boy Dominic Ellis will lay a laurel wreath on the actual grave. The flowers will go on the gravestone. “The pupils lead the way with me and the staff following. Many Old Boys come back. It’s quite a spectacle. Where else would you see teenagers walking through a town each carrying a bunch of flowers? “It’s a delightful English tradition. This year is particularly important being the 450th anniversary. It’s going to have added emphasis.”

Has an airline refused compensation after a flight delay or cancellation? Thanks to the European Court of Justice, you can demand at least £225. Barrister Richard Colbey explains Many passengers who have tried claiming compensation from an airline for a cancelled flight will have encountered refusals based on "exceptional circumstances". Until earlier this month, at least in airline speak, it could mean not only extraordinary events – like the foiled terrorist attack which forced Glasgow airport to close – but technical defects. European law entitles passengers whose flights are cancelled or substantially delayed to a minimum of €250 (£225) compensation. The airline is only excused liability if it can show its failure was caused by these ill-defined exceptional circumstances. Friederike Wallentin-Hermann had booked Alitalia tickets for herself, her husband and daughter from Vienna to Brinidisi in south-east Italy, via Rome. The first leg of her flight was cancelled at very short notice, leaving her to take a roundabout route on Austrian Airlines, which resulted in them reaching their destination nearly four hours late. The cancellation was due to a "complex" turbine engine failure, which took 10 days to fix. Predictably, the airline claimed this was an "exceptional circumstance". Wallentin-Hermann decided to pursue her claim for the standard compensation, plus a small amount for telephone charges, in her local commercial court. Airlines have tended, since the current compensation regulations were introduced in 2004, not to defend claims from those passengers who actually use the courts. Most prefer not to risk setting an unfavourable and incontrovertible precedent, which could make it harder to fob off the majority who give up before resorting to litigation. Alitalia, however, decided to put its head above the pulpit, fighting the matter not only in the Austrian courts, but, when unsuccessful, appealing to the European Court of Justice. The resulting decision will be welcome confirmation for passengers that routine technical faults are not "exceptional". The court's reasoning recognised that airlines invariably face technical problems. Checking for, and fixing these, is an inherent part of their business. The mere fact that an airline has complied with the legal minimum maintenance requirement will not exempt it from liability when something mechanical goes wrong. The judgment does not go so far as to rule that mechanical defects could never amount to exceptional circumstances. The court recognised that a warning by the aircraft manufacturer leading to the removal from service of an entire fleet, or mechanical defects caused by terrorists or sabotage, could be treated differently. The judgment was given in December last year, when it probably became known to the industry, but was only formally published earlier this month. This has a personal resonance, as I suffered a Swiss International Air (SIA) cancellation on Boxing Day due, apparently, to a failed autopilot. My compensation claim – I only sought out-of-pocket losses, not the full EU set sum – was initially met with the same response as the Wallentin-Hermanns'. A couple of stroppy emails did persuade SIA to pay up, but it was disappointing that the airline continued to argue this issue even after the European Court decision. Airlines have no excuse now for not paying up; some will doubtless continue to try it on. Anyone encountering this who refers specifically to the "European Court case of Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia" may impress the airline sufficiently so that it does not waste time trying to bluster its way out of paying up.

Sidechains have been the source of increased excitement in the Bitcoin community over the past year due to the belief that this new technology will allow an endless number of features to be integrated into the Bitcoin protocol. There are still a few people out there who believe sidechains are nothing more than vaporware, but the sidechains concept has an experienced team of Bitcoin Core developers behind it, not to mention a startup, Blockstream, that announced a $21 million round of funding late last year. Blockstream recently released Sidechain Elements, which is a federated, alpha release of their originally outlined pegged sidechains proposal. The idea is that this early version allows the community to test out the concept without making any changes to Bitcoin Core. Some have pondered whether it could take up to five years for a true, two-way peg implementation to make its way to Bitcoin. Although the timeframe for a real two-way peg is unclear, there seems to be a general path for this new functionality to make its way into Bitcoin. What Will It Take to Enable Two-Way Peg Support for Bitcoin? Cryptographer Adam Back is, perhaps, best known as the inventor of hashcash, which is the underlying proof-of-work system utilized by the Bitcoin blockchain. He’s also the President and Co-Founder of Blockstream, which means he should have a general idea of how decentralized, two-way peg sidechains will eventually be rolled out. In a recent email to CoinJournal, Back was able to describe what needs to happen in order for two-way peg support to be possible in Bitcoin: “Two-way peg support would generally be possible with any generic and sufficiently flexible scripting language, it is just a script that verifies a compact hash chain structure. Two-way peg appears almost — but probably not quite — possible today with Bitcoin script; however, I think we can fairly say this a historical accident due to slight limitations in bitcoin script, which had various opcodes disabled defensively for security reasons some years back. By doing some very advanced tricks across multiple transactions, it might even be just possible already (exercise for the reader).” When it comes to the “very advanced tricks,” Back also added, “If someone can solve that exercise for the reader via advanced Bitcoin script hacking, we’d be very happy to hear from them.” A BIP and Community Consensus According to Back, either an upgrade to Bitcoin script or specific changes that enable two-way peg support should be enough to bring sidechains to Bitcoin. He then added that a concrete proposal is the next step that needs to be taken in order for decentralized sidechains to become a reality: “I think the next step would be for someone to make a concrete proposal for community review (i.e. a BIP) and an example implementation, and then for there to be a design discussion with perhaps alternative methods compared side by side [and] evaluated by the community as has happened with prior BIP proposals and review process.” It’s well-known that making changes to Bitcoin Core is an extremely tedious task surrounded by immense amounts of caution (as it should be), but it should be pointed out that the sidechains proposal is something that could potentially speed up the process of bringing new features to Bitcoin in the future. Back also pointed out that technically-inclined individuals in the Bitcoin community seem to have a positive view of the sidechains concept: “We can say that generally technical people have been quite supportive of the idea of sidechains and the flexibility it adds for experimentation and extension, but it’s quite difficult to predict a time-frame as a specific proposal has not been made yet, and how long that would take depends on the technical community reaching consensus on alternative proposals. Bitcoin BIP community consensus is focussed on security and tends to prioritize new features by utility to the community.” What to Do in the Meantime For now, the low-trust, federated peg model can be used as a test ground for sidechains. Back explained how this early implementation of the sidechains concept could eventually lead to decentralized, two-way peg sidechains on the Bitcoin network: “In the mean time there is an approach to get a similar effect using a functionary model with multi-sig as a protocol adaptor, as described in appendix A of the sidechains white paper, so people can use side-chains in a different security model in the mean time. We used this approach in the elements sidechain alpha release that we released in June, and if side-chains using the functionary model are popular it may help make the case for why a 2wp operator to improve them would be useful to integrate in Bitcoin.” It’s impossible to predict a timeframe for two-way peg sidechains at this point. Having said that, it seems clear that it will be easier to gain consensus around a sidechains-related proposal rather than something like an increase in the blocksize limit. Although there have been issues with making changes to Bitcoin Core in the past, Blockstream’s Adam Back seems somewhat optimistic about the prospects of implementing the two-way peg model in Bitcoin:

Beijing Sets Deadlines for Bitcoin Exchanges - Customers to Withdraw Funds Quickly Beijing has ordered all affected bitcoin exchanges to post a notice of their closure by midnight on Friday. Now, the exchanges are urging customers to withdraw their funds as regulators have also set a deadline for them to come up with plans to allow withdrawals “in a risk-free manner.” Also read: China’s Regulatory Crackdown Forces More Bitcoin Exchange Closures Exchanges Ordered to Announce Closing Dates Chinese authorities have ordered Beijing-based cryptocurrency exchanges to stop trading and allowing new registrations as of Friday, according to a government notice, which was verified by Reuters. “The notice was signed by the Beijing city group in charge of overseeing internet finance risks and circulated online.” The notice read: All trading exchanges must by midnight of Sept. 15 publish a notice to make clear when they will stop all cryptocurrency trading and announce a stop to new user registrations. China’s top bitcoin exchanges have already complied. Btcc announced that “Btcchina will completely shut down its exchange businesses on September 30th,” the company tweeted. However, the only businesses affected are those relating to Btcchina; other Btcc businesses are unaffected as “Btcc is a separate company from Btcchina,” the company noted, adding that “Btcc Pool, Btcc USD Exchange, Btcc Dax, Btcc Mobi, & Btcc Mint are not affected by this change.” Huobi and Okcoin made similar announcements on Friday, stating that they are closing on October 31. Huobi announced that new user registration and CNY deposit service have already stopped, stating that: The actual closing of CNY trading will take place on October 31st. We will close all CNY to cryptocurrencies trading one asset at a time. Okcoin similarly posted a notice on Friday, outlining its closing policies. The company emphasized that the only service closing is the RMB trading business. The rest of its businesses are not affected. “Because regulators have not announced that bitcoin and digital assets are illegal, Okcoin will actively explore, strive for, expect to continue to provide Chinese users with compliant digital asset services,” the company wrote. Many others have also announced their closure such as Viabtc and Yobtc. Another exchange C2CX announced that it will close on September 30. Customers Urged to Withdraw Funds Quickly The regulators have additionally instructed the exchanges to come up with plans of how customers can withdraw their funds, Reuters reported. “Platforms should also tell the government by Wednesday Sept. 20 how they will allow users to make withdrawals in a risk-free manner and handle funds to make sure investor interests are protected,” the news outlet detailed. Btcchina has already made announcements regarding the withdrawal of user funds. All withdrawals are processed within 24 hours, the company revealed. In addition, even after September 30 when the exchange has ceased operations, customers can still continue to withdraw funds. Furthermore, its Blockchain+ trading platform will open up bitcoin cash (BCC, BCH) withdrawals before Sunday, September 24. The company assured customers that the exchange and its Blockchain+ trading platform have enough funds to accommodate all customer withdrawals including CNY, BTC, LTC, BCC, and ETH, and tweeted that: Btcchina encourages customers to withdraw their funds as quickly as possible. Customers can withdraw their funds whenever they want. Huobi’s notice also gave some details about how it will deal with withdrawals. While CNY deposit service has stopped, digital asset deposits and withdrawals, as well as CNY withdrawals, will remain open. “BCC withdrawal service will be enabled before September 20th,” the exchange wrote. What do you think of Beijing’s orders? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Btcc, Twitter Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

Two students have found a human tooth from about 560,000 years ago in a famous prehistoric cave in south-western France , a discovery praised by archaeologists as the oldest human body part ever discovered in the country and being rare from that period in Europe . The tooth was found last week during excavations at Tautavel, one of Europe's most important prehistoric sites, where about 40 volunteers are working under the supervision of scientists. Chevalier told The Associated Press that the adult tooth would help fill a gap between the very few oldest human fossils, notably found in Spain and Germany , and more recent ones. Thousands of finds on the site include prehistoric tools and bones from animals, especially horses, reindeers and buffaloes. "We believe these men have lived for a long time in the cave or have regularly come back into it," Chevalier said. "We also know that the area was quite cold at the time. It was a steppe, with no trees. There had to be some long periods with snow." Volunteer archaeologists at work in the Arago cave (AFP) These latest findings haven't been the subject of a scientific publication yet, but Tautavel is recognised as a reference by archaeologists all over the world. There have been excavations at the cave for about 50 years and it is famous for the discovery of 450,000 human skull in the early 1970s, known by scientists as the "Tautavel Man". Christian Perrenoud, a geologist and archaeologist who has been director of Tautavel's excavations for nine years, told the AP that his team used several dating processes to determine the age of the tooth. Mr Perrenoud said he is "pretty confident" that his team will find more human fossils from this period on the site. "Our daily life is to determine what human activities looked like 560,000 years ago," he said. Professor Chris Stringer, merit researcher in human origins at the Natural History Museum of London, wrote in an email to the AP that "well-dated teeth of this age are very important as they probably belonged to the species Homo heidelbergensis, which is already known from Arago (in Tautavel) in France, Mauer in Germany and Boxgrove in England". "If the tooth has calculus (tartar) attached to it, this may also provide direct evidence of the diet of these ancient humans," he added.

NINTENDO Australia fears it could be swamped by requests for freebies after a cute story of goodwill went viral on the internet. 11-year-old Victorian schoolgirl Helen last month wrote to the company as part of her Year 6 class project. "The reason I'm writting (sic) to your company is because at school we are learning how to write letters to companies," Helen wrote. "We have 25 students in our class and we have 25 companies. I chose your company because I'm a big fan of yours." In fact Helen was such a big fan of Nintendo she couldn't resist asking for a DS gaming console after her parents "refused" to buy her one. "I also have a request to make. My request is quite big. I would like a DS please for those many reasons," Helen wrote. Nintendo obliged and sent a new DS to Helen's school along with a letter of reply to the young girl. "Thank you for your letter — we were very impressed. I really hope you and your classmates enjoy playing the DS," wrote a Nintendo staff member. Now the exchange — including Helen's letter and Nintendo's reply — has gone viral on the internet. Just two days after being posted online, the exchange has been viewed more than 330,000 times on image-sharing site imgur. It has also attracted thousands of votes on link-sharing websites like Reddit and Digg. But for every reader that responded with a "daaaaw", there's another who has joked about trying it out for themselves. "So I can just send any company a letter and they will give me a product?" asked one reader on Digg. "I'm going to send a letter to Steve for a certain pad," said another. However if you're thinking about writing to Nintendo under the pretence of a school project, be warned — they verify all requests. "Nintendo always calls the school, hospital, retirement home, or whatever it may be to ensure the letter is legitimate," said Nintendo Australia's Heather Murphy. "In this particular case, Nintendo called the school and spoke to the school principal." After talking to the principal to make sure the gaming console would be well used, Nintendo sent a DS and a "game suitable for children to play" to the school. Ms Murphy said it wasn't common practice to give away free consoles — or even reply — to everyone who wrote to the company. She said it received "hundreds" of letters per day. "Nintendo does not routinely give away products in response to letters. From time to time, we may donate product to schools, hospitals or retirement villages," she said. "We receive a high number of letters on a daily basis, and unfortunately we are not able to respond to every one. "So therefore we hope we do not receive an influx as we simply would not be able to respond." However Ms Murphy said Nintendo would like to thank everyone who had written to the company already. "Especially those letters that tell Nintendo about their experiences with our products and how and why they enjoy them so much," she said.

Sierra Nelson loves cephalopods. Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish—you name it, if it’s a bilateral mollusk with a big-ass head, Nelson is positively gaga over it. Nelson is a Seattle-area poet, and you can understand how a poet might fall in love with tentacled sea creatures: They’re romantic figures, skulking in the ocean—part of the great marine biosphere, but also remote from whales and fish. Those articulate limbs and big brains set them apart, leaving them to skulk and mope fabulously. And they even produce their own ink! How could a poet not land on Team Cephalopod? But Nelson is more science-minded than your average poet. She’s a co-founder of the Vis-á-Vis Society, which applies scientific rigor to crowd-sourced poems, often employing large crowds at parties to write, Mad Libs-style, a series of poems about love and longing. No other poets in town, likely, have dissected a poem into pie charts on a whiteboard while wearing a lab coat. On her own, Nelson loves to tease out the poetry in science, finding resonance in the long and mysterious Latin words and phrases we’ve used to name the world. One of my favorites of her poems is “The First Photograph,” which explains the process that created a blurry heliograph by the father of photography, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce: “Through the pinprick it all came to us,/how close we were, upside down,/several hours on the windowsill./We were surfaces arranged to receive.” The poem concludes: “Yet I capture you. Close to the sun./I coated my longing in bitumen.” Much has been written about the way photographs capture a moment in time, but rarely is that desperate need so beautifully overt. So yes, there’s whimsy in Nelson’s celebration of all things squid and squidlike. But there’s also serious investigation and a questing mind, fusing science and art and seeing what happens. Every year since 2015, she’s been presenting Cephalopod Appreciation Societies—arts celebrations with music, film, visual art, poetry, and speeches. Past participants have included musician Lori Goldston, biologist Stephanie Crofts, marine cinematographer Laura James, and novelist Kevin Emerson, and presentations have included stickers, classes on incorporating marine biology into creative writing, octopus-themed animation, and sea-shanty singalongs. This Sunday’s Society is in a different setting: not the creative hub of Hugo House, as in past years, but at Waterfront Space, a gallery on Western Avenue. Nelson encourages participants of all ages to come dressed as their favorite cephalopod, and she promises there will be a “mini-parade” to the waterfront, presumably where she will call on a giant squid to rise from the deep and cast judgment on Seattle. Will we be destroyed by the mammoth monster from the briny depths? Or will our suction-cupped friend recognize the like-minded intelligence in our eyes and guide us to a happier future? Only our molluscular overlords know for sure. Waterfront Space, 1400 Western Ave. Free. All ages. Noon, Sun., Aug. 20. Paul Constant is co-founder of The Seattle Review of Books. Read books coverage at seattlereviewofbooks.com.

[What Steve King's 'subgroups' musing says about the party of Donald Trump] The Post's Philip Rucker interviews Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Wednesday, July 20. (The Washington Post) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Wednesday defended his controversial comment this week that some cultures contribute more to civilization than others. "The idea of multiculturalism, that every culture is equal — that's not objectively true," King told The Washington Post's Philip Rucker, less than 48 hours after he asked on live TV what "subgroups" besides white people had made any contributions to civilization. "We've been fed that information for the past 25 years, and we're not going to become a greater nation if we continue to do that." Here's what he told Rucker: "Western civilization is the most successful civilization the world has ever seen. And some of the reasons for that is it's borrowed from other cultures along the way, back to Mosaic law, the Greek age of reason, Roman law and the Roman order of government, and the Republican form of government, by the way that we're guaranteed in our constitution. The foundation of our ideological thought is rooted in the enlightenment of Europe and then this country was born at the dawn of the industrial revolution. ... The sum total that's been contributed by Western civilization, it surpasses any other culture of civilization, party because we borrowed from them along the way, and we're flexible enough to do that. And so I don't think we should apologize for our success." Of course, as my eagle-eyed colleague Philip Bump — who caught King's comment Monday on MSNBC — pointed out, our society is shaped by numerous nonwhite societies, past and present: Civilization first arose in cities in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq and Syria. Arabic and Middle Eastern inventors and scientists brought astronomy to the world, which in turn aided innovations in navigation. Critical innovations in mathematics and architecture and medicine originated in the same area. The Chinese contributed philosophical precepts and early monetary systems, among other things. The specific inventions that were created outside of the Western world are too many to list: the seismograph, the umbrella, gunpowder, stirrups, the compass. Oh, and, of course, the non-Western world gave us the numeric system that will be used to tally up the delegates to make Trump the nominee of King's party. That apparently didn't resonate with King, who told Rucker he originally felt forced to defend his view of how Western civilization became great after Esquire's Charlie Pierce said in the same live TV interview he didn't see much diversity at the Republican convention. "If you're really optimistic, you can say that this is the last time that old white people will command the Republican Party's attention, its platform, its public face," Pierce said on MSNBC. "He was disparaging a group of people — a subgroup of people, old white people — and saying they're going to be out of the politics of the Republican Party,” King told Rucker. "That's got to be answered." [What Steve King's 'sub groups' musing says about the party of Donald Trump] Rucker asked King — who has often been in the spotlight for making controversial remarks on race — if his answer wasn't the very definition of identity politics that Republicans love to accuse President Obama of playing. King said the opposite was true, and that he hoped his conversation could help people see beyond the skin color. "Our focus on melanin and people's skins — can't we talk about the diversity of ideology? Can't we look at people for their minds and what they can contribute?" he said. "And I'd like to see us go more toward a respect for people's ability to contribute, and I actually want to get to a society where we disregard race." The Post's Philip Rucker sits down with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Wednesday, July 20. (The Washington Post) But thanks in part to him, in a week when the Republican Party is nominating a presidential candidate whose views on race often seem to align with King's, the color of people's skin is very much in the political conversation.

The investigation into suspected collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government has claimed its first three victims: one (Paul Manafort) for completely unconnected money laundering charges, and two (George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn) for lying to investigators about things which were not themselves criminal, and which are therefore crimes which would never have happened had there never been an investigation. To date, the evidence of direct collusion between Trump and the Russians is looking a little thin, to say the least. Now, into this maelstrom steps Guardian reporter Luke Harding with his book Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russian Helped Donald Trump Win. Collusion spends over 300 pages insinuating that Trump is a long-standing agent of the Russian secret services, and hinting, without ever providing any firm evidence, that Trump and his team acted on orders from the Kremlin to subvert American democracy. I’ll be honest, and admit that I picked this book up expecting it to be a series of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and to be utterly unbalanced in its analysis, and in that sense I’m not an unbiased reader. At the same time, I was interested to see if Harding had come up with anything that everybody else had not, and was willing to give him a chance. I needn’t have bothered. For alas, my worst suspicions proved to be true, and then some. The first thing to note about Collusion is that most of it is padding. That is to say, that it consists mainly of a lot of digressions in which Harding describes people and events not directly related to the main story of collusion. Whenever a new character is introduced, you tend to get pages of background information, along with descriptions of various places they’ve been to, things they’ve done in the past, and so on. At the start of the book, for instance, Harding introduces Christopher Steele, who prepared an infamous dossier purportedly based on secret sources within the Kremlin, which made all sort of extreme accusations against Trump. We learn about Steele’s parents, his childhood, his education, his career, and so on. Harding recounts how he met Steele. We learn about how they tried one café, then another, who drank what, etc, etc. This pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the book. There’s a lot of padding. This padding makes Collusion an easy read, and gives it colour, and the flavour of a spy novel. But none of it adds anything to our knowledge of Donald Trump and his relationship with Russia. It’s just filler, designed to cover up the fact that, when it comes to the matter of collusion, Harding doesn’t have a whole lot new to say and certainly doesn’t have enough to fill up an entire book. The second thing to note is that Harding’s modes of argumentation and standards of evidence are not – how can I be polite about this? – what I’m used to as an academic. Let’s take the example of Trump’s former convention manager, Paul Manafort, to whom Harding devotes an entire chapter, obviously on the basis that the Trump-Manafort connection somehow proves a Trump-Kremlin connection. The problem Harding has is that, despite pages of fluff about Manafort, he hasn’t got any evidence that Manafort is a Kremlin agent. In fact, he quotes one source – a former Ukrainian official, Oleg Voloshin – as telling him that when Manafort worked as a political advisor to Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich: Manafort was an advocate for US interests. So much so that the joke inside the Party of Regions [in Ukraine] was that he actually worked for the USA. … He supported Ukraine’s association with NATO and with the EU. He warned Yanukovich not to lock up [former Prime Minister Iuliia] Tymoshenko. “If it weren’t for Paul, Ukraine would have gone under Russia much earlier,” Voloshin told me. This is pretty funny behaviour for a Kremlin agent, and Harding has to admit that, “It’s unclear to what extent, if any, Manafort was involved in supplying intelligence to Russia.” This doesn’t fit with the conclusion that Harding obviously wants readers to draw – that Manafort was a Kremlin agent, and so Trump must be too. So, he comes up with something else: some of Manafort’s associates in Ukraine “were rumoured to have links with Russian intelligence.” Note the use of the word “rumoured”. It’s not exactly convincing, but it’s good enough for Luke, who uses it to tell a story about one such associate, Konstantin Kilimnik. Harding recounts that he contacted Kilimnik by email to ask him about his relationship with Manafort. Kilimnik responds by telling him that the collusion accusations are “insane” and “gibberish”, and signs off his email with a bit of self-mockery: “Off to collect my paycheck at KGB. :))” And here’s where it gets interesting. For Harding thinks there’s something suspicious about Kilimnik’s answer. He writes: The thing which gave me pause was Kilimnik’s use of smiley faces. True, Russians are big emoticon fans. But I’d seen something similar before. In 2013 the Russian diplomat in charge of political influence operations in London was named Sergey Nalobin. Nalobin had close links with Russian intelligence. He was the son of a KGB general; his brother had worked for the FSB; Nalobin looked like a career foreign intelligence officer. Maybe even a deputy resident, the KGB term for station chief. On his Twitter feed Nalobin described himself thus: A brutal agent of the Putin dictatorship : ) And that’s it. That’s Harding’s evidence. Just to make sure readers get the point, he follows the last line up with a double paragraph space. Stop and think what this means, he seems to be saying. Someone who “looked like a career foreign intelligence officer” uses smiley faces. Kilimnik uses smiley faces!!! Say no more. This is the level at which Harding’s logic works. Harding recounts a meeting of Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the White House, a meeting which was photographed by someone from the Russian news agency TASS. As Harding tells us: The Times put the photo of Trump and Lavrov on its front page. At the bottom of the photo taken inside the White House was a credit. It said: “Russian Foreign Ministry.” Yet another double paragraph break follows, just to make sure that readers take in the implication of what this means. Take another example. We learn (which in fact we knew already if we’d been following this story) that Trump’s short-lived National Security Advisor, and former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, attended a conference on the subject of intelligence at Cambridge University, where he met a Russian woman, Svetlana Lokhova. Harding admits that, “There is no suggestion she is linked to Russian intelligence.” Nevertheless, he feels it necessary to tell us that Flynn later corresponded with her by email. He writes: In his emails, Flynn signed off in an unusual way for a US spy. He called himself “General Misha.” Misha is the Russian equivalent of Michael. Again, Harding then introduces a section break, leaving this ominous fact hanging in the air. Think of what it means, he is saying! This is typical of how Harding argues. He puts in some suspicious sounding fact, or asks some question, and then just leaves it hanging. The implication is that the question doesn’t need answering, that the most damaging and extreme answer is obviously true. There’s an awful lot of this technique in Collusion. Harding spends pages on a digression about Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybovlev before telling us that Rybovlev’s private jet sometimes parks next to that of Donald Trump. Seems suspicious, huh? Except that Harding tells us that, ‘The White House … said that Trump and Rybovlev had never met. This appears to be true.” But Harding isn’t satisfied, and asks, “Had he [Rybovlev] perhaps met someone else from Trump’s entourage during his travels? Like, for example, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen?” Later, Harding tells us that Rybovlev’s yacht was once at Dubrovnik at the same time as Ivanka Trump’s yacht. “Was this perhaps planned” he asks. Harding’s method is to ask these questions, as if asking was itself proof of guilt. Trump borrowed money from Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank was bailed out at one point by the Russian bank VTB. “Was there a connection?” Harding asks. But Harding doesn’t answer these questions. In fact, one of the interesting things about this book is that again and again the author has to confess that the facts don’t really fit what he’s trying to say. For instance, when discussing Trump and Deutsche Bank, and trying to make it sound as if Trump was in some way connected to the Kremlin because he was borrowing from the Germans, Harding writes, “The sources insist that the answer was negative. No trail to Moscow was ever discovered, they told us.” This isn’t a lone example. Harding spends quite a few pages discussing Carter Page, a businessman who appeared on RT and gave a talk at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and who at one point had a marginal role in the Trump election campaign. It’s clear that he wants it all to sound really damaging. And yet, he writes that Page’s “attempts to meet Trump individually failed.” So, it turns out that there’s not much of a connection there after all. Likewise, when discussing Russian computer hackers, Harding writes: “By the second decade of the twenty-first century the cyber world looked like the high seas of long ago. The hackers who sailed on it might be likened to privateers. Sometimes they acted for the ‘state’, sometimes against it.” This rather undermines his claim that the Russian state was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. In another example, Harding discusses the sudden death of Oleg Erovinkin, who worked for the oil company Rosneft. He speculates that “Erovinkin was Steele’s source deep inside Rosneft,” and was murdered because word of Steele’s document had leaked out. The murder, he implies, is proof of the dossier’s validity. Except that Harding admits that, “there was nothing suspicious about Erovinkin’s sudden death” and “Steele was adamant that Erovinkin wasn’t his source.” Yet this doesn’t stop Harding from writing that, “in the wake of the dossier the Kremlin did appear to be wiping out some kind of American or Western espionage network. … It certainly looked that way.” I could give other examples, but I can’t make this review too long. The point is that Harding ignores his own evidence. He argues by innuendo, and on occasion he just lets his imagine run away with itself. Steele’s dossier alleged that Trump had hired prostitutes while on a trip to Moscow. Vladimir Putin’s response was to crack a joke about Russian prostitutes being the best in the world. But to Harding it wasn’t a joke. As he writes: Putin may have been sending a second message, darkly visible beneath the choppy, translucent waters of the first. It said: we’ve got the tape, Donald! I wish I could say that this book was a joke. If you were going to write a parody of the collusion story, this is perhaps what it would look like. Unfortunately, Harding is deadly serious and I suspect that a lot of uncritical readers will soak it all up, not stopping to reflect on the awful methodology. So, I end on a word of warning. By all means read this book. But don’t do so in order to find out the truth about Donald Trump and Russia; do so in order to understand the methods currently being used to enflame Russian-Western relations. In that respect, Collusion is really quite revealing. Advertisements

That did not take long. Last night we found out that Tim Tibesar would not be retained as Purdue's defensive coordinator. Today it was announced that Linebackers coach at Florida State Greg Hudson would be taking over as the defensive guru under new coach Darrell hazel. FSU's on Scout.com affiliate broke the news: Sources indicate that Florida State linebackers coach Greg Hudson has accepted the offer to become the new defensive coordinator at Purdue. I love this news. Florida State had a defense that actually stopped people this season. In the two games I watched extensively (Miami and Northern Illinois) they strangled the life out of two pretty good offenses. Against Miami the Hurricanes jumped out to an early 10-0 lead then nothing worked for the rest of the game. Hudson was a DC at East Carolina from 2005-09. In that time the Pirates went 5-6, 7-6, 8-5, 9-5, and 9-5 with a pair of Conference-USA championships and a stout defense. The 2008 season was especially good as the Pirates opened with wins against Virginia Tech and West Virginia. Virginia Tech went on to win the ACC and the Orange Bowl that season. Hudson has been linebackers coach at Cincinnati (1997-2000), Minnesota (2001-2004), and Florida State 2010-12) while playing at Notre Dame for two seasons. Therefore, we've seen him before with the Golden Gophers (who were at their best under Glen Mason at that time) and the Fighting Irish. This season was a very good one for FSU, as the Seminoles were 12-2, won the ACC, and won the Orange Bowl with a defense-first philosophy. The Noles were 6th scoring nationally at 14.7 points per game given up and held teams to 10 or fewer points six times in 14 games. Christian Jones is one of the top-rated linebackers in the country and could go pro early as a player that Hudson coached. Telvin Smith is also pretty damn good in his own right. Hudson can help us fix a vast, gaping hole at linebacker that last saw Niko Koutouvides and Landon Johnson as dominant players a decade ago. Since they left Purdue had has a revolving door of decent, but not great linebackers and the overall defensive unit has struggled as a result.

