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DENVER -- A group of Hispanic children were called racist names as they filmed a movie for a local non-profit and several minutes of the rant were caught on tape. "I'll do more to your Mexican kids, and I'll send them back to Mexico," transient 39-year-old Robert Arnold can be heard yelling in the video. "Back to Mexico, Mother F*****." "See, he just has a problem with his sexuality," Arnold goes on to say in the video. "It's called a game kids. You wanna learn about real reality?" Marcos Garibay is the man behind the camera and founder of the non-profit Tomorrow Maker Films. He started filming while he called 911. "They're harassing kids, calling them illegals, trying to steal our camera equipment," Garibay can be heard telling the dispatcher. He said they were filming a movie scene with a group of 10 and 12-year-olds when the incident happened Sunday afternoon. "It was enraging to hear someone talk to these kids that we look at like family," said Garibay. Garibay and his fiancé, Karen Colato, started the non-profit to help at-risk youth in Commerce City. The films they produce star children, and the couple describes them as Lord of the Flies meets X-men. "If we were a group of non-Latino children, I don't think this would have happened," said Colato. "It was super hard for the kids," said Garibay. They said a lot of the kids have undocumented parents and believe the hate is no coincidence. "I feel like it's embolden and empowered a lot of these kinds of closet racists," said Garibay. Denver Police were able to find and arrest Arnold. He's being held at the Denver County Jail on an outstanding warrant. WATCH: The raw video of the encounter. [WARNING: The video contains explicit language]: --------- Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines. Or, keep up-to-date on the latest news and weather with the Denver7 apps for iPhone/iPads , Android and Kindle .

When the first look at the Jumanji cast was released last year many eyes fell on Karen Gillan, but for all the wrong reasons. While her male counterparts (Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black) were all dressed appropriately for the treacherous jungle, covered up in neutral colours, Gillans character was shown in a pair of tiny booty shorts and top that shows off her stomach. Rightly so there was a lot of outrage online. Gillan is the only female in a line of four equally accomplished actors, but is the only one being sexualised for her body. Then there’s the practicality of her outfit. The shot shows a jungle terrain, which would of course be rife with mosquitos – the poor woman would get bitten to death, if she didn’t die of heat stroke/sunburn first. She also has those gorgeous ginger locks, but they’d get muddy pretty quickly or even get tangled in a tree or something – someone get the girl a bobble! Seeing all the complaints, Karen Gillan herself responded saying her the backlash was understandable but that we’d “find out why [she’s] wearing CHILD SIZED clothes when you watch the movie”. This seemed to imply that maybe she’d gone from a child to grown up… but if that was the case the clothes would never be as form fitting or sexual. “As Sony rightly point out, women got a bad deal in video games back then, but we still do now. “ When the trailer dropped we were given their flimsy excuse. The characters played by the four are actually avatars in the 90s video game Jumanji, and four kids get sucked into it. Because it’s the 90s and, duh, video game stereotypes, of course we get the nerdy plump professor, the token sassy black guy, the hunky hero and the scantily clad action girl. Gillan’s character is also given the eye-roll worthy name of ‘Ruby Roundhouse’. As the girl who becomes Karen Gillan is a nerdy, plain looking glasses-wearer (that’s Hollywood for feminist) she immediately exclaims, “why am I wearing half a shirt and short shorts IN THE JUNGLE.” And that’s all the totally feminist commentary we get in the film, well done Hollywood. “Everyone knows that if there’s one thing that’s underrepresented in movies, it’s Jack Black.” Unfortunately, sexism isn’t the other thing being joked about in the trailer. The gorgeous blonde girl turns into Jack Black and immediately cries that she’s “an overweight middle aged man”, no doubt paving the way for many a fat joke. There’s also the potential gay jokes that will come from the girl in Jack Black’s body crushing on Dwayne Johnson. Add to that the fact that the main cast was initially equally split between male and female actors, but then one of the teenage girls gets put in Jack Black’s body… because everyone knows that if there’s one thing that’s underrepresented in movies, it’s Jack Black. The thing is that, as Sony rightly points out, women got a bad deal in video games back in the 90s, but er, they still do now. There are still very few games out there that let women play as women that look like them, whilst still giving them the same adequate armour or protection. Women try to fight against this but when we do we’re hit with horrible things such as gamer-gate. If Hollywood wants to target bad stereotypes they need to do a better job of deconstructing them. I hope that in the movie Ruby Roundhouse becomes a fully fleshed-out character who uses her mind and skills to kick ass. Who knows, she may also get a costume the same as the men but with the addition of a scrunchie a la’ Ursula Stanhope in George of the Jungle . One can dream. – Image via Sony Pictures Entertainment

By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley Google paid $1.65bn for YouTube in 2006 Video-sharing site YouTube is taking its first steps into the online movie rental business. The fledgling service will go live on 22 January. Initially only five films will be available to rent. The movies will come from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance Film Festival and will only be available in the US. The move for the Google owned company represents a major development for the site which has been looking for ways to boost its bottom line. "This is a huge move for YouTube in the sense of them trying to monetise the site," Mike McGuire, principal analyst at Gartner Research told BBC News. "This certainly opens the door for them with bigger movie studios." Content providers will be able to set their own prices, with YouTube taking a cut of the revenue. All but one of the Sundance films is being offered for $3.99 (£2.50) each for users to watch over a 48-hour viewing period. The site which is best known for its user-generated content, including dogs on skateboards and performing cats, said 20 hours of video is uploaded every minute. Last August, Comscore reported that over 10 billion videos were streamed on YouTube. Hollywood signs Industry insiders say this first step into online rental is a curtain-raiser for more ambitious pay-per-view plans. It is expected that in the near future the site will expand its rental catalogue with television shows and feature films from major studios. Persuading studios to part with movies like Harry Potter will be key "Content is king in this kind of business and Sundance is a good first step," said Mr McGuire. "Negotiating with the major studios over distribution rights however is not for the faint hearted. Google has to perfect its delivery model and its billing system." YouTube already offers full-length films from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's archives. It is expected similar deals like this will emerge in the coming weeks and months and extend to newer movies. In its blog, YouTube hinted at that possibility. "In the coming weeks we'll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option." Some industry watchers say YouTube has had a tough time in the past persuading the studios to part with their crown jewels such as newly released movies and Hollywood blockbusters. "YouTube has had little luck over the last several years wooing major studios and networks to stream premium content on the site, which would make it easier to draw advertising," said Ben Fritz of the Los Angeles Times. "Most studios have instead opted to put their content on Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal, News Corp and Walt Disney that has had more success luring marketers." Analysts point out that the pay-per-view movie offering will put YouTube in direct competition with other services including Apple's iTunes store, Amazon.com and Microsoft's XBox Live. The first five films for rent are "The Cove," "Bass Ackwards," "One Too Many Mornings," "Homewrecker" and "Children of Invention." The Sundance film festival runs until 31 January. Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Tiger Woods was raised to believe that his destiny is not only to be the greatest golfer ever but also to change the world. Will the pressures of celebrity grind him down first? Tiger Woods was raised to believe that his destiny is not only to be the greatest golfer ever but also to change the world. Will the pressures of celebrity grind him down first? It was ordinary. It was oh so ordinary. It was a salad, a dinner roll, a steak, a half potato, a slice of cake, a clinking fork, a podium joke, a ballroom full of white-linen-tablecloth conversation. Then a thick man with tufts of white hair rose from the head table. His voice trembled and his eyes teared and his throat gulped down sobs between words, and everything ordinary was cast out of the room. He said, "Please forgive me . . . but sometimes I get very emotional . . . when I talk about my son. . . . My heart . . . fills with so . . . much . . . joy . . . when I realize . . . that this young man . . . is going to be able . . . to help so many people. . . . He will transcend this game . . . and bring to the world . . . a humanitarianism . . . which has never been known before. The world will be a better place to live in . . . by virtue of his existence . . . and his presence. . . . I acknowledge only a small part in that . . . in that I know that I was personally selected by God himself . . . to nurture this young man . . . and bring him to the point where he can make his contribution to humanity. . . . This is my treasure. . . . Please accept it . . . and use it wisely. . . . Thank you." Blinking tears, the man found himself inside the arms of his son and the applause of the people, all up on their feet. In the history of American celebrity, no father has ever spoken this way. Too many dads have deserted or died before their offspring reached this realm, but mostly they have fallen mute, the father's vision exceeded by the child's, leaving the child to wander, lost, through the sad and silly wilderness of modern fame. So let us stand amidst this audience at last month's Fred Haskins Award dinner to honor America's outstanding college golfer of 1996, and take note as Tiger and Earl Woods embrace, for a new manner of celebrity is taking form before our eyes. Regard the 64-year-old African-American father, arm upon the superstar's shoulder, right where the chip is so often found, declaring that this boy will do more good for the world than any man who ever walked it. Gaze at the 20-year-old son, with the blood of four races in his veins, not flinching an inch from the yoke of his father's prophecy but already beginning to scent the complications. The son who stormed from behind to win a record third straight U.S. Amateur last August, turned pro and rang up scores in the 60s in 21 of his first 27 rounds, winning two PGA Tour events as he doubled and tripled the usual crowds and dramatically changed their look and age. Now turn. Turn and look at us, the audience, standing in anticipation of something different, something pure. Quiet. Just below the applause, or within it, can you hear the grinding? That's the relentless chewing mechanism of fame, girding to grind the purity and the promise to dust. Not the promise of talent, but the bigger promise, the father's promise, the one that stakes everything on the boy's not becoming separated from his own humanity and from all the humanity crowding around him. It's a fitting moment, while he's up there at the head table with the audience on its feet, to anoint Eldrick (Tiger) Woods—the rare athlete to establish himself immediately as the dominant figure in his sport—as SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's 1996 Sportsman of the Year. And to pose a question: Who will win? The machine . . . or the youth who has just entered its maw? Tiger Woods will win. He'll fulfill his father's vision because of his mind, one that grows more still, more willful, more efficient, the greater the pressure upon him grows. The machine will win because it has no mind. It flattens even as it lifts, trivializes even as it exalts, spreads a man so wide and thin that he becomes margarine soon enough. Tiger will win because of God's mind. Can't you see the pattern? Earl Woods asks. Can't you see the signs? "Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity," Earl says. Sports history, Mr. Woods? Do you mean more than Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, more than Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe? "More than any of them because he's more charismatic, more educated, more prepared for this than anyone." Anyone, Mr. Woods? Your son will have more impact than Nelson Mandela, more than Gandhi, more than Buddha? "Yes, because he has a larger forum than any of them. Because he's playing a sport that's international. Because he's qualified through his ethnicity to accomplish miracles. He's the bridge between the East and the West. There is no limit because he has the guidance. I don't know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power." Surely this is lunacy. Or are we just too myopic to see? One thing is certain: We are witnessing the first volley of an epic encounter, the machine at its mightiest confronting the individual groomed all his life to conquer it and turn it to his use. The youth who has been exposed to its power since he toddled onto The Mike Douglas Show at three, the set of That's Incredible! at five, the boy who has been steeled against the silky seduction to which so many before him have succumbed. The one who, by all appearances, brings more psychological balance, more sense of self, more consciousness of possibility to the battlefield than any of his predecessors. This is war, so let's start with war. Remove the images of pretty putting greens from the movie screen standing near the ballroom's head table. Jungle is what's needed here, foliage up to a man's armpits, sweat trickling down his thighs, leeches crawling up them. Lieut. Col. Earl Woods, moving through the night with his rifle ready, wondering why a U.S. Army public information officer stationed in Brooklyn decided in his mid-30s that he belonged in the Green Berets and ended up doing two tours of duty in Vietnam. Wondering why his first marriage has died and why the three children from it have ended up without a dad around when it's dark like this and it's time for bed--just as Earl ended up as a boy after his own father died. Wondering why he keeps plotting ways to return to the line of fire--"creative soldiering," he calls it--to eyeball death once more. To learn once again about his dark and cold side, the side that enables Earl, as Tiger will remark years later, "to slit your throat and then sit down and eat his dinner." Oh, yes, Earl is one hell of a cocktail. A little Chinese, a little Cherokee, a few shots of African-American; don't get finicky about measurements, we're making a vat here. Pour in some gruffness and a little intimidation, then some tenderness and some warmth and a few jiggers of old anger. Don't hold back on intelligence. And stoicism. Add lots of stoicism, and even more of responsibility--"the most responsible son of a bitch you've ever seen in your life" is how Earl himself puts it. Top it all with "a bucket of whiskey," which is what he has been known to order when he saunters into a bar and he's in the mood. Add a dash of hyperbole, maybe two, and to hell with the ice, just whir. This is one of those concoctions you're going to remember when morning comes. Somewhere in there, until a good 15 years ago, there was one other ingredient, the existential Tabasco, the smoldering why? The Thai secretary in the U.S. Army office in Bangkok smelled it soon after she met Earl, in 1967. "He couldn't relax," says Kultida (Tida) Woods. "Searching for something, always searching, never satisfied. I think because both his parents died when he was young, and he didn't have Mom and Dad to make him warm. Sometimes he stayed awake till three or four in the morning, just thinking." In a man so accustomed to exuding command and control, in a Green Beret lieutenant colonel, why? has a way of building up power like a river dammed. Why did the Vietcong sniper bracket him that day (first bullet a few inches left of one ear, second bullet a few inches right of the other) but never fire the third bullet? Why did Earl's South Vietnamese combat buddy, Nguyen Phong--the one Earl nicknamed Tiger, and in whose memory he would nickname his son--stir one night just in time to awaken Earl and warn him not to budge because a viper was poised inches from his right eye? What about that road Earl's jeep rolled down one night, the same road on which two friends had just been mutilated, the road that took him through a village so silent and dark that his scalp tingled, and then, just beyond it . . . hell turned inside-out over his shoulder, the sky lighting up and all the huts he had just passed spewing Vietcong machine-gun and artillery fire? He never understands what is the purpose of Lieutenant Colonel Woods's surviving again and again. He never quite comprehends what is the point of his life, until. . . . Until the boy is born. He will get all the time that Earl was unable to devote to the three children from his first marriage. He will be the only child from Earl's second marriage, to the Thai woman he brought back to America, and right away there are signs. What other six-month-old, Earl asks, has the balance to stand in the palm of his father's hand and remain there even as Daddy strolls around the house? Was there another 11-month-old, ever, who could pick up a sawed-off club, imitate his father's golf swing so fluidly and drive the ball so wickedly into the nylon net across the garage? Another four-year-old who could be dropped off at the golf course at 9 a.m. on a Saturday and picked up at 5 p.m., pockets bulging with money he had won from disbelievers 10 and 20 years older, until Pop said, "Tiger, you can't do that"? Earl starts to get a glimmer. He is to be the father of the world's most gifted golfer. But why? What for? Not long after Tiger's birth, when Earl has left the military to become a purchaser for McDonnell Douglas, he finds himself in a long discussion with a woman he knows. She senses the power pooling inside him, the friction. "You have so much to give," she tells him, "but you're not giving it. You haven't even scratched the surface of your potential." She suggests he try est, Erhard Seminars Training, an intensive self-discovery and self-actualizing technique, and it hits Earl hard, direct mortar fire to the heart. What he learns is that his overmuscular sense of responsibility for others has choked his potential. "To the point," says Earl, "that I wouldn't even buy a handkerchief for myself. It went all the way back to the day my father died, when I was 11, and my mother put her arm around me after the funeral and said, 'You're the man of the house now.' I became the father that young, looking out for everyone else, and then she died two years later. "What I learned through est was that by doing more for myself, I could do much more for others. Yes, be responsible, but love life, and give people the space to be in your life, and allow yourself room to give to others. That caring and sharing is what's most important, not being responsible for everyone else. Which is where Tiger comes in. What I learned led me to give so much time to Tiger, and to give him the space to be himself, and not to smother him with dos and don'ts. I took out the authority aspect and turned it into companionship. I made myself vulnerable as a parent. When you have to earn respect from your child, rather than demanding it because it's owed to you as the father, miracles happen. I realized that, through him, the giving could take a quantum leap. What I could do on a limited scale, he could do on a global scale." At last, the river is undammed, and Earl's whole life makes sense. At last, he sees what he was searching for, a pattern. No more volunteering for missions--he has his. Not simply to be a great golfer's father. To be destiny's father. His son will change the world. "What the hell had I been doing in public information in the Army, posted in Brooklyn?" he asks. "Why, of course, what greater training can there be than three years of dealing with the New York media to prepare me to teach Tiger the importance of public relations and how to handle the media?" Father: Where were you born, Tiger? Son, age three: I was born on December 30, 1975, in Long Beach, California. Father: No, Tiger, only answer the question you were asked. It's important to prepare yourself for this. Try again. Son: I was born in Long Beach, California. Father: Good, Tiger, good. The late leap into the Green Berets? "What the hell was that for?" Earl says. "Of course, to prepare me to teach Tiger mental toughness." The three children by the first marriage? "Not just one boy the first time," says Earl, "but two, along with a girl, as if God was saying, 'I want this son of a bitch to really have previous training.'" The Buddhist wife, the one who grew up in a boarding school after her parents separated when she was five, the girl who then vowed that her child would know nothing but love and attention? The one who will preach inner calm to Tiger simply by turning to him with that face--still awaiting its first wrinkle at 52? Whose eyes close when she speaks, so he can almost see her gathering and sifting the thoughts? The mother who will walk every hole and keep score for Tiger at children's tournaments, adding a stroke or two if his calm cracks? "Look at this stuff!" cries Earl. "Over and over you can see the plan being orchestrated by someone other than me because I'm not this damn good! I tried to get out of that combat assignment to Thailand. But Tida was meant to bring in the influence of the Orient, to introduce Tiger to Buddhism and inner peace, so he would have the best of two different worlds. And so he would have the knowledge that there were two people whose lives were totally committed to him." What of the heart attack Earl suffered when Tiger was 10 and the retired lieutenant colonel felt himself floating down the gray tunnel toward the light before he was wrenched back? "To prepare me to teach Tiger that life is short," Earl says, "and to live each day to the maximum, and not worry about the future. There's only now. You must understand that time is just a linear measurement of successive increments of now. Anyplace you go on that line is now, and that's how you have to live it." No need to wonder about the appearance of the perfect childhood coach, John Anselmo; the perfect sports psychologist, Jay Brunza; the perfect agent, Hughes Norton; the perfect attorney, John Merchant; and the perfect pro swing instructor, Butch Harmon. Or about the great tangle of fate that leads them all to Tiger at just the right junctures in his development. "Everything," says Earl, "right there when he needs it. Everything. There can't be this much coincidence in the world. This is a directed scenario, and none of us involved in the scenario has failed to accept the responsibility. This is all destined to be." His wife ratifies this, in her own way. She takes the boy's astrological chart to a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles and to another in Bangkok and is told by monks at both places that the child has wondrous powers. "If he becomes a politician, he will be either a president or a prime minister," she is told. "If he enters the military, he will be a general." Tida comes to a conclusion. "Tiger has Thai, African, Chinese, American Indian and European blood," she says. "He can hold everyone together. He is the Universal Child." This is in the air the boy breathes for 20 years, and it becomes bone fact for him, marrow knowledge. When asked about it, he merely nods in acknowledgment of it, assents to it; of course he believes it's true. So failure, in the rare visits it pays him, is not failure. It's just life pausing to teach him a lesson he needs in order to go where he's inevitably going. And success, no matter how much sooner than expected it comes to the door, always finds him dressed and ready to welcome it. "Did you ever see yourself doing this so soon?" a commentator breathlessly asks him seconds after his first pro victory, on Oct. 6 in Las Vegas, trying to elicit wonder and awe on live TV. "Yeah," Tiger responds. "I kind of did." And sleep comes to him so easily: In the midst of conversation, in a car, in a plane, off he goes, into the slumber of the destined. "I don't see any of this as scary or a burden," Tiger says. "I see it as fortunate. I've always known where I wanted to go in life. I've never let anything deter me. This is my purpose. It will unfold." No sports star in the history of American celebrity has spoken this way. Maybe, somehow, Tiger can win. The machine will win. It must win because it too is destiny, five billion destinies leaning against one. There are ways to keep the hordes back, a media expert at Nike tells Tiger. Make broad gestures when you speak. Keep a club in your hands and take practice swings, or stand with one foot well out in front of the other, in almost a karate stance. That will give you room to breathe. Two weeks later, surrounded by a pen-wielding mob in La Quinta, Calif., in late November, just before the Skins Game, the instruction fails. Tiger survives, but his shirt and slacks are ruined, felt-tip-dotted to death. The machine will win because it will wear the young man down, cloud his judgment, steal his sweetness, the way it does just before the Buick Challenge in Pine Mountain, Ga., at the end of September. It will make his eyes drop when the fans' gaze reaches for his, his voice growl at their clawing hands, his body sag onto a sofa after a practice round and then rise and walk across the room and suddenly stop in bewilderment. "I couldn't even remember what I'd just gotten off the couch for, two seconds before," he says. "I was like mashed potatoes. Total mush." So he walks. Pulls out on the eve of the Buick Challenge, pulls out of the Fred Haskins Award dinner to honor him, and goes home. See, maybe Tiger can win. He can just turn his back on the machine and walk. Awards? Awards to Tiger are like echoes, voices bouncing off the walls, repeating what a truly confident man has already heard inside his own head. The Jack Nicklaus Award, the one Jack himself was supposed to present to Tiger live on ABC during the Memorial tournament last spring? Tiger would have blown it off if Wally Goodwin, his coach at Stanford during the two years he played there before turning pro, hadn't insisted that he show up. "Tiger has Thai, African, Chinese, American Indian and European blood," Tida says. "He is the universal child." The instant Tiger walks away from the Buick Challenge and the Haskins dinner, the hounds start yapping. See, that's why the machine will win. It's got all those damn heel-nippers. Little mutts on the PGA Tour resenting how swiftly the 20-year-old was ordained, how hastily he was invited to play practice rounds with Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, with Greg Norman and Ray Floyd and Nick Faldo and Fred Couples. And big dogs snapping too. Tom Kite quoted as saying, "I can't ever remember being tired when I was 20," and Peter Jacobsen quoted, "You can't compare Tiger to Nicklaus and Palmer anymore because they never [walked out]." He rests for a week, stunned by the criticism--"I thought those people were my friends," he says. He never second-guesses his decision to turn pro, but he sees what he surrendered. "I miss college," he says. "I miss hanging out with my friends, getting in a little trouble. I have to be so guarded now. I miss sitting around drinking beer and talking half the night. There's no one my own age to hang out with anymore because almost everyone my age is in college. I'm a target for everybody now, and there's nothing I can do about it. My mother was right when she said that turning pro would take away my youth. But golfwise, there was nothing left for me in college." He reemerges after the week's rest and rushes from four shots off the lead on the final day to win the Las Vegas Invitational in sudden death. The world's waiting for him again, this time with reinforcements. Letterman and Leno want him as a guest; GQ calls about a cover; Cosby, along with almost every other sitcom you can think of, offers to write an episode revolving around Tiger, if only he'll appear. Kids dress up as Tiger for Halloween--did anyone ever dress up as Arnie or Jack?--and Michael Jordan declares that his only hero on earth is Tiger Woods. Pepsi is dying to have him cut a commercial for one of its soft drinks aimed at Generation Xers; Nike and Titleist call in chits for the $40 million and $20 million contracts he signed; money managers are eager to know how he wants his millions invested; women walk onto the course during a practice round and ask for his hand in marriage; kids stampede over and under ropes and chase him from the 18th hole to the clubhouse; piles of phone messages await him when he returns to his hotel room. "Why," Tiger asks, "do so many people want a piece of me?" Because something deeper than conventional stardom is at work here, something so spontaneous and subconscious that words have trouble going there. It's a communal craving, a public aching for a superstar free of anger and arrogance and obsession with self. It's a hollow place that chimes each time Tiger and his parents strike the theme of father and mother and child love, each time Tiger stands at a press conference and declares, "They have raised me well, and I truly believe they have taught me to accept full responsibility for all aspects of my life." During the making of a Titleist commercial in November, a makeup woman is so moved listening to Earl describe his bond with Tiger that she decides to contact her long-estranged father. "See what I mean?" cries Earl. "Did you affect someone that way today? Did anyone else there? It's destiny, man. It's something bigger than me." What makes it so vivid is context. The white canvas that the colors are being painted on—the moneyed, mature and almost minority-less world of golf—makes Tiger an emblem of youth overcoming age, have-not overcoming have, outsider overcoming insider, to the delight not only of the 18-year-olds in the gallery wearing nose rings and cornrows, but also—of all people—of the aging insider haves. So Tiger finds himself, just a few weeks after turning pro at the end of August, trying to clutch a bolt of lightning with one hand and steer an all-at-once corporation—himself—with the other, and before this he has never worked a day in his life. Never mowed a neighbor's lawn, never flung a folded newspaper, never stocked a grocery shelf; Mozarts just don't, you know. And he has to act as if none of this is new or vexing because he has this characteristic--perhaps from all those years of hanging out with his dad at tournaments, all those years of mixing with and mauling golfers five, 10, 20, 30 years older than he is—of never permitting himself to appear confused, surprised or just generally a little squirt. "His favorite expression," Earl says, "is, 'I knew that.'" Of course Pop, who is just as irreverent with Tiger as he is reverent, can say, "No, you didn't know that, you little s---." But Earl, who has always been the filter for Tiger, decides to take a few steps back during his son's first few months as a pro because he wishes to encourage Tiger's independence and because he is uncertain of his own role now that the International Management Group (IMG) is managing Tiger's career. Nobody notices it, but the inner calm is beginning to dissolve. Earl enters Tiger's hotel room during the Texas Open in mid-October to ask him about his schedule, and Tiger does something he has never done in his 20 years. He bites the old man's head off. Earl blinks. "I understand how you must feel," he says. "No, you don't," snaps Tiger. "And I realized," Earl says later, "that I'd spent 20 years planning for this, but the one thing I didn't do was educate Tiger to be the boss of a corporation. There was just no vehicle for that, and I thought it would develop more slowly. I wasn't presumptuous enough to anticipate this. For the first time in his life, the training was behind the reality. I could see on his face that he was going through hell." The kid is fluid, though. Just watch him walk. He's quick to flow into the new form, to fit the contour of necessity. A few hours after the outburst he's apologizing to his father and hugging him. A few days later he's giving Pop the O.K. to call a meeting of the key members of Tiger's new corporation and establish a system, Lieutenant Colonel Woods in command, chairing a 2 1/2-hour teleconference with the team each week to sift through all the demands, weed out all the chaff and present Tiger five decisions to make instead of 500. A few days after that, the weight forklifted off his shoulders, at least temporarily, Tiger wins the Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic. And a few weeks later, at the Fred Haskins Award dinner, which has been rescheduled at his request, Tiger stands at the podium and says, "I should've attended the dinner [the first time]. I admit I was wrong, and I'm sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused. But I have learned from that, and I will never make that mistake again. I'm very honored to be part of this select group, and I'll always remember, for both good and bad, this Haskins Award; for what I did and what I learned, for the company I'm now in and I'll always be in. Thank you very much." The crowd surges to its feet, cheering once more. See, maybe Tiger can win. He's got the touch. He's got the feel. He never writes down a word before he gives a speech. When he needs to remember a phone number, he doesn't search his memory or a little black book; he picks up a phone and watches what number his fingers go to. When he needs a 120-yard shot to go under an oak branch and over a pond, he doesn't visualize the shot, as most golfers would. He looks at the flag and pulls everything from the hole back, back, back . . . not back into his mind's eye, but into his hands and forearms and hips, so they'll do it by feel. Explain how he made that preposterous shot? He can't. Better you interview his knuckles and metacarpals. "His handicap," says Earl, "is that he has such a powerful creative mind. His imagination is too vivid. If he uses visualization, the ball goes nuts. So we piped into his creative side even deeper, into his incredible sense of feel." "I've learned to trust the subconscious," says Tiger. "My instincts have never lied to me." The mother radiates this: the Eastern proclivity to let life happen, rather than the Western one to make it happen. The father comes to it in his own way, through fire. To kill a man, to conduct oneself calmly and efficiently when one's own death is imminent--a skill Earl learns in Green Berets psychological training and then again and again in jungles and rice paddies--one removes the conscious mind from the task and yields to the subconscious. "It's the more powerful of the two minds," Earl says. "It works faster than the conscious mind, yet it's patterned enough to handle routine tasks over and over, like driving a car or making a putt. It knows what to do. "Allow yourself the freedom of emotion and feeling. Don't try to control them and trap them. Acknowledge them and become the beneficiary of them. Let it all outflow." Let it all because it's all there: The stability, almost freakish for a close-of-the-millennium California child--same two parents, same house all his 20 years, same best friends, one since second grade, one since eighth. The kid, for god's sake, never once had a babysitter. The conditioning is there as well, the two years of psychological boot camp during which Earl dropped golf bags and pumped cart brakes during Tiger's backswings, jingled change and rolled balls across his line of vision to test his nerves, promising him at the outset that he only had to say "Enough" and Earl would cut off the blowtorch, but promising too that if Tiger graduated, no man he ever faced would be mentally stronger than he. "I am the toughest golfer mentally," Tiger says. The bedrock is so wide that opposites can dance upon it: The cautious man can be instinctive, the careful man can be carefree. The bedrock is so wide that it has enticed Tiger into the habit of falling behind—as he did in the final matches of all three U.S. Junior Amateur and all three U.S. Amateur victories—knowing in his tissue and bones that danger will unleash his greatest power. "Allow success and fame to happen," the old man says. "Let the legend grow." To hell with the Tao. The machine will win, it has to win, because it makes everything happen before a man knows it. Before he knows it, a veil descends over his eyes when another stranger approaches. Before he knows it, he's living in a walled community with an electronic gate and a security guard, where the children trick-or-treat in golf carts, a place like the one Tiger just moved into in Orlando to preserve some scrap of sanity. Each day there, even with all the best intentions, how can he help but be a little more removed from the world he's supposed to change, and from his truest self? Which is . . . who? The poised, polite, opaque sage we see on TV? No, no, no; his friends hoot and haze him when they see that Tiger on the screen, and he can barely help grinning himself. The Tiger they know is perfectly 20, a fast-food freak who never remembers to ask if anyone else is hungry before he bolts to Taco Bell or McDonald's for the 10th time of the week. The one who loves riding roller coasters, spinning out golf carts and winning at cards no matter how often his father accuses him of "reckless eyeballing." The one who loves delivering the dirty joke, who owns a salty barracks tongue just a rank or two beneath his father's. The one who's flip, who's downright cocky. When a suit walks up to him before the Haskins Award dinner and says, "I think you're going to be the next great one, but those are mighty big shoes to fill," Tiger replies, "Got big feet." A typical exchange between Tiger and his agent, Norton: "Tiger, they want to know when you can do that interview." "Tell them to kiss my ass!" "All right, and after that, what should I tell them?" "Tell them to kiss my ass again!" "O.K., and after that. . . . " But it's a cockiness cut with humility, the paradox pounded into his skull by a father who in one breath speaks of his son with religious awe and in the next grunts, "You weren't s--- then, Tiger. You ain't s--- now. You ain't never gonna be s---." "That's why I know I can handle all this," Tiger says, "no matter how big it gets. I grew up in the media's eye, but I was taught never to lose sight of where I came from. Athletes aren't as gentlemanly as they used to be. I don't like that change. I like the idea of being a role model. It's an honor. People took the time to help me as a kid, and they impacted my life. I want to do the same for kids." So, if it's a clinic for children instead of an interview or an endorsement for adults, the cynic in Tiger gives way to the child who grew up immersed in his father's vision of an earth-altering compassion, the seven-year-old boy who watched scenes from the Ethiopian famine on the evening news, went right to his bedroom and returned with a $20 bill to contribute from his piggy bank. Last spring busloads of inner-city kids would arrive at golf courses where Tiger was playing for Stanford, spilling out to watch the Earl and Tiger show in wonder. Earl would talk about the dangers of drugs, then proclaim, "Here's Tiger Woods on drugs," and Tiger would stagger to the tee, topping the ball so it bounced crazily to the side. And then, presto, with a wave of his arms Earl would remove the drugs from Tiger's body, and his son would stride to the ball and launch a 330-yard rocket across the sky. Then Earl would talk about respect and trust and hard work and demonstrate what they can all lead to by standing 10 feet in front of his son, raising his arms and telling Tiger to smash the ball between them—and, whoosh, Tiger would part not only the old man's arms but his haircut too. They've got plans, the two of them, big plans, for a Tiger Woods Foundation that will fund scholarships across the country, set up clinics and coaches and access to golf courses for inner-city children. "I throw those visions out there in front of him," Earl says, "and it's like reeling in a fish. He goes for the bait, takes it and away he goes. This is nothing new. It's been working this way for a long time." "That's the difference," says Merchant, Tiger's attorney and a family friend. "Other athletes who have risen to this level just didn't have this kind of guidance. With a father and mother like Tiger's, he has to be real. It's such a rare quality in celebrities nowadays. There hasn't been a politician since John Kennedy whom people have wanted to touch. But watch Tiger. He has it. He actually listens to people when they stop him in an airport. He looks them in the eye. I can't ever envision Tiger Woods selling his autograph." See, maybe Tiger can win. The machine will win, it has to win, because it makes everything happen before a man knows what hit him. Let's be honest. The machine will win because you can't work both sides of this street. The machine will win because you can't transcend wearing 16 Nike swooshes, you can't move human hearts while you're busy pushing sneakers. Gandhi didn't hawk golf balls, did he? Jackie Robinson was spared that fate because he came and went while Madison Avenue was still teething. Ali became a symbol instead of a logo because of boxing's disrepute and because of the attrition of cells in the basal ganglia of his brain. Who or what will save Tiger Woods? Did someone say Buddha? Every year near his birthday, Tiger goes with his mother to a Buddhist temple and makes a gift of rice, sugar and salt to the monks there who have renounced all material goods. A mother-of-pearl Buddha given to Tiger by his Thai grandfather watches over him while he sleeps, and a gold Buddha hangs from the chain on his neck. "I like Buddhism because it's a whole way of being and living," Tiger says. "It's based on discipline and respect and personal responsibility. I like Asian culture better than ours because of that. Asians are much more disciplined than we are. Look how well behaved their children are. It's how my mother raised me. You can question, but talk back? Never. In Thailand, once you've earned people's respect, you have it for life. Here it's, What have you done for me lately? So here you can never rest easy. In this country I have to be very careful. I'm easygoing, but I won't let you in completely. There, I'm Thai, and it feels very different. In many ways I consider that home. "I believe in Buddhism. Not every aspect, but most of it. So I take bits and pieces. I don't believe that human beings can achieve ultimate enlightenment, because humans have flaws. I don't want to get rid of all my wants and desires. I can enjoy material things, but that doesn't mean I need them. It doesn't matter to me whether I live in a place like this"—the golf club in his hand makes a sweep of the Orlando villa—"or in a shack. I'd be fine in a shack, as long as I could play some golf. I'll do the commercials for Nike and for Titleist, but there won't be much more than that. I have no desire to be the king of endorsement money." On the morning after he decides to turn pro, there's a knock on his hotel room door. It's Norton, bleary-eyed but exhilarated after a late-night round of negotiations with Nike. He explains to Tiger and Earl that the benchmark for contract endorsements in golf is Norman's reported $2 1/2 million-a-year deal with Reebok. Then, gulping down hard on the yabba-dabba-doo rising up his throat, Norton announces Nike's offer: $40 million for five years, eight mil a year. "Over three times what Norman gets!" Norton exults. Silence. "Guys, do you realize this is more than Nike pays any athlete in salary, even Jordan?" Silence. "Finally," Norton says now, recalling that morning, "Tiger says, 'Mmmm-hmmm,' and I say, 'That's it? Mmmm-hmmm?' No 'Omigod.' No slapping five or 'Ya-hooo!' So I say, 'Let me go through this again, guys.' Finally Tiger says, 'Guess that's pretty amazing.' That's it. When I made the deal with Titleist a day later, I went back to them saying, 'I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this one. Titleist is offering a little more than $20 million over five years.'" On the Monday morning after his first pro tournament, a week after the two megadeals, Tiger scans the tiny print on the sports page under Milwaukee Open money earnings and finds his name. Tiger Woods: $2,544. "That's my money," he exclaims. "I earned this!" See, maybe Tiger can win. How? How can he win when there are so many insects under so many rocks? Several more death threats arrive just before the Skins Game, prompting an increase in his plainclothes security force, which is already larger than anyone knows. His agent's first instinct is to trash every piece of hate mail delivered to IMG, but Tiger won't permit it. Every piece of racist filth must be saved and given to him. At Stanford he kept one letter taped to his wall. Fuel comes in the oddest forms. The audience, in its hunger for goodness, swallows hard over the Nike ad that heralds Tiger's entrance into the professional ranks. The words that flash on the screen over images of Tiger—There are still courses in the United States I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin. I've heard I'm not ready for you. Are you ready for me?—ooze the very attitude from which many in the audience are seeking relief. The media backlash is swift: The Tiger Woods who used to tell the press, "The only time I think about race is when the media ask me"--whoa, what happened to him? What happened to him was a steady accretion of experiences, also known as a life. What happened, just weeks before he was born, was a fusillade of limes and BBs rattling the Woods house in Cypress, Calif., one of the limes shattering the kitchen window, splashing glass all around the pregnant Tida, to welcome the middle-class subdivision's first non-Caucasian family. What happened was a gang of older kids seizing Tiger on his first day of kindergarten, tying him to a tree, hurling rocks at him, calling him monkey and nigger. And Tiger, at age five, telling no one what happened for several days, trying to absorb what this meant about himself and his world. What happened was the Look, as Tiger and Earl came to call it, the uneasy, silent stare they received in countless country-club locker rooms and restaurants. "Something a white person could never understand," says Tiger, "unless he went to Africa and suddenly found himself in the middle of a tribe." What happened was Tiger's feeling pressured to leave a driving range just two years ago, not far from his family's California home, because a resident watching Tiger's drives rocket into the nearby protective netting reported that a black teenager was trying to bombard his house. What happened was the cold shoulder Earl got when he took his tyke to play at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress--"a club," Earl says, "composed mostly of retired naval personnel who knew blacks only as cooks and servers, and along comes me, a retired lieutenant colonel outranking 99 percent of them, and I have the nerve to take up golf at 42 and immediately become a low handicap and beat them, and then I have the audacity to have this kid. Well, they had to do something. They took away Tiger's playing privileges twice, said he was too young, even though there were other kids too young who they let play. The second time it happened, I went up to the pro who had done it and made a bet. I said, 'If you'll spot my three-year-old just one stroke a hole, nine holes, playing off the same tees, and he beats you, will you certify him?' The pro started laughing and said, 'Sure.' Tiger beat him by two strokes, got certified, then the members went over the pro's head and kicked him out again. That's when we switched him to another course." Beat them. That was his parents' solution for each banishment, each Look. Hold your tongue, hew to every rule and beat them. Tiger Woods is the son of the first black baseball player in the Big Seven, a catcher back in the early '50s, before the conference became the Big Eight. A man who had to leave his Kansas State teammates on road trips and travel miles to stay in motels for blacks; who had to go to the back door of restaurant kitchens to be fed while his teammates dined inside; who says, "This is the most racist society in the world—I know that." A man who learned neither to extinguish his anger nor spray it but to quietly convert it into animus, the determination to enter the system and overcome it by turning its own tools against it. A Green Berets explosives expert whose mind naturally ran that way, whose response, upon hearing Tiger rave about the security in his new walled community, was, "I could get in. I could blow up the clubhouse and be gone before they ever knew what hit them." A father who saw his son, from the beginning, as the one who would enter one of America's last Caucasian bastions, the PGA Tour, and overthrow it from within in a manner that would make it smile and ask for more. "Been planning that one for 20 years," says Earl. "See, you don't turn it into hatred. You turn it into something positive. So many athletes who reach the top now had things happen to them as children that created hostility, and they bring that hostility with them. But that hostility uses up energy. If you can do it without the chip on the shoulder, it frees up all that energy to create." It's not until Stanford, where Tiger takes an African-American history course and stays up half the night in dormitories talking with people of every shade of skin, that his experiences begin to crystallize. "What I realized is that even though I'm mathematically Asian--if anything--if you have one drop of black blood in the United States, you're black," says Tiger. "And how important it is for this country to talk about this subject. It's not me to blow my horn, the way I come across in that Nike ad, or to say things quite that way. But I felt it was worth it because the message needed to be said. You can't say something like that in a polite way. Golf has shied away from this for too long. Some clubs have brought in tokens, but nothing has really changed. I hope what I'm doing can change that." But don't overestimate race's proportion in the fuel that propels Tiger Woods. Don't look for traces of race in the astonishing rubble at his feet on the Sunday after he lost the Texas Open by two strokes and returned to his hotel room and snapped a putter in two with one violent lift of his knee. Then another putter. And another. And another and another--eight in all before his rage was spent and he was ready to begin considering the loss's philosophical lesson. "That volcano of competitive fire, that comes from me," says Earl. A volcano that's mostly an elite athlete's need to win, a need far more immediate than that of changing the world. No, don't overestimate race, but don't overlook it, either. When Tiger is asked about racism, about the effect it has on him when he senses it in the air, he has a golf club in his hands. He takes the club by the neck, his eyes flashing hot and cold at once, and gives it a short upward thrust. He says, "It makes me want to stick it right up their asses." Pause. "On the golf course." The machine will win because there is so much of the old man's breath in the boy . . . and how long can the old man keep breathing? At 2 a.m., hours before the second round of the Tour Championship in Tulsa on Oct. 25, the phone rings in Tiger's hotel room. It's Mom. Pop's in an ambulance, on his way to a Tulsa hospital. He's just had his second heart attack. The Tour Championship? The future of humanity? The hell with 'em. Tiger's at the old man's bedside in no time, awake most of the night. Tiger's out of contention in the Tour Championship by dinnertime, with a second-round 78, his worst till then as a pro. "There are things more important than golf," he says. The old man survives—and sees the pattern at work, of course. He's got to throw away the cigarettes. He's got to quit ordering the cholesterol special for breakfast. "I've got to shape up now, God's telling me," Earl says, "or I won't be around for the last push, the last lesson." The one about how to ride the tsunami of runaway fame. The machine will win because no matter how complicated it all seems now, it is simpler than it will ever be. The boy will marry one day, and the happiness of two people will lie in his hands. Children will follow, and it will become his job to protect three or four or five people from the molars of the machine. Imagine the din of the grinding in five, 10, 15 years, when the boy reaches his golfing prime. The machine will win because the whole notion is so ludicrous to begin with, a kid clutching an eight-iron changing the course of humanity. No, of course not, there won't be thousands of people sitting in front of tanks because of Tiger Woods. He won't bring about the overthrow of a tyranny or spawn a religion that one day will number 300 million devotees. But maybe Pop is onto something without quite seeing what it is. Maybe it has to do with timing: the appearance of his son when America is turning the corner to a century in which the country's faces of color will nearly equal those that are white. Maybe, every now and then, a man gets swallowed by the machine, but the machine is changed more than he is. For when we swallow Tiger Woods, the yellow-black-red-white man, we swallow something much more significant than Jordan or Charles Barkley. We swallow hope in the American experiment, in the pell-mell jumbling of genes. We swallow the belief that the face of the future is not necessarily a bitter or bewildered face; that it might even, one day, be something like Tiger Woods's face: handsome and smiling and ready to kick all comers' asses. We see a woman, 50-ish and Caucasian, well-coiffed and tailored--the woman we see at every country club--walk up to Tiger Woods before he receives the Haskins Award and say, "When I watch you taking on all those other players, Tiger, I feel like I'm watching my own son" . . . and we feel the quivering of the cosmic compass that occurs when human beings look into the eyes of someone of another color and see their own flesh and blood.

Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Good news for the basements and attics of the world: bulky old cathode ray TVs are no longer useless! And turning them into a retro streaming device is easier than it looks. Dr. Moddnstine found a way to make a “portable” TV from 1978 accept Chromecast, turn on automatically when streaming to it, and found a way to fit all the additional parts inside the original chassis. I feel compelled to warn you though, it is very easy to electrocute yourself when fussing around in the cuts of old CRT—and not a quick jolt either. These kind of accidents can be lethal so proceed with caution. Advertisement As he explains in the extended demo, the mod requires a series of adapters to be wired together in the TV. First, there’s the 300 ohm twin lead (the one that old rabbit ear antennae attach to) needs to be converted into 75 ohm VHF. That signal runs into an RF modulator which outputs composite video. Finally, a composite to HMDI gives you the connection needed to plug in a standard Chromecast. The process might be a pain in the ass, but it doesn’t require anything you can’t find on Amazon. There’s also almost no soldering involved. Unfortunately, he doesn’t disclose how the automatic power on unit functions—we’ll just have to hold out for a new video some time in the future.

In 2013, the allegedly unbiased network of websites calling themselves PolitiFact wrote an article headlined “Lie of the Year: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'” Angie Drobnan Halic concluded: “PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice....The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s ‘you can keep it’ claim has been a real hit to his credibility.” Now, PolitiFact Virginia is accusing Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie of airing a claim that is “False.” Why? Because in a new ad, they play video of Sen. Mark Warner also promising in 2009 that “I’m not going to support a health care plan that’s going to take away health care that you’ve got right now, or a health care plan that you like.” Somehow, GOP challenger Ed Gillespie is judged as wrong to suggest Politifact called this the "Lie of the Year," or suggesting it applies to every Democrat pushing Obamacare, not just Obama. Warren Fiske – a reporter with the Richmond Times-Dispatch – lamely claimed that only Obama is the subject of the original designation. “PolitiFact National’s article announcing the Lie of the Year, however, only refers to the White House’s repetition of the false claim.” Fiske also claimed that he couldn’t find any quotes of Warner doubling down on this claim after Obamacare went sour. Fiske also claimed that somehow, when Senator Warner pushed his colleagues to vote for Obamacare, he was somehow victimized and surprised when Obama made a lie out of the original promise: Warner wound up voting for a bill that contained language shielding existing policies from meeting the minimum ACA coverage standards, but leaving it to the White House to fill in the details. Obama subsequently imposed tough regulations that blocked insurers from adjusting the grandfathered plans to market conditions or selling them to new customers, all but assuring the death of substandard policies. Warner says he was surprised by the president’s actions. Can you imagine a newspaper reporter trying to claim that if you voted for the Iraq war, you're not really responsible for how the war unfolds when you run for re-election, since the president "surprised" you when it didn't go as planned? These liberal media "fact checker" websites define "fact" in an incredibly elastic and politicized way -- just the way they report the rest of the news. Ed Gillespie’s campaign manager Chris Leavitt called out PolitiFact as the falsifier on their website:

Billy Hurley III celebrates with the championship trophy after winning the Quicken Loans National golf tournament at Congressional Country Club on June 26. (Photo: Geoff Burke, Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports) AKRON, Ohio – Billy Hurley III will not be playing in the British Open. He has a wedding to go to. Hurley's emotional victory Sunday in the Quicken Loans National came with perks, including playing spots in this week’s World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, next month’s British Open and next year’s Masters. He said Tuesday he will not be going to Scotland to play in the game’s oldest championship. Instead, he’ll be going to a house near his childhood home in Leesburg, Va., to attend the wedding of his sister, Megan. Hurley, who received nearly 400 congratulatory text messages and emails after winning his first PGA Tour title, called his sister to tell her the news while he was playing the South Course at Firestone Country Club for the first time. “I wouldn't miss my sister’s wedding for the world, and I think that at this point in time for me and my family and the trajectory of our family, it's very important for me to be there to support her and her new husband,” Hurley said. “It was a pretty easy decision at the end of the day. She tried to not really influence me a ton on Sunday night, but I called her while I was playing, and she started crying. I mean, so she was pretty thrilled that I'll be there.” Hurley is pretty thrilled to be at Firestone for the first time. Recently, he thought about quitting the game. Then he played like a veteran last week at Congressional Country Club north of the nation’s capital and 30 miles from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where he earned a degree in quantitative economics and rose to the rank of lieutenant. “I don't think they were expecting me here. My locker is kind of in the corner and there's a parking spot back in the back of the lot and everything,” Hurley said. “But happy to have just both of those this week, to be honest.” He’ll feel pretty good going to the first tee, too. “Any time you have success, you have the chicken and the egg of success and confidence, right, so obviously success breeds confidence, and so hopefully I can use that confidence to continue to play well throughout the rest of the season,” Hurley said. As for the rest of the season, Hurley will keep hearing what he’s been hearing since he walked off the 18th green at Congressional, that his win is the feel-good story of the year. A story of a first-time winner, playing in a tournament honoring current and past members of the U.S. Armed services, winning 10 months after his father committed suicide. “I'm certainly touched,” when people say it’s the feel-good story of the year, he said. “I'm a little flabbergasted just in the sense that I didn't know that many people cared that much about me. I've heard from so many grown men telling me they were watching golf crying on Sunday. I had a good friend of mine in California call and leave a message and he was fighting back tears the whole time he was leaving the message for me. So that surprised the heck out of me. “Michael Greller, (Jordan Spieth’s caddie), said to me on the range, ‘Thanks for making us all cry.’ That's been kind of an unbelievable show of support from people that I never expected.” PHOTOS: 2015-16 PGA TOUR WINNERS

We are proud to announce DrupalCorn Camp 2012 to be held on the Iowa State University campus in Ames on August 3-4, 2012. If you are an open source enthusiast, Drupal designer, hacker, geek, Drupal developer, UI expert, IT manager, or you just want to find out what this Drupal thing is, this conference is for you! Drupal powers websites for the Economist, MTV-UK, The White House, and Sony Music. Registration and session submission is now open. We also have separate training available before the camp so you can you get a head start. Keynote - Chris Shattuck, Build A Module.com Chris is an experienced speaker and long-time Drupal developer. He has recorded over 600 Drupal video tutorials on BuildAModule.com, has developed and designed numerous Drupal sites, has contributed several interesting, obscure modules, and generally considers his life sufficiently enriched by Drupal-related errata to have a hard time imagining existence without it. He is especially passionate about education technology and community building.

Spoilers ahead. It's been more than 10 years since Godzilla last smashed its way into theaters, and to the casual spectator, this past weekend's blockbuster seems a fitting revival to the franchise. Coming in at number one at the box office and receiving overall positive reviews, it seems most of America agrees: Godzilla is back. But in Godzilla’s success there is also great failure. Despite the fact that 2013 was a hallmark year for women and characters of color thanks to big hits like Frozen , The Hunger Games, 12 Years a Slave and The Butler, it is disheartening to realize that one of the summer's first true blockbusters falls prey to the same old trope of oversimplified female and minority characters — a fact further complicated by the reality that Godzilla is at root a Japanese story. None of Godzilla's minority or female characters act with agency or move this movie forward. Rather, they are stand-ins, foils and caricatures. The people in control — the plot-drivers — are white men; a pattern we see far too often and one that demands calling out in order to one day change. Let's take a look. Dr. Ishiro Serizawa Image Credit: Kimberley French via Image Credit: Kimberley French via IMDB Our first example is Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, played by Ken Watanabe. Dr. Serizawa is a scientist and ostensibly a leader in MONARCH, a multi-national organization dedicated to the research of giant monsters (kaiju). Yet when Americans enter his research facility and proclaim that they are superseding him, he barely protests. He does little more than whimper and grimace when the Americans come up with a (completely idiotic) plan to nuke the kaiju off the coast of California. To top it all off, throughout the movie, Serizawa speaks only one or two lines at a time, mostly while looking at the camera with a half-dazed or half-crazed expression on his face — a look that gives the impression of a mystic rather than a brilliant scientist. Captain Russell Hampton Our next character of color is so far down the cast list pecking order that audiences might not remember his name. That's understandable, seeing as Captain Russell Hampton's, primary function is to enforce orders given by his white superior officer. He picks the white men up from the research facility so that they can talk to his white male boss about how best to fix the problems they face. Unnamed Bus Driver The last person of color with a significant speaking part is an unnamed bus driver, who deserves mention if for no other reason than that he is may be the smartest, most put-together character in the movie. While he's driving a bus full of children out of San Francisco for their safety, the Golden Gate Bridge comes under attack. This bus driver has the sense to drive around police cars blocking the bridge to save his charges. Our brilliant driver has only one line in the whole film and receives no name (or photo, apparently). Sandra Brody Zeroing in on the movie's female characters there's Sandra Brody. She is wife to Joe Brody (the nuclear plant manager obsessed with finding the truth at the beginning of the film) and mother of the film's protagonist, Ford. She is easily the most well-developed of the three female characters but within the first 10 minutes of the movie, she is killed. She then becomes motivation for her husband to pursue the truth, rather than a character who moves the plot herself. Elle Brody Elle Brody, wife to protagonist Ford Brody, only serves the movie as, again, motivation for her husband. She is the person Ford must save to avoid sharing his father's fate. Though Elle appears to be a doctor or a nurse of some kind, we never see her serving in that capacity. Image Credit: Warner Bros. Picture via Image Credit: Warner Bros. Picture via IMDB Every time Elle is on screen, she is worried about Ford or her child. You would suppose that a doctor serving in a hospital during a time of crisis might also be busy tending to her patients, particularly after she sends her son away to be safe. Sadly, however, all Elle does is worry, run and gape at the camera. Vivienne Graham Speaking of gaping at the camera, no one does that better than Vivienne Graham, the scientist second-in-command to Serizawa. Unfortunately, Graham does not act like a scientist. When the situation turns dire, Graham phrases almost all of her urgent information as questions rather than statements, submitting herself to the authority of the men around her (who, by the way, never answer those questions). Graham likely knows as much about the kaiju situation as Serizawa, and certainly more than the Americans. Yet the film paints her as completely deferential to the men around her, even when she should know better than they do. In case you were wondering, no, Godzilla does not pass the Bechdel test. The women never see each other, let alone say anything to one another. Admiral William Stenz In contrast, the characters in Godzilla who act as their own agents and move the plot forward are white men. Admiral William Stenz, a white male character, causes many of the confrontations and consequences in the movie. His actions may be controversial but at least they are actions. While he may be so narrowly focused on short-term that he makes poor choices at least the scripts affords him the chance to make choices at all. Joe Brody Joe Brody, a nuclear plant manager and nuclear physicist, is apparently the only person who can figure out that the monster is emitting an elecrtomagnetic pulse at the beginning of the movie. The league of MONARCH scientists, led by a Japanese man and a woman, apparently couldn't figure it out in 15 years; they had to have Brody tell them. Ford Brody Ford Brody is an agent. He takes action, pushes the plot forward and does everything he can to reunite with his family. Again another male character who is white and fully realized. The message that Godzilla perpetuates is that when disaster strikes, white men, and only white men, can take action. It seems that 10 years wasn't long enough for the writers to bring their minority characters into the 21st century.

