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There is a debate within the Obama administration over whether to publicly blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee or to wait for the FBI to complete its investigation — a delay that has frustrated some lawmakers and national security officials.
The intelligence community has high confidence that Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee but does not have the same level of confidence that Russia then leaked stolen committee emails to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, several administration officials said. The release of the embarrassing material on the eve of the Democratic convention has been seen by some officials as an attempt to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.
“I really think we’ve reached the point where there ought to be a public accounting for what’s going on,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, who has been briefed on the matter. “The American people have the right to know if a foreign power is trying to influence their elections.”
[U.S. investigating potential Russian effort to disrupt November elections]
White House officials and FBI Director James B. Comey have repeatedly said that they do not want to get ahead of the investigation, which covers suspected Russian hacks and attempted hacks of a variety of political organizations and state election systems. “Policy decisions regarding public attribution for these intrusions are contingent on the results of that investigation,” one senior administration official said in a statement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he doesn't know who was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, but it was important the information had been made public. (Bloomberg)
The White House’s and some Cabinet officials’ insistence on awaiting the probe’s results has frustrated some officials at the FBI, the Justice Department and within the intelligence community, who favor holding Moscow accountable. The White House’s continued requests for more evidence, said one official, is “to delay — purposely delay” a public attribution.
The FBI, White House, Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a member of the Homeland Security committee, said President Obama should publicly name Russia and do so before the November election. A failure to do so will only encourage further cyber intrusions and meddling in the U.S. election, he said.
“If the Obama administration has a reason for not clearly attributing these hacks to Russia, it contradicts their own cyber strategy,” Sasse said. “If they’re silent because it would invite response, that suggests that we’re operating from a position of weakness — in other words, we know that we need to aggressively deter cyberattacks, but we are too vulnerable to do it. Neither scenario is reassuring.”
Even as the administration awaits the FBI results, consideration has begun at the staff levels of potential ways the United States might respond. Options in the mix include the first use of a program to impose economic sanctions to deter significant network attacks or intrusions. Created last year by executive order, it permits the sanctioning of individuals overseas linked to malicious cyber acts that threatened the national security or foreign policy of the United States.
“Clearly trying to surreptitiously influence U.S. elections would be a pretty bold move,” said a second administration official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity. So sanctions might be an appropriate response, the official said.
[FBI investigating foreign hacks of state electoral systems]
The Post's Ellen Nakashima goes over the events, and discusses the two hacker groups responsible. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)
The internal debate is rife with political and diplomatic concerns, including a fear that acting before November might appear unduly partisan — an effort to tip the balance toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday that “it’s probably unlikely” that Russia is trying to interfere in the U.S. election. “I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out — who knows,” he told Larry King on RT America, a Kremlin-funded network.
U.S. intelligence agencies are also wary that a public attribution might disclose sources and methods, some officials said. However, one national security official noted, “that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to hold [the Russians] accountable. They may just want that accountability to be less than public.”
The National Security Agency, for instance, could disrupt a Russian computer system in a way that leaves no doubt who did it and that warns the Russians “to knock it off,” one former intelligence official said. Or the CIA could leak documents that are embarrassing in some way to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But there is also unease about how Putin might respond.
“This whole thing is very fraught with all sorts of issues in all sorts of directions,” the second security official said.
Administration officials say the Democratic National Committee hack was an act of political espionage, which, while not welcome, is an activity that all governments engage in, including the United States. By contrast, they say, it is the release of 20,000 hacked emails to WikiLeaks, an act that forced the resignation of the committee’s chairwoman, that raises concerns of interference in the 2016 election.
[Russian government hackers penetrated DNC systems]
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he has no reason to doubt that Moscow’s apparent actions were an attempt to interfere in the U.S. election. “The Russians are good enough at this that they could [have the material passed to WikiLeaks] without WikiLeaks ever knowing that they were the source. And WikiLeaks, of course, has no interest in knowing and even has a policy of taking data anonymously. There’s no other explanation out there that is credible.”
The Obama administration has previously not publicly blamed a foreign government for hacking strictly for political intelligence. But some officials say the White House should have publicly rebuked China for its massive hack of the Office of Personnel Management. Though considered an act of intelligence-gathering, its scale was so large that it merited a “naming and shaming,” one official said.
What the White House does — or doesn’t — do is significant because its response will send a signal to governments around the world, analysts said. Russia has been testing limits in all areas: militarily in Ukraine and in cyberspace in Europe and the United States.
“What action will trigger what response — that is the strategic question in cyber deterrence,” said Zachary Goldman, a former senior Treasury Department official who worked on sanctions, terrorism and financial intelligence.
Evelyn Farkas, a former senior Pentagon official focused on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said assuming a Moscow link to the WikiLeaks release, a response “at least as strong” as sanctions is warranted — and before November. “There’s a risk of waiting till after the election,” said Farkas, who stepped down last October and is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “If you want to have a chance of deterring, you have to move as quickly as possible. It sends a better signal to the world if we respond quickly. It shows that the president is still in control.”
But Sean Kanuck, who until May was the national intelligence officer for cyber issues with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said he is not sure the alleged Russian actions rise to a level that demands action. “If they actually manipulated the integrity of one of my electoral systems, it would warrant a national security response,” he said. “But just releasing DNC emails? Welcome to the new world. I would say that’s a law enforcement matter. The ‘doxing’ of a private entity is not a national security event.” | Administration officials say they will wait for the FBI to finish its investigation. |
Nasa's Cassini spacecraft, nearly 900 million miles from Earth, has turned its gaze away from Saturn and its entourage of moons to take a picture of its home planet. The image shows Earth as a very small, blue-tinged dot – paler and tinier than in other photos – overshadowed by the giant Saturn's rings in foreground. "We can't see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19," Linda Spilker, Cassini spacecraft lead scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.Picture: AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech | The best images taken on Nasa's Cassini spacecraft's mission. |
Model Kendall Jenner arrives at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada May 18, 2014. REUTERS/L.E. Baskow (UNITED STATES-Tags: ENTERTAINMENT)(BILLBOARDAWARDS-ARRIVALS) - RTR3PQOC
Kendal Jenner’s 19th birthday party was not for the faint of heart.
It seems the model takes after her older Kardashian sisters—meaning, she knows how to throw a wild party. The star-studded bash on Monday night was complete with a stripper who spanked the birthday girl in front of her guests.
TMZ posted a video of 19-year-old Jenner bent over as a stripper, who is dressed as a cop, spanks her.
Jenner wore gray pants and a teeny crop top for her party, and she was snapped wearing a sailor hat in several pics.
In another video posted by TMZ, Khloe Kardashian is seen getting cozy with her ex-boyfriend French Montana. The two were caught grinding to music and getting close.
Kardashian sent out an angry tweet shortly after the videos hit the web.
Kendall and I will find you!!! We will hunt you down and find you!!! You know who you are....
— Khloé (@khloekardashian) November 5, 2014 | Kendall Jenner’s 19th birthday party was not for the faint of heart. |
Yet at dusk on Saturday, the 2 kilometers between the US-trained Golden Division and the medieval world of the so-called caliphate suddenly were aflame with the loathing and terror of the world's war on ISIS.
Tracer rounds flashed across the horizon; the sparks and thud of countless explosions rocked the tiny village of Bazwaya, split in two by the closing stages of this battle. Ferocious and constant, it came closer and closer to the Iraqi base where we filmed from a rooftop.
By the end of the fearsome exchange -- which fell silent after heavy artillery flew over our heads -- a staggering 14 Iraqi soldiers were dead, some of the worst losses sustained by the unit.
When Maj. Hussien Hussien's Golden Division unit piled in to Bazwaya, they arrived as veterans of the war on ISIS. Having fought in Ramadi and Falluja, Hussien has a series of scars on his right ear from a rocket-propelled grenade attack months earlier.
They are the literal tip of the spear in the global war on the militant group. Despite the risk of being flanked, the men defiantly hold a tiny strip of land jutting perilously into ISIS territory.
The Golden Division moved into the town a few days earlier, putting them within 2 or 3 kilometers of the area near the Mosul city limits known as Gogjali. Hussien aggressively takes on ISIS positions, using tanks to pile into the dust at night and fire on areas from which his outposts are harassed. We watch as a series of rounds hit distant buildings marked by flags. In the darkness, we cannot tell if the flags are white to denote civilians, or black to denote those accused of using them as human shields: ISIS.
Hussien and his men use videos filmed from sniper scopes and Google maps to target their prey. The coalition has liaisons nearby, but not the volume of technology required to fully map out ISIS across this huge front.
The young Iraqis who make up much of this force have gone through American training and are buoyant when we join them. One, nicknamed Ahmed Bullet (there are six Ahmeds in the unit and his trainers had to distinguish among them) jokes in limited English that he doesn't like Michael Jackson. But, he says before emptying his mounted machine gun into the desert, he does like US Special Forces.
These men have been in the fight against ISIS for months. Their main question as they enter this closing chapter of the war: What level of bloodshed will they have to cause to defeat the enemy?
The town of Bazwaya itself is still haunted by its recent occupiers. An old school was used to teach grenade tactics, with instructions written on the whiteboard. Its doorbells are marked by graffiti that bans "the strike force" from entering, and half-prepared food rots in the kitchen. Nobody left here slowly.
Elsewhere, a stolen Syrian army tank hides in the basement of a house, its ISIS driver having simply reversed it into the building basement to keep it out of the view of drones. A Predator had flown above moments earlier, a reminder of the Coalition's presence.
The town is split along its main road by a huge tunnel, wide and tall enough to drive a motorbike along. It was dug by an excavator and then torched by the Iraqi special forces. As we are there, soldiers discover newer tunnels, some with shelters attached.
At one outpost, Alpha Company has a snapshot of how resilient their foe can be. Capt. Ala, using his scope, can regularly see his adversary hundreds of meters away behind sandy berms. Mustafa Sniper, as he is known, checks the top of the berm, and suddenly several rounds crack through the air above their heads. ISIS fighters are using a truck that allows them to pop up over the berm, open fire, and then repeat the procedure from another position moments later.
The soldiers, visibly nervous owing to how close their adversary is, try to fire back, but the moving target slows progress. "Where is the vehicle?" one shouts, as he loads a heavy machine gun. The exchange continues for 10 minutes.
At dusk the unit takes its hardest blow. At one point tracer rounds race fiercely back and forth across the street we are based upon. It was impossible to tell which blast hit Ala's men, but several rockets struck a room where the unit slept, making the largest contribution to a death toll of 14 that night.
One witness described how the strength of the blast tore limbs from bodies. Another witness said he stumbled over body parts when he entered the room in the dark.
That night we observe the wounded rushed back and treated on a large carpet pad outdoors near the base. Many dead, in blankets in the back of pickup trucks, race past us. The Iraqi army, like many military services, does not want its casualties filmed.
The losses leave the unit part furious, part numb. Hussien races to the front to try to bolster the defenses. Ahmed Bullet walks silently around the base, his cheerful nature subdued. An argument erupts among some soldiers about which radio channel they were meant to be on.
Once the gunfire slows, Hussien returns to his men and tries to raise morale. He is handed the weapons of the fallen and asks for their body armor. He puts his hand on Ala's shoulder and tells his men: "You guys are heroes, and none of you should be affected by this. Those suicide bombers are nothing."
It is a moment of great loss, tempered by grief for those already gone in previous battles and the knowledge that this comes 2 kilometers from Mosul's city limits, with another 7 to go before the city center. | It is across the silence and dense dust of the berms between ISIS' Mosul and advancing Iraqi special forces that the final chapter of ISIS in Iraq will play out. |
When a wildfire that had flickered for days in the forests of northern Alberta suddenly changed course and started careening towards Fort McMurray this May, the city’s entire population was told to flee.
The order came just as Spike Baker was brewing a pale ale.
But there was little time to spare: the flames could be seen in the distance and a thick cloak of smoke had already enveloped some parts of the city, said Baker, the head brewer at Fort McMurray’s Wood Buffalo Brewing Company. “We just turned off the brew, left everything in the kettle and headed out the door.”
The apocalyptic scenes that followed were seen around the world. Nearly 90,000 people struggled to evacuate the city, crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic as ash rained down and flames licked the highways.
Days after making it to safety, Baker remembered that he had left his last shipment – a pallet of peated malt from Scotland – sitting on the patio of the downtown brewery.
He gave little more thought to it as he returned to the fire-ravaged city some four weeks later. The blaze had torn a path of destruction through Fort McMurray, consuming more than 2,500 homes. The brewery was left standing, but had been badly scarred by ash and smoke. Two tanks of fully brewed beer had to be dumped, as did 500 litres of a half-done brew.
Baker expected that the pallet of malt would also have to be thrown out. “For that entire month, the entire town was incredibly smoky and when we came back we discovered that this malt had taken on a lot of that flavour.”
Lab tests came back with a surprise: the malt was safe to consume, but was completely altered by the fire.
The finding offered Baker a tantalising opportunity to create what he described as a one-of-a-kind time capsule in the form of a stiff drink.
“It’s so meaningful because everyone in this community was affected by the event and we’ve all been changed by it,” he said. “As was this malt and now we’re just able to capture that in a whisky.”
The whisky was first distilled last month, part of a process that will include five years of barrel ageing. “You can definitely taste the smoky notes to it but it is balanced with more of a sweet peat flavour to it, and then the campfire flavour has brought through spruce and mint.”
The whisky has been named the Beast, a nod to the nickname given to the blaze by the firefighters who fought it.
The brew is expected to yield some 200 bottles, most – if not all – of which will be donated to auctions and charities, said Baker. An auction of the first 10 bottles last month raised more than C$40,000 ($30,000) for local charities and attracted intense bidding, including by some who had lost their homes in the fire. “For us its not about remembering the devastation – although we’ll never forget that,” said Baker.
“It’s about remembering the togetherness of this community and how well everyone worked together to get out safely,” he said. “There’s so many stories of people just tossing keys to spare vehicles to absolute strangers or helping with broken-down vehicles. It was phenomenal.” | The May wildfire that raged in Alberta left Spike Baker’s peated malt infused with a smoky taste. Now he’s distilled a time capsule in the form of a stiff drink |
Reading Zadie Smith's gloriously undisciplined first novel, ''White Teeth,'' was like going to a rip-roaring party where you met so many great people it didn't matter that at 4 a.m. the beer suddenly ran out -- and some drunk knocked over the stereo. Before crashing to earth with its abrupt, tie-everything-together-in-knots ending, Smith's comic novel, published in 2000, soared higher than any other fiction debut had in years.
The narrative strategy of ''White Teeth'' was one of compulsive character generation. A hilarious overture about the bungled suicide attempt of Archie Jones (a charmingly defeatist doofus who suggested a British Homer Simpson) flowed into a satirical sketch of Archie's Jamaican bride, Clara Bowden, a Jehovah's Witness desperate to flee the family cult; this riff then prompted a wicked digression about Clara's cockney ex-boyfriend, Ryan Topps, a self-styled rebel whose scooter, alas, ''didn't do more than 22 m.p.h. downhill.'' And that was just the opening pages.
So what if she lacked a plot? Smith simply kept on going, crowding her stage with resentful Bangladeshi waiters, smug Jewish geneticists, adulterous music teachers, self-doubting Muslim separatists. All of these inventions were amusing; some were among the wittiest caricatures since Dickens. Moreover, because the novel's true subject was the improvised patchwork of North London, its sprawling structure became an accidental virtue. ''White Teeth'' wandered all over -- but in so doing, it brilliantly captured a sense of place.
The novel made Smith deservedly famous. Even she knew, though, that ''White Teeth'' lacked the shape of a masterpiece. She publicly disowned her firstborn, calling it the ''literary equivalent of a hyperactive, ginger-haired tap-dancing 10-year-old.'' Now the 26-year-old author has delivered a slimmer follow-up, ''The Autograph Man,'' that offers a corrective to the excesses of her debut. It may be, however, that Zadie Smith wasn't meant to behave. ''The Autograph Man'' is more entertaining than lots of novels, but it doesn't come close to the divine mess of ''White Teeth.''
In an apparent effort to button down, Smith has settled on a clear protagonist: Alex-Li Tandem, a half-Jewish, half-Chinese (and half-depressed) autograph trader from North London. Smith even gives Alex a plot, an amiable quest narrative. Her 27-year-old hero travels to New York to look for Kitty Alexander -- a reclusive 1950's starlet who has finally mailed Alex her signature, after years of failed entreaties. Alex reveres Kitty's old films; her frozen beauty is a ''sacred thing,'' arousing deeper feelings than sex with his girlfriend, Esther.
