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These girlfriends deserves a special mention for going that extra mile, hopefully doesn't set too many guys off on the path towards outrageous demands.
1. She knows the severity of man-flu
2. All fun and games is all good
3. A voucher that says 'I love you'
4. When arguments don't drag on forever.
5. Providing everything he needs.
6. Very understanding
7. As awesome a gesture as this is, we are worried about this man's cooking skills.
8. Nice cake
8. Fair bargaining
9. Excellent gift choice
10. Very thoughtful
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LeSean McCoy going through warmups with first team offense. To my eye, does not look close to 100 percent when cutting and exploding.
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Tom Curran has been called up to England's Ashes squad. The 22-year-old Surrey all-rounder will fly out to Australia in the next 24 hours as a replacement for Steven Finn, after the Middlesex fast bowler was ruled out of the rest of the tour with a torn left knee cartilage.
Curran is yet to play a Test match for England. However, he broke into the white-ball side during the 2017 season, making his debut in Twenty20 and one-day international cricket, and impressed the England management with his attitude.
Coach Trevor Bayliss is known to be a fan, and so Curran has been preferred to the likes of Liam Plunkett, Tom Helm, George Garton and Mark Wood as England seek to bolster their ailing pace-bowling reserves ahead of the toughest series of them all.
Shape Created with Sketch. England Ashes squad Show all 17 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. England Ashes squad 1/17 Captain: Joe Root England's Mr Dependable will lead his side into an Ashes series for the first time, and while he has the experience of the series wins in 2013 and 2015, he also has the scars of the last trip Down Under. Getty 2/17 Batsman: Alastair Cook The former captain will be crucial to England's hopes, with the Essex opener needing to find the same resilient form that he displayed in Australia in the 2010/11 series. Getty 3/17 Batsman: Mark Stoneman Cook's likely opening partner will be Mark Stoneman after selectors decided to stick with him despite a nervous series against the West Indies. Getty 4/17 Batsman/spinner: Dawid Malan Malan showed glimpses of promise this summer and can also offer an option with the ball, but he is untested on the hard pitches of Australia and could be found out. Getty 5/17 Batsman: Gary Ballance Ballance is handed yet another chance to salvage his England career as the selectors hope he will eventually come good for their unyielding faith. Getty 6/17 Batsman: James Vince Vince is the surprise inclusion in the squad, having done little of note in county cricket since being dropped in 2016. Getty 7/17 Batsman/spinner: Moeen Ali Moeen Ali could easily go on to be man of the series given his ability to deliver fireworks with bat and ball. He may disagree, but he is undoubtedly England's front line spinner. Getty 8/17 Batsman/spinner: Mason Crane Crane is yet to make his full debut, though took a wonderful catch against the West Indies as a substitute fielder and will head to Australia as a back-up leg-break spiner bowler. Getty 9/17 Wicketkeeper: Ben Foakes Foakes will head to Australia as a deputy for first-choice wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow. Getty 10/17 Wicketkeeper: Jonny Bairstow Another man who will need to produce runs to give England a chance of victory, with his ability in the mid-order giving the tourists a bite throughout the line-up. Getty 11/17 All-rounder: Ben Stokes Stokes is named in the side despite falling under a huge cloud after his arrest on a late night out in Bristol. His future as vice-captain looks very much in doubt. Getty 12/17 All-rounder: Chris Woakes Woakes will provide rest for the front-line bowlers and will also prove handy with the bat. Getty 13/17 Bowler: Stuart Broad Broad has long set his sights on this Ashes tour as he hopes to make up for the 2013/14 humiliation, and his opening partnership with James Anderson will set the tone for how England will cope out in Australia. Getty 14/17 Bowler: James Anderson England's leading Test wicket-taker will be wrapped in cotton wool until the first Test, though he will have to deliver the goods in a country where swing can be hard to find. Getty 15/17 Bowler: Jake Ball Ball could prove to be England's joke in the pack given his extra pace and bounce. Think Chris Tremlett a la 2010/11. It's just a case of keeping him fit. Getty 16/17 Bowler: Craig Overton The third uncapped member of the squad, Overton has been rewarded for a solid season with Somerset. Getty 17/17 Bowler: Tom Curran Called up by England to replace Steven Finn, who had previously been called up due to Ben Stokes' uncertainty. Getty 1/17 Captain: Joe Root England's Mr Dependable will lead his side into an Ashes series for the first time, and while he has the experience of the series wins in 2013 and 2015, he also has the scars of the last trip Down Under. Getty 2/17 Batsman: Alastair Cook The former captain will be crucial to England's hopes, with the
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We'll have turkey on the table Thursday but, as yet, it looks like no turkey in the Presidential on-deck circle. And both Gov. Howard Dean and Congressman Bernie Sanders think credit should go where credit is due. That means, thank you, Ralph Nader. Thanks a whole frickin' lot!
Shortly after the votes were counted and the stalemate began, Dean said he hoped the Nader voters in the Sunshine State — all 93,000 — were "happy." Said he hoped they would be comfortable with the Supreme Court justices that Dubya will be appointing if he proves to be the eventual winner. Dean supported Ralph Nader's right to run, but sarcastically expressed the hope that Nader's supporters will live at peace with themselves under the looming Bush administration.
And Sanders, an old friend of the Green Party candidate, was even more upset.
"It seemed to me," said Ol' Bernardo, "that in the last month or two, Nader really made a deliberate effort to defeat Al Gore. He went to those states where the races were closest and was pretty clear about his goal. I don't understand that and I think that was wrong."
Hindsight's always 20-20.
Thanks, Ralph.
Civil-Unions Update — The 11-member commission established by Act 91 met last week at the Statehouse to check up on how Vermont's landmark legalization of love for all couples was shaking out. The news was quite good.
Steve Patterson, deputy commerce secretary, reported no negative repercussions whatsoever to date. While there's plenty of anecdotal information about the positive effect the more than 1200 civil unions have had on Vermont's hospitality sector, Patterson said his agency had compiled no data to quantify that.
Town Clerk Linda Spence of Manchester told the commission over the speakerphone that implementation of the civil-unions law has been remarkably smooth. Vance is also a justice of the peace and the president of the Association of Town Clerks and Treasurers. She was familiar with just one case of rude treatment given an out-of-state lesbian couple by a town official in Weston.
"The sun still rises and sets in Vermont," said Spence. "I myself am a heterosexual, but I have to say my experiences both as town clerk and justice of the peace have been nothing but positive with this law in place. It has proved to me to be one of the most moving and emotional pieces of legislation I have seen, and I don't see where it does any harm to anybody."
We're No.1??? — University of Vermont men's ice hockey Coach Mike Gilligan told Seven Days Tuesday morning he's hanging in there. After all, the guy's a veteran of the game. A senior statesman. An institution.
When Gilligan first hit Burlington, Bernie Sanders was mayor, Madeleine Kunin just got elected governor, Phish was a typo. Nobody ever heard of Bill Clinton. The lakefront bikepath did not exist.
Things change.
That's why we had to check Gilligan's pulse this week. At no time in his 16 years of whistling Vermont line changes has Mike Gilligan been here before. It's uncharted territory. The numbers don't lie. As the old Green & Gold prepared for Tuesday night's game against non-league opponent UMass-Amherst, Vermont is 4-0 and flying solo in first place in the ECAC.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's much too early to suggest that Cinderella is spending the winter in Burlington, Vermont. Way too early. Dream on, right?
But they say the darkest hour comes right before the dawn. And everybody remembers the black night that swallowed UVM last season. However, what these guys have been doing on the ice speaks volumes.
"They learned quite a bit last season," Gilligan told Seven Days. "They learned how precious one game is. How precious a night on the ice is."
It shows.
And make no mistake, this is a disciplined team in more ways than one. Gilligan told us forward Graham Mink, a junior from Stowe, Vermont, sat out the first four games as punishment for breaking an undisclosed team rule. When he finally got to play in the Yale game, Big Mink played like a gorilla on ice skates.
A couple of Minnesota schools are coming in this weekend for a Saturday-Sunday tournament at the Gut with Gilligan's Gorillas and UNH. Duluth and Mankato, in the giant Minnesota state university system, will hit Burlap with some rock-'em-sock-'em "western-style" hockey. Welcome to Vermont, boys!
Media Notes — Is there Mardi Gras coverage in Sera Congi's future?
Congi is the talented co-anchor of "Vermont's Own" Ch. 3
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The 1945 Sinkings of the Cap Arcona and the Thielbek
Allied Attacks Killed Thousands of Concentration Camp Inmates
By Mark Weber
All prisoners of German wartime concentration camps who perished while in German custody are routinely regarded as "victims of Nazism" -- even if they lost their lives as direct or indirect result of Allied policy. Similarly, all Jews who died in German captivity during World War II -- no matter what the cause of death -- are counted as "victims of the Holocaust."
This view is very misleading, if not deceitful. In fact, many tens of thousands of camp inmates and Jews lost their lives as direct and indirect victims of Allied action, or of the horrors of the Second World War. For example, the many thousands of Jews who perished in the notorious Bergen-Belsen camp during and after the final months of the war in Europe, including Anne Frank, were primarily victims not of German policy, but rather of the turmoil and chaos of war.
Among the German concentration camp prisoners who perished at Allied hands were some 7,000 inmates who were killed during the war's final week as they were being evacuated in three large German ships that were attacked by British war planes. This little-known tragedy is one of history's greatest maritime disasters.
The Cap Arcona, launched in May 1927, was a handsome passenger ship of the "Hamburg-South America" line. At 27,000 gross registered tons, it was the fourth-largest ship in the German merchant marine. For twelve years -- until the outbreak of war in 1939 -- she had sailed regularly between Hamburg and Rio de Janeiro. In the war's final months she was pressed into service by the German navy to rescue refugees fleeing from areas in the east threatened by the Red Army. This was part of a vast rescue operation organized by the German navy under the supervision of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. All but unknown in the United States today, this great undertaking saved countless lives. The Thielbek, a much smaller ship of 2,800 gross registered tons, was also used to transport refugees as part of the rescue operation.
In April 1945, Karl Kaufmann, Gauleiter of Hamburg and Reich Commissioner for merchant shipping, transferred the Cap Arcona and the Thielbek from naval command, and ordered them to Neustadt Bay in the Baltic Sea near the north German city of Lübeck.
Some 5,000 prisoners hastily evacuated from the Neuengamme concentration camp (a few miles southeast of Hamburg) were brought on board the Cap Arcona between April 18 and 26, along with some 400 SS guards, a naval gunnery detail of 500, and a crew of 76. Similarly the Thielbek took on some 2,800 Neuengamme prisoners. Under the terrible conditions that prevailed in what remained of unoccupied Germany during those final weeks, conditions for the prisoners on board the two vessels were dreadful. Many of the tightly packed inmates were ill, and both food and water were in very short supply.
On the afternoon of May 3, 1945, British "Typhoon" fighter-bombers, striking in several attack waves, bombarded and fired on the Cap Arcona and then the Thielbek. The two ships, which had no military function or mission, were flying many large white flags. "The hoisting of white flags proved useless," notes the Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. The attacks were thus violations of international law, for which -- if Britain and not Germany had been the vanquished power -- British pilots and their commanders could have been punished and even executed as "war criminals."
The Thielbek, struck by rockets, bombs and machine gun fire, sank in just 15-20 minutes. British planes then fired on terror-stricken survivors who were struggling in rescue boats or thrashing in the cold sea. Nearly everyone on board the Thielbek perished quickly, including nearly all the SS guards, ship's officers and crew members. Only about 50 of the prisoners survived.
The burning Cap Arcona took longer to go under. Many inmates burned to death. Most of those who were able to leap overboard drowned in the cold sea, and only some 350-500 could be rescued. During the next several days hundreds of corpses washed up on nearby shores, and were buried in mass graves. Having sunk in shallow water, the wreck of the capsized Cap Arcona remained partially above water as a grim reminder of the catastrophe.
A German reference work, Verheimlichte Dokumente, sums up:
A particularly barbaric Allied war crime was the bombing on May 3, 1945, by British Royal Air Force planes of the passenger ships Cap Arcona and Thielbek in the Lübeck bay, packed with concentration camp inmates. Among the many 'nameless' victims were many prominent political figures, a fact that is hushed up today because the fact that concentration camp inmates, many of them
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Kim Kardashian is jumping on the hype wave and releasing a fidget spinner. The spinner is a gold money symbol and it says "daddy," which is apt since it's called the Daddy Money Fidget Spinner. It can be yours — with a seven-day shipping delay because these things take time — for the low price of $15, plus $4 for shipping
Fidget spinners are apparently still a thing. But since I could not give less of a shit about them, I asked my colleague and noted fidget spinner enthusiast, Ashley Carman, what she thought about Kim's latest business endeavor.
"I would never spend $15 on a Kim K spinner," says Carman.
Well there you have it. Have a nice weekend.
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10 of London's greatest Victorian projects – 4. The Palace of Westminster… February 6, 2013
Commonly thought to be older than it actually is due to its Gothic stylings (although, to be fair, parts of it do date from medieval times), the Palace of Westminster – or, as it's more commonly known, the Houses of Parliament – didn't actually take on much of its current appearance until the latter half of the 19th century.
The need for a new building for parliament arose after 1834 when a fire, caused by the overheating of two underfloor stoves used to incinerate the Exchequer's obsolete tally sticks, tore through the former complex, leaving only some structures from the old palace intact. They included the 11th century Westminster Hall (the largest in Europe when it was built), 14th century Jewel Tower and a chapterhouse, crypt and cloisters, all of which was once attached to the now gone St Stephen's Chapel.
While King William IV offered the use of Buckingham Palace for Parliament, the idea – along with a host of other options – was rejected as unsuitable. Instead, a competition was held for a new design and after almost 100 entries were considered, architect Charles Barry and his design for a new palace in the perpendicular Gothic style was chosen. Interestingly, while Barry was a classical architect, under the terms of the competition, designs were required to be in a Gothic style, thought to embody conservative values .
Incorporating some of the remains of the old palace – including Westminster Hall but not the Jewel Tower which to this day stands alone – the design was based around a series of internal courtyards with the House of Commons and House of Lords located on either side of a central lobby (first known as Octagonal Hall). The design involved reclaiming some land from the Thames so the building's main river-facing facade could be completed.
Towers stand at either end of the complex – the Victoria Tower over the Sovereign's Entrance at the southern end of the complex (for many years the tallest square stone tower in the world) and the narrower tower formerly known as the Clock Tower which houses the bell Big Ben, at the northern end – and there is a central Octagonal Tower which stands directly over the Central Lobby. The Clock Tower, incidentally, was renamed the Elizabeth Tower last year in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee (for more on it and Big Ben, see our earlier entries here and here).
Other towers include the Speaker's Tower (located at the northern end of the building on the waterfront, this contains a residence for the Speaker), the Chancellor's Tower (located at the southern end, it too contained a residence originally used by the Lord Chancellor) and St Stephen's Tower – located in the middle of the building's west front, it contains the public entrance to the building. Significant other rooms in the palace complex include the Robing Room – where the Queen puts on her ceremonial robes and crown before the State Opening of Parliament – and the Royal Gallery, used for state occasions.
The foundation stone (the building was constructed out of sand-coloured limestone from Yorkshire) was laid in 1840 and construction of the monumental building – which features more than 1,100 rooms and two miles of passageways – wasn't completely finished until the 1870s although most of the work had been completed by 1860 (the year Barry died). The House of Lords first sat in their new chamber in 1847 and the House of Commons in 1852 (it was at this point that Barry was knighted for his work).
The cost, meanwhile, originally estimated at less than £750,000, ended up coming in at more than £2 million.
Much of the interior decoration owes its appearance to the Gothic revivalist Augustus Pugin who designed everything from wallpapers, to floor tiles and furnishings. Pugin also helped Barry with the external appearance but like Barry died before the project was completely finished (in 1852).
The palace was bombed numerous times in World War II – in one raid, the Commons Chamber was destroyed as firefighters opted to save the much older Westminster Hall instead. It was later rebuilt under the direction of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and completed by 1950. Other aspects of the building have also been restored.
A Grade I-listed building classified as a World Heritage Site, Barry's Houses of Parliament remain one of London's most iconic structures. We'll be looking in more detail at some of the building's features in future posts.
WHERE: Houses of Parliament (nearest Tube stations are Westminster, St James's Park and Embankment); WHEN: Tours (75 minutes) are run from 9.15am to 4.30pm on Saturdays (also six days a week during summer opening); COST: £15 adults/£10 concessions/£6 children five to 15 years (children under five are free). Prices go up after 1st April – check website for details and to purchase tickets (
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: This week the Chilean government's promise to protect roughly 10 million acres of land became official, boosting the nation's parklands by 38.5 percent, according to a statement . Read our original story about the move below:
Last week, the government of Chile signed an agreement taking possession of a 1-million-acres of private park land put together by a pair of American philanthropists. It also announced it would protect an additional 9 million acres of wildlands as national parks, reports Jonathan Franklin at The Guardian.
Kris McDivitt Tompkins, former CEO of the clothing company Patagonia and her husband, Doug Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing lines, began buying hundreds of thousands of acres in the wild Patagonia region of Chile in the early 1990s, The Guardian's John Vidal reported last year. Their goal, Vidal writes, was to "buy and restore as much land as they could, improve and protect it, and then return it to people as public, national parks."
After over two decades of work, they acquired 2.2 million acres of land, including the gifted land, Parque Pumalín and Patagonia, which together span roughly 1 million acres and represent the largest land donation from a private entity to a country.
But Chile was not always receptive to the couple. In the beginning of the project, they were accused of being CIA spies, of trying to hobble Chile's economic development and called a national security threat. At one point the government threatened to take their land.
"We were opposed for four years. We were 'the couple who cut Chile in half,'" McDivitt Tompkins tells Vidal. "They said we were setting up a nuclear-waste dump or a new Jewish state."
But in recent years, the Chilean government has warmed up to the conservation projects, and president Michelle Bachelet was on hand at the border of Pumalin Park to sign the documents authorizing the handover. As Elizabeth Royte at National Geographic reports, Chile hopes to include the new parks in a 1,500-mile tourism route they want to call the Ruta de los Parques, which would link together 17 national parks and offer everything from rainforest hikes and mountaineering to sea kayaking. By some estimates the new parks will bring $270 million into the area and employ 43,000 people.
The new parks make Chile one of Central and South America's most eco-conscious nations. "That puts Chile right up there with Costa Rica in terms of the percentage of protected lands," Yvon Chouinard, founder of the Patagonia clothing company tells Franklin. "No other human has ever created this many acres of protected wildlands…These are tourist-ready parks with trails and cabins and infrastructure."
However, Doug Tompkins, who died in 2015 in a kayaking accident, will never see the fruits of their labor. "I wish my husband Doug, whose vision inspired today's historic pledge, were here on this memorable day. Our team and I feel his absence deeply," McDivitt Tompkins says in a press release. "But I know that if Doug were here today, he would speak of national parks being one of the greatest expressions of democracy that a country can realize, preserving the masterpieces of a nation for all of its citizenry."
The handover of the Tompkins property will take place incrementally over the next two years.
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Household fast food names could soon be a thing of the past thanks to the funding of plant-based alternatives from some of the world's biggest investors. The plant-based food scene is changing rapidly, no longer are vegans thought to eat nothing but lettuce and lentils, the plant-based burger revolution has arrived. What's more, big investors are excited about it.
Recently, Beyond Meat's burger, otherwise known as 'the burger that bleeds' accomplished something huge when they struck a deal with stores owned by Kroger, that means their burger will be stocked in 605 stores across the US. Beyond have seen investments from some big names including Bill Gates, General Mills and even meat producers Tyson Foods. Tyson's CEO said earlier this year that the future of protein may lie in the meatless market.
A similar burger, made by Impossible Foods, who Bill Gates has also invested in, managed to accumulate $75 million worth of funding last month. Alongside Bill Gates, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Asia's second richest man Li Ka-shing were amongst the contributors.
Impossible are currently waiting on confirmation from the FDA about their ingredient 'heme', which they were granted a patent for this month. Heme is the key to their 'meat like' burgers and is derived from soy. As yet the FDA are undecided as to whether this product will be considered an allergen, which is currently stopping Impossible from distributing further. However, it seems that they will have a lot of support behind them when they do.
Taking it one step further, from individual products to a whole chain of restaurants, By Chloe has taken the US by storm since its first store opened its doors in 2015. The fully plant-based chain which has been described as 'Shake Shack without the meat', is already venturing across the Atlantic to London, where it will open its first European store in Covent Garden later this year. Since opening, the chain has sold over 600,000 vegan burgers, which aren't the only item on their menu. These high figures may account for the whopping $13 million dollars invested in the chain recently to allow them to expand both in the US and overseas.
Start-ups like these are seeing an increase in popularity, and it's not surprising. Plant-based foods are much more sustainable than their animal product alternative, something Impossible Foods boast about on their site. The increased number of options allow people who are still keen on the taste of meat, as well as those who want to celebrate vegetables, plenty of things to try without comprising their favourite foods.
With backing from big investors these companies could go from just starting out to fast food giants pretty quickly, and with everything they have to brag about it could mean a sharp decline in some of the world's biggest fast food outlets.
Unless, of course, McDonalds want to jump on the plant-based bandwagon?
Image credit: Impossible Foods | Beyond Meat | Grub Street | by Chloe
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by David E. Petzal - Thursday, June 29, 2017
According to a poll by the Media Insight Project, only 6 percent of Americans have faith in the news media. Among readers of American Rifleman, that figure is likely even lower. We've learned that, in all probability, anything we read or hear about guns will be either biased or factually wrong, or both. How come?
Reason One:
Lack of accountability. When I broke into the magazine business in 1964, I had some basic rules drummed into my crew-cut head. If you edited a piece, you were responsible for everything in it: spelling, punctuation, facts, everything—especially facts.
If you were wrong, God help you. The least you would get was a serious public tongue-lashing. As a result of this process I can tell you to this day that it's the Smithsonian Institution, not Institute, and that "prairie" is not spelled "prarie." A cousin of mine, who worked at one of the big New York City daily newspapers, had exactly the same experience.
This seems to have gone by the wayside. A small example: On Jan. 5, in The New York Times, there was an article on "ballistics vests." What's wrong with this? It's "ballistic vests." "Ballistics" is the science of projectile behavior and is a noun, while "ballistic" means relating to ballistics, and is an adjective. No one at The Times appears to know the difference. If I had made that mistake, or my cousin had, we would have been screamed at for 10 minutes with no regard for our "safe space."
Reason Two:
People in the same profession tend to think alike. Among the news media, the collective wisdom regarding guns runs as follows:
1. They believe guns are inherently evil.
2. They think gun owners are, at the least, disturbed and, at the worst, dangerous.
3. They believe the National Rifle Association has, since its founding in 1871, done nothing worthwhile, has never been right about anything and is nothing more than a shill for the firearm industry.
4. They believe the Second Amendment has no relevance in today's United States, and if only we could institute reasonable gun controls there would be no more gun violence.
5. It is their opinion that guns in the home lead only to tragedy, and self-protection is a myth.
Now, let's assume that you're a student in journalism school, and the subject of guns comes up, and you venture the fact that you own guns, and use them, and that your family has always had guns in the home, and that there's never been an accident, and that you don't even know of any accidents. How do you think that statement would be received?
Most likely, you would shortly receive a summons from the dean of students and probably the college psychiatrist to come in and chat, not that there's anything wrong, you understand, but … .
Or let's say that you work in a newsroom and the subject of guns used in self-defense comes up and you point out that, every month, you can cite half a dozen or more cases in "The Armed Citizen" where someone who had a gun prevented a crime or saved themselves or someone else and, in many instances, did it without firing a shot. Imagine the look you're going to get from the news director. It will not be the kind of look that says your career will prosper here.
Reason Three:
Good old-fashioned ignorance. I got my first exposure to this in the mid-1960s when the armed forces began issuing M16s. The 5.56 mm bullets, we were told by reporters, created terrible wounds because "they tumbled through the air and hit people like little buzz saws."
"Golly gee," I said, (or words to that effect), "that's just not possible. Anything that tumbles through the air isn't going to go where it's aimed. Just look at a football that doesn't spiral."
But there it was, and there was more to come.
When the first Glocks were imported they were denounced as "all plastic," and therefore undetectable at airports. The media, knowing nothing of how guns work, and not understanding such concepts as mass and resistance, printed the nonsense verbatim.
When the great "cop-killer-bullet" brouhaha erupted, the media also neglected to check the facts. If they had, they would have learned that Teflon-coated ammunition was very expensive, made in limited amounts, sold to police agencies only and had never been used to kill a cop.
Journalists are ignorant about guns because being knowledgeable about guns requires at least a smattering of
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This is a Random Event. Occurs in:
You are immediately hailed by a dangerous looking ship. "I'm feeling generouss today. I shall allow you to choose your own death. Which do you like leasst: shields, oxygen, or weaponsss?"
Trivia Edit
This event is called "NEBULA_SLUG_CHOOSE_DEATH" in the datafiles.
Choosing Weapons wont affect the Artillery Beam as it is not part of the Weapon Control.