Alright guys, it's getting real. We've been sitting back for a while getting excited about data transfer speeds in the lab and early trials of Li-Fi, but engineers in Germany have reportedly just gone and achieved blisteringly fast wireless speeds of 6 Gbps over a distance of 37 kilometres - in a real-world setting. In other words, they nailed speeds fast enough to download the entire contents of a DVD in 10 seconds. Or six high-def episode of Game of Thrones instantly, all without a cable in sight, which sounds pretty good to us. If verified, the accomplishment will beat the previous wireless transfer world record by a factor of 10. To be clear, the team hasn't published their results in a peer-reviewed journal just yet, so we need to take the announcement with a skeptical pinch of salt for now. But if it all checks out, it's pretty exciting stuff. Although we've achieved faster speeds than this before - you might remember that last year researchers transferred data wirelessly at a rate of 1 Tbps - the research usually happens in a lab, or using technology that would require us to change the way we connect to the internet, like Li-Fi. The new German achievement, on the other hand, was made by simply blasting a radio signal between a 45-storey tower in central Cologne to the Space Observation Radar in Wachtberg, almost 37 km (23 miles) away. The research was run by an international collaboration of researchers called ACCESS (Advanced E Band Satellite Link Studies). To achieve such blistering speeds, the researchers used electromagnetic waves called millimetre waves to send their data in the 71-76 GHz radio frequency band, which is usually reserved for terrestrial and satellite broadcasting - so it's a whole lot less congested than lower frequency bands. Millimetre waves are found in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared waves, and as this trial shows, they're able to transmit data much faster, and over longer distances, than the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz frequency bands we generally use at the moment. In order to transmit and receive these millimetre waves effectively, the researchers used a system known as fully monolithically integrated millimetre wave circuits (MMICs), which basically allows them to amplify the signal and send it over large distances. This system has two key parts. The first is a transmitter, which helps amplify the signal up to 1 watt, thanks to gallium-nitride amplifiers. That's useful, but no matter how strong the signal starts out, as it travels, it gradually gets weaker. And that's where the second new technology comes in - the researchers were able to develop a series of low-noise amplifiers that are sensitive enough to pick up the weakest of signals. As mentioned earlier, we need to have this result verified before we can get too excited, but there are already some promising applications of this work - without even getting into those cray download speeds. One thing the researchers already have in mind is supplying rural and remote regions with internet access. According to the team, 250 internet connections could be supplied with 24 Mbps ADSL using their system. That would be pretty incredible for areas that don't have the infrastructure for internet currently, or that have lost it due to a natural disaster. In fact, eventually, the technology could replace the need for optical fibre altogether. "Terrestrial radio transmissions in E-band are suitable as a cost-effective replacement for deployment of optical fibre or as ad-hoc networks in the case of crises and catastrophe, and for connecting base stations in the backhaul of mobile communication systems," the release explains. It's a pretty exciting time to be online.

Dragon Priests are powerful dungeon bosses who wield some of the best collectible unique items in Skyrim - the Dragon Priest Masks. They are unique and there are only 10 of them in Skyrim (not including DLCs). Unfortunately, vanilla Skyrim used the same texture for all of them and they all looked uninteresting -it doesn't give justice to the power and uniqueness of these collectible artifacts. So, I created these new textures to truly show that each of them isone-of-a-kind with a sinister BAD-ASS look! These new textures now represent the true EVIL nature of the masks.Version 2.0 - This is a high resolution texture replacer for the 10 Dragon Priest Masks:Konahrik, Hevnoraak, Krosis, Morokei, Nahkriin, Otar, Rahgot, Vokun, Volsung and Wooden Mask.Version 2.1 - This is the stand-alone (non-replacer) version of the Unique Dragon Priest Masks.They are craftable and enchantable. Compatible with any replacer mod for the Dragon Priest Masks.- Extract the archive contents into your Skyrim data folder. Enjoy!- Extract the archive contents into your Skyrim data folder and activate the included ".esp" file in your load order.Credits & Permissions:Most of these textures are hand-made by me, so please endorse if you like it andgive credits and ask permission if you want to use it in your own mods.SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING FOR THE COLLABORATIVE EFFORT: MaidenUSA - for the development of the standalone version and assistance with normal maps skunky123 & the "Mystery Modder" - for helping improve the new normal maps EbrithilUmaroth - for the NMM installer ScriptVERSION UPDATE LOG:VERSION 2.2 - All-in-one NMM installer package releasedVERSION 2.1 - Stand-alone Edition releasedVERSION 2.0 - Unique Hoods & Enhanced Normal MapsVERSION 1.2a/b - Konahrik Mask releasedVERSION 1.2 - Uploaded the correct default mask version for Otar & Wooden maskVERSION 1.1 - Updated Masks for Morokei and OtarVERSION 1.0 - INITIAL RELEASE[size=15]Version 2.0[/size] - Unique Masks with Unique Hoods HD and Enhanced Normal MapsLatest Video showing the Version 2.0 Masks with Hoods[size=15]Version 1.2[/size] - Mask only with Vanilla Hood & Normal Map

Andy Murray kept a bedside vigil in a Melbourne hospital on Saturday night while doctors monitored the condition of his 58-year-old father-in-law, Nigel Sears, who collapsed earlier in the stands at the Australian Open. Murray won through to the fourth round, unaware of what had happened while he was on court, then rushed immediately to the hospital about a mile from the tournament venue to be with Sears, whose daughter, Murray’s wife Kim, is at home in London awaiting the arrival of their first child. Andy Murray’s father-in-law Nigel Sears collapses during Ana Ivanovic match Read more Murray’s continued participation in the tournament was not immediately in doubt, although he had said earlier he would leave Melbourne if news came through that his wife was about to give birth imminently. If Murray thought Kim’s father’s collapse was sufficiently distressing for her that he needed to be with her – with the birth expected in the next few weeks – it is possible he could decide to go home early. His long-time friend and Great Britain Davis Cup captain Leon Smith, said, “If Nigel is absolutely fine, it will be business as usual. But obviously Andy needs to find out what exactly happened.” Andy Murray beats João Sousa at Australian Open in extraordinary circumstances Read more Sears had been watching the player he coaches, the former world No1 Ana Ivanovic, against the American Madison Keys on the tournament’s main court, the Rod Laver Arena, which adjoins the court where Murray was playing, Margaret Court Arena. ESPN reported there was “a pool of blood” where Sears collapsed and fell after the first game of the second set. There were gasps around the arena and Ivanovic, alerted to movement in the stands, looked up to her box and was heard on the courtside microphone saying, “I think it’s my coach.” Medics applied a defibrillator and, after attending to him for 20 minutes, carried Sears away on a stretcher. Andy Murray v João Sousa, Madison Keys v Ana Ivanovic: Australian Open 2016 – live! | Les Roopanarine Read more While play was suspended for 50 minutes, Ivanovic told friends in the locker room that “Nigel had similar episodes before”. She was visibly upset on her return, lost in three sets and later cancelled her scheduled press conference. Within moments of beating the Portuguese João Sousa 6-2, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 in two hours and 24 minutes, Murray was met at the end of the players’ tunnel by his mother, Judy, who took him into a quiet room and told him what had happened. The world No2 dashed past waiting journalists through the corridors of the complex to a waiting car, still in his match kit with his bag over his shoulder. His brother, Jamie, who had been liaising with the tournament director, Craig Tiley, said Sears was “undergoing tests” but was “conscious, talking and sitting up”. He had had an ECG heart test in the ambulance and again at the Epworth Hospital in nearby Richmond. The hospital later described Sears’s condition as “stable”. Wimbledon referee Andrew Jarrett, who is working here as an assistant referee, accompanied Sears in the ambulance. “It was very worrying to begin with and, when I saw him lying on the steps, he looked so grey facially,” he said. “They gave Nige an ECG in the ambulance on the way to hospital and another when he got there. The results of both of those were fine. Now they are doing some blood test on him, which will more accurately determine what the problem is. “I was a lot happier when I left the hospital than when I arrived. He was totally conscious and talking very normally. All he wanted to know was how Ana’s match was going. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is discharged from the hospital in the morning.” He added: “I’m not quite sure how all the blood ended up on the steps. I saw no sign of Nigel cutting his head at all but the sleeve of his tracksuit was bloodied, and maybe the medics pushed something into his arm.”

THIS PROGRAMME - THE PLANTATION OF IRELAND IN THE COUNTIES OF ARMAGH AND TYRONE. Thursday 15 August 2002, 9.02 am - 9.30 am. Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at six critical moments across the last 1,000 years. Listen to - introduction Listen to - lives of the indigenous people Listen to - flight of the Earls. Listen to - the Plantation implemented Listen to - rebellion against the planters Read the original sources..>> The Plantation of Ireland - Introduction Ulster, one of the four ancient provinces of Ireland, remained largely independent of English rule until the end of the 16th century. During the 16th century the English had tried to break the powers of the Gaelic overlords primarily through military conquest. Many of the Gaelic gentry were attracted by the security of land title that the Crown promised. The seizing of land by expansionist overlords, such as Hugh O'Neill, had created great resentment among the lesser lords. Many of this class had fought against O'Neill and initially welcomed the plantation. Ireland at the time of the Spanish Armada: an Irish chief entertained by a bard and harper - from a series of woodcuts from The Image of Irelande by John Derrick, 1581. The plantation period the programme analyses is the half century between the Tudor conquest of Ulster in the 1590s to the rebellion of the Ulster Irish in 1641. The Plantation During the period of mid 16th century to mid 17th century Ulster is unique in being the only place to be colonized on a major scale within Europe. James 1 was closely involved in the planning. The official government sponsored plantation of Ulster (previous plantation schemes had been privately organized) began in 1610, initially with the co-operation of many Irish landowners. The Ulster Plantation, like earlier 16th century plantations in Leix, Offaly and Munster, was chiefly driven by the English government's desire for financial gain and increased security, pragmatic concerns rather than a political or religious crusade. A survey of the Estate of the Plantation of the County of Londonderry taken in 1624 by Sir Thomas Philips. The aim was: To replace Gaelic law with English law. protect against future alliances between a Gaelic Ulster and Spain. Establish the king's title to confiscated lands. Offer land to English servitors and settlers. There were certain factors that made the plantation possible, including: the Flight of the Earls( Gaelic Lords opposed to England including the 'Great O'Neill'), the availability of vast church lands and the confiscation of land following a series of rebellions made unprecedented amounts of territory available for colonisation. 1n 1610 the structure of the plantation was finalised. It involved three grades of grantees of land: English and Scottish 'undertakers' ( on whom the chief responsibility for the plantation was to fall ), Servitors ( English crown servants in Ireland ) and native Irish freeholders. While several hundred Irish remained landowners, threee times as much land was acquired by English and Scottish grantees. Effects of the Plantation on the Ulster Irish The Irish remained in the majority on all estates. Some poorer Irish may have benefitted from the secure leases offered by servitors and undertakers. Only the 'kerne', the remaining soldiers or swordsmen of the Gaelic lords were expelled, living as outlaws in the woods or forcibly shipped abroad. However, those Irish who remained on plantation lands were rarely given ownership. This combined with the flight or death of the greatest of the lords had a grave impact on the whole of Gaelic society. Thomas Raven's map of land division in Ulster, circa 1625. The Irish were not forcibly pushed onto poor and marginal land but in some counties, although not all, English and Scots settlers did increasingly dominate the more fertile land. The 1641 rebellion. Many of the smaller landowners who had welcomed the plantation and the opportunity to formalise ownership of their land. Gradually however, and partly as a result of their own failure to adapt to a commercial economy, this group became disaffected. It was among this class, the gentry class, that resentment really became overwhelming and it was they who initiated the 1641 rebellion against the settlers. Although tens of thousands of British settled, they remained in the minority. Many of the Ulster Irish were resentful and they saw their opportunity as King Charles was quarrelled with his Parliament. Together they rose in rebellion and overwhelmed the Planters over almost the whole of Ulster. Atrocities against the settlers by the local population took place. Thousands were killed and made homeless. The British Crown lost control of almost the whole of Ulster as a civil war began in England. War raged in Ulster for many years, and an end to the turmoil was brought about only by the arrival of Cromwell in 1649. Experts Dr Jonathan Bardon of Queen's University, Belfast. Dr Hiram Morgan of University College, Cork. Professor Nicholas Canny of the National University of Ireland in Galway. Roddy Hegarty of Federation for Ulster Local Studies.

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton gave a speech before a meeting of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just after taking the stage, an as-yet unnamed woman rose from the crowd and threw something at her. Thankfully, Clinton was unharmed, ducking and joking, “Was that a bat?…Is that somebody throwing something at me? Is that part of Cirque de Soleil? My goodness, I didn’t know that solid waste management was so controversial. Thank goodness she didn’t play softball like I did.” Here is a video, courtesy of ABC: The would-be assailant was taken into custody and is said to have later revealed that the item in question was a shoe, naturally. Clinton and Bush: Just more of the same. (Don’t throw shoes at people.)

A combination photo of a Boeing 737 MAX before the opening of the 52nd Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris on June 16, 2017, and shareholders line up to view Bombardier’s CS300 aircraft following their annual general meeting in Mirabel, Quebec on April 29, 2016. (Reuters Photographer/Reuters) The U.S. government moved to impose tariffs on Canadian-made jetliners Tuesday when it ruled in favor of a complaint by U.S. aircraft maker Boeing that claimed rival Bombardier is receiving unfair government subsidies. The Commerce Department suggested that the tariffs could be as high as 219 percent. The action threatens to further inflame trade tensions between the two North American neighbors. Earlier this year, Commerce moved to impose new duties on the import of Canadian soft lumber, and President Trump has signaled his interest in renegotiating the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which involves Mexico, the United States and Canada. Bombardier has sold aircraft to U.S. airlines for decades. But Boeing's complaint follows a multibillion-dollar deal struck between Bombardier and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines for 75 C series CS100s, a commercial jet that seats about 100 passengers. Following the deal, Boeing formally asked Commerce to investigate what it called illegal Canadian government subsidies and unfair pricing practices that allegedly have given Bombardier an unfair advantage as it competes for business in the United States. "Without bailout money from Ottawa and the Quebec provincial government [Bombardier] would probably be bankrupt," said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant whose think tank receives funding from Boeing. "What Boeing is really saying here is that Bombardier has an unfair advantage because Canadian taxpayers are covering part of its cost." Bombardier is slated to begin delivering the planes next year, and any new duties imposed by the Commerce Department would apply to the present Delta-Bombardier deal, which was reached in 2016. The exact amount of any new tariffs is unlikely to be finalized until early next year. Even then, Canada could potentially pursue a case against the United States at the World Trade Organization. A decision ultimately to impose tariffs could have ripple effects in Northern Ireland, where Bombardier has about 4,000 employees. The Trump administration did not take an official position on the matter before Tuesday evening's trade decision. But British and Canadian leaders have publicly urged the Trump administration not to impose tariffs. The Guardian reported this month that British Prime Minister Theresa May raised the issue privately with President Trump after coming under political pressure in Britain. And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested this month that his government might retaliate directly against Boeing through decisions on military purchasing agreements. The Canadian military is considering whether to buy Boeing's F-18 Super Hornets for the Canadian military, and Trudeau suggested in a Sept. 18 news conference that he would abandon the purchase as a result of Boeing's complaint against Bombardier. "We won't do business with a company that's busy trying to sue us and put our aerospace workers out of business," Trudeau said in the news conference. Some have questioned why Boeing would wade into international geopolitics in the first place. Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace industry analyst with the Teal Group, described Boeing's action as a "self-inflicted wound" that could damage the company's business relationships with the Canadian military and with Delta. "This is a dangerous moment for Boeing," Aboulafia said. "They clearly saw this as an opportunity to walk in tandem with Donald Trump and appeal to his nationalist economic base." In a statement, Bombardier called the proposed 219 percent tariff "absurd and divorced from the reality" of how multibillion-dollar aircraft programs are typically financed. "This result underscores what we have been saying for months: the U.S. trade laws were never intended to be used in this manner, and Boeing is seeking to use a skewed process to stifle competition," Bombardier's statement said. Boeing hailed the decision. "Global trade works only if everyone plays by the rules that we've all endorsed to ensure fair competition, as adjudicated by independent national and international bodies," Boeing said in a statement. "This dispute has nothing to do with limiting innovation or competition, which we welcome. Rather, it has everything to do with maintaining a level playing field and ensuring that aerospace companies abide by trade agreements." The move follows another trade dispute between the United States and its northern neighbor. For years, the United States lumber industry had complained that because Canadian lumber is subsidized by the government, the imports make it difficult for U.S. companies to compete. Over the summer, the Trump administration called for tariffs on imports of softwood lumber. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at the time that he was optimistic that the countries would be able to "reach a negotiated solution," and the Commerce Department recently announced a delay in proceedings to work one out. Still, the Trump administration has generally taken a one-on-one stance toward trade, threatening to remove the United States from multinational regional accords such as NAFTA. But that has received pushback, including from Thomas Donohue, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week that, "quitting NAFTA would be an economic, political and national-security disaster." Christian Davenport contributed to this report.

MTG 080: Liam “Hitman” Harrison Discusses His Next Big Fight, Toughest Thai Opponents, and Turning Pro at 14 Muay Thai Guy Podcast – Episode 80 Liam “The Hitman” Harrison started fighting professionally at 14 years of age and hasn’t looked back since. By fighting top Thai opponents like Saenchai, Pakorn, Anuwat and a number of others, Liam has built his reputation as one of the toughest, most skilled foreign fighters in the world. In my interview with Liam, we discuss a variety of topics including: How he started training at age of 13 and then began fighting shortly after. Why Bad Company Gym in Leeds, UK is one of the top gyms in the world with multiple world champion fighters. What his first trip to Thailand was like and how he has been returning regularly to train and fight at the mecca of Muay Thai. What his day-to-day training was like while in Thailand. Why he took days off during training camps even though his Thai training partners would laugh and make fun of him. His toughest opponents that he’s fought and what made them so tough. His thoughts on his recent fight against Pakorn at the Yokkao show. Why he doesn’t think he’ll fight for GLORY again unless the offer/opportunity is right. His thoughts on the judging and general fighting style that GLORY offers. Who his next opponent is and what promotion it is on! How Muay Thai has become a more household name in the UK. And much, much more! Click Here or on the podcast player at the top of the page to listen to MTG 079: Liam “Hitman” Harrison Discusses His Next Big Fight, Toughest Thai Opponents, and Turning Pro at 14 Make sure to follow Liam on Facebook and on Twitter. If you like the podcast make sure to leave a review and rating to help the show grow! The more reviews I get, the more popular the show will get and the more I can help spread this awesome sport! Please follow and like us: Like this: Like Loading...

Contents show] Alteration Edit Fundamental Edit Absorbing Grasp : The caster absorbs <10> points of health from the touched target. Base Cost: 50 : The caster absorbs points of health from the touched target. Light (Rank I) : The caster creates a bright hovering light that lasts for <300> seconds. Base Cost: 150 : The caster creates a bright hovering light that lasts for seconds. Mage Armor (Rank I): Improves the caster's armor rating by <20> points for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 100 Advanced (25) Edit Animate Lockpick : The caster infuses simple inanimate lockpicks with life, making them able to pick locks almost by themselves. However, the spell requires a piece of quicksilver ore to work properly. Base Cost: 300 : The caster infuses simple inanimate lockpicks with life, making them able to pick locks almost by themselves. However, the spell requires a piece of quicksilver ore to work properly. Featherfalling : The caster's feet become surrounded by a telekinetic field that negates all falling damage for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 150 : The caster's feet become surrounded by a telekinetic field that negates all falling damage for seconds. Light (Rank II) : The caster creates a ball of bright light that lasts <60> seconds and sticks where it strikes. Base Cost: 84 : The caster creates a ball of bright light that lasts seconds and sticks where it strikes. Mage Armor (Rank II) : Improves the caster's armor rating by <30> points for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 150 : Improves the caster's armor rating by points for seconds. Transmute: Muscles (Rank I): The caster's raw strength and body tissue becomes magically reinforced. Therefore, unarmed damage, health and carrying capacity are increased by <25> points for <40> seconds. Base Cost: 250 Superior (50) Edit Absorb Health : The caster absorbs <10> points of health per second from the target. Base Cost: 100 : The caster absorbs points of health per second from the target. Absorb Stamina : The caster absorbs <10> points of stamina per second from the target. Base Cost: 100 : The caster absorbs points of stamina per second from the target. Detect Life : The caster detects all nearby living beings and can sense them even through walls. Base Cost: 50 : The caster detects all nearby living beings and can sense them even through walls. Mage Armor (Rank III) : Improves the caster's armor rating by <40> points for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 200 : Improves the caster's armor rating by points for seconds. Mage Shield (Rank I) : Improves the target's armor rating by <80> points for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 200 : Improves the target's armor rating by points for seconds. Telekinetic Hand : The caster grabs the target item from afar. It then can be either taken or thrown. Base Cost: 170 : The caster grabs the target item from afar. It then can be either taken or thrown. Transmute: Water : The caster is able to transmute small amounts of water into air, allowing him to breath underwater for <300> seconds. Also, the caster's ability to swim becomes improved greatly, negating any stamina penalties while swimming, even when wearing armor. Base Cost: 222 : The caster is able to transmute small amounts of water into air, allowing him to breath underwater for seconds. Also, the caster's ability to swim becomes improved greatly, negating any stamina penalties while swimming, even when wearing armor. Transmute: Minerals : Transmutes one piece of unrefined Iron ore to Silver, or Silver ore to Gold if the caster is carrying any. Base Cost: 100 : Transmutes one piece of unrefined Iron ore to Silver, or Silver ore to Gold if the caster is carrying any. Transmute: Muscles (Rank II): The touched target's raw strength and body tissue becomes magically reinforced. Therefore, unarmed damage, health and carrying capacity are increased by <25> points for <45> seconds. Base Cost: 300 Sophisticated (75) Edit Absorb Magicka : The caster absorbs <10> points of magicka per second from the target. Base Cost: 120 : The caster absorbs points of magicka per second from the target. Arcane Mending : The caster mends the target automaton or atronach telekinetically, restorating <75> points of health. Base Cost: 150 : The caster mends the target automaton or atronach telekinetically, restorating points of health. Detect Death : The caster detects all nearby dead and can sense them even through walls. Base Cost: 75 : The caster detects all nearby dead and can sense them even through walls. Mage Armor (Rank IV) : Improves the caster's armor rating by <50> points for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 250 : Improves the caster's armor rating by points for seconds. Mage Shield (Rank II) : Improves the target's armor rating by <120> points for <60> seconds. Base Cost: 300 : Improves the target's armor rating by points for seconds. Paralyze (Rank I) : The caster tries to telekinetically imprison the target for <1> seconds. Base Cost: 200 : The caster tries to telekinetically imprison the target for seconds. Polymorph : The caster attempts to turn the target into a harmless animal for <30> seconds. Although potent, the spell is rumored to be very unstable, and various side-effects have been reknown to be the consequence of its casting... Base Cost: 600 : The caster attempts to turn the target into a harmless animal for seconds. Although potent, the spell is rumored to be very unstable, and various side-effects have been reknown to be the consequence of its casting... Telekinetic Disarray : The caster magically removes all worn equipment from the target, though one should beware. Unpredictable side-effects like cloth-phobia might occur. Base Cost: 500 : The caster magically removes all worn equipment from the target, though one should beware. Unpredictable side-effects like cloth-phobia might occur. Telekinetic Nova: The caster evokes an explosion of telekinetic forces, maiming all nearby targets and sending them flying through the air. Base Cost: 500 Master (100) Edit Absorb Essence : The caster absorbs <10> points of health, magicka and stamina per second from the target. Base Cost: 200 : The caster absorbs points of health, magicka and stamina per second from the target. Animate Lock : The caster can infuse almost any lock with magic energies, causing it to unlock itself on his behalf. Base Cost: 750 : The caster can infuse almost any lock with magic energies, causing it to unlock itself on his behalf. Etherealness : The target's body is dematerialized, becoming practically invulnerable for as long as the caster doesn't interact with the environment. Base Cost: 0 : The target's body is dematerialized, becoming practically invulnerable for as long as the caster doesn't interact with the environment. Lighting Speed : The caster moves with meteoric speed, making everything slow down almost to motionlessness for <3> seconds. Base Cost: 1200 : The caster moves with meteoric speed, making everything slow down almost to motionlessness for seconds. Mage Armor (Rank V) : The caster creates an almost unpenetrable force field that negates nearly all physical damage taken for <7> seconds. Base Cost: 1000 : The caster creates an almost unpenetrable force field that negates nearly all physical damage taken for seconds. Mage Shield (Rank III) : The caster surrounds the target with an almost unpenetrable force field that negates nearly all physical damage for <4> seconds. Base Cost: 1000 : The caster surrounds the target with an almost unpenetrable force field that negates nearly all physical damage for seconds. Paralyze (Rank II) : The caster tries to paralyze all nearby beings for <1> seconds. Base Cost: 937 : The caster tries to paralyze all nearby beings for <1> seconds. Telekinetic Blast : The caster unleashes a wave of telekinetic force that will maim every single bone of the targets while sending them flying through the air. Base Cost: 1000 : The caster unleashes a wave of telekinetic force that will maim every single bone of the targets while sending them flying through the air. Telekinetic Execution : The caster attempts to break every single bone of the target while casting it miles into the air, ensuring that it's maimed for good. Base Cost: 1600 : The caster attempts to break every single bone of the target while casting it miles into the air, ensuring that it's maimed for good. Telekinetic Grab : The caster grabs the target from afar. It then can be either taken or thrown. Base Cost: 500 : The caster grabs the target from afar. It then can be either taken or thrown. Transcendance (Rank I) : The caster's body is dematerialized, becoming practically invulnerable for as long as the caster doesn't interact with the environment. Base Cost: 1200 : The caster's body is dematerialized, becoming practically invulnerable for as long as the caster doesn't interact with the environment. Transcendance (Rank II) : The target's body is dematerialized, becoming practically invulnerable for as long as the caster doesn't interact with the environment. Base Cost: 1200 : The target's body is dematerialized, becoming practically invulnerable for as long as the caster doesn't interact with the environment. Transmute: Corpus: The caster tries to transmute the target into slimy ectoplasm, thereby killing it instantly and generating useful alchemy ingredients. Base Cost: 1000 Conjuration Edit Fundamental Edit Bound Sword Conjure Familiar Raise Zombie Raise Dead (Rank I) Summon Ghostly Wolf Summon Skeletal Soldier Summon Swarm (Rank I) Advanced (25) Edit Bound Axe Conjure Flaming Familiar Necromantic Empowerment (Rank I) Raise Dead (Rank II) Soulcairn Summoning (Rank I) Soul Trap (Rank I) Summon Ghostly Mudcrab Summon Ghostly Hound Summon Skeletal Archer Summon Skeletal Hero Summon Skeletal Warlock Summon Swarm (Rank II) Superior (50) Edit Banish Deadra (Rank I) Conjure Flame Atronach Necromantic Empowerment (Rank II) Raise Dead (Rank III) Soulcairn Summoning (Rank II) Soul Trap (Rank II) Spectral Arrow Summon Ghostly Archer Summon Ghostly Bear Summon Ghostly Berserker Summon Ghostly Troll Summon Ghostly Warrior Teleport (Rank I): First cast marks an area. Second cast teleports you back to that mark, destroying it. Don't teleport out of Sovngarde (or anywhere else you don't have a way of getting back to). Sophisticated (75) Edit Banish Daedra (Rank II) Bound Bow Conjure Dragon Priest Conjure Frost Atronach Conjure Storm Atronach Command Daedra Expel Daedra Raise Dead (Rank IV) Soulcairn Summoning (Rank III) Summon Ghostly Sabrecat Summon Ghostly Warlock Summon Ghostly Wraith Teleport Vitals: Deals 5 damage to living enemies every second because you teleported something important outside of their bodies. Master (100) Edit Conjure Dremora Lord Conjure Flame Thrall Conjure Frost Thrall Conjure Storm Thrall Conjure Dremora Archer Conjure Dremora Archmage Conjure Invisible Stalker Raise Dead (Rank V) Summon Ghostly Dragonpriest Summon Ghostly Lich Summon Ghostly Steed: Summons a very fast horse. While riding, you can't be hurt. Summon Ghostly Werewolf Teleport (Rank II): Teleports you to a place you can see. Destruction Edit All spells stats are with the appropriate perk (fundamental destruction, advanced destruction, etc.), and with destruction at 100. No other relevant perks are included, unless otherwise noted. Costs are not certain; Archmage robes may have been equipped during testing. Fundamental Edit Advanced (25) Edit Superior (50) Edit Fireball: Deals 160 points of damage to an area. Does not hurt the caster at point-blank range. Will hurt followers. Costs 60 magicka. Sophisticated (75) Edit Firebolt: Deals 325 points of damage. Costs 135 magicka. Master (100) Edit Arcane Volley: Deals lots of damage every second (not sure how much). Pierces magical resistances (not sure which ones). Costs 78 magicka/second. Ice Storm: Makes a blizzard which does 150 cold to everything inside it every second. Lasts 60 seconds. Costs 427 magicka. Lightning Cascade: Outside only; still sometimes does not work. Lightning bolts strike the target from above over and over. A roof will interfere. Costs 579 magicka. Lightning Vortex: Almost certainly bugged. Does 450 lightning damage per second for 38 magicka/second. Probably meant to be 380 magicka/second. Venomous Shock: 120 poison damage per second for 2 seconds. 30 poison damage for 10 seconds. 231 magicka/second. Illusion Edit Fundamental Edit Clairvoyance - Still testing effects Still testing effects Frightening Orb - Still testing effects Still testing effects Charming Touch - The target will stop hostilities towards caster for 42 seconds. Exhausts 77 Magicka. The target will stop hostilities towards caster for 42 seconds. Lionheart - The target will not flee battle, gains 26 stamina, and magicka and regenerates these attributes 52% faster for 42 seconds. Exhausts 77 Magicka The target will not flee battle, gains 26 stamina, and magicka and regenerates these attributes 52% faster for 42 seconds. Dark Vision - Still testing effects Advanced (25) Edit Superior (50) Edit Sophisticated (75) Edit Master (100) Edit Restoration Edit Fundamental Edit Arcane Ward (Rank I): The caster creates a protective shield that negates a moderate amount of physical damage and negates up to <20> points of spell damage. Base Cost: 50 The caster creates a protective shield that negates a moderate amount of physical damage and negates up to points of spell damage. Healing Aura (Rank I): The caster becomes surrounded by healing energy that restores health slowly but steadily for a long time. Base Cost: 175 Advanced (25) Edit Arcane Ward (Rank II) : The caster creates a protective shield that negates a great amount of physical damage and negates up to < 40> points of spell damage. Base Cost: 70 : The caster creates a protective shield that negates a great amount of physical damage and negates up to < points of spell damage. Dispel Soul Gems : The caster sets free all souls currently captured in carried soul gems. Base Cost 150 : The caster sets free all souls currently captured in carried soul gems. Heal Self (Rank I) : Heals the caster <10> points per second. Base Cost: 40 Heal Self (Rank II) : Heals the caster by < 20> points. The spell does not affect undead, atronachs and automatons. Base Cost: 100 : Heals the caster by < points. The spell does not affect undead, atronachs and automatons. Healing Hands (Rank I) : Heals the target by < 5> points per second, but not the undead, atronachs or constructs. Base Cost: 25 : Heals the target by < points per second, but not the undead, atronachs or constructs. Turn Undead (Rank I) : The caster causes Undead up to level < 6> to flee for <30> seconds. Base Cost: 84 : The caster causes Undead up to level < to flee for seconds. Protection From Poison (Rank I) : The caster's body becomes protected by positive energies that weaken the effects of poison by <20> percent for one hour. Base Cost: 150 : The caster's body becomes protected by positive energies that weaken the effects of poison by percent for one hour. Sunfire : The caster evokes a ball of searing sunlight that deals <50> points of sun damage to any undead. Base Cost: 75 : The caster evokes a ball of searing sunlight that deals points of sun damage to any undead. Terminate Undead (Rank I): The caster deals <50> damage to the target Undead. Base Cost: 200 Superior (50) Edit Arcane Disjunction (Rank I) : The caster evokes a mystic energy that decreases the target's magic resistance by <5>% for <7> seconds. Base Cost: 400 : The caster evokes a mystic energy that decreases the target's magic resistance by for seconds. Arcane Ward (Rank III): The caster creates a protective shield that negates a great amount of physical damage and negates up to <60> points of spell damage and has a chance to reflect a fraction of absorbed spells. Also renders the caster immune to most paralyzing effects. Base Cost: 100 Dispel (Rank I) : All magical effects and poisons are removed from the caster. Base Cost: 480 : All magical effects and poisons are removed from the caster. Heal Self (Rank III) : Heals the caster by <40> points. The spell does not affect undead, atronachs and automatons. Base Cost: 150 Heals the caster by points. The spell does not affect undead, atronachs and automatons. Healing Aura (Rank II): The touched target becomes surrounded by healing energy that restores health slowly but steadily for a long time. Base Cost: 200 Healing Hands (Rank II) : Heals the target by < 30> points, but not undead, atronachs or machines. Base Cost: 80 : Heals the target by < points, but not undead, atronachs or machines. Healing Ray : The caster evokes a ray of healing energy, restoring <60> health to the target each second. Base Cost: 125 : The caster evokes a ray of healing energy, restoring health to the target each second. Protection From Poison (Rank II): The touched target's body becomes protected by positive energies that weaken the effects of poison by <20> percent for one hour. Base Cost: 200 Repel Undead (Rank I) : The caster causes Undead up to level <8> to flee for <30> seconds. Base Cost: 115 : The caster causes Undead up to level to flee for seconds. Sunburst: The caster evokes a searing explosion of sunlight that deals <100> points of sun damage any hit undead. Base Cost: 325 The caster evokes a searing explosion of sunlight that deals points of sun damage any hit undead. Terminate Undead (Rank II) : The caster deals <100> damage to all undead beings the evoked spell hits. Base Cost: 400 : The caster deals damage to all undead beings the evoked spell hits. Turn Undead (Rank II): The caster causes Undead up to level <13> to flee for <30> seconds. Base Cost: 168 Sophisticated (75) Edit Arcane Disjunction (Rank II) : The caster evokes a mystic energy that decreases the target's magic resistance by <15>% for as long as the spell is channeled. Base Cost: 400 : The caster evokes a mystic energy that decreases the target's magic resistance by for as long as the spell is channeled. Arcane Ward (Rank IV): The caster creates a protective shield that negates a great amount of physical damage and negates up to <80> points of spell damage and always reflects a fraction of absorbed spells. It also renders the caster immune to most paralyzing and life-draining effects. Base Cost: 150 Circle of protection : Undead up to level < 20> entering the circle will flee. Base Cost: 171 : Undead up to level < entering the circle will flee. Healing Aura (Rank III): The caster becomes surrounded by powerful healing energy that restores health passively for a long time. The spell also renders the caster immune to almost all magical drain and absorb effects. Base Cost: 400 Healing Aura (Rank IV): The touched target becomes surrounded by powerful healing energy that restores health passively for a long time. The spell also renders the target immune to almost all magical drain and absorb effects. Base Cost: 400 Healing Hands (Rank III) : Heals the target by < 50> points per second, but not the undead, atronachs or constructs. Also cures almost all diseases the caster is suffering from. Base Cost: 250 : Heals the target by < points per second, but not the undead, atronachs or constructs. Also cures almost all diseases the caster is suffering from. Repel Undead (Rank II) : The caster causes Undead up to level < 16> to flee for <30> seconds. Base Cost: 353 : The caster causes Undead up to level < to flee for seconds. Turn Undead (Rank III): The caster causes Undead up to level <21> to flee for <30> seconds. Base Cost: 266 Master (100) Edit

The Church of England voted Sunday to consider holding special services when a member of the congregation announces a new gender identity or undergoes gender transformation. The vote took place during the Church of England’s general synod meeting which began Friday. England’s bishops voted 30-2 in favor of the services, which clergymen said would help those who “suffer from transphobia,” the BBC reported Sunday. The vote called the House of Bishops “to consider providing some nationally commended liturgical materials which may be used in parish churches and chaplaincies to provide a pastoral response to the need of transgender people to be affirmed following their long, distressing, and often complex process of transition.” The synod also voted Saturday to ban conversion therapy for LGBT Christians, arguing that the Bible does not condemn gender transition or homosexuality. “As the world listens to us, the world needs to hear us say that LGBT orientation and identity is not a crime,” said the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu. “LGBT orientation and identity is not a sickness. And LGBT orientation and identity is not a sin.” Clergy members voted 127-28 in favor of the changes, and the general congregation members voted 127-48. “I hope that we can make a powerful statement to say that we believe that trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created them, and is present through all the twists and turns of their lives,” Reverend Chris Newlands, who proposed the motion, said. Follow Anders on Twitter Send Tips: anders@dailycallernewsfoundation.org Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Cancer isn't cheap. The total cost of oncology drugs and supportive care medications surged 11.5 percent in 2015 to reach $107 billion globally, according to a new study from IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The spending is based on invoice prices, the amount hospitals or pharmacies paid to distributors. That pace may slow somewhat during the next several years, but it's still likely to grow faster than the rate of inflation. The cost of cancer drugs will rise between 7.5 percent to 10.5 percent annually through 2020, the IMS study said, at a time when the U.S. inflation rate is likely to remain below 2 percent. The rapid rise in cancer drug costs reflects both good and bad news. The numbers are going up partly because of new treatments such as immunotherapy drugs that use the patient's immune system to attack cancer cells. At the same time, drugmakers are also hiking prices on existing drugs. The average annual cost of treatment for cancer patients rose 19 percent to $58,097 in 2014, the study found. That's leading to questions over who'll pay for the increased costs, though patients increasingly bear the brunt, the study said. "Most health systems are struggling to adapt and embrace this evolution -- including the regulatory systems, skilled professionals, diagnostic and treatment infrastructures, and financing mechanisms that are required to serve the needs of cancer patients around the world," said Murray Aitken, IMS Health senior vice president and executive director of the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, in a statement. The pipeline of new therapies and America's National Cancer Moonshot Initiative -- which aims to accelerate cancer research -- demand "urgent attention" to questions such as who ends up financing cancer treatments, he said. Patients can find relief through coupons from drugmakers that lower the cost of prescriptions. The report found that the average coupon saves patients about $750 per prescription. The issue of surging drug prices came to the forefront last year when Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, boosted the price of a six-decade old drug by 5,000 percent. While Shkreli became the poster boy for accusations of price-gouging, the practice has grown fairly common in the pharmaceutical industry. The Director, The Cost of Cancer Drugs, Saving History About 20 brand-name prescription drugs have at least quadrupled in price since December 2014. Earlier this year, lawmakers investigating Turing and Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) released thousands of pages of documents that suggest price hikes were designed to boost profits, rather than fund the development of new drugs. As for cancer drugs, some of the new therapies carry mind-boggling prices. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Daratumumab last year for treating multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. The Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) medication was hailed as a "breakthrough" by biotech site FierceBiotech. But it doesn't come cheaply: The IMS study estimates Daratumumab's monthly cost at as much as $14,000 per patient. The typical cost for the first year of treatment is more than $135,000, according to FierceBiotech, which cited J&J. As many cancer patients and their families know, it's difficult to say no to a costly drug treatment if it offers the hope of remission or a longer life. Unfortunately, cancer drug costs are also one of the top causes of personal bankruptcy.

When it comes to putting more money in your pocket, there are two ways to do it: earn more or spend less. [np_storybar title=”‘I once made my own laundry detergent:’ Tips from Canada’s most frugal bloggers” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/2014/11/15/i-once-made-my-own-laundry-detergent-tips-from-canadas-most-frugal-bloggers/”%5D Whether you want to pay down your mortgage or just make ends meet, you can pick up a penny-wise habit or two from these super savers. Read on [/np_storybar] Even if you aren’t in a position to earn more at the moment, a few little spending adjustments made on a daily basis can go a long way. From practical food-buying tricks to reframing the way you think about your finances, we’ve listed some of the easiest tweaks below, including the best from a Reddit thread on quickly cutting your spending. 1. Plan out and cook your own meals. Dining out often is a huge money drain. —MrTimSearle 2. Clean out your fridge and pantry. You’ll find good food you didn’t know you had. —InsaneRay 3. Buy in bulk the things you would normally buy. You’ll get more for your buck. —cjs3 4. Opt for non-canned goods. Fresh produce and dried beans are typically cheaper and healthier than canned items. —BellabitchTheStrange 5. Use coupons. It’s easy to forget coupons you’ve cut out at home so try using an app instead. Cellfire, Coupons.com, and Grocery IQ give you easy and fast access to available coupons and let you send them to a loyalty card. 6. Try the grocery store brand. If you like the taste, stick with it, and you’ll save money. —Colonel-Rosa 7. Stop buying microwave dinners. The mark-ups are crazy. You could make better, healthier meals for less. —yawrn 8. Don’t buy more groceries than you actually need or can keep. Throwing away food is the same as throwing away money. —nowgetbacktowork 9. Use a slow cooker. Throw in some veggies, beans, and meat, and you’ll have lunches and dinners for the whole week. —i-hear-banjos 10. Make your own coffee. Those $2 to $4 coffees add up. —StickleyMan 11. Bring your lunch to work. You’ll cut your lunch tab in half or more by making it yourself. —ILikeLampz 12. Stop buying bottled water. Use a glass or refill a bottle with tap water for free. —Cam_Harris 13. Don’t go out to drink. Drinks with dinner can add $10 or more a person, and a night at the bar can easily cost $40. —typographicalerr 14. Avoid your favorite stores. Don’t stop into them “real fast,” don’t visit their websites, and unsubscribe from their emails. You’re less likely to buy something if you never see it in the first place. 15. Track your expenses for a month. Using a tool like Mint.com or simply keeping a running log will help you see how much of your income is spent frivolously. —elderbio 16. Set goals. If you have a plan to stock money away in an emergency fund, for example, you’ll think twice about spending on superfluous things. —Newmoney4me 17. Buy quality items. If you skimp on the important things, you may spend more in the long run. For instance, spending $30 on shoes every six months costs more than spending $60 on a pair that lasts years. —tahlyn 18. Think of your spending in hours instead of dollars. If you make $10 an hour, then that $2 cup of coffee is 12 minutes of your life. You may decide it’s not worth it. —Koketa13 19. Compare prices online. If there’s something you really want but it’s pretty pricey, see if you can find a barely used — but much cheaper — version on websites such as Ebid or Overstock. 20. Before you buy something, ask yourself: What impact is this purchase going to have on my life? That can put an end to impulse spending. —_yertle_the_turtle 21. Change how often you spend on indulgences. Rather than give them up entirely, limit the frequency. For example, if you go to Starbucks daily, try going weekly, and if you go the movies weekly, try once a month. —stringliterals 22. Put half of your paycheck into savings. It forces you to figure out how to live on less. —ntran2 23. Always pay off your credit card at the end of every month. You avoid paying interest and get in the habit of living within your means. —nova_cat 24. Set up auto transfers on your bills so you’re never late. Late fees are a waste. —nowgetbacktowork 25. Get checking account alerts on your phone or opt out of overdraft protection. Otherwise, you’ll pay steep fees for overdrafting your account. —nowgetbacktowork 26. Before you buy something on sale, ask yourself: Would I buy this without the discount? If you’re just buying something because it’s on sale, you probably don’t really need it. 27. Spend your money where you spend your time, and cut the rest. If you’re a runner, you need good shoes, and if you spend a lot of time in the car, you should invest there. This kind of thinking helps you trim the superficial stuff that does not add value to your life. —GreyFoxNinjaFan 28. Wait at least two days before buying anything over $50. You may no longer want it or forget it altogether. —Newmoney4me 29. Trade cable for Netflix. You’ll have access to more TV shows and movies than you can watch for just $7.99 a month. If you like to watch sports, go to the bar or a friend’s house. —Newmoney4me 30. Ask your internet provider if it has any promotional rates. You could see your rate drop by as much as $20. —Aerospacing_Out 31. Buy discounted gift cards. Sites such as CardCash and Raise.com sell gift cards for less than they’re actually worth. Even if you can’t get through the day without your Starbucks latte, you could buy a $100 Starbucks gift card for $89 and save 11%. 32. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions you don’t read. Many people will let them stack up instead of picking up the phone to cancel. —mrhoopers 33. Compare rates of local electric companies. You may no longer be getting the best deal available. —Aerospacing_Out 34. Wear a sweater in the house, and turn down the heat a couple of degrees. Over time, you’ll save on electricity. —MrTimSearle 35. Use a surge protector, and turn it off when you leave the room. If you’re not there, why keep everything on? These tips can help reduce your electricity bill even further. 36. Rethink your cell phone plan. Are you paying for more than you use? Switching to Straight Talk or a similar plan could significantly drop your bill. —Aerospacing_Out 37. Get car insurance quotes. Companies competing for your business may quote you a lower rate. —Aerospacing_Out 38. Look into refinancing your car or home. You could see your payment immediately drop. —Aerospacing_Out 39. Frequent the library. Get books, movies, and music for free. —AnnabellBeaverhausen 40. Buy your clothes from the thrift store. Chances are, no one will be able to tell the difference. —Newmoney4me 41. Ride your bike to work. Not only will you save on car or public transportation costs, you’ll be healthier. —Colonel-Rosa 42. Pay attention to when you’re buying things. You could get a better deal on something depending on the day of the week or month you buy it.

Ezekiel Elliott went to a marijuana dispensary in Seattle before the Cowboys' preseason game and Merril Hoge doesn't want this to turn into a career-ending mistake. (1:18) SEATTLE -- Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones was not pleased to see a video on TMZ that appeared to show Ezekiel Elliott at a marijuana dispensary hours before the rookie running back was set to make his preseason debut. In the video, a man the website reported to be Elliott was seen in Herban Legends in Seattle, but he was not shown making any purchases. "Well, I think that in and of itself the reason we are talking about is in a way part of the learning process," Jones said after the Cowboys' loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday. "But it's not good. It's just not good. It's just not good." Marijuana remains a banned substance in the NFL, though its recreational use is legal in the state of Washington. Elliott carried the ball seven times for 48 yards in the first quarter. Elliott is under investigation by the Columbus, Ohio, attorney's office for an alleged domestic violence incident involving a former girlfriend. Elliott has denied the accusations, but he has yet to be interviewed. The Cowboys have backed Elliott and have not seen his story change. The NFL seems disinclined to become publicly involved in the situation, believing Jones sufficiently rebuked Elliott. But the league continues to monitor the investigation in Ohio, a source told ESPN's Ed Werder, describing Elliott's "pattern of behavior'' as a concern. The TMZ video, however, evidently upset Jones. "Again, that's a part of just really getting the big picture here," Jones said. "No matter if you played at whatever level, there is a picture here of interest. So again, I'm aware of it. I heard the report. I would know how he is, and he needs to look at that. And the other thing is it's just not good."