His unusual ethnicity aside, Alex is a safe choice for a character. He is the prevailing stereotype of his generation, the pop-culture-addled trivialist. When not selling autographs on the Internet, Alex rents videos. (''You watch too many films is one of the great modern sentences,'' Smith cleverly writes. ''It has in it a hint of understanding regarding what we were before and what we have become.'') The only unusual thing about Alex's immersion in cinematic imagery is that it's a deliberate emotional strategy -- a way of suppressing grief for his dead father.
Tracking down Kitty breaks Alex out of his Hollywood prison. Kitty, it turns out, is no Norma Desmond, clinging to faded glories; she's a sensible woman comfortable in her dying skin. Meeting her jolts Alex awake from his fantasies, inspiring a belated sense of engagement with the people around him.
It's satisfying to witness Alex overcome his intimacy issues. Yet Smith can't hide the fact that she's spinning a rather pat tale about a self-absorbed man who, soon after his sperm count starts dwindling, realizes he wants to be ''in the world.'' This is the same laddish parable Nick Hornby spent most of the last decade polishing.
Coming from Smith, this theme feels disappointingly myopic. After all, ''White Teeth'' was the first book in ages by a 20-something novelist who didn't write exclusively about mopey 20-somethings. It wasn't solely the length of ''White Teeth'' that evoked ''Middlemarch''; it was Smith's understanding that young people are only part of the story. ''White Teeth'' abounded in jaded, confused youths, but Smith wisely forced them to interact with older people who saw the world differently.
Perhaps that's why ''The Autograph Man'' feels so lightweight during its first half, in which Alex defends his celebrity obsession to his equally callow London friends. Most of these conversations simply float away, like the marijuana smoke often accompanying them. Smith tries to fill the emptiness of this chatter with jokes; explaining the laws of spliff-fueled dialogue, she drolly plays Moses: ''The one who is more stoned shall have the right -- for the period during which he is more stoned -- to tell the other man exactly what his problem is.''
If only these exchanges were so direct. In one typical chapter, Alex spars with Adam, a friend fascinated by cabala, the Jewish mystical tradition. Between tokes, Adam intones murky slogans: ''The godhead is incomplete. He needs us.'' Alex is unimpressed: ''That's a big job, my friend.'' Adam rightly criticizes Alex as shallow, but he's not exactly on a higher plane; whereas Alex seeks transcendence in a celebrity's inky scrawl, Adam hunts for ''shards'' of God in ''six chosen letters'' culled from the Torah. Both are fixated on symbols. This comparison is interesting, but Smith fails to develop the idea. Adam remains a static quote machine, and Alex never truly listens to him. | In Zadie Smith's second novel, the Chinese-Jewish-British protagonist worships an aging movie actress. |
The NBA is officially saying goodbye to North Carolina ... the 2017 All-Star Game will be moved to a state more friendly to the LGBT community.
The catalyst for the decision ... the North Carolina law that requires people to use bathrooms that correspond with their birth gender. The move to repeal the law failed.
The game -- which was originally scheduled for February 19, 2017 at Timer Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte -- will now be moved to another city ... as yet undetermined.
An NBA official says, "We do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2."
All hope isn't lost for basketball fans in Charlotte ... the NBA says they HOPE to reschedule the ASG for 2019 ... providing Charlotte lawmakers 86 the bill. | The NBA is officially saying goodbye to North Carolina ... the 2017 All-Star Game will be moved to a state more friendly to the LGBT community. The… |
If you want to get ahead in the art world, get a camera or get in front of one. All of the artists shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize use film or video and most of them star in their own work - most notoriously Tracey Emin, who enlivened the 1997 Turner circus by staggering drunk out of a post-award television debate declaring, "I'm off to phone my mum."
With film-makers picking up the prize in two out of the last three years, this list is proof again of how the ground has shifted in contemporary art.
Tate Gallery director, and chairman of the jury, Nicholas Serota defended the choice. "There are always gripes. Yes, there are a lot of cameras and no painters, but remember last year a painter (Chris Ofili) won."
But David Lee, editor of Art Review, one of the prize's fiercest critics, was scathing about the selection. "Why Emin is on the list I'll never know. I never knew her appalling poetry and embroidery was so highly valued. I suppose it is only right that the Turner should now be dominated by flickering amateur videos. After all, it's the only thing that the fashionable young things want to see these days.
"The great thing about these video installations is that they always break down, which is a mercy as it saves you having to stare at them tediously for hours on end."
Although the bete noire of the traditionalists, Emin - best known for her tent of names, Everyone I've Ever Slept With, and the wall hanging Mad Tracey From Margate, Everyone's Been There - is hugely influential among young artists, and jury member Sacha Craddock compared her to the legendary sculptor Louise Bourgeois.
This year's other mandatory controversy has been supplied by early favourite Steve McQueen, who snubbed the Turner two years ago and reputedly had to be talked into accepting his nomination this time. Fittingly for an artist with the same name as the film star, McQueen regularly raids Hollywood for inspiration, most notably in his re-enactment of Buster Keaton's classic window stunt from Steamboat Bill Jr.
The identical Wilson twins, Jane and Louise (Tracey Emin is also a twin), are the most striking choice though. Like McQueen their work is riddled with film references. Their spooky videos, shot in the abandoned Greenham Common missile base and the East German secret police headquarters, have echoes of cult television shows like The Prisoner.
The surprise element is Steven Pippin who has turned washing machines in a laundrette and a toilet bowl on the London to Brighton train into ingenious cameras.
Not since 1986, when the late film director Derek Jarman was beaten by Gilbert & George, has the medium of film so dominated a shortlist.
Ironically, the only highly tipped name not included was photographer Richard Billingham, whose unsettling portraits of his family and west Midlands low life have been praised for their raw truthfulness.
David Lee claimed this may have been because of the Tate's squeamishness about honouring a "mere photographer" rather than an artist. "I wonder where they draw the line between photographer and conceptual artist. I think it has something to do with the size of the pictures. Artists are the ones with the huge blown-up prints."
Critic Matthew Collings said it was inevitable that film-based artists should come out on top.
"The Turner Prize is not setting an agenda - it is simply reflecting what is going on. Over the last five years it has become an incredibly accurate barometer of the art world. And what is happening is that a lot of young artists are experimenting with film and video installations.
"Personally, I am not besotted with installation art and videos but it is quite interesting how many others are. There is quite a moronic trendiness around it and I am not sure how much of the work will last. I would prefer to look at a nice Picasso or a Jackson Pollock myself. Picking a lot of camera-based artists is not outrageous or evil or wrong, it just shows how everyone's visual references are set by TV. Even my old mum can read all its meanings."
Guardian art critic Adrian Searle said the final shortlist had a "horrible inevitability" about it. "That Jane and Louise Wilson are there, and that Steve McQueen at last accepted his nomination, came as a relief . . . The inclusion of Steven Pippin is the only real surprise."
An exhibition of work by the the five shortlisted artists will open at the Tate Gallery in London on October 30. The winner of the £20,000 prize will be announced on November 30. | Traditionalists are scathing as camera artists dominate shortlist for the best of British |
BY Mark Feinsand DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Monday, November 15th 2010, 4:00 AM
Next month's winter meetings at Disney World are expected to be action-packed, with free agents such as Cliff Lee and Carl Crawford presumably taking their final steps in free agency.
Monday night, the 30 general managers will gather a few miles away in Orlando for the start of the GM meetings, and while no big deals are expected to be struck during the next three days, plenty of groundwork can be set to put the wheels in motion on both the trade and free-agent markets.
It was at the GM meetings last year in Chicago that the Tigers made it be known that Curtis Granderson was available, setting the stage for the Yankees' deal for the outfielder at the winter meetings in Indianapolis a month later.
There won't be much Lee talk, as agent Darek Braunecker said last week that he would likely skip the event altogether. Brian Cashman has already made a trip to Arkansas to visit Lee, and it appears that other teams will follow suit, making a trip to Orlando unnecessary for the agent.
"We're not going to have to go there to drum up interest," Braunecker said last week.
There will be plenty of talk about some marquee names on the trade market, led by Kansas City's Zack Greinke, San Diego's Adrian Gonzalez and Milwaukee's Prince Fielder.
While most of the talk won't center around the 2011 rosters, Cashman will certainly check in with the other 29 GMs to find out what players might be available on the trade market. Cashman has already started talks with the agents for Lee, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, while Andy Pettitte is still deciding whether to pitch one more season. | Next month's winter meetings at Disney World are expected to be action-packed, but there won't be much Cliff Lee talk, as agent Darek aunecker said last week that he would likely skip the event. |
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A sign at the Birmingham airport fell on a family Friday, killing a 10-year boy and injuring other family members.
Deputy Coroner Derrick Perryman said 10-year-old Luke Bresette was pronounced dead at Children's of Alabama. Two other children were being treated there, and the mother, Heather Bresette, was taken to University Hospital, where spokeswoman Nicole Wyatt said she was in critical condition. The coroner's office and the hospital did not disclose the family's hometown.
Firefighters estimated the arrival-departure sign weighed 300 to 400 pounds.
Albert Osorio, 46, of Birmingham told al.com that he was close by when the sign fell. He said a loud boom was followed by screams from the family and witnesses. Then he and five other passers-by lifted off the sign.
"The whole thing flipped down on those kids. It took all of us here to stand it up," he said.
Airport spokeswoman Toni Herrera-Bast said officials aren't sure how the sign fell. She said it happened about 1:30 p.m. Friday in a pre-security area of the airport. The airport continued operating while rescue workers tended to the family.
The airport completed the first phase of a more than $201 million modernization effort and opened newly renovated concourses last week.
TSA officials say airport crews are checking all of the other flight information signs to make sure they are secure. The workers have also placed barricades around all of the flight signs to keep passengers from getting too close to them, MyFoxAl.com reported.
A spokesperson for the airport, Toni Herrera-Bast, said airport officials don't know why the board fell, but they will investigate the matter.
Herrera-Bast said the airport was never closed to the public during the incident and all flights are still going on as normal.
Birmingham's Mayor William Bell released a statement about the incident, saying he has offered the city's "full support to the Airport Authority as they investigate what has occurred this afternoon."
Mayor Bell said he has asked the public safety staff to "assist this family in their time of need in any way possible as they grapple with what has happened."
Click for more from MyFoxAl.com | A coroner says one of four children injured when a sign fell at an Alabama airport has died. |
It's a dog-eat-dog world in most corporations. And it helps to have a best friend nearby.
Bringing your pet to work is still a fairly rare perk at most companies, but there are definitely benefits to doing so. A study in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management found that people who bring their dogs into the workplace are less stressed, and that sense of job satisfaction extends to people who come into contact with the pet.
"Dogs in the workplace can make a positive difference," wrote principal investigator Randolph T. Barker, Ph.D. and professor of management in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business. "The differences in perceived stress between days the dog was present and absent were significant. The employees as a whole had higher job satisfaction than industry norms."
Looking for a job where you can bring Fido along? DogFriendly keeps a running list of companies that are dog-friendly—or you could simply apply for a job at one of these businesses.
—By Chris Morris, Special to CNBC.com Posted 12 Feb. 2014 | Bringing your pet to work is still a rare perk, but their are a growing number of companies including Google and Etsy that offer this fringe benefit. |
The idea for this story came, oddly enough, from the U.S. Secretary of Education. In a speech to reporters gathered for the Education Writers Association conference last month, Arne Duncan spoke about how technology continues to change how today’s students learn and specifically mentioned kindergarten classes that use iPads.
My colleague, Diane Rado, suggested the story to me when she returned from the speech. Here's the result.
My first interview with a preschool teacher who added the use of four iPads to his classroom repertoire this year intrigued me. But it wasn’t until I visited two classes – one with a roomful of preschoolers and another with kindergarten students – that I became convinced the story would fascinate readers too.
What parent hasn’t noticed how cell phones and computer screens enthrall their kids? And how a 2-year-old seems to intuitively know how to slide the icon to start a game? (Note of disclosure here: this reporter owns neither an iPad nor an iPhone and still keeps a daily calendar in my planner…my paper planner, that is.)
Q: What makes touchscreen tablets a fit for little fingers?A: The tablets have flat, wide screens with large colorful icons that little fingers can easily tap and swish across the screen. They also do not have a mouse. So, young children who don’t have the dexterity an older student might can still access the technology, educators and tech experts alike told me.
Q: Does every student get one?A: No. At least, not yet. While one school district in Maine made national headlines last month when it unveiled a plan to provide every kindergartner with an iPad, none of the dozen or so Chicago area districts that we consulted will give every kid their own tablet. Some opt for a classroom set of iPads that a teacher can reserve for a lesson and others keep two or four iPads in the room for student use.
Q: What about finger paints?A: They’re not going away, teachers told me time and again. The youngest students still learn best by exploring, discovering and playing with one another. iPads won’t replace books or block letters.
Rather, they’ll be one more tool for kids to use in the classroom. One teacher we interviewed takes pains to keep the four classroom iPads tucked away where students cannot see them unless they are used in a specific lesson. Once a day, for instance, he uses an iPad to look up the day’s weather with his students.
Q: Why is this topic – technology and the youngest students – such a hot button?A: I posed this question to Peter Pizzolongo with the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
He offered two insights: first, many educators worry about the rise of high-stakes testing pushing down more advanced curriculum to younger and younger grades. The presence of a computer in a preschool classroom – a scene more commonly found in advanced grades – may spark concerns that 4- and 5-year-olds will not have time for unwired and imaginative play.
But so long as the iPad does not limit a child’s creative play and comes at a developmentally appropriate time, Pizzolongo said it can be an appropriate learning tool.
Q: Coming soon to a school near you?A: Not necessarily, no. School principals and local school boards will determine whether and when to invest in touchscreen tablets for their youngest learners. While some schools are clamoring to get the iPads into classrooms, others are taking a wait-and-see approach. But one thing is clear, said Sandra Calvert, founder and executive director of the Child’s Digital Media Center: “Technology should not be seen as a replacement for teachers. …The teacher is the person who will make the platform work for kids and maximize what they can learn.”
Q: Now that you've read a little more, how does this strike you?
A: Share your thoughts in the comments! | How and why the Chicago Tribune started digging into a program to put iPads in pre-K and kindergarten classrooms |
No matter their loyalties, tennis fans agree on one absolute truth: Roger Federer is the most versatile, most complete, most polished player in the sport, and perhaps ever. His smooth serve, deadly forehand, picturesque backhand, crisp volleys and feather-light footwork make him the ideal model, a man who, win or lose, stands alone for his mastery of the game's techniques and intricacies.
That is, he did stand alone.
At this year's U.S. Open, where Mr. Federer and Rafael Nadal seem fated to play their first Grand Slam final in New York, there's more at stake in the game's greatest rivalry than a trophy. There's a race for supremacy in shotmaking, too. And Mr. Nadal, not long ago considered one-dimensional, is gaining ground. Quickly.
Rafael Nadal, who has won every Grand Slam besides the U.S. Open, will face Russia's Mikhail Youzhny in the semifinals on Saturday.
His transformation from a clay-court scrambler with a fabulous forehand into an all-surface menace who belts aces and punches winning volleys has caught many in tennis off guard.
"I completely underestimated his ability to improve," John McEnroe said.
When Mr. Nadal, 24, first began to garner attention for his clay-court prowess, Mr. McEnroe cast a suspicious glance on the young Spaniard's two-handed backhand. Mr. Nadal hits it with an abbreviated swing that relies largely on his right hand (Mr. Nadal is naturally right-handed, but plays with his left). "That doesn't seem like a shot that's humanly possible on a regular basis," Mr. McEnroe thought. Then he saw it up close. At Wimbledon in 2008, he warmed up Mr. Nadal for his semifinal. Even in practice, Mr. McEnroe was in awe of the stroke's speed and precision. "I was like, 'How did he get that type of power?' " he said. Mr. Nadal won the title that year, beating Mr. Federer in a five-set drama.
The list of Mr. Nadal's improvements over the years is long. Some are subtle, like his default position on the court, which is now much closer to the baseline, rather than four or five feet behind it. Others are readily apparent. His biting slice backhand. His can't-miss overhead. His reflex half volleys, like the one he hit—at the beginning of a 360-degree spin—against Fernando Verdasco in the quarterfinals Thursday evening. Drop volleys, angled volleys and deep volleys are among his tricks, too. "He's one of the best volleyers in the world now," Mr. McEnroe said.