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About This Game
UNLEASH THE GIANTS
COLOSSAL BATTLES
CALL UP YOUR ELITES
DESTRUCTIVE ABILITIES
THREE-FACTION CAMPAIGN
A NEW DAWN ONLINE
ONE ARMY TO RULE
Step into a brutal battle between three warring factionsIn Dawn of War III you will have no choice but to face your foes when a catastrophic weapon is found on the mysterious world of Acheron.With war raging and the planet under siege by the armies of greedy Ork warlord Gorgutz, ambitious Eldar seer Macha, and mighty Space Marine commander Gabriel Angelos, supremacy must ultimately be suspended for survival.Take control of towering war machines and tip the balance of battle in your favor with the biggest characters in Dawn of War history. Turn the tide with the mighty Imperial Knight (Space Marine), the clattering Gorkanaut (Ork), or the haunting Wraithknight (Eldar).Dawn of War is famous for its epic action and those immense clashes are back - but now they're off-the-scale. Wage war with massive armies across violent volcanic terrain or mighty orbital Star Forts.Take your battle plans to another level by deploying powerful collectible elite squads, each boasting their own special abilities and bonuses that will help you unlock and develop new attacking strategies to conquer your foes.Cause devastation on the battlefield with powerful super-abilities. Rain down total destruction on your enemies with the Space Marine's Orbital Bombardment, the Eldar's blistering Eldritch Storm or the Ork's Rokks to counter your unsuspecting rivals.Learn what makes each force formidable through alternating missions. You'll soon come to understand the combat advantages of Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar and the rules of a universe with no heroes or villains… only war.Your army will wreak havoc online. Join the multiplayer community and forge new alliances - or turn the tables on your new 'friends' as they become foes in explosive, chaotic and competitive maps.Customize your own universal army from the very first moment you are matched in a melee. Progress through battle after battle with loyal troops by your side across both challenging campaign missions and dominating multiplayer maps.
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Getty Images
Eagles quarterback Michael Vick has heard people, including the President of the United States, call for him to slide feet first dozens of times in the last few years.
If Vick played for the Vikings, he might not hear quite as much criticism of the way he ends his runs. Vikings offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave wants quarterback Christian Ponder to slide head first after he suffered a concussion on a hit by Redskins linebacker London Fletcher after a feet first slide last season. Musgrave is fine with sliding feet first when there's no one around, but he thinks Ponder gets to the ground more quickly if he leads with his head in traffic.
"We don't want to expose ourselves by being a periscope up — exposing all our vital organs. We want to give them a very minimal surface," Musgrave said, via Dave Campbell of the Associated Press.
Going head first isn't going to eliminate the possibility of injuries. There's the chance of a shoulder or wrist injury as you go to the turf and rules governing when defensive players hit you aren't in place when the quarterback goes head first, to say nothing of the increased risk of injury. In 2010, Eli Manning lost a fumble against the Eagles that contributed to a Giants loss in a season that ended with the Giants one game out of a playoff spot.
There are risks either way, then, and the Vikings will be taking theirs head first this season.
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What the team was looking for, in particular, were elements like thorium and uranium, which along with potassium, warm Earth's interior. This heat affects its plate tectonics and, according to the scientists, the way it retains its water. Though the functions of that heat-to-plate-to-liquid interaction aren't fully understood -- it's "one of the great mysteries in the geosciences," the study's advisor, Wendy Panero, put it -- scientists have speculated that the forces of heat convection in the mantle, the ones that move Earth's crust, have some kind of role in regulating the amount of water in the oceans. "It seems that if a planet is to retain an ocean over geologic timescales, it needs some kind of crust 'recycling system,' and for us that's mantle convection," Unterborn said.
Which means, in turn, that plate tectonics could also be a key indicator of a planet's hospitality to life. Particularly for microbial life -- since microbial life on Earth, the study's authors point out, benefits from subsurface heat. (Take the single-celled microbe archaea, some of which live not off the energy of the sun, but rather off the heat rising from inside the Earth.) And that indicator, the team reasoned, can be approximated by analyzing a given exoplanet's sun: the more thorium in the star, say, the more likely a terrestrial planet formed around that star would be to support life. Since it would stand to reason that the planets that orbit around those suns contain more thorium, as well, that would suggest that the interiors of those exoplanets are warmer than ours -- and also that those planets are more geologically active than Earth. And that would mean that they are more likely than Earth to retain the liquid water that supports life.
And: Of the eight solar twins the team studied, seven of them seemed to contain more thorium than our own star.
One star in the team's survey, for example, contained 2.5 times more thorium than our sun. And per the study's measurements, terrestrial planets that formed around that star likely generate 25 percent more internal heat than Earth does -- with all that that implies. So there could be at least one planet that is potentially more life-affirming than Earth. But there could also be, the study suggests, more where that came from: exoplanets that are more earthly than Earth -- planets nourished and made hospitable by the warmth of other suns.
Now that the hunt for exoplanets has moved from science fiction to science, that finding -- preliminary and tentative as it is -- could have implications for humans' ability to find signs of life elsewhere in the universe. As study co-author Cayman Unterborn summed it up: "If it turns out that these planets are warmer than we previously thought, then we can effectively increase the size of the habitable zone around these stars by pushing the habitable zone farther from the host star, and consider more of those planets hospitable to microbial life."
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Backpage accounts for about 70 percent of prostitution advertising among five Web sites that carry such ads in the United States, earning more than $22 million annually from prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a media research and consulting company. It is now the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States, according to the National Association of Attorneys General. And it's not a fly-by-night operation. Backpage is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the estimable Village Voice newspaper.
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Attorneys general from 48 states have written a joint letter to Village Voice Media, pleading with it to get out of the flesh trade. An online petition at Change.org has gathered 94,000 signatures asking Village Voice Media to stop taking prostitution advertising. Instead, the company has used The Village Voice to mock its critics. Alissa thought about using her real name for this article but decided not to for fear that Village Voice would retaliate.
Court records and public officials back Alissa's account, and there is plenty of evidence that under-age girls are marketed on Backpage. Arrests in such cases have been reported in at least 22 states.
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Just this month, prosecutors in New York City filed charges in a case involving a gang that allegedly locked a 15-year-old Long Island girl in an empty house, drugged her, tied her up, raped her, and advertised her on Backpage. After a week of being sold for sex, prosecutors in Queens said, the girl escaped.
Liz McDougall, general counsel of Village Voice Media, told me that it is "shortsighted, ill-informed and counterproductive" to focus on Backpage when many other Web sites are also involved, particularly because Backpage tries to screen out ads for minors and reports possible trafficking cases to the authorities. McDougall denied that Backpage dominates the field and said that the Long Island girl was marketed on 13 other Web sites as well. But if street pimps go to jail for profiteering on under-age girls, should their media partners like Village Voice Media really get a pass?
Paradoxically, Village Voice began as an alternative newspaper to speak truth to power. It publishes some superb journalism. So it's sad to see it accept business from pimps in the greediest and most depraved kind of exploitation.
True, many prostitution ads on Backpage are placed by adult women acting on their own without coercion; they're not my concern. Other ads are placed by pimps: the Brooklyn district attorney's office says that the great majority of the sex trafficking cases it prosecutes involve girls marketed on Backpage.
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Alissa, who grew up in a troubled household in Boston, has a story that is fairly typical. She says that one night when she was 16 — and this matches the account she gave federal prosecutors — a young man approached her and told her she was attractive. She thought that he was a rapper, and she was flattered. He told her that he wanted her to be his girlfriend, she recalls wistfully.
Within a few weeks, he was prostituting her — even as she continued to study as a high school sophomore. Alissa didn't run away partly because of a feeling that there was a romantic bond, partly because of Stockholm syndrome, and partly because of raw fear. She says violence was common if she tried connecting to the outside world or if she didn't meet her daily quota for cash.
"He would get aggressive and strangle me and physically assault me and threaten to sell me to someone that was more violent than him, which he eventually did," Alissa recalled. She said she was sold from one pimp to another several times, for roughly $10,000 each time.
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She was sold to johns seven days a week, 365 days a year. After a couple of years, she fled, but a pimp tracked her down and — with the women he controlled — beat and stomped Alissa, breaking her jaw and several ribs, she said. That led her to cooperate with the police.
There are no simple solutions to end sex trafficking, but it would help to have public pressure on Village Voice Media to stop carrying prostitution advertising. The Film Forum has already announced that it will stop buying ads in The Village Voice. About 100 advertisers have dropped Rush Limbaugh's radio show because of
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The 43-year-old pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two counts of using a carriage service to transmit, publish or promote child pornography. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment. An agreed statement of facts tendered to the court details graphic communications which "amount to child pornography" that were exchanged between the men on Skype. The conversations include descriptions of what the pair would like to do to children, their preferences of children as young as three including ages and physical features, and discussion of where to access videos and photos of child pornography. On May 12, 2015, McCormack - who used the screen name "oz4skinboi" and claimed to be 28 - said he couldn't wait to look at "B porn". Hundreds of texts between McCormack and another man were detailed in court documents. Photo: AAP
The man responded: "I have some vids ... wbu [what about you]?" McCormack: "Some". Man: "Cool cool, pics too?" McCormack: "None saved but links." In an early morning chat on January 4, 2017, McCormack wrote: "I'm a total b loving pedo".
Over the next two and a half weeks, he sent messages including "I wana get pedo with u" and "Proud ped, proud b lover" The graphic messages were intercepted by the NSW Police Child Exploitation Internet Unit. Police also obtained a 30-second video of McCormack performing a sex act, which he sent to the other man. In the video, McCormack is heard to say he perves "non stop" when he's at the beach, a shopping centre or at the movies. As the chats went on, the man speaking with McCormack called him "Ben" and later mentioned McCormack's affiliation to A Current Affair, which gave police vital clues they needed to track him down.
McCormack was arrested at Moore Park on April 6, with search warrants carried out at his home and A Current Affair's offices in Willoughby. He declined a police interview. On Tuesday, a Channel Nine spokeswoman said McCormack had resigned, and that he no longer worked for the network. Following his brief appearance at Downing Centre Local Court, where he entered his guilty plea, McCormack grinned and appeared at ease, chatting to someone he recognised in the public gallery. Outside court, his lawyer Sam Macedone said McCormack never traded images of children. "I just wanted to make it quite clear that there was never any images that were traded between Ben and anyone else of any child exploitation material," Mr Macedone said.
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Quoted from kennypu: Quoted from xvirus: Quoted from Magus: since i seems to understand that the patch is going to be menu only,will there be a walktrough of sort to supplement the story bits (like i played a bit and i don't have the slighest clue of what i have to do after reaching the first town)
? Click to expand... Well, right now the plan is everything but the story. I'd love to do the story as well, but don't currently have a translator(he's too busy teaching) and I'm still learning Japanese, so my skills aren't quite up to par for handling dialogue yet. Click to expand... I said earlier in the post, but I can translate, i'm fully fluent (lived in japan for 9 years, lol). I'm getting into ram hacking anyways, so it would be great if I can help out Click to expand...
That'd be so awesome if you could help with that! I'm still trying to log all of the control codes(they seem to be different when it comes to dialogue for some reason XD). Hopefully when I finish that, I can write up a program to help with the dialogue, as those seem to mostly be in separate files where as the menu/monsters/etc. were all in the arm9 file. My girlfriend's family is visiting now, so I'm not sure when I'll have time to write one up, but hopefully soon!
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Join Myspace
[[Guy with black hat is talking to another guy]] Guy: Dude, you should get on MySpace. Black Hat: Eh, I don't think so. Guy: C'mon. There's no real reason not to except snobbiness. It's the new social scene. Black Hat: I know. I'm just not interested. Guy: Please? I'll friend you. Black Hat: Carebearstare. Guy: What? [[Black Hat shoots a rainbow colored ray from his chest - the Care Bear Stare. It throws Guy to the edge of the panel, pinned to the wall.]] {{Title Text: I really shouldn't abuse that power so heavily.}}
Permanent link to this comic: https://xkcd.com/146/Image URL (for hotlinking/embedding): https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/join_myspace.png
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On June 17 at about 13:40 I crossed the Ambassador bridge into Windsor Ontario Canada. I intended to see Rush's 2 Toronto concerts and a Blue Jays game.
At customs an agent Reid was intensely interested in my electronics, in particular she was obsessed with an old VHS VCR that was in a suitcase in my trunk along with a dozen or so VHS tapes. Every bit of media, Digital and analog was taken out of my vehicle and scrutinized. Even the "timer" VCR tapes with CSI Reruns and Oprah recorded on them. After logging in to my Twitter account, and finding a "Tweet" on my laptop to the username <Girls Name Redacted> Officer Reid accused me of lying to her about knowing "<Girls Name Redacted> (I don't know her, the messages that Reid read clearly illustrated that) and demanded the password for my cell phone. At this point I asked to speak to a supervisor. This was when I spoke to Mr Mailoux, who told me that if I did not provide the password, my phone would be seized and sent to Ottawa for evaluation. He said that MacDonald believed that I was meeting a "girl of questionable age" and that all of my digital and analog media was suspect. I provided the password, there was nothing illegal on my phone, my iPod, my (now broken) tablet, my laptop, or any of the 20 or so VHS tapes that were meticulously scrutinized, and two cameras and their SD cards, which I cannot locate at the moment as my personal belongs were COMPLETELY RANSACKED and scattered inside of my vehicle! <Girls Name Redacted> gave her age as 21 on Twitter, and I had no reason to doubt her, we had only kicked around the idea of possibly meeting, and she warned me that her "social anxiety" might keep her home. So when Ms Reid asked if I knew anyone, or if I was meeting someone, my 100% honest answer was and still is "NO" Since Reid had obviously read the same messages, she knew all of this before asking, and my answers confirmed exactly what the messages said, regardless, she accused me of lying. About 45min later I was told that a "weapon" had been found in my car and that it had been seized, I could only get my car back if I paid $500.
When I asked for the documents, Mr. MacDonald said that he already gave them to me. I knew this was not the case, the only place I could put the documents was in the car that was not in my possession. I was wearing swim-trunks, sandals and a pocketless T-Shirt, the documents were NOT in my possession! Only after asking for a supervisor did he provide me with "copies" of the forms.
The "weapon" in question is some sort of tool, although I cannot tell you what kind. It was in a box of tools that I borrowed to repair the door handle on my car, and it got left behind after the chore was finished. I never used it, just removed it to get to another tool, and did not return it to the box of loaner tools.
The replacement handles were also in the car at the time, and so was the broken one that had been replaced. The tool was in the door handle pocket with a pinball and a pack of matches, all just miscellaneous odds and ends that I found under the seats last time I vacuumed the car. It was a random piece of "junk" that wound up being put in the door handle. The item is NOT BRASS KNUCKLES, it is not brass, and there are only 2 rings on it, and they pivot from side to side I do not know what it is, I do know that it is NOT a WEAPON, and that I have never used it as a either a tool or a weapon.
When I asked Mr Mailloux (the "supervisor") for his name, he said "I will get you a card" and he did, although the card had no name on it. His name was clearly on his uniform, so while there was no attempt to "hide" his identity, the card 'trick' seemed like he was trying to "pull something". Clearly there is distrust on both sides at this point.
Since a don't know what the tool even is and it would be expensive to ship due to it's weight, I would simply like to appeal the $500 that was demanded to return my vehicle. What ever the tool is, as I do not know what it is, I have no use for it. What I DO have a use for is the $500 that I was forced to pay for the return of my vehicle.
My arrest in 1988 was disclosed to Reid, it was 25+ years old and was dismissed. This has not been an issue my previous 3 visits to Canada.
So ummmm any ideas
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The Cleveland Browns, after an 0-2 start, are now 3-2 and atop the AFC North. With the third ranked defense entering the game, T.J. Ward's pick-six sealed the 37-24 win.
In a game that showcased new kids Brian Hoyer and E.J. Manuel as starters, neither made it to the finish with undrafted rookie Jeff Tuel and estranged starter Brandon Weeden filling in after injuries. Stevie Johnson also left the game early and C.J. Spiller was on limited duty after injuring his ankle 4 days ago. However, his 8 carries were enough to flash his still-blazing speed on route to a 54 yard rushing TD.
While Weeden was booed by his home crowd initially, he was able to put some scoring drives together fueled by the ultra-talented Josh Gordon and electric return-man Travis Benjamin, who had 179 punt-return yards and a TD.
Everyone had pinned the Browns as tossing the season after dismissing Trent Richardson for a 1st round pick. However, his weak 3.1 YPC this season reveals more of his NFL ability than his college success and 3rd-overall draft status. With a potentially top-loaded draft in 2014, the Browns are looking sneakily clever. Now, with the Ravens struggling and the Bengals inconsistent, the Browns are in control of their division. With their next 3 games against the Lions, Packers and Chiefs, their tough defense will be severely tested as they try to hold onto a division they've never won.
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Pro-abortion protesters outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in March. (Reuters photo: Kevin Lamarque)
A strange controversy in Texas
Texas has passed a regulation requiring that human corpses be disposed of in accordance with the state's regulation for the disposal of human corpses. That this exercise in tautology was necessary — and that it is controversial — is a reminder that we live in the golden age of mass delusion.
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The underlying question here, which properly understood isn't a question at all, has to do with abortion, and what it is that an abortion does. The biological answer to that question is straightforward: An abortion is a procedure in which a physician or another party kills a living human organism, either prior to birth or in the course of inducing a birth. About the three relevant criteria — 1) living, 2) human, 3) organism — there is no serious question: The tissue is living tissue, not dead tissue; it is human tissue, not rutabaga or koala bear tissue; it is arranged into an individual organism rather than an organ or a tumor or an extension of the maternal body.
Because the biology is straightforward, maintaining the fiction that abortion is something other than the premeditated killing of a living human being requires a retreat into poorly wrought metaphysics. The same people who will lecture you about science eight days a week inexplicably embrace pre-modern superstitious notions of "ensoulment" and work up some fine angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin material about "personhood," the legal construction one uses when one is trying one's best not to notice that what happens in an abortion is killing and that what is killed is a distinct and individual human being.
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The abortion ethic is based on a lie: that the procedure involves nothing more than the elimination of a meaningless clump of cells. That lie is bound up in a nest of lies of which it is one particularly poisonous constituent, all of which are aimed at denying the relationship between sex and procreation or at denying the deep and wide-ranging consequences of attempting to disrupt that relationship. And that larger tangle of lies is itself only a constituent of an even more sprawling mess of confusion and deceit holding that men and women are interchangeable social units, that motherhood and fatherhood are social fictions that were dreamt up rather than evolved, and that you, Sunshine, and your desires are the very center of this universe.
The dead baby in the surgical tray makes all that nonsense rather hard to sustain.
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Texas governor Greg Abbott approved a proposal yesterday that would forbid treating the bodies of the dead like used bandages or other medical waste, instead requiring that they be cremated or buried. The burials, if they come to pass, will be surreal affairs. What would one say? Would the mother attend?
The rule does not apply to miscarriages or to "abortions that take place at home," presumably a reference to pharmaceutically induced abortions.
Yes, the Texas rule is transparent: It is a transparent attempt to force Texans to face reality.
The abortion lobby is apoplectic, which is what it always is, which must get exhausting. NARAL Pro-Choice Texas protests that the move is a "transparent" attempt to burden abortionists. "The rules target physicians that provide abortions and the hospitals that care for patients," says Blake Rocap, the lawyer for the group. "Transparent" is a funny choice of word: NARAL is an organization that refuses even to say its own name — it is formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League — or to acknowledge what sort of "choice" it is advocating.
Yes, the Texas rule is transparent: It is a transparent attempt to force Texans to face reality.
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It probably will not prevent (at least not directly) a single abortion from taking place, and, though the particulars of their condition is unknowable, it seems unlikely that a grave or a dignified cremation will make the victims feel any better about having had their lives snuffed out before they had had a chance to take a breath, much less to take a step or fall in love. The dead, Private Joker informs us, know only one thing: that it is better to be alive — though Christians, who in one month will celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents, take a different view. Whichever story is closer to the truth, death is death is death.
But our children are not garbage. Not the living ones, and not the dead, as resolute as their parents may be in treating them as though they were. Reality will not be denied. Not for very long. Not in Texas. Not anywhere.
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Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Luzerne County officials investigating complaints by voters who chose a straight-party Republican ticket that Hillary Clinton's name was on their ballot, Nov. 8, 2016. (WBRE/WYOU Staff Photo)
Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Luzerne County officials investigating complaints by voters who chose a straight-party Republican ticket that Hillary Clinton's name was on their ballot, Nov. 8, 2016. (WBRE/WYOU Staff Photo)
WILKES BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) - Luzerne County elections officials were scrambling Tuesday after receiving a barrage of complaints about the county's electronic voting machine turning Republican votes for Donald Trump to votes for Hillary Clinton.
Eyewitness News was the first to report the problem early Tuesday morning after more than a score of voters contacted us saying that when they checked the straight-party Republican ticket option on their voting machine all the GOP candidates were checked - except Trump. Instead, Hillary Clinton's name appeared as their selection.
"If you click on Republican," says "Becky", a Dallas voter. "Hillary was automatically picked and moved to the next screen. I went back to change it and it wouldn't let me. I had to have someone come over and reset my scree. She said that it happened to someone earlier."
"I now believe that this is rigged!", she wrote Eyewitness News.
"My concern is I was smart enough to realize that after making three separate attempts to try to complete my ballot," says Lorraine of Pittston Township "the machine was trying to cast it for me. I stopped and called for help."
Election officials initially told us that they had received no word of the problem, then conceded about an hour later there was a problem.
"We've gotten several calls," Luzerne County Election Bureau Solicitor Mike Butera told us just before 11:00 a.m.. Initially, they said the problems appeared to be related to "voter error" "We sent technicians to every polling place where we received a complaint. We found no vote flipping at all. We have found some machine glitches, which were fixed."
While the problem seemed most troublesome in the Butler Township, Drums and Rock Glen precincts, it soon began appearing elsewhere around the county.
Eyewitness News has learned the problem appears to be more widespread, however, with the same "glitch" being reported in Columbia, Carbon and Monroe Counties and in other parts of central Pennsylvania.
Elections officials say in each case they've been made aware of, the voter was able to cast an accurate vote for the candidate of their choice - saying there was no "vote flipping" occurring at the polling stations.
Luzerne County Bureau of Elections Director Marissa Crispell says initially there appeared to be a calibration problem with some machines. "You might select a straight Democrat party ticket, and it would send you to the Green party. It was an obvious problem, which was easily fixed when brought to the attention of poll workers."
Officials also indicated some of the problem might be due to "voter error" as many voters aren't familiar with the wide variety of electronic voting machines being used in Pennsylvania.
The problems in Luzerne County are indicative of the suspicion many voters have in the outcome of the 2016 election, especially the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump has campaigned for weeks on what he's called a "rigged election".
Earlier in the day, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes dismissed Trump's allegations, telling Eyewitness News during a live interview from the state capitol in Harrisburg that Pennsylvania has a good, secure voting system.
"It is unfortunate that it has been some of the talk of this election, he said. "Pennsylvania has a very good history of running elections that are fair, that are smooth, that you can trust. Elections are not perfect, but they are legitimate and there's no basis to substantiate those claims. It's important for voters to know that our machines in Pennsylvania are not connected to the internet, they're not even connected to each other."
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Deep-sea diving tank combined with injections of a patient's own stem cells to treat diabetes
Sitting in a diving chamber may be a new treatment for type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the condition.
Scientists are combining the treatment with injections of a patient's own stem cells in a bid to kick-start insulin production.
They believe the high levels of oxygen in the chamber boosts the activity of the stem cells, helping them to repair the cells in the body that produce insulin.
There are around 2.9 million Britons with diabetes, with most of them suffering from type 2
In a new trial, patients with type 2 diabetes reduced their need for insulin and metformin (a common diabetes drug) with some no longer needing the insulin at all.
So-called hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves a patient sitting in a pressurised chamber.
The high-pressure atmosphere means they breathe in three times as much oxygen as they would normally.
The treatment is normally used for helping divers who have surfaced too quickly and have the 'bends' (where bubbles of nitrogen form in the blood).
It's also used for carbon monoxide poisoning and to speed up wound healing such as leg ulcers.
Studies suggest high levels of oxygen boosts activity of stem cells — the so-called blank slate cells that can turn into any cell of the body — helping them to replace and heal ailing cells.
A study at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine showed that a course of hyperbaric oxygen treatment triggers an eight-fold increase in the number of circulating stem cells, possibly by boosting the activity of enzymes involved in the release and activity of stem cells.
The new treatment involves scientists extracting a patient's stem cells, multiplying them in the lab and then injecting them back into the pancreas (this organ produces the hormone insulin, which mops up blood sugar).
Combining this treatment with the oxygen chamber increases the activity of the stem cells, boosting their healing powers.
In some cases, it is possible to control symptoms through lifestyle changes, such as a healthy diet
Patients receive injections of their own stem cells into the pancreas before and after entering the diving chamber.
There are around 2.9 million Britons with diabetes, with most of them suffering from type 2, where not enough insulin is produced to maintain a normal blood sugar level, or the cells of the body become resistant to its effect.
Diabetes cannot be cured, but there are treatments that aim to keep blood glucose levels as normal as possible to control symptoms and lower the risk of complications.
In some cases, it is possible to control symptoms through lifestyle changes, such as a healthy diet.