OTTAWA — The federal government has agreed to give the provinces and territories a 75 per cent share of the tax revenues from the sale of legalized marijuana, a portion of which will be meted out to cities and towns to help them defray the cost of making pot legal across Canada. Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced the two-year agreement today after a day-long meeting with his provincial and territorial counterparts. Morneau says Ottawa will retain the remaining 25 per cent share to a maximum of $100 million a year, with any balance over and above that limit going to the provinces and territories. The larger share, he added, will allow the provinces to “fairly deal with their costs and so they can work with municipalities,” which had been asking for at least a one-third portion of the revenue to help ease the burden of costs like law enforcement. Morneau said that over the first two years, the federal government expects legalized pot to generate only about $400 million in tax revenues, adding that the ministers are scheduled to gather again a year from now to assess how the framework is working. “Our expectation is that by keeping prices low, we will be able to get rid of the black market. However, that will happen over time,” Morneau said during a closing news conference, his counterparts lined up behind him. “Our estimates suggest that the size of the taxation revenue is roughly … about up to $400 million for the first couple of years. What we’ve agreed at our table today is that we need to come back together; we’re going to come back together in December 2018 to look at how the market’s working, and how the federal government, provinces and municipalities are dealing with this change. “Of course, we’ll stay very much on top of this, but after two years it’s time to rethink the approach to make sure we’re getting it right.” All 14 jurisdictions at the table agreed to the key principles reached at the meeting, Morneau said, calling it a “very good outcome.” The original model put forward by the federal government proposed an even 50-50 split, a plan that was immediately shot down by the provinces, many of which wondered aloud what sort of costs Ottawa would be incurring to deserve such a share. Earlier today, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the federal Liberal government had successfully made the case that it, too, would have costs, but was showing flexibility on related revenue and cost-sharing questions. After a meeting with his Atlantic counterparts in Halifax, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil let slip that a two-year deal had been reached, and that provinces would have the ability to include a markup above and beyond existing taxation levels. Ottawa’s initial estimates suggested the total pot of tax revenue from marijuana sales could eventually reach $1 billion per year. “If there is a markup that a respective province wants to do it would be outside of that taxation model, so that was the flexibility that we as a province were looking for and I would say indeed it was what we were hearing across the country,” McNeil said. “The two-year window will give each of us the time to go back to the table and say this is actually what policing is costing and this is what the education component is.” The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has said it wants a third of the revenues earmarked to help municipal governments handle administrative and policing costs, but how that share of the pot is divvied up will be up to the municipalities and their provincial or territorial counterparts. The federal government has already committed more than $1 billion over five years towards pot legalization in areas like policing and border security. When asked about the federal push to ensure enough money goes to cities and towns, Quebec Finance Minister Carlos Leitao said each province will do it their own way. “Of course, the provinces will work with their municipalities, but it’s for us to decide what that percentage will be,” he said. “And every province is different, every city is different, so there is no preconceived amount for the provinces.” During the meetings, the ministers also discussed the federal government’s proposed tweaks to the formula behind equalization payments, as well as the three-year review of the Canada Pension Plan. They also explored the state of the global economy and heard a presentation from Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz. Talks also took place on a national strategy to improve the sharing of information on corporate ownership between jurisdictions, a measure designed to clamp down on tax avoidance, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing. “We agreed to take concrete steps to make sure that we had knowledge of who owns companies across our country so that we can do a better job at ensuring that we don’t have tax evasion, that we don’t have money laundering, that we don’t have terrorist financing in any part of our country,” Morneau said. — with files from Terry Pedwell

Place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. This article is about the metaphysical term "heaven" and the astral dimension it denotes. For other uses, see heaven (disambiguation) Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter heaven alive. Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a World to Come. Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka[1], and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (heaven, hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld. Etymology [ edit ] Beowulf "heofones," an ancient Anglo-Saxon word for heavens in the The modern English word heaven is derived from the earlier (Middle English) heven (attested 1159); this in turn was developed from the previous Old English form heofon. By about 1000, heofon was being used in reference to the Christianized "place where God dwells", but originally, it had signified "sky, firmament"[2] (e.g. in Beowulf, c. 725). The English term has cognates in the other Germanic languages: Old Saxon heƀan "sky, heaven" (hence also Middle Low German heven "sky"), Old Icelandic himinn, Gothic himins; and those with a variant final -l: Old Frisian himel, himul "sky, heaven", Old Saxon and Old High German himil, Old Saxon and Middle Low German hemmel, Old Dutch and Dutch hemel, and modern German Himmel. All of these have been derived from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *hemina-.[3] or *hemō.[4] The further derivation of this form is uncertain. A connection to Proto-Indo-European *ḱem- "cover, shroud", via a reconstructed *k̑emen- or *k̑ōmen- "stone, heaven", has been proposed.[5] Others endorse the derivation from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₂éḱmō "stone" and, possibly, "heavenly vault" at the origin of this word, which then would have as cognates Ancient Greek ἄκμων (ákmōn "anvil, pestle; meteorite"), Persian آسمان‎ (âsemân, âsmân "stone, sling-stone; sky, heaven") and Sanskrit अश्मन् (aśman "stone, rock, sling-stone; thunderbolt; the firmament").[4] In the latter case English hammer would be another cognate to the word. Ancient Near East [ edit ] Mesopotamia [ edit ] Ruins of the Ekur temple in Nippur , believed by the ancient Mesopotamians to be the "Dur-an-ki", the "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth. The ancient Mesopotamians regarded the sky as a series of domes (usually three, but sometimes seven) covering the flat earth. Each dome was made of a different kind of precious stone. The lowest dome of heaven was made of jasper and was the home of the stars. The middle dome of heaven was made of saggilmut stone and was the abode of the Igigi. The highest and outermost dome of heaven was made of luludānītu stone and was personified as An, the god of the sky. The celestial bodies were equated with specific deities as well. The planet Venus was believed to be Inanna, the goddess of love, sex, and war. The sun was her brother Utu, the god of justice, and the moon was their father Nanna. In ancient Near Eastern cultures in general and in Mesopotamia in particular, humans had little to no access to the divine realm. Heaven and earth were separated by their very nature; humans could see and be affected by elements of the lower heaven, such as stars and storms, but ordinary mortals could not go to heaven because it was the abode of the gods alone. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh says to Enkidu, "Who can go up to heaven, my friend? Only the gods dwell with Shamash forever." Instead, after a person died, his or her soul went to Kur (later known as Irkalla), a dark shadowy underworld, located deep below the surface of the earth. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no impact on how he would be treated in the world to come. Nonetheless, funerary evidence indicates that some people believed that Inanna had the power to bestow special favors upon her devotees in the afterlife. Despite the separation between heaven and earth, humans sought access to the gods through oracles and omens. The gods were believed to live in heaven, but also in their temples, which were seen as the channels of communication between earth and heaven, which allowed mortal access to the gods. The Ekur temple in Nippur was known as the "Dur-an-ki", the "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth. It was widely thought to have been built and established by Enlil himself. Canaanites and Phoenicians [ edit ] Almost nothing is known of Bronze Age (pre-1200 BC) Canaanite views of heaven, and the archaeological findings at Ugarit (destroyed c. 1200 BC) have not provided information. The 1st century Greek author Philo of Byblos may preserve elements of Iron Age Phoenician religion in his Sanchuniathon.[22] Hurrians and Hittites [ edit ] The ancient Hittites believed that some deities lived in Heaven, while others lived in remote places on earth, such as mountains, where humans had little access. In the Middle Hittite myths, heaven is the abode of the gods. In the Song of Kumarbi, Alalu was king in heaven for nine years before giving birth to his son, Anu. Anu was himself overthrown by his son, Kumarbi.[23] [24][25][26] Abrahamic religions [ edit ] Hebrew Bible [ edit ] As in ancient Near Eastern cultures, in the Hebrew Bible, the universe is commonly divided into two realms: heaven (šāmayim) and earth (’ereṣ). Sometimes a third realm is added: either "sea" (Exodus 20:11, Genesis 1:10), "water under the earth" (Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 5:8), or sometimes a vague "land of the dead" that is never described in depth (Job 26:5, Psalm 139:8, Amos 9:2). The structure of heaven itself is never fully described in the Hebrew Bible, but the fact that the Hebrew word šāmayim is plural has been interpreted by scholars as an indication that the ancient Israelites envisioned the heavens as having multiple layers, much like the ancient Mesopotamians. This reading is also supported by the use of the phrase "heaven of heavens" in verses such as Deteronomy 10:14, 1 Kings 8:27, and 2 Chronicles 2:6 and 6:18. In line with the typical view of most Near Eastern cultures, the Hebrew Bible depicts heaven as a place that is inaccessible to humans. Although some prophets are occasionally granted temporary visionary access to heaven, such as in 1 Kings 22:19-23, Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-6, and Isaiah 6, they hear only God's deliberations concerning the earth and learn nothing of what heaven is like. There is almost no mention in the Hebrew Bible of heaven as a possible afterlife destination for human beings, who are instead described as "resting" in Sheol (Genesis 25:7-9, Deuteronomy 34:6, 1 Kings 2:10). The only two possible exceptions to this are Enoch, who is described in Genesis 5:24 as having been "taken" by God, and the prophet Elijah, who is described in 2 Kings 2:11 as having ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire. According to Michael B. Hundley, the text in both of these instances is ambiguous regarding the significance of the actions being described and in neither of these cases does the text explain what happened to the subject afterwards. The God of the Israelites is described as ruling both heaven and earth (Genesis 14:19 22 24:3, Psalm 146:6). Other passages, such as 1 Kings 8:27 state that even the vastness of heaven cannot contain God's majesty. A number of passages throughout the Hebrew Bible indicate that heaven and earth will one day come to an end (Psalm 102:26-27, Isaiah 13:5, 14:26, 24:18, 51:6, Jeremiah 4:23-28, and Zephaniah 1:2-3 and 18). This view is paralleled in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, which also regarded heaven and earth as vulnerable and subject to dissolution. However, the Hebrew Bible differs from other ancient Near Eastern cultures in that it portrays the God of Israel as independent of creation and unthreatened by its potential destruction. Because most of the Hebrew Bible concerns the God of Israel's relationship with his people, most of the events described in it take place on earth, not in heaven. The Deuteronomistic source, Deuteronomistic History, and Priestly source all portray the Temple in Jerusalem as the sole channel of communication between earth and heaven. Second Temple Judaism [ edit ] During the period of the Second Temple ( c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Jewish people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire. Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them. Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology. By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Jewish thinkers. The Jews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there. The idea that a human soul belongs in heaven and that the earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC). Gradually, some Jews began to adopt the idea of heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead. New Testament and early Christianity [ edit ] Descriptions of heaven in the New Testament are more fully developed than those in the Old Testament, but are still generally vague. As in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, God is described as the ruler of heaven and earth, but his power over the earth is challenged by Satan. Sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke speak of the "Kingdom of God" (Greek: βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ; basileía tou theou), while the Gospel of Matthew more commonly uses the term "Kingdom of Heaven" (Greek: βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν; basileía tōn ouranōn).[38] Both phrases have exactly the same meaning, but the author of the Gospel of Matthew changed the name "Kingdom of God" to "Kingdom of Heaven" in most instances because it was the more acceptable phrase in his own cultural and religious context in the late first century. Modern scholars agree that the Kingdom of God was an essential part of the teachings of the historical Jesus. In spite of this, none of the gospels ever record Jesus as having explained exactly what the phrase "Kingdom of God" means. The most likely explanation for this apparent omission is that the Kingdom of God was a commonly understood concept that required no explanation. Jews in Judea during the early first century believed that God reigns eternally in Heaven, but many also believed that God would eventually establish his kingdom on earth as well. This belief is referenced in the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples and recorded in both Matthew 6:10 and Luke 11:2: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Because God's Kingdom was believed to be superior to any human kingdom, this meant that God would necessarily drive out the Romans, who ruled Judea, and establish his own direct rule over the Jewish people. In the teachings of the historical Jesus, people are expected to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of God by living moral lives. Jesus's commands for his followers to adopt lifestyles of moral perfectionism are found in many passages throughout the Synoptic Gospels, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Jesus also taught that, in the Kingdom of Heaven, there would be a reversal of roles in which "the last will be first and the first will be last" (Mark 10:31, Matthew 19:30, Matthew 20:16, and Luke 13:30). This teaching recurs throughout the recorded teachings of Jesus, including in the admonition to be like a child in Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 19:30, and Luke 18:15-17, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20:1-16, the Parable of the Great Banquet in Matthew 22:1-10, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. Traditionally, Christianity has taught that heaven is the location of the throne of God as well as the holy angels,[51][52] although this is in varying degrees considered metaphorical. In traditional Christianity, it is considered a state or condition of existence (rather than a particular place somewhere in the cosmos) of the supreme fulfillment of theosis in the beatific vision of the Godhead. In most forms of Christianity, heaven is also understood as the abode for the redeemed dead in the afterlife, usually a temporary stage before the resurrection of the dead and the saints' return to the New Earth. The resurrected Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven where he now sits at the Right Hand of God and will return to earth in the Second Coming. Various people have been said to have entered heaven while still alive, including Enoch, Elijah and Jesus himself, after his resurrection. According to Roman Catholic teaching, Mary, mother of Jesus, is also said to have been assumed into heaven and is titled the Queen of Heaven. In the 2nd century AD, Irenaeus of Lyons recorded a belief that, in accordance with John 14:2, those who in the afterlife see the Saviour are in different mansions, some dwelling in the heavens, others in paradise and others in "the city".[53] While the word used in all these writings, in particular the New Testament Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos), applies primarily to the sky, it is also used metaphorically of the dwelling place of God and the blessed.[54][55] Similarly, though the English word "heaven" still keeps its original physical meaning when used, for instance, in allusions to the stars as "lights shining through from heaven", and in phrases such as heavenly body to mean an astronomical object, the heaven or happiness that Christianity looks forward to is, according to Pope John Paul II, "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit."[51] Rabbinical Judaism [ edit ] While the concept of heaven (malkuth hashamaim מלכות השמים, the Kingdom of Heaven) is much discussed in Christian thought, the Jewish concept of the afterlife, sometimes known as olam haba, the World-to-come, is not discussed so often. The Torah has little to say on the subject of survival after death, but by the time of the rabbis two ideas had made inroads among the Jews: one, which is probably derived from Greek thought,[56] is that of the immortal soul which returns to its creator after death; the other, which is thought to be of Persian origin,[56] is that of resurrection of the dead. Jewish writings[which?] refer to a "new earth" as the abode of mankind following the resurrection of the dead. Originally, the two ideas of immortality and resurrection were different but in rabbinic thought they are combined: the soul departs from the body at death but is returned to it at the resurrection. This idea is linked to another rabbinic teaching, that men's good and bad actions are rewarded and punished not in this life but after death, whether immediately or at the subsequent resurrection.[56] Around 1 CE, the Pharisees are said to have maintained belief in resurrection but the Sadducees are said to have denied it (Matt. 22:23). The Mishnah has many sayings about the World to Come, for example, "Rabbi Yaakov said: This world is like a lobby before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall."[57] Judaism holds that the righteous of all nations have a share in the World-to-come.[58] According to Nicholas de Lange, Judaism offers no clear teaching about the destiny which lies in wait for the individual after death and its attitude to life after death has been expressed as follows: "For the future is inscrutable, and the accepted sources of knowledge, whether experience, or reason, or revelation, offer no clear guidance about what is to come. The only certainty is that each man must die - beyond that we can only guess."[56] According to Tracey R. Rich of the website "Judaism 101", Judaism, unlike other world-religions, is not focused on the quest of getting into heaven but on life and how to live it.[59] Kabbalah Jewish mysticism [ edit ] In order from lowest to highest, the seven heavens, Shamayim (שָׁמַיִם), according to the Talmud, are listed alongside the angels who govern them:[60][61] Islam [ edit ] Similar to Jewish traditions such as the Talmud, the Qur'an and Hadith frequently mention the existence of seven samāwāt (سماوات), the plural of samāʾ (سماء), meaning 'heaven, sky, celestial sphere', and cognate with Hebrew shamāyim (שמים). Some of the verses in the Qur'an mentioning the samaawat [65] are Quran 41:12, Quran 65:12, Quran 71:15. Sidrat al-Muntaha, a large enigmatic Lote tree, marks the end of the seventh heaven and the utmost extremity for all of God's creatures and heavenly knowledge.[66] One interpretation of "heavens" is that all the stars and galaxies (including the Milky Way) are all part of the "first heaven", and "beyond that six still bigger worlds are there," which have yet to be discovered by scientists.[67] According to Shi'ite sources, Ali mentioned the names of the seven heavens as below:[68] Rafi' (رفیع) the least heaven (سماء الدنیا) Qaydum (قیدوم) Marum (ماروم) Arfalun (أرفلون) Hay'oun (هيعون) Arous (عروس) Ajma' (عجماء) Still an afterlife destination of the righteous is conceived in Islam as Jannah (Arabic: جنة‎ "Garden [of Eden]" translated as "paradise"). Regarding Eden or paradise the Quran says, "The parable of the Garden which the righteous are promised: Beneath it flow rivers; perpetual is the fruits thereof and the shade therein. Such is the end of the righteous; and the end of the unbelievers is the Hellfire."[Quran 13:35] Islam rejects the concept of original sin, and Muslims believe that all human beings are born pure. Children automatically go to paradise when they die, regardless of the religion of their parents. Paradise is described primarily in physical terms as a place where every wish is immediately fulfilled when asked. Islamic texts describe immortal life in Jannah as happy, without negative emotions. Those who dwell in Jannah are said to wear costly apparel, partake in exquisite banquets, and recline on couches inlaid with gold or precious stones. Inhabitants will rejoice in the company of their parents, spouses, and children. In Islam if one's good deeds outweigh one's sins then one may gain entrance to paradise. Conversely, if one's sins outweigh their good deeds they are sent to hell. The more good deeds one has performed the higher the level of Jannah one is directed to. Verses which describe paradise include: Quran 13:35, Quran 18:31, Quran 38:49–54, Quran 35:33–35, Quran 52:17–27. The Quran refer to Jannah with different names: Al-Firdaws, Jannātu-′Adn ("Garden of Eden" or "Everlasting Gardens"), Jannatu-n-Na'īm ("Garden of Delight"), Jannatu-l-Ma'wa ("Garden of Refuge"), Dāru-s-Salām ("Abode of Peace"), Dāru-l-Muqāma ("Abode of Permanent Stay"), al-Muqāmu-l-Amin ("The Secure Station") and Jannātu-l-Khuld ("Garden of Immortality"). In the Hadiths, these are the different regions in paradise.[69] Ahmadiyya [ edit ] According to the Ahmadiyya view, much of the imagery presented in the Quran regarding heaven, but also hell, is in fact metaphorical. They propound the verse which describes, according to them how the life to come after death is very different from the life here on earth. The Quran says: "From bringing in your place others like you, and from developing you into a form which at present you know not."[Quran 56:62] According to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of Ahmadiyya sect in Islam, the soul will give birth to another rarer entity and will resemble the life on this earth in the sense that this entity will bear a similar relationship to the soul, as the soul bears relationship with the human existence on earth. On earth, if a person leads a righteous life and submits to the will of God, his or her tastes become attuned to enjoying spiritual pleasures as opposed to carnal desires. With this, an "embryonic soul" begins to take shape. Different tastes are said to be born which a person given to carnal passions finds no enjoyment. For example, sacrifice of one's own's rights over that of other's becomes enjoyable, or that forgiveness becomes second nature. In such a state a person finds contentment and Peace at heart and at this stage, according to Ahmadiyya beliefs, it can be said that a soul within the soul has begun to take shape.[70] Bahá'í Faith [ edit ] The Bahá'í Faith regards the conventional description of heaven (and hell) as a specific place as symbolic. The Bahá'í writings describe heaven as a "spiritual condition" where closeness to God is defined as heaven; conversely hell is seen as a state of remoteness from God. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane, but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.[71] For Bahá'ís, entry into the next life has the potential to bring great joy.[71] Bahá'u'lláh likened death to the process of birth. He explains: "The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother."[72] The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Bahá'í view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Bahá'ís view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities which will be needed in the next life.[71] The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestation of God, which Bahá'ís believe is currently Bahá'u'lláh. Bahá'u'lláh wrote, "Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return and be gathered to the glory of the Beloved."[73] The Bahá'í teachings state that there exists a hierarchy of souls in the afterlife, where the merits of each soul determines their place in the hierarchy, and that souls lower in the hierarchy cannot completely understand the station of those above. Each soul can continue to progress in the afterlife, but the soul's development is not entirely dependent on its own conscious efforts, the nature of which we are not aware, but also augmented by the grace of God, the prayers of others, and good deeds performed by others on Earth in the name of that person.[71] Chinese religions [ edit ] In the native Chinese Confucian traditions, heaven (Tian) is an important concept, where the ancestors reside and from which emperors drew their mandate to rule in their dynastic propaganda, for example. Heaven is a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophies and religions, and is on one end of the spectrum a synonym of Shangdi ("Supreme Deity") and on the other naturalistic end, a synonym for nature and the sky. The Chinese term for "heaven", Tian (天), derives from the name of the supreme deity of the Zhou Dynasty. After their conquest of the Shang Dynasty in 1122 BC, the Zhou people considered their supreme deity Tian to be identical with the Shang supreme deity Shangdi.[74] The Zhou people attributed heaven with anthropomorphic attributes, evidenced in the etymology of the Chinese character for heaven or sky, which originally depicted a person with a large cranium. heaven is said to see, hear and watch over all men. heaven is affected by man's doings, and having personality, is happy and angry with them. Heaven blesses those who please it and sends calamities upon those who offend it.[75] Heaven was also believed to transcend all other spirits and gods, with Confucius asserting, "He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray."[75] Other philosophers born around the time of Confucius such as Mozi took an even more theistic view of heaven, believing that heaven is the divine ruler, just as the Son of Heaven (the King of Zhou) is the earthly ruler. Mozi believed that spirits and minor gods exist, but their function is merely to carry out the will of heaven, watching for evil-doers and punishing them. Thus they function as angels of heaven and do not detract from its monotheistic government of the world. With such a high monotheism, it is not surprising that Mohism championed a concept called "universal love" (jian'ai, 兼愛), which taught that heaven loves all people equally and that each person should similarly love all human beings without distinguishing between his own relatives and those of others.[76] In Mozi's Will of Heaven (天志), he writes: "I know Heaven loves men dearly not without reason. Heaven ordered the sun, the moon, and the stars to enlighten and guide them. Heaven ordained the four seasons, Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Summer, to regulate them. Heaven sent down snow, frost, rain, and dew to grow the five grains and flax and silk that so the people could use and enjoy them. Heaven established the hills and rivers, ravines and valleys, and arranged many things to minister to man's good or bring him evil. He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing. This has been so from antiquity to the present." Original Chinese: 「且吾所以知天之愛民之厚者有矣，曰以磨為日月星辰，以昭道之；制為四時春秋冬夏，以紀綱之；雷降雪霜雨露，以長遂五穀麻絲，使民得而財利之；列為山川谿谷，播賦百事，以臨司民之善否；為王公侯伯，使之賞賢而罰暴；賊金木鳥獸，從事乎五穀麻絲，以為民衣食之財。自古及今，未嘗不有此也。」 Mozi, Will of Heaven, Chapter 27, Paragraph 6, ca. 5th Century BC Mozi criticized the Confucians of his own time for not following the teachings of Confucius. By the time of the later Han Dynasty, however, under the influence of Xunzi, the Chinese concept of heaven and Confucianism itself had become mostly naturalistic, though some Confucians argued that heaven was where ancestors reside. Worship of heaven in China continued with the erection of shrines, the last and greatest being the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and the offering of prayers. The ruler of China in every Chinese dynasty would perform annual sacrificial rituals to heaven, usually by slaughtering two healthy bulls as a sacrifice. Indic religions [ edit ] Buddhism [ edit ] In Buddhism there are several heavens, all of which are still part of samsara (illusionary reality). Those who accumulate good karma may be reborn[77] in one of them. However, their stay in heaven is not eternal—eventually they will use up their good karma and will undergo rebirth into another realm, as a human, animal or other being. Because heaven is temporary and part of samsara, Buddhists focus more on escaping the cycle of rebirth and reaching enlightenment (nirvana). Nirvana is not a heaven but a mental state. According to Buddhist cosmology the universe is impermanent and beings transmigrate through a number of existential "planes" in which this human world is only one "realm" or "path".[78] These are traditionally envisioned as a vertical continuum with the heavens existing above the human realm, and the realms of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings existing beneath it. According to Jan Chozen Bays in her book, Jizo: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers, the realm of the asura is a later refinement of the heavenly realm and was inserted between the human realm and the heavens. One important Buddhist heaven is the Trāyastriṃśa, which resembles Olympus of Greek mythology. In the Mahayana world view, there are also pure lands which lie outside this continuum and are created by the Buddhas upon attaining enlightenment. Rebirth in the pure land of Amitabha is seen as an assurance of Buddhahood, for once reborn there, beings do not fall back into cyclical existence unless they choose to do so to save other beings, the goal of Buddhism being the obtainment of enlightenment and freeing oneself and others from the birth–death cycle. The Tibetan word Bardo means literally "intermediate state". In Sanskrit the concept has the name antarabhāva. According to Anguttara Nikaya [ edit ] Brahmāloka Here the denizens are Brahmās, and the ruler is Mahābrahmā After developing the four Brahmavihāras, King Makhādeva rebirths here after death. The monk Tissa and Brāhmana Jānussoni were also reborn here. For a monk, the next best thing to Nirvana is to be reborn in this Brahmāloka. The lifespan of a Brahmās is not stated but is not eternal. Parinirmita-vaśavartin or Paranimmita-vasavatti The heaven of devas "with power over (others') creations". These devas do not create pleasing forms that they desire for themselves, but their desires are fulfilled by the acts of other devas who wish for their favor. The ruler of this world is called Vaśavartin (Pāli: Vasavatti), who has longer life, greater beauty, more power and happiness and more delightful sense-objects than the other devas of his world. This world is also the home of the devaputra (being of divine race) called Māra, who endeavors to keep all beings of the Kāmadhātu in the grip of sensual pleasures. Māra is also sometimes called Vaśavartin, but in general these two dwellers in this world are kept distinct. The beings of this world are 4,500 feet (1,400 m) tall and live for 9,216,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition). Nimmānarati The world of devas "delighting in their creations". The devas of this world are capable of making any appearance to please themselves. The lord of this world is called Sunirmita (Pāli Sunimmita); his wife is the rebirth of Visākhā, formerly the chief upāsikā (female lay devotee) of the Buddha. The beings of this world are 3,750 feet (1,140 m) tall and live for 2,304,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition). Tuṣita The world of the "joyful" devas. This world is best known for being the world in which a Bodhisattva lives before being reborn in the world of humans. Until a few thousand years ago, the Bodhisattva of this world was Śvetaketu (Pāli: Setaketu), who was reborn as Siddhārtha, who would become the Buddha Śākyamuni; since then the Bodhisattva has been Nātha (or Nāthadeva) who will be reborn as Ajita and will become the Buddha Maitreya (Pāli Metteyya). While this Bodhisattva is the foremost of the dwellers in Tuṣita, the ruler of this world is another deva called Santuṣita (Pāli: Santusita). The beings of this world are 3,000 feet (910 m) tall and live for 576,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition). Anāthapindika, a Kosālan householder and benefactor to the Buddha's order was reborn here. Yāma The denizens here have a lifespan of 144,000,000 years. Tāvatimsa The ruler of this heaven is Indra or Shakra, and the realm is also called Trayatrimia. Each denizen addresses other denizens as the title "mārisa". The governing hall of this heaven is called Sudhamma Hall. This heaven has a garden Nandanavana with damsels, as its most magnificent sight. Ajita the Licchavi army general was reborn here. Gopika the Sākyan girl was reborn as a male god in this realm. Any Buddhist reborn in this realm can outshine any of the previously dwelling denizens because of the extra merit acquired for following the Buddha's teachings. The denizens here have a lifespan of 36,000,000 years. Cātummahārājika The heaven "of the Four Great Kings". Its rulers are the four Great Kings of the name, Virūḍhaka विरुद्धक, Dhṛtarāṣṭra धृतराष्ट्र, Virūpākṣa विरुपाक्ष, and their leader Vaiśravaṇa वैश्यवर्ण. The devas who guide the Sun and Moon are also considered part of this world, as are the retinues of the four kings, composed of Kumbhāṇḍas कुम्भाण्ड (dwarfs), Gandharva गन्धर्वs (fairies), Nāgas (snakes) and Yakṣas यक्ष (goblins). The beings of this world are 750 feet (230 m) tall and live for 9,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition) or 90,000 years (Vibhajyavāda tradition). Tibetan Buddhism [ edit ] There are 5 major types of heavens. Akanishtha or Ghanavyiiha This is the most supreme heaven wherein beings that have achieved Nirvana live for eternity. Heaven of the Jinas Heavens of Formless Spirits These are 4 in number. Brahmaloka These are 16 in number, and are free from sensuality. Devaloka These are 6 in number, and contain sensuality. According to the Shurangama Sutra [ edit ] [79] The Six Desire Heaven The cause for birth in the Six Desire Heavens are the 10 good conducts. [80] 1. The Heaven of the Four Kings Those with no interest in deviant sexual activity and so develop a purity and produce light. When their life ends, they draw near the sun and moon and are among those born in the Heaven of the Four Kings. Master Ou Yi Zhixu [81] explains that the Shurangama sutra only emphasized on avoiding deviant sexual desire, but one would naturally also need to avoid killing and abide by the 10 good conducts to be born in this heaven. 2. The Trayastrimsha Heaven Those whose sexual love for their wives is slight, but who have not yet obtained the entire flavor of dwelling in purity, transcend the light of sun and moon at the end of their lives, and reside at the summit of the human realm. They are among those born in the Trayastrimsha Heaven 3. The Suyama Heaven ”Those who become temporarily involved when they meet with desire but who forget about it when it is finished, and who, while in the human realm, are active less and quiet more, abide at the end of their lives in light and emptiness where the illumination of sun and moon does not reach. These beings have their own light, and they are among those born in the Suyama Heaven. 4. The Tushita Heaven Those who are quiet all the time, but who are not yet able to resist when stimulated by contact, ascend at the end of their lives to a subtle and ethereal place; they will not be drawn into the lower realms. The destruction of the realms of humans and gods and the obliteration of kalpas by the three disasters will not reach them, for they are among those born in the Tushita Heaven. 5. The Heaven of Bliss by Transformation Those who are devoid of desire, but who will engage in it for the sake of their partner, even though the flavor of doing so is like the flavor of chewing wax, are born at the end of their lives in a place of transcending transformations. They are among those born in the Heaven of Bliss by Transformation. 6. The Heaven of the Comfort from Others’ Transformations Those who have no kind of worldly thoughts while doing what worldly people do, who are lucid and beyond such activity while involved in it, are capable at the end of their lives of entirely transcending states where transformations may be present and may be lacking. They are among those born in the Heaven of the Comfort from Others’ Transformations. The Form Realm The First Dhyana, the Second Dhyana, the Third Dhyana and the Fourth Dhyana. The First Dhyana Those who flow to these levels will not be oppressed by any suffering or affliction. Although they have not developed proper samadhi, their minds are pure to the point that they are not moved by outflows. 1. The Heaven of the Multitudes of Brahma Those in the world who cultivate their minds but do not avail themselves of dhyana and so have no wisdom, can only control their bodies so as to not engage in sexual desire. Whether walking or sitting, or in their thoughts, they are totally devoid of it. Since they do not give rise to defiling love, they do not remain in the realm of desire. These people can, in response to their thought, take on the bodies of Brahma beings. They are among those in the Heaven of the Multitudes of Brahma. 2. The Heaven of the Ministers of Brahma Those whose hearts of desire have already been cast aside, the mind apart from desire manifests. They have a fond regard for the rules of discipline and delight in being in accord with them. These people can practice the Brahma virtue at all times, and they are among those in the Heaven of the Ministers of Brahma. 3. The Great Brahma Heaven Those whose bodies and minds are wonderfully perfect, and whose awesome deportment is not in the least deficient, are pure in the prohibitive precepts and have a thorough understanding of them as well. At all times these people can govern the Brahma multitudes as great Brahma lords, and they are among those in the Great Brahma Heaven. The Second Dhyana Those who flow to these levels will not be oppressed by worries or vexations. Although they have not developed proper samadhi, their minds are pure to the point that they have subdued their coarser outflows 1. The Heaven of Lesser Light Those beyond the Brahma heavens gather in and govern the Brahma beings, for their Brahma conduct is perfect and fulfilled. Unmoving and with settled minds, they produce light in profound stillness, and they are among those in the Heaven of Lesser Light. 2. The Heaven of Limitless Light Those whose lights illumine each other in an endless dazzling blaze shine throughout the realms of the ten directions so that everything becomes like crystal. They are among those in the Heaven of Limitless Light. 3. The Light-Sound Heaven Those who take in and hold the light to perfection accomplish the substance of the teaching. Creating and transforming the purity into endless responses and functions, they are among those in the Light-Sound Heaven. The Third Dhyana 1. The Heaven of Lesser Purity The heavenly beings for whom the perfection of light has become sound and who further open out the sound to disclose its wonder discover a subtler level of practice. They penetrate to the bliss of still extinction and are among those in the Heaven of Lesser Purity. 2. The Heaven of Limitless Purity Those in whom the emptiness of purity manifests are led to discover its boundlessness. Their bodies and minds experience light ease, and they accomplish the bliss of still extinction. They are among those in the Heaven of Limitless Purity. 3. The Heaven of Pervasive Purity Those for whom the world, the body, and the mind are all perfectly pure have accomplished the virtue of purity, and a superior level emerges. They return to the bliss of still extinction, and they are among those in the Heaven of Pervasive Purity. Hinduism [ edit ] Attaining heaven is not the final pursuit in Hinduism as heaven itself is ephemeral and related to physical body. Only being tied by the bhoot-tatvas, heaven cannot be perfect either and is just another name for pleasurable and mundane material life. According to Hindu cosmology, above the earthly plane, are other planes: (1) Bhuva Loka, (2) Swarga Loka, meaning Good Kingdom, is the general name for heaven in Hinduism, a heavenly paradise of pleasure, where most of the Hindu Devatas (Deva) reside along with the king of Devas, Indra, and beatified mortals. Some other planes are Mahar Loka, Jana Loka, Tapa Loka and Satya Loka. Since heavenly abodes are also tied to the cycle of birth and death, any dweller of heaven or hell will again be recycled to a different plane and in a different form per the karma and "maya" i.e. the illusion of Samsara. This cycle is broken only by self-realization by the Jivatma. This self-realization is Moksha (Turiya, Kaivalya). The concept of moksha is unique to Hinduism and is unparalleled. Moksha stands for liberation from the cycle of birth and death and final communion with Brahman. With moksha, a liberated soul attains the stature and oneness with Brahman or Paramatma. Different schools such as Vedanta, Mimansa, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Yoga offer subtle differences in the concept of Brahman, obvious Universe, its genesis and regular destruction, Jivatma, Nature (Prakriti) and also the right way in attaining perfect bliss or moksha. In the Vaishnava traditions the highest heaven is Vaikuntha, which exists above the six heavenly lokas and outside of the mahat-tattva or mundane world. It's where eternally liberated souls who have attained moksha reside in eternal sublime beauty with Lakshmi and Narayana (a manifestation of Vishnu). In the Nasadiya Sukta, the heavens/sky Vyoman is mentioned as a place from which an overseeing entity surveys what has been created. However, the Nasadiya Sukta questions the omniscience of this overseer. Jainism [ edit ] Structure of Universe per the Jain Scriptures. The shape of the Universe as described in Jainism is shown alongside. Unlike the current convention of using North direction as the top of map, this uses South as the top. The shape is similar to a part of human form standing upright. The Deva Loka (heavens) are at the symbolic "chest", where all souls enjoying the positive karmic effects reside. The heavenly beings are referred to as devas (masculine form) and devis (feminine form). According to Jainism, there is not one heavenly abode, but several layers to reward appropriately the souls of varying degree of karmic merits. Similarly, beneath the "waist" are the Narka Loka (hell). Human, animal, insect, plant and microscopic life forms reside on the middle. The pure souls (who reached Siddha status) reside at the very south end (top) of the Universe. They are referred to in Tamil literature as தென்புலத்தார் (Kural 43). Sikh Religion [ edit ] As per Sikh thought, heaven and hell are not places for living hereafter, they are part of spiritual topography of man and do not exist otherwise. They refer to good and evil stages of life respectively and can be lived now and here during our earthly existence.[82] For example, Bhagat Kabir rejects the otherworldly heaven in Guru Granth Sahib and says that one can experience heaven on this Earth by doing company of holy people. He claims to know the Lord, who is beyond measure and beyond thought; By mere words, he plans to enter heaven. I do not know where heaven is. Everyone claims that he plans to go there. By mere talk, the mind is not appeased. The mind is only appeased, when egotism is conquered. As long as the mind is filled with the desire for heaven, He does not dwell at the Lord's Feet. Says Kabeer, unto whom should I tell this? The Company of the Holy is heaven. Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib 325, [83] Mesoamerican religions [ edit ] The Nahua people such as the Aztecs, Chichimecs and the Toltecs believed that the heavens were constructed and separated into 13 levels. Each level had from one to many Lords living in and ruling these heavens. Most important of these heavens was Omeyocan (Place of Two). The Thirteen Heavens were ruled by Ometeotl, the dual Lord, creator of the Dual-Genesis who, as male, takes the name Ometecuhtli (Two Lord), and as female is named Omecihuatl (Two Lady). Polynesia [ edit ] In the creation myths of Polynesian mythology are found various concepts of the heavens and the underworld. These differ from one island to another. What they share is the view of the universe as an egg or coconut that is divided between the world of humans (earth), the upper world of heavenly gods, and the underworld. Each of these is subdivided in a manner reminiscent of Dante's Divine Comedy, but the number of divisions and their names differs from one Polynesian culture to another.[84] Māori [ edit ] In Māori mythology, the heavens are divided into a number of realms. Different tribes number the heaven differently, with as few as two and as many as fourteen levels. One of the more common versions divides heaven thus: Kiko-rangi, presided over by the gods Toumau Waka-maru, the heaven of sunshine and rain Nga-roto, the heaven of lakes where the god Maru rules Hauora, where the spirits of newborn children originate Nga-Tauira, home of the servant gods Nga-atua, which is ruled over by the hero Tawhaki Autoia, where human souls are created Aukumea, where spirits live Wairua, where spirit gods live while waiting on those in Naherangi or Tuwarea, where the great gods live presided over by Rehua The Māori believe these heavens are supported by pillars. Other Polynesian peoples see them being supported by gods (as in Hawaii). In one Tahitian legend, heaven is supported by an octopus. Paumotu, Tuamotus [ edit ] An 1869 illustration by a Tuomatuan chief portraying nine heavens. The Polynesian conception of the universe and its division is nicely illustrated by a famous drawing made by a Tuomotuan chief in 1869. Here, the nine heavens are further divided into left and right, and each stage is associated with a stage in the evolution of the earth that is portrayed below. The lowest division represents a period when the heavens hung low over the earth, which was inhabited by animals that were not known to the islanders. In the third division is shown the first murder, the first burials, and the first canoes, built by Rata. In the fourth division, the first coconut tree and other significant plants are born.[85] Theosophy [ edit ] It is believed in Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky that each religion (including Theosophy) has its own individual heaven in various regions of the upper astral plane that fits the description of that heaven that is given in each religion, which a soul that has been good in their previous life on Earth will go to. The area of the upper astral plane of Earth in the upper atmosphere where the various heavens are located is called Summerland (Theosophists believe hell is located in the lower astral plane of Earth which extends downward from the surface of the earth down to its center). However, Theosophists believe that the soul is recalled back to Earth after an average of about 1400 years by the Lords of Karma to incarnate again. The final heaven that souls go to billions of years in the future after they finish their cycle of incarnations is called Devachan.[86] Criticism of the belief in heaven [ edit ] Anarchist Emma Goldman expressed this view when she wrote, "Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell; reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment."[87] Many people consider George Orwell's use of Sugarcandy Mountain in his novel Animal Farm to be a literary expression of this view. In the book, the animals were told that after their miserable lives were over they would go to a place in which "it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges".[88][89] Some have argued that a belief in a reward after death is poor motivation for moral behavior while alive.[90][91] Sam Harris wrote, "It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available."[92] Neuroscience [ edit ] In Inside the Neolithic Mind, Lewis-Williams and Pearce argue that a tiered structure of heaven, along with similarly structured circles of hell, is neurally perceived by members of many cultures around the world and through history. The reports are so similar across time and space that Lewis-Williams and Pearce argue for a neuroscientific explanation, accepting the percepts as real neural activations and subjective percepts during particular altered states of consciousness. Many people who come close to death and have near death experiences report meeting relatives or entering "the Light" in an otherworldly dimension, which share similarities with the religious concept of heaven. Even though there are also reports of distressing experiences and negative life-reviews, which share some similarities with the concept of hell, the positive experiences of meeting or entering "the Light" is reported as an immensely intense feeling state of love, peace and joy beyond human comprehension. Together with this intensely positive-feeling state, people who have near death experiences also report that consciousness or a heightened state of awareness seems as if it is at the heart of experiencing a taste of "heaven".[93] Postmodern views [ edit ] Representations in arts [ edit ] Works of fiction have included numerous different conceptions of heaven and hell. The two most famous descriptions of heaven are given in Dante Alighieri's Paradiso (of the Divine Comedy) and John Milton's Paradise Lost. See also [ edit ] References [ edit ]

Well, here we go again. Another group of wealthy, elitist supporters of gun control have come together, spending their own money to form a new organization to pursue their personal, pet agenda. This would be unremarkable, except that this time they are using the rare gambit of pretending to be a group that actually supports the Second Amendment. Note I said rare—not unprecedented. You would think that a group of self-styled entrepreneurs would perform some basic market research before launching this charade. If they had, they would have found they are not the first to mount such a deception. They would have discovered the remnants of both “Americans for Gun Safety” (AGS) and the “American Hunters and Shooters Association” (AHSA) within the trash heap of history. “Americans for Gun Safety” was precisely one American, a billionaire from New York City (sound familiar?) named Andrew McKelvey, who hired a half-dozen Democratic staffers and operatives to lobby for gun control at both the state and federal level. These operatives recognized a gravy train when they saw one and they milked it for as long as they could, but their sponsor eventually tired of funding the group after years of failing to pass his personal gun control agenda. The operatives didn’t miss a beat, however, and turned themselves into a think-tank with the name of “Third Way.” They still exist, now taking funding from a much broader array of left-wing interest groups to pursue a broader agenda. And one of their staffers has re-appeared on the gun control scene, recently drafting a lengthy report for the Brookings Institution calling for new gun control. “American Hunters and Shooters Association” had broader support—this time, it was a group of about six gun control supporters who banded together to push for new restrictions under the guise of supporting our rights. And, according to a deposition given by a staffer, AHSA far eclipsed AGS in member recruitment, eventually arriving at the vast total of “fewer than 150” individual members. The leader of AHSA was a former Washington Redskins football player named Ray Schoenke. He liked to shoot ducks on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, so he considered himself well equipped to be a national policy and political leader for all hunters. Schoenke also had a lengthy history of making publicly disclosed donations to groups like Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign) and political candidates who supported gun control. Like McKelvey, Schoenke hired gun control lobbyists to work at both the state and national level, but he also liked to put his own skin in the game. In 2008, Schoenke traveled extensively to battleground states, making public appearances to say why gun owners and hunters should vote for Barack Obama. The Obama campaign paid handsomely for his support, but after the election the group dried up and blew away. Schoenke later claimed the group had to fold because of a lack of support for its agenda from the Obama administration. Maybe Schoenke’s happy now that Obama has finally revealed his true gun-ban agenda. Now comes the “American Rifle and Pistol Association” (ARPA). Founded on July 4, the group bills itself as an “independent third voice to the highly polarized national firearms conversation, a voice of reason and responsibility.” But what do their leaders really think? ARPA’s CEO Waylan Johnson told U.S. News that the reason for their founding is because “The NRA represents the firearms industry. There’s not a lot of member input.” That sound bite is straight from the Obama/Bloomberg playbook, and there’s a reason for that. Another founder, group chairman Peter Vogt, had a lengthy online trail of social media postings in support of Bloomberg’s mayors’ group, as well as the newer gun control group “Moms Demand Action.” Once discovered, Vogt quickly and quietly took down his postings. In short, there’s nothing new about elitist gun control supporters banding together to push their agendas—there’s safety in numbers, and they can hide behind the veil of secrecy that many such groups drape around their funders. But the idea of attempting to conceal the anti-gun agenda behind a pro-gun façade has already been tried, repeatedly, and has always failed. —– Join the NRA – Click here for a full year membership for $25.

Changing them is quite easy Because the files are simply just mp3, you don't need to convert any files(except when you listen to wav or any other file that isn't mp3)First you will need to get your custom musicChange the custom music name to the same name of the original music that you wanna changefor example if you want to change the menu theme, you will change your custom music toand when you want to change it into a victory theme, rename it toYou can just listen to any file and guess when they playYou will need to add the renamed custom music into the mp3 folderIf you want the menu theme to repeat after a fight copy your custom music and have one of the files namedand the second oneand just to be sure make a third one and have it named

Vegetarian Society Approved Effective region United Kingdom Product category The approved product or food has undergone stringent checks to meet our vegetarian criteria Legal status Recognised by the consumers Website www.vegsoc.org The Vegetarian Society is a British registered charity which was established on 30 September 1847 to promote vegetarianism. History [ edit ] Society notice (1890) In the 19th century a number of groups in Britain actively promoted and followed meat-free diets. Key groups involved in the formation of the Vegetarian Society were members of the Bible Christian Church, supporters of the Concordium, and readers of the Truth-Tester journal.[1] Bible Christian Church [ edit ] The Bible Christian Church was founded in 1809 in Salford by Reverend William Cowherd after a split from the Swedenborgians. One distinctive feature of the Bible Christians was a belief in a meat-free diet, or ovo-lacto vegetarianism, as a form of temperance.[2][3] Concordium (Alcott House) [ edit ] The Concordium was a boarding school near London on Ham Common, Richmond, Surrey, which opened in 1838. Pupils at the school followed a diet completely free of animal products, known today as a vegan diet. The Concordium was also called Alcott House, in honor of American education and food reform advocate Amos Bronson Alcott.[1] Truth-Tester and Physiological Conference, 1847 [ edit ] The Truth-Tester was a journal which published material supporting the temperance movement. In 1846 the editorship was taken over by William Horsell, operator of the Northwood Villa Hydropathic Institute in Ramsgate, Kent. Horsell gradually steered the Truth-Tester towards promotion of the 'Vegetable Diet'. In early 1847 a letter to the Truth-Tester proposed formation of a Vegetarian Society. In response to this letter, William Oldham held what he called a "physiological conference" in July 1847 at Alcott House. Up to 130 attended, including Bible Christian James Simpson, who presented a speech. The conference passed a number of resolutions, including a resolution to reconvene at the end of September.[1] Ramsgate Conference, 1847 [ edit ] On 30 September 1847 the meeting which had been planned at the Physiological Conference took place at Northwood Villa Hydropathic Institute in Ramgate.[4] Joseph Brotherton, Member of Parliament for Salford, and a Bible Christian chaired. Bible Christian James Simpson was elected president of the society, Concordist William Oldham elected treasurer, and Truth-Tester editor William Horsell elected secretary.[5] The name 'Vegetarian Society' was chosen for the new organisation by a unanimous vote.[4] After Ramsgate [ edit ] The Vegetarian Society's first full public meeting was held in Manchester the following year. In 1853 the Society already had 889 members. In 1897 its membership was about 5,000.[6] Current work [ edit ] During the 20th century, the Society's work focused primarily on public education. In fulfilling this mission, the Society worked with other community groups to educate the public about the benefits of eating healthily. The Vegetarian Society also participated in political events, as a pressure group with the aim of influencing food producers to remove non-vegetarian ingredients such as gelatine or cheese produced using animal rennet from their products. They sought manufacturers to become accredited and marked food products with the Society's trademarked seedling symbol.[7] This accreditation includes the use of free range eggs, which other V symbols may not include. Their campaign was opposed to the labeling of products as vegetarian that contained fish. This action particularly affected restaurants. They also highlighted celebrities who claimed to be vegetarian but ate fish. As part of this campaign, in 1995, the Society produced the documentary Devour the Earth, written by Tony Wardle and narrated by Paul McCartney. Notable members [ edit ] Notable members of the Vegetarian Society have included Peter Cushing, Henry Stephens Salt, Isaac Pitman, Jorja Fox, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, Paul, Linda, Stella McCartney and Jerome Flynn[citation needed]. See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Bibliography [ edit ]

Bryan Singer has broken his silence on the abuse claims filed against him by a former Hollywood hopeful, calling them "outrageous, vicious and completely false". The director also said he would not be engaging in any publicity for his forthcoming X-Men sequel Days of Future Past in the wake of the allegations. "I do not want these fictitious claims to divert ANY attention from X-Men: Days of Future Past," said Singer in a statement yesterday. "This fantastic film is a labour of love and one of the greatest experiences of my career. So, out of respect to all of the extraordinary contributions from the incredibly talented actors and crew involved, I've decided not to participate in the upcoming media events for the film. However, I promise when this situation is over, the facts will show this to be the sick twisted shakedown it is. I want to thank fans, friends and family for all their amazing and overwhelming support." Michael Egan, 31, last week filed a suit against Singer for allegedly abusing him as a 17-year-old in 1999. Three other high profile executives, David Neuman, Garth Ancier and Gary Goddard, are now also the subject of civil lawsuits filed by Egan's lawyer, Jeff Herman. Egan claims all four men were involved in a Hollywood sex-abuse ring taking place at an estate in Hawaii and properties in LA. The allegations are fiercely denied by all the accused. Egan and Herman have now held two press conference in LA to promote their claims, the second of which was attended by Egan's mother Bonnie Mound. She said on Monday that approaches to the LAPD, FBI and various media outlets in 1999 were all knocked back in the wake of the alleged abuse. Singer is alleged to have raped Egan and forced him to take cocaine during a period in which the young actor and model was trying to break into Hollywood. The suit also alleges the film-maker and others threatened to make or break Egan's career depending on his willingness to keep them happy.

It may not be nearly as frantic and fraught as Game of Thrones, with its clans jostling and wrestling for the crown. But the kingdom of streaming subscription services offering on-demand music is crowded—and just about everyone wants to be number one. Spotify is the app to beat, boasting 20 million users and, according to a new report, the most popular one in the world. Rdio—the king of the north, as the first streaming service to believe in Canada as a market back in 2010—was, like the Starks, among the first to fall, its head speared on a pike earlier this month and shipped off to Pandora, the leading service in America by the number of users on mobile devices. There’s the venerable Baratheon-like Deezer, a long-standing player that has proven to be on struggling ground after bailing on plans to go public. Tidal, the “artist-oriented” outfit bought by Jay-Z and sponsored by a number of major celebrities, enjoyed its moment in the sun, but is now something of a Targaryen shell—claiming to offer a luxury audiophile product that few believe can be truly possible, the kind of hushed-tone eye-rolling usually reserved for talk about dragons. And there are new services cropping up all the time. Corporate monolith Amazon has leapt into the fray, though they are telegraphing their half-heartedness about that service by providing 1/30th of the songs its competitors offer, making it little more than a value-added element to their Amazon Prime membership. But without a doubt, the biggest new entrant is Apple, whose purchase of Dr. Dre’s Beats Electronics gave them the technology to launch Apple Music, a replacement to the iTunes store that changed the marketplace in 2003 by setting a market-wide price for a song: 99 cents. The prize of all this effort and intrigue? The ability to control the future of how music is consumed—a crown that’s potentially made of fool’s gold, since growth in the field continues apace despite the services generally failing to turn profits after paying high-priced royalties to labels and the like. But it’s a shiny bauble nonetheless. Which puts Google—and its streaming offering, Google Play Music—in an interesting place. One arm of the Google Play app, the general marketplace for Android users to download and buy apps, games and entertainment, the platform has the pedigree and the hardware integration to conquer the streaming world. After all, Google owns Android, which shares with Apple a huge chunk of the mobile operating-system market; it, like Apple, could put Google Play Music as a default on millions of phones, for starters, and market it more widely. And yet in its four years—just 18 months in Canada, however—it is not one of the big names in music-streaming, with early reports that it wasn’t living up to expectations. The sense of vague antipathy may be in part because no knows how many users Google Play Music has. Google is notoriously secretive, though spokespeople did say that it is available in 60 countries, and that numbers have doubled in the last year. But it’s clear it’s not a name-brand, and it’s hard to shake the feeling Google hasn’t harnessed its marketing power with a serious push. In part, that comes through in the product’s lack of identity—it’s not clear what features separate it from the pack—and that kind of thing matters in a crowded marketplace. Google Play Music is, in some ways, like Game of Thrones‘ House Martell—a powerful yet careful clan drawn into the fray that could easily snatch power for themselves, if power didn’t feel so base. That changed this week. At a Toronto event on Wednesday, Google announced that Songza—the curation/streaming service that provided playlists designed to match moods, activities and events with names like “Sexy Sweaty Dance Workout” or “Good Friends, Cheap Whiskey,” and which was bought by Google in 2014—would be rolled into a new free, ad-supported tier of Google Play Music. This “concierge” service has already been a part of Google Play’s all-you-can-listen paid subscription service, Google Play Music All-Access, which operates much like Apple Music; this announcement means the creation of a new free, but paid-by-advertising tier which allows people the option of sampling one aspect of the full service. All this to say: No longer is Google Play Music a fairly vanilla offering, with an intimidating paywall and confusing nomenclature. Google is making a big bet on the power of human curation built not around artist or even genre, but by feeling—a distinctive approach to music consumption. “Music-listening is inextricably linked to the context of the person who’s listening to it,” said Peter Asbill, a co-founder of Songza who is now a product marketing manager for Google Play Music, in an interview with Maclean’s. ” ‘I have a barbecue and my niece and in-laws and college friends are coming. I want to go to the gym and go harder and faster and stronger.’ People want a soundtrack for specific moments and moods in their lives. And that was an eye-opening idea that we [at Songza] heard time and time again.” “We’re really betting both now and going forward, that context is the most important thing, and we want to serve exactly the right thing to our users at exactly the right time,” added Danny Cohen, a product manager with Google Play Music. “The thing we’re really getting behind as a product is that context is king.” The question of whether that will work is a big one. Even Eric Schmidt, Google’s co-founder and the CEO of its parent company Alphabet, has his doubts, dismissing human curation as “elitist” in a BBC News op-ed while hailing algorithmic discovery tools. “It’s a much less elitist taste-making process—much more democratic—allowing everyone to discover the next big star through our own collective tastes and not through the individual preferences of a select few,” he wrote. Asbill acknowledges that Schmidt is right about the value of this “machine-learning,” and says Google Play Music offers a combination of the two, with its Pandora-like “radio stations” continuing alongside these human-curated mood playlists. And Cohen says the roll-in of Songza curation increased listening time overall when it was added to Google Play Music All-Access earlier this year. But Asbill insists Google wouldn’t take this plunge if the average-listening time statistics—unreleasable, of course—didn’t bear out its usefulness. “I promise you we would not use human curation in our product at all if it did not work. We’re ruthless about that stuff; if it’s not borne out by whether people like it, we will can it.” There’s also the fact that this feels like a catch-up move. When Apple Music bought Dre Beats Technology, many insiders believed it was for the industry-leading human curation offered by Beats Music; true to form, Beats Music was then absorbed by Apple Music, which now boasts playlists made both by experts and famous musicians. (Google did announce it would roll in Songza in the U.S. before Apple Music’s June launch.) Pandora and Spotify have long offered algorithmic options, too. But merely making a move to match Apple Music, and offer standout features compared to other apps, is a fairly significant move for Google, and they have as good a shot as any to succeed now. After all, with Google’s search engine, YouTube, and the popularity of its Chrome browser, what company knows how people work, play and think better than Google? It’s telling, too, that Asbill describes Google Play Music as a “lifestyle product”: a way to boost workouts, to ease long commutes, a way to lighten hard work days that’s embedded into the fabric of your life, powered by the things you do. So perhaps it’s not the number one spot, the King’s Landing crown, that Google is after. It doesn’t want the throne—it wants to be the throne. With these moves, they’ve at least armoured up enough to belong on the battlefield. “I think there’s no doubt [that we want to be number one.] That’s really not the primary thing that motivates us, to be honest, and that’s not really how we’re wired. I think that it’s a true statement, that that is what we want,” said Asbill. “But what are we really after? We’re trying to super-serve our users.”