At the U.S. Open, his serve has astounded. When Mr. Nadal won his first French Open title, in 2005, he was content to spin his serve into the court and punish his opponent during the rally that ensued. Now he strikes serves as fast as 135 mph and often ends points before a rally can begin.
So far this tournament, 40% of Mr. Nadal¹s serves have not been put back into play. Mr. Federer¹s percentage is slightly better (43%). Mr. Nadal has 15 more forehand winners than Mr. Federer, 51 more backhand winners and a higher winning percentage at the net (72% compared with 62% for Mr. Federer). To be fair to Mr. Federer, Mr. Nadal has played more overall points, which has given him a little room to pad his numbers. Neither man has lost a set so far. On Saturday, Mr. Nadal plays Mikhail Youzhny in the semifinals while Mr. Federer faces Novak Djokovic.
"Nadal's a kid who's not afraid to work and grind and make changes," said five-time U.S. open champion Jimmy Connors. "I see the young guys play today and I enjoy watching them, but to have an attitude like that, it's a throwback, especially in a time where your success is based on your bank account."
Mr. Nadal's ambition and rapidly evolving game are home grown. Though many tennis champions begin their rise under the tutelage of parents or relatives, most eventually seek expertise outside the family. Andre Agassi's father sent his son to Nick Bollettieri. So did Monica Seles's father. Mr. Federer has received expert coaching since childhood. Mr. Nadal, who never enrolled in a tennis academy, relies on his uncle, Toni.
As boy growing up on the island of Mallorca, Mr. Nadal hit both his forehand and backhand with two hands. Toni Nadal directed him to play left-handed. He put his nephew on poorly kept courts, so he would learn to adapt to bad bounces. He experimented—in fact, he still experiments. At his uncle's urging, Mr. Nadal recently tweaked his service grip, a tiny change that has produced startling results.
"This is a guy who is extremely ritualistic on court," said Jim Courier, the former world No. 1. "I would think it impossible to get him to make even the slightest change midseason."
Mr. McEnroe had a question about Mr. Nadal's development. "Who the hell was Toni Nadal as a coach?" he asked. "It's absolutely brilliant what they've done, the progression. Half of this and you would have said he was an amazing coach."
As versatile as Mr. Nadal has become, to call him Mr. Federer's stroke-for-stroke equal is still blasphemy in some quarters. Mr. Courier said Mr. Federer remained a more complete player. Tracy Austin, the former U.S. Open champion, agreed, though she said Mr. Nadal is "catching up." Roger Rasheed, the current coach of Gaël Monfils and the former coach of Lleyton Hewitt, said he admires Mr. Nadal's intensity, yet he hesitated to put him in Mr. Federer's class. "Federer has more clubs in his bag," he said.
If Messrs. Nadal and Federer do meet in this year's U.S. Open final, the outcome could have much to do with the surface under their feet. Mr. Nadal has beaten Mr. Federer on hard courts before, most recently in the final of the 2009 Australian Open. The U.S. Open's courts, though, play faster. Mr. Nadal can adapt to speed, as he has proven at Wimbledon. There, though, Mr. Nadal's exceptional footwork and balance give him an advantage over most opponents, who have unsure footing on the slippery grass. "On a hard court, everyone has good footing," said Mary Carillo, the CBS and ESPN commentator. "It narrows the gap."
Inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, Mr. Federer's footing is better than good. He has reached the final here six straight years and won the title five times. So far this tournament, he has played sublimely, even in swirling winds. Mr. McEnroe suggested the final could be the toughest test that either man has ever faced.
"This would be a big, big match for our sport," he said. "It would tell us a lot about where Rafa stands and also what Roger's made of." And, maybe, who has the most game in tennis. | Roger Federer once stood alone as the most polished player in tennis. Now, Rafael Nadal rivals Mr. Federer as a complete player. |
Greece, where the economy has been in free fall, “grew” only after adjusting for seasonal effects — a calculation made by economists at Barclays. The Greek government did not provide an official figure.
“I cannot imagine this is really a new spring,” said Fabio Fois, European economist at Barclays in London. Nor is news of technically defined growth likely to offer much consolation to ordinary Greeks. Not while one in five people in the work force are out of work.
Still, along with growth in Germany that was much better than expected, the data provided mild respite from the gloom that has pervaded Europe in recent days. Despite the figures, major stock indexes retreated Tuesday in Europe, and Spanish and Italian bond yields, or interest rates, edged up on news that those two countries’ economies continued to contract. Indexes in the United States, however, were modestly higher in afternoon trading.
The euro zone, by not slipping into recession in the first quarter of 2012, ran counter to expectations. Growth in the region was zero compared to the previous quarter, according to the figures, from Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency.
“In the current context, zero growth in the euro zone in the first quarter is relatively good news,” Marie Diron, an economist who advises the consulting firm Ernst & Young, said in a statement. “It suggests that the economy is not falling off a cliff under the burden of fiscal austerity.”
In the fourth quarter of 2011, gross domestic product in the euro zone had declined 0.3 percent. A second consecutive quarter of decline would have met the general definition of a recession.
Germany’s economy expanded 0.5 percent in the first quarter, more than analysts expected. But France did not grow at all, Spain’s economy slipped 0.3 percent, and Italy experienced a 0.8 percent decline in output.
The divergence in the numbers, which officials adjusted for seasonal effects, showed that there remains a wide gulf between Northern and Southern Europe.
“Even if the euro zone as a whole narrowly escaped technical recession in the first quarter, there is no sign of a strong, sustained economic bounceback on the horizon,” Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Bank, wrote in a note to clients. The data, he said, “offers scant consolation for the peripheral economies, where the recession is deepening and whose economic fortunes look bleak at best and downright depressing at worst.”
The growth numbers arrived hours before François Hollande, newly sworn in as French president, traveled to Berlin, where he was to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She was likely to see the data as vindication of her position that growth must be the product of sound government finances and economic restructuring, not the stimulus advocated by Mr. Hollande.
The Greek economy has shrunk by more than a quarter since 2008, and continued to plunge at the beginning of the year without adjusting for seasonal effects, although at a slower velocity. While Greece’s official statisticians do not make such adjustments, statistics agencies in most countries adjust quarterly data to reflect the fact that economic activity typically picks up at the end of a year and slows at the beginning of the next.
Another euro zone trouble spot, Portugal, also performed less dismally than expected. Its economy shrank 0.1 percent in the first quarter from the previous quarter, compared with a 1 percent decline that analysts had forecast.
Portugal, which is seen as having done more than Greece to improve economic performance, may have benefited from stronger exports. But Mr. Fois of Barclays said a recovery probably remains distant.
“Expecting sustained growth in the short term would be a bit optimistic,” he said. “You still have a lot of fiscal austerity to come through.”
Germany has benefited from the European Central Bank’s low lending rate of 1 percent, a benchmark that is set with the euro zone as a whole in mind but is probably too low for German conditions.
While credit is tight in much of Europe, it is still available in Germany at inexpensive rates that have pushed up real estate prices in urban areas. German wages are also likely to rise as companies have trouble finding skilled workers, fueling inflation which is already above the official target of about 2 percent.
Higher wages and inflation in Germany are likely to trouble some policy makers and segments of the German public, but may be good news for other countries in Europe. They would have an easier time competing with Germany for investment, while higher wages might increase German demand for their products.
“Robust German demand is essential to help offset falling domestic activity in the peripheral countries,” Ms. Diron said.
Germany depends on trade with other euro zone members, and in coming months there is a risk its economy may suffer from problems in countries like Italy and Spain.
“The highly competitive German economy has not entered a recession,” Jörg Krämer, chief economist at Commerzbank, wrote in a note. “Still, it is unlikely to expand at the same pace in the next few months.” | The euro zone narrowly avoided recession at the beginning of 2012, after the German economy grew much more than expected. |
OF all the restaurant brainstorms of the last decade or so, few have seemed as silly to me as the effort to impress Americans with the joys of consuming snack-size portions from small plates. Spain has its tapas, the Middle East its mezze, Russia its zakouski, Korea its anju and so on. But Americans? Supersize this!
In their proper cultural context, small-plate restaurants make perfect sense. Tapas bars like Xunta in the East Village and Ñ in SoHo are great fun, for example. But when you try to transfer this idea to cuisines out of context, the result has been some pretty dopey restaurants.
And yet, even pronouncements like my own have exceptions, which brings me to Alta, just about the smartest small-plate restaurant I have seen in New York. The owners, Christopher Chesnutt and Ewa Olsen, do not have brainy restaurants in their background, though Mr. Chesnutt has been involved in successful kitsch joints like El Teddy's and Tortilla Flats. But at Alta the elements of food, wine and ambience all come together.
Mr. Chesnutt hired as chef Harrison Mosher, who had been a sous-chef at 71 Clinton Fresh Food. His assignment was to create a menu of small plates, using flavors and ingredients from around the Mediterranean, and this he has done cleverly.
Some of the dishes are traditional. A pile of tiny deep-fried smelts ($6), seasoned just enough with lemon and salt, would be right at home in any seaside Greek taverna. So would a salad of roasted beets with feta cheese ($6.50), though I doubt it would also be paired with orange and pistachios, so that you could gather in one perfect bite sweet beet, acidic orange, creamy cheese and crunchy nut. And I can't imagine the salad presented so carefully and beautifully. No doubt you would find savory lamb meatballs ($5) on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, possibly served with fennel shavings and labneh, the yogurt cheese. But would you find skewers of pork belly ($7), each tender, layered cube interspersed with scallions, roasted peppers and hard-cooked quail eggs? Each mouthful is wonderful.
Unlike some overly conceptual restaurants, Alta requires no lecture on how to order. You simply plunge right in, order a few dishes (three will feed you well) and eat as they come. A small dish of Marcona almonds ($3) is perfect for nibbling as you scan the menu, and the list of wine and beers is smart and fairly priced, with more than a few interesting bottles for under $30.
When Mr. Mosher is at his best, each plate brings with it unexpected flavor combinations. Beautifully roasted piquillo peppers are stuffed with goat cheese ($7.50) and served over a pestolike sauce, an excellent marriage of pungencies. Calamari and haricots verts ($8) are cut into slender "tagliarini," roasted together and given a spicy edge, while a generous bowl of cauliflower florets ($7), roasted until they caramelize, are blended with Manila clams, chorizo and raisins, which add surprising bursts of sweetness.
The menu also includes some bigger offerings, like a fabulously buttery sautéed skate with Manila clams ($10) or a mild but well-prepared shallot risotto ($11), dotted with cubes of grana Padano. But I would hate to lose the opportunity to try smaller plates, like smoky grilled octopus with parsley and an olive purée ($8) or buttery brandade ($9), airy as a codfish soufflé.
Mr. Mosher is not without overwrought moments. His smoked eggplant and labneh dip ($5) suffers from the addition of honey. Ginger adds a bizarre note to bouquerones ($5). Intriguing sweets like a lime-ginger tart ($5) and a pear marinated in white wine ($6) are almost undone by the crème fraîche that is scooped onto each dessert plate.
Though Alta has been open since September, it is a work in progress. Situated in the Greenwich Village town house that was formerly L-Ray and long ago Texarkana and Peter's Backyard, Alta has banished those ghosts to offer its own transporting experience. As you enter, you pass a long, inviting bar. You climb stairs to the second floor and pass through the small kitchen to a small, airy dining room facing out to the street.
Each meal at Alta was a natural, unforced pleasure. Inevitably, I imagine, some people will complain about small portions. All I can say is, they work for me.
64 West 10th Street, Greenwich Village; (212) 505-7777.
BEST DISHES Smelts; beet salad; pork belly skewers; piquillo peppers; calamari; cauliflower; skate; shallot risotto; octopus; brandade.
PRICE RANGE Small plates, $3 to $14; medium plates, $10 to $13.50.
HOURS Sunday, 6 to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, until 1 a.m.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Steps at entrance. Stairs to restrooms. | Alta is just about the smartest small-plate restaurant I have seen in New York, full of natural, unforced pleasures. |
The anguished widow of a firefighter killed in a Brooklyn blaze bared her soul in an emotional note about her husband just hours after he died.
Lt. Gordon “Matt” Ambelas, 40, died after suffering smoke inhalation and third-degree burns while battling an electrical fire in Williamsburg on Saturday night. Hours later, his widow, Nanette, took to Facebook to share her grief.
“How do I say goodbye to you Matt,” Nanette wrote. “You were my everything and the rock of this family.. My heart will never heal and I will love you forever. I want more time!!!”
The social media post mentions their two daughters, Giovanna, 5, and Gabriella, 7.
The aftermath of a deadly fire.
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“My life and my children’s has forever been changed,” Nanette wrote. “I was lucky enough to call you my husband for almost 10 wonderful years and thank you for giving me two of the most special part of you. Gabriella and Giovanna had the best father in the world.”
Nanette goes on to say she “will raise our girls to make you proud.”
After sharing her grief online, Nanette spent much of the day Sunday making funeral arrangements.
Ambelas’ wake will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at Casey McCallum Rice Funeral Home on Nelson Avenue in Staten Island. The hours both days will be from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.
The funeral will be held Thursday at 11 a.m. at St. Clare’s Church on Nelson Avenue in Staten Island. | She wants more time. The anguished widow of a firefighter killed in a Brooklyn blaze bared her soul in an emotional note about her husband just hours after he died. Lt. Gordon “Matt” Ambelas, 40, d... |
Ill grandfather refused to go into hospital until his grandson was well enough to return home
A BLACK and white photograph of a shirtless grandfather cradling his baby grandson has taken the internet by storm for an unexpected reason.
In the image Allen Halstead and little Kolbie Gregware are looking into each other’s eyes and both are displaying their zipper scars following open heart surgery.
The shot highlights the brutality of life, as the pair are in the opposite stages of their lives but have already shared such a difficult experience.
Kolbie, 11 months old, had his first open heart surgery at four months old after being born with a heart defect, pulmonary vein stenosis, pulmonary hypertension, chronic lung disease, kidney disease and Down’s syndrome.
Brandy Gregware, Kolbie’s mother, said: “My dad has had two open heart surgeries,18 stents, pacemaker, deflator, artery disease, diabetic, massive stroke, to many to count mini heart attacks and has 10 per cent heart function. His last admission was at the heart failure hospital in Atlanta.
“They were able to put him a medicine that helps his heart beat a little stronger. Once the medicine is no longer effective we will be saying our goodbyes.”
Alabama-based photographer Sunshine Moody took the series of images after meeting the family in hospital when her own daughter was in the same neonatal intensive-care unit.
She offered to take free photos of the twins because she had missed out on producing some professional images of her daughter during the time she was unwell.
Sunshine told the Daily Mail: “We had set a time up to take them, but Kolbie took a turn for the worse and was sent to Egleston in Atlanta. So we postponed the shoot.
“Then in May, she reached out to me to do their photos for their upcoming birthday.
“The photoshoot itself was actually fun and her dad is a character. When it came time to take the photo, I wanted to catch the rawness of the situation but also the love you can clearly see that the two of them have for one another.”
Kolbie and his twin brother Kash, who requires spine surgery, are now 11 months old and Kolbie spent seven of those months in hospital.
During the youngster’s last admission to hospital he was on a life support machine for over two-and-a-half weeks due to being ill with HMPV.
Speaking about the image of her father and son, Brandy added: “I was in tears when I saw this picture! I’m in tears as I type this… It shows 2 fighting miracles.
“This past year has been extremely hard for our family because BOTH have been in and out of the hospital and us not knowing if they would make it home! There was several times my dad refused to go to the hospital til his Kolbie Lee came home.” | A BLACK and white photograph of a shirtless grandfather cradling his baby grandson has taken the internet by storm for an unexpected reason. In the image Allen Halstead and little Kolbie Gregware a… |
Perseus Books Group is planning to lay off about 30 employees of Consortium, a company based in St. Paul, that provides sales, marketing, distribution and bill-collecting services to 100 small independent publishers across the country, including prominent publishers like City Lights and Assouline. After acquiring Consortium in August, David Steinberger, the president and chief executive of Perseus, which includes imprints like Da Capo Press, Basic Books and Running Press, said it was not considering layoffs. When the reorganization takes place on March 1, distribution for clients of Consortium and Perseus will be come from the Perseus center in Jackson, Tenn. | Perseus will lay off about 30 employees from Consortium, which provides sales, marketing, distribution and bill-collecting services to independent publishers. |
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley surrendered — just like many other parents.