But drugs such as metformin (which reduces glucose production by the liver) or injected therapies such as insulin may become necessary.
The new treatment, which is being investigated at a number of centres across the world, involves extracting stem cells from the patient's bone marrow under local anaesthetic and injecting them into the pancreas.
In a trial at Miami University, 25 patients had five hour-long sessions of hyperbaric oxygen treatment before and after the injections, over the course of a week.
All the patients were taking either metformin or insulin, or both.
Four patients were able to stop using their insulin after the combined treatment.
Fifteen of the patients could gradually reduce their insulin over the following year, while ten stopped or reduced their metformin dose, it was reported in the journal Cell Transplantation.
Commenting on the use of stem cells in diabetes research, Dr Matthew Hobbs, Diabetes UK Head of Research, said: 'Although any stem cell therapies for type 1 and type 2 diabetes are many years away from widespread clinical use, researchers agree that stem cells hold great potential to treat and perhaps even cure a range of different health conditions.
'Stem cell research is an exciting area of science that, in the long term, could help us bring about a future without diabetes.'
________________________________________________
Meanwhile, children and teenagers with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes are being given daily vitamin D pills in a new clinical trial.
There is evidence vitamin D may help treat autoimmmune conditions by dampening inflammation.
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The Dan Simmons novel Hyperion, along with its companion/second-half novel The Fall of Hyperion, is one of the great modern works of science fiction. With a story of seven characters on a pilgrimage to enter a time-warped tomb, the story adopts the structure of the Canterbury Tales to weave together disparate genres, the influence of poetry by John Keats, and far-flung science fiction concepts.
Bradley Cooper has wanted to adapt Hyperion for many years; some time ago he even lobbied to get the gig writing the script. Now he, along with Graham King and Todd Phillips, is producing a Hyperion TV series for Syfy.
THR reports that Syfy is working with the three producers to adapt the novel(s) into event series form, with Itamar Moses (Boardwalk Empire) writing and acting as co-exec producer.
Bradley Cooper said in a statement,
It is an absolute honor to enter into the world created by Dan Simmons that is arguably one of the greatest works of science fiction, and help realize it for television audiences.
Syfy has been more ambitious of late in developing TV series that engage on a deep level with science fiction, rather than just adopting the superficial trappings of sci-fi. Hyperion could benefit from that treatment; the story is so epic in scope that adapting it into one or two movies always seemed like a woefully insufficient approach.
The TV series format may allow enough breathing room so that each of the pilgrims' stories can be told in detail while also building the story's universe and allowing for a visual realization of the incredible end-game.
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The federal government and most states are throwing away $28 billion in yearly tax revenue by not legalizing marijuana, according to a new analysis from the Tax Foundation, an independent think tank.
The bulk of that revenue -- $20.5 billion of it -- would accrue to states through the collection of excise taxes on marijuana sales, general sales taxes, and income and payroll taxes levied on workers and businesses in a mature legal marijuana industry.
The federal government would take in another $7.5 billion, primarily from income and payroll taxes, and $500 million in excise taxes if marijuana were to be taxed the same way tobacco is.
These are estimates relying on a certain number of assumptions about the size of the marijuana market ($45 billion in sales annually) and the ways that governments decide to tax the sale of the drug. For instance, if the federal government decided to slap a 10 percent surtax on marijuana sales rather than a tobacco-style per-pound tax, that $500 million excise tax figure would grow to $5.3 billion.
As German Lopez points out over at Vox, these figures account for just a tiny slice of annual government spending in the United States, so don't expect to balance your state budget on the backs of marijuana smokers any time soon.
[Something interesting happens to weed after it's legal]
Still, $28 billion is nothing to scoff at. The Tax Foundation analysis points out that marijuana tax revenues in Colorado and Washington are exceeding projections by a considerable margins. Colorado initially projected it would receive $70 million in annual taxes on marijuana sales and excise taxes, but it is on track to pull in $140 million this year. The money goes to fund things like school construction and drug abuse-prevention campaigns.
Critics point out that marijuana legalization carries some social costs too as people may become more likely to abuse the drug and suffer the negative consequences of abuse and addiction, if the drug is more widely available.
But as the Tax Foundation analysis points out, people are already using and abusing marijuana -- regardless of legality. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, over 13 percent of Americans age 12 and older, 0r 35 million people, used marijuana in 2014. And 4.2 million of them met criteria for substance abuse or dependence.
We're already paying the social cost of marijuana abuse, in other words. Increased tax revenues could help offset those costs.
And marijuana prohibition carries a whole host of costs of its own -- roughly a half-billion dollars a year to arrest people for simple marijuana possession. Billions more to arrest and prosecute people who sell and traffic the drug. And the difficult-to-quantify cost of restricting the ability of millions of people who would prefer to use a drug that, by any reasonable metric, is considerably less harmful than alcohol.
More from Wonkblog:
How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church
Stoned drivers are a lot safer than drunk ones, new federal data show
These 'marijuana goggles' are supposed to make you feel stoned
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Police in Thessaloniki have arrested a PAOK fan accused of dumping a crate of fish on the visiting Olympiakos bench.
A 34-year-old man covered the bench in several kilograms of anchovies in a stunt that delayed a tense Greek Cup semi-final for more than an hour.
Olympiakos's home ground is in the port of Piraeus, and the club's supporters are nicknamed 'anchovies'.
PAOK won 1-0 on Wednesday but the game was repeatedly halted by brawls on the pitch and three players were sent off.
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"I Don't Wanna Wait for Our Lives to Be Over" marks the first solo museum exhibition in the United States for Manuel Solano. Working across mediums, Solano explores issues of identity and its formation by drawing from their personal life,… →
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Trump, to his credit, has indeed delivered a message about Russia's actions with regards to Ukraine and others, saying earlier this month that it must "cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere" and end its support for "hostile" governments in Syria and Iran. Pence also pointed out that Trump has said he will sign Congress's new Russia sanctions bill, but it's not really even a choice for Trump: Congress has way more than enough votes to override his veto.
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As many of you know Jeff and I have spent the past year working on a new book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients
(HBin5). It is a project that started with you! Because of your questions, comments and requests for breads made with whole grains, seeds, nuts, fruits, veggies and even gluten-free ingredients, we set to work to create new recipes. We liked them so well, we decided to do another book. We've been playing with ways to make breads that are not only nutritious, but incredibly tasty and still fit into our busy lives. The methods will still be fast, easy and only take 5 minutes, but the results are wonderful breads made with ingredients that will keep us happy and healthy, no matter our dietary needs. Who better than a pastry chef and a doctor to write such a book?
Writing a cookbook takes a long time, not only to test and retest and then test again the recipes, but the editing and designing of the book after we write it. Although it is nearly done we still have more work to do before it comes out this fall. HBin5 will be available in the book stores on October 27th of this year. In the mean time Amazon has posted it for pre-orders for those of you who want to avoid the mad rush at the book stores! 😉
In honor of HBin5 we've launched this new home page on our website. My husband Graham designed and built the site for us and Jeff's wife Laura, who is also our copy editor, wrote much of it. We are so fortunate to have such a creative and talented team to help us. We want to thank them for all of their work!And THANK YOU for inspiring us to write our second book. As a thank you we are giving away 5 signed copies of our CURRENT book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
Here is a little glimpse into our life of writing HBin5: (more…)
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The Coalition has reaffirmed it could call a double-dissolution election if it wins government but is blocked from repealing the carbon tax.
Opposition MPs on Saturday repeated their view that September's election would be a referendum on the carbon tax, and that a joint sitting would be a fallback option if they're prevented from scrapping the policy.
Opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne confirmed that leaked details of the Coalition's environment policy, including the timeline for rolling back the carbon tax, were correct.
The reports included calling a double-dissolution election within five months if the Coalition's efforts to abolish carbon pricing were thwarted.
When asked about the reports, opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said if the Coalition won the federal election, voters would expect Labor to respect their mandate.
The Coalition however retained the right to go to a joint sitting of Parliament if Labor stood in the way.
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LaVar Ball and Big Baller Brand hope to release a debut sneaker for Lonzo Ball's rookie season. The price tag will be in the $200 range, according to The Vertical's Nick DePaula.
That would price the UCLA standout's signature kicks ahead of All-Stars and MVP candidates like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and James Harden.
Lonzo is projected as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft, but he has no endorsement offers from any of the three major sneaker companies in Nike, Adidas, or Under Armour. It's the first time a top draft prospect has been shut out of the Big 3 of kicks corporations.
That's because LaVar Ball has pushed for a co-branded partnership with whichever company intends to sign him, which would allow Big Baller Brand to operate underneath the parent umbrella. That's like Jordan Brand, which signs athletes and has its own sneaker line as part of the Nike family.
Ball has also set the bar high, claiming he and his sons will settle for no less than a combined $1 billion deal over the life of the contract. That prompted Nike CEO Phil Knight to call Ball's asking price "a bit steep," and company consultant George Raveling to call Ball himself "the worst thing to happen to basketball in the last hundred years."
Lonzo Ball is projected as the No. 2 overall pick in the upcoming draft after an impressive freshman season leading the UCLA Bruins to a Sweet 16 appearance in the NCAA tournament.
How does that price tag compare with other NBA stars' footwear?
It would rank Lonzo ahead of the league's stars with the priciest basketball kicks out.
LeBron James' LeBron XIV retails at $175, with the customizable XIV iD series ringing up $220 before tax. Kevin Durant's latest KD9 comes in at $150, while James Harden's Harden Vol. 1 Series with Adidas run $140. Under Armour debuted Steph Curry's Curry 3's at $149.99, but has since slashed the price to $99.99.
And Paul George's debut sneaker, the PG1, hit shelves this year at $109.99.
For some players, sneaker price is a status symbol. When Durant's KD9 dropped last June, its $150 tag was $30 cheaper than that of its predecessor, the KD8. But it was still nearly twice as expensive as his debut sneaker, the KD1, that retailed for $88.
"As humbly as I can say it, I'm not a $88 player," Durant said, according to Nick DePaula. "I'm an elite player in the league. I wanted everything to be affordable, but I knew we had to sacrifice some stuff."
LaVar Ball thinks the world of his son. He's twice claimed Lonzo Ball is better than Curry, a two-time league MVP. And at his $200 price tag, he's doubled down on those sentiments.
Now only two questions remain: Can Lonzo's play back up his father's talk? And more importantly, will the kicks be fire?
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Republicans launched an unprecedented frontal assault against environmental protections and regulations this year, prompting Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to call his chamber "the most anti-environment House in history." Here are the 10 most powerful and outspoken opponents of clean air, clean water, conservation and climate action.
10. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Thought to be the biggest lifetime recipient of oil-industry contributions in the Senate, Cornyn has rewarded Exxon-Mobil's largesse by supporting the industry's position on pretty much every energy or environmental issue that has ever appeared before him. That's why he, like everyone on this list, has a "0" on the League of Conservation Voters' scorecard for pro-environment votes.
9. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska. A tireless advocate for opening Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Young was involved in one of the more entertaining name-calling spats in Congress this year when he got into a tiff over the refuge with author and professor Doug Brinkley. You can be the judge of who won by watching the video replay.
8. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista. There may have been a time when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lived up to its name, investigating and bringing to light incidents of government waste, fraud and abuse. But I can't remember back that far. In recent decades it has served as a tool for the majority party in the House to bash and embarrass the presidential administration, at least during times such as now when the House isn't controlled by the president's party. Issa, the committee's current chairman, has turned such political gamesmanship into an art form, and has been particularly keen to attack environmental regulators and policymakers. In so doing he has turned up precious little waste or fraud, but provided plenty of political theater for those who want to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency or end subsidies for clean energy.
7. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio. Latta has the distinction of sponsoring the most far-reaching and destructive amendment to the most egregious anti-environment bill passed by the House this year. The TRAIN Act, approved by the House in September but not expected to get through the Senate, is a breathtaking (literally) gift to polluters that creates a committee to study the costs but ignore the benefits of environmental regulation, while also blocking EPA efforts to crack down on deadly emissions from power plants. Latta's contribution is an amendment that undermines a cornerstone of the Clean Air Act, requiring the EPA to take industry costs into account when setting health-based standards. This would allow corporate polluters to overrule scientists and strikes at the heart of the polluter-pays principle that has guided environmental policy for 40 years.
6. Rep. Edward Whitfield, R-Ky. Another architect of the TRAIN wreck, Whitfield offered an amendment that would block the EPA from regulating mercury and other toxics from power plants, and from coming up with a rule on smog and soot that crosses state lines. Together, these two regulations would save an estimated 51,000 lives per year. But what are a few thousand lives when utility profits are at stake?
5. Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla. One of the most outspoken climate-change deniers in the Senate (he's renowned for calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"), Inhofe is also one of the most influential Republicans in the country when it comes to environmental policy. As ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, he uses his position to push for expanded oil drilling and reduce environmental regulation. Inhofe sometimes even finds himself to the right of the polluter-packed U.S. Chamber of Commerce; this summer he placed a hold on President Obama's nominee John Bryson as Commerce secretary, even though Bryson had the blessing of the Chamber, because Inhofe felt Bryson was too pro-environment.
4. Rep. Michael Simpson, R-Idaho. Simpson has stepped to the front lines of his party's war on Mother Nature by adding dozens of anti-environment riders to must-pass budget legislation. Among other things, Simpson aims to let mountaintop coal-mining operations continue to pollute streams, prevent the EPA from regulating coal-ash disposal, and exempt pesticide sprayers from complying with the Clean Water Act.
3. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. The enforcer of Republican Party discipline, Senate Minority Leader McConnell is among the key architects of his party's stance on environmental issues. In 2009, when Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was among the few Republicans willing to discuss a bipartisan climate bill with Democrats, it was McConnell who reportedly convinced him to back away. This spring he led a failed effort to block the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and overrule its finding that climate change threatens public health -- tantamount
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Donovan Bailey facing third driving-related charge Donovan Bailey, once the fastest man on the planet and an idol to millions of track fans in Canada and around the world, has been charged with having a blood-alcohol level of more than 80 milligrams while driving a car in Toronto.
Former world and Olympic sprint champion Donovan Bailey speaking at a press conference in 2004. Bailey has been charged with driving with an alcohol level of more than 80 milligrams. It is the third time Bailey has been before the courts on driving charges. (Feb. 5, 2004) ( Hans Deryk / Toronto Star File Photo ) Donovan Bailey's iconic pose after winning the 100-metre sprint in world record time at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. ( Toronto Star File Photo )
Bailey, 44, was not at College Park Court on Monday for a first appearance on a charge, commonly referred to as "being over .08." Bailey, who gave his address to the Toronto police who stopped him as St. James, Jamaica, was reportedly in his native country Monday promoting the upcoming London Olympics where he is to be a TV commentator for the Canadian media consortium covering the games. The matter was put over to June 11 for a pre-trial conference.
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According to the information filed in court, Bailey was stopped by police on March 28 in Toronto and administered the breathalyzer test. The police record does not say where or what time of day Bailey was stopped by police in the downtown 51 Division. This is the third time the Canadian icon — a five-time world and Olympic champion and inductee into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame — has been before the courts on driving related charges. Bailey captured the hearts of Canadians at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he won the gold medal and set a new world record of 9.84 in the 100-metre sprint. Two years later his image was somewhat tarnished. In May 1998, Bailey was fined $200 for failing to report an accident after he left the scene of a single-car cash that totalled his $80,000 Mercedes.
The car, awarded to him for a gold medal performance at the 1995 track and field championships in Sweden, struck a concrete utility pole, flipped over and caught fire. Bailey emerged from the wreck without injury. Passersby offered to get him medical attention but Bailey refused and asked to be driven home instead. Police arrived at his home five hours later.
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At the time, Crown Attorney Paul Renwick told the court that a more serious charge of careless driving was withdrawn because there was "no reasonable prospect of a conviction." Bailey was assessed three demerit points over the accident. Three years later, in December 2001, Bailey was convicted of driving a Mercedes-Benz 200 kilometres an hour on the Queen Elizabeth Way and fined $975. An Ontario Provincial Police officer testified he tracked Bailey's black Mercedes doing 200 km/h in the slow lane of the westbound QEW between Mississauga Rd. and Erin Mills Parkway at 3:34 in the morning. Bailey lived in Oakville at the time, but apparently has since sold his mansion there. "He runs fast and he drives fast, except now he's going to slow down," his lawyer Paul Stunt said as he left court. Bailey was at a track meet in Italy at the time and did not appear in court. Under the Highway Traffic Act Bailey lost six demerit points but his licence was not suspended. After his racing career ended Bailey started his own company called DBX Sport Management, which helps amateur athletes find ways to promote themselves, and a sports injury clinic in Oakville, Ont. If convicted of the current charge Bailey faces a fine and licence suspension.
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A giant asteroid is heading toward Earth so some astronauts disembark from a nearby space station to blow it up. The mission is successful, and they return to the station unknowingly bringing back a gooey green substance that mutates into one-eyed tentacled monsters that feed off electricity. Soon the station is crawling with them, and people are being zapped left and right! Written by Humberto Amador
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I've known David and his family for years, which is why it's shocking that Northeast High School and the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department are overreacting after they found his dad's knife in the truck this young man borrowed to bring to school.
Northeast High School in Clarksville, TN had a random search on Thursday, February 20th and they checked lockers, backpacks and cars. David drove his dad's car to school that day, so it too was searched with his permission.
It turns out that his Dad had left his fishing knife in the car, apparently wedged between the seat & console so the police cited David for a weapon on school property. Not only that, but the school gave him a 10 day suspension and reprimanded him to 90 days at the alternative school!
David explained that it was his dad's car & his fishing knife but to no avail. He is a A/B honor student who has never ever had any problems in or out of school.
He may appeal the punishment, but this is his senior year and who knows if he will be able to go back to school or finish out his senior year. He did not have a knife in school, in his backpack, or his locker. He drove his dad's car to school and his dad left his fishing knife in the locked car.
Just think what this could do to this promising young man's future.
He may be forced to miss his prom and his final months with his classmates before college, and more importantly, he may not even be able to graduate.
David also may have his record tarnished with a weapons charge.
Please sign and share. If enough of us speak out, the school board and local authorities will have no choice but to drop all punishment against David who did nothing wrong!
2/27 update. David's school penalty has been reduced so he will reportedly be able to go to prom and graduate, but he's still facing 30 days at an alternative school and a charge for possession of a prohibited weapon, so please keep signing and sharing.
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Teen working for California-based pizza chain says she was fired after asking for equal wage
FOX Kansas City FOX Kansas City Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Teen working for California-based pizza chain says she was fired after asking for equal wage 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Jensen Walcott easily got a summer job at a Kansas City, Kansas slice house franchise called Pizza Studio. After being hired on the spot, the 17-year-old was told she'd be making $8 an hour — slightly higher than the state's $7.25 minimum. She was also thrilled to find out she'd be working alongside a friend of hers named Jake Reed.
That excitement didn't last long; she soon discovered that Reed, who was also 17, had comparable work experience, and was working the same position, was hired at $8.25 an hour.
Walcott told Fox Kansas City that when she called her manager to ask about the pay difference, she was initially put on hold.
"I was like maybe when I'm on hold right now, she will just offer me $8.25 and everything is gonna be good but... she didn't do that," Walcott said. When she was taken off hold, her manager fired her, saying she could do so because "discussing wages is against its policy."
A similar fate met Reed. "She said you're fired. Basically just like a 10 second phone call," he told Fox.
As attorney David White confirms, the National Labor Relations Board maintains that employees may discuss pay with each other, meaning that Walcott was in the right. He thinks that Walcott and Reed may have a case against the Calabasas, California-based pizza chain, though the two haven't decided yet if they will take legal action.
As the American Association of University Women found, for the year 2014, women in Kansas earned just $0.79 for each dollar men in Kansas did. That rate is slightly higher in California.
Meanwhile, Pizza Studio recently opened its second Bay Area franchise location inside Concord's Sunvalley Mall.
UPDATE: Pizza Studio has responded to SFGATE's request for comment, saying that after fully investigating the incident, that "gender did not play a role in determination of either salary, nor for any Pizza Studio employee." Ashleigh Siefker, the organization's Executive Director of Operations, says that she has "personally instituted policies and procedures that strictly prohibit discrimination of any kind."
Siefker adds:
"After an in-depth review, we are confident this instance was not one of gender-bias but rather a failure to assign the correct salary and a misunderstanding of our company policies by one of our employees; it should be noted the manager in communication with Miss Walcott is also a female.
"Pizza Studio did not agree however with how the manager handled the situation. We pride ourselves with treating our employees and guests with respect and open communication at all times. We have extended a formal apology to both Miss Walcott and Mr. Reed and have parted ways with the responsible manager in the best interest of all parties involved. We plan to use this experience to better improve our hiring procedures and policies moving forward."
Alyssa Pereira is a staff writer for SFGATE. Follow her here on Twitter.
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The simplest sports betting math many punters possess is the ability to convert odds and calculate break even percentages, also known as implied probabilities. After spending years doing these calculations, first on a windows calculator, and later in an excel spread sheet, I finally developed the Intense Gambling odds converter you'll find below.
Odds Converter Tool
[oddscalc]
In case you're not familiar with the difference between American Odds called moneylines and European odds, which are in decimal format, here is how each works.
American Odds
Also known as moneylines, are offered as either a positive or negative number. When positive, the moneyline represents how much profit a punter stands to make on a $100 stake. To give an example, a line of +125 represents risk $100 to win $125 profit. Negative moneylines represent how much a punter needs to stake for a winning bet to profit $100. A moneyline of -235 is risk $235 to win $100 profit.
European Odds
Also known as decimal odds, represent how much a winning ticket is worth for each dollar staked. For example if a punter wagers $10.00 at odds 1.95 and wins, their payout is $10 x 1.95 = $19.50. A major difference between American and European odds is that while the American version is based on profit, the European version is based on return. Likewise, a $10 wager on odds 1.95 translates to risk $10.00 to potentially profit $9.50. Considering 1.95 pays less than even money, it would be expressed in American odds format as a negative moneyline.
The best way to convert American odds to European format, and vice versa, is to use the "odds converter" located above. For those of you interested in the math, I'll cover it great detail later in this article. First let me discuss break even percentage and implied probability.
Implied Probability
Is how often a bet must win for it to have neutral value. To give the simplest example, take American odds +100 (which is the equivalent of 2.00 in European odds) where winning bets are paid even money, here the implied probability is 50%. This is because in American format risk $100 to win $100, and in European format stake $1 to return $2, you'll need to win an average of 50% of the time to break even over the long haul.
Where our odds converter comes in handy is let's say you've done an analysis on a game between the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays and determined the Red Sox should be 57% favorites in this game. After price shopping, the best odds you can find on the Red Sox are -128, which in European format is 1.781. There are now two ways you can determine if you've found a good bet. The first method is to plug 57% into our odds converter under the required break even field. Doing this you'll find at 57% the true odds in American format are -132.6 (1.754 European). Consider you're getting better than this with the -128 (1.781 European) you have a profitable bet.
The second way you could approach the above problem, is to plug -128 into our odds converted under American odds. Here you'll see the required break even rate (implied probability) is 56.14%. Considering your calculation of a 57% win probability comes out higher than the win rate needed to break even, you've find yourself a good bet.
Sports Betting Strategy You Should, but Most Don't, Understand
For those with basic sports betting math skills, the sample problem I'm about to give will be easy to solve. If you're stumped, or answer incorrectly, what you're about to read could very well be what gets you on the path required to winning consistently at sports betting.
The sample
Every online betting site with odds on a NBA basketball game between the Orlando Magic and Sacramento Kings has the odds listed in American format as Magic -545 / Kings +445.
Someone comes long and says "I'll offer you either Magic -490 or Kings +490, your choice". Which of these options, if any, has the highest expected value?
The way many sports bettors would approach this is to average out 545 and 445 and figure the fair value is about -495 / +495. Using this failed logic they'd end up taking the Magic -490 as that's better than the fair price and must be +EV. The problem is neither American nor European odds work this way; they can't be averaged out to calculate the fair value.
The first step those who understand sports betting math take to solve this problem is the conversion of Magic -545 / Kings +445 to break even percentages.
After plugging the odds
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Question. Hi Mike: Is there a way to use fireplace ash that would be beneficial to my garden or lawn? If not, what is the best way to dispose of the stuff? ---Chris in Berwyn, PA (formerly Newport, RI)
Mike: Like many of my neighbors here in Eastern Carolina, I have a 'burn pile' where I dispose of storm debris, old trimmed branches (mainly pine and oak) and all manner of other garden/yard items. My question is: Is the leftover ash good for anything? I know better than to put it in the compost pile. Thanks,
---Doug in Beaufort, NC
Answer. Thank you, Doug. As you note, I've long cautioned gardeners not to include anything other than very small quantities of wood ash in a compost pile—a little of this highly alkaline material goes a long way. But those of us with naturally acidic soils can (and should) use much larger amounts on our lawns and gardens—as a substitute for lime.