As federal authorities continue to investigate Anthony Weiner's sexually charged online chats with an underage girl, DailyMail.com has learned that a grand jury could hear the case against the ex-congressman as soon as the end of the month. The FBI, the New York Police Department, and US attorneys in New York and North Carolina opened investigations into Weiner's conduct in late September, after DailyMail.com reported that the former politician carried on a months-long online relationship with a 15-year-old high school girl. Weiner has already been hit with a federal subpoena for his cell phone, CNN reported last month. The feds are apparently looking to move quickly - a federal grand jury is expected to hear allegations against Weiner in the next few weeks, sources tell DailyMail.com. A federal grand jury is expected to hear allegations against disgraced Anthony Weiner in the next few weeks, sources tell DailyMail.com The DailyMail.com first reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl (pictured), who he traded photos and sexy messages with for several months starting in January In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard' The timing of the potential hearing - shortly before the US presidential election - could cause a political headache for Hillary Clinton, whose top aide Huma Abedin is still officially married to Weiner, 52. Abedin announced in August that she was separating from Weiner, after he was caught sending a suggestive photo of himself to another woman with his four-year-old son in the background. Abedin and Weiner continue to share an apartment, and Clinton's political opponents have sought to tie the presidential candidate to the scandal-plagued former congressman. After DailyMail.com reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl, Donald Trump called on Clinton to return any campaign donations from Weiner. Legal experts say there are several possible avenues prosecutors might pursue if they are looking to build a case against Weiner under either New York State or federal laws. Celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina told DailyMail.com that Weiner could potentially face a misdemeanour of endangering the welfare of a child, which could carry up to a year in jail. Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin (pictured on October 15 with her son), is still officially married to Weiner, 52 Abedin announced in August that she was separating from Weiner, though they continue to share an apartment 'All you really have to do is look at the messages there to substantiate 90 per cent of her story,' said Tacopina. Other legal experts said he could have violated federal laws against sending obscene materials to minors. Weiner's conversations with the girl also drew criticism from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said during a press conference: 'If the reports are true, it's possibly criminal and it's sick.' The DailyMail.com first reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl, who he traded photos and sexy messages with for several months starting in January. In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard', and invited her to chat with him on the video-messaging application Skype. One message said: 'I would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.' Weiner and the girl used several anonymous messaging apps, like the one pictured above, where every line of text - and the sender's name - disappear after the message is opened. In one message he told he would 'bust that tight p***y so hard' The message continues, and Weiner says he would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week'. Weiner began talking to the girl in January, after she messaged him on Twitter The girl told DailyMail.com in an interview that she and Weiner also spoke over Skype, where the ex-congressman asked her to get undressed and masturbate in front of him Weiner began talking to the girl in January, after she messaged him on Twitter. In the messages, the girl told Weiner she was in high school and discussed her school activities and newly acquired learner's permit. The girl told DailyMail.com in an interview that she and Weiner also spoke over Skype, where the ex-congressman asked her to get undressed and masturbate in front of him and engage in teacher-student 'roleplaying' scenarios. In a statement to DailyMail.com, Weiner said that he was sorry for having poor judgment with his online conversations and said he might have been the victim of a 'hoax' in this scenario. This is far from the first time Weiner has been entangled in a sexting scandal. He resigned from congress in 2011 after he was caught sending photos of his crotch to a female college student, and admitted to sexting with several other women during his marriage. In 2013, he ran for New York City mayor, but his campaign tanked after it came out that he had been exchanging sexual messages with yet another college student. This past summer, Abedin announced that she was separating from Weiner after the New York Post reported that he had sent shirtless photos to another woman, including one that showed his four-year-old son in the background.

“There is no right answer. Cream or jam is fine.” So says 34-year-old Tingting He, in answer to the question of which to spread on the scone first in a British cream tea. It’s a relief to learn that I haven’t been doing the wrong thing all my life. We’re in the Essex tea room of an upmarket British jam maker and on the table before us is a plate of fluffy scones, a bowl of clotted cream and miniature jars of strawberry jam. Tingting may be Shanghainese but she’s giving me a lesson in the British tradition of afternoon tea. As brand ambassador for Tiptree Farm she delivers the same lecture in China’s top hotels. Her home country may claim to be a communist state, but it has a healthy appetite for the branding and rituals of the British ruling class. Tingting brings Chinese buyers for a tour of the Tiptree fruit farm. Tingting He and Carrie Gracie “It’s refreshing for them. They’re paying for the countryside with the birds singing. There are lots of rumours about Chinese food sources, so the quality gives them peace of mind. And also they know the Royal Family has issued us with a royal warrant. That gives them another level of security.” It’s easy to see why Chinese visitors might enjoy the tour. Tiptree exported its first jar of jam in the late 19th Century and still has some of the rambling walled gardens and ancient orchards of that era. Inside the jam factory, the scent of simmering strawberries gives way to a hot wave of orange marmalade. And then the heady spices of the Christmas pudding room. Tingting says she loves the tradition of setting light to the brandy. She thinks she can sell Christmas puddings in China. People like something festive, a good gift over Christmas or Chinese Spring Festival. It’s special, unique. They’re very curious and open-minded.” British food is not fabled in China. But on a state visit to the UK in 2015 the Chinese president was filmed eating fish and chips. And walking between pallets piled high with jams and chutneys, Tingting is excited about China’s new breed of gastronomic adventurers. “The more they read and travel and encompass different food cultures, the more they try new things. Blueberry jam is something they are willing to try. Cheese and redcurrant jelly. At the start they found it strange but now they think it’s good. They are inventing their own way of getting Western food into their culture, which is very exciting for us. ” When Tingting says “us” she means Tiptree. After many years studying in the UK, and with a British fiance, the Essex farm is as big a part of who she is as Shanghai. But the hard fact for exporters is that China is a long way away. Sea freight can take two months. Tingting hopes the rail freight service on the new Silk Road will shrink the time to market. When the train gets refrigerated containers next year, it should become possible to deliver British scones and Devon clotted cream. She dismisses my suggestion to bake the scones in China. “You can’t do that because British water and flour make for the special taste.” Once a symbol of British empire and engineering, now it’s China’s great age of the railways. The overland freight service from the UK began this year, carrying British hopes for post-Brexit markets from one end of the new Silk Road to the other. Tingting is impatient for faster progress.

(CNN) The story about a small-town police officer in Illinois becomes more convoluted by the day. Investigators interviewed a woman who said the officer asked for help finding a gang member to kill the administrator, Lake County Major Task Force member Christopher Covelli said. When authorities talked to the gang member, he denied having a conversation with Gliniewicz about a hit, Covelli said. No other evidence was found about a hit. At a press conference, Fox Lake Village Administrator Anne Marrin was asked how it felt to know a police officer apparently wanted her dead. "Unsettling," she said of the inquiry. "It's quite unbelievable and almost surreal." Marrin said she was asking questions about the youth group that police say Gliniewicz was stealing from. She said she didn't know about Gliniewicz' plans until after his death and doesn't feel in danger now. "Even though these threats were made months ago, I take these threats very seriously," she said. The hit man revelation is the latest turn in a story that has shaken Fox Lake, a community northwest of Chicago. Gliniewicz, a veteran officer with 30 years experience, was found shot to death on September 1 after he radioed that he was chasing suspects into a wooded area while on patrol. No arrests were made. The community mourned the shaved-head military veteran known as G.I. Joe. Authorities didn't truly suspect Gliniewicz had killed himself until about two weeks ago, when bank statements and text messages revealed the extent of his stealing, said George Filenko, Lake County Major Crimes Task Force commander. Money taken from Explorers Post Gliniewicz stole "tens of thousands" of dollars from the Explorers Post, an organization for youths interested in law enforcement careers, Marrin said. The police department sponsored the group and Gliniewicz was the leader. Investigators said he used the money to pay his mortgage and other expenses. Marrin said her relations with Gliniewicz were always cordial. "We never fought," she said. "There were no harsh words." But he was reluctant to provide information about the Explorers. She asked for but didn't receive schedules of activities, a list of members or parental consent forms, she said. "They didn't have a budget," Marrin said. "That was part of the problem." A day or two before Gliniewicz' death, she asked for an inventory of equipment owned by the Explorers, she said. He didn't provide it by the deadline and she asked again. "His email said, 'I will have that information for you by noon or 1 o'clock at the latest,' " she said. That was on September 1. Gliniewicz was found dead later that day. The lieutenant sent word over his radio at 7:52 a.m. that he was pursuing a trio on foot. Three minutes later, he requested backup. Radio communication dropped off. Colleagues would not hear Gliniewicz's voice again. The backups arrived about 8 a.m. and a few minutes later found Gliniewicz dead. His body was roughly 50 yards from his cruiser, police said. The officer's .40-caliber pistol was found at the scene. A massive manhunt followed, with 400 law enforcement officers looking through the woods around the crime scene and helicopters hovered overhead. Gliniewicz was wearing a bulletproof vest at the time he was shot, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. One of the officials said two shots hit Gliniewicz -- one stopped by his bulletproof vest, and another entered his torso at a downward angle. Recovered text messages Gliniewicz had deleted 6,500 text messages, Filke said. Investigators spent weeks recovering them. In one messages that police released, Gliniewicz talked about how much he disliked Marrin. "We have a new village administrator that is a power monger and is trying to control everything in the village," Gliniewicz said, adding that many officers were considering retirement. The officer allegedly had discussed causing harm to Marrin. "Hopefully she decides to get a couple of drinks in her and she gets a dui," said a person identified as "Individual #2." Gliniewicz replied, "She does, but not around here and no one knows where. Trust me ive thought through MANY SCENARIOS from planting things to the volo bog!" Apparently he meant the Volo Bog, a state park with a lake near Fox Lake. After Gliniewicz' death, investigators found packets of cocaine in his desk. Authorities haven't said whether those were the "things" he considered planting in her car. The evidence bag with cocaine was not marked and it did not have a case number on it, investigators said. The toxicology report did not include a positive finding for cocaine. The investigation is not over and more people may be arrested. The widow and a son of Gliniewizc are being investigated to determine whether they were involved in the embezzlement of funds, three law enforcement sources told CNN on Thursday. One source says the two are the individuals 1 and 2 referred to in the text messages released by the investigative task force. When reached Thursday, an attorney for the family refused to comment.

December 4, 2013 - TF2 Team We've been busy these last few months, trying to settle a longstanding debate as to what "bimonthly" actually means. Some members of the team are convinced it means "once every two months." Others maintain even trying to define it would ruin the enchanting mystery of reading. Anyway, three months later we're no closer to an answer. However, we are close to releasing the second issue of Team Fortress Comics, this time as a tri-monthly publication. How close? It's here. When we last left our gripping ongoing tale, Saxton Hale had lost Mann Co. to the scheming Gray Mann and disappeared to parts unknown. The TF2 mercs, now out of jobs, had scattered to the winds—until six months later, when Miss Pauling started reassembling the team under orders from an in-hiding Administrator. With Demo, Soldier and Pyro on board, our team heads to Teufort to rescue Spy and Scout from the hangman's noose. Find out what happens next in Part Two, titled "Unhappy Returns".

Following a monster sophomore campaign at Cartersville High School in Georgia that saw him pass for 3,655 yards and 43 touchdowns, Trevor Lawrence keeps his spot as the No. 1 player in the nation and headlines Thursday’s unveiling of the first full Top247 for the 2018 class. With the release, we have a starting point for the names to know among the nation's top soon-to-be juniors. CLICK HERE FOR THE TOP247! The list will change; it will evolve, prospects will drop and new names will emerge but at this early stage in the recruiting process, it's time to recognize the players that have already caught the collective eye of the college recruiting world. THE FIVE-STARS There are four initial five-stars in the Top247 for 2018: 1. Trevor Lawrence, QB, Georgia – A quarterback with a shot to go wire-to-wire as the nation's top ranked prospect. He checks every box: Size, arm-strength, athleticism, productivity. His recruitment looks like a Georgia-Tennessee battle. 2. Brey Walker, OT, Oklahoma – He's what offensive tackles look like in cartoons. A freak of a body at 6-foot-6 and 290 pounds who is also one of the nation's top heavyweight wrestlers. He's already committed to Oklahoma. RELATED: Walker among a few players in the hunt for Lawrence's top spot 3. Zamir White, RB, North Carolina – Whatever you want a running back to be, this kid can be it. A big, powerful back with speed, White has 20 offers but is high on Clemson and North Carolina at the moment. 4. Xavier Thomas, DE, South Carolina – The game-changing edge rusher that every defense is looking for. Thomas is ready to carry the torch for the defensive line tradition in the Carolinas for the 2018 cycle. TEAM RANKINGS SHUFFLE Based on the new grades handed out within the Top247 and beyond, Miami is clearly building a special class. Mark Richt has locked up three Top247 prospects in cornerbacks Josh Jobe and Gilbert Frierson and wide receiver Daquris Wiggins. The Hurricanes have two more committed from outside the Top247 in all-purpose back Jalen Patterson and cornerback Thomas Burns. RELATED: Gallery of legacy 2018 recruits Miami's haul of three Top247 prospects is tops. Three teams, all from the SEC, have two Top247 pledges. Alabama has the two highest rated prospects in tight end Macom Epps and offensive tackle Dare Rosenthal. LSU's two Top247 prospects are both homegrown talents in wide receiver Devonta Jason and cornerback Kelvin Joseph. Luke Matthews, the son of NFL Hall of Famer Bruce Matthews, makes it a fourth son to play for the Aggies. His older brother, Jake, was drafted sixth overall by the Atlanta Falcons in 2014. Luke joins wide receiver Montel Parker as the two Texas A&M commits on the list. POISED FOR BIG YEARS - It's a good time to be arriving at South Carolina if you're Will Muschamp. The Carolinas are loaded with talent in 2018 and Muschamp looks poised to benefit from it. So too will Clemson, North Carolina, NC State and the other regional recruiters. Between the states of North Carolina and South Carolina, there are 18 combined Top247 members. - LSU could be poised for a run at a recruiting national title based on its in-state talent to pull from. While the class doesn’t have any no-doubt five-star types yet, Louisiana looks to be loaded with depth in that mid four-star range. Fifteen four-stars in the Top247 are from Louisiana and the Tigers already have two of them committed. - Pennsylvania is also trending up in 2018. There are nine Pennsylvanians represented in the Top247. James Franklin and Penn State are looking to capitalize on that talent by landing an early commitment form the state's top player, Micah Parsons. Can Pittsburgh do the same by keeping local gun-slinger Phil Jurkovec at home despite Notre Dame and Ohio State overtures? CLICK HERE FOR THE TOP247!

Barcelona football star Lionel Messi last night wrote his way into the history books after notching up the Guinness World Records title for the most goals in a calendar year by netting his 86th goal of 2012. The 25-year-old Argentine edged past Gerd Mueller's long-standing record of 85 - set in 1972 - to set a new benchmark, which includes goals for club and country. Messi clinched the record after hitting the target twice in Barca's 2-1 win over Real Betis on Sunday. The Three-time World Player of the Year drilled in an angled shot after 16 minutes to equal the German's record before adding a second with a shot driven low in the 25th minute to set the new mark. video Speaking after the match, Messi told Spanish TV station Canal Plus: "I always say the same, it's nice for what it means but the victory is more important as it maintains our lead over the other teams". Mueller, who netted 72 for Bayern Munich and 13 for West Germany when he set the previous benchmark in 1972 and was 27 at the time, was among the first to congratulate Messi, telling Sport1.de: "My record stood for 40 years - 85 goals in 60 games - and now the best player in the world has broken it, and I'm delighted for him. "He is an incredible player, gigantic." Messi's attempt to break the record looked uncertain after he was stretchered off during Barcelona's Champions League draw with Benfica on Wednesday with a knee injury. However, despite admitting he thought he had kicked his last ball "for a long time because of the pain", the injury to his left knee was eventually found not to be as bad as initially feared, allowing him to start against Betis. Messi's path to the record has included 74 goals for Barcelona and 12 for Argentina in 66 games. He could still add to his final tally, with the striker set to feature in two league matches and one King's Cup tie before the end of the year. Nicknamed "The Flea" for his small frame, Messi passed Cesar Rodriguez's 57-year-old milestone of 232 goals to become Barcelona all-time leading scorer. Messi's month-by-month goal tally January 7 February 10 March 13 April 9 May 8 June 4 July 0 August 7 September 5 October 10 November 9 December 4 Messi's goal breakdown Barcelona Copa del Rey: 3 Primera Division: 56 Champions League: 13 Spanish Super Cup: 2 Club total: 74 Argentina World Cup qualifiers: 5 Friendlies: 7 Country total: 12 Overall total: 86

One of the world’s major terrestrial carbon pools is rapidly deteriorating as large parts of Indonesia’s peatlands are deforested and converted to oil palm and paper plantations. No longer a carbon sink, Indonesia’s peatlands are now a globally significant source of emissions. The June fires in Sumatra once again drew international attention to Indonesia’s forests. At the fires’ peak, 140,000 hectares were burnt in just one week. Most fires were in peatland, much of it on land destined to become oil palm, or Acacia plantations for the paper industry. Fire remains the instrument of choice for low-cost land-clearing. The fires were a reminder of the unsolved problem of peatland protection in Indonesia, and of the need for urgent action against the toxic combination of plantations, fire and poor governance that is destroying one of the world’s major carbon pools. What exactly is peatland? Indonesia’s peatlands are (or were) low-lying rainforests located close to coastal areas. Under the forest lies the peat itself, a below-ground accumulation of carbon-rich decayed vegetation. Formed in swampy conditions where plant material fails to fully decay, peat can build up to a depth of 10 meters or more over thousands of years. The greenhouse significance of Indonesia’s peatlands lies in the fact they can store up to 20 times as much carbon as tropical rainforests on normal mineral soils, 90% of it below ground. Peatlands release carbon for decades after deforestation as the underlying peat decomposes or is burnt. Indonesia has by far the largest area of tropical peatland in the world: 22 million hectares. Sumatra, the Kalimantan provinces on the island of Borneo, and Papua have about a third each. Global significance of Indonesia’s peatlands Indonesia’s peatlands hold at least 57 billion tonnes (Gigatonnes or Gt) of carbon, making them a globally significant terrestrial carbon pool. The pool is comparable to the Amazonian rainforest, which holds about 86 billion tonnes. To limit the world to 2 degrees of warming, we can emit no more than 600 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases between now and 2050. Indonesia’s peatland carbon alone, if released as CO 2 in the atmosphere, is equivalent to one-third of the remaining carbon budget. What then are the chances of Indonesia losing its entire peatland carbon stock? Indonesia’s peatland in a downward spiral Indonesia became a leading raw material supplier in the timber, paper and oil palm industries in the 1970s. Deforestation and degradation of Indonesia’s forests took place on an epic scale, and Indonesia lost more than half its peat forest cover. Just over 10 million hectares remained forested by 2010. Only Papua retained large areas of pristine peat swamp forest. This downward spiral won’t end any time soon. Each year Sumatra loses another 5% of its lowland forests; the situation is similar in the Kalimantan provinces. In all this, Papua is the new frontier. With logging on the rise, pulp mills planned and large areas of land under concessions, it is poised to go the way of Sumatra and Kalimantan. The extent of forest degradation is another sign of trouble ahead. Where peatland has been deforested, fragmented or drained, it is transformed from an unburnable resource into a tinder-box. A detailed study which analysed over 10 million hectares of peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan found that most was degraded. Less than 4% was covered by pristine peatswamp forests and just 11% or 1 million hectares were covered by relatively intact forests. The remainder is on a trajectory of fire and conversion into plantations, as the recent events in Sumatra demonstrate. Climate change itself is working against peatlands. In what is termed a “positive feedback cycle”, climate change is expected to produce more prolonged El Niño dry periods in Indonesia, leading to more intense fires, which in turn cause further climate change. During the 2006 El Niño, there were 40,000 fire hotspots on Indonesia’s peatlands. The peatlands of Sumatra and Kalimantan are headed for collapse. Major question marks surround Papua’s peatlands. What does it mean for Indonesia’s greenhouse emissions? The peatlands of Sumatra and Kalimantan are no longer a carbon sink but a carbon source. With steadily increasing emissions from decomposition of peatland combined with large contributions from fires during El Niño years, peatland emissions are now in the order of 1 Gt of CO 2 a year on average and rising. If Indonesia’s peatlands were a country, they would be the world’s 7th or 8th largest emitter. Over the coming decades, almost all of Sumatra and Kalimantan’s peatland carbon could be released. More alarmingly, with half of Indonesia’s peatland deforested or degraded, around 100 Gt of CO 2 or about 150 times Australia’s annual emissions could be released into the atmosphere over the coming decades. With this situation Indonesia has little hope of achieving its pledge to cut its emissions by 26% or 41% by 2020, which relies heavily on reducing forests and peatland emissions. What can be done about it? Indonesia has fought hard to address the problems of deforestation and peatland loss. It has launched major campaigns to stamp out illegal logging. It has established a Commission Against Corruption, whose clashes with the Indonesian Police are watched with fascination locally, and portrayed as the struggle of the plucky gecko versus the crocodile. Indonesia has attempted without much success to enforce the law banning plantations on deep peat, impose due process in issuing forest concessions, and prevent fires on peatland. It has implemented a moratorium against deforestation with the strong encouragement of Norway, established a national REDD agency (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and issued regulations to protect remaining forests. But in a country notorious for its entrenched political economy of korupsi, kollusi and nepotisme (hardly needing translation) these efforts have shown few results to date. The solutions are well-known and have been aired extensively. Converting peatland to plantations has to stop, but this doesn’t mean that the oil palm industry has to end. It does mean that existing concessions on peatland need to be transferred to degraded lands elsewhere. This is something Indonesia’s national development planning agency has long called for. Laws protecting peat and banning fires need to be enforced vigorously. And critically, Papua’s peatlands needs protection to ensure they do not go the way of Sumatra and Kalimantan. None of these things are happening. A better understanding of the global significance of Indonesia’s peatlands is needed to spur Indonesian and international policy-makers into action.

MADISON, Wis. – Protests at the Wisconsin Capitol over public workers’ collective bargaining rights cost more than $7.8 million for police, and damage to the Capitol will cost about $270,000 to repair, a state official said. Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch said during a news conference Friday that local law enforcement incurred $3.9 million in overtime costs from Feb. 14 to March 13. Another $3.5 million was spent on overtime for state agencies that helped cover security such as the Capitol Police, Wisconsin State Patrol, Department of Natural Resources and the Division of Criminal Investigation. Huebsch said that the state has not paid any claims yet, but will pay overtime and some justified food expenses incurred by local law enforcement once they’ve been audited. DOA officials also say a Capitol damage report written by restoration expert Charlie Quagliana found that protesters caused “3-5 years of wear” on the building in the course of two weeks that will cost $161,050 to repair. About $112,000 should be spent repairing damage to stonework, while another $30,500 has already been spent on extra custodial staff for cleaning. Quagliana’s assessment cost about $13,000. The damage was related to nearly monthlong protests that saw daily demonstrations of tens of thousands of protesters in and around the Capitol. Several thousand protesters flooded the Capitol rotunda daily, with many setting up camp under the dome and staying the night. The Capitol walls were filled with signs affixed with blue painters’ tape, which protesters used to avoid damaging the marble. Despite a handful of arrests over the course of the demonstrations, protesters maintained a peaceful presence and made efforts to clean parts of the building nightly. In his report, Quagliana said that the most significant damage was chipping and nicks to stones on the ground and first floors, which would have to be repaired through a process that includes trying to match the color of the stones. Quagliana noted residue left by tape from protester signs and oil damage from cardboard pizza boxes hung as makeshift signs. While he recommended a full cleaning of surfaces in public areas to remove the tape and residue, he also noted they have not had a full cleaning since the late 1990s’ and were covered with layers of dust and grime. Another $108,500 will be spent repairing damage to the Capitol lawn and its shrubs that were damaged by rallies of thousands held outside. Huebsch said there was no evidence of “malicious destruction” of the Capitol by protesters, but only “carelessness.” “I think $270,000 in damage to the Capitol is a huge amount,” Huebsch said. “That being said, it could have been much worse.” Huebsch initially estimated during a court case regarding access to the Capitol that the damage to the building would cost $7.5 million to repair. Huebsch said he did not regret making the estimate, which he says was the best information available at the time. “The DOA staff responded in the best way they could, and you’ve certainly seen the memos as to the ground work that they did … and just basically went back to what the restoration costs were 15 years ago when the Capitol was renovated,” Huebsch said. “So I don’t think it was a mistake because we were specifically asked that question in court.” Huebsch said that DOA will work with the Legislature to fund the reimbursements, but that they would likely come from taxpayer dollars. Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, who has been a critic of Capitol access issues since the protest, decried the cost of the added security to taxpayers. “The costs of these excessive security measures are still being incurred and remain in clear violation of a court order,” Risser said. “The protests that occurred this spring were peaceful. It is unnecessary to turn the people’s house into a fortress where the people are not welcome.” Huebsch said that although security around the Capitol is being constantly evaluated, the extra security would likely remain in place until after the collective bargaining issue has been resolved in the Legislature. DOA is also waiting on a report from the Department of Military Affairs that would detail the Capitol protests and security concerns arising from the event.

Last year, theatre owners and exhibitors in Pakistan temporarily stopped screening Indian films after Pakistani artistes and technicians were banned by the Indian Motion Pictures Producers’ Association (IMPPA) from in India. The controversial move was taken in the wake of political tension between India and Pakistan, post the Uri (Jammu and Kashmir) attacks in September. However, earlier this year, Pakistan lifted the ban on Indian films and began screening them in the country. And a few days ago, local distributors from the neighbouring nation apparently requested for Dangal (2016) to be released there. Aamir Khan and the film’s team were “absolutely okay” with that, especially since Pakistani audiences have always loved Hindi films and Indian actors. Aamir was surprised with the demands of the Pakistan censor board to omit the scenes featuring the Indian flag and playing the national anthem. ( You Tube ) However, Hindustan Times has learnt that the release of the film couldn’t go through when a “surprising” demand came in from the other side of the border. A source says, “When the film went to the Pakistan censor board, they were fine with it except for two particular scenes towards the end — one in which the Indian flag is shown and another in which the Indian national anthem is played after Geeta Phogat (played by Fatima Sana Shaikh) wins the gold medal. The Pakistan censors wanted the scenes to be edited out before they gave Dangal the green signal,” says an insider. Dangal is the Hindi movie industry’s biggest blockbuster with over Rs 385 crore at the Indian box office. ( You Tube ) But Aamir — who is also the producer of the film — felt that the “demand for the two cuts was surprising, because the film isn’t jingoistic in nature”. The source says, “It’s a sports-based biopic with no direct or indirect reference to Pakistan. The film only highlights India’s nationalistic sentiment, so what is the reason to chop off those scenes?” Aamir then decided that the film would not be released in Pakistan. Dangal is the Hindi movie industry’s biggest blockbuster with over Rs 385 crore at the Indian box office. “It will result in an economic loss to the tune of Rs 10-12 crore, as Pakistan is an important international territory vis-à-vis money, but he isn’t willing to edit the scenes in question. He is aware that not releasing the film could lead to piracy, but he is sure about what he won’t do,” adds the source. We tried to reach Aamir, but he was not available for comment till the time of going to press. But his spokesperson confirmed the news without divulging further details. Watch the promo of Dangal- First Published: Apr 06, 2017 18:09 IST

I was teased by my present for a whole 24 hours as I came home to a FedEx slip on Wednesday night. By Thursday, I was bubbling with excitement, and the presents did NOT disappoint! I had done a little internet stalking of my giver as he had messaged me to tell me it was on its way to me last week. A geek who loved tattoos, Star Wars, Harry Potter and reading? This was either going to go really, really well or really, really badly as those four things are pretty much at the top of my own interests. Wrapped individually, with old timey string closures and lots of detail, my box unfolded on itself. A Star Wars lunch box surrounded by green, red and white tissue paper. A card atop more tissue wrapped things inside telling me not to open until I'd unwrapped everything. And then. There it was. Coffee beans roasted with Maker's Mark. And a handcrafted, orange metal up-vote ornament. My gifter wrote a card admitting to some cyber-stalking of his own. (It's the internet after all - that's what we do.) Given that I frequently tweet my love of bourbon and regularly tweet about my boyfriend, coffee, Matt could NOT have picked better gifts for me. And the vehicle of delivery? A metal Star Wars lunchbox like I had when I was a kid? He wins all my up votes today! I instagrammed my present immediately with lots of capslock and squee'ing. A girlfriend's comment to the picture was "It's you in present form!" and she could not have been more right! Thanks Matt!

This year's 41st issue of Shueisha's Young Jump magazine is announcing on Thursday that an anime adaptation of manga creator Lynn Okamoto (Elfen Lied, Nononono)'s Gokukoku no Brynhildr science fiction manga is in the works. The original manga revolves around high school boy Ryōta Murakami, who cannot forget his female childhood friend whom he let die in an accident. Feeling that he must fulfill their promise of proving the existence of aliens, he has continuously looked up at the sky as a member of the astronomy club. One day, a girl named Neko Kuroha who looks exactly like his childhood friend appears as a transfer student. It turns out that she is a magic-user that has run away from a research lab. Okamoto began the manga in Young Jump in 2011. Shueisha will release the sixth compiled volume of the manga on September 19. Update: Updated title's reading.

In this July 6, 2012 photo, excavation continues at the Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi coal mining facility in southern Mongolia. Fully 90 percent of Mongolia's exports - coal, copper, cashmere and livestock - go to China, which in turn sends machinery, appliances and other consumer goods that account for a third of Mongolian imports. The rising trade with China now amounts to three-fourths of Mongolia's economy, one of the highest ratios in the world, according to an Associated Press analysis of IMF trade data. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) * China, India to propel coal past oil by end of decade * Muted impact from carbon policies aimed at curbing coal use * China to drive two-thirds of coal growth this decade (Adds comments from Alstom on Asia power market, coal supply and prices; provides graphic link) By Florence Tan DAEGU, South Korea, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Coal will surpass oil as the key fuel for the global economy by 2020 despite government efforts to reduce carbon emissions, energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie said on Monday. Rising demand in China and India will push coal past oil as the two Asian powerhouses will need to rely on the comparatively cheaper fuel to power their economies. Coal demand in the United States, Europe and the rest of Asia will hold steady. Global coal consumption is expected to rise by 25 percent by the end of the decade to 4,500 million tonnes of oil equivalent, overtaking oil at 4,400 million tonnes, according to Woodmac in a presentation on Monday at the World Energy Congress. "China's demand for coal will almost single-handedly propel the growth of coal as the dominant global fuel," said William Durbin, president of global markets at Woodmac. "Unlike alternatives, it is plentiful and affordable." China - already the top consumer - will drive two-thirds of the growth in global coal use this decade. Half of China's power generation capacity to be built between 2012 and 2020 will be coal-fired, said Woodmac. China has no alternative to coal, with its domestic gas output limited and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports more costly than coal, Durbin said. "Renewables cannot provide base load power. This leaves coal as the primary energy source," he said. ASIA TO FOCUS ON LOW-COST COAL Power infrastructure provider Alstom estimated that across Asia close to half of the 600 gigawatt of new power generators to be built over the next five years will be coal-fired, Giles Dickson, a vice president at the company said. "Coal prices are low," he said, adding that coal is about one-third of the price of LNG in Asia and about half of the gas price in Europe. Abundant supply is also supporting demand for coal. The traded volumes of coal will increase by a further 20 percent by 2020, Dickson said, including supply of lower grade coal from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa. "As the lower grade coal comes into the market, further downward pressure on prices will further drive demand," he said. Excess supply and faltering demand growth have depressed global coal prices this year. European coal futures have tumbled more than 20 percent, while Australian coal prices have plummeted from the record $130 per tonne hit in 2011 to around $80 per tonne as China's demand grew slower than expected. "If you take China and India out of the equation, what is more surprising is that under current regulations, coal demand in the rest of the world will remain at current levels," Durbin said. High fuel import costs and nuclear issues will support coal use throughout Northeast Asia, while in North America coal is still competitive in many locations despite abundant low-cost shale gas. "The struggling economy and low coal prices has rendered the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) ineffective," Durbin said. "The carbon price will need to reach 40 euros per tonne to encourage fuel switching, which is unlikely before 2020." In Southeast Asia, coal will be the biggest winner in the region's energy mix. Coal will generate nearly half of Southeast Asia's electricity by 2035, up from less than a third now, the International Energy Agency said in early October.