When his daughters were choosing their colleges, he let them have their way. He didn’t want to crush their dreams, and ended up with crushing debt.
Last week, O’Malley spelled out a proposal to help students graduate debt-free from public colleges and universities, by increasing Pell Grants and automatically enrolling borrowers in income-based repayment plans. One key part of his plan calls for helping students and parents refinance their debt at lower interest rates.
O’Malley knows of what he speaks. In announcing his proposals, he revealed his family has accumulated more than $339,200 in student loans, the bulk of which are parent PLUS loans. He and his wife borrowed the money to educate their two daughters, Grace, 24, who attended Georgetown University and is a public school teacher in Baltimore, and Tara, 23, who attended the College of Charleston in South Carolina and is now an administrative assistant for the United Nations Foundation in the District of Columbia. The couple still has two sons to get through college, William 17, and Jack, 12.
I can empathize with O’Malley’s dilemma. His father, a World War II veteran, graduated from Georgetown. His daughter pleaded to have the same opportunity, although his father went on the GI Bill. And once you allow the first to go out-of-state, it’s hard to deny the second.
We can second-guess the wisdom of their decision, and I do. But now that they’ve made it, I hope the O’Malleys — given their public platform — will use their experience as a cautionary tale that, for most families, it’s not OK to cave to an 18-year-old whose dreams of a particular college will create decades of debt.
“I don’t want to hold us up as a metaphor of every family,” O’Malley said. “We are very lucky in that both of us are working and hopefully will continue to work. I think one thing that is true for all of us as Americans, it’s not good for our country or our economy to saddle [families] with the sort of debt that we have. A lot of families don’t have the ability to go into that sort of debt.”
Total outstanding student loan debt has reached $1.3 trillion. When we talk about the student-loan crisis, we mostly focus on the amount of debt being accumulated by students. But there’s not enough emphasis on the amount parents are borrowing. PLUS loans for parents have reached almost $69 billion, according to Department of Education data.
“Better we have the debt than [our children] have the debt,” O’Malley said.
That’s a sentiment many parents hold. But even as public servants, the O’Malleys (Katie O’Malley is a Baltimore District Court judge) may be able to manage the debt load. Are other families really thinking through whether they can?
As Consumers Union points out, PLUS loans, which are also available for graduate students, have much higher borrowing limits. The organization, in a letter urging the Department of Education not to lower standards for PLUS loans, made some important observations.
“Loans to graduate students are made on the promise that they will see an increase in salary from their educational attainment that enables them to repay the loans they borrowed,” wrote Suzanne Martindale, a staff attorney for Consumers Union. “Parents, on the other hand, do not see an increase in their incomes from their children’s education. . . . They have no guarantee that their children will help pay the loans back, or will even finish school. For these reasons, allowing parents to borrow many thousands of dollars in PLUS loans raises unique concerns.”
We’ve heard promises on the campaign trail this year about helping families afford college. And we do need some legislative intervention so that many people won’t be priced out of a college education.
But we also need to press upon parents and their children that dreams can come true without going to colleges that result in a heavy debt load.
As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked O’Malley an obvious question. What’s the plan for their sons?
“I hope to make a compelling argument with them to choose more affordable options for their parents,” he said. “I may put your column under their pillows.” | For most families, it’s not OK to cave to an 18-year-old whose dreams of a particular college will create decades of debt, warns Michelle Singletary. |
There are close to 110 million smartphone users in the United States alone. And, according to a recent Price Grabber study, many of them plan to use their devices for holiday shopping.
The study polled 2,500 smarthphone users across the country. Of them, 32% said they planned to use shopping apps to use for the holidays; 42% said they planned to buy small- and big-ticket items through smartphones. 75% agreed they would do some form of shopping online.
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to retailers — many have adjusted accordingly. Target, for example, will add QR codes to a selection of its toys so shoppers can scan and purchase in a few clicks. Others, like Best Buy, plan to assertively match the prices of their online competition, like Amazon.
Watch the video above to learn more. How will you be shopping this holiday season? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of Flickr, ilamont.com | According to a PriceGrabber poll, smartphone apps will play a big part in people’s holiday shopping plans. Retailers are preparing to either combat or embrace the trend. |
More than 400,000 Californians will have their weekly federal unemployment benefits reduced by about 17.7 percent starting April 28 as a result of the federal budget cuts known as sequestration.
The Employment Development Department announced Wednesday how it will implement the cuts. The cuts will only affect federal benefits, which start after someone has exhausted their regular state benefits, which typically last up to 26 weeks. Federal benefits arrive in four consecutive stages known as tiers that total up to 47 weeks. The cuts won’t hit everyone receiving federal benefits at once.
“The cuts will not be implemented for unemployed individuals collecting benefits in the middle of a federal extension tier. The cuts will only be taken at that point when the individual first starts a federal extension claim or starts a new extension tier that begins on or after April 28, 2013,” EDD says. It says it will send claimants a notice at that time, giving the effective date of the benefit reduction and the amount.
The cut will reduce the maximum weekly benefit of $450 by about $79 and the average benefit of $296 by $52. EDD has a sequestration calculator here.
The cuts were supposed to take effect at the end of March and reduce benefits by 10.7 percent. But many states including California had trouble programming the necessary changes by that deadline and as a result must reduce benefits by a larger amount.
“It would have been better if they had done it earlier, and across the board,” rather than waiting to slice a person’s benefit until a new tier begins, says Maurice Emsellem of the National Employment Law Project. That would have spread the pain a little more evenly. He says 19 states implemented the cuts the first week of April. “For states that impose an across-the-board cut on April 28th, it comes to 12.8 percent, not 17.7 percent,” he says.
EDD emphasized that the cuts will not reduce state benefits, nor will they reduce the duration of federal benefits, only the amount. Federal jobless benefits are scheduled to expire entirely at the end of the year.
Recipients of extended benefits under the California Training Benefit and Trade Readjustment Assistance programs are exempt from cuts.
Jobless people should expect less help from EDD because sequestration will also reduce funds money the federal government gives states to administer unemployment programs. EDD said it urges customers “to use self-help tools whenever possible.” | CA will cut federal jobless benefits almost 18% starting April 28 |
This argument has strengths and weaknesses, but surely its most audacious suggestion is that the court should give legal weight to Hobby Lobby’s religiously motivated “desire” to provide employees with health insurance — even though the health-care law guarantees that workers could still get coverage, through the health-care exchanges, if Hobby Lobby declined to provide it.
Sounds to me like Hobby Lobby’s religion requires the company — and only the company — to look out for its employees’ health needs. That sure is a highly specific religious duty.
No doubt Hobby Lobby provides this insurance out of a sincere intent to fulfill that duty. But I’ll bet the federal tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance plays a role, too.
Given that it benefits from this feature of the Internal Revenue Code, Hobby Lobby’s insistence on delivering health insurance to employees in precisely the manner its company conscience dictates strikes me as not only a matter of principle but also a subtle manifestation of the great American entitlement mentality.
I’ll leave it to the court to sort that out. The real question is: Why do we have to worry about thorny issues like this in the first place? We wouldn’t have to if nearly 150 million Americans weren’t covered through employer-paid health insurance.
Potential crises of corporate religious conscience are just the latest pitfall of the employer-based system, whose accidental origins lie in World War II wage controls that encouraged companies to compensate employees with health care and other “fringe benefits” instead of cash.
Workers risk losing benefits when they switch employers; the resulting “job lock” reduces labor-market flexibility. And the tax exemption encourages overconsumption of health care, which drives up costs for everyone.
On the surface, Obamacare reinforces the system through such devices as the insurance mandate for large employers such as Hobby Lobby. But in other ways, the 2010 law undermines it, such as by imposing an excise tax that offsets some of the tax subsidy for employer-paid benefits and by creating the exchanges as an alternative source of coverage.
Ezekiel Emanuel, a former top health-care adviser to President Obama, predicts in a new book that Obamacare’s incentives will cause large employers to cease offering health insurance; Emanuel thinks fewer than 20 percent of private-sector workers will still be getting it in 2025, down from nearly 60 percent now.
From Emanuel’s lips to God’s ears. Of all the reasons to cheer the reported fulfillment of the administration’s 7 million sign-up quota for the exchanges, one of the best is the prospect that this country might develop a robust individual health-insurance market — ending “job lock” for millions.
If Republicans were thinking straight, they’d be cheering, too. Yes, Obamacare is still very much a work in progress and could flop in a thousand different ways — including from the failure of many enrollees to actually make their insurance payments, as the GOP predicts.
Nevertheless, exchanges, or something like them, would be at the heart of any market-oriented Republican alternative. Indeed, then-GOP presidential nominee John McCain proposed in 2008 to eliminate the tax exemption for employer-paid benefits and use the savings to subsidize an individual market — albeit with a different and, Democrats said, weaker method of insuring people who have preexisting conditions than the one in Obamacare. Three Republican senators recently offered a similar proposal.
In 2008, Obama attacked McCain’s plan as a tax increase, just as Republicans today are shortsightedly attacking Obamacare’s excise tax on employer-paid benefits, among other things.
Better for Republicans to admit that, for all their current flaws, the exchanges could be the building blocks of a system that breaks the link between coverage and employment — and start offering ways to improve them.
Some on the right concede as much. As Avik Roy, a health-care expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute told John Harwood of the New York Times, “It’s a better world where people shop on their own.”
Sooner or later, the GOP as a whole will have to embrace such arguments. Maybe after the election.
Read more from Charles Lane’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. | Obamacare starts to break the employer-health care lock. It’s about time. |
Rick Santorum shares Rocky Balboa's tough style and blue collar charm
Sylvester Stallone likes Rick Santorum. He gave his 1994 Senate campaign $1,000 (for the record, he gave $1,000 to Joe Biden, too). Perhaps the mumbling thespian sees something of himself in the Rickster? Both are Italian-Americans, both have worked hard to get where they are. Both are muscular conservatives (one literally, the other more intellectually). Both have played working class heroes. In the latest installment of the Rocky Balboa series, Stallone portrays Rocky as a post-9-11 dropout, living in a post-industrial Hell. Yet, Rocky steps the ring with a younger boxer and matches him blow for blow, round for round. He doesn’t win, but the bloodied old boy leaves the ring with his head held high to the chant of “Rock-y! Rock-y! Rock-y!” That right hook spoke for an entire generation of angry Americans.
Santorum finds himself in a similar underdog role, and there’s as much history resting on his shoulders as there is on Balboa’s. Following his photo-finish in Iowa, Conservatives have to reassess Santorum and decide whether or not he’s going to be a one hit wonder. They face a difficult choice. Rick has plenty of momentum but little money and manpower, making it difficult to win big states later on. But if Right-wingers abandon this newborn frontrunner for Gingrich or Perry, they could split the field and let Romney win by default. No wonder then that a group of social conservatives gathered in Texas yesterday “to unite and to come to a consensus on which Republican presidential candidate or candidates to support”. They need to make their minds up soon.
The factors against Santorum emerging as that consensus candidate aren’t limited to his campaign poverty. For starters, if you Google his name you come up with an obscenity invented by gay rights advocates in revenge for Santorum’s pro-family agenda. In many ways, this filthy neologism is a badge of honour, for it testifies as to how much the candidate gets under liberals’ skin. On the other hand, it’s a sore reminder of how Santorum more often divides than he unites. His conservatism has a rough edge that would alienate many moderate and independent voters were he nominated. He has opined that, “The political base of the Democratic Party is single mothers running households that look to the government for help,” and said, “What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution.” Rick also believes that, “There are no Palestinians” and that the theory of manmade climate change is “patently absurd”. Where other candidates fear to tread, Santorum goes in with fists of steel.
This ought to endear him to conservatives, but even there he has some trouble. The Ron Paul and establishment wings of the party will never vote for Santorum – so that’s about 50 percent of every primary vote lost. But even some Tea Party types have convinced themselves that Santorum isn’t one of them. The morning after Iowa, the Telegraph’s own James Delingpole launched a scathing attack on Santorum as a “big government conservative”. He quoted this analysis by National Review’s Michael Tanner:
“Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style ‘big-government conservatism.’ For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ … He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey … In fact, Santorum might be viewed as the mirror image of Ron Paul. If Ron Paul’s campaign has been based on the concept of simply having government leave us alone, Santorum rejects that entire concept. True liberty, he writes, is not “the freedom to be left alone,” but “the freedom to attend to one’s duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” And he seems fully prepared to use the power of government to support his interpretation of those duties.”
One man’s statist is another man’s working class hero, and there’s a case for saying that Santorum is misunderstood by Delingpole and Tanner. The earmarks that Santorum liked (appropriations attached to congressional legislation) were probably liked by his constituents, too. The whole point of going to the Senate is to serve one’s state. Any Senator who put either the best interests of the national taxpayers first, or who sacrificed goodies on the altar of high mindedness, would be a fool. They also wouldn’t be re-elected. Maybe that’s why Ron Paul – who Tanner calls Santorum’s philosophical opposite – also loves earmarks.
Santorum and his voters define the goals of conservatism differently from Paul and Tanner. Free trade is all well and good, and generally provides the best conditions for prices and profit. But it doesn’t guarantee strong families or crime free communities. On the contrary, the mass migration of manufacturing jobs has made the American economy more efficient but its society less stable. Whole communities have been dispossessed. Families have been broken by despondency, addiction and the burdens of low paid menial labour. Much of this has happened in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s home state. For Rick to speak out against the amoral brutality of globalisation is, again, him just doing his job. But it is also natural that a family values conservative should wish to use the state to shield vulnerable people against the excesses of the free market. For what is conservative about maximising profit at the expense of human dignity? If this movement is prepared to step in to save the life of an unborn child, why won’t it do the same for a man’s livelihood?
Combine Santorum’s religiosity with his economic populism and you see the kind of coalition that might put him in the White House. One wing is the Christians who came out for Rick in Iowa – traditional Republican social conservatives. The other is Middle Americans who are feeling the pinch of recession and have been let down by Obama. Columnist David Brooks writes that these working class voters, “sense that the nation has gone astray: Marriage is in crisis; the work ethic is eroding; living standards are in danger; the elites have failed; the news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent children. They face greater challenges, and they are on their own.” If Ron Paul’s brand of liberty means being left to fend for yourself, these folks are already living it. What they are looking for is not less government but a government that shares their values and will fight their corner. For the record, Santorum did not support the 2008-2009 bailouts and is a straight-down-the-line Tea Partier when it comes to spending. But his candidacy has shown a unique sensitivity to the plight of ordinary men and women. That puts him at the opposite end of the spectrum to Obama, who has spent a lot of money on welfare boondoggles while simultaneously signing free trade bills with Asia and South America.
And this is why Santorum’s controversial public image could be more of a help than a hindrance. Some people find Rick aggressive and tactless. Others identify with his tough struggle against the Republican elite and the media. Like Rocky, he has entered the ring the underdog. Millions of Americans who feel unrepresented in Washington will be drawn to him. He is the grandson of a coal miner and the son of an Italian immigrant. He says what he believes, and much of what he believes matches the experience of working class voters. Big business is against them, government is against them. All they’ve got is God. Well, maybe now they’ve got Rick Santorum, too. | Sylvester Stallone likes Rick Santorum. He gave his 1994 Senate campaign $1,000 (for the record, he gave $1,000 to Joe Biden, too). Perhaps the mumbling thespian sees something of himself in the Rickster? Both are Italian-Americans, both have worked hard to get where they are. Both are muscular conservatives (one literally, the other more intellectually). [...] |
Hers was an often repeated observation. Residents want peace, but they harbor no particular rooting interest in the army or the drug gangs or the paramilitaries composed of retired cops: All armies are lethal.
We scrambled up a hardscrabble path to the new police precinct that commands the hill like a medieval castle keep. Inside, three police officers in body armor nodded warily.
They pointed to one, two, three bullet holes in the glass windows of the precinct, each the size of a Ping-Pong ball; the police attack, and the gangs counterattack. The precinct wall is dominated by a painting of a knight kneeling and holding his sword, accompanied by these words: “You may die, but if you don’t fight, you’re already dead.”
The precinct commander walked in, a semiautomatic rifle strapped to his chest. “You should not stay here — go back to the Olympics,” he said. “Shooting is anytime.”
Officials cut several bus lines that run north to south during the Olympics, in hope of keeping gangs from invading the tourist zones of Copacabana and Ipanema and the central business district. Many tens of thousands of working-class Cariocas, as natives of Rio are known, spend two and a half to three hours commuting to distant jobs, journeys made far more arduous during the Games. Anderson’s mother lives in a favela. She is in her ninth decade and has never visited the white sand beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema.