Before we get to that, however, I'd like to take a moment to try and pry your incendiary little fingers away from those piles. Yes, we guys love to set stuff on fire—especially in the name of 'yard work'. But such burning fouls the air, adds greenhouse gases we don't need, and wastes lots of nutrients. Pile up your "garden/yard" items and they'll turn into nice compost, especially with lots of leaves in the mix. Stack the branches on the outskirts of your property to provide habitat for toads, birds and other beneficials. (And you'll find a surprising amount of compost at the bottom of those piles after a few years.) If you can't go completely 'burn turkey', consider cutting back to one small bonfire a year to satisfy your inner firebug, and get better use out of the rest of that wood.
And good quality hardwood ashes—that means no ashes from BBQ grills, cardboard, plywood, painted, or pressure treated wood—do have real agricultural use. (Softwoods have a lot less value, but you shouldn't be burning soft wood in a stove or fireplace anyway.) The best information on how to properly utilize the valuable material in wood ash is contained in a couple of great farm-scale articles from the Georgia Extension Service and the government of Alberta's department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. We'll post links to those articles at this end of this Q of the Week for those of you who want all the details.
To help put the advice into garden-size perspective, we turned to Julia Gaskin, a Land Application Specialist for the University of Georgia Extension Service who recently updated their wood ash information article. She explains that ash from good quality hardwoods contains a very nice amount of potassium; at least 3% by weight. Also known as potash, this is the "K" in the fabled N-P-K scale of plant nutrients—the Dow Jones of Horticulture! Potash improves root health and strengthens the very cellular structure of plants, helping them resist all kinds of stresses.
Wood Ash also contains lots of micronutrients, and, on average, 15% calcium—a nutrient often lacking in many of our soils and fertilizers. Ashes even improve the structure and tilth of soils. But they must be used with care, as all that calcium makes them highly alkaline—a range of 9 to 13—and they WILL change your soil's pH. But that's OK, because that's exactly what you going to be using them to do.
So the first thing you need is a soiltest. I know—I always say that. And I'm always right! This time double, because you'll be using those ashes to actively change the pH of your soil and you need to know where you're starting from.
All soil tests report pH—the measure of your soil's acidity or alkalinity. The center of this scale is the number 7, the scientific neutral. I say 'scientific', because most plants prefer soil to be a little acidic, around 6.5, for good growth. Some of our most popular plants, however, require a highly acidic soil (in the 4 to 5.5 range) to survive: azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries, mums, marigolds, mountainlaurel, oak,pecan and sweet potato to name a few. Keep your alkaline ashes far away from these and other acid lovers.
But many parts of the country—especially areas with heavy rainfall—have soils that are naturally down in that highly acidic range, which your regular plants do not enjoy one bit. Normally people use lime to correct this, which is why soil test results often include a "liming recommendation", specifying how many pounds of lime per thousand square feet to add to your lawn or garden to bring the pH up to around
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BY: Follow @HashtagGriswold
Hollywood director Oliver Stone, who recently emerged as a prominent celebrity defender of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has a son who works for a Russian government-funded propaganda outlet.
Stone is the director of the upcoming Showtime series "The Putin Interviews," compromised of a series of interviews Stone conducted with Putin over a span of two years. The show has already been criticized for taking Putin's assertions at face value and excusing Russian aggression.
Most recently Stone was panned for defending Putin during an interview with CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
"That doesn't seem like an interview," Colbert told him. "That seems like an opportunity for him to merely propagandize."
Stone responded that Putin has been "insulted and abused" and "never really said anything bad about anybody."
Despite Stone's claim that he treated Putin fairly, his son Sean Stone is a host on the Russian-backed television network RT America, part of RT News, which observers have called the Kremlin's propaganda outlet.
Sean Stone was hired in 2015 to replace an RT journalist who resigned in protest after bucking the network line and criticizing the Russian invasion of Crimea. Like his father—who has defended Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro, among others—Stone has a history of defending anti-American authoritarian leaders.
The younger Stone made headlines in 2012 for defending then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "really misunderstood." Stone, who converted to Shia Islam during a trip to Iran, told Bill O'Reilly he was "OK with Iran having a nuclear weapon" and insisted the country is a moderate republic.
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To report abuse, click here.
Adult Protective Services (APS) is the state entity charged with investigating all reports of abuse, neglect, and/or exploitation of older persons (65+) or an adult (18+) with a disability who do not reside in long-term care facilities pursuant to the Disabled Adults and Elder Persons Protection Act, O.C.G.A. §§ 30-5-1, et seq.
TYPES OF ABUSE
Physical abuse;
Mental, emotional, or verbal abuse;
Sexual abuse;
Neglect;
Self-Neglect; and
Financial Exploitation.
Who should report abuse, neglect and exploitation?
For persons living in the community, Georgia law requires mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, neglect or exploitation by certain professionals who are mandated reporters. View the list of Mandated Reporters here. Failure for a mandated reporter to report abuse, neglect and/or exploitation of a disabled adult or elder person is punishable by a criminal misdemeanor.)
All persons are encouraged to report suspected abuse to protective services. Persons who report in good faith are immune from liability. Reporting is kept confidential within the parameters of state law (O.C.G.A. § 30-5-4).
Call 911 if someone needs immediate help!!
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A couple in New York wandered into a reporter's live shot from Wednesday night's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting then thought it would be funny to re-enact the final moments of Eric Garner's life.
The outrageous prank is made all the more shocking by the fact that WPIX reporter Allison Kaden was on the scene to report on the protest at the ceremony.
As she described the night's peaceful demonstration, a man in a suit and a woman noticed they were on camera.
Scroll down for video
Shocking: Allison Kaden of WPIX in New York was covering the protests of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony when the couple pictured behind her used the opportunity to mock Eric Garner, it appears
Threw her hands up: The man in the suit first noticed the camera, but the woman threw her hands in the air, as Eric garner did just before his death, after it dawned on her what her companion was doing
The man grabbed the woman around the neck and then, as it dawned on the woman what her friend was doing, she played along and put her hands up.
They both then laughed and walked off camera.
Kaden finished her segment non-the-wiser. The in-studio anchors didn't seem to notice, either.
However, the folks at Deadspin picked up on the sick joke and the angry comments were sure to follow.
With good reason. Garner died following his altercation with police due, at least in part, to the chokehold put on him by Officer Daniel Pantaleo.
The couple laugh as they scuttle out of the shot and WPIX reporter Allison Kaden finishes her segment non-the-wiser
The tree lighting ceremony came just hours after a grand jury decided not to indict a Pantaleo in Garner's videotaped chokehold death.
Mayor Bill de Blasio canceled his scheduled appearance to meet with elected officials and activists on Staten Island as citywide protests started to gather steam.
Police presence was heavy as hundreds of protesters stood behind rows of police barricades jamming the sidewalks on Fifth Avenue within sight of the holiday revelers. A block away on Sixth Avenue, police in riot gear faced off with protesters behind metal barricades.
But the annual tradition went on as planned.
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OKLAHOMA CITY -- All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook will have surgery to repair cartilage in his right knee and will be out indefinitely, dealing a harsh blow to the Oklahoma City Thunder's championship chances.
General manager Sam Presti said Friday the Thunder had not yet scheduled Westbrook's surgery and would not have an accurate timeline for his return until after the procedure was done. No one would rule out Westbrook's possible return if Oklahoma City keeps advancing in the playoffs, and All-Star teammate Kevin Durant only said his teammates "hope" Westbrook can play again this postseason.
"We're not trying to rush him or bring him back ahead of schedule. We want to make sure he's healthy and his knee is right," Durant said. "That's our only concern with it right now. ... We have to come together as a team and worry about the basketball. All he has to worry about is him getting healthy."
The three-time All-Star was hurt in Game 2 of the Thunder's playoff series against Houston on Wednesday night. Rookie Patrick Beverley lunged for a steal in the second quarter and his hip collided with Westbrook's knee.
Beverley called Westbrook's injury "unfortunate" and said Oklahoma City is still dangerous without him.
"Anyone who knows me knows I don't go out there and try to hurt anybody," Beverley said. "I play at one speed and that's fast. I was just trying to make a play on the ball before they called a timeout and it's just unfortunate."
"That's a freakish accident, that play," Grizzlies forward Tayshaun Prince said. "I'm pretty sure the Oklahoma City fans will be pretty pissed off at Beverly."
Coach Scott Brooks claimed after Westbrook missed practice Thursday that Westbrook would be "fine tomorrow," but the team found out differently Friday morning.
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The Republican National Committee (RNC) said that Hillary Clinton's meeting Saturday with the Federal Bureau of Investigation makes her the first major party presidential candidate to sit for an interview with an FBI criminal investigation about her own conduct.
RNC chairman Reince Priebus remarked upon the historical significance of such an interview. Breitbart News has extensively reported on the potential Espionage Act violations committed by Clinton and her top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.
Here is Priebus' statement:
Hillary Clinton has just taken the unprecedented step of becoming the first major party presidential candidate to be interviewed by the FBI as part of a criminal investigation surrounding her reckless conduct. That the FBI wanted her for questioning reinforces her central role in deliberately creating a culture which put her own political ambitions above State Department rules and jeopardized our national security. In over 2,000 emails, Clinton's decision exposed classified information, including 22 that included top secret intelligence, just so she could skirt transparency laws in order to hide her shady dealings as Secretary of State. When you factor in Clinton directed this server be established to cover up the tangled web of donors, State Department actions and her family foundation, we must ask ourselves if this is the kind of leadership we want in the White House.
"The American people need to have confidence that the Obama Justice Department is conducting a fair and impartial investigation, but when the attorney general meets secretly with Bill Clinton just days before Hillary's interrogation is conducted discreetly over a holiday weekend, it raises serious concerns about special treatment. Others have lost their security clearances, their jobs, or even gone to jail for doing far less, and Clinton needs to be held to the same standard as everyone else," Priebus stated.
An inspector general report found that Clinton violated State Department rules with her private server. The RNC is promoting five instances of Clinton violating State Department policy.
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One of my favorite games in the last 20 years is XCOM 2. I love Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity also. But that video imo, is not very good.
That's not what I saw in that video. If you watch the video again, you're going to see the complete extend of how much those NPC's are "living" in that world. They're just as limited as anything going on in SOTA.
I don't think SOTA does differ much there. But neither does that Bard's Tale video. Neither does Morrowind for that matter.
NPC's are dead mindless hucks compared to human beings. If you're talking about MMO's then you're talking about multiplayer (which is in the acronym). If you're talking about single player RPG's then you're talking about NPC's and that really requires you to bring your own immerssion, some players mileage may vary. For me I'm not at all immsersed in that video. In fact I find myself being the opposite.
To be fair, I'm not at all immersed by SOTA NPC's either, and I've posted about that over the years A LOT. There are points in the story line where I can get into the lore here, but it's rare I think mainly because nothing ever seems to work correctly. When you play a game that has a lot of bugs like ours does (because it's in development) it's hard to stay immerssed in a quest line that doesn't work. When quests have gone on for a long period of time without a hitch, I've enjoyed them here.
And just to put this back into context some. I finished X-Com 2 because it worked. I didn't finish Wasteland 2 or Pillars of Eternity (even though I played both a ton) because at some point I just got lost and didn't know what to do next, I honestly think they were both bugged. So there you go...single player RPG has to be really well made and bug free to "work". Multiplayer not the same...you can play for hours and hours in a bugged world and players make that content....well, playable.
Click to expand...
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RELATED VIDEO
CINNAMINSON — A Burlington County man was put in jail after he didn't return money mistakenly given to him by a teller while cashing a check at a bank, according to a report on PhillyBurbs.com
Felipe S. DePadula, 27, of Riverside is charged with receiving stolen property after a teller at Delanco Federal Savings Bank on Route 130 in Cinnaminson gave him $3,000 when he went to cash a $300 check.
The bank contacted DePadula about the error a few days later but he said he lost the envelope that had the cash, the report said.
He was charged Wednesday after police examined the bank's security footage. DePadula was held on $2,500 bail. The construction worker has been unemployed since being injured, according to 6abc.com.
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Montgomery County is in the peak season for young bears to strike out on their own, which has led to sightings of black bears on the streets, at a church, and area parks.
Ken D'Loughy of the Maryland Department of National Resources told Montgomery Community Media that residents reported a black bear on Rainbow Arch Drive in Clarksburg Tuesday. The DNR also received reports of a bear sighting at Greenridge Baptist Church. D'Loughy says he believes this is the same black bear spotted earlier in Damascus and Germantown.
On Monday, a black bear was spotted running alongside a fence at Ridge Road Recreational Park.
SEE ALSO: Another Bear Sighting Makes Waves Throughout Montgomery
Just last week, a black bear was spotted on Observation Drive in Germantown. In Damascus, Montgomery County Police say residents have reported numerous sightings of a black bear at and around Oak Ridge Park last month.
The now-famous Poolesville Bear sighting on Old Oaks Estate in Beallsville led to Internet fame in the form of a popular Facebook parody account.
Black bear sightings are most common in Montgomery County in June and July when young, solitary bears – frequently young males -- travel considerable distances in search of a suitable home range to call their own, says Montgomery Parks. Most of the young bears settle in western Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.
Tips to avoid bears:
NEVER FEED BEARS OR OTHER WILDLIFE (intentionally or unintentionally). Feeding black bears can seem fascinating and fun, but is a recipe for disaster. Feeding bears is illegal in the State of Maryland.
(intentionally or unintentionally). Feeding black bears can seem fascinating and fun, but is a recipe for disaster. Feeding bears is illegal in the State of Maryland. Don't leave bowls of pet food or water outside. If possible, keep all pet food indoors at all times.
Keep garbage in sturdy, clean containers with tight fitting lids. (Bear proof cans are recommended in areas where bear interactions become common.) Secure all trash cans and clean them regularly to minimize strong food odors as much as possible.
Keep compost that contains food materials in enclosed bins away from your residence
Keep bird feeders out of reach. Do not over fill bird feeders, and stop filling them prior to the month of April (It has been said that "In April, a bird feeder becomes a bear feeder")
Keep barbeque grills clean and secure
Always walk your dogs on a leash
Do not tolerate bears becoming comfortable around your yard – encourage them to leave by making loud noises etc.
»Photos of black bear at Ridge Road Recreational Park, courtesy of Montgomery County Parks
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MEP Nessa Childers, who represents Ireland East in Europe, has this morning resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to join fellow Labour members in opposition.
MEP Nessa Childers, who represents Ireland East in Europe, has this morning resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to join fellow Labour members in opposition.
In a statement, Ms Childers said she entered politics to help people, and was resigning from the PLP because she no longer wanted to support a government that is hurting people.
"It is predicted that Ireland will have to experience tight budgets for the foreseeable future, long after we exit the bail-out programme," said the MEP.
"My question is will this Government continue with business as usual and ignore the lack of fairness across government policy?
"My dissatisfaction with the party in government has been known for some time; however recent statements from the Labour ministers have dismayed me. They continue to insist that because of the dire economic situation there is no alternative to current government policies.
Ms Childers has now become the latest in a line of Labour members who are now outside of the parliamentary party. TDs Patrick Nulty, Colm Keaveney, Róisin Shortall and Tommy Broughan have all distanced themselves from the senior leaders.
"The government is implementing harmful conservative policies," said Ms Childers.
"Senior Labour people appear to refuse to discuss or acknowledge recent research that shows that the greatest impact of financial distress has been seen in the lower income households in Ireland, and that the austerity agenda is not improving the real economy lived and experienced by ordinary people.
"I think there is a possibility that we could see a group of people coming together to take up the ideas and values of Labour – leaving the party and its members hostage to a leadership that appears to be more comfortable with policies that protect the more privileged in Irish society.
"The party leadership's strategy of attacking people who are loyal to the party's stated policies; coupled with their objection to a special party conference and objection to renegotiating the Programme for Government signals that they is completely cut off from the concerns of the party members and Labour party ideals and values.
Labour's popularity has decreased significantly since entering government with Fine Gael in 2011, falling to just 9 per cent in a recent opinion poll.
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Regristration closed. Weeklong #2 regristration here! If looking for replays, click boxes that are highlighted blue. (v2.01)
Schedule your matches using Challonge's PM system or in-game once tourney starts. If there are conflicts, PM me.
MUST PM PARTNER a schedule by Monday 12/8PM, else you will be reported as a no-show.
Play matches during the week (or just Friday/Sat). Report scores yourself and upload replays if possible (use .zips).
Matches up to Round-2 play by Friday 2PM PST, 10PM UTC. Please attempt to play as soon as possible.
All matches up to Grand Finals must be played by Saturday 2PM PST, 10PM UTC.
Grand Finals can then be played Saturday or Sunday. Deadline is Sunday 2PM PST, 10PM UTC. Replays must be uploaded.
---(Tournament style info below)
---
---
Best of 3 (Bo5 finals)
Veto Rules:
1st map: Both players ban until 1 map
2nd map +: Loser picks any map
Maps:
(new) Spiral
Cloud Kingdom
Steppes of War
Lava Bridge
Overgrowth
King Sejong
Village of the Guards
Belshire Vestige
Rocky Mountain
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× Man used handgun as hammer at Missouri school
BENTON, Mo. (AP) _ A man has been charged with unlawful use of a weapon and child endangerment after police say he used a handgun as a hammer while working on a project at a southeast Missouri elementary school.
A probable cause statement from the Scott County Sheriff's Department said 45-year-old Jeffrey Grubbs was volunteering at a 4-H event Monday at Kelly Elementary School in Benton when he gripped the handgun's barrel and used the butt of the weapon to drive a thumbtack into a wood plaque.
The Southeast Missourian reports Grubbs was arrested and released Tuesday.
Police say Grubbs has a concealed-carry permit, but it's illegal to bring a gun onto school property without consent from a school official.
Attempts by The Associated Press to reach an attorney listed as representing Grubbs were unsuccessful.
___
Information from: Southeast Missourian
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In 1963, Lynda Gunn was asked by her grandfather, a private-school athletic director in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to model for a buddy of his who was a painter. Gunn, who was eight years old at the time, spent a few sessions wearing a fancy white dress and standing stock still in a walking position—her feet were balanced on wooden blocks to simulate the appearance of being in motion—being sketched and photographed by Norman Rockwell. Rockwell used her image in his celebrated work "The Problem We All Live With": the painting depicts Ruby Bridges, who in 1960 became the first African-American girl to enroll in an all-white Southern elementary school. In it, Gunn-as-Bridges approaches her first day of school flanked by federal marshals, the wall behind her defaced by a graffito slur. Last summer, President Obama requested that the painting, which is in the collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, in Stockbridge, be loaned to the White House, where it was displayed on a wall outside the Oval Office.
Gunn, a taciturn, thoughtful woman who works as a night auditor at the Super 8 Motel in Lee, Massachusetts, was invited to New York recently, to view a series of paintings by Philip Maysles, which are hanging on the wall of the Red Rooster, a restaurant in Harlem owned by Marcus Samuelsson. In one, Maysles—who is the son of Albert Maysles, the documentarian—has drawn "The Problem We All Live With" as it appeared while on exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, complete with a book for comments, in 2006. (A reproduction of the Houston comments book—"The more things change the more they stay the same"; "Security keeps following us"—is provided at the Red Rooster. Guests are invited to contribute their own comments, in a different color ink.) In another, he has drawn Gunn, schoolbooks in hand, being carefully positioned by her father, David Gunn, Jr., in Rockwell's book-lined studio. Another painting, a rendering of Rockwell's famous self-portrait in which Rockwell's face on the canvas has been replaced by Gunn's profile, is, Maysles said, his own oblique self-portrait. Over lunch with Gunn and Jane Allen Petrick, a writer who is working on a book about the real people of color whom Rockwell used as models, and who had initiated the encounter, Maysles explained, "A lot of my work is exploring white identity, and how whiteness is constructed in relation to images people have of black folk."
Gunn told Maysles that, like Ruby Bridges, she had been the only black child in her elementary school, though for different sociological reasons. Her family had been in Stockbridge for generations, and her grandfather was a well-known figure in the community. "It was a very sheltered experience—I just got to be a child," she said. Although members of her family were active in the N.A.A.C.P., she did not feel affected by the nation's larger racial tensions until she was older. The only time she felt singled out for being different was when her classmates read "Little Black Sambo." "Everyone would turn around and look at me," she said. "But it wasn't traumatic. It was just a moment." As an adult, she found that her Yankee accent provided a measure of cultural camouflage. "I've gotten a lot of job interviews—on the phone, it's one thing, but when I show up, the jaws drop," she said.
At the Red Rooster, Gunn was fêted. The kitchen sent out complimentary pumpkin soup and macaroni-and-cheese; a hefty cookbook was pressed upon her; Samuelsson stopped by to grasp her hand. Gunn said she was honored to have participated in the making of an icon, though she admitted she would have preferred royalties over the ten dollars per session that she was paid by Rockwell. It might also have been nice, she added, to have been invited to the White House to view the painting, as was Ruby Bridges, who is the founder of the Ruby Bridges Foundation. "But I wasn't expecting anything, so I'm not disappointed," Gunn said. She has largely stopped participating in events around "The Problem We All Live With." She said, "It got to be too much—'Will you come and sign autographs,' for nothing, so I stopped."
"Do you feel resentment toward me?" Maysles asked.
"I'm not resentful," Gunn said, quietly. "I'm happy to see you went somewhere with it." When Maysles asked her to sign a postcard-size reproduction of "Self-Portrait of Norman Rockwell as Ruby Bridges," Gunn signed her name boldly across the blue shirtsleeve of the artist's painting arm. ♦
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About [ edit ]
The Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macau Qualifier allows 2 players to advance to the WCS hallenger for the 2015 WCS Season 2.
Format [ edit ]
Stage 1 Single-elimination bracket up to 64 players Matches are Best-of-three Top 8 players advance to stage 2
Stage 2 8 players in a double-elimination bracket Matches are Best-of-three Qualifying matches are Best-of-five Top 2 players advance to WCS hallenger
Qualified players [ edit ]
Results [ edit ]
Stage 1 [ edit ]
Notable Participants [ edit ]
Complete Brackets [ edit ]
Official bracket: http://challonge.com/2015WCSS2TWHKMO
Bracket A [ edit ] Round of 32 Touch 0 Slam 2 Miracle 2 Lisa 0 Cell 2 naxiN 1 Bistork 2 Fastball 0 Round of 16 Slam 2 Miracle 0 Cell 1 Bistork 2 Qualified Slam Q Bistork Q Bracket B [ edit ] Round of 32 Calm 2 Kai 0 RevoLutioN W beaT - Kuolow 2 Saying 0 Cheetos 2 Ian 1 Round of 16 Calm 0 RevoLutioN 2 Kuolow 0 Cheetos 2 Qualified RevoLutioN Q Cheetos Q Bracket C [ edit ] Round of 32 InfiniteWing 0 AK 2 SoFtBaIL 2 LolitaLife 0 GogojOey 1 RedFeet 2 Vanilla W Settings - Round of 16 AK 2 SoFtBaIL 0 RedFeet 0 Vanilla 2 Qualified AK Q Vanilla Q Bracket D [ edit ] Round of 32 Shang 0 Fist 2 ChriZ 0 Python 2 玩瘋 2 GArgus 0 SkyAllBluE 0 Rex 2 Round of 16 Fist 1 Python 2 玩瘋 0 Rex 2 Qualified Python Q Rex Q
Stage 2 [ edit ]
Participants [ edit ]
1 AK and RevoLutioN cancelled their participations due to personal reasons. They were replaced by SoFtBalL and Calm who were their opponents in Ro16.[1]
Matches [ edit ]
Quarterfinals Slam 2 Bistork 0 Calm 0 Cheetos 2 SoFtBalL 1 Vanilla 2 Python 0 Rex 2 Semifinals Slam 2 Cheetos 1 Vanilla 2 Rex 0 Winners' Finals Slam 2 Vanilla 0 Losers' Round 1 Bistork 2 Calm 0 SoFtBalL 2 Python 1 Losers' Round 2 Cheetos 2 Bistork 0 Rex 2 SoFtBalL 0 Losers' Round 3 Cheetos 2 Rex 1 Losers' Finals Vanilla 1 Cheetos 3 Grand Finals Slam Q Cheetos Q
View Games [ edit ]
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The EFF's barricading of the busy R59 main road next to Pielsfarm, Midvaal this morning – after being prevented from illegally invading land, is another politicking stunt to create chaos and destabilize the Midvaal Local Municipality.
The Midvaal Local Municipality condemns any and all types of disruptive protests which have become a hallmark of the EFF's mode of operation during the election campaign period.
The Midvaal Local Municipality was informed that the EFF were about to illegally occupy 100 stands on privately owned land in Midvaal and as a result, we sent the Red Ants to prevent the illegal land invasion.
However, as a result, the EFF has this morning started an illegal protest in Midvaal by barricading the R59 and have violently threatened community members who did not want to take part in the protest.
The protests in Pielsfarm are not about failure of service delivery in Midvaal, as we have achieved the following:
– In the long-term, approved a housing development called The Grace that seeks to provide housing and better service delivery by targeting the following communities: Pielsfarm, Khayelistha and Boitumelo.
– In the short-term, Under the Phase 1 roll out of the Extension Services to Informal Settlements on Private Property we did the following:
– Stabilized 24 hours water provision and access by linking them to the water network and Installed Enviro-Loo toilets and improved access to sanitation.
This illegal protest action which prevented road users from getting to work on time and intimidation of community members shows their contempt for the progress of all South Africans, we will act to ensure that no further chaos occurs.