THE GOVERNMENT reckons laws on “suicide websites” are too lax and need rewriting before they do serious damage. Times are hard, and a recent spate of suicides has prompted the government to take a closer look at information available online about easy, painless ways to kick the bucket. Under a 1961 Suicide Act it is illegal to promote suicide in the UK, but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of web sites and forums popping up offering lethal advice. UK Justice Minister, Maria Eagle, reckons there isn’t a "magic solution " to protecting suicidal maniacs online. But with nothing better to do with its time and dwindling financial reserves, the Government has decided to amend the law and make it more obvious it applies online too. In other words, ‘If we can’t make people financially secure and happy enough to not want to do themselves in, we can at least make it bloody difficult for them to do so!’ The news comes just months after boffins at the British Medical Journal conducted a survey which concluded the Internet was more likely to encourage people to top themselves than talk them out of it. µ L’Inq BBC See Also Internet encourages suicide

REG REAGAN runs the rule over every NSW and Queensland player ahead of Game II and he hasn’t held back! NSW Sub-type: comment CAPTION: NSW Sub-type: comment CAPTION: NSW JARRYD HAYNE Says the turning point in his career was being shot at six years ago at Kings Cross. He says, ``It taught me the importance of speed and evasion’’. DANIEL TUPOU Going into this Origin II camp, Laurie Daley urged the young man to talk more and he actually did... Then he was encouraged to talk less! JOSH DUGAN Son of Queanbeyan grog monster, `Dave Dugan’. Dave recently went to give blood and when they drew it out, it formed a head. A man after my own heart. MICHAEL JENNINGS Is having his best season in years for the Roosters. Which isn’t saying much because his previous four years were pathetic. Boo Bailey artwork Source: The Daily Telegraph WILLIAM HOPOATE Recently returned from a Mormon mission where he broke the Mormon record for most Bibles sold. William said the secret to his selling success was kindness, as well as taking his father John, just in case they were considering not buying. JOSH REYNOLDS A typical rough, tough Western Suburbs boy. Was homesick all week in Coffs Harbour and had trouble sleeping. Eventually Laurie Daley had to stand outside his hotel room window and fire a handgun, just to make him feel at home. TRENT HODKINSON Has a huge phoenix tattoo emblazoned across his chest to remind him of all the injuries he’s overcome, and also a cellmate he became particularly fond of during a stint in Long Bay prison. NSW Origin stars Josh Dugan, Jarryd Hayne and Will Hopoate. Picture Gregg Porteous Source: News Corp Australia PAUL GALLEN When the great Bob Fulton labelled Paul Gallen a possible future Immortal, Gallen said it was his proudest moment. No-one has had the guts to tell Paul that Bozo was joking. ROBBIE FARAH Was at the centre of all the post-game celebrations at full-time as coach Laurie Daley turned Robbie upside down and used his nose as a yard glass for teammates to drink out of. AARON WOODS Last week, he put his Leichhardt house up for sale. The real estate guide described the house as, ``Just like its footballing owner, large, ugly and rather empty upstairs’’. Unsung heroes of the NSW Blues Origin team Beau Scott and Ryan Hoffman. Picture Gregg Porteous Source: News Corp Australia BEAU SCOTT One of the true heroes of Origin I. He walked into the sheds at full-time and collapsed, not through exhaustion but when he was reminded he had to go back and play for the Knights. RYAN HOFFMAN Stood up after Origin I and gave a stirring victory speech, it’s just a shame his teammates didn’t respect him enough to listen to it. GREG BIRD Has been brought into the NSW side because of a distinct lack of nastiness and suspect facial hair being the only thing missing from our Origin I performance. JAMES TAMOU His Origin I performance was superb. Coach Laurie Daley described his performance as ``almost as strong as his body odour.’’ Michael Jennings and team mates enjoying themselves during the NSW Blues Origin team captains run training. Picture Gregg Porteous Source: News Corp Australia ANTHONY WATMOUGH Laurie Daley paid tribute to Anthony Watmough’s new found maturity. Daley said, ``Last camp he actually managed to string a sentence together and spelt dog three times without making a mistake’’. TRENT MERRIN Or otherwise known as the fat, slow bloke who dates Sally Fitzgibbons. Sally, like most celebrities, does her bit for charity causes, but dating Trent Merrin is taking things too far. LUKE LEWIS Says he misses the threat of violence and all around general hostility of Penrith. Lewis said when it comes to violence, Cronulla really lacks consistency and needs to aim up, more than the occasional Australia Day. QUEENSLAND Sub-type: comment CAPTION: QUEENSLAND Sub-type: comment CAPTION: QUEENSLAND BILLY SLATER Poor diddums was apparently in doubt for the game after someone forced him to make the first tackle in his career and his shoulder’s a little sore. Pull out the violins everyone. Billy’s in the real world now. If only his heart was as big as his nose. DARIUS BOYD When Darius plays for Queensland his motto is, ``Never say die’’. When he plays for Newcastle, he obviously confuses that with, ``Never say try’’. GREG INGLIS Aggravated a knee injury he first hurt while trying to tow ``that boat’’ from Melbourne to Sydney. Is confident he’ll play after realising the crack he heard wasn’t his ankle joint, but his credit card snapping. JUSTIN HODGES Popular Queensland player who lists his likes as yelling obscenities at the less fortunate and not offering his seat to the elderly on public transport. BRENT TATE Was distraught following Origin I after getting spear tackled by Josh Reynolds. He said, ``I saw my whole life flash before my eyes’’. He added later that it wasn’t the tackle which distressed him, but the fact he’d come to realise what a boring, meaningless life he’s led. Maroons players Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston. Pic by Luke Marsden. Source: News Corp Australia JOHNATHAN THURSTON Won a Logie award for his near perfect depiction of a speed hump during Origin I. DALY CHERRY-EVANS Nicknamed ``Cherry Ripe’’ because like the chocolate bar exciting, reinvigorating and smooth on the palate. After watching his Origin I performance, he should be renamed ``Flake’’, bland, rather boring and falls apart with very little pressure. MATT SCOTT Rough, tough North Queensland boy, likes nothing more than a good feed and a fight. He can’t fight but by the look of him he certainly knows how to feed. CAMERON SMITH ``Pops’’ had a shocker in game I and spent the majority of the match limping around after losing his walking stick while changing his adult nappy at half-time. NATE MYLES Has earned the tag of ``Most hated Queenslander’’ and that’s just by his Maroons teammates. Likes to lead with his head, whether it be in games, at training or in the showers. MATT GILLETT Impressed many with his performance in Origin I ... unfortunately they were mainly family members or friends. Voted for himself as Queensland’s best on-ground. Will he won’t he? Daly Cherry-Evans has been sporting a leg brace. Pic Peter Wallis Source: News Corp Australia AIDAN GUERRA Stood up after Origin I in the Maroons shed and declared what an honour it was to play alongside his teammates. It’s a shame that they didn’t feel the same way about him. SAM THAIDAY One of the game’s fairest players, unless he spots an opponent who is vulnerable, smaller than he is and has his back turned, and then he’ll take a ruthless cheap shot. Lists his likes as parking in handicapped spots and stealing from the blind. JACOB LILLYMAN A huge cheer went up when Lillyman’s name was read out for this game ... nearly all the cheering was from Blues supporters. BEN TE’O Laurie Daley was so impressed by the way Nine news reporter Danny Weidler stood up to Ben Te’o at Rabbitohs’ training last week. Daley has made Weidler 18th man for NSW and is seriously considering giving him a bench spot. DAVE TAYLOR Nicknamed the ``coal train’’, because he’s big, ugly, unreliable and breaks down when the going gets tough. CHRIS MCQUEEN Was close to the Blues’ best player in Origin I. Hopefully Mal gives him more time tonight so he can entertain us even further with his hilarious fumbling and bumbling. A real court jester.

The Nuraphones determine your personal hearing profile by listening to "otoacoustic emissions" -- sounds emitted by the inner ear when stimulated -- with a tiny microphone. These emissions reveal a lot of info about our hearing, enough that Nura believes can be deciphered into a sort of hearing "fingerprint." Nura takes this fingerprint and uses it to adjust the audio signal from the headphones. The end result is a bit like a personal EQ setting, without all the guesswork, designed to make music sound like the artist intended (rather than amplify arbitrary frequencies). It's a tantalizing prospect: Corrective headphones that know the quirks and failings of your beleaguered ears. When we wrote about them last year, I'll admit I was skeptical. Pretty much every headphone pitch I have ever had (and that is many) has espoused the virtues of its revolutionary audio, be it custom drivers, magical sound engines, dynamic doo-dahs or cutting-edge EQ algorithms and so on. But none of that helps if you're not able to hear all of those sounds and frequencies equally. Setting up the Nuraphones is a bit more involved than most other headphones (in that there's even a setup process at all), but it's simple. Using the companion app (iOS/Android), you are first guided to make sure you have the headphones placed on your head correctly. Nuraphones have an unusual configuration that we'll get into later, but this makes it important to have them on just right during setup. Once you have them on properly, the app plays some audio that sounds a bit like a futuristic fax machine. This doesn't last long, but it soon moves onto the next stage of configuration, which takes a little longer. All in all, it takes about a minute. Once complete, you can save your profile and forget about it if you wish. Naturally, the first thing I wanted to know was how it sounded without the custom profile. Fortunately, this is easy to do in the app, as there's a switch to toggle between generic and custom audio. I'll be honest, the difference was incredible. In the generic setting, the audio sounded actually pretty bad. But once I put on the custom profile, the music sprang to life. The first thing you notice is that the music is louder. This alone -- a simple bump in volume -- is often enough to "trick" the brain into thinking something sounds better. (There's an old DJ trick of casually lowering the volume on the previous DJ's last record so that your first one invokes the same feeling.) I could tell straight away though that there was more going on here. The music didn't just sound louder, it sounded more "complete." All the different frequencies in the music felt balanced and natural, and not "juiced." After listening to a number of different tracks in different styles, I was actually somewhat excited. There's an intangible, magical feeling you get when listening to well-recorded audio on a high-end system. This isn't quite the feeling I had here, but it was similar. A sense that music feels alive -- clearer, almost. The Nuraphones have a few other features that help the music along, too. While they look like over-ear headphones, each cup has a protruding "stalk" that goes inside your ear. Both the outer section and in-ear part provide passive noise canceling, so the effect is doubled. In a room with people talking right in front of me (and no music playing), I couldn't hear a thing. The second trick that Nura added is tactile bass. Inside the on-ear part are transponders that respond to low frequencies (bass) with vibrations. It's not just an on/off vibrate, it's responsive to the frequency. Similar to how SubPac or Basslet work. The idea is that you "feel" the bass while the in-ear part focuses on the midrange and upward. It works very well (trust me), and I'd love to see this option in more headphones. If you're wondering, you can disable the "immersion" feature (as Nura calls it) or, conversely, go wild, and jack it right up to face-melting levels. By now, you can't help but have noticed that these are no regular headphones. The design alone will tell you that. When I first saw the two in-ear drivers poking out of the cups, I didn't know what to make of them. Each stalk is spring-loaded, so it doesn't poke you in the side of the head (or push into your ear too hard). The spring is cleverly engineered so it retracts/extends slowly. The upshot is that sometimes you adjust the headphones and then feel the tip of the stalk slowly worm its way into your ear canal. You might also have noticed these stalks are... mildly "anatomical" looking. It's a little weird, but not unpleasant. I did find myself having to readjust the Nuraphones a fair amount. Not constantly, but maybe two or three times an hour I'd find myself reaching for either side just to get it in a slightly sweeter spot. The earbud stalks aren't uncomfortable, but it's more about making sure you have them inserted properly, so it becomes a bit of an unconscious twitch to be sure you have them set right. The Nuraphones' weird earcups aside, the product experience as a whole is thoughtfully designed. The rubber sections that rest on the side of your head can detect when you're wearing them. This is, in fact, how you turn the Nuraphones on -- simply put them on your head. There are two touch-sensitive buttons "hidden" in the circular caps outside the strap (where you adjust the fit). These can be configured in the app to do whatever you want. There's likely a compromise here, as you'll have to choose between skipping tracks, audio profile toggling, answering calls ... whatever the two things you need the most. I often want to pause or adjust the volume on the go, but obviously want to be able to answer calls too, without reaching for my phone.There's no button to activate Bluetooth mode, either. Anytime the headphones aren't connected, they default back to pairing mode. This minimalist approach feels smart when it works. But if you need to toggle Bluetooth (as I sometimes did) or want to reboot the headphones (as I sometimes did), it's a bit of a guessing game -- setting them down for a bit and putting them back on. Likewise, occasionally I'd lift one earcup off to talk with a friend, and the headphones would turn off. They'd reconnect again in a few seconds, but it's a minor break in the experience. For those who prefer a wired connection, you have plenty of options here. The Nuraphones come with a USB A cable for charging, but there are USB C, micro-USB, Lightning and 3.5mm audio cables available too (for an additional cost). Despite the minor quirks, the whole experience feels refined. Smart, even. And it'll likely only get better. A feature in beta is that the headphones can detect who's wearing them (if they have a profile set in the app). I tested this with my wife, and it works well -- telling me "Welcome back, James" every time I put them on. You also don't need the app once you've gone through the setup -- the settings are stored on the headset, so you can forget about it completely if you prefer. If you're wondering, you can have up to three different profiles set in the app. It's also a good way to see how different your hearing is to someone else's. I tried my wife's profile, and it actually sounded pretty similar. Both mine and hers sounded pleasing, but mine did sound better (to me). I noticed higher frequencies were a little harsher in my partner's setting, and mids a little subdued. On a more practical note, in wireless mode the Nuraphones last about 20 hours, which is decent. You can also use them with your PC without the 3.5mm cable. When you plug them in via USB, your computer should detect them as an audio output device, so you can easily charge them while listening at work. It's worth noting here that there's no LED, so without the app, it can be hard to know if they are fully charged. For a debut product, the Nuraphones are impressive. The audio voodoo really does add a depth and a sense of clarity to music that almost makes you worry that you must otherwise be slogging through the world hearing the world only half as brightly as you could. The tactile bass adds another dimension (and means you need less volume), though your personal preference may vary with this one, and the slick design touches make this feel like a polished product. But they also introduce a few minor compromises or design quirks that might take some getting used to. If you can live with relinquishing control over connectivity and power to the headphones, you've got little to worry about. At $399/£349, the Nuraphones aren't the cheapest on the market, but they deliver an experience (and musical excitement) that's unique.

The following is an interview that will appear in the book How to Prove God Does Not Exist by Trevor Treharne, to be released in September by Universal Publishers. What is the fundamental conflict between science and religion? Is it one that will never be resolved? The two have opposing views on what constitutes reality. Science finds no need to include any substance beside matter in order to describe our observations of the world. Religion holds that there is a world beyond matter. Religion claims it has a way of obtaining knowledge that is separate from the scientific method of observation and experiment. The religious believe that we have an inner faculty of some sort that enables us to learn about the world, the universe, and reality without such observation. It is hard to see the two ever resolving this conflict. One of your more recent books, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, is certainly a timely one based on how common that argument is currently proving. What is your summary on what is wrong with the fine-tuning arguments? As I have said before, the universe is not fine-tuned for us--we are fine-tuned to the universe. I claim that the statements made about fine-tuning are not accurate. When theists talk about something being fine-tuned to one part in ten or a hundred orders of magnitude, they are simply incorrect. If you look more closely at the physics and cosmology, you will see that there is plenty of room to vary their various parameters and still maintain some kind of life. Our form of life is certainly sensitive to the parameters and if the parameters of the universe were different, our form of life wouldn't exist; I agree with that. But our form of life is not the only form of life one can imagine. Two rather traditional arguments still persevere amongst theists today, firstly that "something" could not come from "nothing"... When tackling this question in the past, I was often forced into a philosophical discussion on defining what one means by nothing. Once you define it, give it some property, then it becomes "something." So, I don't really know how you define "nothing," when you start talking philosophically. The way I handle that question now, which is consistent with all existing knowledge of cosmology and physics, is that the universe is eternal. It didn't come from nothing, or something for that matter, because it always existed and it always will. Our universe began with the big bang. I don't dispute that, but it could have come from an earlier universe and there are proposals available in literature--written by reputable scientists, published in reputable journals, and fully worked out mathematically--that provide scenarios for how our universe could have come from an earlier universe. They don't prove it really happened that way. However, they serve to refute any claim that our universe had to be supernaturally created ex nihilo. And secondly, how can "order" come from "disorder"... That's an easy one since you don't have to rely on complex biological arguments. You can go back to simple physics and look at something like water. Water appears in three phases: gas, liquid, and solid. If you are out in space or in a polar region, then the natural state of water is solid--ice. But that occurs only after water vapor, which is a gas, is condensed into liquid water, which is then frozen into ice. That original vapor has little structure and is about as simple as it could be. Then when it becomes a liquid, it develops some structure but can still flow and change shape. Finally, when it becomes solid ice it has considerable structure--crystal layers and so forth. So, there is this tendency in nature, in physics, for physical substances to go from simplicity to complexity. That is actually the natural trend of physical processes. Much is made of Christian apologist William Lane Craig today, yet your debate in Hawaii seemed to set him straight on several of his arguments, in particular his first cause argument. What do you make of his challenge? I've debated William Lane Craig a couple of times. I've written about his views, he has reviewed one of my books, and I have also spoken to him personally a number of times. So, we have had a fair amount of interaction. He is basically a very evangelically minded Christian theologian and philosopher. He uses a lot of cosmological arguments, but they don't hold water. They are already ruled out by existing science. "Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings" - what reaction has that view garnered since you suggested it? What made you think of it? I sent it into Richard Dawkins when he was trying to come up with bus slogans. He was delighted with it and said it was the best one he had received. Other people have picked up on it since, so it has worked out pretty well. It is one of those sound bites which people have made use of. What do you define as what is new about the New Atheism? When my book The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason came out in 2009, I took a lot of flak from old-time atheists who resented that all the work they had done promoting atheism, secularism, and humanism was not fully recognized. But there was a difference. When, starting in 2006, a whole series of bestsellers appeared by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and myself, these all got a lot of attention. In The New Atheism, I was focusing on those works and asking what it was about these bestsellers that were different from the old atheism, which I did acknowledge. The difference was that we are far more uncompromising towards religion. The term "accommodationists" is used for the people who were saying that they wanted to promote atheism, humanism, and science--but at the same time, we should respect the opinions of believers and, in particular, we shouldn't get into fights with them since we need their support for, say, the teaching of evolution in public schools. Moderate Christians tell us that they believe in evolution. But surveys show they really don't, since they claim evolution is God-guided, which isn't Darwinian evolution. In Darwinian evolution, humanity is an accident and that is unacceptable to Christians. They sure as heck don't want that taught in school. Scientists are very reluctant to criticize religion. They are afraid of a backlash that might affect scientific funding, which for a research scientist is critical. The new atheists understand that it makes sense to have as many friends as possible, but ultimately it came down to the fact that religious belief is based on magical thinking and ideas that cannot be supported empirically. This serves to retard the progress of science. There is a lot of antiscience built into the religious enterprise and we felt we had to take a strong stance and argue that when someone says something contrary to our best existing knowledge, whether religious or not, then we should not hesitate to respond to it. Not that we have to call them fools or idiots, but we have to present an intellectual arguments that explain the flaws in their reasoning. We needed to come out and say something and not pussyfoot around it.

U.S. Marines from Delta Company, Infantry Training Battalion, School of Infantry-East navigate their way through the obstacle course aboard, Camp Geiger, N.C., Oct. 04, 2013. Delta Company is the first company at center with female students. (Photo: Warrant Officer Paul Mancuso, U.S. Marines) Story Highlights Thirteen women taking the latest infantry course Services must open combat roles to women who qualify One test: Carrying an 85-lb. pack for 10 kilometers or more CAMP GEIGER, N.C. — Mist clings to the ground and the sun won't make an appearance for another three hours. The 263 Marines of Delta Company, Infantry Training Battalion, shoulder their bulky packs and set off. The air is still cool, but 85-pound packs are heavy. Soon the Marines are sweating through their camouflage uniforms and noncommissioned officers are moving between the two files of Marines, shouting encouragement and encouraging stragglers to keep up. The Marine Corps has been training infantrymen here since 1953. This year is different. Among Delta Company's 263 Marines are 13 women who have volunteered to participate in a closely watched experiment into the feasibility of integrating females into the infantry. The infantry is among a handful of military jobs that remain male-only preserves. The women, who are shouldering the same packs and wearing the same combat uniforms as the men, are barely distinguishable from the men as they trudge in the darkness. "We treat everyone the same," said Staff Sgt. Billy Shinault, a Marine instructor who chatted while working a bolt of chewing tobacco after the hike. "We would be doing them a disservice to lower the standards." Shortly before he left office earlier this year, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered the military to lift the ban on women serving in ground combat specialties, such as the infantry and special operations. He left it up to the services to figure out how to put the order into effect. The services have until January 2016 to do so. Exceptions would require approval of the defense secretary. Women have been serving in plenty of jobs that have exposed them to combat over the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan. But ground combat jobs have remained off-limits. These jobs require physical strength, feats of endurance and spending a long time in primitive field conditions. The infantry is the leading edge of the ground combat specialties. Its mission is as basic as it is elemental. Infantrymen carry what they need on their backs and kill the enemy at close quarters. "Every single one of them is an alpha male," said Sgt. Kenneth Hayden, a tactics instructor here. Fighting the old-fashioned way For all the talk of technology and a "push-button wars," the combat of the past decade has proven that there remains a need for foot soldiers going to war with little more than rifles and bayonets. A Marine earned a Navy Cross, the second highest award for valor, in Afghanistan after he killed a Taliban with the stock of his own weapon. At the end of the 10-kilometer hike the men and women line up to run through an obstacle course that requires scrambling over a wall, vaulting logs and climbing a rope. A woman Marine in infantry training at Camp Geiger, N.C. (Photo: Warrant Officer Paul Mancuso, U.S. Marines) Shinault explains to the Marines that the march is only a means to an end. After the hike is complete the Marines have to have enough energy to take the fight to the enemy. The Marine Corps hope to have about 300 women go through enlisted infantry training by the end of a year, providing enough data to assist in making decisions about the way ahead. Officers say it is too early to draw any conclusions. But a similar experiment conducted at infantry officer training at Quantico, Va., suggests that women struggle with the physical part of the training. The 13-week officer course at Quantico is significantly more demanding. About 25% of men do not complete the course and end up in other jobs. So far, 10 women have started the officers course under a similar experiment, but none have completed it, according to the Marine Corps. Here at the enlisted training Shinault acknowledged the women have more trouble with the physical requirements, but said the women match the men evenly in marksmanship, a key part of infantry training. The two-month enlisted course here at the School of Infantry-East is not as demanding as the officer course and it is more likely at least some women will complete it. The attrition rate for men here has been about 1%. Even if they do pass this initial group will not get to join the infantry, at least not immediately, since it remains closed to women. On the 10-kilometer hike two men and two women dropped out. The hikes here at the infantry school get longer, culminating with a 20-kilometer walk. Officers have promised that standards, honed after more than a decade at war, will not be changed to accommodate women. "There certainly is no pressure to lower those standards," said Col. Jeffrey Conner, commander of the School of Infantry-East. Army standards The Army is also undertaking studies as it works to open ground combat positions to women. Recently they validated the physical requirement of all their specialties in an effort to create tests that will screen applicants for those occupations. Among the hardest physical task was in the artillery field, where a three-person crew has to load 90 rounds of 155mm howitzer shells, which weigh about 95 pounds each, into an ammunition truck within 45 minutes. "Our guidance is not to lower the standards," said David Brinkley, an official at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, which is overseeing the analysis of job requirements. In order to get into the course here at Camp Geiger women had to pass the same physical test that men take, which includes a requirement to complete three pull-ups. The Marines asked for volunteers from a recent class of 114 females graduating from boot camp at Parris Island. Of that class, 49 met the physical standards to join. Of the 49, only 19 volunteered initially. Four dropped before training started and another two did not pass initial physical screening. One of them has elected to continue in a later class. Another was recently injured, leaving 12 in the class currently. Officials would not allow journalists to speak to any of the students in order to avoid interfering with the training. The Marines have taken pains to ensure that women don't feel alienated by the culture of the infantry, which has been an all-male enclave for years. The Marines, an infantry-oriented service with a gung-ho culture, have the fewest number of women of any service — less than 7% of the total force. Instructors have been told not to change the standards, but minor adjustments have been made at the training. Women in the Infantry Training Battalion are housed in separate barracks, but share the same conditions as the men when they go to the field. Male instructors are instructed to announce themselves before entering the female barracks and same for women instructors entering male barracks. The training battalion has added several women instructors who teach and also serve as mentors. Staff Sgt. Juanita Towns, an instructor here, said the women have the same concerns as the men: finishing the course. "We're all going to be Marines at the end of the day," Towns said. The instructors were also asked to tone down some of their profanity. "Some of the terminology they used in the past may not be as effective with women," Conner said. Follow @jimmichaels on Twitter. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1aZfAzr

With 2015 heading towards being the hottest year on record, India and China will negotiate for a treaty to put a check on the rising temperature. The two countries will formally move a proposal at the Bonn climate talks starting from Monday, proposing that rich nations should have pre-2020 emission reduction targets. India will also propose that rich nations give US$ 100 billion of public finance every year to fight climate change. An 89-page draft was agreed on in Geneva earlier this year for the Paris climate summit and at Bonn, negotiators of 196 countries will try to bridge differences on several contentious issues, including finance, mitigation targets, adaptation and technology transfer. An Indian climate negotiator said the task at Bonn would not be easy as most of the countries were not willing to budge from their stand. He added that as the Prime Minister had made it clear, India would be insisting on pre-2020 emission targets as part of the deal. “Having post-2020 emission reduction targets has no meaning unless rich countries have emission reduction targets for 2020. Many countries have opted out of the Kyoto Protocol making it a non-effective instrument,” the official said. The proposal is backed by China and a few other developing countries but may be resisted by the United States which has not given any emission reduction target for 2020. The negotiations come at the time when several tropical countries, including India and Africa, are battling an intense heat wave. The Geneva-based World Meteorological Organisation that monitors global weather conditions had predicted that 2015 could be the warmest year on record. The prediction is based on the hot weather conditions in various regions of the world in the first five months of 2015. Climate scientists believe that the weather condition this year should be a warning to countries that they need to act now to fight climate change. First Published: May 31, 2015 23:58 IST

Chancellor Carol Christ announced a new commission on Thursday to assess ways to better handle campus free speech situations like the canceled “Free Speech Week.” In a campuswide email, Christ said the intent of the new task force is to address the controversy that free speech issues have caused on campus, as well as to examine the “complex set of issues and propose solutions.” The commission will be comprised of students, staff, faculty and administrators. The commission is still in the very early stages of development, according to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof, and more information will be released in the coming weeks. Mogulof added that the chancellor is still finalizing the commission’s objectives and exact membership makeup. “The team must be willing to balance the law and the needs of our students,” ASUC Senator Juniperangelica Cordova-Goff said in a text message. “Free speech is important, but controversial speakers have proven their intention to cause unnecessary chaos. We cannot let this continue, as (Free Speech Week) directly blocked the education of so many students who felt unsafe to attend class.” Cal Berkeley Democrats President Caiden Nason said in a text message that he feels the formation of a task force will help the campus to receive input but that the results of such efforts will always remain the same. Nason added that the campus has begun to attract outsiders, some of whom have engaged in violence in past protests. According to Mike Wright, editor-in-chief of conservative student publication the Berkeley Patriot and one of the Free Speech Week organizers, he has no knowledge of attempts made by the campus to reach the publication regarding the commission. Although Cordova-Goff is currently unaware of how involved the ASUC will be, she said she believes that student representation must play an integral role in the commission. “If we desire a safe campus, we must act as a community, challenging systems and laws that allow for state-sanctioned violence and parallel speech,” Cordova-Goff said in a text message. Contact Mark Henry Salupen at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @salupen_markdc.

Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email His whole-hearted approach made Jonjo Shelvey a popular figure during his time at Liverpool. And his reputation among fans was further enhanced when he gave Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson a verbal volley in front of the Main Stand at Anfield in September 2012. Shelvey was leaving the pitch after being sent off by referee Mark Halsey for a two-footed lunge on Jonny Evans and he believed Ferguson had contributed to his dismissal by his reaction to the incident. At the time he accused Ferguson of ‘grassing’ him up. Now Shelvey has revealed further details about the clash which endeared him, not just to the Anfield faithful, but apparently to the United boss himself. He now accepts he was wrong to confront Ferguson – but says the Scot was impressed with his passion. Shelvey said: “I was a bit immature then and a bit silly. I pulled him aside afterwards and apologised to him and he was spot on with me. “He said, ‘no I like it. It shows you’ve got a bit of balls about you’. “I got a few high fives around town for the next few months, but it was silly from me on the professional stage. You don’t do something like that. “I was young and I was starting for Liverpool against Manchester United, games don’t come much bigger. “I was immature, the occasion got the better of me. It was part of growing up and you learn from those sort of things.” There was no happy ending to the 39th minute dismissal despite Steven Gerrard giving the Reds the lead. Second half goals from Rafael and a Robin van Persie penalty won it for United. Shelvey played 69 times in three years at Anfield, departing in the summer of 2013 to Swansea, where his form has earned him another England call-up.