The city’s public safety director talks about the disaster that could await when the Olympics end and soldiers withdraw from the tourist zones.
The next day, I talked with Carla Maria Avesani, a young professor at the Rio de Janeiro state university. She has a Ph.D. and runs a nutrition institute at the University of Rio de Janeiro. She serves on the board of a prestigious journal and writes for an international audience of academics. She studies how changes in diet help poor patients on dialysis and those with heart problems. It was her dream to work at a public university with a mission.
Now she and her fellow professors pool their Brazilian reais to buy computers and paper towels, and to fix doors. They try to figure out what to do about the broken elevator. Their university is broke, its pockets turned out.
She lives in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, with good restaurants and that Mediterranean climate. The evening atmosphere, with young couples hand in hand, calls to mind Rome, except with enormous rock faces nearby and an ocean lapping at your feet. She watched the opening ceremony, all the brilliant choreographies, and read her friends’ proud posts on Facebook.
She could not join them.
“It was a beautiful party; we Brazilians do wonderful parties,” Avesani said. “But to see the amount of money spent for stupid stadiums, I don’t want to celebrate when the state is broke and hospitals are closing and the poor are dying by the thousands.”
She paused. “It’s nice to see so many foreigners, and I want you to be happy. I want to be happy.”
She sighed. “I would be happiest now if the world sees how we are living. I feel absolutely offended by these Olympics.”
A version of this article appears in print on August 15, 2016, on page D8 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘The Rich Play, and We Die’. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe | Rio de Janeiro residents have criticized Brazilian officials for spending money on the Olympics rather than tending to the country’s problems. |
THE path is wide, the terrain easy, yet I keep losing my footing, tripping over stones and my own feet because I can’t watch the trail. My eyes refuse to leave the white mountain filling the sky before me, the 24,786-foot Himalayan peak Annapurna III. It dominates the horizon as surely as a sunset does, but with millenniums-old glaciers ringing its crest like a necklace of diamonds, it feels more dazzling than even the brightest setting sun.
Ethan-Todras Whitehill for The New York Times
In the Kali Gandaki Valley. In recent years, a road has been built along the river.
Just over a third of the way through the legendary 150-mile Annapurna Circuit trek, circling the Annapurna massif in Nepal, I have finally reached a height where no smaller mountains obscure my sightlines to the peaks. Ahead, four days on, lies Thorong La, a daunting 17,769-foot pass, the high point of the circuit and start of the trail back down. But I’ve already reached euphoria. Annapurna III is too everything tall, close, imposing, beautiful to be true.
Everyone who’s been to Nepal tells you the Himalayas are big. But nobody prepared me for the reality of breathing hard at altitudes already near those of some Rocky Mountain peaks, only to see a mountain rise another full height of the Rockies above me.
If my fiancée, Jen, and I had driven this same route in a jeep, my memories now and forever after would be a blur of trees and far-off villages, the mountains beautiful but remote, hardly more vivid than those seen in nature documentaries or computer wallpaper. Instead, as we approach the base of Annapurna III after a week of walking, my head is swimming with images seen close up: swaying footbridges over thunderous gorges; rocky footpaths jammed with goats, donkeys and water buffalo; terraced rice paddies thrusting green shoots against the olive hillsides; narrow stone Gurung villages filled with shrieking children, chatty shopkeepers and the low hum of chanting monks seeping out of brightly colored Buddhist monasteries.
And the mountains. Day by day, we’ve hiked in the company of the Annapurnas, admiring them from a distance in their shifting costumes of sun and shadow, sighing each time they hid behind clouds and cheering when they emerged. They feel like our mountains, our friends. Our Annapurnas.
It is a shame, then, that by 2012 a road will have been built on this path, destroying this experience and, according to many, placing the last nail in the coffin of what was once the greatest trek on earth.
Many walks lay claim to the title of World’s Greatest Trek the Milford Track in New Zealand, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and the Inca Trail in Peru are a few. But none of those are epics through valleys surrounded by five-mile-high peaks, staying every night in teahouses run by local villagers and stocked with good kitchens, cold beer and Snickers bars. The Annapurna Circuit marries natural grandeur, cultural immersion and relative luxury in a union found nowhere else.
The circuit is a tale of two river valleys: up the steep, lush Marsyangdi, then over the pass and down the wide, arid Kali Gandaki. But in recent years a road, usable by buses and four-wheel-drive jeep-like vehicles, was completed that runs up the Kali Gandaki to the base of the pass. On that side, most trekkers now opt to ride in the jeeps rather than walk in their dust, and as a result, the time needed to complete the circuit has shrunk from 17 days to 11. In the coming years, with the road now being built on the Marsyangdi side, the undeveloped portion of the trek will shrink again, to just four days.
Roads are the bane of trekkers, most of whom myself included want to visit places where only their own two feet can take them. On trekking blogs and message boards, purists are already mourning Annapurna’s demise. So when I walked the Annapurna Circuit this past October, I decided to test this trekking prejudice: with Jen, a guide and a porter, I would walk the 17-day trail, even if it meant mingling with jeeps, and find out first-hand if all the doomsaying was warranted.
Thorong La is the highest altitude reached by many trekkers in their lifetimes, a few hundred feet higher than Everest Base Camp and eclipsed on the popular-treks list only by Kilimanjaro’s 19,331 feet. October, after the usual monsoon months, is prime trekking season because it is typically the driest month.
For pretty much every trekker in Nepal, whether headed to Annapurna, Everest or any of the other fabulously scenic regions, the preparation starts in the Thamel neighborhood of Katmandu, where every third storefront overflows with knockoff trekking poles, nylon pants and packs at prices half to a third of those elsewhere. (Our guide, a 30-something, thin-mustached Gurkha, called it “Chinese North Face.”) Thamel has no sidewalks, so our every foray into its streets was a tooth-and-nail battle with rickshaws, cars and mopeds.
ETHAN TODRAS-WHITEHILL is a frequent contributor to the Travel section. | The Annapurna Circuit is one of the world’s great treks. But a road is coming in, and vehicles’ dust may cloud the experience. |
Jason and Justin Sablich are here to help you with your fantasy football team. The Sablich brothers will provide fantasy football advice throughout the season on this blog and on Twitter (@5thDownFantasy).
If you submit one of the 50 most accurate responses this week, you can win a prize from FantasyPros.com.
As fun as fantasy football is, it also serves up an unhealthy portion of frustration every Sunday. A lot of that has to do with things out of any fantasy owner’s control, like the N.F.L. schedule.
Week 13 is a crucial week for many of you, a week when playoff hopes will either be bolstered or blasted. If you have relied on San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers and receiver Vincent Jackson to get you where you are at this point, we do not have great news for you. The Chargers match up with the Jacksonville Jaguars on Monday night, a team that just fired its head coach (Jack Del Rio) and is 3-8, but that strikes fear into the hearts of fantasy passing attacks. They allow just 13 points per game to opposing quarterbacks and are the second toughest fantasy matchup for receivers. San Diego’s banged-up offensive line will not help matters for Rivers and Jackson, who are among our unfavorable matchup picks for Week 13.
View our Week 13 rankings here. Favorable/Unfavorable Quarterback Matchups
Tim Tebow (DEN) vs. Minnesota – After Tebow attempted the most rushes by a QB since 1950 against the Chargers last week (22), we’re not sure how much Tebow will throw in this one, but there won’t be a better week for Coach John Fox to open up the play book and let Tebow air it out. Nobody allows more fantasy points through the air than the depleted Vikings secondary (23 fantasy points per game) and they are dealing with yet another injury, with cornerback Asher Allen (questionable) sustaining a sprained AC joint against Atlanta last weekend.
Matt Hasselbeck (TEN) vs. Buffalo – The Bills have allowed a 27-point fantasy average to Mark Sanchez, Matt Moore and Tony Romo over the last three weeks, with each quarterback throwing for at least three touchdowns during those games. In addition, the team’s 31st-ranked pass rush continued to be nonexistent on Sunday as the unit failed to register a sack for the sixth time this season.
Eli Manning (NYG) vs. Green Bay – Manning was one of the bright spots for the Giants during their Monday night beat down in New Orleans, completing 70 percent of his passes and compiling 400-plus yards and two touchdowns. The undefeated Super Bowl champions are on deck, which is bad news for Giants fans but could be very good news for Manning owners since the Packers will offer a very similar situation as the Saints. Both Green Bay and New Orleans allow 20 fantasy points a week to quarterbacks and both feature high-powered offenses that should force the Giants into throwing mode in an attempt to keep up.
Matt Moore (MIA) vs. Oakland – Caleb Hanie’s 21-point fantasy day in Week 12 marks the fourth consecutive game that Oakland has yielded at least two touchdown passes to the position. The Raiders are considered the fourth best matchup a quarterback can have (21 FPPG).
Philip Rivers (SD) vs. Jacksonville – Rivers will find the Jaguars fourth-ranked defense extra challenging this week behind a patchwork offensive line that will be missing Pro Bowl standouts Marcus McNeill and Kris Dielman. Dielman’s backup, Scott Mruczkowski, will also be sidelined, and there are no guarantees that right guard Louis Vasquez makes it back from a high ankle sprain.
Ben Roethlisberger (PIT) vs. Cincinnati – It was only a couple of weeks ago that the Bengals limited Roethlisberger to a mediocre 13-point fantasy day (245 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT). It seems as though Cincinnati has gotten the best of this matchup of late, with Roethlisberger averaging just 223 passing yards in his last five games against the Bengals, with just three touchdowns.
Matt Ryan (ATL) vs. Houston – The Texans’ secondary hasn’t allowed a quarterback to post 20 or more fantasy points since Drew Brees back in Week 3. In fact, he’s the only QB to total at least 20 points against this unit all season. Ryan drops to low-end QB1 status for us this week (second worst QB matchup).
Ryan Fitzpatrick (BUF) vs. Tennessee – His surprise 264-yard, three-touchdown day against the Jets was most likely wasted on your bench. We’ll continue to view him as a QB2 this week up against a Titans secondary that has surrendered just two passing touchdowns in the last three weeks.
BenJarvus Green-Ellis (NE) vs. Indianapolis – Expecting a lot of rushing yards from the Patriots’ backfield is never a good idea, but Green-Ellis is coming off a two-score day, and another back who hasn’t seen many carries this season (DeAngelo Williams) posted 2 touchdowns on this defense last week. The Colts are tied for the most rushing touchdowns allowed this season with 12 and are allowing 24 fantasy points a game to the position (second best RB matchup).
LeGarrette Blount (TB) vs. Carolina – Blount is gunning for his third-consecutive 100-yard game this week and the matchup couldn’t be more favorable. Nobody allows more points on the ground than the Panthers, who have surrendered 53 standard fantasy points over the last two weeks to Kevin Smith and Donald Brown.
Jonathan Stewart (CAR) vs. Tampa Bay – Williams stole the show against Indianapolis with his first multiple-touchdown game since 2009, but you still have to like Stewart’s prospects a little more against the league’s third-worst rushing defense. Stewart continues to be the featured option out of the backfield on passing downs, and he actually had more yards than Williams on five fewer carries in Week 12 (70 to 69).
Frank Gore (SF) vs. St. Louis – Gore has disappeared of late, rushing for just 127 yards over the last three weeks (2.8 avg.). But he’ll get a crack at the league’s worst run defense this weekend, a team that gave up 228 yards to the previously struggling Beanie Wells in Week 12.
Beanie Wells (ARZ) vs. Dallas – With the return of the outstanding run-stopping linebacker Sean Lee, the Cowboys are getting tough on the run again (sixth worst RB matchup), limiting Fred Jackson and Reggie Bush to a 10-point fantasy average over the last two weeks. Wells certainly needs to be in lineups after last week’s performance, but a trip back to earth is likely considering that Dallas is 22 times tougher on ground attacks than the lowly Rams.
Michael Turner (ATL) vs. Houston – The Vikings cooled down ‘The Burner’ last week, holding him to 60 yards on 19 carries. This week, he’ll face an even stiffer challenge, as the Texans are 16 times tougher for RBs to score on from a fantasy perspective, allowing just 13 points a week on average.
Donald Brown (IND) vs. New England – Donald Brown turned in 80 yards and a touchdown against Carolina, despite the fact that Joseph Addai technically started the game. Unfortunately, a repeat isn’t likely against the Patriots, who have been tough against ground games of late. They’ve held opposing backs under the century mark in each of the last three weeks and have allowed just one rushing touchdown during that span.
Michael Bush (OAK) vs. Miami – Miami’s stout run defense held the red-hot DeMarco Murray in check on Thanksgiving Day (12 points). Murray’s mediocre Thursday still marked the first time a running back has reached double-digit fantasy points against this unit since Week 4. We like Bush as more of a high-end RB2 this week against the third worst matchup a running back can have.
Victor Cruz (NYG) vs. Green Bay – Fantasy’s fourth-ranked receiver through 11 games was the only other bright spot next to his quarterback in Monday’s night’s massacre, posting 157 yards and two touchdowns. Mario Manningham’s absence helped Cruz see a few more targets, but at this point, it doesn’t matter if Manningham is on the field or not. Cruz is leading the Giants in receptions (55), receiving yards (957) and receiving touchdowns (7) and is locked in as a WR1 this week against a Packers secondary that gives up the second most points to opposing receivers this season.
Michael Crabtree (SF) vs. St. Louis – Crabtree has recently been a serviceable WR3 despite the 49ers’ ultraconservative approach on offense, and he could be seeing a bump in targets this week with Braylon Edwards’s status in doubt because of a shoulder injury. That should mean good things against a Rams’ secondary that is allowing the seventh most fantasy points to the position.
Pierre Garcon (IND) vs. New England – Garcon got the Chris Gamble treatment against Carolina in Week 12 (3 receptions, 34 yards), and his numbers have been in the dumpster over the last three weeks. But his matchup this week against the league’s worst pass defense shouldn’t be ignored.
Jordy Nelson (GB) vs. Giants — Nelson had an unusually quiet day last week but a nice bounce-back performance should be expected. The Giants secondary was completely throttled by the Saints receivers Monday night, giving up 11 plays of at least 15 yards. The Giants allow the sixth most points to opposing receivers this season.
Mike Williams (TB) vs. Carolina – A late 59-yard touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne last Sunday marred an otherwise solid outing from the Carolina secondary. Opposing teams’ No. 1 receivers are averaging just five standard fantasy points through 11 games against Carolina, thanks in part to an improved season from top cornerback Chris Gamble.
Johnny Knox (CHI) vs. Kansas City – His recent uptick in production has been nice for the minority of owners that have actually started him the last two weeks (121 yard average, 2 TDs), but that could be coming to an end for at least this week. The Chiefs’ Brandon Flowers has been tough on wideouts over his last two games, holding Wes Welker and Mike Wallace to a 1.95 average.
Vincent Jackson (SD) vs. Jacksonville – Jackson’s up-and-down season continued last week as he was completely shut down by Denver’s secondary. The lackluster play from his offensive line played a big part as well, with Rivers struggling for time to look downfield. A similar situation is brewing against the second worst matchup for receivers, making him more of an WR2 option in Week 13.
Anquan Boldin (BAL) vs. Cleveland – The ultratalented rookie A.J. Green has been the only receiver this season to reach the century mark against cornerback Joe Haden and the Browns. Cleveland ranks as the worst matchup a receiver can have in 2011.
Favorable Jermichael Finley (GB) vs. Giants — The Giants (seventh best TE matchup) have had no answer for the position as of late, with Rob Gronkowski, Fred Davis and now Jimmy Graham posting a 15-point fantasy average over the last three weeks. The loss of linebacker Michael Boley in the middle has made the Giants even more vulnerable. Boley could return this week, which would take some of the shine off the situation, but we’d still consider Finley a high-end TE1 play.
Vernon Davis (SF) vs. St. Louis – Davis wins the worst tight end matchup award as the Rams are holding the position to just three fantasy points a game.
New England vs. Colts, Chicago vs. Chiefs, Dallas vs. Cardinals, Baltimore vs. Browns, Jets vs. Redskins Unfavorable
Giants vs. Packers, Detroit vs. Saints, New Orleans vs. Lions, Houston vs. Falcons, Green Bay vs. Giants | The Jaguars are 3-8, but in fantasy football, they are one of the toughest opponents for both quarterbacks and receivers. Philip Rivers and Vincent Jackson are among our unfavorable matchup picks for Week 13. |
There are no dogs in this picture. (Jae C. Hong - AP) I am sick of hearing about the dog.