Through our constant communication with law enforcement authorities, six arrests have been made and the investigation into continued unrest is still under way.
We will continue to keep making progress in Midvaal and put the safety of our residents first.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks declined on Monday as each of the major Wall Street indexes retreated from a record, weighed down by a drop in technology and industrial shares.
General Electric (GE.N), down 6.3 percent, suffered its biggest one-day percentage decline in more than six years after a host of brokerages cut their price targets on the stock, citing higher chances of a dividend cut at the industrial conglomerate.
After holding near the unchanged mark for most of the session, losses accelerated late in the session on downturn in technology .SPLRCT, off 0.40 percent.
Last week, the Dow and S&P managed to close at a record high all five days, after a strong start to third-quarter earnings and on hopes President Donald Trump's tax plans move forward after the Senate's approval of a budget resolution on Friday.
"On the one hand, the market is very extended, overbought, on the other hand so far earnings have come through," said Andrew Slimmon, portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Chicago.
"The question becomes what happens if tax reform doesn't happen in 2017, does the market sell off into the year-end?"
Investors are also waiting for news on the next Federal Reserve chief. Trump told reporters on Monday he is "very, very close" to making his decision on who should chair the Fed.
FILE PHOTO: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is pictured in New York City, New York, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
Of the 97 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 73.2 percent have topped expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data, versus the 72-percent average for the past four quarters.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 54.25 points, or 0.23 percent, to 23,274.38, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 10.19 points, or 0.40 percent, to 2,565.02 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 42.23 points, or 0.64 percent, to 6,586.83.
Industrials .SPLRCI, were off 0.8 percent as one of the biggest drags to the S&P of the 11 major sectors. Aside from GE, the group was also pulled lower by a 10.4-percent tumble in Arconic (ARNC.N) after the specialty metals maker missed profit estimates and announced a new chief executive.
The energy index .SPNY stumbled 0.59 percent, driven by losses in Schlumberger (SLB.N), Baker Hughes (BHGE.N) and Halliburton (HAL.N), which reported results on Monday.
Hasbro (HAS.O) plunged 8.6 percent after the toymaker's forecast for the holiday season fell below estimates as Toys'R'Us bankruptcy began to hurt its operations. Shares of peer Mattel (MAT.O) fell 3.2 percent.
The S&P 500 posted 91 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 104 new highs and 41 new lows.
About 5.84 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, compared with the 5.83 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions.
(The story removes extraneous punctuation in paragraph 5)
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Subscribe to the podcast -- RSS and iTunes and Google Play
Check out our Reddit page for discussion -- http://reddit.com/r/welikedota
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At the workplace, Indian millennials are faced with more than just simple work pressure.
More than 40% of respondents to an online survey by a Harvard Business Review digital learning platform said that excessive workload was the main barrier to efficiency at the workplace. Office politics, cited by just over 39% of respondents, was a close second.
Harvard Business Review (HBR) Ascend surveyed approximately 1,700 people aged between 18 and 34 from various industries in India to understand the challenges they encounter at work. Among millennials, "the more tenured group (aged between 25-34) felt that excessive workload is their top barrier (42.92% respondents), while the younger millennials (18-24 years) identified office politics (42.39% of the respondents) as the main pain point," Vivek Chachra, India manager, Harvard Business Publishing, noted in a press release. The workload was a bigger concern for men, while it was office politics for women, the survey found. It is important to note, however, that women represented a smaller proportion (22.17%) of the entire pool.
Moreover, though most Indian millennials are equipped with technical skills, the survey suggests that they lack four key building blocks for a successful career: emotional intelligence, stress management, persuasion, and analytical thinking. Only 13% of the respondents thought they displayed emotional intelligence at work. A dismal 8% felt analytical thinking "is an area of strength for them," and a meagre 4.5% "agreed that they had the persuasion skills needed to be successful at the workplace," the survey noted.
In systems plagued by rote learning, academic excellence has always been the top, if not the only, priority. Consequently, soft skills have taken a backseat at schools and higher education institutes in India. And HBR Ascend isn't alone in noting such a deficit. Studies by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and global management consultancy Hay Group have found that a lack of soft skills has impeded communication, self-awareness, and self-management among India's workforce.
And the struggle is likely to worsen as office landscapes change.
"Soft skills like empathy, emotional intelligence, and persuasion will be even more critical as workspaces become more dynamic and machine-human interplay rapidly evolves," Amit Aggarwal, senior vice-president of learning & development at Genpact, a global business process management and services firm, said in a statement.
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About
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The Convergents - A super powered comic themed battle card game about choosing a team and an objective to protect the city you love (or hate)! Competitive and co-operative game modes await the city's new heroes (and villains) for 2 Players, or...
Also introducing The Cosmic Threat, a 1-5 Player cooperative game format, with three distinct play modes: Autopilot, Hard Autopilot, and Piloted. The players will play cooperatively to take on the Giant Alien Ship that is trying to destroy Slab City.
Will the heroes and villains work well together to defend their city, or will they fail and allow the menace to destroy their home? You decide!
Team Box Components:
Game Box
104 Cards (Including 1 Pre-Constructed Deck and Extra cards. Each has a distinct playset.)
Various Tokens
1 Poster (Map Side / Rules Side)
1 Poster (Battle Side / Keyword Icon Side)
Cosmic Threat Components:
Game Box
54 Cards (This is a pre-constructed deck ready for the players to compete against!)
1 Poster (Map Side / Rules Side)
(Remember, with The Convergents, a single Team Box is enough for a single player. A player cannot play the game with only a single team box. To play the main game, 2 boxes will be needed to play. A solo player may only play with a single Team Box or more, and the Cosmic Threat.)
For How to play you may Watch the video above, or Check out the animated how to play section below!
Introducing players to a world in which the characters interact. Will Slab City be ruled by one Villain? Will the Heroes rescue enough civilians to save the day? What secrets are hidden in the city streets? The fate of Slab City is in your hands!
In this game, players will create a unit of 54 cards. They will choose a Team Leader, which will determine the team the player has chosen (And has other effects unique to that Team Leader) . They will choose an Objective, which tells them if they are heroic or villainous, it also determines one goal in which they need to accomplish to win the game. They will create a 40-card play deck, with character and object cards. Lastly, they will create a 12-card Location deck to represent where the epic battles in Slab City will take place.
. They will choose an Objective, which tells them if they are heroic or villainous, it also determines one goal in which they need to accomplish to win the game. They will create a 40-card play deck, with character and object cards. Lastly, they will create a 12-card Location deck to represent where the epic battles in Slab City will take place. To help you get started, we've created a pre-constructed deck in each team box. Once you get the hang of the game, swap out some of the extra cards and customize your deck to suit your play style!
The Convergents has multiple paths to victory, and not all involve beating down your opponent. Some players may opt to rescue civilians. Others may try to amass wealth or simply beat and bring opposing characters to justice. All of these goals are possible, and more!
Each of the Four different Team Boxes have everything you will need to start playing a game with a friend! For a more competitive experience, add in all the Team Boxes and the Cosmic Threat to make every deck possible! This game focuses heavily on player creativity, in that YOU construct your decks, YOU choose how you play the game. We provide the pre-constructed decks to give you an easy way to start out! After that it is up to you on how you play. Do you farm resources? Do you maximize your battle capability? Do you rush the enemy base? All of that is up to how you make your deck!
The world of The Convergents is deep and rich, allowing players to impact the world through game play, this is the ultimate story driven card game.
Right now, the future is uncertain. That, in part, is because players (through tournament play) will actually be able to influence the world, the canon, the characters, and more in huge ways! Your creative minds will have a portal through which you can be involved directly with the creation of the Universe itself!
Scroll down to see Tournaments for more info on how you can change the future of the Convergents!
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(Please Keep in mind, some of our video reviews have the previous name
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Gildan Ultra Cotton Tank - Sizing Line-Up SM - Standard Sizes
garment fit
name:
height:
weight:
chest:
waist:
Ali
5'6"
130 lbs
34"
30"
Brendan
5'9"
152 lbs
38"
33"
Ben
6'0"
185 lbs
40"
32"
Mark
6'3"
220 lbs
44"
36"
garment measurements (inches)
length
width
S
28
18
M
29
20
L
30
22
XL
31
24
2XL
32
26
3XL
33
27
length
(shoulder seam at collar to bottom hem)
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We all need to know how to clean a toilet brush and toilet brush holder thoroughly and effectively: disinfecting these accessories is an essential part of ensuring your bathroom is as hygienic as possible.
Fortunately, cleaning a toilet brush and its holder is pretty simple, as household tasks go – and it's a natural step to take after you've scrubbed the toilet bowl. So make sure you have a clean toilet brush with our comprehensive guide!
How to Clean a Toilet Bowl Brush Using Bleach
An efficient method is to soak the toilet brush in bleach. Before applying this technique, do remember to read the product label for application instructions, paying particular attention to any safety guidelines – bleach is a powerful product.
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If you have an iPhone 7, you should download the latest version of iOS now.
Apple just released an iOS update for iPhone 7 and 7 Plus devices, which fixes a bug that apparently caused some users to "temporarily lose cellular connectivity."
This is the second iOS 10 update that has addressed issues with cellular connectivity. Previously, during the initial iOS 10 rollout, T-Mobile reported a bug that caused some iPhone 6 and iPhone SE users to lose signal. Apple later addressed that bug in a subsequent update.
The latest iOS update includes other bug fixes as well, though Apple hasn't elaborated on them. The iOS 10.0.3 update includes the same security content as the iOS 10.0.1 update, according to Apple's website.
Despite these issues, though, iOS 10 is seeing wide adoption just a few weeks after its formal release. The update is already installed on more than half of iOS devices, according to the latest numbers from Cupertino, and third-party estimates suggest adoption has been growing rapidly as well.
Though an important update, iPhone 7 owners will still need to wait a little longer for an iOS update that brings new features to their phones. Notably, a forthcoming update will bring a new Portrait Mode to iPhone 7 Plus devices later this year. That update is currently part of the iOS 10 beta release, which suggests it should be getting an official release soon.
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At a site near the Southwest Alaska village of Quinhagak archaeologists are racing against time to uncover Yup'ik artifacts before the effects of climate change cause them to erode into the sea. The old village continues to reveal artifacts that give a glimpse into the daily lives of Yup'ik people hundreds of years ago.
The crowning artifact found this season, says Rick Knecht, the lead archaeologist and a professor from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, is a mask — half human, half walrus — in nearly perfect condition. It's wrapped in several layers of plastic as Knecht keeps the mask damp and cool in a refrigerator at base camp.
"It's got amazingly lifelike contours with the cheek bones, and the nose, and the forehead and so on. Beautifully carved out of wood, and as you can see it's got two little conical tusks that represent that transformation into a walrus. And these are in fact made out of walrus ivory. It's got a little beard here, and half of it are human hairs and then on the other half are sea mammal hairs, maybe walrus whiskers," said Knecht.
Knecht says the mask could have been a used by a Shaman. He unearthed it, about five miles outside Quinhagak, on the edge of the Bering Sea, where archaeologists have spent the six field seasons scraping dirt from the remains of a 500-year old Alaska Native sod house. Today's discovery of a wooden bowl gives another clue about how Yup'ik people lived.
"On the bottom of the bentwood bowl is an ownership mark left by the person who carved that and these ownership marks were inherited between families. We have about six or seven ownership marks we see consistently throughout this site, which we believe was a very large sod house divided up into compartments which were domestic spaces for women and children," said Knecht.
His team has found tens of thousands of household items, jewelry and weapons, among other things. The dig is composed of what's left of an entire village at the site of the ancient community of Arolik.
The objects look much younger than the centuries they've endured. That's because they've been encased in permafrost. Wood and leather items can survive for hundreds of years. The oldest objects date as far back as seven hundred years.
Unseasonably warm temperatures at the dig site– nearly 80 degrees- create another set of variables for the crew to deal with. Conditions that Knecht say are driving the crew to work as fast as possible before more washes away.
In the early 1600s, right around the time that Shakespeare was publishing plays and poems in England, Knecht says, these people were crafting art too: carving intricate ivory jewelry and weaving baskets. Then, in the middle of the 17thCentury, says Knecht, their communal, sod house was attacked and burned.
Carlotta Hillerdal is a co-investigator with Knecht on the project. Back at the dig, she points to a burnt orange streak running along the dark soil of the dig's dirt wall.
"This site was abandoned around 1640. So that's where we have the kind of orange and black soil that you see in the wall over there that we dug. That's the roof of the last phase of the structure that stood here that was burnt down and abandoned," said Hillerdal.
The evidence at the site corresponds with local Yup'ik lore about the 'bow and arrow wars,' a time of fighting between tribes during an earlier climate change that strained resources.
Those are stories that Yup'ik elder Annie Cleveland knows. She says, when she was a girl, she remembers walking on the beach just outside of her village and finding old spears and human remains along the shore.
"When my grandmother and I used to walk down the beach to get some driftwood or pick berries we used to find spear-anek (spears) and maybe a human bone and skull and we used to put the bones back up there and dig a little bit and cover them," said Cleveland.
That spot where she and her grandmother kept reburying things has turned into the dig called Nunalleq, meaning 'old village'. Cleveland says the project is bringing to life history for Yup'ik people in her village and giving them a sense of pride. The Native corporation in Quinhagak eventually wants to develop eco-tourism around the site, but rapid erosion has made getting artifacts out the priority.
As they dig, researchers are finding that the village is larger than expected. With the new discoveries they've tacked on another season of fieldwork to unearth more history before it's too late.
The archaeologists will ship the artifacts to Scotland for study and preservation before they return them to the region. Tribal leaders say
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A smorgasbord of early concept art and animation detailing Naughty Dog's early vision for Uncharted has been revealed.
In a feature at The Verge, Uncharted writer Josh Scherr goes over Naughty Dog's thought process at the time and includes the original pitch video for Uncharted - then codenamed Project Big - that sold the title to Sony.
As you can see from the screenshot below, Nathan Drake sure looked a lot different in these early stages. His face was more plucky, cartoonish and expressive.
Then the studio cast a then unknown character actor named Nolan North for the part and everything changed. "When Nolan came in, it was fairly clear that he was going to be the one," Scherr reminisced. "He had that right kind of devil may care feel to his voice, but he could also get serious when he needed to. And most importantly, as we discovered, is that the guy was hilarious."
North was also able to provide motion capture and he had the perfect physicality for the role. One of the features Scherr was most proud of was "additive animation" meaning the animations would change based on context. For example, Drake sprints differently when he's being shot at versus when he's not. In danger, he'll panic and flail his arms around wildly whereas when he's leisurely running he'll remain cool and collected. "It looks very simple now compared to [how it looked] back then," Scherr said. "But we were doing a lot of things that we had never tried before."
Not everything from the pitch video made it into the final game. The underwater bits were cut, as was the multi-enemy hand-to-hand combat system where you could steal weapons from foes. Amazingly, the jet ski level was built in less than a month at the 11th hour.
Naughty Dog's biggest aspiration with Uncharted was design a game where the narrative was front and center, rather than a flimsy excuse for action sequences. "The thing that we wanted to focus on from the get-go were characters and story," Scherr said. "That was something we felt that - particularly back in 2005, 2006 when this first started getting developed - was something that was sort of an afterthought in the majority of video games out there. So we really wanted not only to tell this pulpy, action adventure-style thing, but also really try to develop some relatable, entertaining characters and have the story be what pulled you through the game."
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection will be out on 9th October and will include access to the Uncharted 4 multiplayer beta running from 4th-13th December.
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Note: There are multiple files available for this download. Once you click on the "Download" button, you will be prompted to select the files you need.
Version: 2010 File Name: rdbgsetup_x86.exe rdbgsetup_ia64.exe rdbgsetup_x64.exe 4/12/2010 File Size: 4.5 MB 12.4 MB 8.6 MB
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One of the women accusing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of sex crimes appears to have worked with a group that has connections to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
James D. Catlin, a lawyer who recently represented Assange, said the sex assault investigation into the WikiLeaks founder is based on claims he didn't use condoms during sex with two Swedish women.
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Swedish prosecutors told AOL News last week that Assange was not wanted for rape as has been reported, but for something called "sex by surprise" or "unexpected sex."
One accuser, Anna Ardin, may have "ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups," according to Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett, writing for CounterPunch.
While in Cuba, Ardin worked with the Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White), a feminist anti-Castro group.
Professor Michael Seltzer pointed out that the group is led by Carlos Alberto Montaner who is reportedly connected to the CIA.
Shamir and Bennett also describe Ardin as a "leftist" who "published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba."
Shamir and Bennett noted that Las damas de blanco is partially funded by the US government and also counts Luis Posada Carriles as a supporter.
A declassified 1976 document (.pdf) revealed Posada to be a CIA agent. He has been convicted of terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of people.
Ardin is "a gender equity officer at Uppsula University – who chose to associate with a US funded group openly supported by a convicted terrorist and mass murderer," FireDogLake's Kirk James Murphy observed.
In August, Assange told Al-Jazeera that the accusations were "clearly a smear campaign."
"We have been warned that, for example, the Pentagon is planning on using dirty tricks to destroy our work," Assange told the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet.
The WikiLeaks founder said he was told to be careful of "sex traps." Had Assange fallen for one of those traps? "Maybe. Maybe not," he said.
Catlin observed that both Ardin and Sofia Wilén, the second accuser, sent SMS messages and tweets boasting of their conquests following the alleged "rapes."
"In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange's honour at her flat after the 'crime' and tweeted to her followers that she is with the 'the world's coolest smartest people, it's amazing!'" he wrote.
"The exact content of Wilén's mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Niether Wilén's nor Ardin's texts complain of rape," Catlin said.
Ardin has also published a seven step guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends.
When the charges were first leveled in August, Gawker raised doubts that Ardin was working for the CIA.
"If anything, Ardin's outing tends to undercut Assange's conspiracy theory that one of his accusers is a major figure on Sweden's left fringe, freewheelingly indiscreet on her personal blog and, until her charges, an enthusiastic promoter of Assange's visit to the country," Gawker wrote.
After Interpol issued a digital "wanted" poster for Assange on Monday morning, an unnamed Scotland Yard source reportedly told Press Association it had been given the documents needed for the arrest. Police would not comment on the report publicly.
Several British news outlets speculated that Assange could be arrested as early as Tuesday.
On Monday evening, Mark Stephens, Assange's London lawyer, was negotiating with British authorities over an arrest warrant they'd received from their Swedish counterparts. Assange has vowed to fight extradition.
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Kristen Bell had no idea the commotion she would cause with husband Dax Shepard when she recorded her voice cameo for iZombie.
The Veronica Mars alum is reuniting with series creator Rob Thomas on his new series by lending her voice for Episode 11, titled "Fifty Shades of Grey Matter." In the episode, Liv (Rose McIver) eats the brain of a poisoned librarian, voiced by Bell, who was also secretly an erotic fiction writer.
"[Thomas] said, 'Just record it on your phone, send it to me and we'll lay it into the episode,'" Bell said in a conference call with reporters. "I was sitting in my husband's trailer while he was shooting [his new movie] CHiPs while both my kids were sleeping in the bedroom of the trailer, and I was like, 'Oh, I have a moment away from them! I'll get it done.' So I wrote out my lines, which was a paragraph or two of erotica. I recorded it on my phone and sent it to Rob."
It wasn't until Bell and Shepard were home later that night when she realized she accidentally set something in motion.
"Dax starts to tell me that the weirdest thing happened to him at work. Somebody slipped him a piece of erotica into his trailer, and he was confused as to who did it," Bell said. "He was trying to find out who wanted him to read their stuff, because he's a writer and he passes stuff onto other writers. He was utterly confused, and thank God he told me about it, because otherwise he would have thought someone on the set of CHiPs was writing erotica and slipping it into his trailer in the hopes that he was enjoying it or give notes or become his protégé? I don't know. He was like, 'One of these PAs or other writers on the set, someone slipped me some of their work… and it was really sexy!'"
Bell reveals she briefly considered letting him believe someone on set was slipping him their provocative writing before eventually owning up to it.
"As he was telling me, I was like, 'Should I let him know that was me, or should I let him think that some gorgeous PA was inspired to write erotica and slipped it under the door of his trailer?'" Bell said with a laugh. "The funniest part was that he went all Veronica Mars trying to figure the origin of this erotica. He said, 'I'm looking at it, it's written on a piece of paper, it's just sitting there in my trailer, and I noticed that it's written in shorthand. The person who wrote it used the number two instead of the word 'to,' and the letter 'B' instead of the word 'be.' What I'm going to do is look over the shoulder of anyone who's writing on a notepad on set for the next couple of weeks and see if I can find who is writing in shorthand.' He turned into Veronica Mars to try to figure out the origin of this erotica. It was very funny."
Both Bell and Shepard were impressed with what Thomas was able to put together for the episode. "It was particularly amusing, especially knowing that my friend Rob had written things like, 'heaving breasts pressed against the cold plastic of the airplane door,'" Bell said with a laugh. "It was bizarre."
Bell knew that it was only a matter of time (and scheduling) before she became involved with iZombie in some way, although she laments that she only had the time to do a voiceover cameo for the episode. "Friendship is something that's permanently on the books for Rob and I," Bell said. "There's a constant dialogue about projects and when we can work together again."
That could even include another installment of Veronica Mars, which most recently spawned a movie in 2014. However, it sounds like Veronica's next act will bring her back to the small screen.
"We're definitely still looking for the windows where we could allow Veronica to exist again, whether it's a miniseries or a short-run cable series," Bell said. "The business of this business twists it all a little bit when you are only allowed to do one television series at a time. It's tricky. But we haven't dropped the conversation. It just might end up being a Murder, She Wrote where I'm 80."
iZombie airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
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Though the full series is set to debut on Netflix tonight, Marvel Entertainment and Netflix have revealed a new motion poster for "Marvel's Daredevil" that finally shows off Hornhead's red suit. After seeing the new suit, don't forget to check out our latest Origins & Evolutions piece, focusing on The Man Without Fear himself.
Produced by Marvel Television and ABC Studios, with executive producers Steven S. DeKnight ("Spartacus"), Jeph Loeb ("Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.") and Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods), the full 13-episode season will be made available globally upon release in all territories where Netflix is available.
Starring Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock), Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page), Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson), Rosario Dawson (Claire Temple), Bob Gunton (Leland Owlsely aka The Owl), Vondie Curtis Hall (Ben Urich), Toby Leonard Moore (Wesley, Wilson Fisk's right hand man), Ayelet Zurer (Vanessa Fisk), and Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk), "Marvel's Daredevil" follows the journey of Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a young boy but imbued with extraordinary senses, now fighting against injustice by day as a lawyer, and by night as the super hero Daredevil in modern day Hell's Kitchen, New York City.
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by Jason Stotts
I think that Leonard Peikoff has done some great things for Objectivism, he is like a demi-Aquinas, but when he talks about sex and sexual issues, it makes me really sad. Frankly, his position on rape is both disgraceful and disgusting. I don't know how anyone of good moral character or intelligence could actually advocate what Peikoff advocated. It is made much worse because Peikoff is someone I respect and I did not expect him to hold such a reprehensible view of rape.
I'm referring, of course, to his recent Podcast question, episode 202 from February 5th, where Peikoff responds to this question:
Is it rape if you obtain sex through fraudulent means? For example a man does not love a woman but tells her he does so that she will have sex with him. Is this the moral equivalent of rape?
His response is:
Well, if all she needs it three words, "I love you," and you're not saying it, then it's not an issue of rape. You have to determine, here — before you talk about rape — what is the context. A woman can give her consent by her presence in certain contexts and that frees the man to have sex regardless of what she then says. I'm thinking of that case of Kobe Bryant where the woman came up some time in the middle of the night, after some drinking, to his bedroom and then when he purported to do something she said, "No, I don't consent." You cannot do that. You have given every evidence that that is what you're going to do and it is too late at that point to say, "Sorry, but no." So, we're assuming it's not that type of case. You actually have created some kind of false identity, she falls for it, and she never would have [had sex with you] otherwise. Well, that's obviously deception. So, in a sense, it is like rape because she is engaging in the act without her actual consent. Without her knowledge means she would not consent to what you're doing, so you're using fraud, and it is a form of having sex by force. But I don't think you could ever make that a legal crime. Because she says she thought you loved her, but you say you didn't say you loved her. But if it came to the law case, how are you going to decide? What is objective? If a woman says, "He told me that he loved me and he didn't!" Any defendant can say, "I indicated that I had a great admiration for her otherwise I wouldn't want to sleep with her, et cetera, et cetera," there is no way of adjudicating what emotions he did or didn't feel or what conversation he did or didn't have. But if there is evidence of physical violence, you know, of a context [such as] she didn't know him, she was walking down the street, et cetera. That's a different story. So. that's what I would say. It's fraud, but in the form you present it is not a legal case.
I want to focus, primarily, just on his one claim:
A woman can give her consent by her presence in certain contexts and that frees the man to have sex regardless of what she then says. I'm thinking of that case of Kobe Bryant where the woman came up some time in the middle of the night, after some drinking, to his bedroom and then when he purported to do something she said, "No, I don't consent." You cannot do that. You have given every evidence that that is what you're going to do and it is too late at that point to say, "Sorry, but no."