Cyclist maimed in random shooting gets $15K in donations Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis gets donation check at the Mexican Consulate. June 29, 2017 (KXAN Photo/Alyssa Goard) [ + - ] Video AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The cyclist attacked on East Riverside Drive by a random passenger shooting out of a car received a large donation Thursday from Austin community members. These community members -- most of whom had never met 42-year-old Alonso Solis before -- came together to offer him care and financial support as he faces medical costs that seemed insurmountable. On June 7, Solis was biking back from the store late at night when he was hit in the back, neck, head and face with pellets from a shotgun blast. Police arrested 19-year-old Merrick Isaacks for shooting Solis. A police affidavit showed that Isaacks was looking to "blow off steam" and held an acquaintance who was driving a car at gunpoint. Isaacks then fired out of his car window around Austin. He is still being held in the Travis County Jail on two charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His bond totals $250,000. After that incident, Solis was unconscious for nearly two days, before waking up in the hospital. When KXAN visited with Solis at his home weeks ago, he could barely sleep or eat because of his pain. He has to take several months off from his job laying carpet because he can no longer lift his arm due to his injuries. He does not speak English or have many friends in Central Texas; his wife and four children live in Mexico. Solis had no insurance and no idea how he would pay for all of the medications. That is, until people from all around Austin stepped forward to help him. Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis of Austin was hit in the face while cycling by a shotgun blast from a random shooter. KXAN Photo/ Frank Martinez. Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis of Austin was hit in the face while cycling by a shotgun blast from a random shooter. KXAN Photo/ Frank Martinez. After KXAN's initial story, our station was overwhelmed with requests from people who'd watched our report and wanted to help. Rich and Anne Barger of Leander were two of those people. The two immediately set up a GoFundMe page for Solis. "As we were just reading that story my wife and I said, 'Hey we have to do something, no one has set up a GoFundMe,'" Rich Barger explained. Barger got in touch with others who'd seen the KXAN story, including Sasha Knight of Austin. "Once I saw Alonso's story that evening and of course being so heartbroken about it, I reached out to KXAN immediately afterward," Knight said. "That's when I started thinking OK this is something we need to start." Knight's friend, an immigration attorney, began communicating with Solis about his limitations and medical needs. Knight and the Bargers decided to set their fundraising goal to $25,000. As of Thursday morning, the page has raised nearly $15,000 with almost 400 people donating. To keep the fundraising transparent, the people behind this GoFundMe have been working with the Mexican Consulate in Austin to coordinate these donations. The Consulate helped Solis to set up a bank account where his donations will be sent to, Knight explained that the first donation of $13,450 was transferred to him Wednesday. Solis was notified of this donation at a formal presentation at the Mexican Consulate on Thursday. "I'd like to thank the people here for helping out very much, these people, even without knowing me, they've come forward to help out and again I want to thank you for what you have done," Alonso said with the help of a translator. "We get together to recognize the compassion, the charity, the good character of people who helped one of our nationals, Alonso Solis," said Consul General Carlos González Gutiérrez. "People who, in the face of tragedy, have shown solidarity to another human being regardless of ethnic or national origin." "Alonso didn't have his family here to support him and be with him," Knight said. "This can show Alonso how many people care about him and hope for a speedy recovery and some sense of healing." "Hopefully this outpouring of love overshadows what was this really negative thing," Rich Barger said. "What happens if we all start to do these things a little more often? Maybe that's altruistic, but that's kind of the heart behind everything we're doing here." Barger explained that to meet Solis' medical needs, they are looking to raise a total of $25,000. You can find the GoFundMe page here. The Consulate tells KXAN that Solis will need to have another surgery next Tuesday to remove more of the pellets in his head. Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis meets the family who organized the fundraiser for his medical expenses. KXAN Photo/ Alyssa Goard.

Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) in a new interview criticized former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE for writing her memoir so soon after the 2016 election. “What’s the f---ing point? Keep the fight up?” McCain asked in an interview with Esquire. “History will judge that campaign, and it’s always a period of time before they do. You’ve got to move on. This is Hillary’s problem right now: She doesn’t have anything to do.” ADVERTISEMENT Clinton published her memoir, “What Happened,” in September, less than a year after her surprise loss to President Trump. The former secretary of State has since taken to the speaking circuit to promote the book and reflect on the 2016 presidential race. McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to then-Sen. Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaChicago's next mayor will be a black woman Obama portraits brought more than 1 million visitors to National Portrait Gallery in first year With low birth rate, America needs future migrants MORE (D-Ill.), also told Esquire that the most difficult thing to do after losing an election “is to just shut up.” “One of the almost irresistible impulses you have when you lose is to somehow justify why you lost and how you were mistreated: ‘I did the right thing! I did!’” McCain said. “The hardest thing to do is to just shut up.”

Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general , but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only small adjustments to a popularly used dogmatism scale, results show that liberals can be significantly more dogmatic if a liberal domain is made salient. Studies 2–4 involve the domain specificity of integrative complexity. A large number of open‐ended responses from college students (Studies 2 and 3) and candidates in the 2004 Presidential election (Study 4) across an array of topic domains reveals little or no main effect of political ideology on integrative complexity, but rather topic domain by ideology interactions. Liberals are higher in complexity on some topics, but conservatives are higher on others. Overall, this large dataset calls into question the typical interpretation that conservatives are less complex than liberals in a domain‐general way. It has practically achieved the state of an axiom in our field that liberals are more complex thinkers than conservatives. This is not without reason. Meta‐analyses—covering a vast array of evidence related to dogmatism, uncertainty avoidance, openness to experience, need for closure, and integrative complexity—suggest that liberals are indeed more complex than conservatives (see Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Van Hiel, Onraet, & De Pauw, 2010; see also Joseph, Graham, & Haidt, 2009). Nonetheless, we believe that the judgment that conservatives are broadly simple‐minded may be premature. In the present article, we provide an alternative framework for understanding existing differences in complexity between conservatives and liberals and some initial evidence for that framework. Our approach focuses on considering more fully the topic domain that the complexity measurement is relevant to. The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking Complex thinking is domain‐specific.1 Someone can think highly complexly about the Iraq War, and yet still think very simply about broccoli. A lot of evidence using many different operations of complex thinking underscores this point (Conway, Schaller, Tweed, & Hallett, 2001; Houck, Conway, & Gornick, 2014; Judd & Lusk, 1984; Liht, Conway, Savage, White, O'Neill, 2011; Pancer et al., 1995; Sidanius, 1984; Suedfeld, 2000; Tetlock, Peterson, & Lerner, 1996). For example, the complexity of thinking can be affected by the importance of the content domain (Conway et al., 2008; Suedfeld, 2000) by the experience people have with the domain (Conway et al., 2008; Dasen, 1975; Suedfeld, 2000), by the heritability of the domain (Conway, Dodds, Hands Towgood, McClure, & Olson, 2011), or by the value conflict implied by the domain (e.g., Suedfeld, Bluck, Loewen, & Elkins, 1994; Tetlock, 1986). This fact of domain specificity has implications for our understanding of group differences in complexity. For example, while there is a tendency to think about cultural differences in complexity in monolithic terms, evidence (see Conway et al., 2001, for a summary) suggests that the culture‐complexity link is in fact domain‐specific. In methodological terms, the relationship between cultural groups and complexity is probably better described as a culture by topic‐domain interaction than it is by a main effect of culture (Conway et al., 2001). Ideology X Domain Interactions on Complex Thinking A primary assumption of the present article is that this same culture × domain interaction applies to political culture (defined operationally by political ideology). This idea is not new. Over 25 years ago, Tetlock (1986) pointed out that, because conservatives and liberals differ in which values are in conflict, his Value Pluralism Model predicts ideology × domain interactions. Of course, his model also predicts that integrative complexity most typically breaks left of center; thus, it expects both a main effect (liberals more complex) and interactions with issue domain. Yet it is worth noting that, while the main effect prediction has been widely discussed, the expected interaction has not.2 This is not from an initial lack of encouragement of its importance. In 1986, Tetlock (p. 825) encouraged researchers to study this topic: “Systematic study of such Ideology X Issue interactions should be a major goal of future laboratory and archival studies on this topic.” Tetlock's admonition has been largely ignored. Indeed, in the intervening 25‐plus years, very little research has been done to further this “major goal.” The research that has been done relevant to issue domain and complexity (e.g., Lavallee & Suedfeld, 1997; Suedfeld, 2000; Suedfeld et al., 1994; Suedfeld, Steel, & Schmidt, 1994) has generally not directly tested ideology X issue interactions, and, to date, no research program has systematically explored these interactions. Further, almost none of the research cited in meta‐analyses on conservative simplicity (Jost et al., 2003; Van Hiel et al., 2010) has directly accounted for such interactions. Why This Matters: The Present Research If we assume that (1) ideology × domain interactions are prevalent in reality, and (2) very few formal and systematic tests have been made of such interactions, then it is possible that existing research to date might misrepresent the actual main effect between liberals and conservatives on complexity—it may be that the small number of tested domains are on average ones for which liberals score higher on complexity and that the counterbalancing domains have yet to be tested. As such, before fully deciding on the question of whether or not liberals and conservatives differ in complexity in a domain‐general way, it is worth first more fully exploring ideology × topic domain interactions on a wide range of topics (see also Duarte et al., in press). To that end, the present research attempts to show how two of the major complexity‐relevant areas most typically used as evidence of conservative simplicity (Jost et al., 2003; Van Hiel et al., 2010) might be accounted for by ideology × domain interactions. Study 1 focuses on one self‐report measure relevant to complexity; studies 2–4 focus on complexity scoring of open‐ended statements. Study 1: Dogmatism is Domain‐Specific As Jost et al. (2003) point out, dogmatism has historically been conceptualized as closed‐mindedness that is indicative of rigid, black‐and‐white thinking; for example, Rokeach described dogmatism in terms of “closed belief systems” (1960, p. 67). Such closed belief systems are a hallmark of cognitive simplicity (see, e.g., Conway et al., 2008; Tetlock, 1986), and thus it is not surprising that other researchers have noted the kinship between dogmatism and cognitive simplicity (e.g., Suedfeld, Tetlock, & Streufert, 1992). For our purposes, this clear conceptual overlap suggests that it is reasonable for us to view dogmatism as a proxy for closed‐minded, simplistic thinking. Indeed, this overlap is the impetus for dogmatism being used as one of the major arguments in the case for conservative simplicity (Jost et al., 2003). Specifically, a large body of research, mostly using versions of the Rokeach (1960) scale we use here, reveals a positive relationship between dogmatism and political conservatism (see Jost et al., 2003). The use of dogmatism as an argument in the case for conservative simplicity is partially dependent upon its conceptualization as being free of specific topic content (henceforth, domain general; see Jost et al., 2003, for a discussion). And many of its items do, on the surface, appear to be domain general. On the other hand, some research suggests that students who rate the ideological content of the Rokeach items rate them as leaning towards conservative content (see Simons, 1968), and other academics have noted (e.g., Van Hiel et al., 2010) that not all the items on the scale are free of specific content. One of the items explicitly mentions religion, another item states an explicit idea about humans being helpless and frail, and a third item states that focusing on one's happiness is contemptuous. These items explicitly identify a domain of interest and in some cases state an opinion on that domain. Thus, it is possible that the standard dogmatism scale is not really a pure measurement of domain‐general dogmatism, but rather a measurement of dogmatism that captures domains on which conservatives are more dogmatic. In the present study, we directly test the degree that the specific content of the dogmatism questionnaire matters by altering the items to reflect one of two content domains (environmental issues versus religion). Study 1 Method Participants Four‐hundred and seventy‐five undergraduates at the University of Montana participated for course credit in large‐group sessions. Questionnaire Packets Participants completed a questionnaire packet which contained a dogmatism scale,3 a political ideology scale, and some demographic information. Dogmatism Eighteen items from Rokeach's (1960) standard dogmatism scale were used in the present study. Participants were randomly assigned one of three versions of the dogmatism scale. Some participants received the standard version of the scale as typically used in previous research on ideology (obtained from Ray, 1970). Other participants received one of two domain‐specific versions of the scale. In one condition, participants received a scale that was designed to measure their dogmatism about religion, and in another condition, participants received a scale designed to measure their dogmatism about environmental issues. These domain‐specific dogmatism scales were nearly identical to the standard scale and to each other, but they differed only in intentionally injecting content domains into the items (please see the online supplemental information for the entire scales). An example will help illustrate. A standard item on the dogmatism scale is “A group which tolerates too much difference of opinion among its own members cannot exist for long.” For the religious dogmatism scale, this item was adapted (italics and bold added for emphasis here) to say “A religious group which tolerates too much difference of opinion among its own members cannot exist for long.” The parallel environmental dogmatism questionnaire item read “An environmental group which tolerates too much difference of opinion among its own members cannot exist for long.” In this way, the two alternate domain‐specific dogmatism questionnaires kept almost all of the language from the original items but interjected a content domain (either religion or environmental issues) into the majority of those items. Inter‐item reliability for the scale was satisfactory in all three conditions (standard‐scale alpha = .74; environmental‐scale alpha = .74; religious‐scale alpha = .88). Four items on each domain‐specific scale were kept in their original (domain‐general) wording. These originally worded items appeared last in the list of 18 items. Political Ideology Participants also completed several items relevant to their political ideology. We focus on two of those here: standard bipolar items anchored by liberal/conservative and Democratic/Republican that have been used in prior research (e.g., Conway et al., 2012) and are similar to the vast majority of standard ideology measures (see e.g., Jost et al., 2003; Federico, Deason, & Fisher, 2012). These two items were highly correlated (r = .77) and thus averaged into a single measure of political conservatism (standardized alpha = .86). Study 1 Results Correlations within Condition We first looked at correlations within each condition. Replicating prior research, the standard dogmatism scale was positively correlated with political conservatism (r[111] = .27, p < .01). Does this finding represent a domain‐general or domain‐specific phenomenon? Our next two findings suggest it is domain‐specific. First, the religion dogmatism scale—a scale specifically designed on a domain on which conservatives are more likely to be dogmatic—showed virtually the same effect as the supposedly domain‐general scale (r[184] = .33, p < .001). More importantly, are conservatives unilaterally more dogmatic across all domains? The answer is no: They were significantly less dogmatic on environmental domains, as illustrated by the negative correlation between conservatism and environmental dogmatism (r[180] = –.26, p < .001).4 Absolute Values for Conservatives and Liberals Evaluating only correlations between scales, it is conceptually possible that the negative correlation between conservatism and the liberal‐focused scale could be driven more by a rejection of those items by conservatives than by an acceptance by liberals. To look at the plausibility of this alternative, we divided participants up categorically into conservatives (those who scored above 5 on the conservatism scale) and liberals (those who scored below 5 on the scale). This analysis thus drops those directly at the midpoint of the scale. We then ran parallel 2 (Type of Scale) × 2 (Ideology) ANOVAs for dogmatism (for this analysis, we dropped the standard questionnaire). This analysis showed a significant Type of Scale × Ideology interaction (F > 29.9, p < .001). More pertinent to our purpose are the absolute values for each scale, broken down by ideology. These are presented in Table 1. As can be seen there, the highest score for simplicity was for liberals (the highest cell was liberals on environmental dogmatism). These additional analyses with absolute values make any interpretation of Study 1 results based on a lack of liberal simplicity implausible.5 Table 1. Studies 1 through 4: Liberals and Conservatives by Topic Domain and Complexity Measurement Liberal Complex Domains Conservative Complex Domains Liberals Conservatives Liberals Conservatives Study 1 (Student) Dogmatism 2.55 3.21 3.61 3.07 Study 2 (Student) Complexity 1.90 1.75 1.54 1.76 Study 3 (Student) Complexity 2.02 1.67 1.54 1.79 Study 4 (Bush/Kerry) Complexity 1.81 1.34 1.39 1.93 Study 1 Discussion These results suggest that the relationship between ideology and dogmatism is domain‐specific. Conservatives are indeed more dogmatic on the religious domain; but liberals are more dogmatic on the environmental domain. It might be easy to dismiss these effects as reflecting the content preferences of liberals and conservatives (and thus as not reflecting anything about dogmatism per se). There are two reasons why we think such a dismissal would be premature. First, the dismissal is a double‐edged sword. If the question is “do prior results suggest that conservatives are more dogmatic?” then simply dismissing our results as only having to do with content raises the possibility that all dogmatism scales are picking up on content primarily (and not dogmatism per se). Second, more importantly, a quick dismissal of these findings does not capture the subjective nature of the items themselves. For example, consider that for dogmatism, liberals scored higher on the following questions: There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are for the truth that the planet is warming and those who are against that obvious truth. When it comes to stopping global warming, it is better to be a dead hero than a live coward. A person who thinks primarily of his/her own happiness, and in so doing disregards the health of the environment (for example, trees and other animals), is beneath contempt. The subjective tone of those statements is not merely “I am an environmentalist” but rather “all people who disagree with me are fools.” In these and other items from the scale, liberals are consenting to (1) categorizing the world into only two kinds of people, those that are right and those that are wrong, (2) a scorn of those unwilling to die for a cause, (3) a belief that persons who disagree with them are “beneath contempt,” (4) a belief that the only method for understanding the truth is to rely on experts, (5) an expression that true living involves believing in their cause, and (6) an appeal to the temporal urgency of the cause. Those are not just statements about having an environmental position: They are explicitly and overwhelmingly dogmatic statements. And liberals are more likely to agree with such sentiments—for an environmental domain. Studies 2–4: Integrative Complexity is Domain‐Specific The dogmatism measurement used in Study 1 has been widely used to make a case for conservative simplicity, but it is not without its problems (see Van Hiel et al., 2010). It is dependent on participants’ own self‐perceptions and willingness to express them; it also contains explicit ideological content. Although, as we have discussed, that “ideological content” argument cuts both ways and does not undermine our present purpose, it would nonetheless be advisable to also use a more open‐ended measure that ameliorated some of these problems. With that in mind, we turn next to one such open‐ended measurement of the complexity of thinking: Integrative complexity (e.g., Suedfeld & Streufert, 1966; Suedfeld & Tetlock, 1976; see also Harvey, Hunt, & Schroder, 1961; Schroder, Driver, & Streufert, 1965). Integrative Complexity Integrative complexity, which formed an important part of Jost et al.'s (2003) case for conservative simplicity, is used to assess the complexity of spoken or written communications according to their basic structure (see, e.g., Suedfeld & Bluck, 1988; Suedfeld, Bluck, & Ballard, 1994; Suedfeld & Leighton, 2002; Suedfeld & Rank, 1976). Passages are coded and assigned a score between 1 and 7 based on the level of differentiation (i.e., the extent to which differing dimensions are used to describe a given topic) and, if more than one dimension is present, integration (i.e., the joining of these multiple dimensions; see Baker‐Brown et al., 1992, for integrative complexity scoring details). In assigning complexity scores, the particular position argued for by the speaker/writer is irrelevant; the score is based on the structure of the passage. As such, the construct is able to capture the underlying mechanisms of the complexity of thought on a broad level that is conceptually independent of the content domain of the passage. It is in part for this domain‐general breadth that integrative complexity is the most widely used scoring system for measuring the complexity of open‐ended statements (e.g., Conway, Conway, Gornick, & Houck, 2014; Conway & Gornick, 2011; Conway et al., 2012; Conway, Suedfeld, & Clements, 2003; Conway, Suedfeld, & Tetlock, 2001; Houck et al., 2014; Suedfeld & Bluck, 1988; Suedfeld et al., 1994; Suedfeld & Leighton, 2002; Suedfeld & Tetlock, 1976; Tetlock, 1984, 1986). Domain Specificity Although it is intended to be a “content free” measurement, this does not mean that participants’ complexity is uninfluenced by the domain of interest. Indeed, although content domain is not often a subject of inquiry in integrative complexity research, topic domain has been shown to influence integrative complexity in some lines of research (Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011; Conway et al., 2012; Pancer et al., 1995; Suedfeld, 2000; Suedfeld, Bluck et al., 1994; Suedfeld & Wallbaum, 1992; Tetlock, 1986; Tetlock, Peterson, & Lerner, 1996). In all this work, the specific content domain that people wrote or talked about mattered for the ultimate complexity they produced. Thus, it is worth considering more fully the possibility of ideology × topic domain interactions on integrative complexity. Our Focus on Dialectical Forms of Integrative Complexity Recently, a new scoring system for parsing integrative complexity scores into different types of complexity has been scientifically validated (Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011). In particular, some integrative complexity scores are driven by dialectical complexity, which is complexity achieved by giving legitimacy to two opposing viewpoints. On the other hand, some integrative complexity scores are driven by elaborative complexity, which is complexity achieved by defending or expanding upon one particular viewpoint (see Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011). All materials in studies 2–4 in the present article were scored for integrative complexity and the two subtypes outlined in Conway et al. (2008). However, we here opt to present results in those studies on dialectical forms of complexity. Our reasons for doing so are three‐fold. First, almost all of the prior work on integrative complexity cited in meta‐analyses by Jost et al. (2003) and Van Hiel et al. (2010) comes from Tetlock. When scoring integrative complexity, Tetlock has only coded dialectical forms of complexity in his work (see Conway et al., 2008, for a review). As a result, the best direct comparison with prior work showing conservative simplicity is dialectical complexity. Second, this focus makes conceptual sense, because dialectical forms of complexity most clearly map on to the “rigidity of the right” idea. It is in their inability or unwillingness to think about things from different points of view that conservatives are supposed to be lacking: And dialectical complexity best captures that aspect (see Conway et al., 2008). Third, our results are inferentially stronger and more consistent using dialectical forms of complexity, and thus we acknowledge that part of our decision to present this set of results is ad hoc. However, we also performed all analyses using the larger integrative complexity construct, and the overall pattern of results in most cases is similar (see footnote 12 for details). It is indeed noteworthy that the key moderating effects reported here are strongest for the form of complexity (dialectical complexity) on which conservatives are supposed to be weakest. Using dialectical complexity below in Studies 2–4, we show that, contrary to the conservative simplicity hypothesis, no main effect emerges of ideology on complexity. Instead, these results are better characterized by an ideology × topic domain interaction. Study 2 Method Participants Over a three‐year span, 1,529 undergraduate participants at the University of Montana completed questionnaire packets, usually in large sessions exceeding 100 persons.6 Complexity Question Stems Participants completed one of 13 possible question stems that mostly dealt with political and social issues (example topic stems include “death penalty,” “abortion,” and “organized religion”). These questions were later coded by trained scorers for integrative complexity. Most of these items were chosen because they had been previously assessed for their heritability in one of two prior, well‐known heritability research programs (Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin, 1989; Martin, Eaves, Heath, Jardine, Feingold, & Eysenck, 1986; see Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011 for descriptions of topic selection). Complexity Coding Study 2 was scored by coders who had taken an intensive training course and achieved a .85 reliability score with an expert integrative complexity coder and who had subsequently received training in scoring the subconstructs. Responses were coded by 4–5 coders in “blocks” of around 500 responses each. For each block, every coder of that block scored all participants (and thus all topics) for that block. Thus, summary scores provided below are the average of 4–5 coders for each participant. To check for reliability, we computed standardized alphas for each block separately (because all coders scored all responses in each block, an alpha is an appropriate metric of reliability). Reliability on each of the different blocks was satisfactory, with standardized alphas for dialectical complexity ranging from .86 to .89 (M = .88). Ideology Measurement All participants completed the same two continuous measurements of political ideology used in Study 1. These were averaged to produce a single continuous “political conservatism” score. For both Studies 2 and 3, we converted this score into a categorical measurement in a manner identical to our method in Study 1 for testing absolute values. We did this because the current conceptual case being made is that conservatives are simple‐minded. Because the slope of the line in a correlation might not fully capture differences between persons on each side of the liberal/conservative divide, there is value in considering what people who classify themselves as being on the “conservative” side of the ledger are like, as compared to those on the “liberal” side, in more categorical terms. In addition, using a regression‐based approach for Studies 2 and 3 would be fairly cumbersome, due to the large number of topic domains (with topic domain serving as one of the primary IVs). Thus, for ease of testing interactions, an ANOVA‐based approach that uses categories for political ideology is more practically useful. Persons who scored above the midpoint were categorized as conservative, while those below the midpoint were categorized as liberal. This removed participants right at the midpoint, leaving 1,323 for our main analyses in Study 2 (liberal = 852; conservative = 471). Results and Discussion Analyses were first performed within a 2 (Ideology: Leans Right versus Leans Left) × 13 (Topic Domain) Factorial ANOVA. By far the strongest effect was for Topic Domain F(12, 1297) = 9.30, p < .001. No main effect of ideology emerged, with Conservatives (M = 1.72) and Liberals (M = 1.72) having virtually identical overall complexity means. However, an Ideology × Topic Domain interaction emerged, with Conservatives higher on some topics and Liberals higher on others, interaction F(12, 1297) = 2.03, p < .02. To understand the degree that this interaction was driven by conservative or liberal complexity (or both equally), we created some ad hoc categories representing the upper tertile of topics on which conservatives and liberals, respectively, were highest in complexity (defined by the difference between conservatives and liberals on complexity for that topic).7 Topics for which Conservatives were higher were: Death penalty is barbaric and should be abolished, Socialism, Refugees, and George W. Bush. Topics for which Liberals were higher on complexity were: People should find out if they are sexually suited before marriage, Bible truth, Alcohol, and Censorship. (These analyses remove the middle tertile of topics for which liberals and conservatives were roughly equal in complexity). A 2 (Ideology) × 2(Ad Hoc Domain Type: Conservatives Higher or Liberals Higher) ANOVA revealed, predictably, an interaction between Ideology and Domain Type, F(1, 734) = 12.31, p < .001. As can be seen in Table 1, this interaction is clearly a true crossover interaction, with conservatives scoring higher than liberals on some topics, while the reverse is true for others. Indeed, within‐domain type correlations showed roughly similar effect sizes for topics on which conservatives were higher in complexity (conservatism‐complexity r[346] = .12, p < .03) and topics on which conservatives were lower in complexity (conservatism‐complexity r[511] = ‐.08, p < .06; Fisher's Z‐test comparing correlations = 2.87, p < .01). In other words, the interaction between domain type and ideology is roughly equally attributable to the fact that conservatives were sometimes higher than liberals on complexity as it is to the fact that liberals were sometimes higher than conservatives. Study 3 Method Participants Over a two‐year span, 728 undergraduate participants at the University of Montana completed an open‐ended question pertaining to an array of attitudes in exchange for course credit, usually in large sessions exceeding 100 persons.8 Complexity Question Stems The 30 question stems were taken directly from a research program that was not motivated by ideology, but rather because they had been previously assessed for their heritability in a project (Olson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2001) that was independent of the heritability program used in Study 2. Complexity Coding As in Study 2, Study 3 was scored by 4–5 trained coders in “blocks” of around 400 responses each. For each block, every coder of that block scored all participants (and thus all topics) for that block. Thus, summary scores provided below are the average of 4–5 coders for each participant. To check for reliability, we computed standardized alphas for each block separately. Reliability on each of the different blocks was satisfactory, with standardized alphas for dialectical complexity ranging from .81 to .82 (M = .81). Political Ideology We measured ideology in a manner identical to Study 2 and further computed a single categorical score identical to that study. This method (which removes participants scoring directly at the midpoint of the scale) left 633 for our main analyses (liberal = 395; conservative = 238). Results and Discussion Initial analyses were performed within a 2 (Ideology: Leans Right versus Leans Left) × 30 (Topic Domain) Factorial ANOVA. Once again, by far the strongest effect was for Topic Domain F(29, 573) = 2.91, p < .001. No main effect of ideology emerged, with Conservatives (M = 1.74) and Liberals (M = 1.76) having virtually identical complexity means. Unlike in Study 2, no clear Ideology × Topic Domain interaction emerged in Study 3. However, the descriptive data suggested that sometimes conservatives were higher than liberals on some topics and vice versa, but that small cell sizes (in some cases n = 7) and the large number of cells made it difficult to find an effect in the 2 × 30 ANOVA. We subsequently followed an ad hoc procedure identical to that in Study 2: Specifically, we created some ad hoc categories representing the upper tertile of topics on which conservatives and liberals, respectively, were highest in complexity. Topics for which Conservatives were higher were: Wearing clothes that draw attention, Exercising, Death penalty, Open‐door immigration, Smoking, Reading books, Castration, Loud music, Roller coaster rides, and Easy access to birth control. Topics for which Liberals were higher on complexity were: Being assertive, Organized religion, Crosswords, Public speaking, Abortion on demand, Big parties, Playing organized sports, Making racial discrimination illegal, Education, Being the center of attention. (This analyses removes the middle tertile of topics for which liberals and conservatives were roughly equal in complexity.) A 2 (Ideology) × 2 (Ad Hoc Domain Type) ANOVA revealed an interaction between Ideology and Domain Type, F(1, 374) = 21.39, p < .001. As can be seen in Table 1, this interaction is clearly a true crossover interaction, with conservatives scoring higher than liberals on some topics, while the reverse is true for others. Indeed, within‐domain correlations showed roughly similar effect sizes for topics on which conservatives were higher in complexity (conservatism‐complexity r[230] = .15, p < .03) and topics on which conservatives were lower in complexity (conservatism‐complexity r[207] = −.20, p < .01; Fisher's Z = 3.67, p < .01). In other words, the interaction between domain type and ideology is roughly equally attributable to the fact that conservatives were sometimes higher than liberals on complexity as it is to the fact that liberals were sometimes higher than conservatives.9,10 Additional Results from Studies 1–3 To this point, we have talked loosely about ideology × domain interactions without clearly specifying the psychological explanatory variables that might account for such interactions. This is partially purposeful—our primary goal in this article is to discuss the potential for such interactions at a large level and not to engage in a debate about the specific psychological mechanisms underlying those interactions. However, on a subset of our data for Studies 1–3, we collected a few variables relevant to mechanisms that we believed might help explain those interactions. (We did not collect any of these additional variables for Study 4.) Thus, while not our primary purpose, we briefly summarize the outcome of those analyses here. Although we measured other variables (for a summary, see footnote 11), we specifically focus on a set of variables related to a given domain's attitude strength. Conceptually and empirically, attitude strength/involvement is negatively related to dialectical forms of complexity (see Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011). Thus, it is possible that liberals and conservatives differ on what topics they hold strong attitudes on, and this fact might help us better understand the domain‐specific effects of conservatism on complexity. We tested the implications of this in Studies 1–3. Study 1 For Study 1, all participants who completed the domain‐specific dogmatism scales also completed several measurements relevant to attitude strength/involvement with the topic domain: (1) topic importance, (2) involvement with the topic, (3) experience with the topic, (4) confidence in their opinion on the topic, and (5) attitude extremity (represented by how far they were from the midpoint in absolute terms on an agreement item). We converted each measurement to a z‐score and averaged them into an overall attitude strength score. Conceptually, if conservatives and liberals differed in what topics they were dogmatic about due to differences in attitude strength, then liberals should hold stronger attitudes on the topics they were more dogmatic on (and vice versa for conservatives). This conceptual logic directly predicts an ideology × topic type interaction on attitude strength, such that liberals would hold weaker attitudes on topics for which they scored lower in dogmatism (in this case, religion), while conservatives would hold weaker attitudes on topics for which they scored lower in dogmatism (in this case, environmental issues). We tested this by computing an ideology (liberal versus conservative) × topic type (environment versus religion) interaction on attitude strength. Results were consistent with our conceptual logic: Conservatives held stronger attitudes for the domain on which they were more dogmatic (conservatives = .27, liberals = .10), while liberals held stronger attitudes for the domain on which they were more dogmatic (conservatives = −.34, liberals = −.04), interaction F(1,304) = 8.69, p < .01. Studies 2 and 3: Attitude Strength/Involvement We performed a similar set of analyses on Studies 2 and 3. In particular: On a subset of our data that comprised part of the sample for Studies 2 and 3 (n = 423), immediately after completing the open‐ended statements that were scored for complexity, participants also completed measurements of attitude strength identical to those used in Study 1. As in Study 1, we converted each measurement to a z‐score and averaged them into an overall attitude strength score. Conceptually, if conservatives and liberals differed in what topics they were more complex about due to differences in attitude strength, then liberals should hold stronger attitudes on the topics they were less complex on (and vice versa for conservatives). Thus, we computed ideology (liberal versus conservative) × ad hoc topic type (liberal higher in complexity versus conservative higher in complexity) interactions. Results were largely descriptively consistent with attitude strength being an explanatory variable, but the inferential statistics were not overwhelming. In particular, for Study 2, conservatives held stronger attitudes for topics on which liberals were higher in complexity (conservatives = .16, liberals = −.04), while liberals held stronger attitudes for topics on which conservatives were higher in complexity (conservatives = −.07, liberals = .00). However, this interaction was not statistically significant (p = .184). A similar pattern emerged for Study 3, where conservatives held stronger attitudes for topics on which liberals were higher in complexity (conservatives = .21, liberals = −.04), while this difference was essentially not in evidence for topics on which conservatives were higher in complexity (conservatives = .05, liberals = .04). However, this interaction was also not statistically significant (p = .262).11 Study 4: 2004 Bush‐Kerry Debates George W. Bush has often been discussed as a prototypical representative of simple‐minded conservatives (e.g., Simonton, 2006). But if, as we have argued, complexity is largely driven by topic domain, then it is important to consider what domain politicians are talking about. In Study 4, we compare Bush versus his opponent in the 2004 election campaign, John Kerry, across 15 different topics that were discussed during the presidential debates. Method Paragraph selection Across three presidential debates, the two candidates were specifically directed to discuss 15 different topics, ranging from domestic issues (e.g., the economy) to moral discussions (e.g., abortion) to foreign policy (e.g., the Iraq war). From each debate, we randomly selected five paragraphs per topic per candidate. If the candidate did not provide five paragraphs in a given debate for a given topic, we used all the available paragraphs for that topic. Paragraph preparation and scoring As is standard in archival integrative complexity research (e.g., Conway & Conway, 2011; Suedfeld & Rank, 1976; Tetlock, 1984; Thoemmes & Conway, 2007), we removed all information from the selected paragraphs that might directly identify who the speaker is and replaced that with generic information, and then we presented the paragraphs in random order to four trained scorers. All scorers coded all paragraphs. Interrater reliability for the current project was satisfactory (dialectical complexity alpha = .75). The four coders’ scores were averaged into a single complexity score. Results and Discussion Analyses were first performed within a 2 (Candidate: Bush Versus Kerry) × 15 (Topic Domain) Factorial ANOVA. By far the strongest effect was for Topic Domain F(14, 65) = 2.40, p < .01. No main effect of ideology emerged, with Conservative Bush (M = 1.45) and Liberal Kerry (M = 1.48) having virtually identical overall complexity means. However, an Ideology × Topic Domain interaction emerged, with Bush higher on some topics and Kerry higher on others, interaction F(14, 65) = 1.88, p < .05. To understand the relative strength of Bush's and Kerry's complexity in contributing to this interaction, we created some ad hoc categories by grouping topic types together on which Bush's and Kerry's complexity differed. Specifically, we created difference scores for each topic representing the degree that either Bush or Kerry was higher on complexity for that topic, and then used the upper tertile of these difference scores for each candidate to create two categories: The five topics for which Bush was higher in complexity and the five topics for which Kerry was higher. (This strategy is analogous to the strategy for creating ad hoc categories in Studies 2 and 3). Using these criteria, the topics on which Bush was higher than Kerry were: Religion, Terrorism/Homeland Security, Stem Cells, Healthcare, and Affirmative action. The topics on which Kerry was higher than Bush were: Iraq, non‐Iraq foreign policy issues, economic issues, Abortion, and Education. A 2 (Candidate) × 2 (Ad Hoc Domain Type: Bush Higher or Kerry Higher) ANOVA revealed an interaction between Ideology and Domain Type, F(1, 58) = 15.44, p < .001. As can be seen in Table 1, this interaction is clearly a true crossover interaction, with Bush scoring higher than Kerry on some topics, while the reverse is true for others. Indeed, comparisons within‐domain type showed roughly similar effects for topics on which Bush was higher in complexity (effect of candidate t[28] = 2.93, p < .01) and topics on which Kerry was higher in complexity (effect of candidate t[30] = −2.63, p < .02).12 In other words, the interaction between domain type and ideology is roughly equally attributable to the fact that Bush was sometimes higher than Kerry on complexity as it is to the fact that Kerry was sometimes higher than Bush.13 General Discussion Are conservatives simple‐minded? The present results suggest the answer to this question is “yes…but only on some topics.” On other topics, conservatives are more complex than liberals. Using a large array of topic domains and methods, we found that the ideology‐complexity relationship is perhaps best described as an interaction between ideology and topic domain. Is this interaction hiding a larger main effect of conservative simplicity? Although we found no evidence here of the much‐assumed main effect difference between liberals and conservatives, our article is not an attempt to definitively answer that question with a “no.” Rather, the results presented here suggest that more caution should be given to definitively answering that question with a “yes.” It may be that liberals are, as many have claimed (Jost et al., 2003; Tetlock et al., 1996; Van Hiel et al., 2010) and as some of even our own prior work suggests (Conway et al., 2012; Thoemmes & Conway, 2007), pulled towards complexity more than conservatives: But we think such a judgment is premature. What Mechanism Might Explain Domain Differences in Complexity? Our primary purpose in this article is not to explain domain differences but to demonstrate domain × ideology interactions. It is nonetheless important moving forward to address what psychological aspects of topic domains might help us better understand when conservatives are more or less complex than liberals. We tested several possibilities on a subsample of our data, and the most promising explanatory variable to emerge was attitude strength. Conservatives and liberals differ on the topics for which they hold strong attitudes; and it may be that this variability in attitude strength helps us understand variability on complexity. Our data reveal evidence that is modestly consistent with this hypothesis: Across all three studies for which data was available, both conservatives and liberals held stronger attitudes for the topics on which they were more simple‐minded (operationalized in Study 1 as topics for which they were more dogmatic and in Studies 2 and 3 as topics for which they were less complex). Although this pattern was weaker for Studies 2 and 3,14 these results provide some preliminary evidence that the ideology × domain interactions on complexity‐relevant variables may be partially a function of domain differences in attitude strength. This suggests two possible ways forward for future researchers. First and most obviously, it would be useful to run studies with greater power for testing the explanatory ability of attitude strength measurements. This could be done by collecting a larger group of participants, but it also might be useful to select topics a priori that were especially prone to show attitude strength differences between liberals and conservatives and run more focused tests with those domains or otherwise directly manipulate attitude strength (rather than merely measuring it as we did in the present studies). Second, the measurements reported here are only one set of possible (and potentially imprecise) methods for measuring the attitude strength construct. Given the potential explanatory value of attitude strength in our understanding of complexity‐related domain variability, future work would do well to include more sophisticated methods of measuring attitude strength that do not rely solely on direct self‐report (e.g., Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995). Sample Limitations This research is not without its limitations. First, our work is entirely constrained to U.S. samples and thus should be interpreted with appropriate caution. We do not know if the results presented in Studies 1–3 would generalize beyond U.S. borders, and the results from Study 4 are from a single U.S. election. What might this mean for our interpretation of the results? First, it is important to note that much of the case for conservative simplicity has been compiled on U.S. samples. For example, in Jost et al.'s (2003) meta‐analysis, 81% of the reported N for integrative complexity and 44% of the reported N for dogmatism occurred on U.S. participants. Since part of our aim is to offer a potential alternative explanation for existing evidence in these areas, our data at least suggest that for the part of the current case which has been built on U.S. samples (a fairly large percentage), we should perhaps reconsider our collective interpretation of the evidence. However, it is of course still worth considering the potential effect of the cultural context on our results. Consider, for example, that one of the most salient differences distinguishing the United States from other potential Western samples is that the United States as a whole is more conservative than many other Western nations. What effect might this have? According to one of the most influential models of the origins of complex thinking, Tetlock's Value Pluralism Model (e.g., Tetlock, 1986; Tetlock et al., 1996), if this had any effect, it would be likely to bias the sample by making U.S. liberals more complex than liberals in other places (in particular on dialectical forms of complexity; see Conway et al., 2008).15 If the United States leans right as a nation, that means that those we call “liberals” are actually more “centrist”—and it is centrists that the Value Pluralism Model (and a related model of belief defense; for discussions, see Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011) predicts would be most complex. As a population, this would make the United States a skewed test that would more likely make liberals complex, because liberals in the United States would actually be less likely to be true liberals—but would in fact be moderates who are more likely on average to be complex (see, e.g., Tetlock et al., 1994). Thus, in a sense, our finding no main effect (and instead finding domain × ideology interactions) in a U.S. sample is more—rather than less—compelling evidence against the conservative simplicity hypothesis. Consistent with this notion, it is worth noting that additional research on integrative complexity and related measurements—research not cited in Jost et al. (2003)—suggests that if anything, the conservative simplicity effect may be less likely to be found in non‐U.S. contexts. For example, Van Hiel and Mervielde (2003) correlated political conservatism amongst Belgian college students with three measurements of complexity, and none of the measurements was statistically significant. Further, in Soviet Russia, leftist communist leaders were less integratively complex than capitalistic reformers who had a more conservative ideology (Tetlock & Boettger, 1989). Quite a bit of research on Canadian political parties is also inconsistent with the conservative simplicity hypothesis. For example, comparing Canadian college students affiliated with two conservative and two liberal political parties, Suedfeld et al. (1994) found no significant differences among them, and the highest overall group on complexity was the conservative Progressive Conservative party. Similar results for Canadian politicians were found by Suedfeld's (2000) scoring of the major political parties’ candidates for Prime Minister during the 1997 Federal election. Finally, Lavallee and Suedfeld (1997) found that more liberal environmental groups scored lower in integrative complexity (though not significantly so) than more conservative forest advocacy groups in a conflict in British Columbia over Clayquot Sound. In summary, we do not view it is likely that our results will end up being relevant to only the United States—they may indeed be more powerful in other regions.16 However, it is further worth noting that to the degree that our sample does in fact differ from other samples and would yield different results, this itself poses a problem for the rigidity of the right explanation. Even should our results prove to be specific only to the United States, this suggests at a minimum that cultural context is a potential moderator of the conservatism‐complexity relationship. Given how alarmingly few cultural contexts have actually been tested, this leaves open the possibility that, averaged across all cultures, we may find a far weaker (or even nonexistent) main effect for the conservatism‐complexity relationship. Thus, while we cannot of course definitively say that our work would generalize, our work at least makes it clear that we should pause in our larger conclusions about the relationship between conservatism and domain‐general simplicity. Research Content Limitations Our discussion has covered two of the major constructs in the argument for conservative simplicity: dogmatism and integrative complexity. But the case for conservative simplicity includes much more than just research on those constructs, and it includes quite a bit of evidence our domain‐specificity theory does not account for even within those two lines of work. It does not seem very likely that ideology × domain interactions account for all of the additional evidence discussed by Jost et al. (2003). As such, caution is warranted in interpreting these results in the larger picture. Indeed, consider three lines of evidence discussed in Jost et al. (2003) and Van Hiel et al. (2010): Need for closure/structure, openness, and preference for complexity (e.g., preferences for complex visual images and complex poetry). In each case, quite a bit of evidence exists tying political conservatism to a motive for simplicity; conservatives are higher in self‐reported need for closure/structure (and, in a more nuanced recent account, liberals who are higher in need for closure show more conservative policy positions; see Federico et al., 2012), lower in self‐reported openness, and lower in self‐reported preferences for complex images or poems. Each of those areas could potentially capture a more domain‐general motive—for example, need for closure is conceptualized as a need for nonspecific closure that cuts across domains—and yet our research cannot directly speak to that work. How, then, do we reconcile our work to this prior work? We discuss three different points of intersection below (see the online supplementary information for additional discussion in this regard). The multidimensionality of complexity and why it matters Even if we assume that this prior work on need for closure/structure, openness, and preferences for complex materials represent phenomena on which conservatives are indeed simpler, that would not invalidate the importance of our present findings. As many researchers have pointed out, complexity itself is multifaceted (see, e.g., Conway et al., 2014; Houck et al., 2014; Tetlock, Emlen Metz, Scott, & Suedfeld, 2014). Thus, even if the present results turn out to be limited only to dogmatism and integrative complexity—two aspects of the case being made for conservative simplicity—that would nonetheless suggest for complexity relevant to those types, the general case being made against conservatives in those areas needs revision. This would present to us a more nuanced and accurate picture of the relationship between ideology and complexity and suggest at the least that the current picture must be qualified by the type of complexity measurement under the microscope. The potential pitfalls of self‐report measurement Further, for the purposes of determining the average complexity of a group of persons, the kinds of self‐report measurements comprising the bulk of prior meta‐analyses have some additional potential pitfalls in interpretation. A self‐report measurement is at best an indirect marker of a potential complexity‐relevant motive. To take one example, Person A may be higher than Person B on the need for closure scale because they are actually more motivated for closure; but they also may be higher because they are more willing to report higher need for closure (even though both persons may actually have the same level of motive), or have a different set of social desirability templates, or a host of other factors that do not have to do with the actual motive.17 Further, self‐report measurements vary in their degree of clear overlap with complexity. Consider that the need for structure scale was intentionally designed to avoid explicitly mentioning cognitive structure (see, e.g., Neuberg & Newsom, 1993). Both the need for structure scale and the highly correlated and conceptually similar need for closure scale contain items that appear like conscientiousness as much as cognitive structure, and the need for structure scale is in fact correlated with both self‐reported conscientiousness and conscientious behaviors (Neuberg & Newsom, 1993). While need for structure/closure has been sometimes correlated with more face‐valid measurements of complexity (e.g., Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994) and is related to attitudinal “seizing” that seems clearly conceptually related to complex thinking (e.g., Webster & Kruglanski, 1994), it is nonetheless worth considering that the scales do not directly measure a desire to think in a complex fashion. In contrast, the scoring of open‐ended statements is a much more direct marker of the average complexity of particular groups (see Houck et al., 2014). While it, too, has its drawbacks, this at the very least means that when Person A scores higher than Person B, we can feel more confident that the output of Person A is indeed more complex than Person B on that domain. Thus, this provides a more direct marker of the outcome of interest—complexity—than do more indirect measurements of a self‐reported motive that is expected to be correlated to the outcome. The importance of the potential divergence between self‐report and open‐ended measures is underscored by the fact that the two types of measurements are often not very highly correlated (see Van Hiel et al., 2010, for a summary). Empirical scope of the present research Our work shows a different pattern of results than quite a bit of prior work. Why is that the case? There are three conceptual reasons why the literature writ large might differ with the results presented here. The first is the primary argument made in this article: That prior work has not fully accounted for domain × ideology interactions. But it may also be that our results are simply anomalous. After all, for any real effect in psychology, sometimes you will not find that effect, or find a reversal of the effect, just by chance. Relatedly, it is also possible that our results represent an overselection of topics on which conservatives score more complexly. Even if one grants the power of ideology × domain interactions, it of course does not follow that there is no meaningful main effect (see, e.g., Tetlock et al., 1996). Conservatives may be more complex than liberals on a certain handful of topics, but this may run counter to the general tendencies outlined by Jost et al. (2003) to pull them, at some larger psychological level, towards simplicity. Indeed, it is possible that we ourselves are exhibiting a bias in topic selection: Although the topics selected here (with a few exceptions) were not largely selected for reasons directly related to ideology at all (see Conway et al., 2008; Conway et al., 2011), it is nonetheless certainly possible that we selected a group of topics on which conservatives are particularly likely to score high in complexity, thus offsetting the larger tendency for liberals to score higher. We acknowledge the possibility, as well as the possibility that our results are simply anomalous. But, in considering the scope of our research set against the existing body of work, it is also worth noting that most prior research on ideology and complexity is very narrow in its scope of possible topics, whereas our research covered 43 separate (though sometimes overlapping) topic stems for the student population and 15 separate topic categories for the Bush/Kerry comparison. For comparison, in the integrative complexity research cited in Jost et al. (2003), only one topic distinction is made within‐study at all, and it only occurred for one study and included only two broad topic types. Thus, although a lot of research indicates that liberals are higher than conservatives in complexity, it is unclear whether or not that research covers a wide range of topics. About integrative complexity specifically, it is further worth noting that prior research on ideology and integrative complexity has been mostly limited to scoring politicians (Jost et al., 2003; Van Hiel et al., 2010), and thus may not apply to the vast majority of the population.18 Further, our research covers over 2,000 participants, which is more participants than all the integrative complexity research combined cited in Jost et al.'s (2003) meta‐analysis (combined participant N for all integrative complexity studies = 307). So while it would be premature to suggest overturning all prior evidence on the basis of our work presented here, it would similarly be premature to dismiss our evidence as having no bearing on the larger question. We do not know yet whether our topic selection method might show bias in favor of conservatives, and our evidence contains the largest set of domains studied to date.19 Concluding Thoughts Even the best research is potentially subject to qualification through scientific scrutiny. Our purpose here is not to claim definitively that conservatives are equally as complex as liberals. We are certainly open to the possibility that conservatives are simpler on average, and agree with Tetlock (1986) and Jost et al. (2003) that there are reasons it may be so. Our purpose is much more modest: It is to point out that, just as there are reasons why it may be so, there are also reasons it may not be so. We have presented one alternative possibility here and offered some empirical evidence in support of that model. As such, we believe that the present research might fit in with a growing body of work suggesting that negative attributes once attributed to conservatives might be domain specific (see, e.g., Brandt, Reyna, Chambers, Crawford, & Wetherell, 2014; Crawford, 2012; Suedfeld, Bochner, & Wnek, 1972). We hope this to be the beginning of the discussion with respect to complexity and have no illusions of it being the last word. Acknowledgments Portions of this article were presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Chicago, IL. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lucian Gideon Conway III, University of Montana, Psychology Department, Skaggs Building 239, Missoula, MT, 59812. E‐mail: [email protected] Footnotes 1 In the present article, we use the term “domain specific” to indicate the particular content that comprises the thought‐about subject in the same way that past researchers discuss “domains” or “issues” (e.g., Suedfeld, 2000 1986 In the present article, we use the term “domain specific” to indicate the particular content that comprises the thought‐about subject in the same way that past researchers discuss “domains” or “issues” (e.g., Suedfeld, 2 Because so many factors relevant to topic content affect complexity, there are many reasons—including value pluralism and attitude strength—to expect interactions between ideology and content domain on complexity. As such, it is reasonable to expect interactions at a larger level without necessarily being able to identify specifically why such an interaction exists in a particular context. Although we provide some preliminary evidence concerning one possible explanatory mechanism in this context, the primary purpose of this article is to demonstrate the expected interaction at a larger level and not to provide a coherent theoretical explanation for the interaction. Because so many factors relevant to topic content affect complexity, there are many reasons—including value pluralism and attitude strength—to expect interactions between ideology and content domain on complexity. As such, it is reasonable to expect interactions at a larger level without necessarily being able to identify specifically such an interaction exists in a particular context. Although we provide some preliminary evidence concerning one possible explanatory mechanism in this context, the primary purpose of this article is to demonstrate the expected interaction at a larger level and not to provide a coherent theoretical explanation for the interaction. 3 Participants also completed measurements of authoritarianism and modern racism. These measurements are not directly relevant to the present study and are not discussed further. Participants also completed measurements of authoritarianism and modern racism. These measurements are not directly relevant to the present study and are not discussed further. 4 We also compared correlations within each condition by the type of item (domain‐general versus domain‐specific). Removing the four domain‐general items from these domain‐specific scales increased the size of the difference between the religion and environmental dogmatism scales: The main conservatism measure was significantly negatively correlated for the environmental scale ( r = –.36, p < .001) and significantly positively correlated for the religion scale ( r = .34, p < .001; Fisher's Z ‐test for comparing correlations = 6.86, p < .001). When looking at the four domain‐general items on the otherwise domain‐specific scales, conservatives were nonsignificantly positively correlated for the environmental scale ( r = .10) and significantly positively correlated for the religion scale ( r = .23, p < .01; Fisher's Z ‐test for comparing correlations = 1.32, p > .05). These results indicate that there is some “leakage” from the domain‐specific environmental items that reduce the typical size of the conservatism‐political ideology correlation but still reveal that the nature of the item itself does matter, even within a domain‐specific context. We also compared correlations within each condition by the type of item (domain‐general versus domain‐specific). Removing the four domain‐general items from these domain‐specific scales increased the size of the difference between the religion and environmental dogmatism scales: The main conservatism measure was significantly negatively correlated for the environmental scale ( = –.36, < .001) and significantly positively correlated for the religion scale ( = .34, < .001; Fisher's ‐test for comparing correlations = 6.86, < .001). When looking at the four domain‐general items on the otherwise domain‐specific scales, conservatives were nonsignificantly positively correlated for the environmental scale ( = .10) and significantly positively correlated for the religion scale ( = .23, < .01; Fisher's ‐test for comparing correlations = 1.32, > .05). These results indicate that there is some “leakage” from the domain‐specific environmental items that reduce the typical size of the conservatism‐political ideology correlation but still reveal that the nature of the item itself does matter, even within a domain‐specific context. 5 Some prior research suggests that the relationship between ideology and outcome variables may be curvilinear and as such represents more about ideological extremism than about ideological content (e.g., Tetlock et al., 1994). As a result, we tested for the possibility that our results represent a curvilinear, rather than a linear, relationship. In particular, we ran linear regression on all key results while entering both a linear and two separate nonlinear terms for political conservatism as simultaneous predictors: (1) A mean‐centered quadratic term for conservatism and (2) an extremism score for conservatism (computed as the absolute difference from the midpoint of the conservatism scale). All analyses were performed within‐condition in a way parallel to that described above. Results overwhelmingly support a linear, rather than a nonlinear, interpretation of our results. For dogmatism, when linear and quadratic/extremism scores are entered simultaneously, all linear conservatism terms remained significant ( p 's < .01), while no significant nonlinear effects emerged in any condition on either nonlinear measurement ( p 's > .380). Thus, (1) all linear effects remained significant—and were of similar size and direction as in zero‐order analyses—when accounting for nonlinear effects, and (2) nonlinear effects overall accounted for very little of the variance. Thus, our results are much better construed as linear effects than as nonlinear. Some prior research suggests that the relationship between ideology and outcome variables may be curvilinear and as such represents more about ideological extremism than about ideological content (e.g., Tetlock et al., 1994). As a result, we tested for the possibility that our results represent a curvilinear, rather than a linear, relationship. In particular, we ran linear regression on all key results while entering both a linear and two separate nonlinear terms for political conservatism as simultaneous predictors: (1) A mean‐centered quadratic term for conservatism and (2) an extremism score for conservatism (computed as the absolute difference from the midpoint of the conservatism scale). All analyses were performed within‐condition in a way parallel to that described above. Results overwhelmingly support a linear, rather than a nonlinear, interpretation of our results. For dogmatism, when linear and quadratic/extremism scores are entered simultaneously, all linear conservatism terms remained significant ( 's < .01), while no significant nonlinear effects emerged in any condition on either nonlinear measurement ( 's > .380). Thus, (1) all linear effects remained significant—and were of similar size and direction as in zero‐order analyses—when accounting for nonlinear effects, and (2) nonlinear effects overall accounted for very little of the variance. Thus, our results are much better construed as linear effects than as nonlinear. 6 Portions of the data from Studies 2 and 3 were used also to test hypotheses about psychological extremism (Conway et al., 2008 2011 Portions of the data from Studies 2 and 3 were used also to test hypotheses about psychological extremism (Conway et al., 7 This ad hoc strategy is primarily an organizing device to simplify data analyses and presentation. First, one of the most important considerations in the domain ideology × interaction is whether or not conservatives show an equal effect on their highest‐complexity topics as liberals do on their highest‐complexity topics. The ad hoc strategy we employ is useful for quickly illustrating that the nature of the interaction across topics is equal on both sides in a manner that allows for easy comparison across studies. Second, this strategy helps simplify additional analyses (e.g., it provides a straightforward way to test the effect of potential explanatory mechanisms in the “Additional Analyses of Studies 1–3” section). Although we recognize that this method has the potential of exaggerating the strength of the interaction effect, it is important to note that two of the three domain × ideology interaction terms are significant (Studies 2 and 4) without any ad hoc organizing—and the one that is not significant (Study 3) has such small cell numbers and so many topic domains that it would be hard to find an interaction term. Thus, we think this ad hoc method is constructive way of summarizing these studies that accurately captures the nature of the data. This ad hoc strategy is primarily an organizing device to simplify data analyses and presentation. First, one of the most important considerations in the domain ideology × interaction is whether or not conservatives show an equal effect on their highest‐complexity topics as liberals do on their highest‐complexity topics. The ad hoc strategy we employ is useful for quickly illustrating that the nature of the interaction across topics is equal on both sides in a manner that allows for easy comparison across studies. Second, this strategy helps simplify additional analyses (e.g., it provides a straightforward way to test the effect of potential explanatory mechanisms in the “Additional Analyses of Studies 1–3” section). Although we recognize that this method has the potential of exaggerating the strength of the interaction effect, it is important to note that two of the three domain × ideology interaction terms are significant (Studies 2 and 4) without any ad hoc organizing—and the one that is not significant (Study 3) has such small cell numbers and so many topic domains that it would be hard to find an interaction term. Thus, we think this ad hoc method is constructive way of summarizing these studies that accurately captures the nature of the data. 8 Studies 2 and 3 have 423 overlapping participants (those participants completed an item used both in Study 2 and in Study 3). As in prior research using this dataset (Conway et al., 2008 2011 2008 2011 r = .02, p > .70. Studies 2 and 3 have 423 overlapping participants (those participants completed an item used both in Study 2 and in Study 3). As in prior research using this dataset (Conway et al., = .02, > .70. 9 Although there are solid conceptual and practical reasons for treating liberalism/conservatism as a dichotomous variable, we ran several sets of additional analyses using conservatism as a continuous variable. First, we used regression/correlation analyses to test the key interactions from Studies 2 and 3 while keeping political conservatism as a continuous measurement. In particular, we (1) correlated political conservatism with complexity within each topic domain, (2) created an ad hoc dummy variable (−1 = liberals higher, +1 = conservatives higher) representing the top and bottom tertile for the conservatism‐complexity relationship, then (3) ran a regression entering standardized political conservatism, topic domain, and their interaction term on complexity. Results were consistent with those presented in the text for the categorical measurement of political conservatism: For both Study 2 and Study 3, there was no main effect of political conservatism ( betas = .01 and −.03), but a significant interaction between conservatism and topic domain ( betas > .12, p 's <= .001). Although there are solid conceptual and practical reasons for treating liberalism/conservatism as a dichotomous variable, we ran several sets of additional analyses using conservatism as a continuous variable. First, we used regression/correlation analyses to test the key interactions from Studies 2 and 3 while keeping political conservatism as a continuous measurement. In particular, we (1) correlated political conservatism with complexity within each topic domain, (2) created an ad hoc dummy variable (−1 = liberals higher, +1 = conservatives higher) representing the top and bottom tertile for the conservatism‐complexity relationship, then (3) ran a regression entering standardized political conservatism, topic domain, and their interaction term on complexity. Results were consistent with those presented in the text for the categorical measurement of political conservatism: For both Study 2 and Study 3, there was no main effect of political conservatism ( = .01 and −.03), but a significant interaction between conservatism and topic domain ( > .12, 's <= .001). 10 For Studies 2 and 3, we further tested for curvilinear effects of conservatism in a manner identical to Study 1 by creating two nonlinear political conservatism terms. A summary of these results is that (1) the difference in the conservatism‐complexity relationship between conservative‐higher and liberal‐higher topics remains when accounting for nonlinear terms, (2) nonlinear effects overall accounted for a proportionally smaller amount of the variance than linear effects. In short, the effects reported here are better described as linear effects than curvilinear effects. A detailed report of these additional results is available upon request. For Studies 2 and 3, we further tested for curvilinear effects of conservatism in a manner identical to Study 1 by creating two nonlinear political conservatism terms. A summary of these results is that (1) the difference in the conservatism‐complexity relationship between conservative‐higher and liberal‐higher topics remains when accounting for nonlinear terms, (2) nonlinear effects overall accounted for a proportionally smaller amount of the variance than linear effects. In short, the effects reported here are better described as linear effects than curvilinear effects. A detailed report of these additional results is available upon request. 11 For Studies 2 and 3, we also performed similar exploratory analyses using several measurements relevant to attitude discrepancy from consensus opinion (both real and perceived), the degree to which participants perceived consensus to exist on the issue in question, and the amount of effort they put into writing the topic. No significant interaction effects—and no clear pattern—emerged across the two studies on any of these variables. Finally, for Study 2 only, we had a measurement of the value pluralism participants felt relevant to the topic they wrote about (constructed in a manner drawn from Tetlock, 1986 2009 2009 p = .01), conservatism did not interact with topic type to predict value pluralism (interaction p > .89), and thus value pluralism cannot offer a clear explanation as to why topic type moderated the effect of conservatism on complexity. For Studies 2 and 3, we also performed similar exploratory analyses using several measurements relevant to attitude discrepancy from consensus opinion (both real and perceived), the degree to which participants perceived consensus to exist on the issue in question, and the amount of effort they put into writing the topic. No significant interaction effects—and no clear pattern—emerged across the two studies on any of these variables. Finally, for Study 2 only, we had a measurement of the value pluralism participants felt relevant to the topic they wrote about (constructed in a manner drawn from Tetlock, = .01), conservatism did not interact with topic type to predict value pluralism (interaction > .89), and thus value pluralism cannot offer a clear explanation as to why topic type moderated the effect of conservatism on complexity. 12 For Studies 2–4, we tested whether the absolute value of the effect sizes for these ad hoc topic‐type comparisons differed for topics on which conservatives versus liberals were higher. In Studies 2 and 4, the effect was slightly stronger for topics on which conservatives were higher; for Study 3, the effect was slightly stronger for topics on which liberals were higher. However, across all three studies, Z‐ tests comparing the absolute value of these effect sizes revealed little evidence that they differed (Study 2 Z = 0.58; Study 3 Z = 0.54; Study 4 Z = 0.24; all p 's > .56). In other words, the absolute values of the ideology‐complexity effects are essentially equivalent between conservative‐higher and liberal‐higher topics in Studies 2, 3, and 4. This is consistent with the interpretation offered in the text. For Studies 2–4, we tested whether the absolute value of the effect sizes for these ad hoc topic‐type comparisons differed for topics on which conservatives versus liberals were higher. In Studies 2 and 4, the effect was slightly stronger for topics on which conservatives were higher; for Study 3, the effect was slightly stronger for topics on which liberals were higher. However, across all three studies, tests comparing the absolute value of these effect sizes revealed little evidence that they differed (Study 2 = 0.58; Study 3 = 0.54; Study 4 = 0.24; all 's > .56). In other words, the absolute values of the ideology‐complexity effects are essentially equivalent between conservative‐higher and liberal‐higher topics in Studies 2, 3, and 4. This is consistent with the interpretation offered in the text. 13 We also performed analyses for Studies 2–4 for integrative complexity. As occurred for the dialectical complexity results reported in the text, no significant main effects for ideology on complexity occurred on integrative complexity in Studies 2–4. Also the same as for dialectical complexity, for Studies 2 and 3 for integrative complexity there was a significant main effect of topic domain. The main difference between integrative complexity and dialectical complexity results occurred in Studies 2 and 4 (recall that Study 3 did not have an initial ideology × domain interaction): Namely, the initial domain × ideology interactions (using all topic domains in those studies) were not significant for integrative complexity. However, following a similar ad hoc strategy for Studies 2, 3, and 4 using integrative complexity (as opposed to dialectical complexity) yielded significant interactions in each case (interaction p 's < .01), and the overall pattern is very similar. Also, Study 4 showed no main effect difference for topic domain for integrative complexity. Given our focus on dialectical forms of complexity throughout this article, these inferential differences are largely irrelevant. We report them here for completeness. Our larger point remains the same: For the dialectical forms of complexity most directly related to the rigidity of the right idea, the pattern presented here is better captured by domain ideology interactions than by a main effect of ideology. We also performed analyses for Studies 2–4 for integrative complexity. As occurred for the dialectical complexity results reported in the text, no significant main effects for ideology on complexity occurred on integrative complexity in Studies 2–4. Also the same as for dialectical complexity, for Studies 2 and 3 for integrative complexity there was a significant main effect of topic domain. The main difference between integrative complexity and dialectical complexity results occurred in Studies 2 and 4 (recall that Study 3 did not have an initial ideology × domain interaction): Namely, the initial domain × ideology interactions (using all topic domains in those studies) were not significant for integrative complexity. However, following a similar ad hoc strategy for Studies 2, 3, and 4 using integrative complexity (as opposed to dialectical complexity) yielded significant interactions in each case (interaction 's < .01), and the overall pattern is very similar. Also, Study 4 showed no main effect difference for topic domain for integrative complexity. Given our focus on dialectical forms of complexity throughout this article, these inferential differences are largely irrelevant. We report them here for completeness. Our larger point remains the same: For the dialectical forms of complexity most directly related to the idea, the pattern presented here is better captured by domain ideology interactions than by a main effect of ideology. 14 For Studies 2 and 3, it is worth noting that we only had relevant data on a subset of our larger sample. Although attitude strength measurements did not show significant effects in those studies, they were in the correct direction and showed a similar pattern across both studies. We do not want to overinterpret these data; it is possible that this pattern does not represent a real finding. However, we view it as likely that a larger sample would find the expected significant effect for attitude strength. For Studies 2 and 3, it is worth noting that we only had relevant data on a subset of our larger sample. Although attitude strength measurements did not show significant effects in those studies, they were in the correct direction and showed a similar pattern across both studies. We do not want to overinterpret these data; it is possible that this pattern does not represent a real finding. However, we view it as likely that a larger sample would find the expected significant effect for attitude strength. 15 The relationship of extremism/value pluralism to complexity itself is more complex than this implies. Some work shows that more extreme views lead to more complexity (e.g., Conway et al., 2008 1984 2008 The relationship of extremism/value pluralism to complexity itself is more complex than this implies. Some work shows that more extreme views lead to more complexity (e.g., Conway et al., 16 There is a potential tension here. These results highlight that other studied nations may show less of a tendency for conservative simplicity, which is best construed as a main effect of context on the effect in question. It is possible that ideology topic domain interactions —the topic of this article—could conceivably be less in those nations, even as they are simultaneously showing less support for conservative simplicity. While we acknowledge this potential, the tension between the main effect and interactions in other nations is beyond the scope of this article. Our point here is that it is likely unreasonable to imagine that different contexts outside of the United States would produce a wildly different landscape in terms of the ideology‐complexity relationship, and based on what we know, if they produce anything different, that difference would likely not be favorable to the conservative simplicity hypothesis. There is a potential tension here. These results highlight that other studied nations may show less of a tendency for conservative simplicity, which is best construed as a main effect of context on the effect in question. It is possible that ideology topic domain —the topic of this article—could conceivably be in those nations, even as they are simultaneously showing less support for conservative simplicity. While we acknowledge this potential, the tension between the main effect and interactions in other nations is beyond the scope of this article. Our point here is that it is likely unreasonable to imagine that different contexts outside of the United States would produce a wildly different landscape in terms of the ideology‐complexity relationship, and based on what we know, if they produce anything different, that difference would likely not be favorable to the conservative simplicity hypothesis. 17 Importantly, many of these self‐report scales that are purportedly domain‐general may also contain very specific domain‐related content. (For discussion of this possibility relevant to openness, see Sibley & Duckitt, 2008 2012 Importantly, many of these self‐report scales that are purportedly domain‐general may also contain very specific domain‐related content. (For discussion of this possibility relevant to openness, see Sibley & Duckitt, 18 A recent study (Brundidge, Reid, Choi, & Muddiman, 2014 r = .20). They also scored for four different topic types and found no clear interaction pattern for ideology and domain. These data are clearly relevant to the larger issue of differences between conservatives and liberals, but it is less clear how relevant they are to integrative complexity specifically. Several considerations include: (1) Computer‐based measurements are at best an indirect approximation of linguistic complexity (see Tetlock et al., 2014 2014 r = .14; Conway et al., 2014 2014 A recent study (Brundidge, Reid, Choi, & Muddiman, = .20). They also scored for four different topic types and found no clear interaction pattern for ideology and domain. These data are clearly relevant to the larger issue of differences between conservatives and liberals, but it is less clear how relevant they are to integrative complexity specifically. Several considerations include: (1) Computer‐based measurements are at best an indirect approximation of linguistic complexity (see Tetlock et al., = .14; Conway et al., 19 It is also important to note that we are not arguing that Jost et al.'s ( 2003 Supporting Information Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's website: Filename Description pops12304-sup-0001-suppinfo01.docx19.3 KB Study 1 Questionnaires pops12304-sup-0002-suppinfo02.docx18.7 KB Additional Discussion: The Potential for Domain‐Specificity for Prior Scales. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