This is not because I am a horrible cynophobe and once, at a formative age, was frightened by a poodle.
Nor is it because if I wanted to be followed everywhere by someone who panted and possessed a limited command of simple verbs, I would need to look no further than my dating life.
Nor is it because I have been on far too many car trips in the back seat with a flatulent dog, and the Romney Solution of placing him on top of the car to battle the elements is a lifelong fantasy.
In general, dogs are bad news. They are something you cry havoc and let slip. The best dog in literature greeted Odysseus by not slobbering on him too much and then quietly dying. The worst dog in literature is Cujo. In general, they fall somewhere in between. Clifford the big red? Clearly a communist. Snoopy? Seems to be suffering from multiple personalities. Cerberus? Three times as much bark as anyone wants.
And Seamus, the Romney setter. He reminds me of Snooki — not in appearance, just in the sense that we will never be rid of him, and I wish we were.
What about the other Romney dog stories — the one where he rescued a neighbor’s dog from drowning? Or the one where he threw another dog’s favorite ball into water and it sank out of sight and both Romney and the dog were deeply saddened? Well, maybe not that second one.
But for crying out loud, if this Seamus Romney story were a horse, it would have been flogged not only to death but also somewhere into the eighth circle of hell by now.
In general, a crate-gate is something you use to keep a dog out of the conversation, not an extended national debate about canine care.
Surely we have extracted every possible ounce of meaning from this tale by now. Gail Collins has inflicted this story on us more than 30 times — and counting.
If you know a man best by the way he treats his dog, we now know Mitt Romney better than we have ever known anyone before.
We have reached the point where Ann Romney now insists — to Diane Sawyer — that Seamus was delighted by the sight of his car-top carrier. And somehow this is news!
Of course, you could argue that it speaks to a larger problem. That is certainly what everyone who invokes it has been doing. “Every story told to humanize Mitt Romney,” they point out, “makes him seem weirder.”
“Most families, when you ask them for funny stories of car trips, don’t immediately leap to the one where the dog’s bowels explode on the car roof.”
A story in The Post Style section today where Mitt Romney’s friends stepped up to tell amusing anecdotes of his young life had the same effect. “At Stanford, he lured rival University of California students into a trap in which his buddies ‘shaved their heads and painted them red,’ according to a 1970 speech at Brigham Young University by his father, George Romney,” the story reported. “One night in Bayonne, in southern France, [George] Keele answered a knock on the door and saw two men, their faces hidden by sheets, ordering him in French to put his hands behind his back, turn around and not utter a word. Keele fled out the back door only to hear Romney, his mask removed, laughing uproariously in the house.”
This is one of those self-perpetuating problems. The more ardently you try to insist that you are cool and normal, the stranger you sound. This is one of those elections that seems to be about everything but the issues involved.
No wonder this story keeps dogging Mitt Romney’s heels.
It’s one thing to groom the potential first lady for the cameras. But first pets are getting top billing now too. Everything but the thing that matters.
Look, if we required our presidents to be normal human beings, that would exclude everybody worth having. Thomas Jefferson fed his bird from his lips and went through the Bible redacting passages with which he disagreed. Abraham Lincoln had a penchant for telling rude jokes. Weed out all the eccentric and you’re left with, at best, Millard Fillmore. And he had a strange name.
Can’t we put the dog down?
Or at least stick the issue in the back seat, where it belongs? | That’s where the issue belongs. |
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 14— At the Eaton Corporation's forklift plant here, they used to call him Big Bad Leroy Brown after the words of Jim Croce's popular song, ''Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.'' That was because he is truly big, his first name is Leroy and in World War II he represented his outfit as a boxer.
Now Leroy Wright's chief avocation is teaching underprivileged boys how to box at a recreation center, and about the worst thing he does, he says, is swear at the fate that took away his job. He is a victim of a national economic phenomenon that has become increasingly pronounced in Philadelphia and other old industrial cities over the last decade: the loss of manufacturing jobs.
''I put in 15 years there,'' Mr. Wright said the other day outside the plant where he used to work. ''Now I'm 54 years old and trying to find something else. They're shutting down - phasing out - and leaving us. But I guess the roughest part will come in two weeks, when my unemployment payments run out.''
The phenomenon is national, though most pronounced in the Northeast and Middle West. Over the last decade, those in manufacturing jobs have declined as a proportion of the United States work force, from 29 percent to 23 percent.
Here, the city continues to enjoy a downtown resurgence that Philadelphians call their Renaissance, with new restaurants, hotels, office buildings and high-technology concerns flourishing.
But Philadelphia's manufacturing jobs represented only 17 percent of the total in 1980, down from 26 percent in 1970, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And like many other old industrial cities, Philadelphia has lost both people and jobs. The population declined from 1.85 million to 1.69 million in 10 years, and from 1970 to 1979 the total number of jobs fell by 140,000.
Richard A. Doran, the city's Director of Commerce, said recently: ''The economic profile of the city as a whole indicates to me we have bottomed out and are experiencing a slight upturn.'' But the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday that Philadelphia lost 12,000 jobs in the second quarter of this year, 11,400 of them manufacturing jobs. May unemployment, the latest figure available for the city, was 7.8 percent, slightly higher than the national rate for the month of 7.6 percent.
According to the latest census, the broader Philadelphia metropolitan area was one of seven in the Northeast and Middle West to lose people in the last decade, and Philadelphia was one of only four major cities in the country to lose black population.
In the 10-year period, among the companies closing down or moving away were old Philadelphia mainstays like ESB-Exide, Philco Ford, Cuneo Eastern Press, the Budd Company's auto frame division, Midvale Heppenstall Steel and Bayuk Cigar. This year, the Container Corporation closed its folding-box division and Eaton and Cooper Industries' Plumb Tool division have decided to phase out manufacturing operations.
Among the more seriously affected by the exodus, some experts say, are the older industrial workers. Many of them have long records at one company, with pay scales built up over the years that they cannot hope to equal at another company. Their severance pay and any vested pension rights are often higher than those of younger workers. However, the dismissal often comes when costs for educating children and for medical care are close to a peak. 55 and Worried
They are workers like Mr. Wright, Richard White and Joseph Dushlek of the Eaton plant and Joseph Fry and Joseph Pedrick, who lost jobs when the Container plant closed, all of them in their 50's and homeowners, but worried about keeping their houses. The average age among the workers at Eaton is about 55, according to David Gracie, chaplain at Temple Univeristy and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Ethics and Public Policy, which is studying the effects of the closing.
John Dodds, coordinator of the Delaware Valley Coalition for Jobs, an organization supported by foundation grants and union contributions, agrees that the hardest blows often fall on older workers. However, he contends that the most serious social impact in the old Northeastern cities is the loss of opportunity for inner-city youths, who have the highest unemployment rate.
Mr. White and Mr. Dushlek are still working as Eaton phases out its local operations, which it will consolidate in existing plants in North Carolina and Virginia. Neither Mr. Wright, who was laid off a few months ago, nor Mr. Fry nor Mr. Pedrick has been able to find permanent subsequent employment.
All five, in interviews, voiced adamant opposition to moving South, where many of the Northeast's jobs have been going. They mentioned special family problems, worries about differences in pay scales or fears about job security.
''This is the home I waited for all my life, and I'm going to fight to keep it,'' said Mr. Pedrick, 55, who bought his comfortable rowhouse on Roosevelt Boulevard only three years ago. He received a sizable settlement in severance pay, but it has been going fast. He worked briefly on two jobs since the Container plant closed early this year, but now is out of work again. Those Who Can't Afford to Leave
George Sternlieb, the Rutgers University expert on urban problems, observed: ''The middle class and those desperately trying to improve themselves are leaving. What's left, basically, is people who can't afford to leave.''
Among those left behind, he said, blacks face a special problem because, among industrial workers, they ''tend to be the last hired and the first to be let go.'' Last year, the average unemployment rate for black adults was 12.9 percent nationwide and 20.4 percent here, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
For the older workers, those interviewed here said, layoffs create other special problems, among them the loss of company-financed medical insurance. Mr. Dushlek has a wife who ''uses the insurance a lot,'' he said, for the insulin shots she needs for diabetes, and Mr. Wright worries about his wife's multiple sclerosis.
''Moving her would be like a death sentence,'' he said. ''My daughter said, 'Daddy, how am I going to get through college?' '' said Mr. White, carrying his lunch pail outside the Eaton plant, which he will soon help to close after working there for 28 years.''I told her not to worry,'' he added, but he was shaking his head.
The flight of manufacturing, meanwhile, creates population losses that cannot be replaced by those who work in service industries, ''Our own surveys indicate that, particularly in Philadelphia, roughly 70 percent of the manufacturing jobs are held by people who live in the city,'' Mr. Sternlieb said, ''while only 30 percent of the office workers are city dwellers.''
The population and job drain from old industrial cities ''became a torrent in the last decade,'' according to Theodore Hershberg, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Philadelphia Studies. Among reasons cited by both Mr. Hershberg and Mr. Sternlieb are higher costs of energy in the North, the greater age of plants and machinery and differences in pay scales.
And of the population decline, Mr. Sternlieb said: ''Philadelphia - any old industrial city - is not the land of opportunity for the industrial worker anymore, and very grudgingly workers are beginning to see that.''
He added: ''Within Philadelphia you've got a nice little city evolving, a post-industrial, swinging, sophisticated city, though there is going to be tremendous friction between the new and the old.''
Illustrations: photo of workers leaving Eaton plant in Philadelphia photo of Leroy Wright outside forklift plant | At the Eaton Corporation's forklift plant here, they used to call him Big Bad Leroy Brown after the words of Jim Croce's popular song, ''Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.'' That was because he is truly big, his first name is Leroy and in World War II he represented his outfit as a boxer. Now Leroy Wright's chief avocation is teaching underprivileged boys how to box at a recreation center, and about the worst thing he does, he says, is swear at the fate that took away his job. He is a victim of a national economic phenomenon that has become increasingly pronounced in Philadelphia and other old industrial cities over the last decade: the loss of manufacturing jobs. ''I put in 15 years there,'' Mr. Wright said the other day outside the plant where he used to work. ''Now I'm 54 years old and trying to find something else. They're shutting down - phasing out - and leaving us. But I guess the roughest part will come in two weeks, when my unemployment payments run out.'' |
A new report from the Institute for Government says civil servants don't know how to prepare for the Brexit talks and beg for more information
THERESA May must give departments more information about the Brexit process and who will be involved, or she will risk being unprepared for leaving the EU.
A new report from the Institute for Government says that Whitehall departments feel uncertain about what to do in the run up to the PM triggering Article 50 in March.
The think tank said that despite clear progress in preparing for negotiations, civil servants across Whitehall are uncertain of where to begin, and what to focus on.
“Departments need to know how they are going to be involved throughout the negotiations so they can put the necessary people in place and tailor their preparation accordingly,” it said.
All departments need to be starting their “post-Brexit planning” now, including on the opportunities that can be offered by leaving the EU – but need more information from Government before they can do so.
The Prime Minister said last week she would provide a “plan” for Brexit, despite repeated refusals to share more in case it compromised the UK’s negotiating position.
But the new report from the Institute for Government lays bare the confusion at the heart of Government as civil servants have no idea what kind of deal ministers want.
Many complained in the report that they have no idea what being “ready” for Article 50 means.
And Britain can’t wait to leave the EU before getting ready for life free of the bloc, the report ads.
The Great Repeal Bill, which Theresa May has promised will lift EU laws into UK ones, is likely to be more complicated than expected, the think tank said.
It warned said: “If the Government does not clearly set out its priorities, there is a risk that the civil service will fail either to deliver existing commitments or to plan properly for Brexit and life afterwards.”
Policy wonks repeated previous concerns that Whitehall does not have the “capacity or resources to deliver Brexit” due to budget cuts and prior commitments.
The Institute for Government said that the Government already has a pile of work to do, and Brexit will add huge amounts to the loads of civil servants.
“The Government must recognise that it is attempting to deliver Brexit with a civil service that is at its smallest in decades, and already managing a myriad of commitments,” the report said.
It called on ministers to give departments more detail or risk being ill-prepared for Brexit talks, and to “set out how it plans to keep Parliament informed… so it can be sure that any deal with the EU will be ratified by the UK Parliament.” | THERESA May must give departments more information about the Brexit process and who will be involved, or she will risk being unprepared for leaving the EU. A new report from the Institute for Gover… |
Cpl. Rodolfo Hernandez, right, and other Korean War heroes decorated by President Harry S. Truman in April 1952.
Rodolfo Hernandez, who received the Medal of Honor for rushing into heavy fire while wounded and armed with only an inoperable rifle and bayonet and then killing six enemy soldiers during the Korean War, died on Saturday in Fayetteville, N.C. He was 82.
The Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced his death on its website. Mr. Hernandez was an Army corporal trying to hold a hill in May 1951 when his platoon was overwhelmed by attackers accompanied by heavy mortar, artillery and machine gun fire.
Corporal Hernandez had already been struck by grenade fragments and was bleeding heavily from a head wound when his commanding officer ordered his platoon to fall back. He continued firing until his rifle malfunctioned, then threw six grenades and charged at the opposing foxholes.
âI took my rifle and fixed the bayonet,â he was quoted as saying in âBeyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words,â by Larry Smith, âand then I yelled, âHere I come!â â
He managed to kill six attackers before falling unconscious from grenade, bullet and bayonet wounds. His action allowed his unit to retake the hill.
Corporal Hernandez was so badly wounded that his comrades initially took him for dead. They were placing him in a body bag when someone noticed movement in his hands, said his wife, Denzil. His injuries were so extensive that he had to relearn how to walk, how to speak and how to write with his left hand (his right arm was permanently damaged).
By the time Corporal Hernandez received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman in the White House Rose Garden on April 12, 1952, he was able to speak a few words.
Rodolfo Hernandez was born on April 14, 1931, in Colton, Calif. His early education ended after the eighth grade, but he studied business administration at Fresno City College for three years after returning from the war. He eventually became a counselor for the Veterans Administration in Los Angeles and had three children with his first wife, Bertha. They divorced, and Mr. Hernandez retired from the V.A. in 1979 and moved to Fayetteville. He married Denzil in 1995.
Information on survivors was not immediately available. | Mr. Hernandez received the award for charging at the enemy in a daring assault while wounded and armed with an inoperable rifle and a bayonet when he was an Army corporal during the Korean War. |
The Texans' Mario Williams has averaged just under 10 sacks per season since entering the league as the No. 1 overall pick in 2006.
While the labor skirmish drones on, let's focus on one item in Monday's column that brought some email and Twitter chatter: the move of Mario Williams from defensive end in the Texans' former 4-3 defense to a rush outside linebacker in new defensive coordinator Wade Phillips' 3-4.
My whole point Monday was that the move wasn't that revolutionary. If Phillips thinks Williams can drop 20 or so pounds and play the rush spot DeMarcus Ware played with the Cowboys to great success, Phillips deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Many of you, including Ted D. of Katy, Texas, think I'm underrating Williams -- who has averaged 9.6 sacks a year over the past five seasons -- and he shouldn't have to move to a foreign position. Ted writes: "Williams has never played the position. He's been excellent for the Texans at defensive end. Stats don't tell the whole story. I'm just afraid he's not suited to play in space the way Phillips is going to ask him to do.''
Let's examine what the phrase "playing in space'' means. In some 3-4 schemes, the outside linebackers are asked to drop in coverage, but in reality they almost never do. If you watch Phillips' defense in Dallas (and, for that matter, in San Diego before then), the outside linebackers were pretty consistently lined up wide on the line of scrimmage, outside the defensive ends. There's this fear that Williams will be a lost sheep on the four or five snaps a game where (it is presumed, and I believe wrongly) he would have to drop and cover a tight end or back. But Phillips doesn't do that, and I'm sure he's not going to start now with Williams.
I asked my friend Aaron Schatz of FootballOutsiders.com, a site that studies tape of every NFL game, what he thought of the move, and to work up some stats on Williams and Ware to see how much each pressured the passer in recent seasons. "To be honest,'' Schatz said, "I don't think Mario Williams as outside linebacker is that crazy. The strongside linebacker [in Phillips' defense] only rarely drops into coverage and the weakside linebacker almost never drops into coverage. Last year, our game charters had Ware in coverage on six passes. That's it. [Antwan] Applewhite, the weakside linebacker in San Diego, was in coverage on just nine. Williams makes more sense there than as a five-technique end.'' The five-technique end has run and rush responsibilities and lines up on the outside shoulder of the offensive tackle.