And to make it very clear what I'm objecting to:
A woman can give her consent by her presence in certain contexts and that frees the man to have sex regardless of what she then says.
Leonard Peikoff believes that if a woman were to come to a man's house late at night, dressed sexily, and perhaps drunk, that he should just be able to use her a fuck-toy, even if she says no. Even if she says no. He thinks that the context is sufficient consent and that any other consent is unnecessary. Furthermore, he believes that this consent cannot be withdrawn, which is the most troubling part of his claim.
I agree with Peikoff that a woman in the context described above is communicating something: that she is amenable to sex. I don't even think that one needs to get explicit verbal consent here. I think it would be sufficient to start initiating sexually and see if she responds and take her response as consent. I think it's fair to say that she's consented to at least being propositioned, whether verbally or nonverbally,
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President Trump says he has created 600,000 jobs so far. It's a false statement.
"We've created over 600,000 jobs already over a very short period of time and it's going to really start catching on now," Trump said Tuesday at the White House, flanked by his top advisers and the CEOs who are members of his Business Advisory Council.
He repeated the statement later at a press conference: "Already we've created more than almost [sic] 600,000 jobs."
Official government data does not back up that claim.
According to CNNMoney's Trump Jobs Tracker, 317,000 jobs have been created since Trump took office. The president is trying to take credit for nearly double that number of jobs.
The ultimate authority on how many jobs are created (or lost) each month is the US Labor Department. CNNMoney's 317,000 figure includes how many jobs the Labor Department reported were created in February (219,000) and March (98,000).
A White House spokesman said Trump is including all the job added in January as well (216,000). Trump was only in office for 11.5 days that month.
But even if you give him all of the gains for January, that still only brings the tally to 533,000 jobs created so far in 2017.
The math doesn't quite add up to 600,000.
Related: Check the data yourself with The CNNMoney Trump Jobs Tracker
Trump likes to count job promises
There's ongoing debate over whether a president should take credit for creating jobs at all. Most of the hiring is done by the private sector. But there's a case to be made that government policies on taxes, regulations, trade, etc. do influence whether businesses want to hire or not.
"The president's comments touting the administration's economic record accurately reflect the growing optimism about his policies and the future outlook for the country," a White House spokesman told CNNMoney.
Trump has frequently said he's influenced companies like Ford, Charter Communications, General Motors and ExxonMobil to hire more workers, even though some of the businesses themselves refuse to give Trump credit for their hiring decisions.
Then there's the fact that some of the jobs these companies are touting as new hires are part of projects that were in the works long before Trump was elected. (CNNMoney has a running fact check of these announcements here).
Related: U.S. unemployment drops to 4.5%, lowest in decade
Trump vs. Obama
The bottom line is: Yes, business and consumer optimism has picked up since Trump won the election. That is likely a factor in some hiring decisions by businesses. But the reality is the economy has added an average of 178,000 jobs a month so far this year. That's very close to, and even slightly lower than, the average last year (187,000 a month) when President Obama was in office.
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Jared Fogle Beaten Up in Prison, Already Gained 30 Pounds — Report
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"Jared is regularly taunted by those who have it out for him," an insider told In Touch. "One of the men called Jared a 'dirty child rapist' and told him to 'get the f—k out' and not come back." VIDEO: Jared Fogle's Recorded "Phone Sex" Tapes About Kids Are Appalling When the diet celeb tried to defend himself the "inmate slapped him across the cheeks several times and made his face red." The sex offender then turned tail and ran out of the gym. All the Big House menacing has led an apparently depressed Jared — who's earned the prison nickname "Chomo" for "child molester" — to turn to food for comfort.
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Overview Just because you're dieting, doesn't mean you can't live a little! And whether you like a glass of wine with dinner or a cocktail out with friends, watching your carbohydrate intake doesn't necessarily mean your indulging needs to come to a full stop. There are many low-carb options out there for dieters who like to drink. As with everything, moderation is key. Heavy drinking isn't good for anyone, but having a few carb-conscious cocktails here and there won't hurt. This is especially true when you consider that some of the drinks that made our top 10 list are 100 percent carb-free!
Why so much liquor? When it comes to low-carb alcohol, distilled spirits are the safest bet. They're virtually all free of carbohydrates, so you only need to worry about what you're mixing them with. But not everyone likes drinking hard liquor, so we've included some dieter-friendly beers and wines, too.
Diet Jack and Coke Obviously, a regular cola would shatter your daily carbohydrate allowance. But diet soda lends itself to numerous carb-free cocktails. This spin on the traditional Jack and Coke simply uses Diet Coke instead. Make! Mix one jigger (1.5 ounces) of whiskey with Diet Coke, and pour over ice. estimated calories (per serving): 100
estimated carbohydrates (per serving): 0 grams
Cuba Libre When you're using diet cola, you can make any simple favorite low-carb. Despite its sweet flavor, rum doesn't contain any carbs either. Make! Mix your favorite unflavored rum with diet cola and serve over ice. For an added twist, throw in a piece of lime. estimated calories: 100
estimated carbohydrates (with a twist of lime): <1 gram
Carb-free gin and tonic Gin and tonics are great summertime drinks. They're crisp and cool, but tonic water is loaded with carbs. It contains 32 grams per 12-ounce can! Swap out soda water for your tonic, and you'll get the flavor without hurting your diet efforts. Make! Mix one jigger of gin with soda water, add a squeeze of lemon or lime, and serve over ice. estimated calories: 150
estimated carbohydrates: <1 gram
Low-carb mojito The traditional mojito uses syrup for sweetening, but if you use a diet lemon-lime soda like Diet Sierra Mist or Diet Sprite, you can get the sweetness without the carbs. Make! Mix one jigger of rum with fresh lime juice and diet lemon-lime soda, and pour onto muddled mint leaves. Then pour over ice. estimated calories: 110
estimated carbohydrates: 1.5 grams
Michelob ULTRA Beer doesn't typically make it onto low-carb lists because most kinds are loaded with carbohydrates. Some light beers, however, won't hurt your efforts too much, including Michelob ULTRA. estimated calories: 95
estimated carbohydrates: 2.6 grams
Wine Remember, a single glass of wine is about 5 ounces. Pinot grigio If you like your wine cold and refreshing, pinot grigio is a good option without too many carbohydrates. estimated calories: 123
estimated carbohydrates: 3 grams Sauvignon blanc Sauvignon blanc also earns a place on your low-carb wine rack. estimated calories: 120
estimated carbohydrates: 3 grams Red wine If red wine is more your style, pinot noir is another excellent low-carb option. estimated calories: 122
estimated carbohydrates: 3.4 grams
Beck's Premier Light If you need a little more flavor with your bubbles, Beck's light beer might do the trick! It's another one of the beer hall's lower-carb options. estimated calories: 63
estimated carbohydrates: 3.8 grams
Low-carb sea breeze A sea breeze is a fruity, summertime drink, but it doesn't have to be filled with sugar. Traditionally, it's made with grapefruit juice, but using Diet Squirt instead eliminates the extra carbs. Make! Mix 1 jigger of vodka with 2 ounces of unsweetened cranberry juice and 4 ounces of Diet Squirt. Pour over ice. estimated calories: 110
estimated carbohydrates: 6 grams Read more: Low-calorie cocktails »
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The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995
Enar Releth, a Mouth
Mouth is the term used for the spokesperson of a Telvanni Mage Lord. The Telvanni Council House is the assembly for Telvanni wizard affairs in Sadrith Mora, the Mage Lords themselves are far too busy and couldn't be bothered with mundane affairs, hence they have their Mouths present instead. A somewhat justified fear of assassination by rivals may play into this as well. If you kill a Telvanni Mage Lord their mouth will disappear too.
Fast Eddie may become your Mouth when you advance to the rank of Spellwright in House Telvanni.
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2018 Webinars
Charting your Course: Developing a Personal Strategic Plan
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 3 p.m. ET
Free for NAPA members, $10 for AAA members, $50 for nonmembers
Click here to register
Presenter: Melissa Vogel, PhD
Professor of Anthropology
Director, Business Anthropology Program
Clemson University
As higher education administration continues to be heavily influenced by business practices, and employment opportunities for anthropologists are more often found in the private sector, it is essential that individual anthropologists start thinking more strategically about their career paths and how they intersect with their own personal and professional goals. Graduate programs often expose students to only one, narrowly defined path that nearly always leads to a tenured faculty position at a research university, yet few will actually reach this goal and many more may not want to. This webinar is designed to help you identify your short and long-term goals and create a step-by-step plan on how to achieve those goals. Participants will also be encouraged to explore a wide range of career possibilities and to incorporate their concerns for work-life balance and job satisfaction. This webinar is relevant to anthropologists from all subfields and career stages, from students to mid-career professionals.
Immigration in the Trump Era
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
In a time when the core anthropological values of multiculturalism, cross-cultural understanding, international diversity, and racial inclusion are under threat, many anthropologists are reflecting deeply upon our roles as teachers, researchers, and engaged scholars. In this webinar we follow from our recent Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots series to discuss our work alongside immigrant communities and undocumented students as forms of solidarity or acompañamiento and as acts of resilience and resistance as we adapt to the current political moment.
Participants:
References/Suggested Reading
Presentation Slides (PDF)
2017 Webinars
Protecting Immigrant and Undocumented Students
Townhall with Anthropologists Action Network for Immigrants and Refugees
March 15, 2017
This webinar discusses the ramifications of recent Executive Orders on vulnerable populations in educational settings. Panelists include anthropologists from Anthropologists Action Network for Immigrants and Refugees (AANIR) and the legal experts from AILA and E4FC who are working to craft solutions for professors and campuses interested in protecting the rights of their undocumented students and their families.
To join the private AANIR Facebook and Google groups, email Whitney Duncan at whitney.duncan(at)unco.edu
Additional Resources:
Presentation slide deck
Webinar chat box transcript
AILA website
E4FC website
Zika Frontline Research: Preliminary Findings
January 18th, 2017
This webinar builds on April 2016's "Understanding and responding to the Zika crisis from an anthropological perspective." The SMA Zika TIG group presents their preliminary research findings from the field. Most recently, Zika has been downgraded from a public health emergency and response efforts are shifting to focus on long term care plans for impacted communities.
Additional Resources:
Presentation slide deck
Webinar chat box transcript
SMA Zika Temporary Interest Group (TIG) Facebook Page
Zika Targeted Interest Group (TIG) Research Assessment Survey
2016 Webinars
Watch "Top Tips for Effective Presentations: A Webinar for Annual Meeting Presenters"
With Jeff Martin, AAA's Director of Communications
(originally presented November 8, 2016)
Understanding and responding to the Zika crisis from an anthropological perspective
On April 29, 2016, the Society for Medical Anthropology in conjunction with the American Anthropological Association sponsored this webinar put on by the Zika TIG group. This webinar focused on a broad range of issues surrounding the Zika epidemic. Topics covered include disease ecology/biology of the Zika virus and principal mosquito vector, sociocultural dimensions of risk including poverty and pregnancy, and current response efforts. A large portion of the time was spent on interactive discussion. As a field, anthropologists have a lot to offer in terms of rapid and effective response to this virus.
Resources mentioned in this webinar:
SMA Zika Temporary Interest Group (TIG) Facebook Page
World Health Organization Risk Communication the context of Zika virus (English, Spanish, and Portuguese editions available)
Zika, the film by Vozes da Igualdade
Katie Hinde: "Mammals Suck"
March 23, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. EDT
Why Milk Matters from the Bush to the Bench to the Beside: Evolutionary, Cultural, and Clinical Approaches to Lactation Biology Research
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Amy Santee: Practicing Anthropology
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Hydra Slayer 18.0
Hydra Slayer 18.0 is released on Steam and itch.io ! Hydra Slayer is a roguelike with a unique combat system, based on old matematical puzzles. The highlights of release 18.0 are the following: A new player race, the Atlanteans . Most characters in Hydra Slayer would meet vulture hydras, who grow one head for every wound they deal to the player. The Atlanteans have been cursed by the gods, and this will happen for all hydras. Will you be able to turn your curse into an advantage? The curse significantly affects the equipment and strategies to use, especially in the first 12 levels. Thanks for Patashu and Nick for the idea! Evolving hydras . They start to appear after level 25. Their resistance to the given weapon material is increased by one after each attack. These are inspired by a (slightly trollish) post by IchigoMait. Previously, each level below Level 12 contained just one special hydra (not counting bloody or dragon variants of standard colors) -- since there are 9 types, some of them will appear just a few times. The new version changes this -- some levels will replace one of the standard ones with another special, and some will almost lack normal hydras and include most of the special types instead. Challenge levels now tend to have two special hydras per level too. One new exotic weapon -- I will leave that for the players to find :) New special graphics for scythes (Atlanteans start with a scythe), hecatoncheires and monkeys. Thanks to tehora for requesting these! Removed some exploits. It is no longer possible to enhance the titanic club easily with the Reforging+Ambidexterity combo (thanks to vo3435 for abusing this). A tighter limit is placed on using time-daggers on mushrooms. Some features have been added to help with "head draining" attacks (all hydras for Atlanteans, Vultures for all characters). When fighting head-draining hydras, the number of wounds caused by the hydra's next attack is given in the UI. For other hydras, when you select your shield, "+1" is displayed for the hydra whose damage is reduced by your shield. Also, you can now press 'w' in the hydra description, to view the amount of wounds the given hydra would deal for every size. Enchanted Mersenne Twister (when trying to roll a 'good' number of heads) will now take into account that extra heads could be drained. In the cheat mode, shift+H can now also summon equipment. Minor bugfixes: better display of the in-game achievement screen, capital letters accepted in the scores menu, better handling of the app going out of focus, the generation of Giants' weapons in challenge games, crash bug with Vulture + Ambidexterity + Knowledge/Growth, using Twister even though runes are active, inexact calculation of wounds in the PoK algorithm by head drainers, 'use count' for traps, dragons attacking in a wrong direction on non-orientable levels, number of stunned heads is no longer displayed in the PoK hint for large hydras (the algorithm does not care about them anyway), potion of knowledge correctly counting wounds for shadows, capital letters accepted in the scores menu Have fun! Small updates will be posted on the Steam forum first.
Posted by Zeno Rogue at 04:57
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Here Is The Best Ruleset For Ultimate: Fouling Out, Stall Clock, And No More Picks
I watch a lot of ultimate: college, club, AUDL, MLU, you name it. I've decided on what I think is the optimal ruleset for ultimate, combining a mish-mash of rules that already exist (this is built, like every rule book, on at least 80% of the existing USAU rules) and a few things that haven't been tried. This is the framework for rules at the highest level of the sport, and many of the features are only feasible for the most important games and tournaments.
The Field
The USA Ultimate rules have the field shape right. The real key is the width — 40 yards wide seems just right. It's wide enough so that the offense can change angles, but not so wide that stopping breaks and swings is impossible, as it is in the semi-pro leagues.
Proponents of the football-sized field at the pro level laud the benefit of more hucking and more offense, calling it more exciting. I think that sells the spectator public short. You need a balance in every sport between offense and defense — I like watching offense-only street basketball occasionally, but I would never encourage the NBA to adopt that style. Beautiful defense — both individual and team — can be as exciting as beautiful offense, especially for the intermediate or advanced fan.
The Stall
Having players count to ten on the mark is obviously not the optimal way to track the stall count. It is way too inconsistent and is one of the most hotly contested calls in the game ("I said the T of ten!")
But the way the pro leagues solve it — with referees counting silently and inconsistently — is not great either.
The solution: a 7-second stall clock, visible to players and fans alike, operated on the sideline. A buzzer goes off if it hits zero. Disc still in the hand of the player? Turnover. A stall clock operator on the sideline presses a button to reset the clock when the disc is thrown/caught.
This would be a much more consistent and exciting way to watch a stall count unfold.
Officiating
If you're coming here hoping for a firm stance on whether we should adopt observers or referees, you will be disappointed. From a spectator point of view, I simply don't think it matters all that much. Players seem split on what they prefer.
Really, the key is to have a trained professional as the official. Whether they are making active rulings or waiting for player calls before adjudicating, there are way, way too many bad officials in ultimate right now. On the whole, the officiating is particularly bad in the AUDL, where each team slaps together a crew of local refs for each game. Like many things in the AUDL, your mileage may vary. Some cities have great refs; others, not so much. I can't believe how often you see a player throw his hands up for a foul call, then get it 3-4 seconds after the play happens.
The MLU's refs are not always great, either, but they are certainly more consistent.
There are some very capable observers in the USAU game, and the top tier of observers are the best trained officials in the sport. We need more of them: people who aren't afraid to make a call, who manage the physicality and call infractions when necessary, and who know the rules inside and out.
Regardless, I am thoroughly convinced that top level ultimate should have officials; pure self-officiation has far too many pitfalls, especially for spectator ultimate.
Fouls
I think the current USA Ultimate rulebook does a great job of outlining fouls. You can't bump the thrower. You can't slash the arms of a receiver or hold them down as they try to jump. Physicality and contact in the stack is technically disallowed, but is often uncalled by players, observers, and referees alike. The rules seem to have found the sweet spot for a "non-contact" sport.
Unfortunately, enforcement leaves a lot to be desired; it's probably the most glaring weakness in the current ruleset. The pro leagues have made an effort to combat fouls with a short yardage penalty, but a 10 yard penalty is so much less significant in ultimate than it is in football. USA Ultimate rules often allow players to get away with repeated, egregious fouls with almost no repercussions. The current TMF/PMF system still lacks teeth, especially when being wielded by inexperienced or timid observers.
It's time to try a new approach. It would be easy to institute an individual foul limit on players in officiated games. Without in-game testing, it would be hard to know what the 'foul out' number should be, but it would serve as an effective way to stop continued
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Stephen Colbert dropped the "L" word (lie) and the "F" word (you know) on the Trump White House on Monday night. It was the late-night comedian's latest blast of politically charged commentary — primarily directed at the 45th president. And it was the kind of performance that just a short time ago seemed to risk alienating large numbers of potential viewers but now appears to be making the "Late Show" host a very big draw.
Colbert lampooned White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who on his tour of the Sunday political talk shows asserted that "the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."
"Will not be questioned? Let me test that theory," Colbert said. "What the f--- are you talking about?"
Colbert then challenged Miller, who said he is "prepared to go on any show, anytime, anywhere," to appear on Tuesday's "Late Show."
"Listen, if you don't show up, I'm going to call you a liar," Colbert said. "And if you do show up, I'm going to call you a liar to your face."
Miller did not show.
With forceful remarks like this, Colbert has been gaining on late-night king Jimmy Fallon, who is far less inclined to take on the president in a harsh manner.
Conventional wisdom is that Fallon's approach works best on a major broadcast network. When the Hollywood Reporter commissioned a survey of late-night viewers in the fall of 2015, shortly after Colbert's debut on CBS, it found that Fallon appealed to people across the political spectrum. The "Tonight Show" host's audience was 36 percent Democrat, 31 percent Republican and 27 percent independent.
Colbert's audience skewed sharply to the left: 47 percent Democrat, 17 percent Republican and 31 percent independent.
A liberal slant helped make Colbert a star on Comedy Central, but "CBS executives made it clear that they expected Mr. Colbert to broaden his appeal when he moved to the medium of late night on a network," the New York Times reported at the time of his hiring.
Colbert, however, was among Trump's fiercest critics during the campaign and never really moderated his politics. Ratings throughout his first year on the "Late Show" were underwhelming, much to the delight of conservative publications such as the Weekly Standard, which in May called Colbert's early struggles "sweet schadenfreude."
Former Daily Show host Stephen Colbert weighed in on the presidency of Donald Trump during an interview with CBS News' Face the Nation on Dec. 25, 2016. (Reuters)
Absent another survey of late-night audiences, it is unclear what exactly has reversed Colbert's fortunes. Are liberal viewers tuning in in greater numbers? Or is Colbert bringing in conservatives who were uncomfortable with Trump during the campaign and who feel unnerved by his fledgling administration?
It is worth noting that Colbert's skewering of Miller on Monday night had little to do with liberal or conservative policy ideas; it was about a claim to unchecked power, which could alarm anybody.
We'll see whether Colbert can sustain his recent success. But if he was waiting for ratings to catch up to his vision for the "Late Show," his patience is being rewarded, for now.
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Image copyright AFP Image caption Giorgio Orsoni posing with a Venetian model boat during a visit to France in February
The mayor of the Italian city of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni, has resigned amid a wider investigation into alleged corruption over new flood barriers.
He and 34 other officials were arrested last week on suspicion of embezzling around 20m euros ($27m, £16m) in public funds earmarked for flood defences.
Mr Orsoni stepped down a day after being released from house arrest under a plea bargain.
He agreed to a four-month sentence but is unlikely to go to prison.
The sentence still requires court approval.
Mr Orsoni had returned to his post on Thursday after a temporary suspension but it appears he lost the support of his political allies, the ruling centre-left Democratic Party, correspondents say.
He had told a prosecutor he was innocent in the case. Speaking to reporters after his release from house arrest, he said he had always run Venice "in the best way possible".
"I made a lot of enemies... and this is the price I am paying," he added.
Delayed project
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Watch: The mobile flood barriers emerge from the water
The bribery allegations centre around the public tender process for the Moses project, as the works are known in English, after their Italian acronym (Mose).
Seventy-eight mobile barriers will be used to shut off Venice lagoon in the event of rising sea levels and storms.
Construction began 11 years ago but has been hampered by delays in funding due to the economic crisis.
The city, one of the world's great tourist destinations, is continuing to sink and is hit by flooding on a yearly basis.
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This week, EA has added cutesy platformer Unravel and so-so racer Need for Speed to both EA Access on Xbox One and Origin Access on PC.
Later this summer, Origin Access will expand further with another 10 titles, EA has now added.
Crysis, Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 headline the list of forthcoming additions, which will be added to the Origin Access vault "soon".
Alongside them will be tip top tower defence game Plants vs. Zombies, classic BioWare role-player Jade Empire, SimCity 2000 (not the bad one) and indie tube map puzzler Mini Metro.
Origin Access now has pretty much the full back catalogue of recent EA releases, including all your Mass Effects, Dragon Ages and Dead Spaces, plus Battlefield 3, 4, and Hardline. It costs £4 for a month's subscription, and also gives you early access to new games as they release.
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Clinton: His role in Northern Ireland
Shortly before Bill Clinton left office, BBC News Online's Dominic Casciani examined his role in the peace process. It's a mark of the people skills of President Bill Clinton that it took his visit to unite the people of Northern Ireland, no matter how briefly, in their tens of thousands on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry.
We came here knowing that words are not very good at a time like this, simply to express our sympathy and to support your determined refusal to let a cowardly crime rob you of the future
President Clinton at Omagh, 1998 President Bill Clinton's domestic legacy, belittled by opponents and tainted by impeachment, will be picked over for years to come. But few doubt the importance of the role that he played in helping to get Northern Ireland's divided community to sit down together with the common goal of consigning violence and inequality to the past. President Clinton is now on his third visit to Dublin and Belfast - three visits more than any other serving US President has ever undertaken. It's a commitment that has ranged from granting Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams a US visa in the belief that it would further peace, to admitting to being left "overwhelmed" following a meeting with victims of the Omagh bomb. Although the peace process is by no means complete, the White House has regarded it as little short of a Clinton foreign policy triumph. Origins of involvement For years, any White House desire to get involved in Northern Ireland was tempered by the relationship with London. Clinton timeline 1992: Irish Forum pledges 1994: Gerry Adams Visa 1994: George Mitchell Appointed 1995: First visit 1998: Key role in Good Friday Agreement 1998: Second visit 2000: Farewell visit During his White House campaign in 1992, the then Governor Clinton of Arkansas made a pledge to send a peace envoy, something that the majority of the politically influential Irish-American caucus had long sought. The commitment risked infuriating London and following election, Clinton appeared to have dropped the pledge - appointing only an "economic envoy", Senator George Mitchell. Coupled with the new US ambassador to Dublin, Jean Kennedy Smith, sister of Clinton's hero President John F Kennedy, the two appointments began a process that would see the US strengthen its involvement in the emerging peace process. Treading a fine line Clinton's approach to Northern Ireland appeared to mirror that of many of his domestic policies - appeal to all sides and seek consensus. His second policy plank was to encourage US companies to bring much-needed economic investment to Northern Ireland. But it was a fine line to follow. In 1994, President Clinton angered London, the US's closest ally, by granting a US visa to Gerry Adams. Despite accusations of being soft on terrorism and opposition among some of his own people, Clinton saw it another way. Only by including the republicans could they be encouraged to leave violence behind. First visit President Clinton's first visit to Northern Ireland came in November 1995, 15 months after the IRA announced its first cease-fire.
He was greeted by tens of thousands of people lining the streets. After famously shaking hands with Gerry Adams on Belfast's Falls Road (the exact location now features in the official Belfast bus tour), he went on to receive a rapturous reception when he turned on the Christmas tree lights in Belfast city centre. Clinton appeared to fire the imagination of many people in Northern Ireland, appearing both statesmanlike, non-partisan and folksy at the same time. The Adams handshake may have drawn unionist criticism, but the president treated him no differently to the political representatives of the loyalist paramilitaries - he would back those he saw as leaving violence behind. From talks to agreement George Mitchell's subsequent appointment as the honest broker between all sides in the developing talks, the de facto peace envoy Clinton had promised in 1992, is regarded by many as the president's single most important foreign policy decision of his administration.