A massive leak of documents exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies. The leak also provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world. The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars. These are among the findings of a year-long investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists including The Irish Times, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organisations. Stories of Irish interest arising from this investigation will be published by The Irish Times over the coming days. Included in the leaked documents are sales promotion agreements an Irish-registered company with an address in Drumcondra, Dublin, has signed in relation to arms and other deals in India, the Philippines and elsewhere, often involving commission-sharing deals with offshore companies. The files expose offshore companies controlled by the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the king of Saudi Arabia and the children of the president of Azerbaijan. They also include at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US government because of evidence that they’ve done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah or rogue states like North Korea and Iran. One of those companies supplied fuel for the aircraft that the Syrian government used to bomb and kill thousands of its own citizens, U.S. authorities have charged. “These findings show how deeply ingrained harmful practices and criminality are in the offshore world,” said Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley and author of “The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens.” Zucman, who was briefed on the media partners’ investigation, said the release of the leaked documents should prompt governments to seek “concrete sanctions” against jurisdictions and institutions that peddle offshore secrecy. World leaders who have embraced anti-corruption platforms feature in the leaked documents. The files reveal offshore companies linked to the family of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping , who has vowed to fight “armies of corruption ,” as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals. The files also contain new details of offshore dealings by the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform. The leaked data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015 . It allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world - providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues. Most of the services the offshore industry provides are legal if used by the law abiding. But the documents show that banks, law firms and other offshore players have often failed to follow legal requirements that they make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption. In some instances, the files show, offshore middlemen have protected themselves and their clients by concealing suspect transactions or manipulating official records. The documents make it clear that major banks are big drivers behind the creation of hard-to-trace companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other offshore havens. The files list nearly 15,600 paper companies that banks set up for clients who want keep their finances under wraps, including thousands created by international giants UBS and HSBC. The records reveal a pattern of covert maneuvers by banks, companies and people tied to Russian leader Putin. The records show offshore companies linked to this network moving money in transactions as large as $200 million at a time. Putin associates disguised payments, backdated documents and gained hidden influence within the country’s media and automotive industries, the leaked files show. A Kremlin spokesman did not answer questions for this story, but instead went public March 28 with charges that ICIJ and its media partners were preparing a misleading “information attack” on Putin and people close to him. The leaked records - which were reviewed by a team of more than 370 journalists from 76 countries - come from a little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama, Mossack Fonseca, that has branches in Hong Kong, Miami, Zurich and more than 35 other places around the globe . The firm is one of the world’s top creators of shell companies, corporate structures that can be used to hide ownership of assets. The law firm’s leaked internal files contain information on 214,488 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories. ICIJ will release the full list of companies and people linked to them in early May. The data includes emails, financial spreadsheets, passports and corporate records revealing the secret owners of bank accounts and companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions, from Nevada to Singapore to the British Virgin Islands. Mossack Fonseca’s fingers are in Africa’s diamond trade , the international art market and other businesses that thrive on secrecy. The firm has serviced enough Middle East royalty to fill a palace . It’s helped two kings, Mohammed VI of Morocco and King Salman of Saudi Arabia, take to the sea on luxury yachts. In Iceland, the leaked files show how Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned an offshore firm that held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds during that country’s financial crisis . The files include a convicted money launderer who claimed he’d arranged a $50,000 illegal campaign contribution used to pay the Watergate burglars, 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s 500 richest people and movie star Jackie Chan, who has at least six companies managed through the law firm. As with many of Mossack Fonseca’s clients, there is no evidence that Chan used his companies for improper purposes. Having an offshore company isn’t illegal. For some international business transactions, it’s a logical choice. The Mossack Fonseca documents indicate, however, that the firm’s customers have included Ponzi schemers , drug kingpins, tax evaders and at least one jailed sex offender. A U.S. businessman convicted of traveling to Russia to have sex with underage orphans signed papers for an offshore company while he was serving his prison sentence in New Jersey, the records show. The files contain new details about major scandals ranging from England’s most infamous gold heist to the bribery allegations convulsing FIFA, the body that rules international soccer. The leaked documents reveal that the law firm of Juan Pedro Damiani, a member of FIFA’s ethics committee, had business relationships with three men who have been indicted in the FIFA scandal - former FIFA vice president Eugenio Figueredo and Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, the father-son team accused of paying bribes to win broadcast rights to Latin American soccer events. The records show that Damiani’s law firm in Uruguay represented an offshore company linked to the Jinkises and seven companies linked to Figueredo. In response to the reporting by ICIJ and its media partners, FIFA’s ethics panel has launched a preliminary investigation into Damiani’s relationship to Figueredo. A spokesman for the committee said Damiani first informed the panel about his business ties to Figueredo on March 18. That was one day after the reporting team sent questions to Damiani about his law firm’s work for companies tied to the former FIFA vice president. The world’s best soccer player, Lionel Messi, is also found in the documents. The records show Messi and his father were owners of a Panama company: Mega Star Enterprises Inc. This adds a new name to the list of shell companies known to be linked to Messi. His offshore dealings are currently the target of a tax evasion case in Spain. Whether they’re famous or unknown, Mossack Fonseca works aggressively to protect its clients’ secrets. In Nevada, the records show, the law firm tried to shield itself and its clients from the fallout from a legal action in U.S. District Court by removing paper records from its Las Vegas branch and having its tech gurus wipe electronic records from phones and computers. The leaked files show the firm regularly offered to backdate documents to help its clients gain advantage in their financial affairs. It was so common that in 2007 an email exchange shows firm employees talking about establishing a price structure - clients would pay $8.75 for each month farther back in time that a corporate document would be backdated. In a written response to questions from ICIJ and its media partners, the firm said it “does not foster or promote illegal acts. Your allegations that we provide shareholders with structures supposedly designed to hide the identity of the real owners are completely unsupported and false.” The firm added that the backdating of documents “is a well-founded and accepted practice” that is “common in our industry and its aim is not to cover up or hide unlawful acts.” The firm said it couldn’t answer questions about specific customers because of its obligation to maintain client confidentiality. The law firm’s co-founder, Ramón Fonseca, said in a recent interview on Panamanian television that the firm has no responsibility for what clients do with the offshore companies that the firm sells. He compared the firm to a “car factory” whose liability ends once the car is produced. Blaming Mossack Fonseca for what people do with their companies would be like blaming a car maker “if the car was used in a robbery,” he said. Under scrutiny Until recently, Mossack Fonseca has largely operated in the shadows. But it has come under growing scrutiny as governments have obtained partial leaks of the firm’s files and authorities in Germany and Brazil began probing its practices. In February 2015, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that German law-enforcement agencies had launched a series of raids targeting one of the country’s biggest banks, Commerzbank, in a tax-fraud investigation that authorities said could lead to criminal charges against Mossack Fonseca employees. In Brazil, the law firm has become a target in a bribery and money laundering investigation dubbed “Operation Car Wash” (“Lava Jato,” in Portuguese), which has led to criminal charges against leading politicians and an investigation of popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva . The scandal threatens to unseat current President Dilma Rousseff. In January, Brazilian prosecutors labeled Mossack Fonseca as a “big money launderer” and announced they had filed criminal charges against five employees of the firm’s Brazilian office for their role in the scandal. Mossack Fonseca denies any wrongdoing in Brazil. The disclosures found inside the law firm’s leaked files dramatically expand on previous leaks of offshore records that ICIJ and its reporting partners have revealed in the past four years. In the largest media collaboration ever undertaken, journalists working in more than 25 languages dug into Mossack Fonseca’s inner workings and traced the secret dealings of the law firm’s customers around the world. They shared information and hunted down leads generated by the leaked files using corporate filings, property records, financial disclosures, court documents and interviews with money laundering experts and law-enforcement officials . Reporters at Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained millions of records from a confidential source and shared them with ICIJ and other media partners. The news outlets involved in the collaboration did not pay for the documents. Before Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained the leak, German tax authorities bought a smaller set of Mossack Fonseca documents from a whistleblower, a move that triggered the raids in Germany in early 2015. This smaller set of files has since been offered to tax authorities in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. The larger set of files obtained by the news organizations offers more than a snapshot of one law firm’s business methods or a catalog of its more unsavory customers. It allows a far-reaching view into an industry that has worked to keep its practices hidden - and offers clues as to why efforts to reform the system have faltered. The story of Mossack Fonseca is, in many ways, the story of the offshore system itself. Crime of the Century Before dawn on Nov. 26, 1983, six robbers slipped into the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at London’s Heathrow Airport. The thugs tied up the security guards, doused them in gasoline, lit a match and threatened to set them afire unless they opened the warehouse’s vault. Inside, the thieves found nearly 7,000 gold bars, diamonds and cash. “Thanks ever so much for your help. Have a nice Christmas,” one of the crooks said as they departed. British media dubbed the heist the “Crime of the Century.” Much of the loot - including the cash reaped by melting the gold and selling it - was never recovered. Where the missing money went is a mystery that continues to fascinate students of England’s underworld. Now documents within Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal that the law firm and its co-founder, Jürgen Mossack, may have helped the conspirators keep the spoils out of the hands of authorities by protecting a company tied to Gordon Parry, a London wheeler-dealer who laundered money for the Brink’s-Mat plotters. Sixteen months after the robbery, the records show, Mossack Fonseca set up a Panama shell company called Feberion Inc. Jürgen Mossack was one the company’s three “nominee” directors, a term used in the business for stand-ins who control a company on paper but exercise no real authority over its activities. Secret companies around the world An internal memo written by Mossack shows he was aware in 1986 that the company was “apparently involved in the management of money from the famous theft from Brink’s-Mat in London. The company itself has not been used illegally, but it could be that the company invested money through bank accounts and properties that was illegitimately sourced.” Mossack Fonseca records from 1987 make it clear that Parry was behind Feberion. Rather than help authorities gain access to Feberion’s assets, the law firm took steps that prevented UK police from gaining control of the company, the records show. After police obtained the two certificates that controlled the company’s ownership, Mossack Fonseca arranged for Feberion to issue 98 new shares, a move that appears to have effectively wrested control away from investigators, the leaked records show. It was not until 1995 - three years after Parry was sent to prison for his role in the gold caper - that Mossack Fonseca ended its business relationship with Feberion. A spokesman for the law firm said any allegations the firm helped shield the proceeds of the Brink’s-Mat robbery “are entirely false.” The spokesman said Jürgen Mossack “never had any dealings” with Parry and was never contacted by police about the case. Mossack Fonseca’s defense of the dodgy company illustrates how far many offshore operatives will go to serve their customers’ interests. The offshore system relies on a sprawling global industry of bankers, lawyers, accountants and other middlemen who work together to protect their clients’ secrets. These secrecy experts use anonymous companies, trusts and other paper entities to create complex structures that can be used to disguise the origins of dirty money. “They are the gasoline that runs the engine,” says Robert Mazur, a former U.S. drug agent and author of “The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel .” “They’re an extraordinarily important piece of the formula of success for criminal organizations.” Mossack Fonseca told ICIJ that it follows “both the letter and spirit of the law. Because we do, we have not once in nearly 40 years of operation been charged with criminal wrongdoing.” The men who founded the firm decades ago - and continue today as its main partners - are well-known figures in Panamanian society and politics. Jürgen Mossack is a German immigrant whose father sought a new life in Panama for his family after serving in Hitler’s Waffen-SS during World War II. Ramón Fonseca is an award-winning novelist who has worked in recent years as an adviser to Panama’s president. He took a leave of absence as presidential adviser in March after his firm was implicated in the Brazil scandal and ICIJ and its partners began to ask questions about the law firm’s practices. From its base in Panama, one of the world’s top financial secrecy zones , Mossack Fonseca seeds anonymous companies in Panama, the British Virgin Islands and other financial havens. The law firm has worked closely with big banks and big law firms in places like The Netherlands, Mexico, the United States and Switzerland, helping clients move money or slash their tax bills, the secret records show. An ICIJ analysis of the leaked files found that more than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches have worked with Mossack Fonseca since the early 1970s to help clients manage offshore companies. UBS set up more than 1,100 offshore companies through Mossack Fonseca. HSBC and its affiliates created more than 2,300. In all, the files indicate Mossack Fonseca worked with more than 14,000 banks, law firms, company incorporators and other middlemen to set up companies, foundations and trusts for customers, the records show . Mossack Fonseca says these middlemen are its true clients, not the eventual customers who use offshore companies. The firm says these middlemen provide additional layers of oversight for reviewing new customers. As for its own procedures, Mossack Fonseca says they often exceed “the existing rules and standards to which we and others are bound.” In its efforts to protect Feberion Inc., the shell company linked to the Brink’s-Mat gold heist, Mossack Fonseca used the services of a Panama-based firm, Chartered Management Company, run by Gilbert R.J. Straub, an American expatriate who played a cameo role in the Watergate scandal. In 1987, as U.K. police were investigating the shell company, Jürgen Mossack and Feberion’s other paper directors resigned, with the understanding they’d be replaced by new directors appointed by Straub’s Chartered Management, the secret files show. Straub was eventually caught in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting that was unrelated to the Brink’s-Mat case, according to Mazur, the former undercover agent. Mazur built the case that led Straub to plead guilty to money laundering in 1995. During Mazur’s deep-cover stint, Mazur said, Straub tried to establish his criminal bona fides by describing how he’d illegally channeled cash to President Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign . Secrets and Victims Nick Kgopa’s father died when Nick was 14. His father’s workmates at a gold mine in northern South Africa said Nick’s dad had been killed by chemical exposure. Nick and his mother and his younger brother, who is deaf, survived thanks to monthly checks from a fund for widows and orphans of mineworkers. One day the payments stopped. His family was one of many that lost out because of a $60 million investment fraud pulled off by South African businessmen. Prosecutors alleged that a group of individuals connected to an asset management company, Fidentia, had schemed to loot millions from investment funds - including the mineworkers’ death benefits pool that was supporting some 46,000 widows and orphans. Mossack Fonseca’s leaked documents show that at least two of the men involved in the fraud used the Panama-based law firm to create offshore companies - and that Mossack Fonseca was willing to help one of the fraudsters protect his money even after authorities publicly linked him to the scandal. Ponzi schemers and other fraudsters who bilk large numbers of victims often use offshore structures to pull of their schemes or hide the proceeds. The Fidentia case isn’t the only big-ticket fraud that appears in the files of Mossack Fonseca’s clients. In Indonesia, for example, small investors claim a company incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands was used to scam 3,500 people out of at least $150 million. “We really need that money for our son’s education fee this April,” one Indonesian investor emailed Mossack Fonseca in April 2007 after payouts had stopped. “You can give us any suggestion something we can do,” the investor asked in broken English after seeing Mossack Fonseca’s name on the investment fund’s advertising leaflet. In the Fidentia case, Mossack Fonseca’s records show that one of the men later jailed in South Africa for his role in the fraud, Graham Maddock, paid Mossack Fonseca $59,000 in 2005 and 2006 to create two sets of offshore companies, including one called Fidentia North America. The law firm’s records say it gave him “the VIP service.” Mossack Fonseca also created offshore structures for Steven Goodwin, a man that prosecutors later claimed had played an “instrumental role” within the Fidentia swindle. As the scandal broke in 2007, Goodwin flew to Australia, then to the U.S., where a Mossack Fonseca lawyer met with him at a luxury hotel in Manhattan to discuss his offshore holdings, the firm’s internal records show. The firm official later wrote that he and Goodwin “spoke deeply” about the Fidentia scandal and that he had “convinced Goodwin to better protect” his offshore company’s assets by passing them to a third party. In his memo, the firm official told colleagues that Goodwin wasn’t involved in the scandal “in any way whatsoever” - he was just “a victim of the circumstances.” In April 2008, the FBI arrested Goodwin in Los Angeles and sent him back to South Africa, where he pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. A month after Goodwin’s sentencing, an employee at Mossack Fonseca suggested a plan for frustrating South African prosecutors who were expected to start digging into assets linked to Goodwin’s offshore company, Hamlyn Property LLP, which had been set up to buy real estate in South Africa. The employee proposed having an accountant “prepare” audits for 2006 and 2007 “to try to prevent the prosecutor from taking actions against the entities behind Hamlyn.” He set off “prepare” in quote marks in his email. It’s unclear whether the proposal was adopted. Mossack Fonseca did not answer questions from ICIJ about its relationship with Goodwin. A representative for Goodwin told ICIJ that Goodwin “had nothing whatsoever” to do Fidentia’s collapse “or anything directly or indirectly to do with the 46,000 widows and orphans.” Politically exposed On Feb. 10, 2011, an anonymous company in the British Virgin Islands named Sandalwood Continental Ltd. loaned $200 million to an equally shadowy firm based in Cyprus called Horwich Trading Ltd. The following day, Sandalwood assigned the rights to collect payments on the loan - including interest - to Ove Financial Corp., a mysterious company in the British Virgin Islands. For those rights, Ove paid $1. But the money trail didn’t end there. The same day, Ove reassigned its rights to collect on the loan to a Panama company called International Media Overseas. It too paid $1. In the space of 24 hours the loan had, on paper, traversed three countries, two banks and four companies, making the money all but untraceable in the process. There were plenty of reasons why the men behind the transaction might want it disguised, not least of all because the money trail came uncomfortably close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. St. Petersburg-based Bank Rossiya, an institution whose majority owner and chairman has been called one of Putin’s “cashiers,” established Sandalwood Continental and directed the money flow. International Media Overseas, where rights to the interest payments from the $200 million appear to have landed, was controlled, on paper, by one of Putin’s oldest friends, Sergey Roldugin, a classical cellist who is godfather to Putin’s eldest daughter. The $200 million loan was one of dozens of transactions totaling at least $2 billion found in the Mossack Fonseca files involving people or companies linked to Putin. They formed part of a Bank Rossiya enterprise that gained indirect influence over a major shareholder in Russia’s biggest truck maker and amassed secret stakes in a key Russian media property. Suspicious payments made by Putin’s cronies may have in some cases been designed as payoffs, possibly in exchange for Russian government aid or contracts. The secret documents suggest that much of the loan money originally came from a bank in Cyprus that at the time was majority owned by the Russian state-controlled VTB Bank. In a media conference call last week, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the government wouldn’t reply to “honey-worded queries” from ICIJ or its reporting partners, because they contain questions that “have been asked hundreds of times and answered hundreds of times.” Peskov added that Russia has “available the full arsenal of legal means in the national and international arena to protect the honor and dignity of our president.” Under national laws and international agreements, firms like Mossack Fonseca that help create companies and bank accounts are supposed to be on the lookout for clients who may be involved in money laundering, tax evasion or other wrongdoing. They are required to pay special attention to “politically exposed persons” - government officials or their family members or associates. If someone is a “PEP,” the middlemen creating their companies are expected to review their activities carefully to make sure they are not engaging in corruption. Mossack Fonseca told ICIJ that it has “duly established policies and procedures to identify and handle those cases where individuals” qualify as PEPs.” Often, Mossack Fonseca appeared not to realize who its customers were. A 2015 internal audit found that the law firm knew the identities of the real owners of just 204 of 14,086 companies it had incorporated in Seychelles, a tax haven in the Indian Ocean . British Virgin Islands authorities fined Mossack Fonseca $37,500 for violating anti-money-laundering rules because the firm incorporated a company for the son of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak but failed to identify the connection , even after the father and son were charged with corruption in Egypt. An internal review by the law firm concluded, “our risk assessment formula is seriously flawed .” In all, an ICIJ analysis of the Mossack Fonseca files identified 58 family members and associates of prime ministers, presidents or kings. The records show, for example, that the family of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev used foundations and companies in Panama to hold secret stakes in gold mines and London real estate. The children of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also owned London real estate through companies created by Mossack Fonseca, the law firm’s records show . Family members of at least eight current or former members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s main ruling body, have offshore companies arranged though Mossack Fonseca. They include President Xi’s brother-in-law, who set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009. Representatives for the Azeri, Pakistani and Chinese leaders did not respond to requests for comment. The list of world leaders who used Mossack Fonseca to set up offshore entities includes the current president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, who was director and vice president of a Bahamas company managed by Mossack Fonseca when he was a businessman and a mayor of Argentina’s capital. A spokesman for Macri said the president never personally owned shares in the firm, which was part of his family’s business. During the bloodiest days of Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Ukraine’s Donbas region, the documents show, representatives of Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko scrambled to find a copy of a home utility bill for him to complete the paperwork to create a holding company in the British Virgin Islands. A spokesperson for Poroshenko said the creation of the company had nothing to do with “any political and military events in Ukraine. ” Poroshenko’s financial advisers said the president didn’t include the BVI firm in his 2014 financial disclosures because neither the holding company nor two related companies in Cyprus and the Netherlands have any assets. They said that the companies were part of a corporate restructuring to help sell Poroshenko’s confectionery business. When Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson became Iceland’s prime minister in 2013 he concealed a secret that could have damaged his political career. He and his wife shared ownership in an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands when he entered parliament in 2009 . He sold his stake in the company months later to his wife for $1. The company held bonds originally worth millions of dollars in three giant Icelandic banks that failed during the 2008 global financial crash, making it a creditor in their bankruptcies. Gunnlaugsson’s government negotiated a deal with creditors last year without disclosing his family’s financial stake in the outcome. Gunnlaugsson has denied in recent days that his family’s financial interests influenced his stances. The leaked records do not make it clear whether Gunnlaugsson’s political positions benefited or hurt the value of the bonds held through the offshore company. In an interview with an ICIJ media partner, Reykjavik Media, Gunnlaugsson denied hiding assets. When he was confronted with the name of the offshore company linked to him - Wintris Inc. - the prime minister said “I’m starting to feel a bit strange about these questions because it’s like you are accusing me of something.” Soon after, he ended the interview. Four days later, his wife took the matter public, posting a note on Facebook asserting that the company was hers, not his, and that she had paid all taxes on it. Since then, members of Iceland’s parliament have questioned why Gunnlaugsson never disclosed the offshore company, with one lawmaker calling for the prime minister and his government to resign. The prime minister has fought back, putting out an eight-page statement arguing he wasn’t required to publicly report his connection to Wintris because it was really owned by his wife and because it was “merely a holding company, not a company engaged in commercial activities.” Offshore Cover-Ups In 2005, a tour boat called the Ethan Allen sank in New York’s Lake George, drowning 20 elderly tourists . After the survivors and families of the dead sued, they learned the tour company had no insurance because fraudsters had sold it a fake policy . Malchus Irvin Boncamper, an accountant on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court in 2011 to helping the con artists launder proceeds of their frauds. This created a problem for Mossack Fonseca, because Boncamper had served as the front man - a “nominee” director - for 30 companies created by the law firm. Once it learned of Boncamper’s criminal conviction, Mossack Fonseca took quick action. It told its offices to replace Boncamper as director of the companies - and to backdate the records in a way that made it appear the changes had taken place, in some cases, a decade earlier. The Boncamper case is one of the examples in the leaked files showing the law firm using questionable tactics to hide its own methods or its customers’ activities from legal authorities. In the “Operation Car Wash” case in Brazil, prosecutors allege that Mossack Fonseca employees destroyed and hid documents to mask the law firm’s involvement in money laundering. A police document says that, in one instance, an employee of the firm’s Brazil branch sent an email instructing co-workers to hide records involving a client who may have been the target of a police investigation: “Do not leave anything. I will save them in my car or at my house.” In Nevada, the leaked files show, Mossack Fonseca employees worked in late 2014 to obscure the links between the law firm’s Las Vegas branch and its headquarters in Panama in anticipation of a U.S. court order requiring it to turn over information on 123 companies incorporated by the law firm. Argentine prosecutors had linked those Nevada-based companies to a corruption scandal involving an associate of former presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In an effort to free itself from the American court’s jurisdiction, Mossack Fonseca claimed that its Las Vegas office, MF Nevada, wasn’t in fact a branch office at all. It said it had no control over the office. The firm’s internal records show the opposite. They indicate that the firm controlled MF Nevada’s bank account and the firm’s co-founders and another Mossack Fonseca official owned 100 percent of MF Nevada. To erase evidence of the connection, the law firm arranged to remove paper documents from the branch and worked to delete computer traces of the link between the Nevada and the Panama operations, internal emails show. One big worry, an internal email said, was that the branch’s manager might be too “nervous” to carry out the effort, making it easy for investigators to discover “that we are hiding something. “ Mossack Fonseca declined to answer questions about the Brazil and Nevada affairs, but denied generally that it had obstructed investigations or covered up improper activities. “It is not our policy to hide or destroy documentation that may be of use in any ongoing investigation or proceeding,” the firm said. Reforming the Secret World In 2013, U.K. leader David Cameron urged his country’s overseas territories - including the British Virgin Islands - to work with him to “get our own houses in order” and join the fight against tax evasion and offshore secrecy. He could have looked no further than his late father to see how challenging that would be. Ian Cameron, a stockbroker and multimillionaire, was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from U.K. taxes. The fund’s name came from Blairmore House, his family’s ancestral country estate. Mossack Fonseca registered the investment fund in Panama even though many of its key investors were British. Ian Cameron controlled the fund from its birth in 1982 until his death in 2010. A prospectus for investors said the fund “should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for United Kingdom taxation purposes.” The fund did this by using untraceable certificates of ownership known as “bearer shares” and by employing “nominee” company officers based in the Bahamas, the law firm’s leaked records show. Ian Cameron’s tax-haven history is an example of how deeply offshore secrecy is woven into the lives of political and financial elites around the world. It’s also an important economic engine for many countries. The weight of that self-interest has made reform difficult. In the U.S., for example, states like Delaware and Nevada, which have allowed company owners to remain anonymous, continue to fight against efforts to require greater corporate transparency. Mossack Fonseca’s home country, Panama, has refused to embrace a plan for worldwide exchange of information about bank accounts - out of concern that its offshore industry could be left at a competitive disadvantage . Panama officials say they will exchange information, but on a more modest scale. The challenge that reformers and law enforcers face is how to find and stop criminal behavior when it’s buried beneath layers of secrecy. The most effective tool for breaking through this secrecy has been leaks of offshore documents that have dragged hidden dealings into the open. Document leaks uncovered by ICIJ and its media partners have prompted legislation and official investigations in dozens of countries - and fanned fears among offshore customers who worry their secrets will be revealed. In April 2013, after ICIJ released its “Offshore Leaks” stories based on confidential documents from the British Virgin Islands and Singapore, some Mossack Fonseca customers emailed the firm looking for reassurance that their offshore holdings were safe from scrutiny. Mossack Fonseca told customers not to worry. It said its commitment to its clients’ privacy “has always been paramount, and in this regard your confidential information is stored in our state-of-the-art data center, and any communication within our global network is handled through an encryption algorithm that complies with the highest world-class standards.” * This story was reported and written by Bastian Obermayer, Gerard Ryle, Marina Walker Guevara, Michael Hudson, Jake Bernstein, Will Fitzgibbon, Mar Cabra, Martha M. Hamilton, Frederik Obermaier, Ryan Chittum, Emilia Díaz-Struck, Rigoberto Carvajal, Cécile Schilis-Gallego, Marcos García Rey, Delphine Reuter, Matthew Caruana-Galizia, Hamish Boland-Rudder, Miguel Fiandor and Mago Torres.

If you thought it was bad that Washington is paying a shady French mercenary to do its dirty work in Somalia, you ain't seen nothing yet. Just wait to you see our latest ally: an admirer of Osama bin Laden with a gory past. Richard Rouget, a notorious gun-for-hire who uses American funds to train African Union soldiers fighting in the ruins of Mogadishu, has been mentioned in connection with at least one murder. But U.S.-backed Somali government general Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a.k.a. "Indha Adde," a.k.a, "The Butcher," once ruled an entire region of Somalia with a bloody fist. The U.S.-led international intervention in civil war-torn Somalia is unlike any of America's other wars. Where the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought by tens of thousands of U.S. troops, in Somalia Washington pays others to do most of the fighting. These proxies include merc firms, regional bodies such as the A.U. and local allies including the nascent federal government. That means less direct danger to American lives. But in another sense it means *more *danger. The more that the U.S. relies on proxy armies to do its fighting, the more it risks those proxies usurping American support and directing it towards their own dubious ends. That's the subject of ace reporter Jeremy Scahill's latest piece in The Nation and also of my own feature for The Diplomat. "As one of the main warlords who divided and destroyed Somalia during the civil war that raged through the 1990s, he brutally took control of the Lower Shabelle region," Scahill wrote about Siad. "There are allegations that he ran drug and weapons trafficking operations from the Merca port." Siad also readily admits providing protection to al-Qaida operatives and speaks fondly of the late Osama bin Laden. Mind you, this is one of the top generals in the army of one of our closest allies in Somalia. For years, Siad resisted CIA efforts to lure him and his hundreds of militiamen to the American side. It took a lot of sweet-talking plus seismic shifts in Somali politics and U.S. strategy to draw in Siad. In 2008, Washington backed Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist and former ally of Siad's, for Somali president. Just two years prior, Ahmed had been co-leader of the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamic group that birthed al-Shabab, pictured, a terrorist and insurgent group and today the main threat in Somalia. Ahmed and Siad both changed sides as Al Shabab grew more extreme and foreign governments organized to destroy it. For the moment, the U.S. and its shady Somali allies share a common enemy. It's not clear how long the alliance will last – or how strong it is even today. "Ahmed claims that Indha Adde [a.k.a., Siad] and other warlords have sworn allegiance to the government," Scahill wrote, "but it is abundantly clear from traveling extensively through Mogadishu with Indha Adde that his men are loyal to him above all else." “The warlords being backed by you [America] have only a conflict of interest with the Shabab, not of ideology," another former warlord told Scahill. "That’s why [arming and supporting them] is a dangerous game.” With Al Shabab on the run following relentless international attacks from the ground, air and sea, Washington soon could find itself in an uneasy relationship with U.S.-armed Somalis who, just a few years ago, were its enemies – and who no longer have a *greater *enemy to focus on. What happens after that is anybody's guess. Photo: Flickr/Abdurahman Warsame See Also:

'Stains On The Sidewalk': Photographer Remembers Year Of Murders In Baltimore Hide caption #19 Eric Dorsey, 41 y/o 2/5/16 at 8:54am 3900 Penhurst Ave. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #130 Christopher Collins, 25 y/o 6/21/16 1300 Glenwood Ave. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #92 Elisha Watson, 1 month, 5/4/16 at 6:05pm 500 E. Patapsco Ave. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #87 Joel McCullum, 26 y/o 4/28/16 at 8:07pm 2400 E. Lafayette Ave. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #16 Gerald Williams, 20 y/o 2/1/16 at 9:46pm 1500 Pentridge Road. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #47 Kenneth Collins, 45 y/o 3/15/16 at 9:00pm 2433 E. Monument St. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #56 Sterling Stanfield, 29 y/o 3/27/16 at 4:20am 1300 Boyd St. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert Hide caption #101 Cortez Brown, 17y/o 5/22/16 at 10:56pm 3500 Hayward Ave. Previous Next Courtesy of Amy Berbert 1 of 8 i View slideshow In American cities, the murder rate has kept rising over the last couple of years. One of the most violent cities in the U.S. is Baltimore. That's where 22-year-old photographer Amy Berbert lives. She's been documenting every murder that took place in Baltimore in 2016. The city has more than twice as many homicides per capita as Chicago. "Same place, same time, same day, one year later," Berbert says about her project, in which she captures the site of each homicide. Each image goes on social media, where she runs the account, Remembering the Stains on the Sidewalk, on Instagram and Facebook. "And for me that's the biggest piece is that I have to plan my life, around these people's death," she says. "I'm missing my cousin's wedding, but these people will never be able to go to another wedding again. So it's a small sacrifice considering this 318 people will never see these opportunities again." She took the first photo on Jan. 1, 2016, and she will take the last one on New Year's Eve. The project often takes her into sketchy neighborhoods in the middle of the night. Berbert never includes people in the photographs because she says she's documenting a loss of life – an absence. On this day, she's documenting the scene of a murder that happened a little past noon in a Baltimore neighborhood called Sandtown-Winchester. When Berbert actually takes the photograph at 12:30, it feels almost anticlimactic. This is the moment one year ago that a man was shot and killed where we're standing. This is photograph No. 131 in the project. But of course, the man who died on this corner a year ago is not just a number. His name was Donzell Canada, and he was 29 years old when he was killed. His murder remains unsolved. "When I met him, he used to be right here on this corner. They called him Zelly at that time," says pastor Rodney Hudson of Ames Memorial United Methodist Church. On this swampy day in Baltimore, Hudson is wearing a button-up shirt with a bow tie and a crucifix around his neck. The window box air conditioner in his office is working overtime. Enlarge this image toggle caption Ari Shapiro/NPR Ari Shapiro/NPR He says Donzell Canada, or Zelly, was friends with Freddie Gray — the man who died in police custody two years ago, leading to protests in Baltimore. "They were young guys just coming up, just trying to earn a little living, doing street pharmaceuticals as we call it," Hudson says, referring to the sale of prescription pills on the street. He says they ended up in that situation because they had no other choice. "When there are no jobs, and when your parents are having to depend on you to become an income maker, it becomes a way of life," Hudson says. "And I believe deep in my heart that if they had another choice, that this would not have been their desired life. But this is all they knew. All they knew was killing. All they knew was drug addiction." Hudson met these guys when he arrived at the church nine years ago. Canada was 20 years old then. Over time he earned their trust, and he often invited them to play basketball with them on a nearby court. He seems to know everyone in this neighborhood — from the old folks sitting in the shade to the young men slouching on the street corners, and the kids playing on the basketball court. Hudson says he cares about these kids "because in order to save the community, you got to start one person at a time." But he wishes there were better infrastructure, opportunities and activities for these kids, and jobs for their parents. Already this year, more than 180 people have been killed in Baltimore. Berbert says as a photographer, she can use her art to make connections between the powerful and powerless. "So if art can look at this group of people that's hurting and help tell their story or at least give them a platform to tell their story for themselves," she says, "the politicians, the policymakers, all of the people that can make a difference, can really understand what the issue is."

Experts examining the 33ft (10m) long animal, which died about 875 yards (800m) from the shoreline, say they are 95% sure it is a female sei whale. The animal was trapped in shallow water near the East Yorkshire village of Skeffling, on the north bank of the River Humber. Andy Gibson, of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said Sei whale strandings were very rare. He said there had only been three strandings of this species in UK waters in the last 20 years. ''It is sad. It was in shallow water of about 1.2m (4ft) to 1.6m (5.25ft), making contact with the bottom,'' Mr Gibson said. ''This was about 800m offshore. ''When it gets in that situation it rolls onto its side and it can cover its blow hole.'' But Mr Gibson said: ''It is sad but we will be able to learn a lot from it.'' The whale is the latest of a number to have died in the Humber estuary area recently. Earlier this month, a young fin whale - a relative of the sei - was stranded at Immingham, North East Lincolnshire, and subsequently washed up dead near Spurn Point. And another dead whale was spotted in the river mouth in the last few days but has yet to wash ashore. The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has noted a rise in whale sightings generally in 2011 but no-one is sure why there may be an increase in the mammals in the North Sea. Over the summer, a pod of up to 10 Minke whales were spotted regularly off the North Yorkshire coast between Whitby and Scarborough. Whale experts admit they do not know why there has been an upsurge in sightings and strandings. Some believe it could be due to changes in ocean currents bringing colder streams of Arctic water into the shallow North Sea.

I am having a difficult time recovering from a HD failure. Essentially my SSD drive I was using to run Windows 7 for gaming has gone completely haywire. I am trying to resize an NTFS partition on a SATA drive and keep running into issues. Currently I am following this document - http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu to make a start up USB Disc which I plan to boot off of then resize the NTFS Partition with the ultimate goal of running Windows off this new NTFS Partition. I've downloaded the Ubuntu 14.04 ISO from ubuntu.com and follow the instructions to step 6 however when I go to select Make Startup Disk the option is still greyed out. Some information on the situation and my setup. Other than a work Windows 7 Laptop with no Admin rights I have no other machines available to me to assist in this process unfortunately. I tried resizing the partition with the Windows Boot device but it only give's me an option to format the partition not resize. DVD Rom died in the same day as my HD (could be a bigger issue here I am not aware of yet or could be a coincidence). Booting of a SATA 3TB Drive 1TB Ext4 running Ubuntu 14.04 2TB NTFS Partition used to store media, documents etc. This this is the partition I want to resize and create a 2nd NTFS partition to put Windows 7 on and dual boot this way moving forward until I purchase a new SSD Drive. USB Device is ADATA Elite S102 Pro which I had previously tested and created a Windows USB Start up disk to install Windows. The device seems to be working fine. I've formatted the USB Device using NTFS and Ext4 however I receive the same results (not being able to take the final step to begin the process of creating the USB Ubuntu Boot device. I've tried to use the "Erase" option in the Startup Disc Creator however I get the following error (same error when the device is formatted in NTFS or Ext4). "org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.gi._glib.GError: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/service.py", line 707, in _message_cb retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords) File "/usr/share/usb-creator/usb-creator-helper", line 239, in Format block.call_format_sync('dos', GLib.Variant('a{sv}', {'erase': GLib.Variant('s', '')}), None) gi._glib.GError: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.Failed: Error synchronizing after initial wipe: Timed out waiting for object" Any advice, suggestions and or help would be great I am really stumped right now and burning to play the new Civilizations game. Am I going about this the wrong way? Am I a just being a newb here? I've searched through Ask Ubuntu / Google and have not found this particular scenario discussed which makes me feel like I am doing something incorrectly here. Thank you for your time.

THE END of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority investigation next month may only be the beginning of years of legal drama for Essendon.If the Bombers are proven to have endangered the health of their players they could be in breach of Victoria's workplace safety laws and face fines totaling more than $1 million.The club could also face a lengthy legal fight with its players for compensation related to damaged reputations and loss of earnings."It could be significant sums of money and it could be a very long period to recover those sums," Maurice Blackburn's principal in employment law Kamal Farouque told"The ASADA process may not be the end of the story; it could be just the start of the story," he said.He indicated any litigation process could last two years.ASADA and AFL are continuing a probe into the Bombers' 2012 supplements program, with the findings due in August So far Victoria's workplace regulator is not investigating, but it hasn't ruled out looking into the case after other inquiries are complete.“WorkSafe is not investigating this matter as more appropriate bodies are looking into the issue," a spokesman toldUnder section 21 of the 2004 Occupational Health and Safety Act there could be grounds to prosecute."An employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain for employees of the employer a working environment that is safe and without risks to health," the act reads.Both organisations and individuals can be liable for massive fines, although WorkSafe rarely takes action against individuals."If any employer in the course of employment administered or procured their employees to have administered a substance which endangered their health and safety then that would raise obvious implications under the Occupational Health and Safety Act," Farouque said."If there was the potential for that then Essendon could be investigated by WorkSafe, and if WorkSafe thought that there was sufficient evidence to sustain a prosecution they could be prosecuted by WorkSafe," he said.

Just as the Americans are dealing with what to do with statues of Confederate leaders such as General Robert E. Lee, Canadians have embarked on their own debate about stripping the name of Sir John A. Macdonald from schools and other buildings in Ontario. At its recent annual meeting, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario passed a motion which described this country's first prime minister as the "architect of genocide against Indigenous peoples." I do not agree with the union's recommended action but respect their decision to engage in an important discussion. Until recently Macdonald was treated kindly by most historians, a trend toward hagiography that began with Donald Creighton's biographies in the 1950s. Macdonald was portrayed as a lovable political rascal who achieved great things despite his heavy drinking and many other flaws. Macdonald was a racist Unfortunately, there is no doubt that Macdonald was a racist in his attitudes and actions toward Indigenous peoples. I was shocked several years ago to read in a book called Clearing the Plains that Macdonald, who was also the minister of Indian affairs, withheld food as a weapon to force starving First Nations people onto tiny reserves and out of the way of European settlers. It was also Macdonald who sent Nicholas Flood Davin to investigate residential schools for Indigenous children in the United States. Macdonald then set up similar schools in Canada beginning in the 1880s. The objective, in his own words, was to remove children from their families, place them in residential schools and to "take the Indian out of the child." The results of this cruel social engineering project were devastating as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) has indicated. Cultural genocide These are harsh truths about Macdonald. Most other settlers in his day held Indigenous peoples in equal contempt and had no qualms about stealing their land -- but Macdonald's transgression is greater because he was the prime minister. Murray Sinclair, who was a judge and is now a Senator, was the lead commissioner for the TRC. He has used the term "genocide" to describe the intended results of residential schools, land seizures, forced relocations and other destructive tactics. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin used the term "cultural genocide" and said: "The most glaring blemish on the Canadian historic record relates to our treatment of the First Nations that lived here at the time of colonization." Tread cautiously Yet we should tread cautiously before expunging Macdonald's name from buildings -- a move which would almost certainly be followed by demands to have his statues removed in Kingston, on Parliament Hill and from locations such as the Ottawa airport, which also bears his name. The campaign paints Macdonald as a one-dimensional racist. However, he was able to overcome at least some commonplace prejudices of the day between Protestants and Catholics, and between Francophones and Anglophones. If there is nothing worthy about Macdonald, then perhaps there is nothing worth celebrating about the nation that he and others brought into being. I believe that, despite its flaws, there is much that is good and noble about Canada. Smacks of revenge Much of the momentum for reconsidering the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians likely arises from the TRC report in 2015. Sinclair and his fellow commissioners made 94 calls to action that relate to reconciliation. They focus upon the need for an honest reappraisal of our history and a variety of concrete actions to be undertaken by governments, educational institutions, churches and individual Canadians. Much of the emphasis in those recommendations is upon education. But nowhere does the TRC propose renaming buildings or removing statues. In fact, Sinclair has responded to the teachers' request to do so by saying that it would be "counterproductive" and "almost smacks of revenge or smacks of acts of anger." Let us, as the TRC recommends, redesign school curricula to tell the truth about what has been done to Indigenous peoples in Canada, and to tell of the resilience of their societies. Let's pressure the Trudeau government to adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Let's repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, which held that Europeans could blithely claim as their own lands which had been occupied by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Let's support treaties, land claims and the provision of equitable funding as it relates to education and social services for Indigenous children. Let's not bother with names on buildings or the location of statues. Image: Dennis Gruending​ Please chip in to keep stories like these coming.

SANTA CLARA — Thursday was the 49ers players’ scheduled day off. There was no way to gauge their reaction after the team’s morning announcement that it had signed Seneca Wallace to the position of — essentially — the fourth No. 2 quarterback. But let me take a wild stab at what the players’ reaction was to the Wallace signing: “Huh? Another one?” No one doubts the motivational skills of 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh. His guys show up every week in the regular season ready to play mentally. Only two of his nine losses as the team’s coach have been by more than 11 points. Thus, as screwy as it sounded last season when Harbaugh kept saying that Alex Smith was the 49ers’ starting quarterback even though Colin Kaepernick had clearly replaced Smith … well, if that sort of spin kept the locker room in the proper groove for a Super Bowl mission, fair enough. But this season, there’s a different challenge for Harbaugh in the quarterbacking-attitudinal-spin department. And it will be tougher than last year’s delicate Smith-Kaepernick dance. Here’s why: By bringing in the 33-year-old Wallace as yet another potential backup, the team and Harbaugh continued their summer camp theme of practically screaming to the world that if Kaepernick gets hurt, the 49ers are doomed. Now, it’s fine if the rest of us believe that. But the 49er players can’t be permitted to believe that. Otherwise, if Kaepernick does indeed suffer an injury and be sidelined for a few games or even longer, it would provide a ready-made excuse to shrug off a defeat or let intensity slip a bit. And in the NFL, if the intensity slips an inch, it’s the same as it slipping a mile. The margin between winning and losing is too thin. So, pretend for a moment that you are a 49ers player. And tell me what you’d think if you saw: 1. Kaepernick barely being allowed to break a sweat in the first two exhibition games, then being ordered quickly to the bench because Harbaugh says he doesn’t want anything “freakish” to happen — which means, what, Kaepernick might be supernaturally transformed into a spineless protoplasmic zombie as if he were in a Stephen King novel? 2. Kaepernick being asked in practice to switch from his normal red jersey to a black one, a signal for defenders to not touch him, or create too harsh a breeze while running past him, or criticize his choice of lunchtime salad bar items. 3. No real clarity in the matter of who will be the No. 2 quarterback. Presumptive top backup Colt McCoy has struggled in the first two exhibition games (25.3 passer rating). Presumptive No. 3 Scott Tolzien has failed to raise any eyebrows. A raw rookie, B.J. Daniels, was moderately impressive last week in Kansas City. But he is still, yes, a raw rookie. 4. The curious move of signing Wallace, who, after starting just 21 games in seven NFL seasons with Seattle and Cleveland, couldn’t catch on with any team in 2012 and was recently released by the New Orleans Saints. Is the 49ers quarterbacking roster truly that distressed? I can imagine what some players must be thinking as they ponder all of the above, even if they won’t talk about it publicly: We must be pretty depth-chart fragile at the most important position on the field. And heaven help us if Kaepernick gets banged up. That’s not ideal, although it’s not necessarily a disastrous mindset. The Saints players probably feel the same way about Drew Brees. But it surely helped the Saints’ confidence to see Brees on the field last week, looking invincible as he led five scoring drives in the first half against the Raiders. Kaepernick has not yet had that sort of preseason opportunity. He might Sunday against the Vikings. Or he might not. It would seem to be a good idea for Kaepernick to go out and flex his muscles longer this weekend — and then have one of the four backups look solid and capable. This would send an excellent message to the team and the league. But Harbaugh isn’t tipping his hand about how he will allot playing time. Perhaps he has the Zen of this all figured out in a way that the rest of us can’t comprehend. For now, the 49er quarterbacking situation behind Kaepernick is a definite issue. The team faces a telling decision. Does it go with Wallace and Daniels, two players whose athletic skills more match Kaepernick’s in terms of running a read-option offense? Or should the nod go to McCoy and Tolzien, more conventional drop-back types? Whichever way it sorts out, the 49ers would do well to retain Daniels in some capacity. The kid has upside. During a brief discussion with him earlier in training camp, I discovered that before the 49ers picked him in the NFL draft, he interviewed for a job with the F.B.I. after earning his criminology degree at South Florida. “I always wanted to get into that kind of stuff,” Daniels told me. “As a kid, I watched C.S.I. with my mom every week.” I predict Daniels will be excellent at dissecting opponents, if he gets a chance. I just know in these next two weeks before the Sept. 8 opener against Green Bay, the most important thing for the 49ers is to gain more clarity and sureness with their overall quarterbacking mojo. That alone will make this Sunday’s exhibition worth watching. Contact Mark Purdy at mpurdy@mercurynews.com.

Derrick Rose will get his wish. Not only can Rose play in fourth quarters, he also will play more than 20 minutes, likely as early as Saturday. And that 32-minute limit Joakim Noah has been on all season? That will be lifted for the postseason. That always has been the organizational plan since the restrictions were put in place in an attempt to keep Rose and Noah, both coming off offseason knee surgery, fresher for the playoffs. Rose's latest small meniscus tear that sidelined him for 20 games after arthroscopic surgery only added another level of conservatism for the short-term. That Rose returned for a back-to-back set of games further underscored the less-is-more approach. The games marked the Bulls' last back-to-back of the regular season, and such scheduling doesn't exist during the playoffs. After successfully navigating the roughly 20-minute outings in Orlando and Miami that featured him sitting out both fourth quarters, an upbeat Rose respectfully asked for more. "I want to," Rose said of playing in the fourth quarters. "It seems like they're fun games. But it's out of my hands." Rose admitted he didn't know how his playing-time plan is hatched, saying he merely receives it from Jen Swanson, the team's director of sports performance. But Swanson isn't unilaterally determining the plan, which comes from management with a collaborative effort with the medical and training staffs. Rose said he doesn't question the plan because of his trust in Swanson, who oversaw his left ACL rehabilitation in Los Angeles before the Bulls hired her in August 2013. It's up to coach Tom Thibodeau to distribute the minutes. "I want to increase my playing time; of course I could go longer," Rose said. "But I don't question her. I've been working with her for three or four years now." Rose said his physical state is so encouraging that he didn't even use a stationary bicycle placed in the players' tunnel to warm up before his post-first-quarter segments. "I didn't know what to expect coming into (Thursday's) game," Rose said. "I know before the game I wasn't sore. I was feeling great. And I still feel the same way. So my preparation for the game, I think, is getting a lot better. And I just have to continue to do it. "Every game, I'm just trying to get better and push myself. My last couple of minutes of the game, I had a couple of turnovers but it comes from just going hard and pushing myself as far as conditioning. I think I'm getting better and I attacked the basket a little more." After a strong stretch from late-February through mid-March, Noah hasn't affected games as much lately. While his passing numbers remain rare for centers, he has just one double-digit rebounding game in his last seven and hasn't scored in double figures since March 15. Obviously, scoring isn't Noah's main forte. But teams are sagging off him considerably now. And following Sunday's loss in Cleveland, Noah admitted he's still struggling with his different defensive role in which he mostly guards stretch fours and isn't roaming the middle as much. Perhaps the postseason plan allowing him to play more if needed will help. Noah's game always has been based on activity and intensity, and he hasn't been closing games lately. "I really hope so," Noah said when asked if Thursday's second half could serve as a springboard for the team. "I think everybody is into their situation a little bit sometimes. But like Coach says, we have to put it all on the team." Future scenarios: In a video post on Bleacher Report, longtime NBA writer Ric Bucher reported people connected to Thibodeau are exploring potential future options, including the Magic, if he and the Bulls part ways. The Tribune previously reported no definitive decision has been made from either side regarding Thibodeau's future. He has two years remaining on his Bulls' deal. kcjohnson@tribpub.com Twitter @kcjhoop

We all already know that America is a haven for white supremacy: a 400-year-old greenhouse for white privilege where the vegetation is watered by white tears and casserole juice. Fortunately, there’s space within this forest of whiteness to cheat the game a little bit and use the guilt some of them feel for being historically terrible people to our advantage. Perhaps these aren’t exactly the most moral things to do, but they killed Radio Raheem, so who gives a fuck? 1. If you need a day off and you have no PTO or vacation days left, cite Kwanzaa. “Hey, Bob. We’re off Friday, right?” “I don’t think so, Tyreke. Why would we be?” “Wait, so you’re telling me, as the manager of this company, that it doesn’t celebrate Kwanzaa?” Advertisement “Um, it’s November. I thought Kwanzaa was in December.” “So you’ve never heard of the 37 days of Kwanzaa, the pre-Kwanzaa recognition of family, unity, Claymation and Isabel Sanford? Tell me, Bob, that you know that Friday is when we light the quadrangle and sing ‘Lift Every Voice on the Mountain’ with our families. Are you trying to keep me away from my family?” “No.” 2. Jokingly drop the racism bomb ... but with a straight face. “Hey, Tyreke, did you see the game last night?” “No, Bob. Flat-screen TVs are racist. Why would you even ask me that?” “Wait ... what?” [Tyreke walks away while Bob wonders what the fuck just happened.] 3. Get out of jams by referencing your hair. “Hey, Iesha. Are those expense reports ready? Been waiting on them for three days now.” Advertisement “Sorry, Bob, but I had to get my edges chopped and remarinated, and that took longer than usual. I won’t get the reports done until next Wednesday.” “But they were due this Monday.” “ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THE EDGE CHOPPING AND REMARINATION PROCESS BLACK WOMEN MUST GO THROUGH WITH OUR HAIR TO COME TO WORK AND BE ACCEPTED IN MAINSTREAM SOCIETY?” Advertisement “I’m not saying that, I’m just ... ” “THEN WHAT ARE YOU SAYING, BOB?” “Nothing. Just that Wednesday will work.” 4. Imply that they’re racist without actually saying anything. [A meeting in Bob’s office.] “So yes, Bob, we should expect a 12 percent increase in revenue this quarter.” “That’s great news, Iesha. Thank you.” [Iesha gets up to leave but pauses while noticing something on Bob’s desk.] “Hmm, that’s ... interesting.” “What’s on your mind?” “Nothing, Bob. Just ... I don’t know ... it’s just that out of all of these pictures of family and friends in your office, none of them have black people in them.” Advertisement [Iesha pauses for second, looks at Bob disapprovingly and turns to leave.] 5. Invite them to an über-black event even though they already had plans. “Hey, guys. Just wanted to remind everyone that I’m going to be out Friday. Going to Tampa for my cousin’s wedding.” Advertisement “So you’re not coming to my Niggafied Drinks and Darts party Friday night?” “Um ... I ... had no idea about your ... um ... drinks-and-darts party.” “I texted you an invite last week. It’s part of the Niggafied series of events I’ve been throwing. Next month it’s Niggafied Trap Knitting.” Advertisement “I don’t remember receiving that, Tyreke.” “Of course you don’t, Bob. Of course you don’t. It’s just funny how ... ” “OK, OK, OK. I’ll come to your ... darts-and-drinks party.” “Nah. Go to your wedding. Iesha and I will see you when you get back.”

Having been mostly in smaller vehicles, I'm really appreciating how the longer wheelbase helps make for a more relaxed ride, especially on some of the questionably maintained streets around here. I also appreciate EyeSight. Sure, the Subaru EyeSight system has forward collision avoidance and one of the best cruising distance-control setups ever. But a feature that I started calling the "Road Rage Reduction System" detects when the car ahead of you has moved, after a light turns green, for instance. The multi-information display then shows a VEHICLE AHEAD HAS MOVED message while the system emits a distinct electronic beep. Whether you've been caught admiring a sunset or the McLaren next to you (because nobody would be checking email, right? RIGHT?), it's a handy "hey, dude, get going" before all the honking and swearing begins behind you. View 15 Photos The Outback can fit a bunch of things in the rear hatch without folding the second row. That's a dehumidifier, an air-conditioner, a medium moving box, and some other things. No troubles. The power liftgate has also been a nice feature. Despite my overall stance that power liftgates are completely unnecessary, I've appreciated it, especially the ease of closing it by pressing a button with two hands full of bags. But occasionally (less than about 5 percent of the time) the hatch will either not open after unlatching itself, or it won't close fully. That's with nothing obstructing it. And this thing is a slow-moving object of heavy resistance if you have to finish the job manually. If I have time, I cycle the open/close button. That usually helps after a few tries. Still, it seems to be a credit in the column of the "just something else to malfunction" purists. More on our long-term Subaru Outback 2.5i Limited here: View 15 Photos The Wilderness Green Metallic paint takes a healthy coating of dust before it looks dirty, and it looks fabulous after a wash.

Selected professor, to start from July 1. By The American Bazaar Staff NEW YORK: Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri will join the faculty of Princeton University next month, as a professor of creative writing at the esteemed Ivy League institution. Lahiri was named alongside 16 other individuals as the university’s newest faculty members, of which four, including Lahiri, will become “full professors”; the other 13 were given assistant professor positions at Princeton. As a professor of creative writing, Lahiri will be part of the school’s Lewis Center for the Arts, and will officially begin work on July 1. This is not Lahiri’s first time working at an educational institution. Currently, Lahiri is a writer in residence at the John Cabot University in Rome, a position she has also held at Vassar College and Baruch College, both of which are located in New York City. The other three individuals selected for full professorships at Princeton University – which is routinely ranked as the #1 higher education institution in the entire US – are: Judith Hameira (Texas A&M University professor of dance), Ilyana Kuziemenko (Columbia University professor of economics), and Aasaf Naor (New York University professor of mathematics). This makes Lahiri the only person from those selected who is not already an instructor at another university to be granted a full professorship at Princeton. Lahiri is perhaps best known as the writer of “The Namesake,” the novel which was subsequently made into a critically and commercially successful film that was directed by Mira Nair and starred Kal Penn, Irrfan Khan, and Tabu. The book and film were both feted with several awards at the times of the respective debuts. Her first published work, the short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies,” earned her the Pulitzer Prize – the most prestigious award a writer in the US can be given. Last year, Lahiri released just her second novel, “The Lowlands,” which was short-listed for several high-profile awards, including the Man Booker Prize and the US National Book Award. Lahiri earned a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College at Columbia, a master’s degrees in English literature, creative writing and comparative studies in literature and the arts from Boston University (BU), and a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies from BU.

Gareth Morgan’s BABIP went down on Tuesday. On the balls in play that he recorded, the Seattle Mariners outfield prospect grounded out, flew out, and singled. He had other at-bats, as well. In one of them, he fanned for the 46th time on the season. In the other two, he homered. Morgan’s stat sheet is… intriguing. The 2014 second-round pick is slashing a solid .291/.352/.473, with four long balls, in 122 trips to the plate. He’s put up those robust numbers despite a 39.3% strikeout rate. And then there’s his ball-in-play fortune. Prior to the aforementioned dip, it stood at .491, the highest mark in professional baseball. (He now ranks third, at .475, having been leapfrogged by Clinton Lumber Kings teammate Anthony Jimenez and Blue Jays prospect Bo Bichette.) The 21-year-old native of Toronto, Ontario, wasn’t aware of that statistical factoid when I spoke to him after Tuesday’s game. Nor could he offer an easy explanation for the mix of whiffs and safe landings. “I’m not really sure,” admitted Morgan. “I’ve simplified my approach to where I’m just looking for a fastball to drive to the middle of the field, but other than that, I don’t really have an answer.” He does, however, have a clue. “When the pitcher puts the ball in the area where I want it, I am barreling those up,” surmised Morgan. “When I get in trouble is when I’m chasing pitches I think I can hit. If I’m looking middle-middle, I don’t want to get too far away from that spot — I don’t want to be going after pitches on the corner, or two inches off the corner. It’s a problem when I start thinking I can hit everything that’s being thrown.” Morgan believes he’s made great strides with his pitch recognition. He admittedly “will still chase here and there,” but compared to last season, the difference is “night and day.” His walk rate, which was under 6% a year ago, is currently a creditable 9.0%. Being flummoxed by ankle-high sliders is no longer an everyday bugaboo. Improved timing, fueled by getting his foot down earlier, has been a key. “When you’re starting too late, that’s when everything is rushed and you don’t see the slider out of the hand,” explained Morgan. “You don’t have that extra split second of time to spit on that pitch. When you’re starting early, you have time to recognize it and follow it with your eyes.” What’s happening between his ears has also become a focal point for the youngster. Morgan has spent time with Jimmy Van Ostrand, whom the Mariners hired over the offseason in a sport-psychology capacity. The 32-year-old former minor leaguer — himself a native Canadian — serves as the organization’s Coordinator of Character and Leadership Development. “He works with all the players on the mental side of the game,” explained Morgan. “We talk about thoughts that are in my head during at-bats, and how I can get back to my original plan if I get away from it. We also talk about not worrying about failure, and about not getting too high on good games. Controlling emotions.” Morgan admitted that “it’s nice to look at box scores like [Tuesday’s]” — nothing puts you on Cloud 9 like a multi-homer game — but true to his convictions, he takes care to accentuate process over results. His bombs were a case in point. After the first, he told hitting coach David Flores, “I guess the plan worked.’ Despite having celebrated his 21st birthday only last month, Morgan has been formulating plans in a competitive environment for quite some time. He began playing on Baseball Canada’s National Junior Team when he was 14 years old. At age 15, he was the youngest player to see action in the Under Armour All-American game at Wrigley Field. Growing up north of the border may not have afforded him an opportunity to play year-round, but his baseball life has been that of an itinerant. Morgan estimated that he’d played in 15 countries by the time he’d graduated from high school. Despite his National Team and showcase experiences, jumping from the prep circuit to the pro circuit proved to be a confidence-threatening challenge. While this year’s BABIP-influenced Midwest League numbers are promising, Morgan was downright horrendous in his two-plus seasons of rookie ball. Not only was he failing to hit his weight — he’s listed at 6-foot-4, 220 — he was striking out at an even higher rate than he is now. Truth be told, his future didn’t look all that bright. He had an interesting response when I asked if there are any good questions he never gets from reporters. After pausing, the thoughtful Torontonian told me that no one ever asks him if he’s having fun. I answered back with a slightly different question: were you having fun prior to this year’s turnaround? “It’s hard to say yes to that,” admitted Morgan. “But at the end of the day, baseball is a game. When it starts to become a chore, the passion will start to drift away. You want to have fun doing this, because you’re playing the game you love to play.”