According to the numbers crunched by FootballOutsiders.com, Ware got home more than Williams in the past three seasons, but both had good impact disrupting the quarterback. Ware had 47 sacks to Williams' 30, but they had an identical 120 hits and hurries of the passer.
When the Texans were getting ready to draft Williams in 2006, I remember speaking to owner Bob McNair about choosing between Reggie Bush, Vince Young and Williams for the number one pick in the draft. "We've got to play Peyton Manning twice a year, and we've got to make sure we find a way to make it uncomfortable for him when he plays us,'' McNair said then. It takes more than one rusher to make it hard on Manning, to be sure, and the Texans absolutely must play better in the secondary; if I'm McNair, I'm telling Rick Smith he has carte blanche to go after accomplished cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha when the free-agent market opens, because a pass-rush without coverage is not going to be good enough.
But I'm anxious to see Williams make more of an impact than he has. Moving him from hand-in-the-ground defensive end to rangy outside 'backer is not a revolution. It could make him more of a force buzzing around quarterbacks than he's been. Williams is excited about dropping down to 265 or 260 and having a bigger impact at rush linebacker. That's a big reason -- along with new draftees J.J. Watt and Brooks Reed -- for Texans fans to be excited about the new defense.
Brett Favre recently said he is considering going into TV or coaching in the future.
I THINK IT'LL TAKE HIM AWHILE TO FIND SOMETHING. "The last few offseasons, we have been inundated with the Brett Favre saga. Now that the labor dispute is all over the NFL front page, discussing Favre would be a relief. What are your thoughts on Favre's comments about coaching or commentating?'' --Jonathan Borne, Timberville, Va.
I can't see him as a TV guy, though I do think he could do something in tandem with his good friend Steve Mariucci on NFL Network -- maybe a dissection of quarterback play every week or so, which would be interesting to see. I'd love to see Favre and Mariucci take a big play by a quarterback, then diagram it and figure out how it worked and what the quarterback's options were, and what Favre would have been thinking at the time. Ultimately, I could see him as a coach in southern Mississippi, like his dad Ervin was. He loves kids, and he'd be good teaching them.
THE MARKET FOR NNAMDI. "As always, great column. That said, what are your thoughts on Nnamdi Asomugha? It appears the Eagles are planning on making a big run at him, only drafting one cornerback, in what seem to be the team's most glaring need. I'd appreciate your thoughts, realizing that this bogus lockout is limiting your ability to gather information on player movements.'' --Adam, Philadelphia
That last statement is absolutely right. Teams are very, very careful to not tip their hands on free agents, for fear of being wrist-slapped (or worse) by the league. I could see five teams with big wallets going after him: Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, Detroit and the Jets -- but the Jets ONLY if there's not going to be a salary cap in 2011. See, that's the difficult thing to forecast. If there's a cap, I can't see the Jets in the running, because paying two cornerbacks a combined $35 million a year (or some such lunatic number) would squeeze too many contributing players off their team. Detroit's probably a dark horse, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Ford family, which has to be as excited about its team as it's been since the prime Barry Sanders days, would authorize a big check for Asomugha.
FAIR ENOUGH. "While I agree with you that more NFL players should donate their brains to science, I think scientists should do the outreach, not the NFL or its teams. Major trust issues there, and I think that would turn off players from helping. But while we're on the topic, maybe you can get BU to do a study of NFL owners brains -- find out why earning hundreds of millions of dollars every year and having millions of loyal fans doesn't make them happy.'' --Brian, Boston
You make two very good points.
MARK IS CLEVER, AND CORRECT. "Are you sure the tweet from Collinsworth isn't a quote from 10 years ago about Michael Vick?'' --Mark, Miami
You make another very good point.
BUT HOW MUCH BLAME DO YOU PUT ON HIM FOR THOSE RECORDS? "Peter, a thought on why Jake Locker may have impressed the Titans despite his lower than desired collegiate accuracy: His record as a 4-year starter at Washington -- 4-9, 0-12, 4-7, 7-6. He knows how to be a leader on a struggling/rebuilding team.'' --Terrance Jakubowski, Los Angeles
I'm not sure if putting up poor accuracy marks and losing records like that is a credit to him. I might say he's been part of the problem. But that's a complicated question, obviously. We'll see if the Titans can turn their offense around with a guy who simply has to be more accurate throwing the ball than he was at Washington.
GOOD QUESTION. "I don't usually question Bill Belichick's draft strategy, but why wouldn't he make the trade you mentioned with the 49ers (taking a three this year and next for allowing the 49ers to move up)? Was there any real chance that Dowling wouldn't be there at 45? Most didn't even have Dowling as the top corner on the board at that point in the draft. Two threes may not be as much value as Belichick wanted, but it is certainly a good haul for moving back and still getting the player he wanted." --Sam Finkelstein, Chicago
Obviously he didn't make it because he wanted more value if he was going to risk losing Ras-I Dowling. If he moved from 33 to 45, with the voracious draft-day appetite for cornerbacks, there's no way he could have been assured of getting Dowling.
HE LIKES MIKE. "Read your message from Mike McGuire regarding the bin Laden closure. What struck me most is that we talk about the lost lives in this war on terror, but we rarely give credence to lives changed. The part about Mike regretting missing his kids growing up particularly struck home as I spend a lot of my life on the road away from my family, and deal with a lot of guilt and sadness about it. The difference is my time away is for business, to make a buck and further a career, but what Mike and the rest of our soldiers are giving up is not for themselves, or even for their own families, but for the entire 300 million citizens of this country, and for much of the western world. So I can appreciate that dealing with that pain while facing life and death situations everyday must be 1,000 times more difficult. To miss out on his own life and that of his children is a sacrifice that is on par with what our fallen have given up. I hope that they all know we are in awe of our soldiers and behind them 100 percent, regardless of the politics that divide our country at times.'' --Chris, Atlanta
Thanks, Chris. I'm forwarding your letter, along with scores of others, to Mike this week. You can be sure he'll appreciate them. | While the labor skirmish drones on, let's focus on one item in Monday's column that brought some email and Twitter chatter: the move of Mario Williams from defensive end in the Texans' former 4-3 defense to a rush outside linebacker in new defensive coordinator Wade Phillips' 3-4. |
Dear Amy: My family and I live in a small town in the Midwest.
My daughter’s friend from high school and college, “Laura,” is getting married this summer.
My daughter is in the wedding party. Laura has been with her fiance since high school. They are a great couple, and everyone likes them.
While I was in Indianapolis on business last week, I clearly saw Laura walking hand in hand with an unknown man. They had their hands on each other, and stopped to kiss each other along the way.
I believe that she is having an affair with this man in the big city, almost 100 miles from our town.
Should I tell my daughter, tell anyone else — or bite my lip and go to the wedding in June, smiling, and feeling like a fraud?
Please don’t tell me that I didn’t see what I saw, or that I somehow misread what I saw with my own eyes, because there was no mistaking what I saw.
Upset: Because this bothers you so much, you could contact “Laura” directly. Tell her what you saw, and share your reaction to what you saw — if you must.
There is no reason to tell your daughter or anyone else about this.
There are a number of reasons why a bride-to-be might get together with another man before the wedding. This might not be an ongoing affair, but the ending of a relationship. You simply don’t know.
If Laura is having an affair and gets married, then she — not you — should feel like a fraud at her wedding.
Dear Amy: I’m a high school student who just finished my first phone interview. The scout was one of my dad’s patients and passed along the contact.
I think I did pretty well, except for one question. The interviewer (my dad’s patient) asked me a very basic math question.
I froze, used my calculator (which she probably heard over the phone), and took way too long to answer the question. I know it seems like not that big of a deal, but I’m so embarrassed! I’m worried she’ll think I’m an idiot; this reflects badly on my dad. I’m worried I’ll be put last on the list for the job!
What should I do? I don’t have an email address. I only have her phone number.
Unsure: It is very easy to get an email address. You can look up the person and her company name, call the company’s main number, or ask your father to help.
You should either email her or write a handwritten note, thanking her for the interview.
Even if you don’t discuss your math question, you absolutely must thank her in writing for the interview.
Simply say, “I’m worried that I blew the math question, but to be honest I was super-nervous and I totally froze! Thank you again for giving me the experience of interviewing; I’m sorry I was so nervous. I hope that won’t happen again.”
Most people have this experience, or one like it when first interviewing, and it does not reflect badly on you or your father. If you explain it well, it might even be to your advantage, because the woman who interviewed you would think — “Wow, this student is really honest. It’s refreshing to have someone just admit their mistake.”
Dear Amy: Which century are you living in? Not the 21st. You answered the question from “Overwhelmed,” saying that a man who supports his family is doing all he needs to do?
Come on, this daddy is indifferent to his baby. The new fathers I know in the 21st century bathe, diaper and can’t get enough of their child. Did you not print the entire letter? Are we missing something? Does this father doubt the kid is his? How about suggesting counseling to determine what is going on?
Or was this a ploy to see how many readers would respond to this incredibly dumb answer?
HS: “Overwhelmed” reported that her husband traveled extensively for his job and was rarely home. It was quite obvious (to me) that he had not bonded with his baby. The question of bonding is a timeless one and can affect mothers or fathers, if the parent doesn’t spend much time with the baby. I tried to offer practical advice and support to this overwhelmed young mother. Counseling would be a good idea, but with his schedule, that doesn’t sound practical.
Amy’s column appears seven days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Write to Amy Dickinson at [email protected] or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
2016 by the Chicago Tribune | Reader sees daughter’s engaged friend with another man and wonders if she should tell |
In past years, Ayyan Ali was deployed as one of the catwalk “showstoppers” at Fashion Pakistan Week, an annual three-day extravaganza that returned this week to a five-star hotel in Karachi.
But the last time the country’s most famous model was seen in public she was wearing an uncharacteristic black burqa as she shuffled into a court far from the gathering of her fellow fashionistas.
As one of the industry’s best-known faces, the 21-year-old has appeared in adverts for everything from ice cream to mobile phones. For the past two and a half weeks, however, Ali has been languishing in jail on money-laundering charges.
“People have been talking about nothing else,” said Frieha Altaf, a former model turned public relations supremo. “Some are unkind because they are jealous – everyone bitches about the beautiful people.”
Industry gossip has focused on what Ali was doing in the VIP departure lounge of Islamabad’s airport on 14 March with more than half a million dollars in her carry-on bag.
Some people are unkind because they are jealous – everyone bitches about the beautiful people
Caught by airport authorities, she was charged with attempting to illegally take more than the $10,000 cash limit out of the country. Ever since, she has been in Adiala, the central prison of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where officials deny local press speculation that she is receiving special privileges. Private cells and extra comforts are made available only to government officials and “the highly educated”, said one officer.
Ayyan has been denied bail, to the outrage of her lawyer, Sardar Ishaq. “All agencies have interrogated her and she is no more required for any purpose whatsoever,” Ishaq said. “She is living with ordinary criminals – ladies involved in murder cases. It will ruin her life.”
Many in the fashion world fear she was manipulated. “My first reaction was there goes one more girl,” said Maheen Khan, the grande dame of Pakistan’s fashion industry. “A lot of these girls come from very protected families and can be very naive. I think of her as a victim.”
Suspicions were aroused after she reportedly told a customs court that she had received the money from a politically well-connected businessman. Khurram Latif Khosa, one of the lawyers working on Ali’s case, said the money had come from a legitimate property sale and she had no intention of taking it out of the country.
According to Khosa, the model had not yet checked into her flight and was waiting in the lounge to give the cash to her brother, who was going to take it on to Karachi. He said Ali was being unfairly treated by the press and courts because of her celebrity status.
He said: “We respect religious scholars, we respect so-called intellectuals but why don’t we respect in this society people who are promoting our culture? She is a cultural ambassador projecting an image of Pakistan which is liberal, progressive and can compete with anyone in the world.”
Altaf, the public relations guru, said Ali had the strength to not let the ordeal destroy her career, which had recently moved into music as well as promoting some of the country’s top brands.
“It takes guts as well as beauty to stand up and be a model in this country,” she said. “You have to have the strength to resist the pressure that comes from society, the social stigma, the questions people always have about you.” | Caught at Islamabad airport with over half a million dollars in cash, one of the country’s most famous faces is languishing in jail on money-laundering charges |
A 16-year-old star athlete died earlier this month in Colorado, one day after his birthday, after he contracted a rare form of the plague, health department officials confirm to PEOPLE.
Taylor Gaes, a pitcher and quarterback at Poudre High School in Larimer County, died on June 8 on the way to the hospital, county health department spokesperson Katie O'Donnell told PEOPLE.
He contracted septicemic plague, she said, a highly fatal form of the disease which results when the bacteria enters the bloodstream directly.
It's believed that Gaes contracted the plague on Thursday, four days prior, O'Donnell explained.
"While the investigation is still ongoing, [Gaes] may have contracted the disease from fleas on a dead rodent or other animal on the family acreage," the health department said
Gaes displayed flu-like symptoms, including mild aches, but nothing serious for a teenage athlete, O'Donnell said. He even played in the Thursday night baseball game.
"We often talk about Taylor's potential as an athlete, but he was much more than that," his varsity baseball coach Russell Haigh
. "He was a good friend to all of our players. He was a special young man."
An excellent hitter, according to the
, Gaes was primed for real success as the varsity team's No. 2 pitcher and, at age 15, the starting first baseman, Haigh told the paper.
His family has asked for donations to the
, which pays youth baseball league entrance fees for kids. They've raised more than $2,100.
Gaes' teammates are wearing patches on their uniforms.
"They are doing well. That's not to say they do not have pain. Young men are amazingly resilient," Haigh told the
. "I think it helps that they continue to play baseball. I think that's what Taylor would want them to do."
The health department said in the release that it is coordinating with experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the State Health Department and the Larimer County Coroner's office.
Gaes's death is the first confirmed case of plague in Larimer County since 1999, according to the release. An average of seven people contract the plague in the U.S. annually, predominantly in the West and Midwest, according to the release.
It's the third plague case in Larimer County in 30 years, O'Donnell said. "It's very, very rare," she said and not transferable from human to human.
The public health concern now is that one of the many people who gathered at the Gaes family property for a recent memorial service may have come in contact with an infected flea or tick, O'Donnell said – it's something the Gaes family was very worried about, she said, that another child would get sick.
The service was held before the family knew how Gaes had died, she said.
O'Donnell said they're now at the "very tail end" of the incubation period and they haven't received any calls from people who've been to the property and now have flu-like symptoms.
That doesn't mean there have been no more contractions, she said. But the plague is treatable if caught early enough and this case's exposure should prompt people to speak with their doctors if they feel ill. | The pitcher and quarterback was remembered as "a special young man" |
(TARIQ CAMP, Iraq) — Iraq’s special forces completed a troop buildup around Fallujah on Sunday ahead of an operation to retake the Islamic State-held city west of Baghdad, a military officer said, as the militants attacked a newly-liberated town to the west.
Teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition, the government launched a large-scale offensive to dislodge ISIS militants from Fallujah a week ago.
The city, located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, is one of the last major ISIS strongholds in Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the country’s north and west, including Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.
The last battalion from Iraq’s Special Forces Service arrived at dawn Sunday at the sprawling Tariq Camp outside Fallujah, said Maj. Dhia Thamir. He declined to comment on troop numbers or the timing of the expected assault.
He said troops have recaptured 80% of the territory around the city since the operation began and are currently battling ISIS to the northeast as they seek to tighten the siege ahead of a planned final push into the city center.
In a televised speech to parliament, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the “current second phase of the Fallujah operation” will last less than 48 hours, after which the offensive to recapture the city will begin.
Al-Abadi called on residents of Fallujah to either leave the city or stay indoors. Government officials and aid groups estimate that more than 50,000 people remain inside the center of the Sunni majority city.
As he cleared his weapon and checked his Humvee at the camp, soldier Ali al-Shimmari said he was “totally ready” for the battle. “I phoned my family in the morning and asked them to pray for me to get back safe to them,” he added.
“I’m determined to end Daesh,” al-Shimmari continued, using the Arabic acronym for the group.
The militants meanwhile launched an attack Sunday on the town of Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, which was recaptured by government troops last month. A military officer said the extremists entered three neighborhoods and were engaged in heavy clashes with Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes.
By late afternoon, the forces had managed to push the militants out and were in control of the whole town. The officer was not authorized to release information so spoke on condition of anonymity.