It not only provided a respected and impartial figure to chair talks, but it effectively guaranteed the White House's involvement in helping to find a political settlement in Northern Ireland, between the north and the south and Dublin and London. Throughout the 1998 talks, there were frequent telephone calls from the Oval Office to the main players - culminating in a round of late-night contacts in the days leading up to the deadline. Mr Clinton never saw his role as a guarantor of a deal - but it was certainly his intention to be an enabler, encouraging compromise and exerting pressure at the same time. Mr Clinton's second visit to Northern Ireland, following the dissident republican bombing of Omagh, came as the president was facing increasing domestic pressures at home. He appeared visibly moved following a meeting with some of those who survived the bombing - but stressed to all of Northern Ireland that it was "up to you" to find the solutions. Difficult, sometimes wrenching decisions lie ahead but they must be made," he said. "The spirit of reconciliation must be rooted in all you do." The future A question mark now hangs over future American policy. No
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Ten years ago a visionary named Vinod Khosla gave a presentation called Biofuels: Think Outside the Barrel. It seems to have disappeared from his Khosla Ventures website, but you can find an archived version here. In that presentation Mr. Khosla outlined his vision for biofuels. He projected that ethanol produced from biomass – aka "cellulosic ethanol" – would scale up rapidly. From zero commercial production in 2006, Khosla foresaw the first 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol hitting the market in 2008 (see Slide 78), ramping rapidly to 2.5 billion gallons in 2011, 14.6 billion gallons in 2015, and ultimately 173 billion gallons per year by 2030. Combined with corn ethanol production, he believed cellulosic ethanol could totally end U.S. dependence on petroleum for transportation fuel – but he needed to get the government on board to foot some costs.
Khosla addressed potential obstacles in his presentation. Certainly cellulosic ethanol wouldn't fail because of technology. There were too many companies working on it. The magic of Moore's Law and black swans would be the ticket to success. (As an aside, he doesn't seem to understand the black swan theory, as he frequently cites these "high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events" as an expected outcome). The only real barrier he could identify was those despicable oil companies, who had to be shaking in their boots that this 100-year old upstart technology would spell their demise.
But he would deal with the oil companies through legislation by forcing them to purchase this product that had yet to be commercialized. So he lobbied, and he testified before Congress. He lost a vote or two, but he was instrumental in getting cellulosic ethanol mandates included in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The EPA was charged with implementing the RFS, and they based the mandated volumes on the amount that potential cellulosic ethanol producers claimed they would be able to produce. For 2010 the EPA was counting on 100 million gallons of cellulosic fuels based on claims primarily from two companies associated with Vinod Khosla: Range Fuels and Cello Energy.
This is ground that has been amply covered here before. Range Fuels and Cello Energy both went out of business after spending hundreds of millions of dollars — including taxpayer money — without delivering a drop of cellulosic fuel. In fact there were zero gallons of qualifying cellulosic ethanol production for 2010 and 2011. In 2012 the first qualifying batch of cellulosic ethanol was produced — 20,069 gallons by Blue Sugars Corporation. The ethanol was produced in April 2012, but that was it for the year. And Blue Sugars went out of business.
There was no qualifying cellulosic ethanol produced in 2013, the year Vinod Khosla had projected 7.2 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol production. But 2014 finally saw some qualifying production as several new plants came online.
INEOS Bio and its joint venture partner New Planet Energy had announced the opening of the Indian River County BioEnergy Center in Florida in 2012. The nameplate capacity of this plant was 8 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year. The House Committee on Agriculture was told in 2012 "The biorefinery is a major landmark for this country. It's the first commercial cellulosic refinery." But the EPA doesn't show any production from anyone in 2012 or 2013, and in December 2013 the company issued a press release that said in part: "Bringing the facility on-line and up to capacity has taken longer than planned due to several unexpected start-up issues at the Center. These efforts have highlighted some needed modifications and upgrades." Another update from them in 2014 cast doubt that they would ever produce any ethanol.
On July 7, 2011 the U.S. Department of Energy had announced a $105 million loan guarantee to POET for the development of its 25 million gallon per year corn cob-to-ethanol facility, dubbed Project Liberty, at Emmetsberg, Iowa. POET, one of the largest producers of ethanol in the world announced that they were open for commercial cellulosic ethanol production in September 2014. Cellulosic ethanol production had been slated to begin in May 2013, but more than a year later than projected Jeff Broin, POET Founder and Executive Chairman, stated "Some have called cellulosic ethanol a 'fantasy fuel,' but today it becomes a reality."
Another company, Abengoa (NASDAQ: ABGB) built a $500 million cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas. In October 2014 they announced the grand opening of the facility: "Abengoa's new industry-leading biorefinery finished construction in mid-August and began producing cellulosic ethanol at the end of September with the capacity to produce up to 25 million gallons per year."
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Long and confusing title, I know, but I'm desperate for help and advice. I'm full of anger and stress at the same time but I don't know what to do. I'm hormonal and can't think clearly and am honestly furious and scared that our marriage is going to fall apart. The abuse happened two years ago which is why I'm posting here but the problem is happening now. We've been married since Valentine's Day 2014.
In 2015, my husband Manuel finished his Navy reserves enlistment. He has a very high paying career and about a week after being discharged, he went to his friend's party. Basically at the party, a woman named Emma started talking to him, drugged his drink, and took advantage of him. My husband found out the day after because a friend told him he found him unconscious and saw earlier Emma on top of him on the bed but didn't realize it was him until later. Manuel didn't report her because he didn't want to "ruin her life" and so the law never got involved. My husband told me what happened the day after the party and I had a mental breakdown and went to therapy because I was going to legitimately kill her. To make it worse, she got pregnant from the incident. I don't have violent thoughts anymore but at the time I was so angry that I wanted to kill her and it got worse once I found out she got pregnant from that. I felt so bad for Manuel and he was disappointed at how he was taken advantage of but it didn't seem to affect him that much. I don't know if it was because he didn't want to show emotion or if it really didn't affect him.
He helps her out willingly and pays for some of her expenses and their baby's expenses. She's a pharmacy technician but since rent in our state and city is pretty high, he helps her out. He went to her delivery and even though he's extremely busy with work and our time, she drops their baby off at our apartment a lot of times in the evening since I don't allow my husband to be alone with her at all or go to her apartment and so my husband can spend time with him. I have met her but we have spoken maybe 40 words total and we're extremely cold and distant. The only reason I'm even letting this happen is because it's not the baby's fault and I don't want Manuel to not see his baby.
On Saturday, Emma came to our apartment and wanted to talk to my husband. They sat down, she wanted me to leave the room to talk in private but I told her no right off the bat because I don't trust her. She legitimately told him that he needed to "step up" and "be a more active father" and "be there for our baby". She works full time and her parents help out with the babysitting .
She wants their baby to spend more time with both of them together instead of just her "dropping him off like a package" and not having the baby bond with both parents at the same time. She said that Manuel also needed to be available more often since she wants Manuel to be around the baby and she wants to drop the baby off more times a week (right now it's around 2-4 times per week...the baby sometimes spends the night but mostly she comes picks him up after a few hours). She needs money for a car since her car is breaking down and she "doesn't want any problems with dropping the baby off or endangering the baby". This sounds like a load of shit to me but I want opinions. She wants Manuel to make trips to her apartment and visit the baby because sometimes she can't make the trip. In my opinion, if worse comes to worse, I'll drive and pick up the baby but I'm starting to think she might want to take advantage of him again since she desperately wants him to go to her apartment to visit their baby.
She acts so shameless and her attitude was so bitchy. She was acting like Manuel was "slacking" or neglecting his duties like they were married or something. The part where she wanted me to leave the room made me extremely suspicious and I'm wondering if maybe she wants to tell him something else but didn't because I was there. I'm pregnant and when the baby comes and we have more, I obviously expect Manuel to prioritize his real children and not her or her baby.
She left after a while and honestly she comes off as flirty sometimes but I don't mind since they barely see each other and he'd never do anything with her. He's very nice to her but keeps his distance with her like I want him to.
I told him that absolutely not is he going to buy her a new car. He started telling me that he's going to pay for a safe and good car for her. She has money and she isn't poor. Manuel is saying that he doesn't want his baby to have a low quality car
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Bangladeshi teachers, students and social activists protest on Friday in Dhaka against the rcent killings of atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities.
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Unidentified attackers hacked a Hindu tailor to death near his workplace in Gopalpur upazila of Tangail district near Dhaka on Saturday.
Police and eyewitness said three young men, who came on a motorcycle, hacked Nikhil Chandra Joarder (50) and left him dead on the spot.
"They came on a motorcycle and attacked him as he sat on a roadside. They hacked him on his head, neck and hand," deputy chief of Tangail district police Aslam Khan, told AFP.
They also left behind a bag in which several bomb-like objects were found. A bomb disposal unit rushed to the spot .
Police suspect a "derogatory" comment Joarder made about Prophet Muhammad might be the reason for the attack. Local Muslims had filed a complaint against him then. He was charged with hurting religious sentiments and spent three weeks in jail.
"But the trial did not proceed after the complainants withdrew the charges," Abdul Jalil, the police chief of Gopalpur sub-district, told AFP.
The Islamic State group-affiliated Aamaq news agency issued a statement saying "elements of the Islamic State stabbed to death by knife a Hindu in Tangail in Bangladesh who was known for insulting Prophet Muhammad". It did not give further details.
The murder came less than a week after suspected Islamist militants hacked to death two gay rights activists in the capital Dhaka, and about 10 days after the murder of Rajshahi University professor A.F.M. Rezaul Karim Siddiquee.
In February suspected Islamists had decapitated a top Hindu priest inside a temple complex in a northern district, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
The attack was similar to recent killings of atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and most recently a gay rights activist in Bangladesh by radical Islamists. Five people have already been killed in such attacks this year and nine were killed last year.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday blamed the "nexus" between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami over the targeted killings. However Ms. Hasina hoped the people will reject such destructive politics and all such plots to destabilise the country would be foiled.
Also read:
Bangladesh in recent times has seen a spate of attacks on secular and liberal thought. Bloggers, journalists and students have been brutally hacked to death by fundamentalist elements in the country.
This thread of violence by radical Islamists runs from the most recent murder of an English professor at Rajshahi University to the 1993, fatwa against author Taslima Nasreen following release of her book "Lajja".
Here we take a look at timeline of the more recent attacks on secular bloggers in Bangladesh. > Read more
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John Amos is one of those actors fortunate enough to have more than one iconic role on his résumé. His two biggest parts were as patriarch James Evans Sr. on Good Times and as the elder Kunta Kinte on Roots. But he first won fame with a smaller, yet still enduring, part: Gordy the weatherman on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Amos appeared roughly a dozen times over the course of the show's first three seasons, and even though he left to take a regular gig on Good Times in 1974, his character was vital enough that he returned with his own spotlight episode during the final season of Mary Tyler Moore. Tonight Amos can be seen talking about his experiences on the show, alongside Betty White, Valerie Harper, Ed Asner, Dick Van Dyke, and others, as part of Mary Tyler Moore: A Celebration, airing at 8 p.m. on most PBS stations. Vulture caught up with Amos by phone last week to dive deeper into his MTM days, including how the show gave him his big break as an actor and the time producers had to retaliate against a racist crew member. He also talked to us about his bumpy ride on Good Times and gave us his thoughts about next year's planned update of Roots.
It's great to speak to you, Mr. Amos. You're on the East Coast now, right? How are you?
I'm in Jersey. I'm fine!
I want to talk to you first about The Mary Tyler Moore Show, since you're part of this new PBS tribute to Ms. Moore. Your role on MTM was sort of your first big national exposure as an actor, though you'd worked as a writer for Leslie Uggams's CBS variety show back in 1969. I read an interview with you where you talked about how you had wanted to break into performing on her show, but the producers said you couldn't do both. Why was that?
Back then you were lucky to be in the business in any working capacity. The idea that I would be in there as a writer, and then want to perform, too? That was just an abstract concept to the producers at that time. They weren't ready for somebody who thought they could act and write. I had to wait until my turn came.
When you say they weren't ready, was it because you were young, or because you were African-American?
I think it was a bit of both. I was just getting started, and that was my first network writing job. Although I had written comedy and performed on a local television show, Lohman & Barkley, which won an Emmy. In fact, we all wrote and performed, the "we" being the entire writing staff, which consisted of Craig T. Nelson, Barry Levinson, the late McLean Stevenson, amongst others. We were all just getting started, and that was wonderful training for us. Having written and performed on a local show that did successfully, I had every reason to believe I could do that at the network level. But they said, "No, you can only do one."
So how did you ultimately make the jump to performing, and to MTM?
One day I had lunch with two of the writers on the [Uggams] show, Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis. And they said, "John, when you act out these sketches for our guest artists, we think you've got the chops. We're involved in the development of something called The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and we think you'd be right for one of the characters." I just took it with a grain of salt. It sounded too good to be true. But later they stayed true to their word. When The Mary Tyler Moore Show [was picked up to series], they called me.
Did you have to try out for the gig?
I auditioned for Mary, Grant Tinker, and the powers that be, and got the job as Gordy the weatherman. It became a recurring character.
Because of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Ms. Moore was already a TV icon of sorts even before she got her own series. What was your experience working with her?
The joy of working with Mary was, you knew who the star of the show was. It was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. So there were no attempts to upstage her, or any of the other things that usually go with actors surrounding the star. It was a harmonious set. She and Phyllis and Valerie got along great, because all they would talk about, all day long, was diets and health food. [Laughs.] As soon as they got to the set, the conversation would start. So they had a nice little [group] going. And they all got along great. It was a wonderful atmosphere. I felt, for the first time, that I was part of a real, meaningful ensemble. I had no idea the show was quite
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Raw dash cam video: Hebron officer-involved shooting
Raw dash cam video: The Boone County Sheriff's office has released dash cam video from Deputy Tyler Brockman's cruiser the night he confronted Samantha Ramsey, 19, as she left a party and fatally shot her four times.
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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Revelations article. General discussions not pertaining to the improvement of the article should be on discussions instead.
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Two War Table Quests? Edit
On my current (and thus far first) playthrough, I had two options for springing Blackwall from prison. The first was "Thom Rainier's Fate", which appears to be the default option. I also had the opportunity to send Leliana in to extract him without implicating the Inquisition via the operation "Rainier's Release: An Alternative".
My sister, however, did not have the secondary option. Anyone have an idea? I play a female Qunari rogue with the Underworld Knowledge Inquisition Perk, and she is a female human warrior without it, so I suspect the difference may lie there. It may, of course, be another factor entirely.
HyenaSpotz (talk) 21:23, December 20, 2014 (UTC)
Trigger Edit
In one of my playthroughs, I completed Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts and Here Lies the Abyss without having completed Wardens of the Coast, and this quest just would not trigger (no matter how many times I talked to Blackwall). Only after I went to the Storm Coast and finished Wardens of the Coast did it finally trigger.
So I'm wondering if that's a legitimate per-requisite or just a bug. -- Keladin Storm 21:58, February 2, 2015 (UTC)r
I've always done Wardens of the Coast before doing this quest, and in my recent playthrough I did it much later than usual. This quest definitely didn't come up for me until after that, but I can't say for sure that it was the trigger. I know it's not dependant upon approval rating, and it's not dependant upon completing Memories of the Grey. -- ♫ Kelcat Talk 22:10, February 2, 2015 (UTC)
I recruited Blackwall ASAP and yet this quest has never triggered and I have no idea why. It's really frustrating, because romance conversations with ultiple characters haven't triggered when I know they should. Am I gonna have to just restart the game? Mr. Mittens (talk) 01:20, June 24, 2015 (UTC)
I have done all three quests now but got "Greatly Disapproves" by choosing Gaspard as Emperor without Briala. I had the fairweather friends Trial active at this time of the game so I guess I don't have enough approval now to trigger the quest.--Kendira (talk) 12:19, October 5, 2015 (UTC) Affirmed. After finishing his Memories of the Grey quest the tavern scene immediately triggered after approaching him and I found the letter at his place that starts Revelations--Kendira (talk) 12:47, October 5, 2015 (UTC)
Neither Blackwalls nor Bulls personal quest are triggering for me now in any of my games my approval is high enough and I dont want to have to restart im at just about to face corpheoues at skyhold and neither quests ever happenedBlitzbear93 (talk) 20:28, September 10, 2015 (UTC)Blitz ear93
Sentenced to the Wardens... Edit
If romanced, yet sentenced to the Wardens, you are given a fifth choice, which is another end relationship option, "I have no future with a Warden." My current Inquisitor, having "shitty luck in choosing lovers," couldn't let him go, so I don't know what she actually says in that regard. Shadizar666 (Ruck Rules) 03:21, July 12, 2016 (UTC)
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It is a slider/cutter, a pitch that has been called a "slutter" by some and simply an expletive by others, mainly those trying to hit it.
But it also has been one key to the ridiculous success of Cubs stud right-hander Jake Arrieta, who faces the Mets in Game 2 of the NLCS Sunday at Citi Field.
"It's developed over the course of several years," Arrieta said Saturday before his Cubs fell 4-2 in Game 1. "The consistency mechanically is really where that pitch started to flourish, being able to repeat the same delivery, same arm slot on a pretty regular basis. Adjusting the velocity by tweaking the release point is really where the change in speed comes from.
"That's why you'll hear it called a slider or a cutter based on different sequences to different hitters."
Or, of course, a few unprintable words.
Regardless, it is part of the reason Arrieta, who finished 22-6 with a 1.77 ERA, is favored to take home the Cy Young Award. Not bad for the former Oriole — he was traded in 2013 with Pedro Strop for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger, sort of the gods' way of evening out Milt Pappas for Frank Robinson.
"It's just been some hard work and some repetition," Arrieta, 29, said of his pitch, noting his transformation from regular pitcher to All-Star began the day he joined the Cubs.
"[I] reverted back to some things that I was doing successfully, and I started to do those more often … comfort things that I had in place," Arrieta said. "My arm slot, my release point became more consistent over time, and the confidence continued to rise."
It rose to where Arrieta had a season that recalls the day of Bob Gibson.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, he is just the fifth pitcher with at least 22 wins with a sub-2.00 ERA since ERA became an official stat before World War I (1912 in the NL, 1913 in the AL). Arrieta posted a ridiculous 0.75 ERA and was 12-1 with two shutouts in the second half, the best numbers since the All-Star Game began in 1933. And from Aug. 4 to the end of the season, he was 11-0 with a 0.41 ERA, the best numbers ever.
Yeah, but he did walk 14 guys in that stretch…
Manager Joe Maddon sees something different behind Arrieta's rise.
"Biggest, biggest difference is fastball command, period. He knows where his fastball's going," Maddon said.
Mets manager Terry Collins just pointed to the total package.
"His location has just been off the charts," Collins said. "He's got this, he may call it a slider, it's this hard cutter that he's now started to command that he's eating up left-handed hitters. He locates the fastball. He moves his curveball around."
Arrieta threw a career high 229 innings, but Maddon noted how much of his work was low stress because he only averaged 15-plus pitches an inning. Arrieta claimed the mental was harder than the physical.
"The mental expenditure of energy," Arrieta assessed. "Throughout the course of the day you start to contemplate your routine and think about the game in different scenarios … that heart rate starts to rise a little bit."
Think of the guys facing him.
"The physical toll really hasn't bothered me at all," he said, "but the mental side of it and all the energy you burn leading up to the game does have a little bit of effect."
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Crochea Mors is best bro Darkgenerallord Jan 14th, 2017 ( edited ) 67 Never 67Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 0.79 KB No one gave me a second glance as I headed out towards the trucks around the White Whale and I alternatively nodded or waved as I passed my fellows by. I went straight towards the truck who's back was slowly rising, peered up at it, and then tapped one of the metal parts with a finger. "Summon Elemental," I said and saw a flash of Crocea Mors in my reflection before he was gone, rising up quickly. There wasn't much he could do in the forest except enhance my gauntlets, but here in the city… I saw the raised truck connect with the lift system the White Whale used, creating a bridge for the Yellow Death, and then jerk slightly. I walked over to the truck's open window. "Hey, Carlo, I think something's wrong," I said to the man frowning at his control. "I'm gonna head up and check, okay?"
RAW Paste Data
No one gave me a second glance as I headed out towards the trucks around the White Whale and I alternatively nodded or waved as I passed my fellows by. I went straight towards the truck who's back was slowly rising, peered up at it, and then tapped one of the metal parts with a finger. "Summon Elemental," I said and saw a flash of Crocea Mors in my reflection before he was gone, rising up quickly. There wasn't much he could do in the forest except enhance my gauntlets, but here in the city… I saw the raised truck connect with the lift system the White Whale used, creating a bridge for the Yellow Death, and then jerk slightly. I walked over to the truck's open window. "Hey, Carlo, I think something's wrong," I said to the man frowning at his control. "I'm gonna head up and check, okay?"
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In Picnic Panic command a tribe of warrior ants fight other tribes for control of a stash of candy that has fallen on the ground. The game is easy to learn and quick to play. Best of all, you get to eat the candy that you capture!
The game contains (41) 1-inch metal miniatures depicting the four ant tribes. It is the perfect introduction to miniatures gaming for children aged 8+! Or, substitute and adult beverage for the candy, and you have the perfect game to end a late night gaming.
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16
8115 Canoga Ave
Los Angeles , CA 91304
(818) 348-5385
I am in the process of restoring a 1990 RX7 convertible. The car is very sentimental to me and Tri-Point has been amazing. They've taken meticulous care in their repairs. I've been driving the car to work and loving it. Thank you, Tri-Point Engineering
Took my 09 Mazdaspeed 3 in to get serviced by these self proclaimed Mazda specialist, what I ended up receiving is ham-fisted, half-ass work, with 0 accountability resulting in me needing to pay another shop to fix mistakes. Services I paid for that were performed improperly: - Replaced gas cap to try and resolve Vacuum code After I took the car to get er filled up, I noticed that the gas cap that they replaced my OEM one with did not spin properly with the rubber-gasket-string that attaches it to the exterior door. Basically, you'd turn it tight and it'd rip out the rubber-gasket-string from the gas door. Obviously an inadequate gas cap was ordered as it did not fit with the factory equipment. But the worse offense was that they installed it, and I'm assuming tested it, and found it's improper fitment as passable. This is just a microcosm of the lack of attention to detail, and or pride in the work they do. I immediately took it back and they ended up shaving the rubber gasket down so it'd spin with the gas cap. I'm still experiencing the vacuum leak so this was also a misdiagnosis. -Motor-mount replacement Paid $500 to have my engine motor mount replaced (was experiencing no issues at the time but took their word for it). Well, 9k miles later, I started to hear creeks, and clacks coming from the engine bay. Turns out the motor mount they replaced was totally shot. Ended up paying $600 to have them all replaced to resolve the issue. -Replaced spark plugs Immediately after the performed the work my car would no longer start in cold weather. They insisted it had nothing to do with the work they performed but the problem only started happening after the work they performed. Well, 9k miles later, I started experiencing really rough idle. I looked on the forums and a common cause is spark plugs not being gapped properly. I took them out myself, re-gapped them to .029, and now the problem is gone. A couple were off by quite a few centimeters. What kind of shop can't gap their spark plugs properly? Other notes: It was really difficult getting ahold of them during the whole time they had my car. They don't work weekends and during the week when I'd call them I'd never get a call back for days at a time. I tried emailing them but even that it'd take forever to receive a message back.
The real-deal Tri-Point is long gone. Do yourself a favor and avoid these imposters. The real Tri-Point worked on my ancient Mazda 626 and later my 1991 RX-7 GTUs. That shop is long gone. Marc Shuler and Craig Nagler (the REAL owners) were certified card carrying Mazda experts. The current owners aren't really even up to the challenge of operating. Their location looks like a wrecking yard and they rarely answer the phone. Still, I took a chance and made an "appointment" with them for an oil change. I showed up at the shop at the designated time but no one was there. To be honest, it looked they were out of business and left a bunch of partially repaired cars in their wake. I walked around and finally the guy in the shop next door called over to me and said, "He's not here." Uh, right; "he" is most obviously not here... So, I stood around for a while and then headed for home. I figured that a few minutes later I'd get a call from them explaining what was going on. Nope. Silence. After I got home I decided to call them just to follow-up and to thank them for wasting 45 minutes of my day. The guy I talked to sounded like he had just woken up. When I told him about my appointment and the fact he weren't there he said, "Well, you don't need an appointment for an oil change." Amazingly clueless. I wouldn't trust these guys to change my windshield wiper blades. They do not deserve to be doing business under the name Tri-Point Engineering. Avoid them at all costs.
This is my 1990' Mazda Miata the car is one of lifes joys an who better to take care of most precious possesions in life but the very guys who do what they love as a living! Tri-Point the best in Mazda today they originally helped me bring back a 1985' RX-7 GS i had bought about 2 years ago an its
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The U.S. military has had its eyes on Afghan mineral deposits for some time. A 2007 Pentagon memo that the New York Times quoted in a 2010 article says that Afghanistan could be the "Saudi Arabia of lithium."