Elevated levels of nitrates have been found in water in select areas of Franklin County. The Columbus Division of Water says areas impacted by the nitrate advisory include portions of west, central, and southwest Columbus, as well as Grandview Heights, Grove City, Hilliard, Lincoln Village, Marble Cliff, Upper Arlington, Urbancrest, and Valleyview. The city is warning residents that infants below the age of six months who drink water containing nitrates in excess of the maximum contaminant level could become seriously ill and, if untreated, may die. Residents who live in the designated service area and have an infant below the age of six months are advised to purchase bottled water to use in baby formula. The city also alerts residents not to boil tap water, as it could increase nitrate levels. However, healthy adults and older children can consume higher levels of nitrate because they have fully developed digestive systems. It is also safe for pets. On Monday, the nitrate level in tap water tested at the Dublin Road plant registered 10.8 parts per million, exceeding the maximum contaminant level, which is 10 ppm. On Tuesday, the levels increased tp 11.7 ppm. The Ohio Department of Health will make bottled water available to pregnant women and infants below 6 months of age who reside in the impacted areas (including WIC clients) and who are unable to otherwise obtain water on their own. Columbus Public Health will begin water distribution this evening from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. in the front loop at 240 Parsons Avenue, and Franklin County Public Health will begin water distribution at Westland Mall, in front of the former Macy’s, at 4141 West Broad Street. Water distribution will continue at both locations from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. daily as long as the advisory is active. For those who are unable to drive and pick up water. City officials ask that you arrange for family or friends to pick up water for them. Columbus Public Health – 645-7417 Columbus Public Utilities (Division of Water) – 645-8276

“We are taking the heat from both sides,” Gehad el-Haddad, a spokesman for the Brotherhood, acknowledged Thursday as the group responded belatedly with a televised presidential address, a letter to the editor in The New York Times by its top strategist, and a series of sympathetic online messages aimed at mollifying American officials. After decades focused on disciplining its own cadre to survive underground, the Brotherhood’s leadership is still adjusting to the competing constituencies and high visibility of democratic life. “They realized a little after the fact the degree of fallout in the U.S. and that is why you are seeing all these conciliatory statements from Brotherhood leaders today,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, who follows the group closely. “Morsi is doing a difficult dance.” Evidently paralyzed by the conflicting pressure, Mr. Morsi had remained conspicuously silent as protesters breached the walls of the American Embassy in Cairo — a stark contrast to the help, contrition and condemnation coming from the new government of Libya , where gunmen set fire to an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Photo On Wednesday, Mr. Obama, who is campaigning, called staff members at the White House from Air Force One to arrange a telephone call to Mr. Morsi, a senior administration official said. The president was not happy; Egypt, unlike Libya, is crucial to American security interests, given its peace treaty with Israel . At 11 p.m., from his hotel suite in Denver, Colo., Mr. Obama got on the phone with Mr. Morsi, who began by offering condolences on the American deaths in Libya. But that was not what Mr. Obama was calling about. “The president made his point that we’ve been committed to the process of change in Egypt, and we want to continue to build a relationship with the Egyptian government,” said a senior administration official. “But he made it clear how important it is that the Egyptian government work with us to lower the tension both in terms of the practical cooperation they give us and the statements they make.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Morsi brought up the American-made video attacking the Prophet Muhammad, which had set off the violent protests, and Mr. Obama said he understood the ire felt by Muslims, but added that it did not justify attacks on the embassy. Mr. Obama urged Mr. Morsi to publicly and strongly condemn the attacks. He had already signaled his displeasure earlier, saying in an interview on Telemundo that Egypt was not necessarily an “ally,” although White House officials were playing down the remark on Thursday. “ ‘Ally’ is a legal term of art,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman with the National Security Council . “We don’t have a mutual defense treaty with Egypt like we do with our NATO allies.” Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. The pressure from Mr. Obama put Mr. Morsi in a vise grip of competing values and world views. Scholars say the furor here reflects different traditions when it comes to religious rights and freedoms. Where Americans prize individual choice, Egyptians put a greater emphasis on the rights of communities, families and religious groups. On the third day of increasingly violent protests outside the American Embassy, many demonstrators said their main demands were directed at Mr. Morsi, insisting that he needed to be firmer with the United States if it failed to punish the filmmakers. “Morsi needs to take firm action,” said Hesham Nawar, 25, clutching two spent canisters of tear gas and blaming the president for the clashes. Islamist politicians, he said, “rise up and mobilize millions for politics, but they do not come out for the prophet now.” But the war of words was continuing in Cairo on Thursday. The United States Embassy publicly mocked the Brotherhood for sending out conflicting messages in its English and Arabic Twitter accounts. “Egyptians rise up to support Muhammad in front of the American Embassy. Sept. 11,” read an Arabic language post the Brotherhood sent out on the day of the attacks — one of several over the last few days emphasizing outrage at the video or calls for its censorship. Photo So on Thursday, when the group sent out a message of sympathy and support from its top strategist, Khairat el-Shater , from its English-language Twitter account, the Embassy responded tartly via Twitter. “Thanks,” its message read, “By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too.” By midday, searching for a middle ground, Mr. Morsi appeared on national television, telling Egyptians it was their “religious duty to protect our guests and those who come to us from outside our nation,” including their embassies, and businesses. “I know that the people attacking the embassies do not represent any of us. We all have to cooperate to express opinions while maintaining our principles, our correct peaceful ways that the whole world accepts,” he said. Mr. Morsi offered condolences for the American ambassador killed in Libya, in a parallel protest over the same video, and he vowed to bring charges against those who had scaled the embassy walls in Cairo. At the same time, however, he was also careful to stress the legitimacy of the protesters’ grievances. “We all reject any trespassing or offense to our Prophet Muhammad,” Mr. Morsi said, adding, “We oppose anyone who offends our prophet with words, actions, expression. This is rejected by all Muslims and all Egyptians.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Haddad, the Brotherhood spokesman, defended the Brotherhood’s attempt to modulate its messages to the Egyptian streets and the Western world. “Speaking to the angry Muslims of Egypt, we told them we understand your anger, you are right to be angry and we share it — but let’s all express our anger in the right way and control it. And on the other side we tell the international world that we condemn these attacks and we urge restraint,” he said. Both messages were consistent, he said, and sought to preserve enough trust to resolve the tension. In the letter to The Times, Mr. Shater, the Brotherhood strategist, said: “Despite our resentment of the continued appearance of productions like the anti-Muslim film that led to the current violence, we do not hold the American government or its citizens responsible for acts of the few that abuse the laws protecting freedom of expression.” For Mr. Obama, the fear is that Egypt’s initially tepid reaction to the attacks could set a dangerous precedent, as the administration tries to find its footing with the populist governments that emerged from the Arab uprisings. Any estrangement with Egypt could bleed into Cairo’s relationship with Israel — a cold peace since the two countries signed a treaty at Camp David more than 30 years ago. Mr. Obama’s impatience with Mr. Morsi stems in part from the administration’s belief that the United States eventually threw its weight behind the democracy movement in Tahrir Square last year, and has continued to back the Arab street, at least in Egypt. But it is perhaps the 30-year long alliance with the Egyptian military, and Mr. Mubarak, that is still on the minds of many joining anti-American protests, foreign policy experts suggest. “Part of what we’re seeing is the residue of support for 30 years of the Mubarak dictatorship, and that has never been decisively confronted by American officials,” said Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch . “There’s also all the old anger of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and the sense among some that U.S. support for the Tahrir Square movement came a few days, or even a few hours, too late for their taste.”

Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A passenger jet was involved in a near miss with a UFO in the skies above Glasgow, according to a report. Pilots saw a blue and yellow object "loom ahead" as they made their final descent into the city on December 2 last year. The UK Airprox Board, which investigates near misses, was unable to establish what the crew had seen. A report by the board said that the Airbus A320 was flying in clear skies above Baillieston just before 1pm when the incident occurred. The plane was at an altitude of 4,000ft when the pilot and co-pilot reported seeing the object about 100m away. The report said: "The object passed directly beneath before either of the crew had time to take avoiding action or had 'really registered it', although they were both agreed that it appeared blue and yellow, or silver, in colour with a small frontal area but that it was 'bigger than a balloon'." The pilot estimated that the distance between the plane and the object had been 300ft and assessed the risk of collision as high. He asked the controller at Glasgow Airport whether anything was being monitored at the time but was told that nothing had been seen on radar. Further inquiries were carried out into the incident, including a review of radar sources. The report stated: "Investigation of the available surveillance sources was unable to trace any activity matching that described by the A320 pilot. "Additionally, there was no other information to indicate the presence or otherwise of activity in the area." The report said that the object was unlikely to have been a fixed-wing aircraft, helicopter or hot air balloon, as it had not shown up on radar. It concluded: "Members were unable to reach a conclusion as to a likely candidate for the conflicting aircraft and it was therefore felt that the board had insufficient information to determine a cause or risk."

Since it was founded in 2002, Major League Gaming (MLG) has grown each year. But nothing compares to the record-breaking 2011 season, which has seen millions of gamers tune in for live streams of tour stops and upwards of 20,000 people coming in person to check out the virtual competition. This is good news for both the mainstream and gamer-focused sponsors like Nos, Sony Ericsson, Stride and PlayStation that are targeting both the attendees and the global audience that tunes in for the live streams of these competitions. Sundance DiGiovanni, co-founder and CEO of MLG, has big plans for what’s grown into an international pro gaming phenomenon. DiGiovanni talks about some of the changes in store for the 2012 season, how IMG Worldwide is helping with international expansion, and how he sees pro gaming evolving in this exclusive interview. Why do you think MLG is seeing record attendance and live streaming this year? We’ve been at this for quite a while now and one of the things that’s often lost on people is that every year new people are brought in both by existing community members and new games. We’re finally in a position where there’s just a general awareness level that’s higher than it’s ever been. The kids who are 16 years old this year were 8 when we started, and they’re playing these games and are aware of these games. Add to that the fact that the global interest in games like Starcraft 2 is high and I think there’s a real opportunity for an organization such as MLG, which strives to put on a great show to entice viewers. We’re catering to everyone from the hardcore players down to the folks who are slightly more casual around the competitive scene, but just interested in the games. When it comes to your audience, do you have a sense of how many people are watching MLG from other countries? 171 countries tuned into our broadcast from Anaheim, so we’re pretty much covering the globe. It’s about 45-55 split with internationalized making up about 55 percent of that audience. How have those numbers evolved over the years? Our overall audience is increasing everywhere. The bigger difference is that our international audience is actually growing at a slightly greater rate than the U.S. audience because we’ve always been primarily strongest here in North America. The relationship that we have with IMG Worldwide has helped us grow the international audiences, which has been their focal point. So we expect those numbers to go up at a greater rate. When you look at the success that pro gaming has had in Asia and even in Europe, how far away is the U.S. from getting to that point? I think the size of the audience in the U.S. will be larger within the next 18 months just because one of the issues that we’ve had here is accessibility. We’ve had our league structure and tournament structures where there are peaks and valleys. It’s not an ongoing activity. If you look at what happens in Southeast Asia, it’s regularly scheduled matches and leagues and the players have built up over time because there are historical match records and every day or every week there’s meaningful competition. Our plan is to move towards a model which supports that next year, so that we will be able to pump out content far more regularly. Without that, what you have is fits and starts. And we’ve seen time and time again that consistency is key when building and establishing a brand. We tend to get distracted easily as a viewing audience in North America, but if you give somebody a regularly scheduled set of matches and league activity, it’s much easier to pull people in. Would that be more about adding tour stops or more competitions between tour stops? One of our plans is to build something which will support both. Right now we have 18 days a year where we have meaningful competition. We have the six pro circuit stops. Next year we’re looking at between 44 to 50 weeks of meaningful competition play happening in a combination of these tour stops, but also a central location for league activity to take place. And would New York City serve as MLG’s central hub since you’re based there? I can’t comment on it yet. Are you basing this new season model on what other leagues in other countries do? Our approach has always been to look at traditional sports and activities and now we’re in a position where we have an opportunity to blow out what we do. What happens in Europe and in Asia definitely factors into it, but we’re trying to create an opportunity which leverages what we’ve already seen succeed here in North America. Plus we need the tried-and-true level of providing compelling and entertaining competitive activity. You need a season structure. You need a beginning, middle, and end. You need rivalries. You need stars. What we’re building for next year helps support all of those things in a more easily digestible manner for both the hardcore audience, as well as people who coming across this for the first time. Will you guys be expanding the actual length of the season next year? The season structure we can’t comment on at the moment, but basically the season structure is going to support distinct seasons which resolve in large live events and then they have an online component, so it’s going to be a better true blend of what we currently have running. But they’re going to be more accessible and more appealing to both teams and organizations, or support teams, as well as the audience. How long is your season this year? We start at the beginning of the year and our season ends in November. It’s basically a year long, but next year it will be more seasonal. The seasons will be broken down into shorter runs with a championship at the end of the year. Follow me on Twitter @JohnGaudiosi

There is a summary lack of confidence in NASA's ability to explore outer space these days. The press is full of recent accounts that are critical of NASA's ability to advance American goals for space exploration, create a Mars colony, not to mention expanding a program of planetary exploration and the colonization of the outer planets of our solar system. The decreased allocation of funds to NASA programs was reported in the press as early as Feb. 13, lowering available funds for planetary science programs that support Mars exploration and missions to outer planets in the Solar System. There are three main challenges at this time in NASA's history. The first challenge is to clearly voice a renewed commitment to the broader mission and goals of U.S. cooperative space exploration, not just deploy technical capabilities and, somewhere along the way, rekindle taxpayer support. The first task then, (in agreement with a recent NRC report's conclusion) is to refocus on the greater mission of space exploration and how to achieve this goal, instead of deploying projects with short-term capabilities such as the Space Shuttle (the functionality of low-cost transport to low Earth orbit) and the International Space Station (the functionality of a space laboratory). The second challenge is to secure adequate funding to set this fresh commitment to space exploration in motion. The third challenge is to recruit more (wo)men to do the required work on the ground and in missions. Then NASA will need a major change of perspective in its goals, the funds to secure the longevity of the U.S. space exploration program and much more (wo)man power to fill the suits of future astronauts. In these faithless times, NASA, perhaps most important of all, needs a star spangle on its red, white and blue banner to evangelize its purpose to the world with gusto. The troubled agency needs a new voice for the country and the world. President Obama, appoint Nichelle Nichols as Ambassador-at-Large for Space Exploration. Hey NASA, Got space exploration? Get goals, get funding and get Uhura! The Bush administration's goals for NASA had included a lunar landing by 2020, setting up a lunar base and building the groundwork for another Mars mission. However, a blue-ribbon panel led by Norman Augustine in 2009 concluded NASA's Moon-Mars program was underfunded and behind schedule. The panel recommended that NASA defer its goal of returning to the lunar surface and rather build a solid commercial space industry that can handle more immediate, manageable goals of NASA's space program,, like ferrying cargo and crew to the international space station. A new report from the National Research Council has pointed out that NASA's core mission in the 2011 Strategic Plan is vague and doesn't identify priorities. The crux of the problem, according to the NRC report is: While there are clear linkages between current NASA programs and the goals, there is no explicit prioritization among the goals in the 2011 strategic plan. For instance, there is no clear linkage between the details in the plan and the space exploration goals and priorities established by the administration in terms of sending astronauts to an asteroid as an interim destination before sending humans to orbit and eventually to land on Mars. In turn, the definition of these goals also contributes to the lack of clarity in strategic direction. The report details the lack of clarity set forth by NASA for the goals for earth and space sciences, new space technologies, programs to support NASA aeronautic and space activities and the "share NASA with the public" goal. Perhaps the most damaging conclusion in the report was that both NASA's vision statement and mission statements have failed to "articulate a national vision that is unique to the nation’s space and aeronautics agency" and Both the NASA vision and mission statements are generic statements that could apply to almost any government research and development (R&D) agency, omitting even the words “aeronautics” or “space.” NASA’s current vision and mission statements do not explain NASA’s unique role in the government and why it is worthy of taxpayer investment. The non-specificity of the vision and mission statements is a contributing factor to the confusion about NASA’s overall strategic direction. To hear from the source about the "state of NASA's exploratory mission", I sent one question for comment via email to the Office of Communications, Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters to Charles Bolden, current NASA Administrator. The gist of it, is, "What is the status of space for the U.S. and how do we fix it?" Venables: Please comment on the state of U.S. space exploration after the cancellation of the Constellation program. Does the current $17.7 billion in the FY 2013 budget request adequately fund what NASA's current goals are for space exploration? Bolden: NASA is executing an ambitious space exploration vision laid out by the President and approved and funded by Members of Congress in both parties. This plan extended the space shuttle program, put in place a robust commercial space initiative and has put us on track to send American astronauts further into space than ever before. With the funding President Obama and Congress have provided, we are focused on bringing space launches back to the U.S., in-sourcing American jobs and keeping the nation on the cutting edge of technology development and innovation. Houston, we have a[nother] problem. Much of the American public, the National Research Council, the Space Foundation and the media do not have Bolden's rose-colored perspective on the currently established goals and prospective future of U.S. space exploration. So, the issue at hand is an urgent one. Lighting a fire under NASA's large glutei maximi. Again, NASA needs a renewed commitment to its exploratory mission of the solar system and ultimately, the taxpayer popular support to back it up. Two, more money to fund its space exploration programs. About 3 billion more per program it turns out, but details, details. Three, to bring in more people to do the job -- more wo(man) power. To encourage women, period, to enter STEM fields of research and practice. To recruit more women to STEM fields so they can do NASA's work on Earth and in space: aerospace engineering, oceanography, biology, space physics, engineering management, mechanical engineering, polymer science and engineering, chemistry and medicine. The answer to NASA's lack of direction must come from refocused goals for the organization. Bring back an updated version of the Vision for Space Exploration for the 21st century. It was goal-based, not simply capability-based. Take the Space Foundation's suggestion and solidify "pioneering" the agency's holistic goal in the law (and eliminate other ancillary goals that do not support this end). Both the NRC and Space Foundation reports make it saliently evident that the agency has lost it's mission to reach out, touch the stars, and colonize them in the projected future. Moreover, technological partnerships with other countries are the future. Let's expand NASA's core identity from being a civil space agency to an international space partner with more cooperative technology sharing and development projects with other nations. And the NASA administrator must sound the trumpet and lead the charge of change. Refocusing goals will mean changing how to implement the strategy to achieve these ends. If the U.S. is to pioneer, it must do so with the full support of the private sector. Make NASA a permanent government-private sector organization. Privatize the production of space hardware that the private sector does best, the rockets. In the long run, this could only alleviate the burden on NASA's space hardware operation. Find the money to fund the impossible goals the government has historically asked NASA to do. The President should recommend that the U.S. Armed Forces scrap a third from the $396 billion Joint Strike Fighter program, one that has been plagued by safety concerns, cost overruns, delays, contractor-government infighting, etc. Why does the military need planes whose hardware components and software system work poorly in the first place? That cost is almost four times as much as any other U.S. weapons system and two-thirds of the $589 billion of the cost of the war in Afghanistan (the long-term costs of operating the planes is projected at $1.1 trillion). Since, technically, it's a cooperative, international program, perhaps other nations should help pick up the financial slack. Let's do the math on our one-third budget cut: that one third would give NASA $132 billion. A solid foundation to fully fund planetary science, space exploration, and lots of cutting-edge robotic exploration projects. Second, find the person who will galvanize public support behind a new NASA mission in space. Bring in Uhura! Nichelle Nichols, known the world over as Lieutenant Commander Nyota Urura, Chief Communications Officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Now that was a great era of American space exploration. Oh wait, that was in the future, what am I thinking? In fact, there are those, high up in NASA's administration who might support Nichols's appointment as Ambassador-at-Large for Space Exploration. I'm thinking of Leland Melvin, Associate Administrator for Education at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. He is also a former two-time space shuttle astronaut, having flown in 2008 and 2009. I submitted some questions to Melvin via email about the work Nichols has done for NASA, and his remembrances of working with her in the Space Shuttle program to promote space exploration and the recruitment of minority and women astronauts. Below is the Q&A. Venables: Can you tell me about Nichols's support of STEM education and what that means for NASA's future? Melvin: Nichelle is a champion for NASA and its STEM education efforts. She knows that pursuing STEM studies is a win-win situation: students prepare themselves for exciting future careers and NASA helps shape the scientists, engineers and explorers of tomorrow. Venables: What are your thoughts on the importance of Nichelle Nichols' work with the Space Shuttle recruitment program and her accomplishments there? Melvin: For many years now, Nichelle has used her star power as Lt. Uhura to bring attention to NASA and its programs. Her advocacy and commitment to helping minorities and women see their role in America’s space program has been valuable, especially back when there wasn’t much diversity in our astronaut corps. She worked with the senior leadership of NASA to ensure that the astronaut corps would be inclusive and more appropriately represent our American population. Venables: Do you have any favorite personal anecdotes you'd like to share from your time working at NASA's Space Shuttle program, working with a living science fiction icon such as Lt. Uhura? Melvin: Nichelle was the guest keynote speaker at an Education Forum that we held in Florida prior to the final shuttle mission in July 2011. She addressed a group of 250 students and eloquently stated the need for and benefit of having great role models to inspire our young people. We at NASA are so appreciative of her ongoing commitment to space exploration and STEM education. I last saw Nichelle Nichols at the Celebrate Seattle event, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Pacific Northwest Ballet and the fiftieth anniversary of the Seattle Center campus in Seattle. The show included appearances by Curiosity Mars Rover flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, “Mohawk Guy” and astronaut Cady Coleman. Nichelle Nichols came on stage with a luminous presence. Here was the first African-American woman to play a role with honor, dignity and intelligence on television, on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, no less. Here was the leader who is responsible for inspiring the recruitment of Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, Judith A. Resnik, another of the first U.S. female astronauts, Mae Jemison, the first African-African-American female astronaut and the first African-African American male astronauts, Guion Bluford and Ronald McNair. Nichols' very presence that night was to commemorate the original mission of the 21st Century Exposition in 1962, America's commitment to "space, science and the future". Finally, there is not a better time for celebrity evangelism for furthering awareness and support for U.S. space exploration and NASA careers for wo(men). The U.S. space program needs a new direction, quite literally. We need to point NASA somewhere worthy of American scientific ingenuity and STEM-centered scientific enterprise. We need to reclaim the heyday of excellence in bold, scientific inquiry by re-identifying U.S. priorities in space exploration and space colonization and eventual commercialization. Enter, center stage, the actress forever known to Star Trek fans the world over as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Communications Officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Nichols's whole life has been dedicated to testing and breaking societal constructs of gender, race and science. I can not think of a person with better credentials who could solidify widespread support for adequate government funding for NASA's space exploration program. Nichols is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. Her work for NASA's Space Shuttle program, through the efforts of the Nichelle Nichols Youth Foundation, challenges kids to tackle STEM subjects in school, to explore the frontiers of science, technology, engineering and math. That is why I propose that Nichelle Nichols be appointed by the President as Ambassador-at-Large for Space Exploration. She is a walking recruitment icon who can attract kids to future NASA careers, girls and boys who can learn to do the jobs to get the U.S. back into space to find out what is out there. Whether you agree or disagree with the allocations in the NASA fiscal year 2013 budget, having a celebrity with presidential appointment of Nichols's caliber could only help the agency with a capital and human resources drive when it needs money and hands aboard deck the most. Nichols said it best when she sang the Roddenberry lyrics to Alexander Courage's Star Trek theme, with the Pacific Northwest Ballet orchestra: Beyond The rim of the star-light My love Is wand'ring in star-flight I know He'll find in star-clustered reaches Love, Strange love a star woman teaches. I know His journey ends never His star trek Will go on forever. But tell him While he wanders his starry sea Remember, remember me As Nichols's soprano rose higher and higher in the darkened hall on that mild September evening in Seattle, I felt my own sense of wonder. Of how far Lt. Uhura has come for women of color, and women everywhere. But I am mindful of how much farther the American space enterprise must travel to reach the final frontier of space exploration and discover the limits of our own scientific enterprise. Let the star trek begin. With an experienced woman of color at the helm. Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my blog.

A/N: Galator: Yes, Anankos is less powerful outside of Valla, which is another reason he can't break the barrier. However, that's the sort of thing that he'd probably want to keep secret, so he wouldn't just tell Mikoto about it, and it's unlikely she'd know, so there was no way to point it out in the fic. And now: the epilogue, aka the thing that's long enough to be an actual chapter rather than a conclusion. Fourteen Years Later "Your Majesty, I have a letter from Kaze, about Prince Kamui." "My brother?" Saizo whispered, his usually stoic voice heavy with emotion. "My brother is alive?" Kagero laid a hand on his shoulder, and it spoke volumes about the redhead's turmoil that he did not shrug it off. It gladdened Mikoto to hear that Kaze was still alive—it had taken him years to confess that he'd spotted the Nohrian soldiers at Cheve but hadn't understood what their presence meant, and thus hadn't warned his father or Sumeragi of them. The guilt had been crushing him, and even after she'd absolved him she suspected he still hadn't forgiven himself. He more than anyone save the royal family was dedicated to finding Kamui, often volunteering to be a part of the infiltration squads they still sent to search Nohr. But at the forefront of her mind was the fact they had news of her son. The first news she'd received in fourteen years. It took all her self-control to not rip the scroll out of the messenger's grasp as he bowed and handed it to her. Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she unrolled the scroll, eyes rapidly scanning the writing and picking out key phrases. It was all encoded, of course, but Mikoto was well-accustomed to ninja code at this point. …the king ordered us killed, but the prince stepped in… …called himself Corrin. He did not recognize the name Kamui, but his resemblance to you is undeniable… We have captured him. By the time this letter arrives we should be a week away from Shirasagi. Her children—she'd come to think of the royal children as her own blood—had abandoned their food and cluttered around her, reading over her shoulder. They'd been having dinner when the messenger arrived, their retainers seated at a lower table as always. Normally interrupting the royal family during a meal was a social faux pas, but in this case… Well, this sort of news was the reason exceptions existed. Mikoto found herself being grabbed by Ryoma and hugged as he whooped joyfully. Hinoka echoed it, and soon all her children were laughing and smiling, embracing each other—even Azura was pulled into it. Mikoto closed her eyes, relishing the words from the letter. Prince Corrin of Nohr. All this time, he's been Prince Corrin of Nohr. They'd heard of him, of course; one of the five survivors (so they thought) of Garon's concubine wars. Crown Prince Alexander, Princess Camilla, Prince Corrin, Prince Leonidas, Princess Elise. They should have made the connection sooner; Prince Corrin was an enigma, even to the best of Hoshidan spies, never seen in public but estimated to be about Kamui's age, and they'd never heard his name uttered until after Kamui's kidnapping. Fourteen years. Mikoto had honestly expected them to rescue and return her son long before now. The constant failures had slowly whittled down her optimism, but she'd never quite been able to give it up. Her reign had had its ups and downs—thankfully more ups. Relations with Izumo, the Wind Tribe, the Fire Tribe, and surprisingly Cheve, of all places, had improved greatly. There had been a brief insurgent from the merchant lords, which she had put down, and afterwards the Hoshidans seemed to accept that she wasn't a pushover. Hoshido's military was stronger than it had been since the reign of Sumeragi's grandfather, which was fortunate, given what had occurred with her barrier. Barricade had first been able to reject anyone. But eventually, it faltered, weakened; humans still could not cross it, but the undead and the mindless could. Nohr, realizing this, had created monstrosities they called Faceless to attack. Sakura's retainer, Subaki, had lost his father Masashi to them, taken off-guard when one raced across the border with surprising speed, the first casualty to the monsters. They had been embroiled in skirmishes with the beasts ever since; they weren't intelligent enough for coordinated attacks, but they did a lot of damage when they struck. Mikoto suspected Anankos hadn't yet sent his soldiers to kill her because he wanted to keep his presence hidden from the world; she was so heavily guarded nowadays that he would never be able to assassinate her without people becoming aware of the attackers. He would have to wait for an opportunity to pin it on someone else. Her eyes swept over her children, pride swelling in her when she saw how they'd grown up. Ryoma, tall and looking more like Sumeragi every day, noble and a true samurai, but still carrying guilt and uncertainty about the throne. Hinoka, who had kept her promise and kept her red hair short, so bold and headstrong, so different from the shy girl she'd been in her youth. Takumi, her once-happy son turned troubled, full of bitterness and deprecation, but towards none more than himself. Sakura, unaware of her own strength, timid but ready to bloom into a wonderful woman someday. Her maternal love towards the four of them was returned in full—Takumi and Sakura knew no mother other than her, and had always addressed her as such with ease. Ryoma had been the next one to do so, when he'd been fourteen and she'd continued to carry the burden of the crown for him, using the word for the first time when he thanked her. Hinoka had taken the longest to come around, frequently clashing with Mikoto over her pegasus knight training, but eventually she too asked for permission to call her Mother. She made sure to keep the memory of Ikona alive, and they knew Mikoto wasn't their blood mother, but the love between them was as strong as if she were. Her eyes next found Azura, lingering near the back. Her poor niece, always on the outskirts, never really welcome wherever she went. Despite Mikoto's best efforts, she'd only been able to get some of Hoshido to accept Azura—the rest still distrusted or despised her. She'd grown into a lovely, if melancholy, woman, but she was chained down by the pain of whatever she'd faced in Nohr, by the rejection of Hoshido, by the knowledge of Valla. And unlike her other children, Azura had never felt comfortable with calling Mikoto Mother, too aware of her technical status as prisoner. She was distant and aloof even on her best days, though at least she had a good relationship with the royal children. Looking at them now, Mikoto wondered what sort of person her son had grown up to be. Had the cruelty of Nohr eroded his kind soul, made him bitter? Had his idealism died as he waited day after day for a rescue that never succeeded? Had he become rebellious and defiant, trying to escape time and again and being dragged back in chains? Her heart ached at the thought of the hardships he'd surely faced in that cold country. One week and then you can find out. Just one more week. She'd waited fourteen years. She could wait one more week. The royal family had their own private shrine, but Mikoto had made another one for herself. Smaller, more personal, kept in her bedroom. She didn't have any portraits of her husbands or sister, but she still had her wedding rings and Arete's sending stone. While she always kept them on her, they were hidden from prying eyes, except for when she visited her shrine. Then she would take them out and toy with them as she prayed. Sometimes she spoke to her loved ones; she knew Anankos was mad and Sumeragi and Arete were probably possessed, but she liked to think her words could reach and sooth some fragment of their souls. She was praying now, her fingers stroking the three precious objects, when Orochi rushed in. The queen instantly covered the sending stone with her sleeve—while her relationship with her retainers had improved, there were still some secrets she was keeping from them. From everyone. "Lady Mikoto!" the young woman gasped. "Kaze and the prince—they're here!" "What?" Mikoto gasped. "They're a day early!" "I know! Except for Prince Ryoma, none of his siblings are here—they're all out doing their own thing!" "They'll be disappointed to have missed his return," she nodded, discretely gathering her treasures and following Orochi out of the room. Her heart was beating erratically in her chest, and her palms were sweaty—she wiped them against her kimono. Mikoto walked as swiftly as she could without running, time seeming to blur until she found herself standing before a side door leading into the throne room. She entered, slowing as she stepped inside. Ryoma was standing at the base of the throne, arms crossed, and below him was... Mikoto lingered in the shadows of the pillars, one hand lightly resting against the stone, the other over her heart. Below Ryoma was another figure, one with distinct platinum hair. She licked her dry lips as she peered out to see her son for the first time in fourteen years. The angle was bad, but the lighting good. He was tall, taller than her; the last time she'd seen him he'd barely come up to her hip. Now she guessed she'd only be eye-level with his nose. Sleek Nohrian armor encased him, and she could see Kaze off to the side, gingerly holding a dark-looking Nohrian sword. Affectionate amusement rose in her when she saw that her son's feet were still bare and his hair still a bit long and messy. But what she longed to see the most was his face, not his back as he spoke to Ryoma. "—are you waiting for? If you're going to execute me, please get on with it." The years had eroded her memory of Anankos's voice, but when her son spoke she could suddenly recall it with surprising clarity. He sounded almost completely like her first husband had, his voice low with nearly the exact same pitch and timber. There was an accent it, a distinctly Nohrian lilt that made the syllables long and the r's soft and rolling. She had to see his face. Mikoto stepped out of the shadows, allowing her sandaled feet to clack sharply on the floor. At the sound her son turned, brows furrowing when he saw her. Her first thought was that her estimation of his height was correct; he was indeed taller than her. It was odd, looking up at him instead of looking down. Her second thought was that Kaze had spoken the truth; with the baby fat gone, Kamui's resemblance to her had only grown stronger over the years. The shape of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his jaw; it's all her. Only the mouth and chin came from Anankos. And the ears, of course; her eyes flicker to them, pointed as ever, then back to his face. How old was he now? Nineteen, going onto twenty. Gods, her son had been in Nohr for nearly thrice the time he'd been with her. She'd missed so much of his life, and she was never more aware of it than now, now that she was seeing the result of those lost years without any idea of what had happened in them. It made her eyes water a bit, sadness mingling with joy. He stiffened as she approached, body posture reminiscent of a cornered animal. Mikoto halted a few inches away; this close, she could see the reflection of herself in his slitted pupils. Her hands came up, pressing together against her mouth, heart in her throat. "I cannot believe it is really you…" He blinked, but politely asked, "I'm sorry, do we know each other?" Had Mikoto been paying attention, that would have been the first hint that the reunion was not about to go the way she'd always envisioned. But she wasn't, too caught up in a storm of exultation and jubilee. Unable to hold herself back, Mikoto grabbed Kamui and embraced him tightly. Hugging people in armor was never comfortable, but she just didn't care about the cold metal digging into her. Not when she finally had her son back. "Oh, I've missed you so much! Come here, Kamui, my sweet child!" He jerked back from her, alarmed. "Your sweet child?! What are you talking about? Who's Kamui?" Mikoto spent the time waiting for her sons to return from rescuing Hinoka and Sakura in a kind of horrified daze. Of all the things she'd imagined being inflicted on her son, amnesia was not one of them. But there it was—he didn't recall a single thing about his real family. Not even a flicker of recognition had sparked in his eyes when they related his past to him. Devastation didn't even begin to describe how she felt. Had she…had really she been that awful a parent, for him to just forget about her? She thought she'd done a good job, for the little time she'd had him. Had she been mistaken, or—Mikoto shook her head. No, it was Nohr's doing, it had to be; they must have done something to her son. He wouldn't simply forget about all of them. After her children came back—thank the gods all of them were alright, Mikoto thought, it would have been cruel to lose one of them now—she showed Kamui around the palace, hoping to jog his memory. Their last stop was his room. For fourteen years, it had remained untouched, his stuffed animals, drawings and clothes exactly where he'd left them. A thick layer of dust covered everything. Her smile felt as though it would crack her face if she held it much longer, as she watched him pick up a drawing and gaze at it wordlessly. He'd been silent the whole tour, lost in thought, and she found that while she could always tell what her step-children and niece were thinking, she had no idea what was going through his mind. It was unnerving. She continued speaking, hiding the wavering in her voice, "That's something you drew when you were a little boy! That's your father, that's me, and that's you. It's so cute!" He exhaled in a soft sigh, but still didn't speak. Mikoto thought she was going to choke on the words as she forced them out. "We couldn't bear to touch a thing in this room after you were taken. If we put your things away, it would have felt like giving up." Silence. "You've grown so much! I can't believe how handsome you are." Letting the drawing fall from his hands, Kamui turned to her. "Queen Mikoto…" I'm your mother! She wanted to scream. Call me Mother! Please! Instead she said, "Yes, Kamui?" "Corrin," he immediately corrected, not unkindly. Smile and smile and smile, until your mask breaks and falls off. "Corrin," she acquiesced, hating the sound of it, the harsh syllables, the undeniably Nohrian origin. Kamui had been a nice name, flowing easily. Corrin felt like chewing on a tough piece of meat. He hesitated, biting his lip, then launched into a hurried flurry of words. "I'm afraid I still don't remember anything. I…I just don't know how to respond to your stories. I do believe I could be your son… But everyone here simply feels like a stranger to me." Kamui…Corrin ducked his head, apologetic. "I'm sorry." Smile. Smile. Smile. She wanted to scream. She wanted to sob. She wanted to go back in time and never let him out of her sight. But she couldn't do any of those, so instead she smiled and nodded and told him she understood. He apologized again, and she waved it off, hiding how his words had been bolts to her heart. She didn't remember what came next; she thought she might have recommended he talk a walk around the grounds. But when her mind cleared again, her son was gone, and she was kneeling in his dusty room, staring at the crumpled picture on the floor, and the tears she'd been holding back all day finally came loose. That was where Takumi found her, on his way back from archery practice. "Mother?" Takumi cried out, dropping Fujin Yumi and rushing instantly to her side. Out of all her children, he was the one closest to her, thanks to the archery lessons he'd asked from her when he was ten. "Are you alright? What happened?" "Nothing happened," she hiccupped, almost laughing at the harsh truth of it. "Nothing at all." Dinners were always awkward affairs now. It had been several days since Corrin's return, and everyone was still tiptoeing around each other. The ecstatic joy that had initially been upon them had faded as the Hoshidan royal family realized the reunion they'd gotten hadn't been the one they'd expected. The simple truth was, Corrin just didn't seem to fit into Hoshido. They'd tried calling him Kamui, but the sound of his real name seemed to grate on him, made his lips tighten almost impeccably and added a slight hunch to his shoulders, so they'd stopped. They'd offered him Hoshidan outfits, lovely kimonos and armor, and he'd taken them, too polite to say no—just like Anankos, she thought with a pang—but he never wore them except when his Nohrian things needed cleaning. He was trying to obey their laws and customs, but there were so many things he forgot, so many obvious things a native would never have forgotten. She hated it. She hated that Nohr hadn't just taken her son, but brainwashed him too, made his real home unfamiliar to him and his real family strangers. He didn't hate them, that was the one bright spot. Corrin honestly did seem to want to bond with them, but there was just so much tension and uncertainty on both parts. He seemed most at ease with Sakura, smiling and gently teasing and in general taking on the role of a big brother so naturally, it made Mikoto a little awed—until she remembered that Nohr had a princess, Elise, even younger than Sakura, whom he'd probably treated the same way. And that soured it for her. Corrin was warily curious and friendly towards Ryoma and Hinoka. Mikoto knew her eldest son and daughter been waiting years for the chance to apologize to him, but now that it was here, they found themselves unable to take it. It just didn't feel right, they confessed, when he didn't remember them. They wanted him to actually forgive them, not pretend to or think he was obligated to. So instead they tried to bond with him in one of the few ways that was easy for them—through sparring. It seemed to work; sometimes she would drop by their matches, and she'd see them enjoying themselves. But she couldn't help noticing how Nohrian his fighting style was. Takumi didn't like him at all, and he could tell. Mikoto's heart went out to her youngest son—he had, perhaps, been hit hardest by Corrin's unexpected acclimation to Nohr. It upset him that the brother he barely remembered, the brother whose return had been a dream for his family, wasn't just a stranger, but practically a foreigner. So he became prickly and harsh, suspicious and glaring, and made it clear that, in his mind, his real brother had died with Sumeragi at Cheve. Corrin didn't reciprocate the hostility, but it was so blatant he didn't really seek Takumi out, and Takumi definitely didn't seek him out, so they mostly avoided each other. For her part, Mikoto wasn't sure how to really interact with him, so she did what she did best—slipped back into the shadows, watching him from afar. She knew this was no way to rebuild their relationship, but she'd been caught off-guard by the new person he was, and she just…needed time. Mikoto watched her son fumble his chopsticks again—"Where are the forks?" he'd asked the first time he ate, staring at the utensils in puzzlement, innocent to how his insensitivity hurt—until Azura reached over and corrected how he was holding them. He gave her a thankful smile, then looked away, red creeping up his cheeks to the tips of his ears. Watching the two of them interact, Mikoto could instantly tell what was up. The first day he'd been back, he'd returned from the lake with Azura, talking rapidly. He'd been more animated than she'd seen him all that day, and Azura had actually been smiling, something she rarely did around strangers. Now she was the only person whose company Corrin constantly sought, and the only one he seemed completely relaxed with. It wasn't surprising—their circumstances were so similar—but it made Mikoto resent the songstress, just a tiny bit, for just clicking with him when the rest of them couldn't. Well, she thought, happy at what could be and bitter at what hadn't been in equal measures, at least their marriage would have been happy if the betrothal had actually gone through. Dinner consisted of stewed beef and sashimi salad, a meal Corrin had loved as a child. She doubted Ryoma and Hinoka, who were old enough to remember such things, have missed the fact that more and more of their meals are things Corrin used to like. But Corrin ate without any particular notice of the food, chewing and swallowing as swiftly as he could without being rude, as he always did, before retreating to his room. "Bastard," Takumi muttered as soon as Corrin left, his grip on his chopsticks turning his knuckles white. "Takumi!" Sakura gasped sharply. "What? Don't tell me you aren't bothered by how eagerly he escapes our company!" "I understand you're disappointed with how things have been," Ryoma said, his deep voice sharp with disapproval, "but—" "But what?" Takumi snapped. "I'm not allowed to voice my thoughts? My feelings don't matter at all, I can't say anything mean to Corrin otherwise it'll drive him back to Nohr? Well fine! Let him go back since he apparently misses it so much!" "Your Highnesses," Kaze tried to interject from his position by the door. Hinoka overrode him, trying to soothe her brother. "He's just having a hard time adjusting," she said. "He'll be back to normal soon." "Really? What proof do we have of that? How do we not know he's not just spying on us, biding his time before he can return to his beloved Nohr?" "Please stop fighting," Sakura whispered, unheeded as Azura leap to Corrin's defense. "That's an unfair accusation—" "You be quiet, Nohrian!" The archer rounded on her, and she snapped her mouth shut, shocked. Takumi and Azura had never been very close, but he'd always been civil to her, sometimes even kind. His lashing out may have been brought on by stress rather than cruelty, but it was unexpected and hurtful nonetheless. "That's enough, Takumi!" Mikoto said sternly, holding her anger back. She empathized with her son's feelings—she truly did—but a fight wasn't necessary. "First Corrin, now Azura? This is your brother you're talking about—" "Your Highnesses—" "Then why isn't he acting like it?!" Takumi slammed his hands into the table. Frustration and something suspiciously close to tears thickened his voice. "He was supposed to be happy when he got back! He wasn't supposed to go by a Nohrian name and wear Nohrian clothes and miss Nohr! He wasn't supposed to make you cry, Mother!" "I get it, okay?!" Mikoto finally shouted, the pot of emotions she'd kept lidded all week finally boiling over. "I get being frustrated by how Nohrian he is now! And gods know I wish he were like he'd been as a child! Gods know I wish he were differe—" "Your Highnesses!" Kaze almost shouted, and they all turned. Corrin was standing in the doorway, his pale face and wide eyes showing he'd heard everything. Mikoto brought her hands up to her mouth, speechless horror plain to see. The silence that fell was heavy enough to crush a man to death. "Corrin," Ryoma finally began, his voice breaking. "I forgot my gloves," he said hollowly. "Corrin," Mikoto choked, "I didn't mean—" But he didn't answer, just strode forward and snatched his gloves from the table. Then he turned on his heel and stormed off into the hall. Azura rose to hurry after him, but she barely took a few steps before they heard him snapping at her that he just wanted to be alone. The songstress hesitated, then slowly returned to her seat. Mikoto stared at her food, feeling wretched. Hinoka put a hand on her shoulder, doubtless saying something comforting, but she didn't register it. How could she have said what she had? What happened to just having him back being enough? They finished the rest of their meal in silence. Her son didn't make an appearance at breakfast, lunch or dinner the next day—Mikoto had Kaze deliver food to his room instead. It took a shamefully long time for Mikoto to gather the courage to visit him. It was evening went she went, a box full of chocolates in hand, determined to set things right. She knew what she'd said was truly awful and couldn't just be bribed away, but she needed to try to make amends. She paused outside his room when she heard the sounds of soft voices filtering through the open door. Curious as she was to eavesdrop, she'd wronged her son enough. Raising her voice, she called, "Corrin?" The voices stopped. Then from within the room, a figure rose, its shadow easily visible through the paper screen, and crossed over to the door. The queen found herself faced with Azura. Her eyes were sympathetic, but her body posture suggested she would have to be forced away from the door. Behind her, Corrin was sitting cross-legged on the ground, his gaze on the floor. Calling on him this late in the day was how rumors started, and Mikoto was thankful they'd had the good sense to leave the door open. "Could I speak to Corrin alone?" Mikoto asked. Azura looked back at Corrin, a silent do you want me to stay? He shook his head, and she nodded, giving Mikoto a small, sad smile as she left. Mikoto hesitantly entered and knelt across from Corrin, who wasn't looking at her. "I'm glad you have Azura to support you here," she said, for lack of anything else. At least Azura wasn't holding him to standards that didn't exist anymore. "She's a good friend," was all he said, though his heavy blush indicated the feelings, at least on his end, ran deeper. Mikoto handed him the box, unsure of where to start. He weighed it in a hand quizzically. "Chocolates," she explained. She almost added you loved them when you were younger, but bit her tongue. She doubted he'd appreciate any more comparisons to the boy he used to be. He tilted his head up in acknowledgement, selecting a truffle and popping it in his mouth. Surprise flickered across his face. "It's good," he murmured. It was a relief to know his sweet tooth hadn't changed. It was a common link between Kamui and Corrin, and Mikoto treasured it. Still, that wasn't what she was here for. "I am," she began, folding her hands in her lap, "so sorry for what I said yesterday. As a mother, I had no right to say such a terrible thing. You are you, and it was wrong of me to be unhappy with that when I should have just been grateful to have you back. I know this isn't even remotely acceptable penance. But I promise, I will try to be better in the future." "You seem like a fine mother. Ryoma and the others obviously love you dearly." He chewed on another chocolate. "I won't pretend your words didn't hurt," he finally said, swallowing. "But I…can understand where you're coming from. And I'm sorry I can't be who you want me to be." "Don't be," she stressed, boldly placing a hand on his shoulder. "Never be sorry for being yourself. I am so, so proud of the man you've grown up to be, a good man, and I've been a fool for not saying so before now." It was like Izana had told her so long ago; the Astral Dragons must have truly been watching over him and protecting him for him to turn out as well as he had. "What about my siblings?" "They still love you, as do I," she promised. "Takumi will come around when he's ready. And before then, please don't rush him." He nodded, and for a few moments the only sound was him making his way through the chocolate truffles. "What…did Garon tell you your heritage was, growing up?" Her son's strong resemblance to her meant he looked more Hoshidan than Vallite, and definitely more Hoshidan than Nohrian, so Garon would have had to get creative in inventing a backstory if he'd wanted to successfully fool her son. Corrin shrugged. "He said my mother was a Hoshidan merchant he'd met in his travels and grew to favor, eventually bringing her to court like all his concubines. She died in childbirth to me and that's why I was locked away; it was punishment because I'd 'killed' her in his eyes." She nodded, slow. "I see." There was a bitter taste in her mouth, but Mikoto swallowed it down, knowing the next step was vital in repairing their relationship. "Would you…would you mind telling me about your life in Nohr?" She didn't particularly want to hear about it. She didn't want to hear that he'd been happy there, away from her. But—but it was necessary. Compromise was necessary. It had been unfair of her to expect him to adjust to Hoshido all at once, to try and force him into being the boy he'd been years ago instead of the man he was now. They couldn't make any progress without concessions on both ends. "I don't want to hurt your feelings," he hedged. "Please," she said. "Maybe I'll have an easier time understanding your love for Nohr if I knew the experiences you had there were good ones." He hesitated, eyeing her uncertainly. Then a smile stretched across his face. Mikoto inhaled; she suddenly realized that this was the bright, boyish smile of his youth, the smile he smiled with all his heart and soul. How could she have missed the fact that, throughout his entire stay, he'd been wearing a mask of strained smiles like her own, and that this was his true one? He practically wore his heart on his sleeve for the gods' sake. Apparently he inherited my ability to mask his emotions when he needs to. And so Mikoto spent the next few hours actually talking to her son, listening to his tales of life in an isolated fortress, of the four siblings who'd visited him every week, of the kind servants who had cared for him. He told her about the book clubs and snow fortresses and piano lessons and rescued animals. She was jealous, of course, that other people had witnessed his childhood and she hadn't, but she was so, so relieved to hear that it had at least had its good parts. Fourteen years of anger and hate towards Nohr wouldn't go away just like that. But it did soften, slightly. It was easier to speak to him after that, and it was easier for him to speak with the rest of his family. He still requested time to himself to think every now and then, but he didn't seem to be wearing that mask anymore. His siblings—excluding Takumi—all apologized for their behavior at that dinner, and from then on their relationship improved by leaps and bounds. Only his relationship with Takumi hadn't improved, but Corrin had started trying to talk to him now. It was enough. Three weeks after Corrin had returned to Hoshido, Mikoto organized a picnic for her family. It had been deemed unsafe for her to leave the safety of the castle grounds, so they went out to the gardens, spreading blankets down beneath the sakura trees. Summer was close and their pink blooms had long since died, much to Corrin's disappointment, but he still found plenty to admire in the rest of the flora. Currently all her children were relaxing, happy with full bellies and fair weather. Mikoto and Hinoka were pointing out all the different flowers to Corrin, and even Takumi was scowling less than usual as he talked to Ryoma. Azura was speaking to Sakura, a soft, teasing smile on her face as Sakura hid her face in her hands. Her golden eyes caught Mikoto's own, and the queen waved her over; with a quick word to Sakura, the older princess rose and crossed over to her. Mikoto bade her children a quick farewell and met her halfway. "Azura," she greeted with a smile. "I have something for you. I'd like you to give it to Corrin, when you get the chance." Out of her pocket she pulled out a shiny blue gem roughly the size of an egg—a dragonstone for Corrin. Obtaining it had been a stroke of pure fortune. Several days ago, a messenger from the ruler of Notre Sagesse had arrived with it in hand, saying it was a gift from the Rainbow Sage. It was very rare for the sage to just give things out, preferring to let people test themselves against him before deeming them worthy or unworthy. But he'd foreseen that her son would need a dragonstone in the future, and, as Mikoto could not leave Hoshido to take his test, had made a rare exception. Azura turned the dragonstone over in her hands, worry fresh in her eyes. Like Mikoto, she knew what it signified for Corrin. "I will, but…Lady Mikoto, why don't you just give it to him yourself?" Mikoto smiled serenely. "Just wait for the right moment. You'll know when it comes." Azura sighed, knowing she wouldn't get anything else out of her. "Very well." The songstress returned to Sakura, and Mikoto sighed, remaining rooted to her spot. She closed her eyes, welcoming the caress of the breeze on her cheek and in her hair. She knew her death was approaching soon. She had foreseen it—a purple explosion, a dark sword, a rampaging dragon. She didn't know which of those things would kill her, but a worried Orochi had approached her about it, which had confirmed that this time, the future could not be changed. While she didn't know when it would happen, she could sense that it was coming soon. She'd probably be dead by the end of the month. She thought she'd taken it well, all things considered. Some may have panicked at the news of their impending death, but she swallowed her fear; fear wouldn't accomplish anything. Instead she set about trying to make Ryoma's transaction into rulership as smooth as possible and spending as much time with her family as she could. Still…suddenly being confronted with your own mortality, with the fact that you were going to die, was scary. Worse, she knew there would be no peaceful embrace of the afterlife; Anankos would take her, as he'd promised, and she would serve him. And she didn't know if she'd ever be freed, or if her eternity would be a hell of slavish devotion to him. The one comfort she had was that she knew, somehow, that she would die protecting someone she loved. And if she died doing that, she would die content. Mikoto tilted her head back, gazing at the clouds above. Yukimura had told her of unease in the city; some people believed their prodigal prince had finally returned, but other whispered about Nohrian spies infiltrating them and plotting their demise. She had kept Corrin's return secret to give him time to adjust to Hoshido, but no longer, she decided. Rumors were dangerous, and to keep her son safe she needed to weed them out. It was time to announce his return. A public message in Shirasagi's town square, perhaps. Most of the population would be assembled there in mid-day, and she could let his siblings take him on tour around beforehand, showing him the different stalls and landmarks. She nodded; yes, that would work. "Mother!" Sakura called, voice joyous and giggling. She started; her family was gathered at the edge of the stone pathway winding through the rest of the garden, large smiles on their faces. Corrin's was a little awkward, but genuine, and his eyes were bright as his little sister held his hand. "Come on! We're going to show Corrin the koi pond!" "On my way!" Mikoto responded. She put the preparations from her mind and turned towards the path, hurrying to join her family, heart light as air. The future could wait. She would enjoy what she had now. A/N: And that's the final chapter. I can't believe it's over, guys! I had a lot of fun writing this, and everyone was so encouraging and nice in their reviews. I appreciate everyone who reviewed, favorited, followed or even just looked at this! If you have any last questions about the fic, drop them in a review or send me a PM, and I'll PM you with an answer! And now shameless advertising time—I mean, discussing future fics. There's a few that I have planned. The big one is Fire Emblem Fates: Aftermath, which will start immediately after Anankos's defeat in Revelation and cover the reconstruction of Valla, Corrin's difficulties to adjusting to being king, and the struggles to rebuild relations between Hoshido and Nohr since there is no way everything was hunky-dory between them afterwards. I'm also going to expand on stuff I found lacking in the game—some examples include Corrin's draconic urges and Lilith, to whet your appetite. I have no idea how long it will be, but it's definitely going to be as long if not longer than this, and the outline covers events for several in-fic years. The second idea is a counterpart to this. I've received a few PM's and asks about writing a fic showing Garon while he was alive, and if enough people expressed an interest, I'd be willing to write one such thing, either from his or Arete's perspective. So if you like the idea, let me know in a review or a PM. There's also a possible semi-sequel to Invisible Princess I'm tossing around, following Mikoto after her resurrection at Anankos's hands in Revelation. And that's it! Thank you all for your time! 3