At Paris Games Week Today, the developers of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds announced it's leaving Early Access this December. "Late December," to be more precise. That release looks like it will closely follow the launch of the Xbox One version of PUBG on December 12, which will include the much-anticipated vaulting system that's coming to the PC test servers soon. An Xbox press release by PUBG Corp. CEO Chang Han Kim says the following: "In addition to announcing Xbox’s XGP launch date on December 12, we also shared the exciting news that we’re on track to launch 1.0 for the PC version in late December. This has been an amazing year for us and launching both 1.0 on PC and on Xbox through Xbox Game Preview are huge milestones for the team. I’m incredibly proud of how far we’ve come in such a short time, but I’m even more excited to say that we’re just getting started." The press release also states that the two versions of the game won't be identical, though that divide may not last long: "Both versions are being developed at the same time, but they both have their own separate roadmaps. Various Xbox One features and functionality will change and come online over time just like they have on PC, with our goal being to have both versions align to each other as soon as possible." The new desert map will be included in the 1.0 PC release scheduled for December, and will come to Xbox later. You can watch the full VOD of the announcements here, though watch out for some early audio problems (skip to 12:30 to save your ears, headphone users).

Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email In 40 days, Britain goes to the polls to elect a new Westminster government. Before that, the council elections next week will give us a sure indication of how Scotland intends to vote on June 8. Every poll and pointer so far suggests three things will come to pass: 1. The SNP will still be, far and away, the biggest party. They will not reach the high-water mark of 2015 with 56 of Scotland’s 59 MPs but they will still be totally dominant. 2. Labour will take an absolute battering all over the country. Even though they hope to have three MPs, it is entirely possible, if not probable, that they will fail to return a single Scottish Labour member to the Commons. 3. The Tories will continue their resurgence and gain seats from the SNP. (Image: Daily Record/DWP) And while there are still almost six full weeks of campaigning to go and much to play for, the reason these things are likely to happen comes down to just one, mammoth, all-consuming national political obsession: the constitution. The SNP want independence at all or any cost. The Scottish Tories want to remain in Britain at all or any cost. And while Scottish Labour are unwaveringly behind the Union, mixed messages from London Labour have sown the seeds of doubt about the party’s commitment to Scotland’s place in the UK. These doubts have spread like a virus amongst committed Labour unionists who are turning away from the bosom of a party they’ve supported all their life. Now they’re lending their support to the Tories, believing they offer the best chance of halting the SNP march to independence. While those former diehard Labour voters are fully entitled to protect their cherished place in Great Britain, voting to strengthen the Conservatives’ grip on power is a decision they may come to regret. Make no mistake, this is a Tory Government driven by right-wing ideology. Whatever it plans, it will not end well for the majority of working class Scots. (Image: PA) The Cabinet of Theresa May – the shameless Boris Johnson, Damien Green, Philip Hammond, David Davis, the Scot Liam Fox, et al – are no friends of Scotland. This newspaper was no fan of David Cameron and George Osborne. But this current bunch demonstrate a nastiness of an entirely different magnitude. The repugnant rape clause is a stark warning about how vindictive this Government can be. If they are emboldened by an increased majority at Westminster, be under no illusion, things will get worse. And it could get very, very much worse for Scotland. By way of explanation, we need to wind the clock back to early 2016. In January last year the Scottish Government were locked in bitter negotiations with the Treasury over a financial settlement required to fund the new powers coming to Holyrood because of The Vow. These fiscal framework negotiations revolved around the Barnett Formula. The Treasury team were desperate to cut billions from the Scottish budget. They have been itching to take money away from Holyrood for years and they saw this as a perfect opportunity. If they got their way, the outcome would have been disastrous for Scotland. (Image: Getty) They did not get their way for one very good reason … David Cameron had signed The Vow on the front page of this newspaper. To stiff Scotland out of billions of pounds would have left his questionable integrity shattered. So he ordered the Treasury to roll over and agree to maintain Scotland’s funding for five years until a review in 2021. The Treasury was furious. When Scotland’s settlement comes up for renegotiation in a few short years time, there will be no David Cameron there to protect us, even if last time it was for purely personal reasons. Next time, the discussions will be led by Tory ideologues and a Treasury department hell-bent on revenge for not getting their way last time round. The outcome could be catastrophic for the NHS, education, and everything else the Scottish Government pay for north of the Border. That’s bad enough but here’s the real kick in the unmentionables for those Labour unionist diehards tempted to swing behind the Tories. The Yes campaign lost in 2014 because they could not offer an economic argument that trumped Better Together’s pooling and sharing promise of staying in Britain. If the Tories do win a bigger majority this time round and they do rip up Barnett and cut billions from our budgets, the economic arguments for staying in the Union are null and void. And that may be more than enough to swing a second referendum the way of Yes. There is also little evidence that the Tories have ever been anything but disastrous for the Union. (Image: PA) It was the Tories who propped up Alex Salmond at Holyrood from 2007 to 2011, giving the nationalists the springboard they needed to hold the first independence referendum. It was the Tories who handed a major boost to Nicola Sturgeon’s 2015 general election campaign by cynically pitting England against Scotland by talking up a fantasy coalition between Labour and the SNP. And it was the Tories who caused the unholy Brexit mess that has put the prospect of a second indyref back on the table in such short order. Elections are about choices but it’s not always as simple as a cross in the box. We know a lot of thought goes into the decision. When people voted for the Tories in the Scottish election last year, it was to clip the wings of the SNP Government at Holyrood. Through the wisdom of crowds, the voters got exactly what they wanted – the SNP were denied a majority but remained the dominant force in Scottish politics. But attempting to transfer that nuanced voting decision – and few electorates are more experienced or sophisticated than Scotland’s population – to a Westminster election scenario is wishful thinking. (Image: PA Wire) Sure, more than half the voters are against independence and don’t want their votes to be interpreted as some kind of endorsement for Sturgeon’s political vision, as they were after the EU referendum. It’s understandable that people would want to “send a message” to the SNP about having their votes hijacked for another purpose. That is the reason Ruth Davidson’s Tories use that as their sly election message. But if people vote Tory this time, it is for real. A Tory Government – a vicious Tory Government – is what they will get. That will not be in their own interests or the interests of many of their friends and families. For Labour voters thinking of lending votes to Tory candidates, there are other choices. They may not be great choices but they are all better than voting Tory in 40 days. So be careful what you wish for. You have been warned.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What made Canada's Slims River disappear? A team of scientists say a melting glacier in Canada's Yukon has caused a river to completely change course. Their findings, published in Nature Geoscience, show how climate change can cause surprising geological events. The Slims River once flowed out to the Bering Sea, but now it flows into the Kaskawulsh River instead. This phenomenon, known as "river piracy", typically takes centuries but the study documented it over the course of one spring. "Nobody's ever seen a river piracy occur in modern times, at least to my knowledge," lead author Dan Shugar told the BBC. The geoscientist at the University of Washington Tacoma says he and six researchers from Canadian and American universities had planned to study the Slims River last summer. Image copyright Dan Shugar/University of Washington Tacoma Image caption An aerial photo shows the meltwater stream along the toe of Kaskawulsh Glacier, seen on the left, that is diverting fresh water from one river to the other But when they arrived in the Yukon it was barely flowing. They discovered that a small channel had eroded in a large glacier that fed a number of small lakes. The glacial lakes used to feed two river systems - the Slims River and the Kaskawulsh River - but when water from one lake poured through the channel into another, it cut the Slims off from its water source. The event is known as river piracy or stream capture, and can take thousands of years. But the researchers documented the piracy of the Slims River in just one spring. Prof Shugar said his colleague, John Clague, at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, had predicted this event just a decade before because of the area's unique geological formation. But no one knew when or how quickly the stream capture would occur. River gauges show an abrupt four-day drop in late May 2016, which then continued over the summer, the study found. By the time Prof Shugar and his associates got there, the Slims was basically "a long, skinny lake". "The Slims River was essentially cut off from how it was flowing before," he said. The change in the river's flow affected the whole landscape. Sheep are now grazing on the exposed river bank, while other rivers in the area are running high. Fish population, wildlife and lake chemistry will continue to be affected, the study noted. In the big picture, Prof Shugar said, the piracy of the Slims is a reminder that climate change "may bring surprises that we are not appreciating fully and that we're not necessarily prepared for".

In November, a University of Michigan student reported that a white male threatened to burn her alive unless she took off her hijab, a head covering worn by some practicing Muslim women. The campus police grabbed hold of that report and brought it to the Ann Arbor Police Department’s attention. However, a month later it was found that there was no evidence to support that the student’s reported incident ever took place. The incident, classified under the law as “ethnic intimidation,” is prosecuted as a felony. One of the law enforcement officials told Fox 2 that the prosecutor’s office would be reviewing the case. Because the hate crime that the woman falsely reported is a felony, if convicted, she will face a felony charge, as well. But Tuesday, officials at the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office told The College Fix in an email that they will not be pursuing any charges against the woman. “This office has declined to authorize charges in that matter,” said Steven Hiller Chief Assistant Prosecutor. The prosecutor’s office refused to comment any further. The woman reported the hate crime just days after Donald Trump’s election victory. A wave of Muslim students began reporting similar hate crimes across the United States around the same time. Several of those reports turned out to be hoaxes.

After a terrible personal performance against the Cowboys in round 8, Newcastle captain Kurt Gidley has announced that he’s heading over to England to finish out his career with Warrington. But first, there is a long NRL season to play out, and the Knights need to figure out where Gidley fits into their team. Gidley has his fair share of critics, but he is still a valuable player. He just needs to be used in the right way. Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Reddit Email Share At the moment Rick Stone is starting Gidley at fullback and moving him to hooker a third of the way through the game to make way for Sione Mata’utia at fullback. This is a frustrating, overcomplicated and downright ineffective tactic. For a number of years Gidley has been part of Newcastle’s spine, and he has a great deal of respect from his teammates and the coaching staff. But it’s becoming clear that he needs to move from a shot caller to a support player. Gidley often over calls his halves for the ball, only to make a poor decision when he gets it in his hands. The halves, Jarrod Mullen and Tyrone Roberts, seem to lose confidence and refuse to back themselves when Gidley is calling the shots. Advertisement Advertisement No one can doubt Gidley’s commitment to the Knights, but in his effort to do everything himself he makes a lot of errors. But despite all this Gidley does have a place in the Knights’ top 17 – as an impact lock/second row coming off the bench. Gidley has the ability to break tackles, make tackles, throw offload and play the ball at the line – all attributes which would make him an excellent impact backrower. He’s also one of the fittest blokes in the NRL, and holds the Knights’ record in the beep test. In fact, he has broken his own record a number of times. Compare his offensive career stats to those of Luke Lewis, who has also been slapped with the same utility tag for much of his career. Like Gidley, he has been forced to play a number of positions, from fullback to forward. Gidley: Games 236, metres per game 101, tackle busts 480, offloads 297 Lewis: Games 242, metres per game 82, tackle busts 385, offloads 173 Gidley also averages more tackles a game (18.3 v 17.4), less missed tackles (2.3 v 2.9) and has a better effective tackle percentage than Lewis (85.1 v 80.6). Advertisement Advertisement Yet despite this, Lewis is still considered an Origin and Test player, but Gidley is not. Why? Because of the amount of errors Gidley makes – he’s made a whooping 349 errors compared to Lewis’ 246. This season alone he already has four times as many errors as Lewis does. He simply tries too hard to make things happen when they aren’t on and as a result makes a ridiculous amount of errors. If Rick Stone is serious about turning the Knights into final contenders, he needs to bite the bullet and put Gidley on the bench to inject into the game when his team is lagging. Kurt Gidley is a work horse. As one of the fittest players in the competition he should be used like that, tackling his little red and blue heart out so other players a fresh when the game is on a knife edge. Think back to Game 3 of the 2010 State of Origin series. Advertisement Advertisement Gidley started from the bench and came on to replace Michael Ennis after 30 minutes – and went on to play the rest of the game in various positions. Just before half-time, Gidley set up an inside pass for Paul Gallen, who crash over for New South Wales’ first try of the game. In the 47th minute, Kurt scored the next try for the Blues which narrowed the point deficit to just one. He continued to make several linebreaks and defended strongly. He was later awarded the Brad Fittler Medal for NSW’s player of the series. Gidley was used perfectly in the game and demonstrated all the skills that would make him the ultimate impact player – setting up tries, scoring tries, making breaks and defending like a man possessed. If Stone moves Gidley to the it opens up room for Sione Mata’utia at fullback, or alternatively Dane Gagai could be given a shot at the custodian role (where he played his junior football) and Mata’utia could slot in a centre.

I strongly opposed the appointments of each of the three blind mice, Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers to their posts overseeing our nation’s finances. With Summers gone, the other two need to follow. Bernanke has now thrown his support to allowing criminal Banksters to continue to steal people’s homes using illegal foreclosure procedures and other practices so deceptive that they would make a robber baron blush. Top policymakers at the Federal Reserve are fighting efforts to rein in widely reported bank abuses, sparking an inter-agency feud with the FDIC and the Treasury Department. The Fed, along with the more bank-friendly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is resisting moves to craft rules cracking down on banks that charge illegal fees and carry ou et improper foreclosures. The FDIC supports such rules, according to an FDIC official involved in the dispute. The new regulations would rein in debt collection, loan modification and foreclosure proceedings at bank divisions called "mortgage servicers." Servicers have committed widespread fraud in the foreclosure process. While the recent robo-signing of fraudulent documents has received the most attention, consumer advocates have complained about improper fees and servicer mistakes that lead to foreclosure for years. "Given that we’ve seen a massive failure in servicing practices and a massive failure to address servicing in an honest way, I think this is important," says Joshua Rosner, a managing director at Graham Fisher & Co., and longtime critic of the U.S. mortgage system… [emphasis added] Inserted from <Huffington Post> The article goes on to analyze the abuses and the conflict in far greater detail, so I recommend clicking through to read the entire piece. Geithner has not yet weighed in on the issue.

Criticize cops involved in the G20 debacle? We can now expect to be arrested and face criminal prosecution. Forget a civil defamation suit—two members of the Ontario Provincial Police, aided and abetted by the Crown Attorney’s office, have chosen the nuclear option, charging a Kitchener activist with criminal defamation. (More here. Needless to say, this latest assault on the right to dissent has not received much coverage in the corporate media.) From the Waterloo Record: Dan Kellar, 29, was recently charged with two counts of defamatory libel by officers in the OPP anti-rackets squad as he left his Kitchener home on a bicycle. He was also charged with counsel to assault one of the officers. Police allege he published comments likely to injure the reputation of the officers by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that were designed to insult the officers. …Kellar says the officers who arrested him are from the same unit that arrested other AW@L members and activists in connection with G20-related allegations. “The cop who arrested me is the one who’s making all the arrests for conspiracy cases,” he said. He said police agents began infiltrating activist groups before the summit. The two undercover officers joined AW@L [Anti-War at Laurier, a campus peace group], but were kicked out in the spring of 2010, before the summit, because activists didn’t feel comfortable around them, he said. …The defamatory libel charges were laid against Kellar after he put out a “community alert” on AW@L’s website, peaceculture.org. Kellar learned one of the officers had been spotted in Toronto, and, “sent out the warning…’suspected infiltrator police agent spotted in Toronto,’” he said. In the posting, he made comments police allege are defamatory. Here’s the Criminal Code provision, rarely invoked in this country—until now, I guess: 298 (1) A defamatory libel is matter published, without lawful justification or excuse, that is likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that is designed to insult the person of or concerning whom it is published. Mode of expression (2) A defamatory libel may be expressed directly or by insinuation or irony (a) in words legibly marked on any substance; or (b) by any object signifying a defamatory libel otherwise than by words. Note that the bar for a successful criminal conviction (“beyond a reasonable doubt”) is considerably higher than for a successful civil action (“balance of probabilities”). Kellar’s words might exceed current legal boundaries, although they don’t seem to me to be much more heated than many of the public comments that erupted in the aftermath of the G20 police riot. And, given a recent court ruling, young Kellar may have an ironclad defence in any event—at least for now. I must at this point remain sceptical of the OPP’s motives: “outing” an undercover officer, with a photo, is more likely at the root of this remarkable arrest. But the latter sets a disturbing precedent for those of us critical—sometimes harshly so—of police actions during the G20, and elsewhere. For good measure, Kellar has also been charged with counselling assault on a police officer: He also invited people to “spit in the footsteps” of the officer if they saw him. For that, he is charged with counselling to assault. Now, hold on a sec. Not “spit on the officer,” but “spit in [his] footsteps,” the rhetorical opposite of “worship the ground he walks on,” something that too many police officers appear to expect from a compliant, forelock-tugging citizenry. Last I heard, footsteps are not part of the body, and are not protected by the Criminal Code. If this is the rock upon which the Crown is to build a case of counselling assault, one can only wonder at the strength of the criminal libel case, and whether this is simply punishment by process. But in a free society, we shouldn’t have to wonder.

Organ designers, chief drone experience designers, cybernetic director. Those are some of the fanciful new roles that could be created by the global design industry in the next few years. advertisement advertisement But what about current design roles? How will they favor over the next 15 years? Will every company by 2030 have a chief design officer, or will they all go extinct? Should a generation of creatives who grew up worshipping Apple’s Jonathan Ive put all their eggs in the industrial design basket? We talked to a dozen design leaders and thinkers from companies such as Frog, Artefact, and Ideo to find out which design jobs could die out in the next 15 years, and which could grow. There’s no empirical evidence behind these picks, so they shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Still, they represent the informed opinions of people who get paid to think about the future. Design Jobs That Will Die UX Designers User experience designers are among the most in-demand designers working today. So how could their jobs disappear? According to Teague designers Clint Rule, Eric Lawrence, Matt McElvogue, “UX design” has become too broad and muddled. “The design community has played fast and loose with the title ‘UX designer,'” they write in an email. “From job posting to job posting and year to year, it jumps between disparate responsibilities, tools, and disciplines. Presently it seems to have settled on the title representing democratized design skills that produce friendly GUIs.” In the future, they predict that UX design will divide into more specialized fields. “The expanding domain of user experience and its myriad disciplines will push the title ‘UX designer’ to a breaking point, unbundling its responsibilities to the appropriate specialists,” they say. Visual Designers Visual designers are the ones responsible for the way an app looks. UX designers, meanwhile, are the ones who concentrate on how it feels. A lot of times, designers do both, but going forward, jobs that require just visual design skills are going to die out. That’s according to Charles Fulford, Executive Creative Director of Elephant, the San Francisco-based, Apple-centric stealth arm of the digital agency Huge. “Gone are the days of UX dumping a ton of wireframes on visual designers,” he says, as well as “the days of visual designers being clueless about usability.” What are needed instead are designers who can not only come up with the look of an idea, but make it real, with actual programming and prototyping skills. Rob Girling, cofounder of the design consultancy Artefact, agrees. “In the next 10 years, all visual design jobs will start to be augmented by algorithmic visual approaches,” he says. After all, design companies are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to create previously impossible algorithmic designs, as well as crunch UX data on millions of users. “An AI-powered tool can automatically provide a designer with 100 variations of a layout, based on some high-level template, or style definition . . . We see early versions of these algorithmic procedurally generated tools already in use by game designers.” For example, the 17 billion planet universe in the recent blockbuster video game No Man’s Sky was largely generated algorithmically. The short version? If you’re a visual designer, it’s time to diversify. advertisement Design Researchers “When ethnographic research was new in design, there were designers who specialized in research,” explains Harry West, CEO of Frog. “The role of design researcher is now evolving to become a fundamental skill and practice for all types of designers. Today, for any design challenge, it is assumed that you first learn what the customer wants; every designer must know how to set up customer research and learn from the source.” Consequently, no one needs a dedicated design researcher anymore. “The role is so fundamental that every designer should know how to do it,” says West. John Rousseau, executive director at Artefact, puts a finer point on it: New technologies like machine learning and virtual reality are killing design research. “Design research as we know it may cease to exist—at least in terms of the types of ethnographic field work we do today,” he says. “Research—-and researchers—-will likely be marginalized by new forms of automated data and insight generation, compiled via remote sensing and delivered through technologies like virtual reality.” Traditional Industrial Designers Most designers we asked predictably thought their own fields had rosy prospects. Not Markus Wierzoch, industrial design director at Artefact. He says that classically trained industrial designers who remain too attached to the “industrial” parts of their profession–in other words, overly focused on the sculptural look of a product–will become, in his words, “designosaurs.” “More than ever before, industrial design cannot exist in a vacuum,” he writes. The issuer is that form no longer follows function and function only–software is also involved. That means industrial designers in the future will need to evolve to think about the total end-to-end user experience, a role Wierzoch calls the “post-industrial designer.” (More on that below.) Doreen Lorenzo, director of integrated design at UT Austin, also sees the role of the classically trained industrial designer dying off soon. “In the future, all designers will be hybrids,” she says. Chief Design Officers “This is a trend as of late: to have an executive-level design figurehead,” says Sheryl Cababa, associate design director, Artefact. But that role might–and should–die, because it’s redundant. “Good design is, fundamentally, interdisciplinary, which means that in a company that is design-oriented, all executives will be design practitioners, and the chief design officer position will vanish as quickly as it came.” advertisement CEO Tim Brown echoes the idea that design will be embedded at the executive level, although he doesn’t necessarily think CDOs themselves are going to die out. “Business is moving from a long period where analytical skills were of extreme value in the search for efficiency, to one where creative and design skills will be essential to deal with complexity, volatility, and the requirements for constant innovation… CEOs will need to be designers in order to be successful.” Design Jobs That Will Grow Virtual Interaction Designers Virtual and augmented reality is set to become a $150 billion industry by 2020, disrupting everything from health care to architecture. UT Austin’s Doreen Lorenzo thinks that more user interface designers will start strapping themselves into Oculus Rifts and becoming VI designers. “As more and more products become completely virtual–from chatbots to 3D projections to immersive environments–we’ll look to a new generation of virtual interaction designers to create experiences driven by conversation, gesture, and light,” she writes. Specialist Material Designers Yvonne Lin of 4B Collective believes that in the near future, there will be a growing need for designers who can work in and across different types of materials. For example, she sees bamboo architects as being an up-and-coming design field, as the Western world embraces “the possibilities of a weight-bearing material that can grow three feet in 24 hours and can be bent, laminated, joined, and stripped,” as Asia has. She also says that designers who can sew will soon be in hot demand to create structural soft goods. What’s a structural soft good? Think of the kind of things MIT’s Neri Oxman designs, or wearables that are as much tech as textile: a blend of circuit boards and fabrics, like Google’s Project Jacquard. “Today, there is a skill and knowledge gap between the soft- and hard-good world. Very few people know how to work in both,” she says. “The intelligent mixing of fabrics (for comfort) and plastics and metals (for structure and function) would have significant benefits for health care and sports products. As people live longer and as sports participation increases the demand for these more comfortable and higher performance products will increase.” Maybe even tomorrow’s Air McFlys. Algorithmic/AI Design Specialists Fifteen years down the road, few of the designers we spoke to were afraid that a robot or algorithm would take their jobs. Though “applied creativity is fundamentally hard to codify,” as Artefact’s Rob Girling says, artificial intelligence will create new design opportunities–so much so that Girling and other designers we spoke to think that AI and algorithms represent growing field. advertisement “Human-centered design has expanded from the design of objects (industrial design) to the design of experiences (adding interaction design, visual design, and the design of spaces) and the next step will be the design of system behavior: the design of the algorithms that determine the behavior of automated or intelligent systems,” argues Harry West at Frog. For example, designing the algorithm that determines how an autonomous vehicle makes the right human-centered decisions in an unavoidable collision. “The challenge for the designers is to tie the coding of algorithms with the experiences they enable.” Post-Industrial Designers “As every object becomes connected–from your couch to your fitness bracelet, the hospital room to your wallet–we need to think about connected experiences,” says Artefact’s Markus Wierzoch. “[These] offer much broader value propositions, which means we need to change the [design] processes used to define these objects beyond their immediate form and function.” Enter the postindustrial designer. Postindustrial designers will need to think of the total end-to-end user experience to build “tangible experiences that connect the physical and digital worlds,” Wierzoch says. For example, the designer of the future, charged with designing an electrical toothbrush, will need to make sure their toothbrush can connect to an app, give users brushing stats, as well as plug into the future smart home. It’s just not enough to design something that cleans your teeth well anymore. “Someone has to be responsible to stitch complex experiences together,” Argodesign’s Mark Rolston says. Design Strategists Design researchers may find fewer opportunities in the next 15 years, but Artefact’s John Rousseau thinks design strategists will be indispensable. “The importance of design strategy will grow,” he says. “Future design strategists will need the ability to understand and model increasingly complex systems”–for example, social media networks or supply chains–“and will design new products and services in a volatile environment characterized by continuous disruption and a high degree of uncertainty.” In other words, a future defined by political, social, business, and tech disruption that can happen overnight. In such a future, Rousseau says, design strategists will be like ballerinas, dancing their companies in and out of trouble. “It will be more of a dance, and less of a march.” advertisement Read more The Most Important Design Jobs Of The Future 3 Things UX Designers Can Learn From Industrial Design UI, UX: Who Does What? A Designer’s Guide To The Tech Industry Organization Designers The org chart of the future isn’t going to be the same as the org chart of the past. That’s why Ideo partner Bryan Walker thinks dedicated organization designers will be on hand, helping make companies more “adaptive, creative, and prolific.” These designers, he says, “will help reimagine all aspects of an organization from its underlying structures, incentives, processes, and talent practices to its physical workplaces, digital collaboration tools and communications. “ Freelance Designers Get used to working in your pajamas. According to Teague’s Clint Rule, Eric Lawrence, and Matt McElvogue, the future of design is freelance. “Creative AI and global creative marketplaces will give individual designers on-demand access to skill sets previously only capable within large teams,” they write. “The result is a surge in the specialization, efficacy, and independence of the designer.” In their vision, freelancers won’t just toil away in solitude, they’ll form a “network of targeted micro-consultancies” that compete with more traditional firms. Have something to say? Drop us a note at [email protected]. Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article misstated that IDEO’s Tim Brown thought Chief Design Officers were on their way out. [Illustrations: vasabii/iStock] Related Video: From Apple To Zara, Designers Like To Steal. So What?