U.S. Companies are planning on taking a larger role in extracting Afghanistan's enormous reserves of valuable rare earth minerals, Reuters reported after U.S. President Donald Trump met with his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani on Thursday.
According to a White House statement, the presidents agreed that the development of Afghan minerals by U.S. companies would "develop materials critical to national security," as well as "defray some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more self-reliant."
Afghanistan has some of the world's largest un-extracted reserves of rare earth minerals valuable in electronic production, such as lithium, as well as gold and various gemstones. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the total value at at least US$1 trillion.
The two presidents reportedly discussed difficulties facing the project, such as the growing Taliban insurgency in regions containing the majority of the minerals. With this in account, they both expressed commitment to Trump's new Afghanistan strategy, which, against what he promised in the election campaign, involves keeping U.S. military forces in the country for an indefinite period of time.
The U.S. military has had its eyes on Afghan mineral deposits for some time. A 2007 Pentagon memo that the New York Times quoted in a 2010 article says that Afghanistan could be the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," referencing the oil-rich monarchy that is a key U.S. regional ally.
"There is stunning potential here (in Afghanistan)," General David Petraeus said in the same memo.
Some analysts also believe that a push for greater U.S. presence in Afghan mineral extraction could be a way of limiting the influence of China. With China, along with Russia and Iran gaining greater regional influence, economic activities in the region are no longer the sole domain of U.S.-based companies.
China and Afghanistan have already cooperated to an extent in mineral extraction and China has made the country a center-point of its planned Belt and Road initiative, which seeks to commercially link Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and more recently Latin America and the Caribbean.
Afghanistan also has extensive oil reserves, with a new oil field having been discovered as recently as 2010.
Written by TeleSUR
Editor's Note: This natural resource extraction was one of the original ambitions of those who disingenuously led the US to war in Afghanistan under the guise of fighting a "war on terror," that better resembles a war OF terror, much like has been seen in any country the US "liberates." And in classically contradictory deep state fashion, this is being framed ironically as a way to 'defray cost of assistance.' So after Afghanistan is left in ruin, with more "terrorist" presence than to begin with, otherwise known as US "assistance," the US is now going to begin mining (more of) the country's natural resources, in exchange for that "assistance." Long ago, this country was usurped by individuals who now deceptively carry out this type of atrocity in your name, while invoking and stoking your blind patriotism at every turn. Do not be fooled. It is time to retake the America we once knew.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.
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Hello Friends, we here at <The Guard> are hosting a event on Emerald Dream.
A black lives matter rally! Come on down and meet us (with black level one toons to show your pride) at the human starting zone and we will march to stormwind to protest the racism of our society!
Realm: Emerald Dream
Time: 6 PM Server time, 7pm EST
We will start gathering about ten minutes before hand and sending out invites to our guild <BlackLivesMatter>
This is an entertainment medium. People come here to unwind from the stresses of real life; be that children, school, work, physical health difficulties, what have you. The last thing ANYONE wants is to have another person's politics of ANY VARIETY shoved down their throat here. You're getting jumped on because you've interjected frustration into a medium that's at least in part about ALLEVIATING frustration. There's a time and place for everything, and for social politics this is neither.Good luck in your pursuit for a better society, but learn to pick and chose your battles lest you make enemies of people who would be your allies.
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This is my "You've really stepped in it" face. Chief Lester Jannings: So you're the famous Harry Callahan. So I'm going to tell you two things. We don't have any spoilers in this town and we don't need any from you. Got it? Harry Callahan: Aye-aye, sir. Callahan is getting razed by a judge due to yet another unreasonable search and seizure and the little pukes get to walk. They snark on Callahan in the elevator and Harry sets them straight by terrifying them with size and snarl. No sooner is he back on the streets he interrupts a robbery at his favorite diner by smoking three of the four scumbags and tells the surviving punk to make his day. The smart lad drops his pistol and gives up. Disrupting a stakeout of an alleged crime boss Threlkis at his granddaughter's wedding, the slime finds out he actually has a heart as it fails on him and he vapor locks. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy in this writer's opinion and Harry agrees.
Difference of opinions. Callahan's superiors are teed off at the actions of the inspector leading to this heart attack and grumble at his methods demanding Harry takes a vacation rather than they suspend him. No sooner is Harry on vacation that four of Threlkis's men try to ambush him leading to three of them having holes inside them the size of cantaloupe and one managed to escape. Lt. Donnelly ( Michael Currie of Dark Shadows, Soap, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Dead Pool and Dying Time ) gives Harry an assignment to San Paulo where a previous homicide used to live so Harry is to do some background checking and then report back. Meanwhile in San Paulo a similiar homicide that occured in San Francisco happens. Harry digs deeper in spite of Chief Jennings ( Pat Hingle of Invitation to a Gunfighter, Hang 'Em High, Nightmare Honeymoon, Batman and Batman Returns ) grumblings. Harry starts to fall for an artist with a dark past, Jennifer ( Sondra Locke of The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy and Any Which Way You Can ) but the clock is ticking as the homicides keep piling up in this small town. I think Death and Harry have an agreement or understanding.
I had just some fun trivia on the movie. This would be the eleventh movie Eastwood directed and the only Dirty Harry Movie Eastwood directed. Furthermore, this is the first Dirty Harry film that Harry does not have a partner backing him up and still remains the highest-grossing of the Dirty Harry franchise.
I use this one for bears and kids blaring their hip hop.
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(CNN) Almost 6 in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion about Joe Biden in a new CNN national poll , a finding sure to give the Democratic former vice president a boost as he considers whether to run for president in 2020.
The 57% favorable rating is Biden's best in CNN polling since February 2009 -- when he was sworn in as Barack Obama's vice president. Just over 1 in 4 (27%) have an unfavorable view of Biden.
What's remarkable about those numbers is how Biden's favorability has surged since he (and Obama) left office. As recently as March 2015, CNN polling showed more people viewed Biden unfavorably (46%) than regarded him favorably (43%).
The recovery of Biden's numbers stands in stark contrast to the ongoing negative view that Americans hold of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nominee; in Gallup polling released earlier this week, Clinton's favorable rating dipped to 36%
What explains Biden's current popularity? A few things:
He drew hugely laudatory coverage earlier this year for his book tour in support of his memoir about the loss of his eldest son, Beau.
Politicians -- with the notable exception of Clinton (of late) -- always grow more popular when out of office.
Some level of buyer's remorse -- particularly among Democrats -- who believe that had Biden run in 2016, he would have easily beaten Donald Trump.
Biden has been open about his thinking on running for president in 2020, which would be his third bid for the nation's highest office. "If I were offered the nomination by the Lord Almighty right now, today, I would say no because we're not ready, the family's not ready to do this," Biden said on "The View" earlier this month. "If, in a year from now, if we're ready, and nobody has moved in that I think can do it, then I may very well do it."
JUST WATCHED Biden won't deny a 2020 run for president Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Biden won't deny a 2020 run for president 01:21
While Biden has made no decisions, he's doing the sorts of things someone running for president does in these early stages. He has apologized for his less-than-robust defense of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1991. He has traveled the country in support of Democratic candidates. And so on.
What's so interesting about the CNN poll is that it not only shows why Biden is clearly a top-tier candidate if he runs for president but it also reveals his potential Achilles' heel in that race.
When asked whether "the country would be governed better or governed worse if more women were in political office," almost two-thirds of Americans (64%) said the country would be better off with more women in office. Just 10% said things would be worse with more women in elected office, while 16% said it wouldn't make much difference.
Why is that relevant to Biden? Because he is a 75-year-old white man considering a run for president amid the #metoo movement and a cultural awakening about the boorish -- and in some cases criminal -- behavior by men toward women in the workplace.
That a large majority of people believe the country would be better off with more women running things suggests a major opening exists for a female politician to make a very credible run for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
At the moment, none of the female candidates who might run are even close to as well known as Biden. One example: More than half of the country -- 55% -- didn't know enough about New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to offer an opinion about her in the new CNN poll
But, it's 2017. Which means Gillibrand, who has become a leading voice of the #metoo movement in Congress, has plenty of time to get better known and to challenge the likes of Biden for the nomination.
That is a worry for another day for Biden and his allies, however. Today they will revel in his popularity and use those positive numbers to build buzz for a 2020 bid.
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Tax day is almost upon us, so today we have a question about taxes and politics. Why do US presidents – and presidential aspirants – release their tax returns to the press?
Yes, we know it's a sunshine thing. It's supposed to prove they're paying their fair share. But why taxes, specifically? Is the publication of presidential financial data, like so many Washington political rituals, the result of some particular scandal?
Why yes it is, and thanks for asking! It lets us open the gift to journalists and historians that is the life of Richard M. Nixon.
His 1974 resignation over Watergate makes it easy today to forget that by late 1973, President Nixon was in big trouble over how little he was paying in federal taxes.
He himself first steered attention to his taxes by boasting at a September press conference that he'd been audited by the IRS and found clean. Reporters started digging and, long story short, he had paid Uncle Sam less than $6,000 on an aggregate income of $790,000 from 1970 through 1972.
He'd taken big deductions for donating his vice-presidential papers to charity and for interest on the mortgage for his San Clemente house, among other things. The public was outraged.
"Nixon's taxes were an issue that average citizens readily understood as compared to the constitutional issues raised by the Watergate investigation," concluded University of Alabama tax professor William Samson, in a 2005 analysis of the returns.
Upon further consideration, the IRS decided that Nixon owed $465,000 in back taxes, which he paid. This penalty cut Nixon's personal wealth in half.
After Nixon's resignation, President Gerald Ford faced the task of restoring citizens' faith in government. The US tax system is largely voluntary, after all. Few taxpayers are audited. If voters think the person at the top is cheating, they will, too.
So in April 1976, at the start of his own reelection campaign, Mr. Ford publicly released his 1975 return. He'd paid $94,569 in taxes on an income of $204,606. After he was elected, Jimmy Carter followed suit, and so has every president since, as well as numerous vice presidents and other top US politicians.
Tax Day 2011:
Part 1: When is the tax deadline? Hint: It's not April 15.
Part 2: What's new for homeowners?
Part 3: Checking on your refund? There's an IRS app for that.
Part 4: When did America levy its first income tax? The Civil War.
Part 5: Schedule M could be worth up to $800
Part 6: Four ways to protect your tax returns from data thieves
Part 7: Last-minute tips to keep the Internal Revenue Service away
Part 8: 'I am not a ... tax evader': Why politicians publish their tax returns
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Miranda Mayo (The Game) has been cast in a recurring role on ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars, from Warner Horizon and Alloy. Mayo will play Talia, a chef who is new to Rosewood. She gets off on the wrong foot with Emily (Shay Mitchell), and things go downhill from there. Mayo, repped by Abrams Artist Agency and Sheila Crawford Management, recurs on Days Of Our Lives and next will seen in feature We Are Your Friends.
Samm Levine has booked a recurring role opposite Karen Gillan and John Cho in ABC/Warner Bros TV single-camera comedy Selfie. Written by Emily Kapnek and directed by Julie Anne Robinson, Selfie follows twentysomething Eliza Dooley (Gillan) as she rebrands her social media image with the help of marketing guru Henry (Cho). Levine will play Terrance, a low-level office employee who also just so happens to be the new son-in-law of the company's president, Sam Saperstein (David Harewood). Levine, repped by TalentWorks and Cohn-Torgan Management, recently wrapped indie features Sidewalk Traffic, Promoted and The Night Is Young.
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Two time World Pro Jiu Jitsu Champ (Kit Dale) versus a five time No Gi World Champion (Garry Tonon) proved to be a bit lopsided match skill-wise than the betting odds would have led you to believe.
Let's have a look at the highlights:
19:59 remaining
Tonon immediately rolls for a kneebar but is abit too far and ends up in still in a safe position pulling butterfly guard.
18:00 Remaining
Tonon switches from butterfly to half guard and works to get deep. Rolls for a heel hook that starts to look nasty, Kit Dale escapes.
17:35 Remaining
Dale nearly passes Toon's guard (not shown), but Tonon is able to get back to half guard. Tonon eventually backs his hips out and they are on their feet.
17:20 Remaining
Tonon gets a front headlock from the feet. Dale tries to sit out which puts him in guillotine trouble. Dale tries a few different escapes but to no avail, Tonon hangs on tight and gets the sub.
Result: Garry Tonon defeats Kit Dale by guillotine choke
What did you think of this match? Were the odds a bit silly on this match or did they sound about right?
Check out our other coverage of Metamoris 4
The 10 Best Moments of Metamoris 4
Metamoris 4 Betting Odds
Kit Dale Vs. Garry Tonon
Saulo Ribeiro vs Rodrigo Medeiros
Vinny Magalhães vs Keenan Cornelius
Jeff Glover vs Baret Yoshida Metamoris 4 Secret Match
Josh Barnett vs Dean Lister
Andre Galvao Vs Chael Sonnen
Metamoris 3: Eddie Bravo Vs Royler Gracie
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Originally Posted by skillt Originally Posted by
Really? I don't understand how this worked out. 5 2 man CRA's puts ~30 points on bastions, plus 3 individual charges put another 18. That is 8 more HP than bastions have. That means you probably killed 2 or so. They are also jammed up by your war wolves so they cannot really come forward and that lets you set up a charge with your skin walkers the next turn. Reeves are also excellent at killing daughters before the jam up your line keeping your skinwalkers clear. I played Brian White 2 times at practice weekend with the exact list you speak of and felt the reeves were a very strong addition. They really make the Harby player have to be very careful or she dies and make her cut down alot on her martyrdom, or she is in danger. Even with a devout the list has no shooting so the reeves are 100% safe at all times. Not to mention they are excellent against all of the "normal" menoth stuff. As far as the assassination goes, you can use the excess reeves to clear spots, sunder spirits etc. It takes some planning, but is really not very difficult.
I would suggest playing it again :-)
Will
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A new teaser trailer for the Princess And The Frog is online, and while the hand-drawn animation is really exquisite, there are still several upsetting things about what's being called Disney's "first black princess" movie.
Although the New Orleans Jazz Age and bayous make a gorgeous backdrop for this story, some of the elements in this (admittedly short) new trailer made me knit my brow. Of course, these snippets of scenes are taken out of context, and no one is expecting the film to be perfect. But after years and years of Euro-centric stories, this American tale should be told properly — without being offensive.
Here's what's troubling:
The witch doctor's "curse" seems to involve some kind of African-esque masks; because African people are spooky and scary and have magical powers! Or at least, that's what we want young, impressionable children to think.
"Women like a man with a big back porch," says the firefly, slapping his ass. Cut to: The Prince's butt, growing huge, and a white lady screaming.
As previously mentioned, it seems like the "princess" spends most of her time on screen not as a black girl, but as a frog.
Does Mama Odie, the "good" voodoo lady and the fairy godmother-ish character, look a little Mammy-ish? I mean, she could have been tall and willowy, or hunched and crone-y, or lots of different body types. Just saying.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: That toothless firefly is bothersome. Someone needs to get him some low-cost dental care, ASAP.
Advertisement
The good news is that the Princess seems smart, bold and fun — and the doll is sure to be a big seller at Christmastime, giving little black girls who wish upon a star a shot at believing dreams come true.
Click to view
'Princess and the Frog' Teaser Trailer @ Yahoo! Video
Here's A New PRINCESS AND THE FROG Trailer!! Hand Drawn Animation Still Looks Nice... [Ain't It Cool]
Earlier: An Early Look At Characters From Disney's Black Princess Movie
Why Has It Taken So Long For Disney To Create A Black Princess?
Why Is Disney's First Black Princess Such A Challenge?
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More than 70 North Carolina law enforcement agencies are using automatic license plate readers, cell phone location trackers and surveillance cameras to keep an eye, and a mass of data, on ordinary citizens. And soon, they could be able to add unmanned drones to that list.
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina (ACLU-NC) uncovered a wealth of information about surveillance technologies that police and sheriff's departments use in jurisdictions across the state, through a series of public records requests. Thursday morning, ACLU-NC policy director Sarah Preston and staff attorney Nathan Wessler joined former state Senator and criminal defense attorney Thom Goolsby to host a legislative briefing on privacy and surveillance issues.
While surveillance technology is not new, its use by law enforcement is becoming more widespread in the digital age, and the laws regulating its use have fallen far behind. The federal statute that governs warrantless access to cell phone and email records, for example, has not been updated since 1986. Now, regulating surveillance technology is falling to the states, and the ACLU-NC is pushing for legislation that protects the Fourth Amendment, by requiring law enforcement to obtain a warrant before collecting certain kinds of digital information on citizens.
"Bills that have been introduced in the past have had bi-partisan support," Preston said. "This is a great issue to bring forward right now to build common ground (between parties). We are really hopeful that we will see legislators move forward and we're thankful that they are taking an interest in this."
Law enforcement agencies can track locations electronically in two ways.
First, they can request historical data from a cell phone service provider, as providers log the sector of the specific cell phone tower that transmitted every phone call made and received, every text message sent and received and every time a phone is used to access data such as email or social media sites. With more and more people using smart phones, more cell phone towers are being built closer together, making law enforcement's ability to locate someone GPS-level precise.
Though this practice is widespread—the ACL-NCU found that in 2014, AT&T received 30 thousand data requests from law enforcement, and that the numbers of requests are increasing monthly—it could easily be regulated by requiring police to obtain a warrant before receiving the data.
Police can also use their own technology to track location with the purchase of Cell Site Simulators, or Stingrays, from private manufacturers. Stingrays mimic cell phone towers by sending out signals which trick every cell phone in the vicinity into reporting its unique serial number and other data. A cell phone user would have no way to tell if police were tracking their phone.
Stingray use is shrouded in secrecy—the Associated Press reports that the Obama administration instructed police departments not to disclose their use of Stingrays— so it is unclear how much data law enforcement agencies obtain with these devices. But Stingrays can pinpoint an individual cell phone's location down to a room in a building and law enforcement can track cell phone transmissions and record their locations over time. Regulating these devices will go beyond just having to obtain a warrant, as they gather data from not just one individual cell phone, but from all the cell phones in the vicinity.
"It's vital to address both historical and real time records," said ACLU-NC staff attorney Wessler. "Historical records give police a power that in our entire history they have never had before, essentially a time machine that lets police go back in time and see where you have been in the course of days and weeks and months."
Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR's)—cameras mounted on stoplights, buildings, police cruisers—can capture thousands of license plates per minute, scan them for red flags and store the time-stamped images indefinitely. While ALPR's have many non-controversial uses, like matching tags to stolen vehicles or capturing traffic violations, their widespread use and the data they store could allow government agencies to map out a person's location and movements over time, an invasion of privacy.
In North Carolina, the ACLU-NC found that 11 jurisdictions use ALPR's without any state regulation, and some agencies store the information for years, regardless of whether there is any suspicion of a crime. Simply requiring the images to be deleted after a period of ten days could be an effective way to regulate these devices.
Unmanned aircraft, or drones, could present a significant new avenue for government surveillance, according to the ACLU-NC. Law enforcement agencies across the country, including in North Carolina, have expressed interest in testing drones, and at least two jurisdictions in the state have purchased drones with surveillance equipment using drug forfeiture funds. The 2014 budget included HB 1066, a bill that ostensibly sought to regulate the use of drones by government agencies but that contained a long list of exceptions that allowed their use without a warrant.
The ACLU-NC is lobbying to amend state law to limit the use of drones "to instances where there are specific and artic
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97 | false | 1,024 |
SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Former Restaurant Executives for Undisclosed Compensation and Accounting Fraud; Former CEO Agrees to Pay $500,000 Civil Penalty
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2006-89
Washington, D.C., June 7, 2006 - The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today the filing of securities fraud charges against three former top officers of an operator of national restaurant chains in connection with their receipt of approximately one million dollars in undisclosed compensation, participation in undisclosed related party transactions, and financial statement fraud from 2000 to 2004. The SEC charges were filed against Buca, Inc.'s former CEO, Joseph Micatrotto, the company's former CFO, Greg Gadel, and its former Controller, Daniel J. Skrypek.
Buca is a Minneapolis, Minn., company that operates the Buca di Beppo and Vinny T's of Boston national restaurant chains.
"Buca's top officers created a tone at the top and a corporate culture that allowed them to loot the company and engage in a financial fraud," stated Linda Thomsen, the SEC's Director of Enforcement. "Such conduct is a fundamental violation of the trust placed in corporate officers by public shareholders and cannot be countenanced."
"The fraud that pervaded the executive suite at Buca existed because the company's top officers showed scant regard for sound corporate governance," said Merri Jo Gillette, Director of the Commission's Midwest Regional Office. "The sanctions obtained against Buca's former CEO, Mr. Micatrotto, demonstrate that the Commission will deal with such conduct in the strongest terms."
Micatrotto has agreed to settle the Commission's action, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, by consenting to a permanent injunction, disgorgement of $65,000 plus prejudgment interest, a civil penalty of $500,000 and a bar from serving as an officer or director of a public company. In setting the disgorgement amount, the Commission took into account Micatrotto's previous payments to Buca in connection with his undisclosed compensation and his transfer of title of an Italian villa to Buca.
The Commission's complaint alleges that, from 2000 to 2003, Micatrotto obtained undisclosed compensation in the amount of $849,100 by improperly billing Buca for a wide variety of personal and non-business expenses. In a separate action, filed against Buca's former CFO, Greg A. Gadel, and former Controller, Daniel J. Skrypek, the Commission alleges that Gadel and Skrypek approved many of Micatrotto's inappropriate reimbursement requests.
The complaint against Micatrotto alleges that Buca "reimbursed" the former CEO for, among other things, $131,000 in cash withdrawals from ATMs; a total of $127,000 for the same airline tickets submitted for reimbursement multiple times; the entire bill for the groom's dinner at his son's wedding; and other personal expenses, including dog kenneling and the remodeling of his homes in California, Las Vegas and Minneapolis. However, since these payments were not made to reimburse legitimate business expenses, they constituted additional compensation to Micatrotto and should have been reflected as such on Buca's books. They were not. As a result, Buca's proxy statements for this time period understated Micatrotto's annual compensation by amounts ranging from 27% to 74%.
The Commission's complaint further alleges that Micatrotto engaged in two undisclosed related-party transactions. First, in 2001 Micatrotto used Buca funds to purchase an Italian villa in the name of himself and his wife, and then arranged for Buca to pay for certain improvements to the villa. Second, in June 2003 Micatrotto personally received $65,000 from one of Buca's vendors. The complaint charges Micatrotto with violating, and aiding and abetting violations of, the antifraud, proxy, reporting, internal controls and books and records provisions of the federal securities laws.
In its separate action against Buca's former CFO, Gadel, and former Controller, Skrypek, the Commission alleges that Gadel, from 2000 to 2003, received approximately $96,630 in undisclosed compensation, including reimbursements that he obtained from Buca for family vacations and visits to strip clubs. The complaint further alleges that Gadel knew of a series of undisclosed related party transactions totaling more than $1 million between Buca and an information technology company of which Gadel was a director and shareholder. Finally, the Commission's complaint alleges that Gadel and Skrypek directed a financial fraud in which Buca inflated its income by nearly $12 million from 2000 to 2004 through the improper capitalization of numerous expenses. The financial fraud caused Buca to overstate its annual income in amounts ranging from 18.8% to 36.9%. The Commission's complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota
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98 | true | 482 |
Hidden is theft tracking software for Mac OS X that works to help you recover your stolen MacBook Pro (or MacBook Air, MacBook, and any other Mac OS X machine really). It works by laying dormant on your Mac until you visit the Hidden website and mark your computer as stolen, this then activates the tracking software. Once activated, Hidden starts gathering a slew of information on your missing Mac, including location plotted on Google Maps (see screenshot above), photos of the thief via the built-in iSight camera, screenshots of your Mac in use and what the thief is doing, IP addresses, and more.
After you can install the app, you can test out its efficacy yourself by using 'Test Mode' through their web control panel, this will give you an idea of the data collected and how the app works. Hidden reportedly works across the globe, so whether you're in San Francisco or Budapest you'll be able to get use out of the app.
To get the most out of Hidden, the developers recommend setting up and enabling a separate password free Guest account. While this is contrary to the usual Mac security recommendations, it makes sense here, because with Hidden running you actually want the thief to be using the computer so that you can gather information about them. With all this data captured, you can turn it over to local authorities to pursue the thief.
Now here's the best part, Hidden is free to download and install until January, after which the price is a low $20.
Update: Apparently Hidden is no longer free, the developer was swarmed with requests and had to cancel the offer. If you are looking for a free anti-theft solution, try PreyProject.
Get Hidden for Mac OS X here for $20
Check out the video below to see how the app installs, works, and what it tracks:
If you have a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or even a desktop Mac and you're at all concerned about theft, you should grab this software. Free is an amazing price for what may help you recover a stolen Mac some day, and hey even if you miss out on the free deal, $20 is a small price to pay if it means the difference between finding a stolen Mac or having to buy a new one.
Thanks to LifeHacker for finding this one!
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99 | true | 74 |
So what'?I mean, where is the point or what do you wish to discuss?Please upload studies to the DF files instead of simply linking them - links go dead in time ( even pubmed ones). If you can't get the full article to upload - we have a help for studies thread you can ask the whole thing to be 'organised'.BBW
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