Phil Schiller is a name that needs no introduction to anyone that’s tracked Apple for a decent length of time. An ever-present figure at nearly all major Apple events since Steve Jobs made his return to the company, Schiller is perhaps best known to the more casual Apple observers for his “Can’t innovate any more, my ass!" remark while introducing the 2013 Mac Pro. The Senior Vice President Worldwide Marketing at Apple was in Bengaluru recently to inaugurate the company’s app accelerator facility in Bengaluru where he a spoke to group of Indian app makers that included CEOs of popular apps like Zomato and Practo, as well as developer of the indie app Avaz. “This [the app accelerator] is a unique new thing we haven't done anywhere else in the world," Schiller told the app makers. “We have created the idea of this app accelerator where developers like yourselves can come here in large number week-in and week-out and get help with whether it's design expertise and I think that's something Apple has a lot of knowledge on to share, as small as to be able to experiment and play with the technologies that we are working on." Later during the trip, Gadgets 360 got a chance to sit down with Schiller and pick his brains on a wide variety of topics, both developer- and consumer-focussed. Before you ask, yes, we did quiz Schiller on the state of neglect that the Mac Pro finds itself in, but just three days after our conversation, news broke that Apple is completely revamping the Mac Pro, so it made no sense to share that bit of our conversation. Here are excerpts of our conversation with Phil Schiller. On App Store upgrade pricing Phill Schiller: The reason we haven’t done it is that it's much more complex than people know, and that's okay, it's our job to think about complex problems, but the App Store has reached so many successful milestones without it because the business model makes sense to customers. And the upgrade model, which I know very well from my days of running many large software programmes, is a model from the shrink-wrapped software days that for some developers is still very important, for most, it’s not really a part of the future we are going. I think for many developers, subscription model is a better way to, go than try to come up with a list of features, and different pricing for upgrade, versus for new customers. I am not saying it doesn't have value for some developers but for most it doesn’t, so that's the challenge. And if you look at the App Store it would take a lot of engineering to do that and so would be at the expense of other features we can deliver. For example, the App Store has one price for an app, when you see it, you see if there's a price on it, that's the price. It doesn't have multiple prices for multiple tiers of customers so to engineer that in, it's not impossible, but a lot of work for a small segment of software that we hope for many of them, subscription pricing is a better model, the one where the customers are comfortable with. So we’ll keep talking to developers about what's most important on their list, we want them to keep telling is if that [upgrade pricing] is high on the list or not, and we’ll keep an open mind to it, but it's harder than people realise. Thoughts on devices like Google Home and Amazon’s Echo Phill Schiller: Well, I won't talk to either one specifically, [I] don't want to. My mother used to have a saying that if you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all. So, instead, let’s abstract the conversation just briefly to some of the general concepts and talk about those, because it's really interesting. First of all, there is a lot of talk in the industry about voice-driven assistants and we believe deeply in voice-driven assistants that's why invest in Siri, but there is interest in a voice-only assistant, where there is no screen, and we think it's important to that there are times when it's convenient to simply use your voice when you are not able to use the screen. For example, if you're driving [and] you want Siri to work for you without having to look at the screen, that's the best thing. Or maybe you're across the room, and you want to ask Siri to change the song you were listening to - you don’t have to walk over and back [and you can use Siri instead]. So there's many moments where a voice assistant is really beneficial, but that doesn't mean you'd never want a screen. So the idea of not having a screen, I don't think suits many situations. For example if I'm looking for directions and I'm using Maps, Siri can tell me those directions by voice and that's really convenient but it's even better if I can see that map, and I can see what turns are coming up, and I can see where there is congestion, I understand better my route, and what I'm going to do. Or, for example, with photography, and one of the most popular reasons for our products is photography now, and photography requires a screen. So the idea of a device without a screen, well it’s not really useful for that whole category of photos that we all share. and all the social networking apps that are now embracing photos more and more, well, it doesn't work really so great in voice-only assistants. Or the biggest category of all of apps is games, and I have yet to see any voice-only games that, for me, are nearly as fun as the one that I play on my screen. And so I think voice assistants are incredibly powerful, their intelligence is going to grow, they’re gonna do more for us, but the role of the screen is gonna remain very important to all of this. Gadgets 360: But I don't think anyone is suggesting that they are going to replace our phones, right, so is that a fair comparison? Phill Schiller: With billions of people, there’s somebody always suggesting something everywhere [laughs], but there is an interesting question about role of voice-only products in comparison to the products that have voice, and screen, and touch, and I think that's an interesting discussion about when is each appropriate, and what can they do in our lives. I think that's interesting. Apple Siri Speaker Tipped to Launch at WWDC, Will Take on Amazon Echo Swift adoption among developers Phill Schiller: First of all, Swift is going incredibly well, better than what we imagined when we first started working on it. It has got incredible adoption, it has got incredible adaptability, from school children to the biggest developers in the world [..] I don’t think we’ve seen this before - a brand new language designed around mobile products to help us make better code for all the uses we see with apps, this is a unique new thing and, I have seen in some stats, [it’s] the fastest growing language in the world. So we are really excited about that. We are continuing to evolve [Swift], as you say, we were very upfront about it from the beginning that we knew we would learn a lot in the first versions of Swift, and we have been [learning]. So developers are aware of that and we’ve been very transparent about that, and there will be a lot more about that at our upcoming developer conference, so for the remaining part of your question about what’s coming with Swift, there’s a lot to come, stay tuned for news on that. The other thing that I just bring up with Swift is there's been a lot of excitement around the new Swift Playgrounds that we've put there out for iPad that allows children in school to learn to code in a fun and entertaining way but it's real coding. I think this is phenomenal. The idea that school children at elementary school ages can begin to learn about programming I think that is incredibly important. When we grew up, I grew up - and I’m much older than many of you - it was mandatory to learn a foreign language in school because it's useful in general and it exercises part of your brain that wouldn't otherwise be exercised, and makes you more likely to learn other languages in the future because you’ve really learned that process. I think today it's even more important that school children learn a programming language, as much we used to have to learn a foreign language. Because not that everyone will grow up to become a programmer, but that everyone can understand the concepts of programming, because software is gonna be a part of everyone's life no matter what your job, whether you're a software developer or you work with software developers understanding that is going to help every child get a job at some point in their life. In addition, if you start at a younger age like in elementary school, there are lot of students that by the time they get to high school with peer pressure they might decide that they don't want to become a programmer. Before they know whether that's actually something they are very passionate about. So if you can teach children [a] little bit about programming and get them excited about the concept of creating software, before social pressures discourage some [kids], then people would discover love for something early enough that they can explore that on their own. And I think through a process like that, we’ll get a larger diversity of people who are going into programming whether male or female, [irrespective of] their ethnic background, their economic background, they can discover this passion on their own, while they are still very young. I think that's a really important thing in society to enable. Disclosure: Apple sponsored the correspondent's flights and hotel for the trip to Bengaluru.

A24 The idea of making just one actor or actress the lynchpin of a feature-length movie is enough to turn most filmmakers pants-on-head levels of crazy. It's one thing to make a successful film with an entire ensemble at your fingertips, but it's quite another to create something magnificent - or even watchable - with one lone performer. These "one-man shows" are a painful viewing experience when they don't work out, especially once the initial gimmickry falls away to reveal an underwhelming story or a mediocre performance. Because these types of movies succeed or fail based entirely on those two things: Story and performance. It's crucial that both of those elements knock it out of the park, because there are no other distractions for the audience to get swept away by. And once the viewers are lost, there's really nothing left to reel them back in. On the other hand, when it works, this strange sub-genre of dramatic film can be a truly, uniquely satisfying experience. Sometimes it's even enough to redefine an actor's career. Now in the interest of transparency, some of the films on this list do technically have more than one actor on the roster - occasional cameos or supporting voice actors, that sort of thing - but for the most part, it's all on the shoulders of just one man or woman.

A police officer who broke ranks to reveal that migrants are to blame for the vast majority of serious crime in Sweden is now under investigation for incitement to racial hatred. Peter Springare’s exasperated rant describing the face of crime in Sweden received a huge amount of attention since it was posted to Facebook on Friday 3rd. In the post, the officer concedes that while it’s not politically correct to say so, almost all the serious crime cases he had dealt with over the past week involved migrants. He also states that this situation has been ongoing for the last decade or more. But now the department of internal investigations is probing Mr. Springare for incitement to racial hatred as a result of the post, police have confirmed. Communications officer at Örebro police, Anders Sjöberg, said the police officer will continue to work until the investigation is concluded. If Mr. Springare’s Facebook activity is found to be criminal, his position in the police will be reviewed, Bergslagen human resources manager Olov Augrell told SVT. “It is a crime in the Criminal Code so I decided to start a preliminary investigation”, said Maria Sterup, chief prosecutor of the Special Prosecution Office in Malmö. Mr. Springare has received massive support for the controversial post, with a Facebook group called ‘Stand Up for Peter Springare’ netting more than 100,000 members in less than a week. In it, people have written to express their support for the police officer and to thank him for his honesty. In a post which welcomes new members to the group, administrator Pia Larsson said: “Peter made an incredible contribution when he put the cards on the table and described his work week. Many of us felt incredible relief that the truth had come out — finally.” Appearing on SVT Tuesday night renowned criminologist Leif GW Persson also came to Mr. Springare’s defence. He described the Facebook post as “refreshing”, and said he believes that most police officers are voting for the anti-mass migration Sweden Democrats (SD) party. In the post being investigated for ‘hate speech’, in which the veteran police officer described his week of dealing with violent crime, Mr. Springare wrote: “Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, again, again, again Christopher… what is it true? Yes a Swedish name snuck in on the edges of a drug crime. Mohammed, Mahmod Ali, again and again. “Now, we’re talking just Örebro municipality. And these crimes take up our capacity to investigate 100 per cent. This is what it looks like here, and has been like for the past 10-15 years.”

President Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney has laid out the president's economic agenda as "MAGAnomics." It consists of mostly free market reforms, although it's lacking in specifics. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Mulvaney explained that the Trump administration believes that MAGAnomics will restore America to a 3% economic growth rate. "Over the next 10 years, 3% growth instead of 2% will yield a nominal gross domestic product that is $16 trillion larger, federal government revenues $2.9 trillion greater, and wages and salaries of American workers $7 trillion higher," Mulvaney wrote. Mulvaney dismissed those who say that 3% economic growth is unattainable by arguing that similar criticisms were hurled toward Ronald Reagan, yet his economic policies resulted in a 4.4% real GDP growth rate once the recession evaporated. "That is what a recovery looks like, and what the American economy is still capable of achieving," wrote Mulvaney. Mulvaney then provides a laundry list of broad economic policies: cutting taxes, rescinding regulations, reining in spending, reforming welfare so it incentivizes work, an "all of the above" energy policy, infrastructure spending and "fair trade." Mulvaney gave a brief explanation as to how each policy would help boost the economy but the explanation didn't provide any specifics on the details. "MAGAnomics is for everyone, but especially for those who left for work this morning in the dark but came home after their kids were asleep," wrote Mulvaney. "It's for those who are working part-time but praying for a full-time job. It’s for folks whose savings are as exhausted as they are. This president hears you." Mulvaney's full column can be read here. With the exception of infrastructure spending and supposed "fair trade," the policy items Mulvaney lists are consistent with the free market. It is possible to reach 3% economic growth, but that can only happen if the debt crisis is fully addressed and if Obamacare is repealed. Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.

“Laudato Si,’ ” Pope Francis’s stunning encyclical, has earned much deserved attention for its ringing declaration that climate change poses a real and present danger and is caused “mainly as a result of human activity.” But Pope Francis’s text is far broader. He grounds his call for action on climate change within a fierce critique of the false doctrines of market fundamentalism, calling on us to “reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals.” The pope, as the Wall Street Journal summarized, issues “an indictment of the global market economy” for “plundering the Earth at the expense of the poor and of future generations.” Pope Francis grounds his view on climate both in the scriptures and centuries of Catholic teaching, repeatedly citing the views of past religious figures. The title of his encyclical, “Laudato Si’ ” — which means “Praise be to you” — comes from a 13th-century poem on nature by St. Francis of Assisi. His views on the folly of the market also are grounded in the church’s teachings and continue the themes that he boldly put forth in his apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium.” “The Earth, our home,” he writes in the new encyclical, “is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” We are failing in our responsibility to care for God’s creation. The reason, he says, is that idolatry of the market and consumerism has supplanted any sense of the common good. And public action is stalled because “too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected.” He continues: “Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations? Where profits alone count, there can be no thinking about the rhythms of nature.” The pope condemns the current global economy “where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked.” Wall Street comes under particular criticism: “Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated.” As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of the deified market, which become the only rule.” For Pope Francis, the market and the economy must be bound by rules that serve “basic and inalienable rights.” At the center of these is work: “We were created with a vocation to work.” Work is the setting for “rich personal growth . . . creativity, planning for the future, developing our talents, living out our values . . . giving glory to God.” Therefore, priority should be given to “the goal of access to steady employment for everyone, no matter the limited interests of business and dubious economic reasoning.” But instead of the common good, we have constructed an economy built on private interest and unrestrained appetite, an economy that excludes the poorest and most vulnerable. For Pope Francis, “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” derive from the same distorted global market economy. The encyclical will give a powerful boost to the series of international climate meetings culminating in December’s World Climate Summit in Paris. In September, Pope Francis will travel to the United States, where he will address both a joint session of Congress and the U.N. Special Summit on Sustainable Development. Not surprisingly, right-wing outlets immediately condemned what National Review dismissed as a “crude and backward understanding of economics and politics both.” While liberals embraced the pope’s views on climate, conservatives were dismayed. Rush Limbaugh said the encyclical is saying “that every Catholic should vote for the [Democratic] Party.” Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a Catholic, said, “I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.” Rick Santorum, also a Catholic and a presidential contender, dismissed the statement, arguing that “we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists.” But the pope isn’t a political partisan. Pope Francis is immensely popular in the United States, particularly among Catholics. His views on climate change will contribute greatly to the growing swing in opinion that action is needed. Pope Francis is seeking a far more profound change: economic policy grounded in moral values, measured not by how much money the few make but the respect accorded the rights of all and the health of the environment. Conservatives say he should stick to theology. But he already is sticking to theology, understanding that the worship of markets and the acceptance of unrestrained appetites are moral problems, not technical ones. If this statement on climate is most welcome, his teachings on the economy offer a critique necessary to finding the way out of these problems. Read more from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s archive or follow her on Twitter.

SCHOOLCHILDREN are being asked to define their gender by a list of more than 20 different terms. Pupils at Blatchington Mill School in Brighton were given the survey as homework and asked to choose from a list of 23 terms to say how they would describe their sex. As well as girl and boy, the list includes a catalogue of other labels - including "non-binary", "demi-boy" and "gender fluid". Parents have described the survey as "unnecessary" and "confusing" to teenagers going through some of the most difficult years of their lives. However trans campaigners suggested offering children struggling with their gender the opportunity to put a name to their feelings could help them overcome some of the difficulties. The question was part of a national survey from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and sent to every school in Brighton and Hove. Children's Commissioner for England Anne Longfield OBE who released the survey said: "We want to know how gender matters to young people: what does gender mean to them; how does it affect their lives; what do they want to change? "To explore these important questions, we have constructed a survey, and hope to hear from as many young people (13-18 years old) as possible." The survey says that children's answers "may be used in Government reports, presentations and publications." The report stipulates that children under 16 years old should "check whether your parents/carers are happy for you to complete this survey". However parents of Blatchington Mill pupils said the school had not sought their permission before setting the task. The school says they were not told it should seek parental permission. Blatchington Mill head teacher Ashley Harrold said: "We’re incredibly passionate about ensuring that every student feels safe and welcome at our school. When it comes to gender identity it is a real and valid concern for a number of students. "For us, anything that prevents students feeling happy, from feeling confident in themselves and from feeling accepted by their peers is something we feel the curriculum should address. "Raising students awareness of the wider spectrum of gender identity is important in building an inclusive and tolerant society." Brighton and Hove City Council said it had forwarded the survey to secondary school at the request of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. A council spokesman said: "The survey is designed to explore young people's experiences of gender. "We think the findings from this survey will be useful in our work helping all our children and young people feel good about themselves, achieve their potential and challenge gender stereotyping and sexism. "Blatchington Mill has a well-deserved national reputation as a beacon of best practice for the work it does on LGBT related issues as part of its personal, social and health education curriculum. "We want all our young people to feel comfortable with who they are, to understand that the notion of gender can go beyond the traditional idea of simply being either male and female, and to recognise that people can use a range of terms to describe their gender identity." IT’S IMPORTANT CHILDREN SUFFERING GENDER DYSPHORIA ARE SUPPORTED By Sophie Cook Transgender photographer and activist I THINK it is really important that young people are given the opportunity to express themselves. Society can still be very harsh. I knew from age seven I was transgender, but because there was no information out there I had no idea what was going on so I attempted suicide aged 12. I think it is good for children to be given the opportunity to discuss things openly and honestly. It is so important that children who are going through gender dysphoria are given all the support they can get. The teenage years are terrible for all of us, but if you are battling gender dysphoria as well you can feel so isolated and alone and confused. I really think it could help young people who are going through this to be given a list of terms that they may find relate to what they are going through. It is important that the support is out there, but it also important what is done with that information. DO YOU KNOW WHAT DEMI-BOY, TRI-GENDER OR GENDER FLUID MEAN? Katy Rice By Katy Rice Argus columnist WHY does it worry me as a mother that schools are asking teenagers aged 14 and 15 to identify their gender by giving them multiple bizarre choices? Those choices include terms I’ve never heard of: do you know what a demi-boy is? Or tri-gender? Gender fluid? Agender? Non-binary? Intersex? No, me neither. As a middle-aged woman (and I definitely tick the plain boring ‘woman’ box, by the way), I’m confused by all of these terms and this is just a small selection of those on a questionnaire for pupils to complete for homework at Brighton and Hove schools. So what on earth does this do to teenagers, in the throes of discovering their sexuality for the first time? The majority of teenagers should feel secure in the knowledge that they are simply boy or girl, but by pandering to a minority with gender issues, schools are introducing confusion and insecurity, unnecessarily making all teenagers question their basic identity. Surely it’s parents who should be dealing with their children’s sexuality, not schools.

Japan, while not the wetshaving mecca that England or Germany appear to be, has some things to offer the wetshaver in need. While it is possible to find a decent range of imported goods like Merkur razors and blades, or Plisson brushes, they tend to be limited to the cities and major department stores and they are wildly overpriced. Native products, while limited, are worth a look. I’ll be talking over the next couple of months about Japanese products of interest to the wetshaver, both hardware and “software,” as they say, and hopefully something interesting will popup. Let’s start with shaving creams and soaps. There are a few Japanese made shaving creams on shelves. The two that are most readily available (usually on the shelf just below Feather DE blades) are Rohto Mentholatum Medicated Shaving cream and Milk Brand cream. These are both non-lathering brushless creams, with lots of menthol. Naturally, the former (Rohto Mentholatum) is very strongly mentholated, with a cooling punch like a boxing polar bear…or something of the like. Milk brand, though promising a soothing and nourishing shave, offered only thing, cooling slickness. Sadly for me, my face is highly sensitive to menthol and I was in eye-watering pain within minutes of trying both of these creams. I couldn’t finish a shave with either, so I’m not really the person to tell you whether they are worth trying. However, they are cheap and very old school, so if you don’t mind non-lathering creams, and you like menthol (and, of course, you happen to be in Japan) it might be worth picking them up. Shaving soaps are slightly more promising. Japanese-made soaps include powdered varieities (Kao and MBG brand soaps) and liquids (LION Professional) and as far as I’m aware, one single, solitary puck. The puck is Kamisori Club’s Catechin soap. It’s a melt-N-pour soap with added Catechin (a chemical found in green tea) that is supposed to have excellent skin care properties. In the two or three times I tried this soap, the shaves were just ok (the lather was unstable but super slick) and my skin felt good afterwards. It was an odd thing, actually. I can’t say that the shave itself was enjoyable. The unstable lather tickled as it popped, and it was a rather unappetizing greenish-brown. However, it was really quite slick, with reasonable cushion so I can’t say it was bad. After the shave, my skin did feel quite refreshed, though I can’t really say if that was the soap or not. All in all, it was a middle of the road shave, though the price for the soap (1,680 JPY or roughly US$20) suggested better. Another soap I’ve tried more recently is the powdered MBG with added Aloe extract. You can see a more detailed review at my blog Eastern Smooth, but basically…thin, unstable lather but a super slick shave, with a nice, moist face afterward. A lot like the Catechin soap, actually, though at half the price a much better deal. And that about finishes up the soaps and creams of Japan. Overall, not the best prospects, but better than nothing I guess. Maybe? Next time, I promise the outcome will be much rosier as we discuss one of Japan’s strengths: Aftershaves!

Previously in this series, I uncovered potential undervalued speedsters, power bats and batting average hitters – by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. Now the focus turns to run production counting statistics, in the form of runs batted in. In 2018, there were 40 players with least 85 RBI. There were 21 players above the 95 mark, and 10 with 105 runs batted in. World Series champion J.D. Martinez led all of baseball with 130 RBI. Khris Davis of Oakland came in second with 123. Prospective projections though, are typically more conservative. Steamer projects the top RBI accumulator, Giancarlo Stanton, for 114 RBI. Only 5 players are projected to knock in 100 or more runs. For today’s analysis, I will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of 84 RBI or more. [I was going to choose 85 – however setting the threshold at 84 added a few interesting names.] This should give us a group of players who can greatly help your team’s RBI totals for the upcoming fantasy season. As always, for these draft value comparisons, I look at: The player ranks as computed by the FanGraphs Auction Calculator with Steamer projections (standard NFBC 15 team roto league settings). The current NFBC ADP (of Draft Championship leagues from January 31 to present). Below are the players selected within the top 30 ADP, who also have a Steamer projection of at least 84 RBI: 1st & 2nd Round High Runs Batted In Contributors Name AB HR R RBI SB AVG ADP Giancarlo Stanton 533 45 96 114 3 0.267 24 Nolan Arenado 586 37 98 109 3 0.286 10 J.D. Martinez 529 36 93 109 4 0.297 5 Manny Machado 573 34 92 99 9 0.288 15 Jose Ramirez 572 28 98 99 24 0.284 3 Mike Trout 476 36 109 98 19 0.300 1 Trevor Story 550 30 85 97 18 0.271 18 Javier Baez 586 29 81 96 17 0.269 16 Mookie Betts 584 29 115 95 26 0.302 2 Bryce Harper 503 34 93 93 10 0.267 20 Freddie Freeman 562 27 91 93 8 0.286 21 Aaron Judge 522 36 96 93 7 0.251 19 Alex Bregman 568 26 98 92 11 0.280 14 Francisco Lindor 586 30 101 89 20 0.286 7 Paul Goldschmidt 551 27 92 89 11 0.277 17 Christian Yelich 563 27 97 87 15 0.297 8 These 16 players are projected to provide an excellent run producing base for your draft. Once again, Juan Soto, the Nationals sophomore standout, just missed this list at an ADP of 31. Below are all of the remaining players in the draft pool with a Steamer projection of at least 84 RBI: The players above are once again ordered by their difference in Steamer Hitter Rank versus ADP Hitter Rank. Differences highlighted in GREEN are the players who are going later than their Steamer values indicate that they should; differences in RED show the overvalued players. What jumps out to me is the rightmost column. We have been accustomed (particularly for the stolen base bargains) to seeing more RED than GREEN. That is, we are used to the select scoring categories being drafted at a premium. This isn’t the case for Runs Batted In – many of these premier sluggers are available at a discount, anywhere from 1-3 rounds earlier than Steamer values where they should be drafted. What also stands out, is that the largest overall ADP shown is Randal Grichuk at ADP 234. Only three other players have ADPs of over 150 (Carlos Santana 196, Nomar Mazara 159, Mike Moustakas 154). Unlike stolen bases or home runs, in order to draft a player that will knock in a considerable number of runs, you need to acquire them in the first fifteen rounds – most of them in the first seven or eight rounds. One of my themes this year is “The Case for An Ace” – that you need to draft ace starting pitchers within your first few picks. On the hitting side, it is these early to middle rounds that you need to acquire most of your bats – many of whom are undervalued. Nelson Cruz shows up on yet another undervalued player list. He is the 15th best hitter according to Steamer, yet he is going off the boards as the 60th overall hitter. He is severely undervalued and can help your team in HR, BA & RBI. He sits at #2 on this list. Take note. Randal Grichuk, Jose Abreu and Joey Gallo were all previously covered in this series, but here are a few other players from above that I would like to highlight: Nomar Mazara (Steamer Hitter Rank: 61, ADP Hitter Rank: 100, Overall ADP: 159) Let’s take a quick look at some of Nomar Mazara’s power and run production output for the past three seasons: Nomar Mazara 2016-2018 Season HR R RBI 2016 20 59 64 2017 20 64 101 2018 20 61 77 AVG 20 61 81 On the surface, it seems that Mazara is a steady 20 homer players, with low 60s Runs and low 80s RBIs. Let’s see if there are any issues with his batted ball profile: Nomar Mazara – Assorted Batted Ball Metrics Season LD% GB% FB% HR/FB 2016 21% 49% 30% 16% 2017 19% 47% 34% 14% 2018 18% 55% 27% 20% The 2018 GB% rate of 55% seems somewhat worrisome, and his K% rate has been ticking up year over year from 20% in 2016 to 21% in 2017 to 22% in 2018. Could last year’s surface stats growth reversal from 2017 be injury related? Maybe. He had a thumb injury, which hampered him (and he might have played through) in the second half of 2018. Let’s look at the past season by halves: Nomar Mazara – 2018 Stats by Half Season Half AB R HR RBI AVG 1H 308 45 15 55 0.282 2H 181 16 5 22 0.215 Obviously, we can’t just assume that Mazara’s 1H production would continue for a full season – but his pace was a .282 BA, 30 HR, 110 RBI, 90 R clip. Wow! Let’s look at his batted ball profile from half to half: Nomar Mazara – 2018 Batted Ball Metrics by Half Season Half LD% GB% FB% HR/FB 1H 22% 53% 24% 26% 2H 12% 58% 30% 12% Although that groundball rate was still high in the first half, the other 1H metrics were more in line with his norm (albeit a few less flyballs, but a somewhat lucky HR/FB rate). Overall, it is unclear whether Mazara will have any more growth in 2019 – but he’s only 24 years old. If healthy, he should easily ride the 20 HR threshold that he’s held. Batting in the heart of the Texas lineup should be the impetus to get him to 90+ RBI. He’s only 24 years old … the best is yet to come. Give a strong consideration to the young outfielder for an 11th round selection, especially if you need to catch up in RBIs. Rougned Odor (Steamer Hitter Rank: 51, ADP Hitter Rank: 81, Overall ADP: 129) Sticking with Texas once again – we have the Texas second baseman Rougned Odor, brother of Texas minor league second baseman Rougned Odor (Yes, the two brothers have the same name, play the same position, and were in the same organization). Odor has made great strides in plate patience recently. His walk rate rose from 3% in 2016 to 5% in 2017 to 8% in 2018! His hard contact rate went from 37% in ’17 to 45% last year. His line drive rate rose from 16% to 20% as well. Although Odor seemingly had a down year last season, there is reason to believe his surface stats will rebound – and return close to the 30 HR levels in ’16-’17 once again. He should come close to doing so with a far better batting average to boot. Odor, like Mazara, is also still quite young – as this will only be his age 25 season. The ATC projections do not share as much optimism as Steamer does for Odor’s RBI total. ATC has Odor projected for only 76 RBI [Steamer 84], but that’s still a solid total. According to Steamer, Odor should be the 51st hitter off of the boards, but he is being taken a number of rounds later as the 81st hitter. Eddie Rosario (Steamer Hitter Rank: 36, ADP Hitter Rank: 57, Overall ADP: 92) Eddie Rosario was one of my 2018 potential breakout candidates … and he was … in the first half. Rosario amassed 18 homers, 52 HRI, 6 SBs and a .315 BA in the first half alone, which is a first round type talent. Unfortunately, injuries derailed his breakout season – with shoulder and quad injuries in the second half. Instead of prolonged DL stints, Rosario played through the injuries, which made his final full season figures not as lofty. Eddie Rosario – Assorted Batted Ball & Plate Metrics Season K% LD% GB% FB% 2016 25.7% 19.3% 46.3% 34.4% 2017 18.0% 20.2% 42.4% 37.4% 2018 17.6% 20.3% 35.7% 44.1% Rosario is trending in the right direction in many of his batted ball metrics and his plate discipline – Fewer strikeouts, more line drives, and fewer fly balls. His improvements will set a nice floor for his batting average. He is also hitting more balls in the air, which will ultimately aid his power metrics. Oh yes, and he also steals bases (close to double digits each year). He is healthy now; his power should return in stride. Rosario is a player who has big upside. At the price he is currently being drafted at – he is a bargain even if he just repeats what he did last season. Batting in the heart of a revamped Minnesota lineup, Rosario is a player that will give you excellent run production metrics at a discount. Yasiel Puig (Steamer Hitter Rank: 31, ADP Hitter Rank: 46, Overall ADP: 71) Yasiel Puig traded in his Dodger blue this offseason for some Reds … Red. With that, he moves from a pitcher’s park to a hitter’s park. He will also move from a manager who took him out of games late for defense, to a better “playing time” situation. Puig only had 405 ABs last season [some injuries] – yet managed to earn mid-teens full-season auction value. Puig has many paths to value. He steals bases – amassing 15 in each of the past two seasons. He hits for power – clubbing an average of 26 dingers over the past two years. His ground balls have been turning into line drives over the past few seasons – giving him a solid batting average floor. Finally, he should bat somewhere in the middle of the Cincinnati lineup, which will afford him the opportunity to pile up the RBIs. Puig is a five-tool player and is undervalued according to the Steamer projections. Other than health, he is at low risk for poor performance. He can be acquired on average in the middle of the fifth round. A few weeks ago, he was being drafted at the end of the sixth round – so his stock is on the rise. Grab him now, while he is still going for a small discount.

NEW WWE SIGNINGS WWE has signed Dylan Mile, a 25 year old from Colorado who recently went through a tryout at their Performance Center last month. Mile isis 6'3 and 285 lbs. He wowed trainers with his agilitty, including a 37 inch vertical leap. The company has also signed Leah Van Dale, a former New England Patriots and Los Angeles Lakers cheerleader. She started at the Performance Center this week. Her father, Paul Van Dale, did enhancement work for the WWF in the 1990s and worked independently. The signings bring up Joey Ryan, Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards, who were the biggest "independent wrestling names" at the most recent tryout. We have not heard that any of the three have been signed or offered anything as of this writing. In the case of the latter two, they are not currently under contract to ROH, so if WWE wanted to make them an offer, they obviously could. There's been a buzz about them potentially going, but nothing is ever, ever official until the deals are signed and they are actually under contract. That, however, doesn't mean it's a dead issue, either. If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more, right now for THREE DAYS free by clicking here!

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The exchange on the bridge over the Piusa River was filmed Russia and Estonia have exchanged two convicted spies over a bridge separating the countries. Estonian security official Eston Kohver was sentenced to 15 years in a Russian jail last month. He was swapped for Aleksei Dressen, who was imprisoned in Estonia in 2012 on charges of spying for Moscow. Kohver's case provoked a diplomatic row, with Estonia and the EU insisting he was abducted from Estonian soil, a charge Russia denied. Dressen was a former officer in Estonia's security police, who was found guilty of passing secret data to Russia for years after Estonia's independence in 1991. He had been arrested in 2012 along with his wife, Victoria Dressen, who was given a suspended sentence. According to the Russian Federal Security Service, the swap took place on a bridge over the Piusa River that separates Russia's western Pskov region and Estonia's Polva county. Image copyright AFP/Reuters Image caption Estonia said the exchange of Kohver (L) for Dressen came after long negotiations The exchange came after "long-term negotiations", the head of Estonia's Internal Security Service, Arnold Sinisalu said at a televised news conference, sitting alongside Kohver. Image copyright EVN Image caption The swap took place on a bridge spanning the River Piusa - the face of one of the officials accompanying the two has been blurred The Estonian agent said he was glad to be back home and thanked "all the authorities who helped me get back to Estonia, who helped me to, so to say, endure in prison". Relations between Russia and its Baltic neighbours have been uneasy since they joined Nato and the European Union in 2004. They have worsened since the crisis in Ukraine, where Russia is accused of arming separatists in the east - which Moscow denies.

CHATFIELD, Minn. – Forty-nine years ago Roy and Ray Lange made a decision that has positively affected the grooming of a couple generations of Fillmore County men. The twin brothers were grinding pistons in a factory, when they decided together to seek a cleaner occupation. Ray suggested barber school. Next January, the Lange twins will mark 50 years of barbering, Roy at his shop in Chatfield and Ray 20 miles down the road in Spring Valley. “I could have retired a long time ago, but what would I do?” asks Roy as he clips hair. “I mean, this is my place to hang out. I love being with my wife as much as possible, but she needs a little space too.” That pronouncement, and nearly every other Roy makes, is followed by a prolonged hearty laugh – a delightful trait he shares with his twin brother. Seventy-two years later, there’s still no mistaking Roy and Ray are twins. (Photo submitted) “I’m what you call the original twin,” says Roy. “I was born first.” “I shoved him out,” responds Ray from his own barber shop. As usual, laughter ensues. Sign Up for the Sunrise Morning Newsletter Thank You Something went wrong. This email will be delivered to your inbox once a day in the morning. Thank you for signing up for the Sunrise Newsletter Please try again later. Submit After graduating from barber school in St. Paul, the Lange brothers purchased their shops, from retiring barbers, on the same day. “I take care of this edge of Fillmore County, and he’s taking care of the other edge,” laughs Roy. He’s not far off. By Roy’s count only five active barbers remain in Fillmore County, as more men and boys have taken their business to beauty salons. Still, business is currently brisk as longtime customers have come in for spring haircuts. “A lot of ‘em, when they come in here I pick on ‘em,” Roy laughs. “I always say, ‘Well here comes Grizzly Adams. He’s in here to get slicked up.’” Roy and Ray Lange (left side of photo) at barber school in St. Paul in 1967 Roy and Ray were born the 10th and 11th children, in a family of a dozen kids. “The doctor said to my dad, ‘Don’t be in a big hurry, Harry, I think there’s another one in there,” laughs Ray. “That means I was coming out. The twins weighed four pounds each at birth. Ray says their mother put them in shoe boxes and warmed them by the stove. Seventy-two years later, there’s still no mistaking Roy and Ray are twins. Their hair, builds, speech patterns and laughs remain virtual copies. Both men served in the military, both drive red convertibles, and both repair clocks, zippers and upholstery in their shops to pass the time between customers. Both also have an affinity for black walnuts that could put to shame an ambitious squirrel. Roy owns two nut cracking machines, while Ray carries his nut cracker between home and work. Roy Lange (right) shares a laugh with a customer in his barber shop in Chatfield, Minnesota “Some people go to a football game and the Lange brothers we’re harvesting walnuts,” laughs Roy. “You can feel good about yourself at the end of the day that you cracked some walnuts.” Neither twin expresses much interest in retirement. “There’s a barber in West Virginia, he’s 106-years-old and he’s still barbering,” say Ray. “So with that challenge we’ve got 34 years to go yet.” The laugh that follows is one of his most spectacular of the day - a work of art, really, as laughs go. The Langes’ commitment to keep going should come as good news to the twins’ favorite customers: each other. Every few weeks they meet either in Chatfield or Spring Valley to cut each other’s hair. “We’ve never paid for a haircut in the last 49 years,” says Roy. Ray works up another laugh then adds, “We always keep the money in the family.”

Acupuncture, considered to be one of the oldest traditional healing practices in the world, is an alternative medicine therapy based in traditional Chinese medicine. The general principle of Chinese medicine is that physical health is maintained when the two opposing forces of yin and yang are in balance within the body. When there is a lack of balance between yin and yang the flow of qi (vital energy) is blocked and disease or other health problems result. An acupuncturist uses thin needles to puncture the skin in specific points along meridians or pathways with the goal of improving the flow of the body’s vital energy or qi. Acupuncture for Pain Acupuncture is one of the most widely used and widely studied forms of complementary and alternative medicine. Over 3 million Americans had been to an acupuncturist in the last year and pain or joint problems were the main reasons 7 out of 10 were getting treatment.[2238] Does Acupuncture Work to Treat Pain? Yes, No, Depends. There has been much debate about the studies of acupuncture on pain relief. Why it’s so complicated and why there is so much controversy comes down to several factors. The Placebo Effect: In acupuncture studies patients may receive a ‘placebo’ of simulated acupuncture (fake acupuncture) to compare results with the patients that receive acupuncture. A review of studies showed something interesting: the patients that received fake acupuncture had significantly less pain after ‘treatment’ than patients that had no treatment at all, and the difference between patients that got ‘real’ acupuncture and those that got ‘fake’ acupuncture was smaller. [2239] Your attitude towards acupuncture may make a difference: Four studies found that patients that expected acupuncture treatment to help their pain had more pain relief after treatment than those that didn’t expect it to work. [2240] Lack of consistency in studies makes it hard to make general conclusions. Some studies used different types of acupuncture, different types of comparison groups (no treatment, ‘fake’ treatment) and different ways of measuring results. What Science Currently Says[2241] Knee Pain/Osteoarthritis: People with osteoarthritis especially in the knee joint get pain relief and better function with acupuncture treatment. Low-Back Pain: There are conflicting studies and results meaning no definite conclusion. However, the American Pain Society and the American College of Physicians recommend considering acupuncture when conventional therapy isn’t working. Headaches/Migraines: Conflicting results. Some studies found that acupuncture reduced migraines and tension headaches while others found no difference. Neck Pain: Acupuncture decreased patients’ pain level more than simulated acupuncture did. Other Pain Conditions: Acupuncture has been studied for effectiveness in relieving pain in carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, menstrual cramps, pregnancy and TMJ dysfunction. Again there are often different conclusions reached by different studies or researchers. In all studies the patients all received the standard care for their pain and disorder, often pain medication and physical therapy. Acupuncture is added as a complementary treatment. The National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) states that acupuncture is generally considered safe when performed correctly. Many patients with chronic pain have already tried traditional treatments and continue to suffer. Acupuncture with the goal of reducing pain may be an alternative treatment to explore. Before starting any new treatment be sure to discuss it with your physician or health professional to ensure its suitability to your diagnosed disorder, illness or condition and to prevent unforeseen complications. This article is meant to provide you with information and ideas and is not intended to treat, cure or diagnose any medical or mental health condition. What to Expect During An Acupuncture Session

It’s safe to assume Michael Bradley may never connect any sweeter than he did on a cool, overcast night in Mexico City on Sunday. It’s difficult to fathom, as you watch the goal clip for the 20th and 21st time today, that the circumstances even came together to allow Bradley to score on a flat 50-yard chip that fell into the netting over helpless Mexico goalkeeper Memo Ochoa. Mexico, which won 76 percent possession against the US in their World Cup qualifier on Sunday, were clearly not worried on that play. Or at least, not enough for Ochoa to closely guard his line as Mexico looked to pick its way forward through the US’s sagging midsection. It was into this cauldron that Bradley carved out a wanton pass, broke open Mexico’s sleepy defense with a long touch and then swung through with a hybrid wedge to beat Ochoa and stun the 71,000 strong in the Estadio Azteca. And for one play, the frequently dissenting voices that have surface around Bradley in recent years were silenced. The evolution of Michael Bradley In truth, Bradley’s reputation has undergone something of a transformation in the last few years. If we use Bradley wondergoals as bookends, the time between his last blindingly beautiful goal against Scotland in 2012 and the one he scored Sunday to ensure a vital 1-1 draw in Mexico has been contentiously debated. His roles shifted like putty for club and country, and so too did his utility seem to morph. How do we even come to understand the modern tactical Bradley when it seems as though the clay of his career has been shaped by so many disparate hands at abrupt odds with one another? As I see it, Bradley is the most tragically misunderstood USMNT player of his generation. And he’s quietly been the singular player the US can’t do without, especially in overheated road matches when his cool, collected leadership is so desperately required. It's generally accepted that Bradley came into his own on the club level around 2011-2014, when he was sitting deep in Italy for Chievo and Roma. Even before he arrived in Italy, Bradley was a thoroughly Italian midfielder. His preferred playstyle has always carefully mirrored his clipped, thoughtful demeanor cribbed so naturally from his stern, intentional father Bob. Italy was good to Bradley because Serie A tends to slow down pace to a more ponderous degree. Bradley thrived as a deep-lying midfielder building attacks and simultaneously crushing them while being able to access the more prosaic corners of his tactical intellect. He had the time to do it in Italy. The problems began to first creep into the equation under then-US coach Jurgen Klinsmann. Bradley has always been the most obviously comfortable deep with a covering midfielder slightly akimbo upfield. Bradley, ever the watchful builder, prefers to drop in and collect from the defense, but he also requires a short outlet to provide a backboard for the initial bricks in the wall. For the majority of his five years as US coach, Klinsmann saw Bradley either as a barnstorming box-to-box midfielder or as an out-and-out No. 10. He is neither of these things. When Bradley moved to Toronto FC in 2014, then coach Ryan Nelsen used Bradley similarly, not as a No. 10 but as a sort of do-everything central engine. Bradley is good enough in the latter role, but it takes him away from the sort of game he prefers; smart, low-risk, tightly controlled. Instead, suddenly he was asked to prod into attacking thirds with regularity and challenge center backs. It worked in its fashion, but anyone with eyes could see it was an awkward fit, like a bear asked to run with cheetahs. This has been the way of it for the last three years, and Bradley’s been battered by public opinion in the interim. One imagines it’s intimately frustrating for the former MetroStar, who’s dutifully filled awkward roles outside his best use the last couple years and performed better in them than anyone should reasonably expect. As perhaps the most obvious example, Bradley covered more physical ground than any player at the 2014 World Cup. It’s hard to stress vehemently enough how much this is not Bradley’s wheelhouse. His mistakes compounded only because his eyes were on four different positions, most of them strange fits. Bruce Arena re-entered the USMNT stage late last year with fewer notions about specific fits divorced from the players’ own opinions of themselves. This is partly why Bradley’s returned to the sitting No. 6 role over the last six months, and why he’s suddenly looked more comfortable than he has in a US shirt in years. A system that works for Bradley There is also the matter of central partnership. Jermaine Jones, Bradley’s most common companion in the middle, has his unique merits but few of them jive with Bradley’s. Jones’ history as a nomad is utterly at odds with Bradley’s more staid patterns, and when Jones ran, Bradley was invariably left holding the bag. Many of Bradley's mistakes in space are down to his lack of a possession backboard. As any coach worth his salt will tell you, the most important facet to unlocking a player is first knowing their strengths and weaknesses. But it’s ultimately a useless endeavor if you don’t play into the former to avoid the latter. Bradley is not blameless in all this, of course. His passing efficiency has objectively dropped in the last few years for the national team, but at least the last few games proved his boat is shifting tack into more placid waters. On Thursday, in a 2-0 qualifying win over Trinidad and Tobago, it was Bradley’s pressure and subsequent forced turnover up the middle that started the movement toward Christian Pulisic’s opener. And of course his quick read of the situation on Sunday night against Mexico – a thousand minute calculations processed and spat out in a matter of seconds – led to one of the most sublime goals you’ll ever see. In both scenarios he was leaning back into his preferred position in a system that suddenly allowed him to pick his moments forward instead of thrusting him into the fray at will. One works with Bradley and the latter mostly does not. Allowing Bradley the freedom to hang back also has notably positive defensive consequences. On Sunday, Bradley only even attempted three passes in Mexico’s half, as much a product of his evolved role as it was the US’s lack of impetus in the attack. But it also gave him the ability to recover on Mexico attacks more quickly, a huge demerit against him when he’s forced forward. He’s simply not fast enough to be all that effective on the recovery, one of the reasons that a role as a dedicated attacker is so strange for him. Instead, against Mexico, Bradley was in position to register a whopping five clearances in the box, several of them critical to save vital goal-scoring opportunities. Bradley’s never been one to go in hard and low, but if you position him correctly, none of that really matters. He’s in place to cut off the attack without ever having to go to ground in the first place. Arena’s next frontier with Bradley is finding him that central outlet, and it may have fallen on him against Mexico. Young Kellyn Acosta grew into the game dramatically after earning the start as Bradley’s running mate, and the two looked like old friends by the time the game ended. Acosta is just the sort of reliable pairing Bradley had earlier in his career, and in the long run, as the US drives toward Russia 2018, it would make an immense amount of sense to continue their run at familiarity. Bradley is ever the dutiful captain, willing as he’s been to swallow awkward roles in awkwardly fitting formations while refusing public complaint. In this he’s taken his hits, although I’ve never gotten the sense it cracked his thoughtful veneer. Now that he’s finally returning to his roots on the national team scene, perhaps the shackles are finally falling away.

Tasmanian beekeepers are threatening a pollination ban if the island state's GM-free status is rescinded. Tasmanian beekeepers say they will refuse to pollinate certain vegetables if the moratorium on genetically modified crops is lifted in Tasmania, which would lead to millions of dollars in lost revenue. Tasmania is currently GM-free, but the state government is conducting a review of the ban. President of the Tasmanian Beekeepers Association Lindsay Bourke says the Tasmanian honey industry depends on non-GMO status for access to European and Asian markets. "One of the vegetable crops that we pollinate will be devastated, because we won't go anywhere near it," he said. "We won't go and pollinate if there is a GMO crop alongside that. "We will go and produce honey." Mr Bourke won't specify which vegetable crops may not be pollinated. But the peak body for dairy farmers in Tasmania says that if the moratorium is not lifted, dairy production in the state will be at a commercial disadvantage. One of the vegetable crops that we pollinate will be devastated, because we won't go anywhere near it President of the Tasmanian Beekeepers Association, Lyndsay Bourke Executive officer of Dairy Tas, Mark Smith, says while Victoria does not have a ban on GMO, pastoralists have access to grasses with higher yields and lower inputs. He says the debate over whether or not the ban should be lifted, should be based on science. "The assessment will need to be done by people who can have a good clear objective look at it. "They need to have a good clear look at the situation, so that we're not driven by fear, misinformation and assumption," he said.

CLOSE KY House passes 20 week abortion bill Pam Newman talks Jan. 4, 2017, during a Planned Parenthood press conference in Frankfort, Ky., about how glad that she was given a choice to end a pregnancy when she was 17 years old. (Photo11: Matt Stone, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal) LOUISVILLE — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Monday aimed at blocking a new Kentucky law that would require doctors providing abortions to first perform an ultrasound of the fetus and try to show and describe the image to the patient — even if she objects. The Kentucky General Assembly approved the measure, Kentucky House Bill 2, Saturday with an emergency clause that allowed Gov. Matt Bevin to sign it into law immediately. The law "violates longstanding constitutional principles, including the right to privacy, the right to bodily integrity and First Amendment Freedoms," said William Sharp, legal director of the ACLU of Kentucky. But Bevin, in an interview Monday with WHAS-AM host Terry Meiners, dismissed the legal challenge. “It’s a shocker that the ACLU is suing someone,” said Bevin, a Republican and abortion opponent. “We anticipated as much. That’s what they do. It’s what liberals always do when they don’t like something, they sue." The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court here on behalf of the state's sole abortion provider, EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, and three physicians who provide abortions. Two other clinics, EMW in Lexington and Planned Parenthood in Louisville, suspended abortions last year after the Bevin administration sued them, alleging they were operating without proper state licensure. Those legal disputes are pending. “I personally believe that it’s inappropriate to kill human beings that are innocent.” Matt Bevin, Kentucky governor The ACLU's lawsuit asks the court to declare the new ultrasound law "unconstitutional and unenforceable." It claims the bill was "rushed" through the legislature and "forces physicians to deliver a government-mandated, ideological message" to a patient "lying captive on the examination table." It also said the procedure is invasive because, prior to nine weeks into a pregnancy, the physician must use a probe inserted into the vagina to conduct a fetal ultrasound. A federal appeals court struck down similar law from North Carolina in 2014, the ACLU said. Half the states, excluding Kentucky, have laws mandating ultrasounds before abortions, according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Guttmacher Institute. But only three of those states — Louisiana, Texas and Wisconsin — require that the results of the ultrasound must be displayed and described to a woman before she is allowed to have an abortion. Nine of the states — Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia — say that a woman must be offered an opportunity to view the image. Kentucky's new ultrasound law was one of two abortion bills passed in the first week of the legislature under new Republican control of the House. The Senate already had a GOP majority. The other measure, Senate Bill 5, bans abortions after the 20th week of a pregnancy. Bevin also signed it into law and said in Monday's radio interview that he strongly supports the ban. “This is only meant to coerce and shame women.” Tamarra Wieder, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky “I personally believe that it’s inappropriate to kill human beings that are innocent,” Bevin said. The ACLU said it is analyzing that law as well. Both measures were among a handful of bills Republicans leaders identified as priorities and pushed through the legislature quickly despite objections from abortion-rights supporters that the proposals were rushed, unfair to women and had not had thorough review. Republicans and conservative Democrats in the legislature have been pushing for such legislation for years but had been stymied in the House, which until this year had been controlled by Democrats. Both abortion bills were passed last week after impassioned and sometimes heated debate. Supporters of the ultrasound law said it will ensure that women have the information they need to provide informed consent for an abortion by getting the chance to see an image of the fetus and hearing a heartbeat. But opponents say the ultrasound proposal adds another barrier to abortion for women as well as adding an invasive and unnecessary medical procedure. “This is only meant to coerce and shame women,” said Tamarra Wieder of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. The law permits the patient to avert her eyes or refuse to listen to the heartbeat if she chooses. It doesn't say whether the patient may refuse to listen to the physician's description of the ultrasound image. Any physician or technician who fails to follow the ultrasound law could be fined up to $100,000 for the first violation and up to $250,000 for each subsequent offense. Contributing: Phillip Bailey, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal. Follow Deborah Yetter on Twitter: @d_yetter Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2icOB0e

BY: Follow @BillGertz American intelligence agencies must conduct a formal review of the damage to U.S. security caused by the disclosure of secrets on Hillary Clinton’s unsecure email server, according a to Republican senator. Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) stated in a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that the failure to conduct a damage assessment risks discrediting U.S. intelligence agencies with charges of politicization or incompetence. Sasse, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, requested a formal damage assessment after a report in the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Clapper’s DNI office had declined to conduct the assessment—despite an intelligence directive requiring such inquiries in the wake of classified data compromises. An FBI investigation into the Clinton email server found that highly classified data on CIA drone strikes against terrorists was improperly placed on the server and discussed in emails. The FBI also said foreign intelligence services may have gained access to the emails sent and received by Clinton and several key aides between 2009 and 2013 when she was secretary of state, potentially increasing the damage from the information security failure. "Brilliant and committed patriots work hard every day on our behalf in the Intelligence Community," Sasse told the Free Beacon. "We undermine that work if we shrug at the possible implications of these unauthorized disclosures." Sasse said requesting the assessment is not a bid to drag the DNI into politics. "I’m interested in us securing our nation’s interests and secrets so that we can be safe," he said in an email. In the letter, Sasse asked Clapper to explain why intelligence leaders apparently declined to conduct the damage assessment, based on an informal assessment that similar sensitive and classified data had been disclosed prior to compromise on the Clinton server. U.S. intelligence officials who opposed the damage assessment argued in internal discussions that the previous public disclosures about the drone strikes would make assessing the security damage difficult. "Is this true?" the Nebraska Republican asked. "Are the ODNI and other intelligence agencies declining to conduct an assessment of the national security implications of unauthorized disclosures of sensitive and classified information by former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private, insecure email server? And, if so, what are the reasons for this decision?" "In short, the lack of a formal assessment of these matters risks tarring your organization, and possibly the broader IC, with accusations of partisanship or incompetence," Sasse stated. "I believe both of these critiques are wrong; but, I request your timely answers to these questions in order to maintain this view." Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has come under fire for the email scandal. Clinton initially denied placing any classified information on the private server, and later modified the statement saying no information marked classified was sent and received on her email. Both statements were shown to be false by FBI Director James Comey and a declassified report on the investigation. Sasse noted in his letter that the refusal to conduct the assessment appears contrary to current intelligence policy. A 2014 directive, Intelligence Community Directive-732, mandates that intelligence agencies conduct damage assessments after "actual or suspected unauthorized disclosure or compromise of classified national intelligence that may cause damage to U.S. national security." "Even if information has been previously exposed, is it not prudent to understand the implications of this specific disclosure in terms of who gained access to the information and how they might leverage these insights?" Sasse asked. A damage assessment would also be helpful in determining previous unauthorized disclosures and the overall impact on U.S. national security. A DNI spokesman had no comment and said Clapper would respond to Sasse directly. Russian intelligence is suspected in the major hacking of emails sent by the Democratic National Committee. The emails were disclosed on the Internet in what appears to be a covert Russian effort to influence the presidential election campaign in favor Republican nominee Donald Trump. So far, leaked emails from Clinton’s server have not appeared online. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that additional leaks likely to embarrass American politicians are expected to be disclosed in the coming weeks. The FBI and U.S. intelligence community reportedly are investigating covert attempts by Russian intelligence to influence the U.S. presidential election. On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked the FBI to investigate whether Russian hackers sought to influence U.S. elections in Arizona by intruding on the state’s voter registration system. McCain said FBI officials notified Arizona government officials that Russian hackers were behind attempts to breach the voter registration system, causing a nine-day shutdown of the website used for registration. Russian hackers also appeared to break into the Illinois voter registration database, stealing some 200,000 voter records. "Clearly, Russia is using cyber capabilities to undermine American national interests at every turn, and it appears that our democracy could be the next target," McCain stated in the Sept. 14 letter to FBI Director Comey. "While these incidents reportedly involve the actual or attempted theft of data, rather than actions capable of manipulating the results of the elections, they are no less serious," he said. "In the hands of a sophisticated adversary, such data could be wielded as a weapon that could seriously undermine public trust in the election system and the legitimacy of our government." U.S. Cyber Command chief Adm. Mike Rogers told a Senate hearing this week that Russian hacking is a serious concern. "This is an ongoing investigation and in a public, unclassified forum, I'm not going to be able to provide you specifics as to what our current assessment is," Rogers said. "I will say this that it continues to be an issue of great focus, both for the foreign intelligence community, attempting to generate insights into what foreign nations are doing in this area," he added. The investigation into the Russian hacking includes officials from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence, and National Security Agency.