By Chris Stone Share This Article: Ralph Keeling and Lynn Talley of Scripps Institution of Oceanography aren’t household names. But they lent their scientific weight Saturday to an event that attracted a reported 15,000 people downtown. Support Times of San Diego's growth with a small monthly contribution Become a supporter While Washington’s March for Science commanded most media attention, San Diego’s walk gave the area’s scientific community a more accessible public face as members called for stronger support from policy-makers. At one point in the rally, the call went out to scientists to identify themselves. Many hands rose. A typical chant: “What do we want? Science! When do we want it? After peer review!” Signs reflected a wide range of issues, including global warming, medical research, vaccination and proposed budget cuts. The San Diego March for Science was one of hundreds in the United States and worldwide marking Earth Day to raise awareness of the contributions of science to society, and the importance of supportive public policy, organizers said. The event kicked off with remarks from area scientists at the Community Concourse in the Civic Center complex next to City Hall, followed by the march down Broadway to the Waterfront Park outside the County Administration Center. Marchers carried signs saying “build science not walls,” “ice has no agenda it just melts,” “we do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children,” “there is no planet B,” “no science? no beer,” “climate change is real,” “science rocks,” and “science makes America great,” among many others. The march received support from both UC San Diego and Balboa Park’s Fleet Science Center. In Los Angeles, the LAPD estimated 10,000 to 12,000 people made the trek from Pershing Square to City Hall starting at 11 a.m. In pre-march remarks, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, criticized the Trump administration. “Policy should be guided by scientific consensus. Scientific facts not `alternative facts,”‘ he said. “Donald Trump can’t stop global warming just by emitting an unprecedented volume of hot air.” California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon brought up immigration during remarks at City Hall. “One-half of our scientists in California today are immigrants.” The group also heard from Martha Dina Arguello, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Los Angeles. “Today the Cold War is over and the nuclear threat is not,” she said. “There is no meaningful medical response to a nuclear war” except disarmament. — City News Service contributed to this report. Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Dr. Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography spoke to thousands at San Diego Civic Center Plaza. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone A march coordinator speaks to thousands gathered for the March For Science. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone Thousands took part in the San Diego March for Science through the streets of downtown. Photo by Chris Stone A cutout of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson moves above the crowd in the San Diego March for Science. Photo by Chris Stone 15,000 March for Science in San Diego in Plea to Policy-Makers was last modified: by >> Subscribe to Times of San Diego’s free daily email newsletter! Click here Follow Us:

Toronto police are trying to identify a woman caught on security camera vandalizing a luxury sedan in the city's west end on the weekend. Investigators say the Sunday morning incident marked the third time this year that the car's owner has had a vehicle vandalized. A security video released by police, a woman in a baseball cap with a red bandana over her face is seen running up to a Lincoln MKS in the driveway of a home near Glenholme Ave. and Rogers Rd. She then scratches the hood and sides of the car extensively with a sharp object. "Obviously [the car owner] was targeted, because it's only his vehicle that's been damaged on the street," said Det.-Const. Jay Dabu. Police have not established that the woman in the video is responsible for all three incidents at that address, but Dabu said it is "more than likely" that the car owner and the vandal know each other. The car owner is scheduled to come to Toronto police 13 Division for the vehicle's damage to be assessed. "I'm no body shop guy, but it's probably at least a couple of thousand [dollars' worth] if I'm not mistaken," Dabu said. The woman in the video is described as white, between five-foot-two and five-foot-five, with a thin build and brown hair.

John Schnatter, the founder and CEO of nationwide pizza chain Papa John's, traveled to Tennessee this past weekend to attend the funeral of an employee who had been shot and killed during a store robbery.Gordon Schaffer, 22, was working the late shift at the Papa John's location in Columbia, Tennessee on October 21 when armed robbers entered the restaurant and ordered Schaffer to empty the cash register. Schaffer complied, but was shot by one of the suspects, and died before medics could transport him to a hospital.Schaffer's funeral was held on October 25 in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and was attended by family and friends with the Papa John's CEO making an unexpected appearance."We never once imagined that this would touch anyone high up in the Papa John's corporate office, let alone, John Schnatter. He was visibly distraught when speaking to my family about the tragic loss of my brother and it was apparent that he didn't come just to pay lip service," Devan Cronin, Schaffer's oldest sister, wrote on Facebook.Papa John's also covered the expenses of Schaffer's funeral and medical costs. Darious A. Fitzpatrick was arrested on Wednesday for killing Schaffer, and also faces charges related to the robberies of two Dollar General stores earlier in October, according to News 2 ABC Nashville.

Teams ranked Nos. 1 through 32, as voted on by a panel of 13 NFL.com and NFL Network experts. Total points based on 32 points for a first-place vote through one point for a 32nd-place vote. Don't agree with the experts? Create your own rankings. Rank Team W - L 1st Votes Last Votes Points 1 1 Houston Texans 3-0 13 - 416 2 1 Atlanta Falcons 3-0 - - 396 3 2 San Francisco 49ers 2-1 - - 379 4 2 Baltimore Ravens 2-1 - - 374 5 4 New York Giants 2-1 - - 362 6 8 Arizona Cardinals 3-0 - - 361 7 New England Patriots 1-2 - - 329 8 4 Green Bay Packers 1-2 - - 309 9 7 Seattle Seahawks 2-1 - - 294 10 5 Philadelphia Eagles 2-1 - - 285 11 1 Chicago Bears 2-1 - - 283 12 3 Dallas Cowboys 2-1 - - 277 13 5 Denver Broncos 1-2 - - 262 14 5 Pittsburgh Steelers 1-2 - - 261 15 5 Cincinnati Bengals 2-1 - - 244 16 5 San Diego Chargers 2-1 - - 234 17 2 New York Jets 2-1 - - 194 18 5 Detroit Lions 1-2 - - 182 19 4 Buffalo Bills 2-1 - - 181 20 7 Minnesota Vikings 2-1 - - 175 21 4 Washington Redskins 1-2 - - 153 22 1 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 1-2 - - 150 23 5 Carolina Panthers 1-2 - - 128 24 5 Kansas City Chiefs 1-2 - - 104 25 3 Tennessee Titans 1-2 - - 94 26 4 New Orleans Saints 0-3 - - 90 27 4 Oakland Raiders 0-3 - - 88 28 4 St. Louis Rams 1-2 - - 74 29 3 Miami Dolphins 1-2 - - 62 30 2 Jacksonville Jaguars 1-2 - 1 58 31 6 Indianapolis Colts 1-2 - - 55 32 1 Cleveland Browns 0-3 - 12 14 Voters in the NFL.com Power Poll: Gil Brandt, Bucky Brooks, Charley Casserly, Heath Evans, Daniel Jeremiah, Michael Lombardi, Willie McGinest, Shaun O'Hara, Gregg Rosenthal, Darren Sharper, Kurt Warner, Brian Webber, Steve Wyche.

Sheffield United Football Club announces today (Tuesday) that HRH Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has become joint owner of the Club. Click here to download an Arabic version of this announcement. Prince Abdullah has secured a 50% interest in Blades Leisure Ltd, the holding company for Sheffield United FC, in return for which he will invest substantial new capital into the club with the aim of working with current owner Kevin McCabe and his family to achieve the Blades' return to the Premier League as quickly as possible. The Prince becomes Co-Chairman with Kevin McCabe of Blades Leisure and Sheffield United. Prince Abdullah, aged 47, is a grandson of the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz. He is a passionate football supporter and is former President of Al Hilal FC, the largest and most successful club in Saudi Arabia. He is also Chairman of Saudi Arabia's Football Privatisation Committee. Prince Abdullah is a prominent Saudi businessman and industrialist. He is the founder and Chairman of the publicly-listed Saudi Paper Manufacturing Group, the largest paper tissue manufacturer in the Middle East. He is active in other fields in the services and investments sectors in Saudi Arabia, and internationally. He travels extensively and works with other prominent businessmen from around the world to promote trade, goodwill and understanding through sport between Saudi Arabia and other countries. Prince Abdullah said: "I am delighted to invest in such a sensibly-organised, family and community club with a great history and heritage. Joining Sheffield United FC at a time close to its 125th year in existence is significant to me and, like Kevin, I am determined to see it achieve its goals and look forward to working with the whole Blades community. However, money will be spent judiciously, and in any case we must comply with the Salary Cost Management Protocol." Kevin McCabe said: "We are thrilled to be building this new partnership for Sheffield United with Prince Abdullah, who shares our vision for the Blades to join the top tier of English football. The McCabe family remains wholly committed and over the past 10 years has invested more than £90 million in rebuilding our fine and proud Club, which now has a top-class stadium, academy and junior development centre." The boards will also see new directors in Abdulraham Bin Abdullah (the Prince's son), James Phipps (the Prince's principal advisor) and Selahattin Baki (a highly regarded Turkish businessman and General Manager of Premier Paper Converting Company, which manufactures consumer tissue paper products in Izmit, Turkey). London and Dubai-based specialist consulting firm Forticap acted as the sole arranger for the transaction.

Yesterday I received my Ephemera January Subscription Box! This is a brand new indie subscription box from the indie brand Aromaleigh. I have purchased from Aromaleigh in the past and was very pleased with the products I bought, the inspiration behind their themes, and their fast TAT. The Ephemera Subscription has limited slots so I'm very happy I was able to snag one! Here is some addition information about the sub from Aromaleigh's website: Ephemera is a word of Greek origin that signifies something being of a short-lived nature, making it a perfect name for this offering. Each month will include a range of mini jar sizes of brand new, exclusively curated products, featuring a specific theme. Boxes will also include a sneak peek (or peeks) from upcoming product releases. The themed subscription products are exclusive to your monthly box, meaning that they will not be available at a later date for non-subscription members to purchase. My box shipped on January 2 and arrived on the 5th. The price of the subscription is $17.99 with shipping for domestic subscribers. * Disclaimer: All products purchased with my own money unless otherwise stated. Thoughts and opinions are 100% my own. * This month's theme was Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I happen to love both the books and the films so I was happy with this theme! Not included in this photo is the sample perfume vial from Ten Three Labs, a sample blush from an upcoming Aromaleigh collection, and some candy that didn't survive the wait for swatches :P I think the packaging and labels of the products are cute. When I got it, this box was wrapped in a pretty ice blue bow. The box comes with a shadow guide explaining the products received and monthly theme. From left to right: The White Witch, 100 Years of Winter, Pale as Icing Sugar, Enchanted Turkish Delight (swatched heavily, blended out). From left to right: The White Witch, 100 Years of Winter, Pale as Icing Sugar, Enchanted Turkish Delight (swatched heavily, blended out). The White Witch is a pale aqua shimmer with gold duochrome. I am always drawn to shades like these, they are just so pretty! Reminds me of Notoriously Morbid's Wayward Son. This color would pair well with the new shadow very well. 100 Years of Winter is a smooth greened brown with white sparkles. Very accurate description, the white sparkles can almost look duochromatic at times. I can see his shade being used in conjunction with a lot of different shades so I feel like I'll get a lot of use out of this one as a crease shade to deepen up looks. Pale as Icing Sugar is a metallic purple-leaning taupe. Here I've swatched it two ways as it is described as a multi-use product from shadow or face highlight. I particularly like how it looks blended out so I'm excited to try it out as highlight shade. I can see medium-deep skin tones using this as a very easy inner corner highlight shadow. Enchanted Turkish Delight is described as a winter berry with a teal glow. I didn't really see the teal glow in real life or in these photos but it still is a pretty blush. It's one of those shades that makes me you look naturally flushed, like you have been outside in the cold. In my box I also recieved samples from two guest brands - Ten Three Labs and Dreamworld Hermetica. I am a huge fan of Dreamworld so I was excited to see they would be participating this month. I got a clamshell sample of their new liquid lipstick. Witches Heart is a metallic burnt orange with pink shimmer. THIS SHADE IS SO PRETTY! Such an interesting lipstick shade. I haven't tried it on my lips yet but I'm so stoked to test it out. It was actually quite difficult to get off my arm so I get the impression that it may have a longer wear time. Final Thoughts: I really enjoyed the concept behind this month's box. The eyeshadows were all fairly cool-toned which went with the theme well. My favorites were Pale as Icing Sugar and the lipstick sample. I may pass along The White Witch as I have several similar shades. If I'm being completely honest, I wasn't wowed by this month's box but I am looking forward to next month's sub box. I know Aromaleigh does some amazing duochromes and purples so I hope we will see some more of those in the next coming months!

Well, that reality stands true even today. Kejriwal is still the leader of a city (which lusts for free bijli, paani, and wi-fi), and the recent revolts within AAP, and all that dirty linen being washed out openly in public by AAP, shows his sheer inability to take everyone together. That is precisely why Shanti Bhushan said that he lacks organizational ability and should not be a Chief Minister. His prophecy is becoming true within the very forst month. Just ten days after Kejriwal boastfully sermonized to others that AAP workers should not have 'ahankaar' (while at the same time branding BJP and Congress as 'ahankaari' parties), it comes out that the most 'ahankaari' guy in AAP is he himself as he cannot tolerate any other founder member in AAP attaining some status within the party. When AAP's own pet 'Lokpal' pointed out the one-man-one-post rule being violated by Kejriwal, and objected to his holding dual posts, he was brushed aside by Kejriwal and his coterie. What does this show? It only shows that all that talk of Jan Lokpal by Kejriwal and his coterie was a plain bluff to milk Anna Hazare's ideals to gain power in Delhi. Can someone who brazenly insults own party Lokpal ever be trusted to work towards a national Jan Lokpal?

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. Check them all out! Introduction As you know, I love my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. Since I bought it, I’ve been wanting to purchase one of the UniFi wireless APs ever since I saw the Ars Technica review of them. I ended up picking up the UniFi AC Pro on a Black Friday deal on Jet.com. The UniFi AP itself does not have a web interface (however, you can SSH to it). To manage the APs, you need to use the UniFi controller software. The software is only needed for the initial setup, and can then be turned off afterwards (which means you can do the setup on your laptop, then disable the software after the initial setup). However, if you want to enable statistic gathering or guest portal, the controller software needs to be running at all times. The controller software is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, which means it’s perfect to run on a small Linux server (like a Raspberry Pi 3). Controller setup Installation I’m going to assume you’re running this on a Raspberry Pi 3, running Raspbian. However, any Debian-based distribution should follow the same instructions. First, we need to add the repository to apt. echo "deb http://www.ubnt.com/downloads/unifi/debian stable ubiquiti" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/100-ubnt.list Note – You can also specify the version of UniFi to use, as this commenter did, since the stable repository is still on v4. Thanks for submitting this! Then, add the GPG key. sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv C0A52C50 Next, update your repositories and install Unifi. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unifi Now, start Unifi. sudo systemctl enable unifi sudo systemctl start unifi Finally, we need to disable MongoDB, since UniFi will run its own instance. sudo systemctl stop mongodb sudo systemctl disable mongodb Package hold If you read around r/Ubiquiti and the UniFi forums, you’ll learn that the controller releases (and AP firmware) can be hit-or-miss. Because we’ve added the UniFi repository, every time we do a sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade , we might update the UniFi controller software, even if we don’t want it updated. To get around this, we’ll hold back the unifi package from being updated automatically. sudo apt-mark hold unifi To verify it is held back, use dpkg. sudo dpkg -l | grep ^h Here, you can see the results. hi unifi 4.8.20-8422 all Ubiquiti UniFi server The h as the first character means the package is held, and the i as the second character means the package is currently installed. If you ever need to remove the hold, use the command below. sudo apt-mark unhold unifi To check for a new release of the unifi package in the repository, use the command below. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-cache policy unifi If there is a newer version, update to it manually. sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade unifi Oracle Java 8 (optional) OpenJDK has been known to have performance issues on the Pi, so I’m running Oracle’s Java 8 instead. You can find your current Java packages with the command below. sudo dpkg --get-selections |grep -e "java\|jdk\|jre" If you try to find your Java version, you’ll probably be using OpenJDK. --> java -version java version "1.7.0_111" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.6.7) (7u111-2.6.7-2~deb8u1+rpi1) OpenJDK Zero VM (build 24.111-b01, interpreted mode) Start by installing Oracle Java 8. sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-jdk -y Next, update your environment to use the new Java. sudo update-alternatives --config java Check your Java version again to make sure you’re on Java 8. --> java -version java version "1.8.0_65" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_65-b17) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.65-b01, mixed mode) Now, copy the systemd service file so we can edit it, then update it to point at the new Java location. sudo cp -p /lib/systemd/system/unifi.service /etc/systemd/system sudo sed -i '/^\[Service\]$/a Environment=JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt' /etc/systemd/system/unifi.service Now, restart systemd and UniFi. sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl restart unifi.service Log rotation (optional) Because I’m running the controller on a Raspberry Pi 3, I have limited space on the SD card. To make sure the log files don’t fill the card, I’m going to rotate them using logrotate. Credit to Kevin Burdett for this idea. First, install logrotate. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install logrotate Then, create the configuration file to rotate your UniFi and MongoDB logs. sudo bash -c 'cat >> /etc/logrotate.d/unifi << EOF /var/log/unifi/*.log { rotate 5 daily missingok notifempty compress delaycompress copytruncate } EOF' The logrotate options are explained below: Rotate any files ending in /var/log/unifi ending in .log Save 5 log files before deleting older files Rotate the log files daily If the log is missing, go onto the next one without error Do not rotate the log if it is empty Compress the log files (into gzip format) Delay compression until the log file is rotated (so processes won’t be trying to log to a compressed file) Truncate the original log file in place after creating a copy, instead of moving the old log file and optionally creating a new one Access controller You can now access the controller by going to the IP of your device, over port 8443. https://<device_IP_here>:8443 If everything is working, you should see the setup wizard. Since there are many different ways to do the setup, I won’t be covering that here. Controller alternatives There are a few alternatives to running the controller software on the Raspberry Pi on your local network: As mentioned earlier, run the controller software on your PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) for initial setup. You can either turn it off after the setup, or leave it running to gather statistics. Download the UniFi app (iOS or Android) to setup the AP. The app provides limited setup functionality, with more advanced options requiring the controller. Purchase the Unifi Cloud Key ($80). This device sits on your network and runs the controller software locally, but is accessible from anywhere at https://unifi.ubnt.com. Instructions are here. Run the controller in a VPS or AWS instance. See instructions here for installation and adoption. Comparison Here, you can see my signal strength on the old access point (TP-Link Archer C7 running OpenWrt Chaos Calmer) on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, respectively. Then, the same measurements with the new UniFi access point. Again, on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, respectively. Hope this helps! Logan

At the risk of sounding arrogant, the one thing I can appreciate about myself is that I have no illusions about my shortcomings. I willing admit that my expectations of others can be high and sometimes even unrealistic, but for myself, I really just want people to accept me as I am. However, when you are as stubborn and as set in your ways as I am, you tend to get kicked in the rear by karma a lot. And you also run into the constant irritation of people trying to change you all the time. I like to think of my karma as my wake up calls from God. Sometimes these calls are subtle in nature and only require a tiny poke for me to wake up and redirect myself. But more times than not, it takes a drastic, hard, swift, life altering kick in the ass to make me say “oh, that is what HE meant.” Here is the thing though, I don’t see anything wrong with it, nor would I do anything any different. I am a firm believer in “you made your bed, now lay in it” philosophy. If I mess up, than I mess up but on the same token, it is my responsibility to clean up after myself. Sure, I can try to prevent it but unfortunately, I’m just a permanent member of the hard head makes a soft ass club and that is just the way it is. The beauty of where I am at in my life right now is that I am ensuring that this time around, when karma comes calling, I learn to not repeat these same errors. I do believe that life is all about falling and getting back up because it tests your faith and keeps it in check. Even if it takes 50 times to learn just 1 simple lesson, then so be it. Celebrate the accomplishment of learning the lesson and praise God for your new knowledge. I remember the days of trying to be a perfectionist. I believed that term was something to aspire to and that you really had issues to resolve if you weren’t aspiring to it as well. Nowadays, I am more relaxed and I realize there are very few things I do perfectly and it’s not even a term I want to make applicable for myself. See, my biggest karma lesson from God has been ” you will never be perfect because that is reserved for ME.” Thanking the Lord everyday that I realize my place, my purpose and most of all my limitations. ~ Mara Prose IMPORTANT UPDATE: I have a surprise next week for all my loyal readers. Those who are the most familiar with my writing want to start reading my short stories that I keep under lock and key. After much soul searching, I said why not. So beginning next week, my blog will begin to include short stories. Some of the short stories will begin and end within that blog and others will fall under the “to be continued” format and will evolve based on reader feedback in the comments section. I am very excited about this new format and I hope you will be too. Stay tuned! Advertisements

Socialism: Whether it was an accident or sabotage, the deadly explosion at Mexico's state-owned oil firm wasn't an unusual event. The one thing Thursday's incident at the Pemex tower should be is a spur to privatize. Despite a much-publicized war against cartels, the real Mexico story is one of moderately good economic growth with zero net illegal emigration and a public sector financed by a budget showing a $1 billion annual surplus. But then there's Pemex, the supposed symbol of national sovereignty, which in reality is nothing but a millstone around Mexico's neck holding the country back from far greater gains. Pemex's many costs and debts are among the reasons why that $1 billion annual surplus is not $6 billion. It's also a big reason Mexico has $59 billion in debt. Its unionized 150,000-strong workforce is one of the least efficient, yielding an average of $506,000 of revenue per employee per year, far below the $2.865 million each employee at the top five international oil companies brings in, according to a Baker Institute study. Less revenue, less investment, less safety. Oilmen will tell you every incident is different, and some accidents do occur at private firms of course. But the overall Pemex record speaks volumes, with comparable events at its installations in 2012, 2010, 2007, 1993 and 1984. Even as Pemex costs the government, the government costs Pemex. Its earnings are effectively taxed at 60% to finance about a third of the government, leaving it miserably under-invested in its own production. Not surprisingly, Mexican oil production fell from 3.4 billion barrels a day in 2004 to about 2.5 billion a day in 2012. "The government vacuums the cash flow out of this company like an Electrolux because they need to support the government and social services. Is that how a private company behaves? Of course not," noted Garfield Miller, president of Aegis Energy Advisors, who explained to IBD that private and public oil companies have different goals. "When you are a government institution, almost by definition an instrument of social policy, your mission becomes inescapably broader than simply maximizing value for a narrow set of constituents" — as occurs with private oil companies that answer to shareholders. The situation is so bad in Mexico that it cannot take advantage of its vast new deepwater discoveries in the Gulf, just as the U.S.' highly efficient private companies expand production on the U.S. side of the Gulf and the shale revolution increases production, as well. Things are so dire that already Mexico is importing gasoline from the U.S. and by 2019 is expected to be importing oil. That's ironic for a country which by national lore considers oil a symbol of independence and has indoctrinated its people into believing it is therefore impossible to privatize. Yet the hard facts worldwide show that privatized companies outperform public ones — in technology, production, profitability and safety. The Baker Institute's 2007 "Empirical Evidence of the Operational Efficiency Of National Oil Companies" study impartially demonstrated that private companies operate better than public enterprises. The objectively calculated study of more than 80 companies concluded that relative to economically efficient producers, a national oil company is likely to under-invest, over-employ, sell oil products at subsidized prices, and shift extraction of resources from the future to the present. "Technical inefficiencies," the paper concluded, "are largely the result of governments exercising control over the distribution of rents." It ought to be a lesson for Mexico, and yet it's not taking hold. Mexico's new President Enrique Pena Nieto ran for office on a promise to introduce reforms at Pemex that could lead to privatization. But he has already begun backtracking. The explosion at Pemex's 51-story headquarters on Mexico City's skyline should be his wake-up call.

When you’re ready to give the green light on your explainer video project, you want to make sure that you choose the right company. Now, we know that our team is more than equipped to handle your production needs, but to be honest, we also have some pretty talented competitors. Here’s our list of the top 10 explainer video production companies to choose from (just in case we happen to pack up and move to Mars, you’ll have some good options). Of course we are a bit biased here, taking the top spot and all, but we are just that confident in our abilities to produce killer videos. Our creative team is super talented, and dedicated to delivering exceptional productions that clients are more than happy to showcase. We pay close attention to detail, and every script and animation is triple checked against a rigid set of quality standards. Here’s a cool video that we produced for Paramount Studios. Got a project you want to discuss? Click here. Firestarter Video is an excellent production house based out of Hollywood, California. They have produced several explainer video’s for top companies including Magicjack and United Healthcare (UHC). Their work is known throughout the industry, and the creative team is just awesome. Here’s a neat little number that shows off their explainer video skills. Argentina based Yum Yum Video is number three on our list because of their high quality productions, and impressive portfolio. They have produced explainer videos for companies covering all facets of business, and the work is crisp and effective. Yum Yum also features a helpful blog for anyone looking for information on video marketing in general. This explainer video is a shining example of their fine work. Bread n Beyond has produced explainer videos for top companies including Paypal and Glass Door. Their work is beyond impressive, and they have the clientele to back up their credibility. With over 1,900 productions under their belt, it’s safe to say that clients are in good hands with this company. Here’s a sample of what you get with Bread n’ Beyond. New York based Big Drop Inc. produces stunning explainer videos. The company has an extensive portfolio that includes several animated and non-animated explainer videos (and a killer website for clients to browse.) This short number is a prime example of just how well they produce whiteboard explainer videos. mywebmobile.com from BigDropInc.com on Vimeo. Demo Duck is an awesome video production house with plenty of social proof to back them up. With big names like Netflix, Lowe’s, and Capital One on their client roster, it’s more than safe to say that they’re at the top of their game in this business. Based in Chicago, the company employs a highly gifted team that prides themselves in creating “hand crafted” explainer videos. Here’s one of their masterpieces. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqRAIeMAuPo Explainify is a solid company with excellent credentials. They have worked with several large businesses including Tyson and GE, and their productions are definitely top notch. Explainify is the kind of company that you can feel confident in knowing that your project is being handled with care. This explainer video shows just how professional and talented their team is. Switch Video has a very talented in-house team and a serious portfolio. Their client roster includes companies like LinkedIn and HP, and Switch produces video in a variety of different styles. The Canadian based production house is certainly a force to be reckoned with, and has definitely carved themselves a fair share of the explainer video production marketplace. Here’s an awesome piece that they created. Located in Sarasota Florida, Media Whale is a talented production agency with several explainer video’s under their belt. Their work is crisp and engaging, and it’s easy to see how they have become one of the top agencies in the business. Here’s an example of their high quality work, in this informative video produced for TurboTax. Turbotax Explainer Video from Media Whale on Vimeo. Cartoon Media is a production agency that prides itself in creating non “cookie cutter” type explainer videos for their clients. They work with customers in all facets of business, including some well known companies like Siemens and Cargill. Headquartered in the UK, Cartoon Media works with clients around the globe. Here’s one of their engaging explainer videos. So there you have it, our top ten list of explainer video production companies. There were plenty of other agencies that could have made the list, but in terms of sheer quality, cost and social proof, these represent the best of the best. Keep an eye out for our next list, and if you would like your agency to be featured, drop us a line and we’ll check out your work.

JOHN Carver insists he will NOT step aside at Newcastle United – even though he fears some players aren’t listening to him. Carver’s side slipped deeper into the relegation mire after an eighth successive defeat to Leicester City at the weekend. The performance at the King Power Stadium, where Newcastle were beaten 3-0, was one of the worst of the Premier League era. And the loss left the club is just two points above third-from-bottom Sunderland, who have a game in hand. Many fans want head coach Carver to be relieved of his duties before Saturday’s home game against West Bromwich Albion given his dire record as head coach. But the odds are stacked against Steve McClaren, the frontrunner to take the job in the summer, taking charge for the final three games of the season, despite Derby County’s campaign having ended at the weekend. I’m not going anywhere until someone comes to me and tells me otherwise. John Carver For his part, Carver – who accused United defender Mike Williamson of getting sent off “on purpose” in Saturday’s 3-0 loss at the King Power Stadium – has no intention of stepping down. “I’m not going anywhere until someone comes to me and tells me otherwise,” said Carver. “I’m not a shirker, and I’m not going to hide from anyone. I’m going to stand there and take it, because I have to.” Carver had a brief conversation with managing director Lee Charnley after the Leicester game. He said: “I had a quick chat with Lee Charnley, but it was nothing serious. “He was basically just asking how I was and how I was feeling. It was a nice, calm conversation.” Newcastle have won just two of 16 league games under Carver, who took over from Crystal Palace-bound Alan Pardew at the turn of the year. And, astonishingly, the 50-year-old has admitted that there is a chance some of his players simply are no longer listening to what he is saying on the training field and in the dressing room. “If I’m honest, I have to admit there’s a chance they’re just not listening to me,” said Carver. “That might be one factor of many, and you have to consider it. You have to consider it and take it into account. “But it might be a lot of other things – we might not be good enough, we might not have enough desire to want to defend in the box or score at the other end. “There’s lot of factors, but I won’t deny that (the players not listening) could be one of them.” Meanwhile, Carver refused to talk about McClaren’s situation, only offering him “commiserations” over Derby’s failure to secure a play-off place.