NASA Technology Building on work he and his companies did with Johnson Space Center’s In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) team, Robert Zubrin has developed and commercialized technologies that could prove revolutionary in their Earth applications, such as a system that could extract millions of barrels of oil from defunct oil wells around the world and another that can harness all the natural gas currently burned off as waste at many oil drilling rigs (Spinoff 2015). But when he’s not working to change this world or colonize others, the president of Pioneer Astronautics, Pioneer Energy, and the Mars Society enjoys a good microbrew. Now, he’s applied some of that same technology to cut costs for craft breweries that produce anywhere between 3,000 and 300,000 barrels per year. Beginning in the mid-1990s, as a NASA contractor and then as founder of Pioneer Aeronautics, Zubrin worked with Johnson’s ISRU team to develop technology that could break down elements that are abundant on Mars and turn them into essential resources for exploration missions. Early work devised means to capture the carbon dioxide (CO2) that comprises more than 95 percent of the thin Martian atmosphere and turn it into oxygen and fuel. He built systems that could, for example, collect and separate CO2 from other gases, raise its pressure by two orders of magnitude, combine it with hydrogen to make methane and water, break the water down into oxygen and hydrogen, and remove water vapor from the resulting oxygen before it was stored. Some of this technology, such as systems that manipulate temperature and pressure to liquefy and store gases or to strip water from a gas, as well as the technology that allows such systems to run autonomously, has found its way into Lakewood, Colorado-based Pioneer Energy’s latest creation, the CO2 Craft Brewery Recovery System. Technology Transfer “When you ferment beer, the process that produces alcohol also produces carbon dioxide,” Zubrin explains, noting that CO2 is also necessary later, to carbonate the beverage. Major breweries typically have systems that capture the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation for use in carbonation and other functions, such as purging process tanks. These are high-capacity, multimillion-dollar systems, however, and don’t make sense for a small craft brewery. “They don’t have the capacity to liquefy the carbon dioxide that comes off their fermenters to put it into the beer,” Zubrin says. Instead, microbreweries are left to release the gas from fermentation and buy carbon dioxide from an outside vendor. Pioneer’s CO2 recovery system fills that gap. “We made a system that would produce about five tons of carbon dioxide per month,” Zubrin says, adding that this is enough for a brewery that generates up to about 60,000 barrels per year, and units can essentially be stacked to increase that capacity. “Two of my key engineers, Andy Young and Matt Lewis, saw the need, and together with the rest of the team, created a flexible system that works like a charm.” “We’ve taken our general technology acumen, which we developed under NASA, and applied it here,” Zubrin says. “If you want to get CO2 from the Martian atmosphere, you want to compress it, and you want to liquefy it.” With some modifications, the same technology can put the bubbles into beer. On Mars, carbon dioxide would more likely be frozen, at least initially, rather than liquefied, says Gerald Sanders, chief ISRU engineer at Johnson. But the products made from it would be stored as liquids. “The types of technologies Bob is talking about to liquefy carbon dioxide are similar to technologies we would use to liquefy and store any oxygen or methane we produced on Mars,” he says. “It’s a similar process. It requires things like mechanical compressors and cryocoolers.” Liquid CO2 could also come in handy on the Red Planet, as some NASA researchers are looking into the possibility of using it for washing clothes during a Mars mission, Sanders says. “What Bob has done could fall into that realm if we decide to go that route.” Another commonality is the use of devices like desiccant beds, which Sanders says would be used on Mars to remove any remaining water molecules from final products before storing them. “Before you liquefy oxygen or methane, you have to strip water out of it.” “The fermenters in breweries have water in them, and you’ve got to keep it out of the carbon dioxide, or it will freeze in the lines and block them,” says Zubrin, noting that this is where desiccant beds enter into Pioneer’s CO2 recovery system. “None of this is really new physics, although we do use our own blend of refrigerants, which is new,” he continues. Any system for mixing and matching molecules on Mars would also have to be fully automated using techniques Zubrin worked out during his years of ISRU work. “Typically, for the missions to Mars we’ve been considering, we would send the return vehicle 26 months before the crew even leaves,” Sanders says, noting that systems on the vehicle would produce resources for both the mission and the journey home before the astronauts arrive. And they couldn’t even be controlled remotely in real time, as there is a communication delay of around 4 to 24 minutes each way, depending how far apart Mars and Earth are at the time. In the case of a brewery CO2 recovery system, while the device may save a couple thousand dollars a month, it wouldn’t be economical to hire an employee to run it, Zubrin says. “On a smaller scale, this thing’s got to be totally automated, too. The robotic control you would need for a system on Mars is key to this.” “Even if it’s not 100 percent something we would use on Mars directly, there’s a lot of synergy between what he’s done in the past and what he’s doing here,” Sanders says. Benefits Carbon dioxide typically runs about $200 to $300 a ton, although costs can be much higher depending on the distance from a source, Zubrin says, noting that, while the price is currently around $300 in Denver, breweries in Durango 300 miles away are paying $600 a ton. A typical brewery producing 60,000 barrels a year and paying $300 a ton for CO2 would save around $15,000 a year by using Pioneer’s recovery system, he says. The units are priced to pay for themselves within two years or so. Quality is another advantage the system offers. The carbon dioxide brewers buy is typically a byproduct from ammonia and urea plants and may not be entirely pure, Zubrin says. “Here, you’re getting it pure from the fermenter, so it’s high-quality CO2, without even the slightest trace of industrial contaminants. We have tested it, and it is free from air contamination as well.” And, of course, the technology allows reuse of a greenhouse gas that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. By June 2015, the company had taken at least a dozen orders, and the system went into production late last year. Pioneer also has a unit that it brings around the country for demonstrations. Zubrin says the technology has already received a lot of interest. He notes that microbreweries have proliferated over the last decade, a trend that continues today. “Within the United States, there are several thousand breweries that would be targets for this, and probably 20,000 worldwide.” He credits his NASA work with the money and greenhouse gas emissions he plans to save breweries around the world. “The intellectual capital being developed in NASA’s research and development programs is playing out across the economy, and this is just a small example,” Zubrin says. “The intellectual capital is the big spinoff.”

The Duchess of Cambridge is now an advanced scuba diver after having successfully gained her open water qualification in Mustique. A Kensington Palace official confirmed that Kate has built on her enjoyment for scuba diving by passing the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) advanced tests. Now able to dive to a depth of 98ft, it means she can keep pace with her husband, who is also an experienced diver. Scroll down for video The Duchess of Cambridge has become an advanced scuba diver and can now dive to a depth of 98ft Prince William is the third generation of the monarchy to head the British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) His father, Prince Charles (pictured in Majorca in 1986), instilled a love of the water in his son from an early age William is now the third generation of the monarchy, after his father and grandfather, to head the British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC). When he took on the role as president of the BSAC , the UK governing body, William said he hoped that little Prince George would follow him by taking up snorkelling and scuba diving. The Duchess is thought to have gained the qualification from a diving school in Mustique, according to The Telegraph. A spokesperson for the Duchess told the paper: 'Diving is something the Duchess very much enjoys, and the Duke of Cambridge, who is of course president of the BSAC, has said in the past that he is hopeful his children will become interested in the sport.' There are five dives - including the must-do deep and underwater navigation dives - which have to be completed successfully in order to gain the advanced qualification. The deep adventure dive is about the planning of dives, how to deal with the physiological effects and challenges of deeper scuba diving. Deep sea divers run the risk of contracting decompression sickness. Commonly known as 'the bends', is it a potentially fatal condition caused by nitrogen bubbles in the blood, which are formed as the diver rises to the surface. The underwater navigation elements aims to fine tune compass navigation skills and helps you better navigate using kick-cycles, visual landmarks and time. Photography, buoyancy control, fish identification and exploring wrecks are also part of the course.

WASHINGTON — Congress extended protections to 44 states that have legalized medical marijuana in its proposed $1 trillion spending bill that funds the government through September. The language prevents the Justice Department from using any of its funding to “prevent” those states from “implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.” This amendment, championed by former Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., Sam Farr, D-Calif., and current Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., more than 10 years ago, finally became law in 2014 as part of the omnibus bill that funded fiscal year 2015. It was unclear if it would be included again this year, given the Trump administration’s harsher tone on legal marijuana. Trump embraced states’ rights to set their own marijuana policies as a candidate, but his attorney general has long opposed loosening laws around pot. “I am definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in late February. “I would just say, it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not.” Sessions called the idea that medical marijuana could ease the heroin crisis “stupid.” In March, however, Sessions said he thought much of the Obama administration’s Cole memo, which limited federal interference in states that legalized marijuana as long as they robustly regulated its growth and sale, was “valid.” That statement suggested he might not go after pot as much as its proponents feared. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said recently that Sessions will likely soon put forward a revised memo on the subject. “He’s obviously reviewing the Cole [memo],” Hickenlooper told the Cannabist of his meeting with Sessions. “We’ll have to see how far they go.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer had suggested that any federal enforcement crackdown would focus on recreational, not medical, marijuana. He said Trump saw a “big difference” between legalizing pot for medical and recreational use. “This is definitely good news, and it reflects the fact that nearly 90 percent of Americans support legal access to medical marijuana,” said Taylor West, spokeswoman for the Cannabis Industry Association. “Patients deserve access to treatment, and voter-approved state programs deserve respect from the federal government.” She added that the group would work to gain the same “respect” from the federal government for recreational marijuana use. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the provision. The spending bill is expected to pass before Friday, when government funding runs out. Olivier Knox contributed to this report. Read more from Yahoo News:

Longtime Houston radio sportscaster Barry Warner said today he has resigned from CBS Radio’s KILT (610 AM), bringing to an end, for now, a radio career that began in the 1950s. Warner, who will be 70 in December, had been off the air since May and underwent surgery in July after suffering a neck injury while playing hockey. He said he was cleared to resume work but informed Ryan McCredden, KILT’s program director, that he would not return. Warner said his decision was based in part on the decision to remove him in April from KILT’s 6 to 10 p.m. show and reassign him to the 10 p.m.-midnight shift. “I tried to do the (later show) with an open mind, but it came to a point of diminishing returns,” he said. “I would be in bed at 2 a.m. and up at 6:15 a.m., and I can better use the time for my various interests.” Warner said he will continue to work with a company he owns called Asian Southwest Media and would be open to a return to radio. “I’m a free agent, but there aren’t any franchises,” he said. McCredden did not immediately return a telephone call for comment. See John McClain’s tribute to Barry Warner Warner grew up in the Buffalo, N.Y., area and started his radio career there. He covered the Bills in the AFL’s inaugural season of 1960 and moved to Houston in 1966 to work for the AFL just prior to the league’s merger with the NFL. He remained in Houston as a scout for NFL teams before getting back into radio in 1975 with KLYX (102.1 FM) and KIKK (95.7 FM). After several years with the Denver Nuggets while they were owned by Houston businessman Sidney Schlenker, he returned to Houston and launched the “Sportsmouth” show on KILT (610 AM). Warner also worked as a sportscaster with the Stevens and Pruett show on KLOL (101.1 FM), at KSEV (700 AM), the Dean and Rog show on KKRW (93.7 FM) and with Houston radio veteran Ralph Cooper at KYOK (1590 AM). He was hired in 2009 by KILT program director Gavin Spittle to work a Sunday night show with Brad Davies that evolved into a nighttime show with Shaun Bijani. Fred Davis replaced Bijani in 2012, and former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson was hired to replace Warner in April. Warner said he was grateful to Spittle for the opportunity to return to radio and said the proudest moments of his career involve his work mentoring broadcasters such as Mark Berman at KRIV (Channel 26), David Dalati at KFNC (97.5 FM), Matt Thomas at KSEV and political consultant Chris Begala as they began their careers. “I’ve got a lot of energy left and no desire to retire from working,” he said. “I can hold my head high.”

SOUTH SALT LAKE — A 5-year-old boy tested positive for cocaine after a woman admitted she used the boy's urine to pass a drug test and failed. A 54-year-old man and a 42-year-old woman now face felony charges in connection with the incident. In February, a woman called the Department of Child and Family Services and said she "knew of a mother and father who were using both cocaine and heroin in front of their child," according to charges filed Monday in 3rd District Court. The woman said she "borrowed" the 5-year-old's urine to pass a drug test, but the urine came back positive for cocaine, according to court documents. Police later tested the boy's hair and urine — both came back positive for cocaine, according to the charges. The man and woman have been charged with clandestine laboratory endangerment of a child, a third-degree felony.

California has issued more than 800,000 driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants in the two years since the state implemented a law allowing for issuance without proof of legal presence. The Mercury News reports that in the two years since AB 60 took effect the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued driver’s licenses to 806,000 undocumented immigrants — 14,000 of which the department issued just last month. One undocumented immigrant living in San Jose — identified only as Ramon — told the paper that since he received his AB 60 license, he no longer lives “in fear.” “It’s a completely different feeling because you no longer have to worry about seeing a police car,” he said to The Mercury News. “You’re much more at peace when you drive. You can drive long distances with your family — to Disneyland or to the Monterey Bay Aquarium — with confidence. You don’t live in fear.” In order to qualify for a California driver’s license under AB 60, undocumented immigrants must still be able to meet all the other requirements — including passing a driver’s test — and show proof of identity and California residency. The state provides study materials in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. There are an estimated three million undocumented immigrants in the state, according to The Mercury News. While AB 60 driver’s licenses have been popular in the state, the election of Donald Trump has some worried that the federal government may one day use the program to locate undocumented immigrants for deportation. California, however, has already taken an aggressively pro-undocumented immigrant stance in the wake of Trump’s election and the DMV has said that it will shield personal information. “The California Department of Motor Vehicles takes very seriously the protection of personal information for all license holders,” the DMV said in a statement, according to Mercury’s report. The DMV added that Trump cannot repeal AB 60 or AB 1461 — a law that, beginning next year, will automatically register California drivers to vote. AB 1461 has some concerned that the law could lead to voter fraud, however, Mercury reports that there will be systems in place to prevent undocumented immigrant voter registration.

Westminster Christian tight end Michael Parker became Alabama's second in-state commitment last week. The 6-foot-6, 236-pounder picked Alabama over Auburn, Central Florida and Purdue. He caught 43 passes for 812 yards and nine touchdowns in 11 games this season after snagging 35 receptions for 561 yards and five TDs in 2016. A three-star prospect, he follows in the footsteps of his brother, Jacob, who is currently a walk-on tight end for the Crimson Tide. Parker is one of Alabama's 14 commitments for the Class of 2018, but the Crimson Tide can only accept 22 signees this year, instead of the usual allotment of 25, Parker is in Hattiesburg, Mississippi this week to prepare for and play in Saturday's Alabama-Mississippi All-Star Classic. AL.com caught up with him for a short question-and-answer session after Wednesday's practice. 1) AL.com: How did you get your Alabama offer, how did you commit and what was the reaction? Parker: "I got my offer when I went for my visit for the Mercer game. Coach Saban took me into his office at the stadium and offered me. To commit, I called (assistant) Coach (Joe) Pannunzio, and he was extremely excited." 2) AL.com: Did Coach Saban have the button to close the door remotely at the stadium? Parker: "I don't think so, but I've seen that before. ... Not this past summer but the summer before I went into Coach Saban's office when I went there for a camp. It was pretty cool. He hit the button and he has the rings out on his desk." 3) AL.com: What do you need to work on before you get to Alabama? Parker: "In high school, I played mostly at receiver, so my blocking on the inside. That's the biggest thing - blocking inside against bigger guys. Playing this week, I can already see it's helping. It's something I don't have as much experience in." 4) AL.com: What do you think of Bama's playoff chances? Parker: "I think they have a good chance. I think Clemson has a great team. All of the teams in the Playoff are great teams. I definitely think Alabama deserves to be in. I think they can beat Clemson, and I think they can beat the winner of Oklahoma and Georgia." 5) AL.com: Why did you pick Alabama? Parker: For non-football, it's always been my dream. My whole life I've always been a fan. For football, nobody uses a tight end like Alabama. They basically have two tight ends on the field for almost every play. If you're a tight end, there's no better place to go than Alabama. So, it's really the best of both worlds for me." Parker said he doesn't plan to sign during the early signing period that begins Dec. 20, but added he doesn't plan to take any other official visits before the traditional National Signing Day in early February. Josh Bean covers high school sports for AL.com. He can be reached at jbean@al.com.

Honorable Tea Party voters might ask why Karl Rove has thrown his corrupt, Bush-style politics behind the Sharron Angle campaign for Nevada senator. Honorable Tea Party voters might also ask why Angle comes to Washington, in virtual secrecy, hidden from Nevada voters, to meet with old-style Bush-friendly Republican insiders to study the tricks of the dirty political trade. I have always tried to be fair to Ron Paul. I I agree with Paul on some matters, such as auditing the Fed, and disagree with Paul on other matters. But let’s be clear, agree with him or not, Ron Paul is the real deal, a serious thinker with serious ideas on serious issues. Sharron Angle is just a political kook who takes weird positions on issues and has been seeking high office unsuccessfully in the past. Can any serious person believe that abortion causes breast cancer? Even many Nevada Republicans are running away from Angle. I would argue that Ron Paul has made a significant contribution on public issues, including those issues I agree with him about and those I don't. I would also suggest that because he is under-respected by the mainstream media, he will do far better in the Republican primaries in 2012 than pundits expect, if he runs for president. When was the last time Karl Rove put his Bush-like dirty politics behind Ron Paul, as he is doing for Sharron Angle? When was the last time Ron Paul went hat in hand to hack Republican insiders in meetings hidden from voters? Ron Paul has credibility, integrity and serious ideas. Sharron Angle has ambition, extremism and weirdo ideas. That's why I suspect that in the end, the Tea Party people will go all out for Ron Paul and Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE and run away from Sharron Angle like a house on fire, as many Nevada Republicans have already begun to do. Ron Paul is the real deal for Tea Party voters. Sharron Angle, by contrast, supports bizarre policies that stink like oil pollution, and practices slimy politics that stink like the rotten eggs of Karl Rove, her big champion.

Johannesburg – The estate agent who has become the focus of outrage caused by an offensive property listing claims she had nothing to with it. A rental listing appeared on the Private Property website on Tuesday morning specifying that "only whites" may apply. Elize Scheun was listed as the estate agent to contact. - Read more: 'Whites only' rental ad pulled after social media backlash "I am extremely upset, I don't even do rentals," Scheun told News24. "I am innocent and now all of this hate is being thrown my way." Joleen Stapelberg from Dick and Sue Home Finders, under which the listing was posted on Private Property, believes that the company might have been sabotaged. "Our rentals aren't even done by her [Scheun]. Our rentals are done by a black man," Stapelberg said. "We aren't like this...our staff is black and most of our clientele is black." Flood of threats Stapelberg said an internal investigation was underway to establish where the listing originated from. "We will be talking to our lawyers tomorrow and we will definitely take action against anyone found guilty," she said. Private Property spokesperson Barrie Knox-Davies said companies using the service had full control over the listings they posted onto the website. "We only intervene [or] take adverts down if they go against our terms and conditions," Knox-Davies said. "Whether it was a software problem or sabotage, they are ultimately responsible for the listing and no one else can post on their behalf," he said. Meanwhile Scheun said she has received a flood of threats. "I have received a considerable amount of threats with rude language use, threats and phone calls," she said. However, she says, she is not afraid as she has nothing to feel guilty about. "I will reveal the content of the threats once our internal investigation has been completed on Friday," she said.

The Barbados government has issued a hurricane warning for the Caribbean island of Dominica as Tropical Storm Maria made its way west-northwest, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Sunday. The storm, which the forecaster expects to reach hurricane status later Sunday, also prompted the island of St. Lucia to issue a tropical storm warning. READ MORE: Toronto couple recounts their horrifying ordeal during Hurricane Irma Maria was about 450 miles (720 km) east-southeast of the Leeward Islands at 11 a.m. E.T., with maximum sustained winds of 65 miles per hour. Some of the islands devastated by Hurricane Irma earlier this month have issued watches for Maria. Maria was about 410 miles (655 km) east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles islands with maximum sustained winds of 65 miles per hour at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), the NHC said. “Strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours,” the forecaster said. Hurricane conditions are possible by Monday night or Tuesday in Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Saba, St. Eustatius, Saint Maarten, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy and Anguilla, according to the NHC. READ MORE: Hurricane Irma: Nursing home tragedy unfolded days after storm’s initial hit Tropical storm conditions were possible on Monday in those areas as well as Martinique, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Indonesia rebuffed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for the establishment of official diplomatic relations and vowed to uphold its support for the creation of a Palestinian state, the local media said Thursday, quoting a Foreign Ministry official. “We want to assert that Indonesia’s support and efforts to push for the independence of Palestine will not change,” the Jakarta Times quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir as saying. Nasir also expressed disappointment at the decision by a delegation of Indonesian journalists to accept an invitation to visit Israel. Netanyahu made the call for normalized ties during a meeting with the delegation in Jerusalem on Monday. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up “We regret that such activities are politicized by Israel,” Nasir reportedly said. With Israel increasingly looking to the East for security and trade cooperation, Netanyahu said Monday that “it’s time for there to be official relations between Indonesia and Israel. We have many opportunities for bilateral cooperation, especially in the fields of water technology and high-tech.” The brokering of ties with Indonesia and its population of some 250 million Muslims would be a major coup for Netanyahu and his bid to foster deeper ties with moderate Arab states and Asian economic powerhouses. The prime minister said the fostering of ties would come as part of shifting allegiances driven by anti-terror efforts and economic factors, hailing growing yet secret ties between Israel and the Arab world. “It’s time to change our relationship, because the reasons preventing it are no longer relevant,” he said, adding that Jerusalem and Jakarta were “allies” against the common threat of terrorism. “I have quite a few Facebook friends who are Indonesian,” the prime minister told the delegation of journalists. Earlier this month, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely told Knesset members that Israel had secret ties with Jakarta, while defending Jerusalem’s decision to block Indonesia’s foreign minister from entering the West Bank because she did not plan to visit Jerusalem during her visit to the region. Retno Lestari Priansari Marsudi had been slated to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki to inaugurate an honorary consulate in Ramallah, but was forced to move the meeting to Amman. Marsudi’s unsuccessful visit to Ramallah came a week after Indonesia held the 5th Extraordinary Organization of Islamic Cooperation Summit on Palestine and Al-Quds Al-Sharif, which discussed the possibility of boycotting Israeli products made in the West Bank. Hotovely told Knesset members that a senior Israeli official traveled to Indonesia ahead of the visit in an attempt to coordinate the trip and avert a public row. Despite the dearth of official diplomatic ties, Hotovely revealed the two countries maintain covert bilateral ties “on a range of issues. “There have been secret contacts with Indonesia, with which we don’t have diplomatic relations, and there were understandings that were rudely broken and so we blocked her entry,” Hotovely said. “This was a breach of diplomatic protocol, and the most honorable thing to do is to respect the protocols, so when you break them don’t be surprised that you bar yourself from visiting the [Palestinian Authority].” In recent years, Indonesia and Israel have signed a number of trade agreements aimed at encouraging the flow of goods between the two countries. Indonesia exported over $100 million (NIS 387 million) worth of goods to Israel in 2015 and imported nearly $80 million (NIS 310 million) in goods from Israel, according to the Jakarta Post. According to a 2014 BBC poll, approximately 75 percent of Indonesians hold a negative view of Israel.

Bug Description * Impact the gnome-calendar window corners don't look right (white squares instead of rounded) * Test case start gnome-calendar under unity and look at the windows corner, they should be rounded. The update also include a bugfix new revesion so make sure calendar events are correctly listed and that the calendar works correctly * Regression potential the update has only small bugfixes and should be safe but keep an eye for new issues ------ Gnome Calendar still looks like it is not using the proper CSD that other Gnome apps do (maps, weather, etc.) nor does it look like a patched Unity app. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04 Package: gnome-calendar 3.19.92-0ubuntu3 ProcVersionSign ature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-17.33-generic 4.4.6 Uname: Linux 4.4.0-17-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu1 Architecture: amd64 CurrentDesktop: Unity Date: Sat Apr 2 07:12:41 2016 InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-03-27 (6 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Beta amd64 (20160323) ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_US PATH=(custom, no user) XDG_RUNTIME_ DIR=<set> LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: gnome-calendar UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross transferred more than $2 billion of his assets into trusts for family members in the months between President Trump's election and his inauguration, according to a report published Monday by Forbes. Forbes said it learned of the trusts after questioning Ross about his financial disclosure form. The form showed that Ross had far fewer assets than he had described to the magazine three months ahead of the election. Ross told Forbes that he had transferred the assets into trusts for family members. It's not clear who precisely in Ross's family could benefit from the trust. Ross said it included his children and some "third parties" that could include children from his and his wife's previous marriages. As part of Forbes's reporting for its list of the wealthiest people in the United States and the world, Ross's assistant had told the magazine earlier that Ross had a portfolio of an estimated value of $3.7 billion. After Ross never sent proof of the assets, Forbes estimated his value to be at about $2.9 billion. "My personal financial affairs have been complex for a number of years, not just one," Ross told Forbes. "The rough estimates used by Forbes for many years were based on a broad definition of family assets." Without the $2 billion, his portfolio is valued at about $700 million - knocking him off The Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. "I don't care if I'm on the list or not," Ross told Forbes. "That frankly doesn't matter. But what I don't want is for people to suddenly think that I've lost a lot of money when it's not true." Ross said he followed all tax laws in setting up the trusts. Under federal law, Ross is required to disclose assets he currently owns, but also has to reveal any that provided him income during the current and previous calendar years, even if they are no longer in his possession. If Ross had transferred the $2 billion in one go, he would be subject to gift taxes that could total more than $800 million, Forbes reported. But the magazine noted that Ross could have transferred some of the assets years before the election.

Many mask unmanageable emotion, can be helped with right therapy Movie villains from Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter have popularized the notion of the psychopath as cold, cruel, lacking in empathy and beyond the reach of treatment. A new study in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology suggests that this monolithic view, shared by some treatment professionals, is not only wrong but prevents many diagnosed with psychopathy, or precursors of it, from receiving therapies that could help them live happier, more productive lives. The study focused on 150 male and female youth housed in juvenile detention centers, aged 11 to 17, who were classified as callous and unemotional, or CU, exhibiting severe anti-social behaviors that put them at risk of developing psychopathic traits as adults. While some in the research sample did fit the classic definition of psychopathy, a significant subgroup did not, said Tim Stickle, professor of Psychology at the University of Vermont, who co-authored the paper with Andrew Gill, a graduate student at the university. "They appear callous and unemotional to others but are actually very distressed, have high levels of anxiety, higher levels of depression, higher levels of emotion," he said. "We think of these harmful, antisocial, aggressive kids as being immune to fear, immune to negative feelings, but in fact we're showing a whole group of them are not only not immune, but are very susceptible." The hopeful implication, said Stickle, is that this set of psychological issues is treatable with approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy that teach strategies for managing emotions. Conventional treatments for aggression and psychopathy emphasize rewards and punishments to change unwanted behaviors. "There is an opportunity to do things differently and more effectively," Stickle said. Savings of $3 million over lifetime Effectively treating youth at risk of developing psychopathy as adults has value on a societal as well as an individual level. "Untreated callous unemotional traits put these youth at risk for becoming lifelong criminals," Stickle said. Preventing one high risk youth from developing lifelong antisocial behavior will save approximately $3 million across the youth's lifetime, according to a study conducted in 2007. Other recent studies have confirmed that this emotionally distressed subgroup also exists among adults with psychopathic traits. Key advance: a comprehensive diagnostic test that reveals differences The study's ability to identify subgroups within the CU research sample was made possible by the psychological testing instruments the researchers used, which gathered information from subjects on a wide variety of personality and emotional traits. Psychopathy is usually identified with a far narrower checklist of traits and behaviors. "It's not just one characteristic that allows clear identification of who falls in which group; it takes a wide range of traits," Stickle said. The multidimensional testing tools the study employed should be widely adopted in the future, said Stickle, to ensure that those in the secondary psychopathy subgroup receive the appropriate therapy. "Using a wide range of measures of emotional experience and expression is very important to clearly identify who these individuals are so they can be helped," he said. Girls more vulnerable The study is first to find that CU girls are especially likely to fall within the group that suffers from significant emotional distress and unregulated negative feeling. "These traits are particularly prevalent in adolescent females in the juvenile justice system," Stickle said. The study also breaks ground in showing that callous and unemotional youth are at risk of developing clinically significant levels of depression. ###

Chrystia Freeland is the federal member of parliament for Toronto Centre and the author of Plutocrats: the Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Earlier this year, the most reliable way for a billionaire to make the headlines was to compare suggested tax increases to Nazi Germany. Lately, though, the more interesting shift in the politics of the plutocracy has been more genteel. There will be more Hitler analogies, of course, but another camp among the superrich is starting to tack in the opposite direction. Some plutocrats accept the evidence that capitalism is no longer working for the middle class, and are trying to figure out what to do about that. Story Continued Below It is not just George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, who cheerfully describes himself as a class traitor and has been worrying about the shortcomings of what he calls free-market fundamentalism for decades, anymore. Among the plutocrats, this once-radical perspective is going mainstream. You could see that in London in late May, at a conference on “Inclusive Capitalism.” In the graceful, gilded rooms of the Guildhall, the historic seat of the City, one of the world’s two centers of finance, international investors controlling $30 trillion worth of asset–one third of the global total—gathered to discuss, as Paul Polman, the CEO of Unilever, put it, “the capitalist threat to capitalism.” Capitalism, Polman and Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the conference’s organizer, wrote in an introductory essay, “has often proved dysfunctional in important ways. It often encourages shortsightedness, contributes to wide disparities between the rich and the poor, and tolerates the reckless treatment of environmental capital. If these costs cannot be controlled, support for capitalism may disappear.” That was just the curtain-raiser. The discussion was kicked off by Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor of the City of London, who warned that capitalism needed to be “for all, not just the gilded few.” Next up was Prince Charles—yes, that Prince Charles—who said the triumphalism of capitalism when the Soviet Union collapsed had been a mistake and that “the long-term job of capitalism is to serve people, rather than the other way around.” The morning’s keynote address was delivered by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. She quoted both Karl Marx’s prediction that capitalism “carried the seeds of its own destruction,” and Pope Francis’ characterization of increasing inequality as “the root of social evil.” She came out against a favorite centrist reaction to rising inequality—“that ultimately we should care about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.” The problem, Madame Lagarde said, was that opportunity could never be equal in a deeply unequal society. She called for more progressive income tax systems and greater use of property tax. These prescriptions may be par for the course for the populists who swept Bill de Blasio to City Hall after 12 years of Mike Bloomberg’s plutocratic reign, or for supporters of Elizabeth Warren, the crusading liberal senator from Massachusetts. But they came from the managing director of the IMF, whose organization has long been the villain in the anti-globalization movement’s worldview, the fiendish mastermind of the plutocracy’s “shock doctrine” efforts to take over the planet. That narrative is still alive and well—Lagarde declined an invitation to be this year’s commencement speaker at Smith College after students and faculty protested she should not have been invited because the IMF was “a corrupt system” that fueled the oppression and abuse of women worldwide. At Guildhall, the day ended with a dinnertime keynote speech by another one of the architects and watchdogs of global capitalism, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England. He said that rising income inequality was real and international: “Within societies, virtually without exception, inequality of outcomes both within and across generations has demonstrably increased.” He refuted the popular centrist argument that this is all about meritocracy: “Now is the time to be famous or fortunate.” And he warned, with strong language, that the capitalist system was at risk: “Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.” The spectacle of plutocrats eating porcini risotto in a Georgian mansion and bemoaning the excesses of capitalism cries out for Tom Wolfe—one British hack made a start in that direction by quipping to his peers that the gathering would more aptly have been called a meeting about “exclusive capitalism.” But that was precisely the point—and why the conference, and the broader trend it is a part of, matter. Most of the Inclusive Capitalism conference was off the record, but its invitation-only attendees were a roll call of the global plutocracy, including Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and the CEOs of UBS, GlaxoSmithKline, Dow Chemical and Honeywell. There are other signs of this shift. Social finance, which takes into account social and environmental goals, is moving from a niche into the mainstream—$1 trillion were invested in social finance funds in the United States in 2012, a five-fold surge from $202 billion in 2007. Sallie Krawcheck, a former senior executive at Citigroup and at Bank of America, who in June opened an index fund focused on companies with a greater number of women in top jobs and on their boards. She said the goal was to have a social impact while earning a fair investment return. Some other business leaders, in industries you might not expect to have much of a social conscience, are starting to support public policy that would raise their costs in the short term. They include the CEO of McDonalds, who in a little-noticed speech in May said “McDonald’s will be fine” if the minimum wage were to rise.

A woman has been charged with attempted murder after she allegedly shot her sleeping husband inside their home south of Holly Springs.The Harnett County Sheriff's Office said it happened around 9 a.m. Friday on Hidden Valley Drive.Deputies responded to a 911 call from the victim, Jason Anderson, saying he had been shot.Jason Anderson was taken to the Central Harnett Hospital. He has since been released from the hospital and is back at home recovering, according to a family friend.Deputies took Jason Anderson's wife, 63-year-old Sandra Anderson, into custody. Her bond is set at $250,000.The Andersons' next-door neighbor said he can't remember any domestic disturbances between the couple."I never seen them arguing or anything. Never," said neighbor Don Roberg. "They always go to work together when he used to [work.] There was really nothing there ... it just shocks me."Sandra Anderson has her first appearance in Harnett County Court on Monday.

John Williams has scored all seven Star Wars movies to date, but even he isn’t in on the closely guarded secret of Rey’s parentage. Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped the Oscar-winning composer from speculating on the Force Awakens protagonist’s family tree. According to an Indie Revolver report, Williams shared his best guess during a performance with the Boston Pops on Thursday evening. “I never asked J.J. Abrams who Rey’s father is, but I think it’s Luke Skywalker,” Williams said. “Your guess is as good as mine, though.” Williams’ theory is a common one — arguably the most common one — although some Star Wars fans have speculated that Rey (who is played by Daisy Ridley) is a descendant of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Theories about Rey’s mom abound as well. While on the subject of Rey, Williams also addressed his potential involvement on Star Wars: Episode VIII, though he didn’t give a definitive answer whether he’ll return. According to Indie Revolver, Williams said he wasn’t sure he’s up to it but also doesn’t want anyone else writing music for Rey. That, of course, would only leave one man for the job. Star Wars: Episode VIII opens Dec. 15, 2017.

Image copyright Arunulfo Franco/AP The US president's spokesman has caused a bit of a Twitter storm by claiming Mr Trump does not own a bathrobe. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer accused the New York Times of printing inaccuracies, specifically referring to him watching TV in his bathrobe, saying the paper owed President Trump an apology. Image copyright @thehill The president has tweeted his annoyance at what he calls poor reporting: "The failing @nytimes was forced to apologise to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!" Unsurprisingly, people have taken to social media to contradict Mr Spicer's bathrobe comment with various hashtags popping up, including #BathRobeGate. Some have even been delving into the presidential bathrobe archives to produce gems such as this from Avi Bueno. He tweeted a photo of Ronald Reagan in a robe, with the caption: 'Weird to see @seanspicer and @realDonaldTrump getting all defensive about a #bathrobe when their hero wasn't shy about it." And historian Michael Beschloss tweeted a picture of President Lyndon B Johnson sitting in a robe with advisers on Air Force One in 1966. Image copyright Obtained by the Daily Mail John Aravosis, editor of @AMERICAblog, was quick to post three photos of Donald Trump wearing a bathrobe, which had featured in a November Daily Mail article about a trove of Trump memorabilia being found in a US thrift shop. Image copyright @JustWhatNowWhy Considering the Trump Organisation lists 37 properties, including 15 hotels, on its website, many posters are assuming that a bathrobe or two may have been worn in the Trump household. Various robes bearing the Trump brand have been posted on social media, including this picture of American actor Mike Rowe. He tweeted a photo in August 2016 of a bathrobe autographed by Mr Trump, along with a video in which Mike says he wore the robe "briefly". Image copyright Mike Rowe There were a few robe-wearing alternatives, such as Evie the Cat, the UK Cabinet Office feline who posted this about the 10 Downing Street cat, Larry. Image copyright @HMCabinetCat And with a clever bit of editing, some have posted gifs of the president holding up a drawing of a bathrobe. Image copyright DonaldDraws.com Even @TrumpBathrobe, a twitter account set up in 2015 and inactive since September 2016, has reawakened amidst this robing furore. Similar posts are appearing on Facebook under #bathrobegate, although not everyone is impressed: Image copyright Babak Khiavchi Compiled by Sherie Ryder, BBC UGC and Social News team.

First, let's be honest with ourselves: 2010 was not the year for cats that 2009 was. But a cat's work must continue, with or without the fickle approval of cat pundits like myself. These have been the finest examples of that work in 2010. 30: Air-Suckling Cat Would that all of us were so unfazed by the lamentable absence of teats in our immediate vicinity. 29. Pervert Cat It is not a cat's lot to be restrained by the dual shackles of decorum and inhibition. It is a cat's lot to stare, when staring is enjoined. To act, when action is required. And to appreciate the gifts that God has given. 28. Curry-Loving Cat "The love of curry is best expressed physically. Not by eating it, as the uninitiated believe, but by immersing yourself in it. By becoming one with the curry." -This cat 27. iPad Cat In 2010, Iggy played with an iPad. And the universe held its breath. 26. Cat Lassie Running for help in a crisis is both the charitable and the practical thing to do. But is it art? Cat Lassie thinks not. 25. Robert Cattinson Twilight enthusiasts like to talk about something called "The Jacob Team" and "The Edward Team" - which you won't understand if you are not a gonzo Twilight fan like I am. But the point of all this is that regardless of which swamp monster you align yourself with, pretty much everybody is Team Robert Cattinson. That is the point of all this, I think. 24. Hidden Kitten Sometimes there's nothing for it but to bury yourself in a large pile of moving fur and hope for the best. 23. Fear Of Intimacy Kitten It's not so much the fear of intimate contact in and of itself; it is a sort of horror attendant upon the act of self-abnegation required to lose yourself completely in an embrace from the "other". 22. Teacup Kitten It is often said that "a teacup is the last resort of a tired kitten," but in all honesty, who are we to judge? 21. Duck Hunt Kitten The tenacity and perseverance of this young cat in the face of a pernicious and all too familiar enemy (specifically, the smug dog from Duck Hunt) provided one of the few bright spots during a very difficult year, this year. 20. Catman Catman never asked for our love and approval. He merely went about the quiet business of making the world a better, safer place, with one leg raised proudly behind his fuzzy little head. 19. Cat Confused By The Size Of His Own Head But more importantly, which of hasn't, at one point or another, been confused by the size of our own heads? Metaphorically speaking. We are all this cat. 18. Staticky Cat Vs. Balloon 2010 was a year when all of us struggled with our own "Staticky Balloons," whether they were financial woes, political upheaval, or just general directionlessness as a world community. Viewed from that perspective, this piece is perhaps one of the most profound statements about that particular aspect of the social condition ever created. 17. Cat On A Cat A cat is a cat is a cat. But a cat on a cat is something else. Something wonderful. 16. Gator Cat Have you ever wondered why this planet is largely controlled by pathetic, scrawny skin creatures instead of by terrifying lizard monsters with sharp teeth? It is because of people like this cat. You're welcome. 15. Overprotective Cat Thanks largely to the valiant efforts of Overprotective Cat, our children were safe from the scourge of evil babysitters that threatened the fragile peace of our Union this year. 14. Rickroll Cat Trying to Rickroll cats is like trying to win a staring contest with them. They will defeat you every time with the sheer, brutal power of their contempt. 13. Penguin Cat You: "Your wings are merely vans to beat the air, Penguin Cat. You will ever be flightless." Penguin Cat: "But my soul soars, dear friend. My soul soars." 12. Orange Juice Cat If there was ever a year for falling asleep in your orange juice, this was a year for falling asleep in your orange juice. And snoring to wake the dead. 11. The Cat In This Photo Such a nice cat. And Now For The Big Guns ... 10. Hermes If Hermes were granted one wish, he would wish to be thrown onto the bed. If he were granted three wishes, he would wish to be thrown onto the bed three times. There is something heartbreakingly beautiful about that. 9. Cat Hugging His Teddy Bear A hug, a squeeze, and a wink, and a legend was born. 8. Baby-Wrestling Cat Footage of this intense battle from earlier in the century emerged a few months ago, allowing us to catch a glimpse into the seedy but fascinating world of cat/baby fighting rings. 7. Existential Birthday Cat "Each passing day takes us a day further from our innocence. A birthday is a milemarker along the long, abandoned road toward oblivion." -This cat 6. Ikea Cats Who could have predicted that the release of 100 British cats inside a Swedish furniture emporium would be one of the defining events of the first decade of the second millennium of the common era? 5. Kitten With A Tiny Hat This video has everything: High fashion, sublime beauty, and insane, jealous rage. Tiny Hat Kitten and Speedo was a parable that made us all better people this year. 4. Kittens On A Slide My God, these kittens on a slide. Slide Kittens. Just the best. The very best kittens of all. 3. OMG Cat OMG cat has since recovered from his dislocated jaw, but our lives will never be the same. 2. Standing Cat "Here I stand, and I can do no other." And we all stand with him, looking to the horizon for a better future. Or a squirrel, probably.

No great shakes, just a drill First-graders Knox Besio (left) and Landyn Lilly take cover at McCornack Elementary School in Eugene as part of the Great Oregon ShakeOut training. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury are also encouraging Portlanders to do more to get prepared. (Brian Davies/The Register-Guard via AP) Ted Wheeler and Deborah Kafoury The last major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest happened off the Oregon Coast in 1700. The next one could happen at any time. There is a lot of attention on this issue, and rightly so. We need to be prepared. Building on the 2013 Oregon Resilience Plan, a 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning story in The New Yorker, and extensive coverage in the media, the City Club of Portland dug into the issue and recently adopted the report "Big Steps Before the Big One: How the Portland area can bounce back after a major earthquake." Their report contains many good recommendations to ensure earthquake readiness and seismic resiliency, some of which are already underway in Portland and Multnomah County. Strengthening social resilience: Neighbors are often the first to provide assistance following a major earthquake. Portland's Neighborhood Emergency Team program now has a record 1,200 active volunteers, with more than 1,500 ready to go through the training. The largest class in the history of the program is happening this April to train several hundred new members and the City will continue to grow this effort. Multnomah County is working with local non-profits, colleges and universities on plans for mass shelters that will be needed after the earthquake. Creating an earthquake ready Burnside Bridge: Multnomah County is leading an effort to retrofit or replace this important lifeline in the coming years so we have a downtown bridge we can rely on after the earthquake. Community engagement in the process to make the bridge earthquake resilient in the coming years is critical. Reducing the risk posed by unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings: Our city has the highest concentration of URM buildings on the West Coast. For the past two years, a team led by Portland's Bureau of Emergency Management, Bureau of Development Services and the Portland Development Commission has been working with community stakeholders to develop a policy to require seismic retrofitting of Portland's more than 1,600 URMs over a 10- to 30-year period. This policy will come to Portland City Council later this spring. Every effort will be made to identify incentives and reduce costs to building owners, including the Property Fit program. Assessing and mitigating the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub in Northwest Portland: We support pursuing a regional or state solution to address the ongoing danger posed to residents in the area, and to ensure this critically important hub for our local and regional economy can recover quickly following a quake. A disruption to this hub will have a statewide impact. Coordinating with the region: The Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization, with our region's full support, coordinates emergency planning and preparedness efforts across political borders in the urban area. The close coordination of our operations during this winter's severe storms served as a dress rehearsal for how we'll work together following the big quake. Preparing for this unprecedented event cannot be achieved by acting alone. Supporting the development of the West Coast earthquake early warning system: In the coming years, the U.S. Geological Survey will launch an earthquake warning system potentially able to provide advance warning to the public before the ground starts shaking. We support federal efforts to finance and deploy this system as soon as possible. Share your opinion Submit your essay of 500 words or less to commentary@oregonlive.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification. It is incumbent upon all of us to prepare for a major earthquake. The recent winter storms demonstrated that we as households and individuals must do much more to prepare for an emergency. The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management has a guide called "The Big One: A Survival Guide" for information about how you can get ready. Read it today. Ted Wheeler is the mayor of Portland, and Deborah Kafoury is chairwoman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

Ever wonder what a jetpack is good for, besides fulfilling dreams and fighting Nazis? Well, Martin wants you to know there are, in fact, practical applications for its $86,000 personal propulsion system . According to the aviation company everyone from emergency responders to search and rescue teams to military personnel could find a place for the dual-engine craft in their arsenal of tools. Sure, we could see how their ability to get in and out where the size of a helicopter or plane might be prohibitive would prove handy, but their high cost and limited carrying capacity make them a tough sell. That doesn't mean we don't enjoy seeing the (poorly) rendered vision of our future filled with jetpacks in the video after the break. Come to think of it, we could see this coming in handy for our CES coverage... excuse us, we need to make some phone calls.

RE: Video Request: Cruz in Knightstown, IN From:BennettE@dnc.org To: Comm_D@dnc.org Date: 2016-04-26 22:10 Subject: RE: Video Request: Cruz in Knightstown, IN Cruz: media will try to say this race is over. This campaign is about to move towards more favorable terrain. Outlines areas where Trump agrees with Hillary: -Both Donald Trump and Hillary support the Obamacare individual mandate. -Both Donald Trump and Hillary agree that we should raise taxes. -Both Donald and Hillary agree that undocumented immigrants should become citizens. We’re going to secure the border and end sanctuary cities -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton support taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. As president, I will instruct DOJ to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supported Bill Clintons firearm ban. As president, I will defend second amendment rights. -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton believe we should negotiate with Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid on Supreme Court nominees. I give my word that every justice I appoint will be a principled constitutionalist and I will not compromise your religious liberty -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton believe that grown men should be allowed to use the bathroom with little girls. Common sense to not allow that happen. Donald and Hillary care more about being PC. -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton believe that the U.S. should be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians. We should stand unapologetically with Israel. -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both agree that we should keep this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal in place. I will rip it to shreds. -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both believe that Hillary Clinton was the best secretary of state. -Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s campaign is run by lobbyists. They also both supported the stimulus and TARP. Hits Manafort for suggesting that Trump is just playing a role. -Cruz: Donald is telling us that he is lying to us. He says he can be different person tomorrow. I will be the same person yesterday and tomorrow. -Again hits Trump and Clinton campaign for connections to lobbyists. -Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both big government liberals. -Eyes of the nation are looking at the state as a crossroads for America. -Protestor comes out. Says if this were a Trump rally, I would encourage people to punch him. But I am encouraging people to treat him with respect. http://abcnews.go.com/Live TED CRUZ: 04/26/2016, 7:00 PM<x-apple-data-detectors://29>: Rally Hoosier Gym 355 N Washington St, Knightstown, IN<x-apple-data-detectors://30>[facebook.com/knightstownnews/posts<http://facebook.com/knightstownnews/posts>]

Bernie Sanders campaign deemed Michigan a “critical showdown.” | AP Photo Bernie Sanders wins Michigan in stunning upset Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has won the Michigan Democratic primary, according to the Associated Press, narrowly defeating Hillary Clinton in a stunning upset. Clinton had been widely expected to win the Rust Belt state, having led Sanders by double digits in polls leading up to Tuesday's primary. Story Continued Below But the Sanders campaign deemed Michigan a “critical showdown,” and aggressively attacked Clinton for her policies on trade and her ties to Wall Street. Sanders is hoping his win in the delegate-heavy Midwestern state — second in delegates only to Texas so far — will show that his populist economic message can resonate elsewhere. Sanders, speaking from Miami on Tuesday, hailed his “enormously successful night” in Michigan but acknowledged the likely split in the delegate haul and looked ahead to the March 15 primaries. “I want to thank the many thousands of volunteers that we had in the state of Michigan for knocking on doors and for making the phone calls that created this kind of enormously successful night for us,” Sanders said during a brief press conference. “In the last week, we have won three caucuses — two of them were record-breaking turnouts — and whether we win or lose tonight in Michigan, basically the delegates here are going to be split up because of proportional representation.” Sanders said that Tuesday’s standings show that his political revolution “is strong in every part of the country” and maintained that his campaign has yet to hit its best states. “We’re gonna do very, very well on the West Coast and other parts of this country,” he said, adding that voters are tired of “a corrupt campaign finance system,” super PACs, “a rigged economy” and “broken criminal justice system.” “What we have seen is in poll after poll, state after state, what we have done is created the kind of momentum that we need to win,” Sanders concluded. “So once again, this has been a fantastic night in Michigan. We’re very grateful for all of the support that we have gotten from the state, and we look forward to going to Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and the other states that we will be competing in next week.” Clinton had made the water crisis in Flint, a predominantly African-American city, the focus of her pitch to Michigan voters. Although she was endorsed by the state’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, Michigan’s unions did not coalesce behind either candidate. Exit polls showed the electorate breaking along lines similar to previous primary contests: Sanders outperformed Clinton among men and younger voters, while she did better among older voters and women. But Sanders bested the former secretary of state among white voters, 57 percent to her 42 percent, while she beat him among black voters, 65 percent to his 30 percent. In the South, she has often carried more than 80 percent of the African-American vote. And Sander trounced Clinton among independents, 70 percent of whom voted for Sanders. Michigan awards its 147 delegates on a proportional basis, so they will likely be split fairly evenly between the two candidates.

WebExtensions are the new standard for add-on development in Firefox, and will be the only supported type of extension in release versions of Firefox later this year. Starting in Firefox 57, which is scheduled to arrive in November 2017, extensions other than WebExtensions will not load, and developers should be preparing to migrate their legacy extensions to WebExtensions. If you have a legacy extension that writes data to the filesystem, and you’re planning to port it to WebExtensions, Embedded WebExtensions are available now in Firefox 51 to help you transition. Embedded WebExtensions can be used to transfer the stored data of your add-on to a format that can be used by WebExtensions. This is essential because it lets you to convert your users without the need for them to take any actions. What is an Embedded WebExtension? An Embedded WebExtension is an extension that combines two types of extensions in one, by incorporating a WebExtension inside of a bootstrapped or SDK extension. Why use an Embedded WebExtension? There are attributes (functions) of legacy add-ons that are used to store information related to the add-on that are not available in WebExtensions. Examples of these functions include user preferences, arbitrary file system access for storing assets, configuration information, stateful information, and others. If your add-on makes use of functionality like these to store information, you can use an Embedded WebExtension to access your legacy add-on data and move it over to a WebExtension. The earlier you do this, the more likely all your users will transition over smoothly. It’s important to emphasize that Embedded WebExtensions are intended to be a transition tool, and will not be supported past Firefox 57. They should not be used for add-ons that are not expected to transition to WebExtensions. How do I define an Embedded WebExtension? To get started, read the documentation below. You can also contact us—we’re here to help you through the transition. MDN docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Embedded_WebExtensions Examples: https://github.com/mdn/webextensions-examples/tree/master/embedded-webextension-bootstrapped https://github.com/mdn/webextensions-examples/tree/master/embedded-webextension-sdk

New Orleans Saints offensive tackle Zach Strief has spoken of his delight at signing a new five-year contract with the franchise. Strief put pen to paper on his new long-term contract earlier this month, and according to ESPN will take home a basic salary of $5.5 million, plus a signing on fee of $5.5 million. The 30-year-old has spent his entire career in New Orleans having established himself as a regular starter in 2011. Strief was allowed to enter free agency but was soon tied down to to long-term contract by the Saints. The seventh-round pick in the 2006 draft said he was glad to have his future sorted, and insisted that he always wanted to stay with the Saints. "I’m extremely excited to be back," he told the Saints official website. "That free agency process is not as much fun as it’s advertised as, especially when you have a strong desire to go to one place and kind of be in your home. I’m just glad that it worked out.” When asked if he always wanted to re-sign, he explained: “You have to be smart about it and try you best to kind of keep a level head. As much as I did want to stay, you have to be open to the possibility that it’s not going to work out for whatever reason that is. "You try to keep an open kind and go into with that mindset that it might not work. I think that’s the same way that the teams go into. "Even if they want a guy, maybe it doesn’t always all come together. Try to keep a level head and yet at the same time every time we heard from somebody else I made sure to emphasize to my agent that he needed to call the Saints and make sure that they were in the loop and see if we could get something accomplished.” There has been plenty of upheaval in New Orleans during the offseason, with a host of veterans let go and Darren Sproles traded to the Eagles. At the same time as announcing Streif's new deal, the Saints also announced that they had signed fullback Erik Lorig on a four-year contract.

The "last-look" advantage Google’s ad server gave to Google's ad exchange so bothered publishers and exchanges that it gave rise to header bidding. As of this week, that advantage is no more, AdExchanger has learned. Google just reworked its auction so it no longer favors itself in the allocation of bids. A support document this week detailed the switch for Google's Exchange Bidding in Dynamic Allocation (EBDA) feature, which is still in a beta, unfinalized state. Google’s director of product management, Jonathan Bellack, confirmed the change to AdExchanger. “We are collecting the price each exchange would pay, including AdX, and then putting it in a unified auction where the highest price wins,” Bellack said. Here's how the programmatic auction will work: All EBDA exchange participants – including Index Exchange, Rubicon Project, PubMatic, Sovrn, Smaato and Gamut – submit their final bids. The DoubleClick AdExchange (AdX) also submits its final bid. And the best price wins. Previously, AdX would wait for all those other exchanges to submit their bids, and then give itself a chance to outbid the winner. So if Google’s exchange had two bids of $1 and $5, it would be able to beat a $4 bid from an outside exchange. Under the new auction rules, it would submit a bid of $1 (the second price) and lose the auction. While at a glance this might seem bad for the publisher, since Google is restrained from submitting a higher bid, in fact the outcome should be the same given the rules of second-price auctions. In the above example, the impression clears at $4 regardless of which exchange takes it. According to Index Exchange SVP of product Drew Bradstock, who had been briefed on the change, removing last-look signals a shift in how Google works with its partners. “This is a big change in how exchange bidding works that shows they are open to having it and DFP be a lot more neutral,” said Bradstock, who spent five years at Google before joining Index Exchange. “We like that they are willing to listen and be a lot more transparent.” During a Google forum late last year, the biggest concern voiced by publishers and exchanges centered on this last-look advantage. Bellack said feedback from those constituents influenced the decision to level the playing field. “The exchanges and publishers we’ve been working with like this [change], because they think this is a fair way to make competition,” he said. Google wouldn’t say how changing the auction rules will affect its win rate and revenue. But AdX includes unique demand from AdSense and performs strongly even without its last-look edge, Bradstock said. Google’s infrastructure is also more robust than most companies, meaning it can return more bids before the auction closes – something other exchanges and DSPs have struggled to keep up with as header bidding has multiplied the number of auctions taking place. And Google will retain one additional advantage in the auction: It knows more about the user than it passes on to the other exchanges. Since Google’s exchange bidding project uses a server-to-server integration, its partners can’t see as much information – think full-page URL, contextual details or viewability predictions – as they would if they had their own tag on the page. If all buyers see the same impression, but buyers through one exchange have more information about that impression, that will be more valuable than the same impression offered up through other exchanges. Bellack emphasized that it's not in Google’s best interest to retain that information advantage. “We only succeed when our partners succeed,” he said. Industry Impact Google making its server-side auction fair moves the header bidding wars to a new chapter. As a primer, publishers first started implementing header bidding to allow outside exchanges to compete on every impression, a privilege Google previously reserved for its own exchange. As publishers saw massive increases in yield, the trend caught like wildfire. Technical upgrades, like moving the header bidding auction server-side, followed. Google announced that it would allow exchanges to compete via a server-side integration last April, with its EBDA release. Index Exchange, AppNexus, Media.net and Sonobi operate server-side solutions. And a large, outside player – Amazon – unveiled a server-side wrapper last December. Publishers could use it as an alternative to Google’s exchange bidding or other server-side solutions. But the shift to server-side solutions, which make auctions run faster, also threaten to make the auctions lose transparency again and replicate the last-look advantage. “It’s not clear that even the rest of server-side implementation of header bidding are operating this way,” Bellack said. With Google removing its last-look advantage, other players with server-side solutions may feel pressured to do so too. Could ad tech enter an era where transparency, not hidden fees and rules, win the day? “Changes to a fair auction will not be an advantage for those that aren’t open or transparent with fees,” Bradstock said.

Growth & Sustainability A test ride through Denver's light rail transit Expanding light rail gets high marks. Last night as we passed through this stretch it didn’t seem terrifying at all — just another piece of suburbia, with its strip malls and car dealerships and parking lots. But we were in a car then. Now, on a warm and humid Monday morning in July, I’m on foot, and this particular streetscape seems downright hostile, designed to scare the unwitting pedestrian into a vehicle or perhaps the nearest Chick-Fil-A. Six lanes of traffic thrum by on the wide thoroughfare, inches and a text-while-driving away from hopping the curb and squashing me. The grocery store turns out to be on the other side of a vast expanse of pavement that would take too much time to traverse. Nothing is on the human scale here. I’m making this mile-long trek, from my suburban hotel to the nearest light rail station, to test a recent headline from the Atlantic’s City Lab news site calling Denver “the most advanced transit city in the West." While a number of Western cities — Salt Lake, Albuquerque and even Phoenix — have put in rail systems in recent years, Denver’s effort to thread dozens of miles of light rail into the urban and suburban tapestry, beginning in the 90s and continuing today, have garnered high praise. Of course, none of that means much if the system’s not user friendly and people don’t use it. So I’ve come here, ditched my car and am pretending to be a commuter on the occasion of a major transit milestone: The July 26 grand opening of the revamped Union Station. So far, my test isn’t going so well. The Website of the transit agency, RTD, suggested that I take the bus from near my hotel to the light rail station, but also indicated that my ticket purchasing options on the bus would be limited (exact change, no all-day passes available). So I chose this harrowing walk, instead, crossing a freeway onramp and then offramp without the help of a traffic light, and feeling my way to the station as the only signage is for cars, not pedestrians. Notably absent is the buzzing, walkable, transit-oriented development that is supposed to pop up near every station. Once in the station, things start looking up. I purchase an all-day pass from the easy-to-use vending machine for $11.50, which is less than I’d spend to park downtown. Notably, however, these machines don’t offer multi-day or monthly tickets (which are available in central locations). The train arrives on schedule, my fellow commuters and I board, and the cars slide quietly down the rails, destined for Union Station.

A new class of recruits starts working its way through the Madison Police Department Training Academy on Monday at a time when public confidence in American law enforcement is the lowest it's been in more than 20 years, according to a recent Gallup poll. Before the academy starts, the Madison department selects a class of recruits. In addition to events it holds in Madison, MPD makes recruiting visits to colleges and universities across the upper Midwest. This year, recruiters will go to 31 campuses. Madison police Sgt. Brian Chaney-Austin remembers the first time he heard of the department. It was at a college job fair in Illinois where he met Madison police Chief Mike Koval, who was a sergeant and training supervisor at the time. "(Koval) stopped me dead in my tracks and said, 'Hey you, what are you doing? I see that you're a criminal justice major,'" Chaney-Austin recalled. He went back to the job fair the next year and again met with Koval. "I shared with him my philosophy and a little bit more about my upbringing and some of the negative encounters I've had with police in Chicago but also some of the good experiences I've had," Chaney-Austin said. Chaney-Austin was hired by the MPD shortly after he graduated with a criminal justice degree. But recruiting coordinator Sgt. Tim Patton said the department looks for people with a wide variety of education and experiences, not just criminal justice majors. "People who have strong communication skills, people who have demonstrated commitment to our city or whatever city they're living in," Patton said. "Service-oriented coaches, teachers are great cops." The application process to become an officer in Madison takes almost a year, with applications due in November. After several rounds of testing and interviews, job offers were made to 23 recruits for this year's class. On the first day, recruits are sworn in. The first day is both "anxious" and "exciting," Capt.Tom Snyder, who oversees hiring and training, said. The bulk of what this year's recruits will learn comes from 720 hours of training the state Department of Justice requires for all certified law enforcement officers. The academy requires an additional 144 hours to allow the future officers to dive deep into topics like cultural competence and ethics, Snyder said. "We bring in experts from the (Wisconsin) Innocence Project, we take the Harvard implicit bias test, we have outside instructors come in," Snyder said. "We are able to do things and spend more time on these respective areas than they do in the technical colleges for the most part." The Madison Police Department is one of four departments in the state with an employer-based training academy, meaning it hires and trains its own employees. This year's class will be in the academy through the end of February. "We're able to put the Madison twist, we're able to talk about Madison geography, Madison demographics, the neighborhoods," Snyder said. "We take officers out into the field and show the neighborhoods they will be policing and they will be serving." Recruits are beginning their training at a time when police are facing increased scrutiny, Snyder said. What that could mean for those beginning their law enforcement careers remains to be seen. At the police academy, the recruits will cover topics like bias and de-escalation. "We don't shy away from that because we represent the community, we're a part of the community, we're not some occupying force that comes in and takes charge," Snyder said. But, concerns about policing have affected recruitment, Snyder said. "We had less applications last year, and I really believe a lot of that had to do with some of the tensions that were happening throughout the country," Snyder said. The department received 681 applications for this year's class, down 22 percent from the year before. Snyder said they’re back on track with the number of applications for next year. This story is part of an ongoing WPR News series looking at people who are beginning their law enforcement careers. Reporter Bridgit Bowden is spending the next few months following a class of recruits through the Madison Police Department Training Academy. The stories can be heard on Morning Edition, the Ideas Network and online at wpr.org.

A demolition permit for the old Seattle Times building is expected to be issued next week, following public safety complaints due to squatters and fires. A demolition permit for the old Seattle Times building is expected to be issued next week amid public-safety complaints due to squatters and fires, including a blaze on Wednesday, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections said. After that, the city expects the building’s property owner, Onni Group, based in Vancouver, B.C., to take “immediate action” toward demolition, spokesman Bryan Stevens wrote in an email. Seattle officials said several months ago they would speed plans for demolition of part of the building over public-safety concerns. “Review of the demolition-permit application has been and remains a top priority for the city,” Stevens said. “However, the historic nature of a few of the buildings have required more complex engineering designs by the developer in order to ensure the partial demolition occurs safely and preserves the historic facades.” He added: “This has become an unprecedented issue involving a very persistent group of people breaking in and not only putting themselves at risk, but also our first responders.” Firefighters who responded to the fire Wednesday said one of the squatters told them that 10 to 12 people had been there for more than a year. The old newspaper building, constructed in 1930-31 at Fairview Avenue North and John Street in the South Lake Union neighborhood, was deemed a historical landmark in the mid-1990s. Onni spokesman Evan Lewis said the company was aware of the Wednesday evening fire and the squatters, and has a 24/7 security patrol at the building. He said demolition would begin as soon as Onni gets the necessary permits. The Wednesday fire in a second-floor room of the building drew a huge response from firefighters, police and nearby residents who questioned why the building is still standing. The Seattle Times sold the building to Onni Group in 2013 after The Times moved to a nearby building at Denny Way and Boren in 2011. The developer plans to construct two residential towers on the site. During the winter, firefighters fought at least two blazes at the building, and police arrested numerous people living inside.

An elderly man opened fire at a South Florida restaurant Saturday afternoon, shooting two women, and killing one. NBC 6 Reporter Erika Glover has the story. (Published Saturday, May 20, 2017) Two women were killed when an 84-year-old man opened fire inside a popular South Florida restaurant Saturday afternoon, police say. The incident happened Saturday afternoon at the Latin Café located at 7360 Coral Way in Miami. According to police, the victims, who were identified as Yenat Guardado, 38, and Madlin Guardado, 39, were working at the restaurant, when a gunman entered the restaurant. Police said the gunman, Jose Reina, approached the victims and began shooting, striking them both. Madlin was killed on the scene. Yenat was airlifted to the hospital, where she later died. According to police, the Reina fled the scene in a green Jeep Cherokee. Police eventually caught up to him at about 3:30 in the afternoon. They found Reina dead inside his car at Bird Road and SW 112th Avenue from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police continue to investigate this incident.

The Who will perform during halftime at this year’s Super Bowl, according to reports. The band, led by surviving members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, are all set for Super Bowl XLIV Feb. 7 in Miami, according to Sports Illustrated. The NFL hasn’t confirmed the booking, saying only that, “When we have something to announce, we’ll announce it.” But the choice of the renowned British rockers makes sense, since CBS uses Who songs as intros for all three of its “CSI” shows: “Who Are You” (“CSI“), “Baba O’Riley” (“CSI: NY“) and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (“CSI: Miami“). The Super Bowl — which draws TV’s biggest annual audience — is traditionally a huge showcase for A-list acts during the halftime show. In past years, the roster of performers has included Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson (and her infamous “wardrobe malfunction”), Paul McCartney, U2, The Rolling Stones, Prince and Bruce Springsteen. CBS officials had no comment yesterday.

Image copyright Huub Moolenaar Image caption The National Museum of Scotland was the most-visited attraction in Scotland Scottish leading visitor attractions "outperformed" the UK average last year, according to new figures. The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) said it saw a 7.2% increase across all its UK sites last year but Scotland went up 15.6%. The 10 most popular sites in the UK were all in London. The National Museum of Scotland, which opened 10 new galleries in 2016, was the most-visited attraction in Scotland, with 1.8 million visitors. It was the most popular museum outside London and 15th on the UK visitor attraction list, one place above Edinburgh Castle. The castle was the most-visited paid-for attraction in Scotland, with 1,778,548 visitors, up 13%. Image copyright Alan Pottinger Image caption Edinburgh Castle lit up red for Armistice day The Scottish National Gallery was at 18 on the UK-wide list. Glasgow attractions the Kelvingrove Museum and the Riverside Museum were at 24 and 25 on the ALVA list. The first visitor attraction outside Glasgow and Edinburgh was Stirling Castle at 68, with 481,970 visitors. Image copyright Charles McGuigan Image caption Stirling Castle rising up through the early morning mist Image copyright Stuart Phethean Image caption Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness Bernard Donoghue, director of ALVA, said: "Like the 2015 figures, Scotland has continued to outperform the rest of the UK with a substantial increase in their visitor numbers. "2016 was a great year for Scottish Tourism - proving that Scotland is reaping the benefits of significant capital investment in attractions and creative programming by its institutions." Image copyright Joan Macleod Image caption Skara Brae on Orkney Scottish government Tourism Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: "As these figures illustrate, this has been a record year for Scotland's leading visitor attractions. "Our wide range of attractions and excellent heritage and museum collections continue to provide high-quality and exciting experiences, both to people who live here, and to our visitors. "The success of our leading visitor attractions will continue to play a vital role in making Scotland a destination of first choice for visitors from the UK and across the world." Image copyright Gary Cousin Image caption Concorde in the hangar at the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune The list of Scottish attractions on the ALVA list

Happy Friday y’all! We finally made it to the weekend! Though to be honest, my weekend started yesterday which is why today’s post is up later than usual. Friday’s are my sleep in day where I luxuriate in bed and read. It’s glorious! So today I’m going to give you a quick and easy breakfast recipe so you can all start your mornings full of vim and vigour and slay any dragons or recue any maidens who may fall in your path. Honestly, it will probably take you longer to read my ramblings than it will to make your breakfast. So away we go! I’m a huge fan of yams (or sweet potatoes), which will be the star of our recipe this morning. These guys are a great source of beta-carotene, which can be converted to vitamin A in your liver. They’ve also got some wicked sweet antioxidant properties to help fight the evil free radicals who are trying to steal away your good looks. B-C is what gives your yams/sweet potatoes their pretty orange colour, so they’re found in other orange foods as well! Bonus: Most leafy greens, such as spinach, collard greens, and swiss chard are also great sources of this nutrient. Again, we’re adding some onions to our recipe because 1. I am absolutely obsessed with them and have been known to eat them with every meal of the day, raw or cooked. And 2. They’re a great source of insoluble fibre and antioxidants. I probably add way more than what I suggest in my recipe, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, a weirdo, so play around until you find your sweet spot. I think you’ll quickly see that though I think recipes are a great way to learn how to cook and can be great inspirations, I don’t like to be told what to do, especially by some know-it-all book. I’m more a fan of intuitively throwing stuff together until it tastes good (Warning: this doesn’t always work so as you start getting comfortable in the kitchen and branching out, be prepared to have some shall we say, less than satisfactory meals. Just remember what you did so you can NEVER do it again. Like roasting beets with cinnamon. Trust me. It’s disgusting.) The recipe also contains cinnamon. This delicious, fall-scented spice is great for managing blood sugar so you don’t get the dreaded spikes and crashes that leave you reaching for the donut or bag of chips. Stable blood sugar helps you avoid that dreaded afternoon slump where all you want to do is crawl under your desk and take a nap. And as someone who has fallen asleep in said position snuggled in a pile of sweaters on a tile floor (and got caught) I can tell you, those crashes are not fun nor are they productive. The spice comes from cayenne, which may be my favourite way to add heat without altering flavour too much. He’s also a delicious anti-inflammatory that has the side benefit of stimulating the digestive tract and relaxing the stomach, which can help eliminate any… unpleasantness. (Farts, I’m talking about farts.) Finally we have some sort of fat, which I’m more specific about below, for energy, maximum deliciosity, and so our food doesn’t stick to the pan and burn. And sea salt. Try to find a sea salt that’s nice and grey and slightly moist. This means that it hasn’t been overly refined and it still contains the excellent trace minerals from the sea that your body needs for all kinds of important body functions. I just bought my first bag of grey sea salt on Sunday and it is amazing! I store it in glass jars (surprise surprise) so it stays nice and squidgy. Morning Timesaving Tips: I like to cut up my yams and onions on Sunday and store them in a glass jar so that when I’m in a hurry during the week I can just shake them into the pan and voila, it’s go time! Set out the pots, pans, bowls, utensils, and spices you need before you go to bed so you don’t waste precious morning time searching for them. Honestly my frying pan and the baking sheet I use to cover it rarely leave my stovetop. Unless I’m having company or need the burners for something else. While the yams are steaming away under cover I wash my face and do other morning necessities so once my food is ready I can relax and enjoy it. I’ve even showered while they’re cooking. As long as your burner isn’t too high these guys can take care of themselves pretty well. Aside: All recipes on this blog are gluten, soy, corn, and dairy free (aside from some magical butter, but I will always provide easy substitutions). So munch on, friends, without fear of tummy aches or other unpleasant side effects. Spicy Cinnamon Sweet Potato Hash Browns Ingredients: 1 Tbsp. Coconut oil, butter, or ghee ½ sweet potato, chopped into cubes 1 Tbsp. red or yellow onion, diced. 1 tsp. cinnamon: You can add more or less depending on preference. I friggen love cinnamon so I load these bad boys up. ¼ tsp. cayenne: I like them a little spicier, so feel free to play around with measurements. Sea salt to taste Makes one serving Directions: Heat oil of choice in a frying pan on medium heat. Make sure the entire bottom of the pan is covered. Add sweet potatoes, onions, cinnamon, cayenne, and salt. Stir together using a spatula. Cover for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once hash browns are soft, remove cover and sauté for an additional minute. Remove from frying pan and serve. Options for Topping I usually eat this topped with two or three over easy eggs because it’s quick and I’m lazy in the mornings (or at night when I decide to have breakfast for dinner). The gooey yolk also makes a nice sauce for the yams. And, you know, ‘cause eggs are super good for you too. They’re a great source of protein, healthy fats, and cholesterol to help you make your vitamin D-lightful. They also contain choline, which is an important nutrient that functions as a precursor for the super awesome brain neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. This guy helps activate muscle cells, amongst many other important things, so you can run faster than a speeding bullet. Yay science! Bacon! Chop into bits and fry up. There’s not really any health benefit to bacon, but I mean come on… it’s bacon! However, a note on sourcing is necessary. While I’m all for including bacon as a treat or delicious topping (I’ve even made chocolate covered bacon stir sticks for coconut milk hot chocolate before), it’s important that you buy the highest quality bacon you can. We all know that this cut is mostly fat, which is one reason why it’s so delicious, but fat is also where humans and animals store accumulated toxins in their bodies. Conventionally raised pigs are often crammed together in tiny spaces, fed unnatural diets, and can be loaded with hormones to make them grow bigger, faster and antibiotics to keep them from getting sick due to their cramped living spaces. All of these toxins can build up in their bodies and end up in your bellies, which we definitely don’t want. I suggest getting to know your local butcher, find out where their animals are raised and try to buy bacon which uses traditional curing methods and doesn’t contain added nitrates/nitrites as these ingredients can have not-so-great health effects. Sidenote: I once went to my butcher and placed my order and as I went to pay he asked if I was having a big party that week. I laughed and told him that no, actually, it was just a week’s supply for my sister and I. Though if I’m completely honest, she likely at 2/3 of what I bought… Nuts: I like to add crushed cashews or walnuts for a little crunch and texture. I usually add them in addition to the eggs so I know that I’m getting enough protein. Both are good sources of healthy fats, but don’t go crazy. A small handful is typically a good serving size. Bonus points if you use a mortar and pestle to smush them. Ground meat: I like to prepare a bunch of ground beef, lamb, or whatever else piques my fancy at butcher on Sunday. I’ve tried venison (very lean so you’ll want to add some extra healthy fat), boar, and bison. All were super delicious! I typically season whichever I’ve chosen with garlic, onions, and sea salt as a nice base and that way I can change it up with a few different spices depending on what I’m eating. For this recipe I might add some cumin, chili flakes, and turmeric (bonus: a great anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant. Winning!) but you could just throw it in with the yams as is and it would still be pretty delicious. Remember what I said about sourcing good pork? Same goes for pretty much every other meat, poultry, eggs, and butter. I’ll do a more in depth post on the whys and hows soon. For now my number one tip is get to know where your meat comes from. Then I’ll slowly convince you to try things like liver, brain, and sweetbreads muahaha. Well that’s all for today mi amigos! Let me know how this recipe works out for you in the comments. Have a most excellent weekend full of friends and funtivities! Until next time, happy eating! Cait PS: I’ve decided to let Scoby Doo ferment for an extra day since I started him so late on Friday night and because my jar is so gigantic. Here’s what he looks like now. He’s growing like such a good boy! Advertisements

Lovelight, Cryptical Envelopment > The Other One > Cryptical Envelopment, Dark Star > St. Stephen > The Eleven > Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks > Feedback > And We Bid You Good Night Sound Forge was used to normalize the recording, remove a number of crackles and discontinuities, and splice together an overlap in The Eleven. Tape warble @ 5:10 Caution plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews Reviewer: light into ashes - - June 5, 2017 Subject: To Doug the Dude EDIT: I'd thought there was an audience tape of this show, but that turned out to be from 2/4/69 Omaha. - June 5, 2017To Doug the Dude Reviewer: Seth in Oz2 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 4, 2017 Subject: Memory 47 years later, some memories fade , but thankfully some remain crystal clear. I went to this show.....I was 16. Most of the audience was there to see Iron Butterfly (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was BIG at the time!), so the Dead were the opening act - ha! As you can hear here, they were terrific, and as it was my first Dead show I was totally impressed. Dark Star - whoa! - June 4, 2017Memory Reviewer: doug_the_dude - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 5, 2013 Subject: -- An exploding bullet of a show - everything just flies out of the cannon at full-speed here. The only thing you'll be disappointed by are the cuts in the board - one at the end of the Other One suite, and one pretty painful, ice-pick-under-the-toenail slice right out of the middle of Caution. But this board will suffice until the gaps can be filled (and you'll be waiting a while, I think...) - February 5, 2013-- Reviewer: njpg - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 6, 2012 Subject: Crazy show! Hardly a moment when someone isn't playing an incredibly hot lick. - February 6, 2012Crazy show! Reviewer: clementinescaboose - favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 1, 2010 Subject: February '69 they were just on a roll man...this isn't quite on the level of 2/7, 2/22, or 2/27-28 but still awesome. Interesting Dark Star, incendiary Eleven>Caution that i agree with direwolf600 must be a top ten version- might even be better than 10/20/68, and that's saying something (all imo). be sure to listen to all the February '69 shows here on the IA. you really can't miss, and this whole Feb-Apr slice is probably the best music of the year. - May 1, 2010February '69 Reviewer: whitelightning66 - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 12, 2010 Subject: Whew! Did that just happen! High Quality. Tie everything down a storms a coming. This completes any questions about performance. Grateful Dead Forever, thanks for posting this timeless show! - April 12, 2010Whew! Did that just happen! Reviewer: Great Expectations - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 5, 2010 Subject: A beautiful dream.... I have just listened to this one end to end and it is one of the most beautiful shows I have ever heard. The opening is energetic, tough and gritty, the middle section DS>SS>11 is fluid, haunting and poetic and the closing Feedback>Bid You Goodnight brings a tranquil peace like a sunset after a raging storm. I am always amazed when reviewers seem to obsess over small details of the sound quality as this little gem is now over 40 years old. I am over fifty years old and I remember what the technology was like back then...and so I suggest you just relax, lay back and let the music play the band. - February 5, 2010A beautiful dream.... Reviewer: Tie-Dye Dan - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 6, 2009 Subject: Historic Show,This Sweet Dark Star Rules This venue sits near the mighty confluence of the Kansas and Missori rivers were the powerful energy of these two great rivers collide.Inhabited for at least 12,000 years by Paleo hunters who felled great Wolly Mammoths and Mega fauna it is a mystical place and this Dark Star played here will reverberate its energy for Ions up and down these valleys till the end of time along with the ancient spirits who inhabit this powerful place! - August 6, 2009Historic Show,This Sweet Dark Star Rules Reviewer: Edsel - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 6, 2009 Subject: Get a clue All the fuss ? Cliff, there are 17 reviews including yours. You seem to be the only one not getting it. Look within. This was a real fine show, too bad that it's hacked up, and missing segments, a major loss, but that does not diminish the playing, which was superb. - August 6, 2009Get a clue Reviewer: Cliff Hucker - favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 5, 2009 Subject: Still in Kansas... The Eleven/Caution suite is compelling, but I dont understand all the fuss here. The typical '69 sound quality/mix is muddy and lifeless. (94 pts) - February 5, 2009Still in Kansas... Reviewer: dead72 - favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 5, 2009 Subject: 2/4 and 2/5 This, along with the previous nights show from the Music Box in Omaha, are great companion pieces. Prime '69, differences in set list, and a club show vs. an auditorium. Check 'em both out! Second only to the very finest shows of the year as represented in the Fillmore West Box. - February 5, 20092/4 and 2/5 Reviewer: NYLifer - favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 5, 2009 Subject: Incendiary Crank up the BASS! - February 5, 2009Incendiary Reviewer: Darrylizer - favorite favorite favorite favorite - July 30, 2008 Subject: Poor Iron Butterfly To have to play after this would not be fun for any band! The Dead display what I can only describe as that "peppery" sound they had from 68 to 69 and they are spicy indeed. Unfortunately the sound is a little muffled for this recording so I kicked off a star, but don't let sound imperfections dissuade you from checking out this excellent show. The playing and energy are wonderful especially The Eleven which is in my opinion one of the best versions they ever played. Rolling thunder! - July 30, 2008Poor Iron Butterfly Reviewer: catfishbob - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 21, 2008 Subject: Extinguiderm: NOT IN OMAHA Anyone who saw the Dead play in Omaha in 1969, did not see them on the fifth of February. I was at the 05 February ’69 show and I can attest that it was indeed at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, KS (not Omaha), and the show was memorable. The Dead opened for the Iron Butterfly, and the contrast between the two bands was something to behold. “Caution” as hot as I have ever heard, and the band performed the astonishing “Seven” instrumental. “And we bid you Goodnight”, closing the show, was sublime. The Bear did the sound, and I quote him: “I remember the KC show very well, we had to help the Butterfly's marginally competent roadies with setting up their gear. The IB fans who filled the hall were in such a stare of shock after the opening set by GD that it was nearly halfway through their beloved Butterfly's set before they came round and starting jumping.” The recording noted by the previous correspondent is apparently correct. At the close of “Goodnight” Garcia can be heard to say “The Iron Butterfly will be out in a minute.” - May 21, 2008Extinguiderm: NOT IN OMAHA Reviewer: Extinguiderm - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 30, 2007 Subject: Awesome recording - but mislabeled? As everyone else has mentioned, this is yet another fantastic time capsule. Yes, some annoying interruptions, but we've all heard worse, to be sure. Excellent quality. HOWEVER - DeadBase X lists this date as Omaha, Nebraska, with an entirely different setlist. Can anyone shed some light on that? Grateful thanks as always; Ex - August 30, 2007Awesome recording - but mislabeled? Reviewer: Disco_Kitty - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - July 30, 2007 Subject: Oozing, drippy show Sicko - ooozing 69 with a strong whiff of patchouli oil and cheap incense. - July 30, 2007Oozing, drippy show Reviewer: direwolf600 - favorite favorite favorite favorite - July 6, 2007 Subject: Wild and Wonderful This isn't one of those 69 shows where every single song played counts as one of the best ever played. I'd agree with the note on the other one as something they are still warming up to as an improv vehicle. All the same, it still is nice and powerful. This show is all about the eleven>caution. The eleven here is one of the 10 best ever imo. At least top 15 if not top 10. When I hear someone saying the GD are pretty good but jerry didn't shred and peak, first I laugh, but I also understand how that opinion can exist. Of course we know different, chances are the person stating that as their opinion just hasn't been given the approriate versions of songs that highlight shredding jerry. Since the first time I heard this eleven it has become one of the song versions I give or play for people who say jerry couldn't shred like the big boys. Thus far it has not failed to change minds. It is just mother-f'ing SICK!!! Sound: 7.5/10 Playing: 8.9/10 Show: 8.5/10 - July 6, 2007Wild and Wonderful Reviewer: Earthquake Country - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 22, 2006 Subject: Sucks to be Iron Butterfly Nascent version of what would become "Live Dead" at the end of the month with DS>SS>The Eleven. I've read the story of how Iron Butterfly got blown off the stage when a relatively unknown Led Zeppelin opened for them in Jan. '69 and now this. The Eleven really grooves but then Caution commits interuptus (I suppose the reel change actually). - May 22, 2006Sucks to be Iron Butterfly Reviewer: Mr. Trips - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 25, 2006 Subject: One Word Wow. - March 25, 2006One Word Reviewer: williscat2000 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 31, 2005 Subject: One of the best definitely a new direction for the dead in this show. A good example of them concretely moving beyond the 1968 primal dead sound. Tremendous jerry all over this. - December 31, 2005One of the best Reviewer: williscat2000 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 31, 2005 Subject: One of the best definitely a new direction for the dead in this show. A good example of them concretely moving beyond the 1968 primal dead sound. Tremendous jerry all over this. - December 31, 2005One of the best Reviewer: hitmeister - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 21, 2005 Subject: Spectacular Is it possible to cram more amazing music onto a single CD? The only downside is the cut at the end of Cryptical. On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd rate this show a 4 for sound quality and an 8 for performance. - October 21, 2005Spectacular Reviewer: MorninDew - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 12, 2005 Subject: DAAAMN DUDE! Yes, indeed, they were VERY good this show. Listen to caution and here bobby (?) and pig screaming "AAAAAAALL YOU NEED" over and over and over. Very good show, very high energy, this is definitely a must! - April 12, 2005DAAAMN DUDE! Reviewer: spleenboy - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 14, 2005 Subject: Oh....My....Gawd... they were so fuckin ON this show, it's a shame we had to miss even one second (an abrupt end to Cryptical that seemed to have more legs). The Eleven is a tour-de-force of Garcia inventiveness. Techie-wise, it's a solid recording considering the era, but quite a ways from perfect. i kinda like it when they go overboard and lose control. it's why we revere these ancient gems - for the slight flaw. - March 14, 2005Oh....My....Gawd... Reviewer: busterb - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 5, 2005 Subject: wow This is great. Blown away. They are coming. You can feel it all around. This makes my mental disorder worth it. - February 5, 2005wow Reviewer: A.J.K. - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - November 2, 2004 Subject: Hot February night Excellent show, the jam from Eleven > Caution is quite tasty and unique. Caution is raunchy, dripping with feedback even before the "Feedback" section. Dark Star is quite good too, it's not quite the monster it became later in the month, but it's a solid improv vehicle at this point. It seems like they're still kinda warming up in the Other One. Not bad but not as ballsy as the remainder of the show. - November 2, 2004Hot February night

New Delhi: Facing attack from opposition parties, Government on Sunday justified the appointment of Lt Gen Bipin Rawat as army chief superseding two commanders, insisting that his operational experience and "general dynamism" tipped the scales in the officer's favour. The Defence Ministry sources also asserted that selection of Army chief is the sole prerogative of the government and it is based purely on merit, irrespective of the Corps to which the officer originally belonged. The "outstanding" track record of Lt Gen Rawat, an Infantry officer, as Commanding Officer of 19 Division in J&K and his familiarity with the functioning of the Army Headquarters and MoD were cited by the Ministry as the reasons for his selection for the top position. The Ministry sources said all officers in the panel of officers in the rank of army commanders are competent and the most suitable is selected "However, it must be emphasised that the prerogative of selecting the most eligible from the panel is that of the government," sources said. The government of the day takes the final decision choosing the most suitable officer based on various aspects of the security situation in the country and the future scenario, they said, adding in the current environment, counter terrorism and counter insurgency are key issues. "Therefore the background and operational experience of the officers on the panel were considered in depth while selecting the next COAS. "Lt Gen Bipin Rawat fulfills this criteria by virtue of his operational assignments as Commanding Officer of 19 Division in Jammu and Kashmir and his outstanding track record, his familiarity with the functioning of the Army HQ and MoD in his capacity as Vice Chief and his general dynamism has also played a role in tipping the scales in his favour," the sources said. A political slugfest broke out over the new army chief's appointment with Congress and the Left asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to spell out the "compelling reasons" for superseding the senior officers even as BJP hit back saying they should not politicise an issue related to defence forces. The Ministry maintained "that the selection is based purely on merit, irrespective of the Corps to which the officer originally belonged". While Lt Gen Rawat is from the Infantry, Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi, the senior most army commander who was superseded, is from the Armoured Corps. Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.

Everybody pees. But that doesn't mean everybody has a perfect grasp of how, exactly, it works. There are many mystifying aspects of urination — starting with what color your urine should be, how long you can safely hold it for, and if "breaking the seal" is a real thing. With this in mind, I spoke to NYU urologist Benjamin Brucker to ask some of the most pressing questions about peeing. 1) At least 5 different parts of your brain are involved in peeing As your blood gets pumped through your kidneys, the organs collect excess water. At the same time, they also filter out a few different types of waste: a molecule called urea (made up nitrogen, a byproduct of your cells' metabolism), chloride, sodium, potassium, and creatinine. All this flows into a small muscular sack: your bladder. "The bladder is made up of lots of different muscles, cells, nerve endings, and blood vessels," Brucker says. "The desire to urinate comes mainly from stretch receptors in the bladder that send a signal to the brain when the bladder reaches a certain size, telling you it's time to urinate." Recent research using MRIs has shown that this communication system is fairly complex: the signal is processed by five to seven different areas of the brain, which send a signal instructing your bladder muscles to contract and your urethral sphincter (a pair of ring-shaped muscles that allow urine to flow from your bladder to your urethra) to relax. "This system is why humans are capable of being continent — why we're not just immediately peeing whenever we need to pee," Brucker says. 2) Your urine doesn't actually need to be clear There's a widespread belief that, ideally, your urine should be perfectly clear at all times — a sign that you're well-hydrated. In reality, however, having totally clear urine may be a sign that you're actually drinking too much water. "Generally, if someone is well-hydrated, the urine is going to be on the clear side, and if they're less hydrated it will be darker," Brucker says. "But it's a myth that you should always be super well-hydrated and peeing clear. For most people, I just say, 'Drink when you're thirsty.'" Doctors generally recommend that your urine is either a "pale straw" or transparent yellow color, although it's not a huge deal if it's a bit darker or lighter (unless you have a condition that requires you to be especially well-hydrated at all times). Other colors — like pink, red, orange, or green — could be a sign of a kidney or liver disorder, or could just be the result of food coloring in something you ate. 3) Your bladder can hold about a soda can's worth of urine Despite how long you might pee for after holding it for a while, your bladder might be smaller than you realize. "Some people have bigger bladders, some people have smaller ones, but usually an adult bladder can hold somewhere between 300 and 600 milliliters," Brucker says. "For a comparison, I often liken it to a can of Coke." For people with various bladder, kidney, or prostate conditions, this can vary widely in both directions. 4) Holding your urine for a long time isn't unhealthy While it's generally a good practice to go when you need to, when the occasion calls for you to hold it for a little while, it probably won't do you any harm. "Urinating at normal intervals — say, every four to five hours — is probably healthiest," Brucker says. "That said, in a normal, healthy patient with no medical issues, would you really do harm to your body by holding it for a while? You probably wouldn't." It's definitely a myth, meanwhile, that holding it too long can make your bladder burst (unless you recently had a bladder reconstructed from other body tissue due to bladder cancer). There also isn't evidence that holding it for excessive lengths of time increases the risk of UTIs (more on those below). 5) Urine isn't sterile — and you should never, ever drink it Under both normal circumstances and dire straits, it's an absolutely terrible idea to drink your own pee. The reason is twofold. One is that contrary to popular belief, urine is not sterile. Drinking it puts you at risk of infection from the bacteria living in it. The second reason is that apart from water, everything else in urine is waste that your body is trying to get rid of. Normally, that just constitutes 5 percent of urine, but if you're dehydrated, it'll make up a greater percentage. Taking in too much urea and other waste further dehydrates you and puts you at risk of kidney failure, as the organs work to filter out double (or more) the usual amount. it's a terrible idea to drink your own pee Though there are several different miraculous survival stories that involve someone drinking their own urine, most survival experts — along with the US Army's survival manual — do not advise trying it. Additionally, from time to time, people have advocated drinking one's own urine as a way to treat several different diseases, including cancer. The American Cancer Society, however, confirms there is no evidence that drinking urine is an effective way to cure cancer. Finally, there's the somewhat related idea that if you get stung by a jellyfish, urinating on the site of the sting is an effective remedy. As it turns out, this is a myth popularized by an episode of Friends — and scientists agree that it probably wouldn't be effective. 6) There's no evidence that peeing after sex prevents UTIs Both women and men can get urinary tract infections, but women get them much more often for a basic anatomical reason: Their urethras are shorter and are located much closer to the anus, allowing bacteria to more easily jump from one to the other and travel up the bladder. Typically, this occurs with E. coli bacteria, though in about 5 to 10 percent of cases, it's Staphylococcus. Unfortunately, the activity that actually spreads the bacteria most often is sex — in pre-menopausal women who are sexually active, researchers estimate sex is to blame for about 75 to 90 percent of UTIs. Using a diaphragm or a spermicide makes someone more likely to contract a UTI, but despite conventional wisdom, there's no evidence that peeing or taking a shower after sex, using condoms, or using a birth control pill makes them any more or less likely. There's some evidence that drinking cranberry juice can help prevent them, but the effect seems to be small. A dose of antibiotics is usually effective in controlling an infection but rarely wipes out the bacteria entirely: 44 percent of women have a second episode within a year of being treated for an initial one. 7) You can train yourself to not need to urinate as often "I see a lot of patients with complaints of frequent urination, or overactive bladder," Brucker says. "But a lot of the time, it's just a matter of them breaking the habit of peeing every opportunity they have, because then they end up peeing 25 times per day." Simply holding it for a bit instead of going the second you feel the need to pee will gradually strengthen both the mental communication circuit responsible for keeping your bladder from emptying and the actual muscles that let you do so. (It's probably a myth, however, that holding it stretches your bladder so that it can accommodate more urine in the future.) if all else fails, there's a secret move you can whip out in dire circumstances If you're stuck in a situation where you do need to hold it for an especially long time, there are some things you can do. WikiHow's exquisitely illustrated guide has some interesting tips: It's good to cross your legs if standing, but not if you're sitting (because raising your thighs at all towards your abdomen will increase pressure on your bladder). Don't move too much, don't drink anything, and try to think about something totally unrelated to your overwhelming urge to pee. If this all fails, there's a secret move you can whip out in especially dire circumstances, though it requires advance preparation. It's called the knack maneuver, and both men and women can develop the ability to execute it by doing exercises similar to Kegel exercises over time. Essentially, you try to squeeze the muscles that make up your pelvic floor, then intentionally cough or pretend to sneeze (here are some tips on how to locate and contract these muscles). Over time, doing multiple reps of this exercise will strengthen the muscles. Then if you contract them when you do need to pee, Brucker says, "it essentially sends a signal to your brain that it's not a good time to urinate, which then sends a signal back down to your bladder." 8) "Breaking the seal" is not a real thing A common urinary myth holds that if you're drinking heavily and ignore the urge to pee, you can stop your body from producing as much urine. Once you give in and "break the seal," however, your body will produce much more urine, and you'll inevitably have to go over and over again. It's a nice turn of phrase, but there's no evidence this is the case. Brucker has a more scientific explanation for it. "Let's say you've been out in the sun all day, and you don't have to pee, and then you go to the bar and have four or five beers," he says. "All of a sudden you're more hydrated, and alcohol is a bit of a diuretic, so you'll be making even more urine. As a result, once you start peeing it's probably just going to keep happening." In other words, you have to urinate over and over simply because you keep drinking — not because you went that first time. And a given volume of alcohol typically leads your body to produce more urine than the same amount of water, exacerbating the problem. 9) Alcohol and caffeine make you pee through different mechanisms Alcohol and caffeine are both diuretics, but they work through entirely different mechanisms. Alcohol messes with your body's production of a hormone called vasopressin (sometimes called anti-diuretic hormone). Normally your brain's pituitary gland secretes this chemical, which tells your kidneys to filter less water out of your blood, thereby producing less urine. Alcohol, however, interferes with the secretion of this hormone, so a lot more water ends up in your urine — and you need to urinate more often. Drink enough alcohol (and not enough water) over time, and you'll get dehydrated, which may be one of the ways alcohol causes hangovers. alcohol messes with your body's production of a hormone called vasopressin Caffeine acts as a diuretic in a different way. When it enters your bloodstream, it alters activity inside your kidneys — ultimately causing them to filter greater levels of sodium out of your blood. This causes more water to flow out of your blood through osmosis, producing more urine. However, there's reason to believe that caffeine is a far less potent diuretic than alcohol. Controlled experiments have shown that amount of caffeine found in tea, soda, and coffee — in other words, the amount of caffeine you'd consume in most in realistic scenarios — doesn't substantially increase urine production or dehydrate people, and also that people who regularly drink caffeine develop a tolerance to its diuretic effects. In other words, for caffeine to actually make you have to pee more, you have to drink a whole lot of it.

The Barack Obama who showed up in Milwaukee today is the one I remember from 2008 who seemed to disappear over the past year or so. If he keeps this tone between now and November, I'll bet on the press narrative changing from "Dems are hosed" to something far more positive. With a mix of humor, sarcasm and a generous dose of fire, Obama put Republicans on notice: Their days of obstruction are numbered. I was struck by how different he is when he has a crowd. It was clear they were completely with him and he with them. If I were in charge of White House communications, I'd lose the prepared speeches in front of the Oval Office and make every camera opportunity one with people, because it's clearly where he's most comfortable and at home. It also plays well in the sound bite arena. I loved this small personal dig at the CEOs and Republicans who think free speech means slander and libel. From his prepared remarks: Milwaukee, that’s what we’re going to do again. That’s what’s been at the heart of all our efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn’t just survive this crisis – but thrives once we emerge. And over the last two years, that’s meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long. And then he jumped off the script for this: Right back on script again: That’s why we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street; reform that will stop credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and unfair rate hikes; reform that ends the era of taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street once and for all. This is what fired everyone up in 2008 -- his passion. Only this time, he's using the last two years of Republicans' obstructionist ways to zing it up and fire up the base. Let's see if it continues. The full text of his prepared remarks follow, but I really recommend just watching him. There are more than a few moments worth the time. Hello, Milwaukee! Thank you to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council and to all of my brothers and sisters in the AFL-CIO for inviting me to spend this day with you – a day that belongs to the working men and women of America. I want to acknowledge your outstanding national president, a man who knows that a strong economy needs a strong labor movement: Rich Trumka; Dave Newby, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO; and our host, your Milwaukee Area Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer, Sheila Cochran, who I hear has a birthday tomorrow. I’m proud to be here with our Secretary of Labor, a daughter of union members, Hilda Solis; and our Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood. And let’s hear it for the folks at the forefront of every fight for Wisconsin’s working men and women – Senator Herb Kohl; Congresswoman Gwen Moore; and your outstanding mayor, Tom Barrett. Your other great senator, Russ Feingold, was here with you earlier, standing with you and your families just like he always has, but he had to head to his hometown of Janesville to participate in their Labor Day parade. So it is good to be back in Milwaukee. Of course, this isn’t my first time at Laborfest. I stood right here with you two years ago, when I was still a candidate for this office. During that campaign, we talked about how, for years, the values of hard work and responsibility that built this country had been given short shrift, and how that was slowly hollowing out our middle class. About how some on Wall Street took reckless risks and cut corners to turn huge profits, while working Americans were fighting harder and harder just to stay afloat. And about how the decks were too often stacked in favor of the special interests and against working Americans. What we knew, even then, was that these years would be some of the most difficult in our history. And then, two weeks later, the bottom fell out of the economy. Middle-class families suddenly found themselves swept up in the worst recession in our lifetimes. So the problems facing working families are nothing new. But they are more serious than ever. And that makes our cause more urgent than ever. For generations, it was the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again. It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the twentieth century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today – the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label. And it was that greatest of generations that built America into the greatest force for prosperity, opportunity and freedom the world has ever known. Americans like my grandfather, who went off to war just boys, returned home men, and traded one uniform and set of responsibilities for another. Americans like my grandmother, who rolled up their sleeves and worked in factories on the home front. When the war was over, they studied under the GI Bill; bought homes under the FHA; raised families buttressed by good jobs that paid good wages with good benefits. It was through my grandparents’ experience that I was brought up to believe that anything is possible in America. But they also knew the feeling when that opportunity is pulled out from under you. They would tell me about seeing their fathers or uncles losing jobs during the depression; how it wasn’t just the loss of a paycheck that stung. It was the blow to their dignity; their sense of self-worth. I’ll bet a lot of us have seen people changed after a long bout of unemployment; how it can wear down even the strongest spirits. So my grandparents taught me early on that a job is about more than a paycheck, as important as that is. A job is about waking up every day with a sense of purpose, and going to bed each night fulfilled. A job is about meeting your responsibilities to yourself, to your family, to your community. I carried that lesson with me all those years ago when I got my start fighting for men and women on the South Side of Chicago after their local steel plant shut down. I carried that lesson with me through my time as a state senator and a U.S. Senator. I carry that lesson with me today. And I know that there are folks right here in Milwaukee and all across America who are going through these kinds of struggles. Eight million Americans lost their jobs in this recession. And while we’ve had eight straight months of private sector job growth, the new jobs haven’t been coming fast enough. Now, the plain truth is, there’s no silver bullet or quick fix to the problem. Even when I was running for this office, we knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a decade’s worth of policies that saw a few folks prosper while the middle class kept falling behind – and it will take more time than any of us wants to dig out of the hole created by this economic crisis. But on this Labor Day, there are two things I want you to know, Milwaukee. Number one: I’m going to keep fighting, every single day, to turn this economy around; to put our people back to work; to renew the American Dream for your families and for future generations. Number two – and this I believe with every fiber of my being: America cannot have a strong, growing economy without a strong, growing middle class, and the chance for everybody, no matter how humble their beginnings, to join that middle class. A middle class built on the idea that if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can get ahead – and enjoy some basic guarantees in life. A good job that pays a good wage. Health care that’ll be there when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. An education that’ll give our kids a better life than we had. These are simple ideas. American ideas. I was thinking about this last week. On the day I announced the end to our combat mission in Iraq, I spent some time, as I often do, with our soldiers and veterans. This new generation of troops coming home from Iraq has earned its place alongside that greatest generation. Like them, they have the skills and training and drive to move America’s economy forward once more. And from the time I took office, we’ve been investing in new care, new opportunity, and a new commitment to their service that’s worthy of their sacrifice. But they’re coming home to an economy hit by recession deeper than any we’ve seen. And the question is, how do we create the same kind of middle class opportunity my grandparents’ generation came home to? How do we build our economy on the same kind of strong, stable foundation for growth? Well, anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it’ll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up – they just haven’t studied our history. We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting special interests run wild. We didn’t do it by just gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We did it by producing goods we could sell; we did it with sweat and effort and innovation. We did it by investing in the people who built this country from the ground up – workers, and middle-class families, and small business owners. We did it by out-working, out-educating, and out-competing everyone else. Milwaukee, that’s what we’re going to do again. That’s what’s been at the heart of all our efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn’t just survive this crisis – but thrives once we emerge. And over the last two years, that’s meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long. That’s why we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street; reform that will stop credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and unfair rate hikes; reform that ends the era of taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street once and for all. That’s why we eliminated tens of billions of dollars in wasteful taxpayer subsidies to big banks that provide student loans. We’re using those savings to put a college education within reach for working families. That’s why we passed health insurance reform that will make coverage affordable; reform that ends the indignity of insurance companies jacking up your premiums at will or denying you coverage just because you get sick; reform that shifts control from them to you. That’s why we’re making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving your tax refunds, a simpler system for enrolling in plans like 401(k)s, and fighting to strengthen Social Security for the future. And to those who may still run for office planning to privatize Social Security, let me be clear: as long as I’m President, I’ll fight every effort to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street. Not on my watch. That’s why we’ve given tax cuts to small business owners. Tax cuts to clean energy companies. A tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans, just like I promised you on the campaign. And instead of giving tax breaks to corporations to create jobs overseas, we’re cutting taxes for companies that put our people to work here at home. That’s why we’re investing in growth industries like clean energy and manufacturing. And you’ve got leaders here like Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle who have been fighting to bring those jobs to Milwaukee and to Wisconsin. Because we want to see the solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars of tomorrow manufactured here. We don’t just want to buy stuff made elsewhere; we want to grow our exports so the world buys products that say “Made in America.” Because there are no better workers than American workers, and I’ll place my bet on you any day of the week. When the naysayers said we should just let the American auto industry vanish and take hundreds of thousands of jobs down with it, we said we’d stand by them if they made the tough choices necessary to compete once again – and today, that industry is on the way back. Now, another thing we’ve done is make sound and long-overdue investments in upgrading our outdated and inefficient national infrastructure. We’re not just talking new roads, bridges, dams and levees; but also a smart electric grid and the broadband internet and high-speed rail lines required to compete in the 21st century economy. We’re talking investments in tomorrow that are creating hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs today. It was because of these investments, and the tens of thousands of projects they spurred all over the country, that the battered construction sector actually grew last month for the first time in a long time. Still, nearly one in five construction workers are unemployed. And it doesn’t do anybody any good when so many American workers have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America to rebuild. That’s why, today, I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads, rails and runways for the long-term. Over the next six years, we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads – enough to circle the world six times. We’re going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways – enough to stretch coast-to-coast. We’re going to restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays for American travelers – something I think folks across the political spectrum could agree on. This is a plan that will be fully paid for and will not add to the deficit over time – we’re going to work with Congress to see to that. It sets up an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on the smartest investments. It will continue our strategy to build a national high-speed rail network that reduces congestion, travel times, and harmful emissions. It will cut waste and bureaucracy by consolidating and collapsing more than 100 different, often duplicative programs. And it will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars; reforming the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck. All of this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul. It’s a plan that history tells us can and should attract bipartisan support. It’s a plan that says even in the still-smoldering aftermath of the worst recession in our lifetimes, America can act to shape our own destiny, to move this country forward, to leave our children something better – something lasting. So these are the things we’ve been working for. These are some of the victories that you helped us achieve. And we’re not done. We’ve got a lot more progress to make. And I believe we will. But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it’s better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean, come on! Remember when our campaign slogan was “Yes We Can?” These guys are running on “No, We Can’t,” and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh? To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that they find so offensive? When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said “no” to that, too. In fact, the Republican who’s already planning to take over as Speaker of the House dismissed them as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving. Not worth saving? These are the people who teach our kids. Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on the line for our own. I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving. We made sure that bill wouldn’t add to the deficit, either. We paid for it by finally closing a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments – even when they don’t pay taxes here. How do you like that – middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America’s biggest corporations agreed the loophole should be closed, that it wasn’t fair – but the man with the plan to be Speaker is already aiming to open it up again. Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn’t find a job, or afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company – you’re on your own. Well, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for working folks. It didn’t work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I’m not bringing this up to re-litigate the past; I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer; if they said, you know, we’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ll do things differently this time. But that’s not what they’re doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda. So basically, they’re betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just believe that they’ve changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they’re asking you for the keys back. Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they don’t know how to drive! At a time when we’re just getting out of the ditch, they’d pop it in reverse, let the special interests ride shotgun, and hit the gas, careening right back into that ditch. Well, I refuse to go backwards, Milwaukee. And that’s the choice America faces this fall. Do we go back to the policies of the past? Or do we move forward? I say we move forward. America always moves forward. And we are going to keep moving forward today. Let me just close by saying this. I know these are difficult times. I know folks are worried, and there’s still a lot of hurt out here. I hear about it when I spend time in towns like this; I read about it in your letters at night. And when times are tough, it can be easy to give in to cynicism and fear; doubt and division – to set our sights lower and settle for something less. But that is not who we are. That is not the country I know. We do not give up. We do not quit. We are a people that faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats; and lit the way for the rest of the world. Whenever times have seemed at their worst, Americans have been at their best. Because it is in those times when we roll up our sleeves and remember that we will rise or fall together – as one nation, and one people. That’s the spirit that started the labor movement. The idea that alone, we are weak. Divided, we fall. But united, we are strong. That’s why we call them unions. That’s why we call this the United States of America. Milwaukee, that’s the case I am going to make across the country this fall – yours. And I am asking for your help. If you are willing to join me, and Tom Barrett, and Gwen Moore, and Russ Feingold, we can strengthen our middle class and make our economy work for working Americans again. We can restore the American Dream and deliver it safely to our children. That’s how we built the last American century. That’s how we’ll build the next. We don’t believe in the words “No, we can’t.” We are Americans, and in times of great challenge, we push forward with an unyielding faith that we can. Yes, we can. Thank you, God Bless You and the work you do, and God Bless the United States of America.