Stuart, a 66-year-old man with diabetes, felt lousy—constantly fatigued, nauseated, and short of breath after just the slightest exertion. His daughter, worried by his increasing frailty, took him to the emergency room at the local hospital. Her concern was amply justified: Stuart was suffering from heart failure. Like 5.1 million other Americans each year who suffer from heart failure, he was admitted to the hospital to treat this serious, often life-threatening condition. The caring medical team stabilized his condition, and Stuart left the hospital after 10 days, glad to be home with words of advice and a few medications. Within a month he was back, once again fatigued, and facing a second episode. Stuart’s story is far from rare. Hospital readmissions for chronic conditions such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and congestive heart failure (CHF) are both common and very costly. Studies conducted in the United States indicate that nearly 20% of Medicare patients who are hospitalized for chronic conditions are often readmitted within 30 days. Experts at Edifecs indicate that it costs Medicare—and US taxpayers—about $26 billion a year, and often a large majority of these readmissions are actually considered avoidable with accurate prioritization and personalized care protocols. Readmission-related costs have become so onerous that the Affordable Care Act includes financial rewards and penalties to deal with the readmission problem. Hospitals that reduce their readmission rates receive financial incentives; those that do not, lose reimbursement and get penalized. Holistic tools that can reliably predict heart-failure readmissions—taking into account all aspects of each patient’s condition and risk factors—would significantly help patients and hospitals. The growth in the use of electronic patient records has recently offered the potential for such analysis, but little had been done to harness the collective intelligence contained in hospital patient records augmented with other data sources. By introducing cloud computing technology and applying some of the latest advances in machine learning techniques, researchers are rapidly changing this situation. One leading example of this is RaaS (Readmission Score as a Service), a platform that was developed by the University of Washington (UW) Tacoma’s Center for Data Science. RaaS compares a patient’s medical information to a database of heart-failure outcomes, using advanced machine learning techniques to arrive at a risk-of-readmission factor as well as corresponding actionable guidelines for the patient-provider team. Those patients identified with a high risk receive additional treatment: the goal is to reduce their likelihood of readmission and produce overall healthier outcomes across all stages of the patient care continuum. The hundreds of machine learning models of RaaS are developed by using both the R machine learning language, and Microsoft Azure Machine Learning. This chronic care management predictive platform relies on historical patient data from multiple sources. These sources include anonymized electronic medical records, claims, labs, medications, and psycho-social factors, all labeled with observed outcomes that the machine learning models access and share in sync to provide continuous monitoring for personalized patient alerts. RaaS is available as an on-premises service as well as via the cloud by using Azure Machine Learning web services and the Azure-based Zementis Adapa scoring engine to make predictions for patients. When deployed using Azure Cloud Services, RaaS performs data preparation at scale. The UW Center for Data Science team began developing initial models in collaboration with MultiCare Health System in March 2012, using just two on-premises servers. The maintenance, frequent updates, and down times of these on-premises servers posed an ongoing problem, and scalability issues limited the scope of the project by affecting the speed of data exploration and machine learning. About a year and a half ago, the team applied for and was awarded an Azure for Research grant, taking advantage of the Microsoft Research program that offers training and awards of computing resources to qualified institutions that use the cloud to advance scientific discovery. The award enabled the Center for Data Science team to scale up the project and create a robust prediction engine that generates a readmission risk factor score for patients at every stage of their hospital care: post-admission, pre-discharge, and post-discharge. The RaaS platform at MultiCare Health enables the care management team to view an electronic dashboard that shows heart-failure patients’ risks of readmission. UW Medicine Cardiology is now collaborating with the Center for Data Science team to study the efficacy of predictive models for augmenting care management guidelines by using machine learning. —Daron Green, Deputy Managing Director, Microsoft Research —Gregory Wood, MD, UW Medicine Cardiology Learn more

Assyrian Farmer in Turkey Attacked By Kurds Iskandar Dayan, an Assyrian farmer in south-east Turkey who was attacked by Kurds, in hospital. (AINA) -- Iskandar Dayan, an Assyrian farmer living in south-east Turkey near the Syrian border, was attacked and severly beaten by twelve Kurds on November 16. Mr. Dayan was driving his tractor alone when approached by the twelve Kurds, whom he recognized as being from a neighboring Kurdish village. The Kurds beat him, breaking his jaw, and warned him to never cultivate his land. Mr. Dayan was brought to a hospital in Diyarbakir. The Kurds were arrested by the police, but were set free after they were interrogated. The attack is part of a wider pattern in which Kurds intimidate, threaten and attack Assyrians in order to take over their lands. Court cases relating to this problem abound in south-east Turkey, where Kurds, empowered by their sheer numbers and the support of PKK Kurdish militia, carry out an ethnic cleansing campaign against Assyrians. The area in south-eastern Turkey, known in Assyrian as Turabdin, was inhabited almost entirely by Assyrians one hundred years ago. The genocide on Assyrians in 1915, the war with the PKK and Kurdish encroachment has sharply reduced the Assyrian population to a few thousand.

Another movie from the daily sketches series - another animal, this time a lot smaller :D On the movie I will show you how to draw such birdie from the very beginning to the end, maybe my techniques will become useful to you in your own creations. Also I'd like to encourage you to upload your drawings to YourWorks gallery (you can do that after logging in)! Lately few new drawings showed up and it makes me very happy :D Such small bird is a great exercise so watch the movie and try it out yourself! Of course if you have any questions, I am waiting for comments, I'd be happy to give additional explanations. ..:: DOWNLOAD VIDEO-TUTORIAL ::.. The one for download is in much better quality, bigger resolution and without speed up, so you can see clearly what I am doing in each step. Just download it, watch and try to draw the bird yourself! At first I just try to grasp the base shape, only after I can see it, I add new layer and sketch all the details. I am not trying to be very precise while drawing, sketch is a bit messy and lines are pretty chaotic but what counts is that all the elements are on correct places (like eye, beak and so on). Then on separate layers I paint base colors with hard brush. I just divide the whole drawing into few layers, trying to simplify it. Opacity of my sketch is lowered, because it was too disturbing. And I paint background with soft brush. Low opacity for the brush makes blending colors easier. For each layer on which I've painted some base color with a hard brush, I add new layer and turn it into a clipping mask (you can do that by right-clicking chosen layer and picking this option from the menu). I also copy the sketch and turn it into a clipping mask too, so that I can use those lines while painting the bird. Parts of the sketch will become part of the painting. I color my birdie with a brush you already know from the previous tutorial, you can download it from HERE. You can see that sometimes I use very small brush and scribble something on bird's head, and sometimes I use bigger one, with smaller opacity and cover larger areas. With small elements (like beak) I mix colors with smudge tool. Sometimes I use smudge tool on my base layer, to get rid of hard borderline or add small feathers on the edge. You can see those on bird's head and belly. Slowly more and more feathers are being added and sketch is finally rubbed into the painting. Bird is rather colorful - to make areas of one color not look artificial, I add small details of that color elsewhere. For example - I used some orange tones from bird's belly and painted small lines on the side or head, where you don't see orange at all. I do the same on the tail, where I used blue from the background to add light. Painting the branch also starts with creation of new clipping mask for color. Those are very convenient since they let me forget about the edges and shapes, I can paint freely without worrying that I will paint over something or will have to erase edges once again. At first I just want to show cylindrical shape of the branch so I add dark color on the upper and bottom part. I also add some light green, so that my branch is not completely black and white. Last thing in this part is adding missing detail on the tail. I start working on his legs - first color them in a dark color, so I can see them more clearly and then adjust the shape with smudge tool. Only after that I start adding some simple detail with lighter color, to make them less flat. I am not trying too hard for those, they are not a significant element of the drawing anyway. But it is crucial to remember about the shadow on the branch. Only because of that shadow our bird actually looks like it is standing on the branch and it's not just pasted on top of it. Then I add some simple bark detail, small dots and wrinkles. I fix (with smudge tool again) edges on the base layer for the branch, so they are not that sharp and stiff. Then I color that thin branch on the edge of the picture. I use lots of blue tones this time, since I plan to blur it out and it should blend into the background nicely. Gaussian blur filter helps me out in this task - I use in on the base layer and on the clipping mask too. I make that last branch in the upper-right corner in the same way. And that's it, drawing is finished. Download the movie if you haven't yet!

I believe it takes a lot of strength to have faith, but there is something that takes even more strength. I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. At the age of 8 years old I was baptized into the church and confirmed as a member. I wasn’t the most obedient, but for the most part I did what was expected of me. But then, at the age of 15 I began to question the doctrines that I had been taught since before I could even speak. I believed, as the church taught, that if I did what I was supposed to it would all be clear to me. I though that this doubt was coming from the devil. I believed that because I was dating when I shouldn’t have been, I let him into my life and allowed him to leave me astray. This doubt continued off and on for two years. After breaking up with my boyfriend, I was sure that I would gain clarity. I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do, he would bless me with the truth. But this never came. I began to google what I had been taught all my life was “anti-mormon” but when I did so, I was plagued with guilt. I would read for five minutes, exit out and delete my browser history. I continued as if I hadn’t read anything at all. I went to seminary, sacrament meeting, mutual, etc.. At this time in my life, guilt and confusion filled me. It wasn’t until I left for school that I really started to look into what I had been taught my whole life. I visited mormonthink.com and /r/exmormon. I read the CES Letter. I stopped going to institute and Sunday meetings. I started to realize that what I grew up believing, was a con. The guilt and confusion I’d been feeling for the past 3 years floated away. That left room for anger, sadness, and worry. Initially, I was furious. I was partially angry at myself for being fooled, but mostly at the LDS church for fooling me and millions of others. I was devastated, I wanted so much to hold on to the church and its teachings. I wanted my dream of being married in the temple, because what girl doesn’t want to be married inside of a castle? At first, it scared me to realize that everything I thought I knew about life, was now a mystery to me. But most of all I was, and still am, worried. I know have a huge weight on my shoulders that will not be lifted until I tell my family of my disaffection. There is no doubt in my mind that they will not understand. They will believe that I have left because I want to “be of the world” and that I just want to sin. They will view me as weak for not having the kind of strength that is required to look past the things that led me away. I can’t blame them though… Four years ago I would have thought the same thing. Yes, I believe that having faith does require a lot of faith… But in my mind, greater strength lies in admitting that you may have been wrong. Greater strength comes from leaving everything you were taught and accepting that maybe you don’t know everything about life. My strength has come from figuring out what I don’t believe, despite the disappointment I will cause my family. It isn’t easy to realize that you will never get to attend your siblings weddings, to know that there will always be a gap between you and your family. Yes, these things are hard to accept, but I wouldn’t go back because for the first time in my life I can actually be myself.

Three people you may have heard of—writer John Gruber, developer Brent Simmons, and designer Dave Wiskus—have joined forces to create Q Branch, an app development company whose first product is a $5 iPhone app called Vesper. The app, released Thursday, aims to help “collect your thoughts.” Yes, it’s Yet Another iPhone Notes App. But it’s one that’s meticulously and tastefully designed—not surprising, coming from the principals of Q Branch. I’ve spent the past few weeks beta-testing the app, and in advance of the release I also talked to Gruber, Simmons, and Wiskus (all of whom have written for Macworld in the past) about what went into building it. A notebook in your iPhone There’s no shortage of notebook and reminder apps on iOS. I’ve used many of them, including Apple’s own Notes, Evernote, and a vast collection of text editors. And yet none of them has stuck for any length of time. The Q Branch group has had the same experience. Vesper's full list view. “I’d been waiting for [a note-taking app] I liked and wanted to use,” Simmons said. “That one just hadn’t appeared. There are good ones, for sure—but none that fit how I think and none that feel the way Vesper feels.” I certainly can’t guarantee that I’ll stick with Vesper for the long haul, but I’ve been using it quite a lot for the past few weeks. The app’s core is a simple list of notes. Each note has a title, displayed in bold, with the first couple of lines displayed below it. Tap and hold to “pick up” a note and re-order the list in any way you like. Tapping on a note enters the note editor. You can enter in as much text as you’d like, as well as attach a single image, which you can take directly from within Vesper or insert from your Camera Roll. Notes can be mailed, sent via message, or copied to the clipboard—there’s no syncing with other devices or any cloud-based sync services. Notes are organized via tags. Tap on the gray Tag button at the bottom of the note to add a tag, and a pretty orange pop-up will appear as you type, suggesting tags you’ve already entered. Autocompletion of tags. From the list view, you can tap the “hamburger” icon in the top left of the screen or just swipe from the left edge in order to display a filter list, which lets you limit the notes being displayed to those that contain a particular tag. There’s also an Archive list, where you can send old notes with a swipe. Vesper doesn’t do much, but that’s the point. “We built it for ourselves,” Gruber said. “I think anyone who is like us—anyone who appreciates attention to detail, doing a few things really well instead of many things mediocrely—will love Vesper.” Vesper's tag-filter list sidebar. It’s visually striking. I like the typography (the app’s one and only body font is a custom-tweaked version of Hoefler and Frere-Jones’ Ideal Sans) and the design of the tags and the filter list. It’s simple enough not to get in my way with a lot of fiddly organizational features, but provides me with more structure than something like the Notes app. Tagging notes made a lot of sense—I immediately made Work, Writing, and Recipes tags. I commingled work notes, ideas for my novel, a favorite recipe for buttermilk biscuits, and an idea for my podcast without any trouble. Once I started treating it as the iPhone equivalent of a small paper notebook tucked into a pocket, it all began to fit. That’s not to say there isn’t more to be done with the app. Syncing notes to other iOS devices (and perhaps a service like Dropbox) would be a natural, though I fear that any feature addition will make the app more cluttered, when simplicity is one of its real strengths. Too many fiddly feature additions and I’ll run screaming from it, just as I often do from Evernote. The story of Q Q is, of course, the mastermind who provides James Bond with all of his clever gadgets, as the leader of the British spy service’s Q Branch. (Vesper is the name of a cocktail invented by Bond as well as a pivotal character in Casino Royale.) "Bond’s gadgets have always been at the intersection of utility and elegance," Gruber said. "That’s as good a motto for a software company as any." “What I hope people pick up on is that in this scenario, we aren’t Bond,” Wiskus said. “We’re the people who make all the great tools for the agents to use.” Here’s a look at the formation of Q Branch and the creation of Vesper in the words of its three creators. Macworld: How did this project come about? When did you decide to work together? Did the idea for Vesper appear first, or did you decide to collaborate and then figure out what you wanted to build? Simmons: Last year at Çingleton I talked to John and Dave about the three of us building an app, because it occurred to me that we’d make a great team, and I was looking for something new and awesome to do. John already had the idea for Vesper, but I didn’t know about it in advance. Wiskus: Last summer, Justin Williams suggested that we work on an idea John mentioned to him. Justin had to drop out to keep up with freelance work, but I had completed a few iterations of design. When Brent pulled me and John aside in Montreal, we knew we wanted to work together but didn’t have anything in mind. I said, “Well, I have this idea of John’s I was working on,’ and showed them the early designs on my phone. Gruber: Right. It was an old idea of mine from around 2009, but I had long ago figured I wouldn’t be able to build it myself, so over the years I had offered it to developer friends when they asked me if I had any ideas for apps. The difference with what we’ve done here is that I didn’t just contribute the idea, I was part of the team. I don’t consider ideas for apps all that valuable. It’s the implementation of an idea that matters. Simmons: We talked it over, and decided pretty quickly that we’d build Vesper. Not long after that I decided to leave my then-current job and switch full-time to working on Vesper. What was the division of labor on this project? What did John do, what did Brent do, and what did Dave do? Simmons: I write code while Dave and John design. While I have input on design, it takes all my time keeping up with these madmen. Which I thoroughly enjoy. In the past I’ve designed my own software, though I didn’t necessarily do all the graphics. This is a very pleasant change for me—it’s great working with designers I trust, so I can concentrate on making those designs real. (Being a design-savvy engineer helps a ton.) I’m so proud of their work. Maybe they can’t say it, but I can: I think the design is hot. I love the way it looks and especially how it feels. Wiskus: Our org chart is a Venn diagram, but simply: John and I would talk, then I would go draw pictures and give them to Brent. Then we’d all look at them, talk things through, try things out in implementation, and start the process over again. "The last few years...have been the longest stretch in my life where I’ve done nothing new," Gruber said. "I had the itch." John, what made you want to build an app? Gruber: I didn’t seek it out. It’s Brent’s idea that we three would make a good team. But once he offered, I jumped at the chance. I’ve never worked with Brent before, but I’ve been using his software for over a decade now, and I’ve long been a beta tester on his stuff. I know his taste in software, and I know it matches mine. It sounded like fun, an opportunity I could not resist. Secondarily, I’ve always tried to do new things. The last few years, where I’ve done nothing but write Daring Fireball, have been the longest stretch in my life where I’ve done nothing new. I had the itch. The surprising part is how much designing for iPhone harkens back to my days doing print design. My earliest design work was print, and that was my first love. Of course as the years went on, I did more and more Web design and less and less print. And like everyone who made the switch from print to Web design, I bemoaned the lack of control. No control over the size of the canvas, severely limited selection of fonts, crude rendering resolution, etc. The control and fidelity afforded by the iPhone—world-class fonts, high resolution output, control over the size and placement of everything on screen—made me feel right at home. Vesper and Q Branch are James Bond references. Why the homage? Gruber: Bond’s gadgets have always been at the intersection of utility and elegance. Serve a necessary purpose, reliably, and look good doing it. That’s as good a motto for a software company as any. What does Vesper bring to the table that other apps don’t? Gruber: A few things. For one, the design supports any size note, naturally. I have two-word notes, and 200-word notes. Vesper supports photo attachments, which few others do, and the ones that do tend to be complex, fussy apps. But the three big things are organization, prioritization, and feel. With tags, I feel organized. I’ve got everything in my mind in Vesper. But with tags I can focus on just one area at a time. (E.g., I have a tag for articles I want to link to on Daring Fireball.) With drag-and-drop reordering, I can keep important stuff at the top of my list. This drove me nuts in other notes apps, which sort by date. I’d always be opening week-old notes and adding meaningless changes, like an extra line at the end, just to get them to sort back to the top of my list. Vesper notes are like cards in a stack—it’s easy to move one to the top of the stack. The last, feel, is the most subjective. But I think we’ve achieved something special with Vesper, where it feels both efficient and pleasing to use. I think this is more than just superficial. Our goal was to make it such that, if a quick little thought entered your head that you might want to put in Vesper, the appeal of using the app would push you over the edge to do it, to put it in Vesper rather than just keep it in your head. A complete reduction of friction. Wiskus: Most apps of this type enforce some kind of philosophy. Some have books you need to read just to understand them. We wanted something that worked the way our brains did naturally.

Idaho Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter made a recent proclamation that grabbed the attention of the L.A. Times, but flew under the radar of most people in Idaho. On the same day that the federal government shut down and Idaho's new health exchange launched, Gov. Otter declared Oct. 1 "Aaron Paul Sturtevant Day". WHEREAS, “Aaron Paul” first became a household name for his role as “Jesse Pinkman” on the popular AMC series “Breaking Bad;” and WHEREAS, Aaron won two Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series” for his role in “Breaking Bad” in 2010 and 2012; and WHEREAS, anyone who watched Aaron Paul’s performance in “Breaking Bad” witnessed the devastating, tragic impacts of methamphetamine use on individuals, and the scourge that meth has become to our communities and society; and WHEREAS, Aaron Paul continues to be an ambassador for the State of Idaho throughout the nation and is an inspiration to all Idahoans; NOW, THEREFORE, I, C.L. “BUTCH” OTTER, Governor of the State of Idaho, hereby proclaim October 1, 2013, as Aaron Paul Sturtevant Day. Aaron Paul Sturtevant, who goes by Aaron Paul, played the meth-cooking Jessie Pinkman in AMC's "Breaking Bad." The hit show's finale was Sept. 30, but the show's much-anticipated end wasn't the final word in Idaho. The governor's proclamation came two weeks after the Emmett-born actor rented out the Egyptian Theatre in downtown Boise for a screening of one of the final episodes. According to Otter's spokesman Jon Hanian, a proclamation of this kind isn't unusual. "He's obviously had great success in his chosen profession, winning accolades and honors for his role in 'Breaking Bad.' He speaks fondly of Boise and of the state and of his experience of growing up here," Hanian says. Hanian says he's not sure if the governor is a fan of the show, but he says Otter wanted to recognize this "Idaho son," despite his living in L.A. for the past several years. And for those who missed the feverishly hyped visit from Paul at the Egyptian, Bushmill's whiskey produced this video documenting it. The whiskey company sponsored his trip to the City of Trees, as Paul refers to Boise. In the video Paul sips whiskey with some friends and talks about his Idaho roots -- and "staying grounded" in Hollywood.

Photo It is widely known that being overweight or obese is linked to an increased risk for cardiovascular and other diseases. Now a new study has found that even in young adults of normal weight, increases in body mass index also lead to increased risk. Researchers studied 12,664 young adults, testing them for 32 gene variants known to be associated with higher B.M.I., and assigning a “gene score” to each depending on how many of the genetic variants they carried. By studying such a large population, they were able to separate genetic tendencies toward weight gain from other variables that may contribute to being overweight, such as diet, physical activity levels and socioeconomic status. Elevated B.M.I. and numerous blood indications of metabolic risk closely matched higher gene scores, strongly suggesting that higher B.M.I. alone causes the increase in cardiovascular risk factors independent of fatty food consumption, exercise, smoking and other variables. The study, online in PLOS Medicine, also analyzed 1,488 people who had metabolic profiles done after six years and found that increases in B.M.I., even within the normal range, led to extensive adverse metabolic changes, while modest weight loss led to multiple favorable changes. “Our study in young adults shows that even a modest weight loss tends to improve the metabolic profile,” said the lead author, Peter Würtz, head of molecular epidemiology at the University of Oulu in Finland. “It doesn’t have to be a large change to have a beneficial role. Even with a normal B.M.I. of 24, it’s worth it to try to get it lower.”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders attacked Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton over her record on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, during Thursday’s debate. Sanders attacked Clinton’s previous promotion of natural gas saying, “[w]hen you were Secretary of State, you also worked hard to expand fracking to countries all over the world.” Clinton admitted Sanders was correct, but stated during the CNN debate, “I don’t think I’ve changed my view.” Clinton specifically claimed that “for both economic and environmental and strategic reasons, it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time, also to get out from under, especially if they were in Europe, the pressure from Russia, which has been incredibly intense. So we did say natural gas is a bridge.” Clinton promoted fracking for natural gas in other countries during her tenure as secretary of state, saying in 2010, “[t]he United States will promote the use of shale gas.” The Department of State helped advise African and other world leaders on the benefits of fracking during her tenure, connecting them with American energy experts and organized visits to drilling sites in America. The State Department hosted several conferences on fracking in other countries while Clinton was secretary of state and sent U.S. experts to help foreign officials develop fracking programs. State’s fracking program continued under Secretary of State John Kerry, known as the Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program. Much of the fracking proposed by the Department of State would have been done on public lands in other countries, but Clinton now supports phasing out fracking on public lands in America. Clinton claimed in the debate that by the time the Enviromental Protection Agency finishes regulating fracking, there will be much less of it in America. The Hillary Clinton campaign immediately hung up when contacted in December by The Daily Caller News Foundation about the presidential candidate’s record on fracking. Environmentalists have accused Clinton of “soft climate denial” for her fracking history and her criticism of Sanders’ environmental record. Friends of the Earth Action, which has endorsed Sanders, claimed Clinton lied about the Vermont senator’s environmental record during an interview earlier this month. Friends of the Earth claims to have “over 2 million members and supporters around the world,” but is poorly funded compared to more established environmental groups. Larger environmental groups, such as the League of Conservation Voters, have endorsed Clinton. Follow Andrew on Twitter Send tips to andrew@ dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard As former acting attorney general Sally Yates prepares to testify, Donald Trump lashed out this morning via his customary outlet, Twitter, to attack both the Obama administration and Sally Yates herself. In his first tweet, Trump went after the Obama administration, attempting to shift blame for the hiring of Michael Flynn off himself and onto his predecessor: General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017 Oh, dear, things seem to have gotten too deep for Trump almost immediately, as national security expert and former NSA analyst John Schindler quickly pointed out: WH does not adjudicate clearances. IRL Obama fired #MoscowMike as DIA director because he's an incompetent asshat. https://t.co/R0ZYtK5hQZ — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017 Schindler further dismantled Trump’s absurd attempt at blame-shifting by a simple appeal to logic and fact: Flynn was commissioned in Army MI in 1981. By Trump's "logic" Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 & Obama all cleared him. This is insane BS. — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017 Trump’s second tweet was directed at Sally Yates: Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017 Again, Schindler quickly pointed to the fly in Trump’s buttermilk (a mistake Trump has since quietly corrected to “counsel”): There's a WH Counsel. And there's a National Security Council. There is no "WH Council". POTUS is a complete moron. https://t.co/hUMBsq7NKS — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017 Schindler followed that up with a stinging condemnation of Trump’s continued dishonesty and where it’s going to get him (hint: not a good place): There's so much dishonest desperation in this tweet you can taste it across the room. Gonna be a bad week for Trump & his #KremlinGate pals. — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017 Donald Trump has good reason to be frightened and good reason to want to shift blame for his hiring of Kremlin mole Michael Flynn onto Obama, who fired the guy and to discredit Sally Yates, who has the proverbial “goods” on Donald Trump. John Schindler called it: Trump is a complete moron and he has only himself to blame for the fix in which he finds himself. His desperate and increasingly pathetic attempts to blame everybody himself for everything he did wrong will stand out in historical accounts of his dizzying fall from the heights vaulting ambition. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:

In the conservative commentariat and intellectual classes, the deal with the devil that is Trumpism seems increasingly complete. Stalwart conservatives who for years—in some cases decades—defended the principles of limited government, personal liberty, and strict adherence to the Constitution have hiked their skirts and dropped their panties, swooning as Big Donnie Trump talks dirty to the media. In a depressing twist, many members of my party and ideological persuasion have become advocates for Donald Trump on a scale that ranges from grudging to toadying, for a simple reason that seems to overwhelm all other factors: He attacks the media. Many are willing to forgive almost any sin because of it. All it took to break the spirit of far too many in the conservative class was for Trump to leaven his deranged, autocratic rantings with “fake news” and “duh librul media” bait to compromise the ideals and credibility of a large swath of the conservative firmament. People who think of themselves as being smarter than the average bag of hammers are missing that they’re the just the latest victims of the Trump Con. We now routinely see a formulation something like this:, “Well, Trump isn't perfect, but at least he's attacking the media.” It's the haute-bourgeois pleasure of watching someone else to do your dueling. For decades, the rallying cry on the right was: “If only we could overcome the liberal media monoculture, the truth and strength of our ideas would finally break through. If only we could really be heard on economic matters, on foreign affairs, and on race, the Republican Party and conservatism would finally get a fair hearing in the minds of the American people.” It wouldn’t have to be a zero-sum game of replacing one set of biases with another; the rightness of our ideas would carry the day. But in a White House press room that includes staff “writers” for Infowars and Breitbart in press conferences, the Trump Administration isn’t looking for up-the-middle coverage; they’re looking for partners in the fake news explosion that helped Trump win the election. Conservative writers and thinkers who look away from the creepy authoritarianism, apocalyptic religious war fantasies, lavish corruption, overt economic statism, and general ineptitude simply because Trump snubs the established press aren’t doing the movement any favors. Let’s be clear; the mainstream media deserves a kick in the ass so hard they reach orbital velocity for their professional missteps, insularity, ideological blinders, vast self-regard, and occasional outright malice against conservatives. However, as a justification for every one of Trump’s failings, reveling in their misery falls wildly short of the mark. It’s certainly not enough for the movement once graced by the ideas of Burke, Hayek, Kirk, and Buckley to sell so cheaply. It’s not an argument for mainstream media malpractice, Obama, Clinton, social justice silliness, George Soros, or the Pentaverate to say that imitating the worst behavior of the liberal elements of the national media doesn’t honor the ideals we claim to serve. Instead, it makes a mockery of our ideas if we believe our a Trump-centric media monoculture is a positive outcome. Yes, in 2008, the media lost their collective minds in a paroxysm of Obama-driven adulation. The superlatives flowed in an ridiculous, flowery stream of praise that bordered at times on the creepy. Yes, “the One” was a media absurdity. I remember emailing a reporter a snarky note after reading one of her pieces, “Are you practicing writing ‘Mrs. Katherine Obama’ in loopy script in your mash book?” (Name changed to protect the embarrassed.) Obama was referred to in terms so glowing, so fulsome, so toadying that it was easy to pin down the journalist class of 2008 as a group of fangirls squeeing and fainting at his every utterance. That nearly mindless adulation was still a strong element in Obama's coverage until he walked out of the Oval Office. Conservatives rightly mocked it, while recognizing that the normative power of media and pop culture had combined in one fell swoop to overcome Barack Obama’s thin resume, his lack of experience, and questions about his ideological underpinnings. Now, though, writers who just two years ago would have torn the bark off Barack Obama for picking winners and losers or for advocating some form of pie-in-the-sky “everyone gets covered” single-payer-ish health care plan today direct a large fraction of their ire to media outlets scrambling to find a way to process the election and governance of Trump. Rather than examine his daily assaults on conservative values, common sense, and that little thing we used to value called “the truth” they look politiely away as “conservatives” who have for decades sung the praises of free trade, low tariffs, and multilateral trade agreements now mutely nod at the brute stupidity of Trumpian economic populism... because at least he’s battering CNN, The New York Times, and BuzzFeed, right? Of course, intellectual conservatism is a fairly small pool in the great scheme of things. What really mattered then and now is that a half-dozen gatekeepers in the conservative movement decided Trump would be lucrative fodder for their audience. They monetized the transition from promoting conservative ideals to selling the umber con man with the same vigor they pitch reverse mortgages, catheters, survival food, and gold. This constellation of media players could have at any moment pumped the brakes on Trump and Trumpism during the 2016 election, and could do so now. At any moment, Rupert or the sons could have told Roger Ailes, “OK...that's enough.” The as-yet unchronicled conspiracy – and I use that word deliberately – between the c-suite at Fox News, Matt Drudge, Trumpbart, Rush Limbaugh is a story waiting to be told. They and others actively elected to elide Trump's endless catalog of ideological sins, moral shortcomings, mob ties, Russian moneymen, personal weirdnesses, trophy wives, serial bankruptcies, persistent tax shenanigans, low-grade intellect, thinly-veiled racial animus, and conspiracy email-forwarding kooky grandpa affect. The “populist movement” explanation for 2016 isn't entirely wrong, but it took the full throttle efforts of the high-volume media enablers to promote Trump as the singular remedy for the moral, economic, and political collapse they decried each day for their credulous viewers and listeners to make that “movement” happen. Even after 25 years in this movement, I can't help but feel a sense of wonder at how brazen their marketing and monetization of Trump has been, and at its spectacular cost to conservatism.