Fallujah, which saw some of the heaviest fighting of the 2003-2011 U.S.-led military intervention, was the first city in Iraq to fall to ISIS. The extremists seized control of Fallujah in January 2014, six months before they swept across northern and western Iraq and declared a caliphate.
Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report. | The city is one of the last major ISIS strongholds in Iraq |
FORTUNE — Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello will step down on March 30, the video game publisher announced today.
In a statement to the press, EA EA said it was naming Larry Probst as executive chairman while it searches for a new leader. Probst was the Redwood City, Calif.-based firm’s CEO from 1991 to 2007, when Riccitiello took over. Probst has served as EA’s chairman since 1994.
EA also said its revenues and earnings per share will be at the low end or below its January guidance. The company reported lower revenues for the last three months of 2012 than it did for the same period a year earlier. EA had the top-selling video game in February with its action-horror title Dead Space 3. But U.S. retail sales of new video games fell for the fifteenth straight month, year over year. Sales of new video game hardware, software, and accessories fell 25% from a year earlier to $810 million in February, the NPD Group reported.
The publisher’s stock is trading at $18.71, down from $61.40 in 2007 when Riccitiello took over as CEO. EA will announce results for fiscal 2013 on May 7.
MORE: Apple up 5.4%, Samsung down 5% since Galaxy S4 event
Videogame makers and publishers are entering a period of uncertainty as technology alters the way consumers play. Increasingly, gadgets made by the likes of Apple AAPL and Google GOOG are eating into the profits of traditional console manufacturers like Nintendo NTDOY and Sony SNE . Game publishers EA and rival Activision Blizzard ATVI , in turn, have had mixed results trying to adapt. In addition, digital sales have begun threatening the once-steady retail business.
“We thank John for his contributions to EA,” said Probst in a prepared statement. “John has worked hard to lead the company through challenging transitions in our industry and was instrumental in driving our very significant growth in digital revenues.” The decision was described as mutual.
In a memo sent by Riccitiello to Probst, the outgoing chief highlighted the company’s growing digital business. At his direction, EA created an online games platform dubbed Origin to distribute titles over the Internet. The company, which controls lucrative franchises such as The Sims, Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, and Need for Speed, has tried to find ways to make more of the considerable intellectual property it owns. Riccitiello also oversaw the acquisition of PopCap, a mobile games maker that created the popular Bejeweled.
But EA’s transition to a more digitally oriented business hasn’t gone smoothly. Earlier today, it announced that it had sold more than 1.1 million copies of its city-building PC game SimCity in the first two weeks it was available. About 54% of those sales were digital versions, downloaded via Origin.
MORE: Startups are about to blow up the textbook
But the launch was widely derided in the games press for severe technical difficulties. For days, players had trouble downloading the game because demand overwhelmed EA’s servers. The technical issues, which have not yet been entirely resolved, caused some reviewers to revisit their initial assessment, lowering high scores that can drive sales. EA announced it would give registered users a free title to make up for the problems.
In 2007, Riccitiello’s incoming mandate was to find ways to pare down the sometimes massive costs associated with developing mainstream titles. Budgets for high-profile games like EA’s Battlefield 3 can easily spiral into the hundreds of millions of dollars. He also vowed to find new revenue streams in comics, television, films, and toys.
Despite a few successes, Riccitiello had yet to score an outsized hit. Activision’s Skylanders franchise, which appeals to younger children, generated more than $600 million in the U.S. alone since its October 2011 launch, according to NPD. Activision previously announced that the franchise had surpassed $1 billion in global sales. In 2012, the combined sales of Skylanders Giants and Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure toys outsold the top action figure lines in the U.S. and Europe, including Beyblades, Star Wars, and Transformers, according to the company’s internal estimates. | Riccitiello steps down as video game publisher Electronic Arts has been struggling to adapt to a changing games market. Revenue and earnings per share will be at the low end of or below January guidance. |
Public health officials say “approximately 10 people” who had contact with the Ebola patient in Texas are considered at higher risk, though they emphasized Friday that none of these people had exhibited any Ebola symptoms.
“All of those individuals are doing well,” David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in a conference call with reporters. “There’s no additional individuals who have symptoms consistent with Ebola at this time.”
Another 40 people are also still being monitored, but these people are considered low-risk, Lakey said.
The people being monitored include health-care workers and other members of the community who encountered Thomas Duncan, who earlier this week became first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.
Now that public health officials have been able to talk to everyone they considered at risk of possible contact, the overall number of people still being monitored has been cut in half since Thursday, when authorities said they were tracking 100 people.
The family that hosted Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan could be confined for three weeks. Health officials are reaching out to as many as 100 people who may have had contact with Duncan or someone who knows him. (AP)
“We’ve cast a wide net,” said Beth P. Bell, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s center for emerging and infectious diseases. “We have a very low bar for deciding to follow patients. We’re not suggesting by this that … we have a great deal of concern about all of these people, because the reality is we have a low level of concern about the vast majority of these people that we’re following.”
The process of figuring out who to track, which is called contact tracing, involved interviewing Duncan, as well as anyone who had gone into the Dallas apartment where he was staying.
Anyone considered a high-risk person needed to be observed closely over the coming days and weeks. The list is expected to shrink again going forward, but the danger to those at highest risk would not, at least for the time being.
“Everyone who worked in the ER that night, all the way down, were at risk,” said David Kuhar, an infection control medical officer at the CDC. “You cast as wide a net as possible and then you just whittle down, whittle down.”
The CDC team split up to track down anyone who may have been exposed. Half of them stayed at the hospital to look over a list of anyone known to have had contact with Duncan from the time his symptoms began, while others met with the people in the apartment where he had stayed.
Duncan had been staying with Louise Troh at her apartment since arriving in the U.S. from Liberia on Sept. 20. He began getting ill by Thursday, at which point he sought medical treatment at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Despite the fact that he said he had traveled from West Africa and had a fever and some abdominal pain, he was diagnosed with a low-grade virus and released.
His condition worsened in the days that followed, as he developed a worse fever and felt weak and cold, before he ultimately was brought back to the hospital Sunday in an ambulance. He was placed into isolation and diagnosed Tuesday.
A person with Ebola is only contagious when they are exhibiting symptoms, which means that Duncan may have been contagious for up to four days before he was placed in isolation.
[Related: Can you catch Ebola from an infected blanket?]
Troh, her son, a relative and a friend who had been living in the apartment at the time have been quarantined inside the home, with an official order barring them from leaving until at least Oct. 19. Duncan also had contact with the three-member ambulance team that transported him to the hospital and health-care workers at the hospital itself. No other patients at the hospital interacted with Duncan, Lakey said.
The apartment where Duncan was staying had not been cleaned until Friday afternoon, so the sheets he slept on as well as his other belongings had been sitting in sealed plastic bags in a separate room from the four quarantined people.
Authorities initially had trouble finding a company willing to do the cleaning, and once they found a company, there were new issues involving the permits allowing the company to dispose of items Duncan had touched.
“We were unable to accomplish that due to some permitting issues yesterday,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the top elected official in the county, said in the same phone call Friday afternoon. He said that the permits still had not been obtained to dispose of these items, but said the process was “underway.”
A hazardous materials team was at the Ivy Apartments on Friday afternoon, as officials said they intended to remove all of the the bagged or otherwise contaminated items. These items were placed in large waste drums as the family waited in another room.
Courtesy the city of Dallas, a look at Hazmat crews preparing to enter Ebola patient’s Vickery Meadow apartment pic.twitter.com/tkjdQIkWIJ
— Dallas Morning News (@dallasnews) October 3, 2014
“The focus is to get all the material and hazardous waste out of that apartment,” Sana Syed, a spokeswoman for the city of Dallas, told reporters outside the apartment complex.
Syed tweeted photos of the team that was taking things out of the apartment on Friday afternoon:
Another one preparing to go into the apartment. pic.twitter.com/PK9Rk2hMLC
— Sana Syed (@dallaspiosana) October 3, 2014
— Sana Syed (@dallaspiosana) October 3, 2014
First drum is in the trailer. pic.twitter.com/6PdSUMRCba
— Sana Syed (@dallaspiosana) October 3, 2014
— Sana Syed (@dallaspiosana) October 3, 2014
In addition, authorities said they still planned to move the four quarantined people to a different apartment.
“I’d like to see them moved to a place that includes its own washer-drier and is a more complete living arrangement than they have now,” Jenkins said. “We are working at that.”
Even as officials in Texas provided an update on the situation there, the World Health Organization announced that the Ebola death toll is up to 3,439 in West Africa. Eight of the deaths came in Nigeria, but the balance were in the Ebola-ravaged nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Through the beginning of October, there have been 7,491 probable, confirmed and suspected cases in West Africa.
And for the first time during the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, the WHO included the U.S. in its “Ebola Response Roadmap” update. The single U.S. case brings the worldwide total to 7,492.
“We recognize that even a single case of Ebola in the United States seems threatening,” Bell said. “But the simple truth is that we do know how to stop the Ebola spread between people.”
The White House sought to reassure the public that it was ready to combat the epidemic in West Africa as well as any other potential cases in the U.S.
“The United States is prepared to deal with this crisis, both at home and in the region,” Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said during a briefing Friday. “Every Ebola outbreak in the past 40 years has been stopped. We know how to do this, and we will do it again.”
Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., said Friday that it had admitted a patient with Ebola-like symptoms who had recently traveled from Nigeria. There have been several other cases of people across the country being tested for the virus, but Duncan is the only one who has tested positive so far.
There have also been at least five Americans infected overseas returning to the U.S. for treatment. A freelance cameraman working for NBC News has tested positive and will be flown back to the United States for care, the network announced. Ashoka Mukpo, 33, is in the early stages of the infection, according to his father.
The U.S. Army announced Friday that it would send additional troops to West Africa to help combat the epidemic. With the additional forces, the Army will send about 3,200 soldiers to help supervise the construction of Ebola treatment units, support command operations and otherwise assist in the response.
Brady Dennis, J. Freedom du Lac and Abby Ohlheiser in Washington, D.C., and Abby Phillip and Amy Ellis Nutt in Dallas, Tex., contributed to this report.
[This post has been updated. First published: 2:36 p.m. Last updated: 5:20 p.m.] | Authorities are monitoring about 50 people who may have had contact with the Ebola patient in Texas. |
Veritiv CEO Mary Laschinger’s biggest fear is boredom.
That may seem like a surprising quality for someone who runs a company that bills itself as a “business to business distributor of packaging, facility, and printing supplies.” But consider the way her company was born: On an extraordinarily eventful day a little over two years ago, a $4 billion segment of International Paper Company (IPC) spun off, merged with its next largest competitor, and the resulting entity went public.
Yes, that all happened within a 24 hour period. Yes, that company is still around. And yes, it was all overseen by a woman most members of the business community had likely never heard of before.
Veritiv, the embodiment of Laschinger’s need to go, go, go, is a brand-new member of the Fortune 500. With nearly $9 billion in revenue and a market cap approaching $600 million, it is the largest packaging and distributions company in the U.S. by a long shot.
Laschinger is one of just 21 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but it’s not just her gender that makes her stand out.
Having grown up on a dairy farm in Arkansaw, Wisconsin (no that’s not a typo), she has no Ivy League pedigree, no stories about being the only girl in her physics class. “When I graduated high school, I didn’t have enough self-confidence to go to college,” she says. Instead, she spent a few years in a tech school, after which she worked odd jobs.
Laschinger didn’t start college until she was 21. She says her primary goal was to avoid the boredom of her Midwestern town, which she describes as a place with more cows than people and more bars than restaurants.
Upon graduating from the University of Wisconsin at age 26, Laschinger went to work at Kimberly-Clark Corp. kmb as a production planner. She immediately found paper manufacturing “totally fascinating,” she says.
“They took me to this hundred-year-old paper mill, where they were turning trees into pulp and pulp into paper,” she says of her early days with Kimberly-Clark. “It smelled awful, but I thought, ‘Wow!'”
After Kimberly-Clark she moved on to James River Corp. and ultimately to International Paper, where she held a series of jobs across the organization. “I took lateral moves, a lot of them. At one point I went five years without a salary increase because I wanted to get the experience instead of focusing on going up in the organization,” she recalls, something she believes other executives should consider.
“I actually think that’s one of the detriments of people when they focus too much on getting to the next step instead of focusing on learning and developing skills,” she says.
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Laschinger says the didn’t see herself in a CEO role initially because there was no one at the male-dominated company she felt she could be. It wasn’t until she became president of IPC’s European operations that she—and her superiors—understood that she could hold her own on a much larger stage.
“The Russian [partners] didn’t know what do with me,” she jokes of her early days on the continent. A Russian client of hers once told her that he never anticipated a world in which he would do business with either Americans or women. And yet here he was, making deals with a woman from Arkansaw, Wisconsin.
“I never backed down,” Laschinger says of the way she was able to gain his respect.
That’s also an accurate way of characterizing Laschinger’s leadership style, which she herself calls “tough but fair.” She prides herself on having high expectations and being a straight shooter (figuratively and literally: she has a nine-millimeter revolver and says she is a “pretty good shot”).
The single most important thing about being a female leader in the male-dominated world of distribution? “You need to have self-confidence,” she says, hearkening back to the days when she wasn’t sure enough of herself to go to college.
Laschinger seems to have plenty of it now—in herself and in Veritiv. “We’re building a new company and we can make it what we want to make it,” she says. “I just get excited thinking about it.” | Mary Laschinger is one of just 21 female CEOs on the list. |
Dr. Andre Perry is the founding dean of urban education at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is the author of The Garden Path: The Miseducation of a City.
Ivory Toldson is deputy director for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Over the past five years, states have been overhauling how they fund public colleges and universities, tying revenue to student performance instead of enrollment. The goal is to motivate schools to improve the education they provide to students. But in reality, performance-based funding has undermined some colleges’ ability to do just that. These policies have limited higher-education options for low-income, first-generation and other types of at-risk college students. The consequences have been particularly severe among historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), threatening their founding principle to provide higher learning for all types of students.
Without thoughtful planning, these policies will continue to erode HBCU’s ability to educate those young people who benefit most from college degrees.
Performance-based funding policies, like the Louisiana Grad Act, require that colleges meet certain goals in order to increase their tuition rates or receive more state funding. Some states track how quickly students gain credit hours or the percentage who receive a degree. Others judge schools based on how many graduates are employed a year later and their average wages. These are laudable goals, but to meet them, some schools have had to institute significant new restrictions on their admissions, including setting minimum ACT or SAT requirements. Some state governing boards, such as the Louisiana Board of Regents, have effectively eliminated remedial classes on college campuses.
These changes are a major blow for HBCUs, like Elizabeth City State University and Fort Valley State University. Many such schools often were founded as open admissions institutions with the mission of educating students of varied academic and social backgrounds. But performance-based funding undercuts that mission, making it financially risky to admit students who are less academically prepared. Further, eliminating remedial classes makes college inaccessible to many students and tying admissions to ACT- and SAT-test scores disadvantages black students. Even among high achievers, black students tend to score lower than white students on standardized tests for various reasons, including less access to test-prep services and self-defeating fears of reinforcing stereotypes. Standardized test scores are a poor predictor of college success. The National Association for College Admission Counseling recently released a research report that revealed students with strong high school GPAs and low standardized-test scores generally performed well in college, while students with low high school GPAs and high test scores generally performed poorly.
These state policy changes are limiting college options for some black students, forcing them into community colleges or for-profit colleges. Those schools often have low graduation rates and lack many benefits of four-year colleges, such as research faculty, Greek letter organizations, and extracurricular activities. Other students are forced to pay higher tuition and costs to attend open-admissions private colleges. Only four of the 34 open-admissions HBCUs are public, according to an analysis of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System by the White House Initiative on HBCUs (WHIHBCU); the other 30 are private and more expensive.
The increased financial burden on students is especially problematic amid changes to the Pell Grant and PLUS loan programs. Across all HBCUs, nearly 73 percent of students qualify for the Federal Pell Grant because of financial need, according to the WHIHBCUs. But in 2011, Pell Grant awards were eliminated for summer semesters. That same year, the U.S. Department of Education began denying PLUS loans to parents with debts in collection or that were charged off. Since then, more than 70 percent of the PLUS loan application denials have been a result of delinquent debt that held by the original creditor, charged off, or in collection status. Recent negotiated changes, set to be enforced in 2015, relax the credit requirements. Many HBCU advocates have expressed optimism in the negotiated changes.
The colleges themselves are suffering financially, too. Most states have not restored funding to their colleges and universities at pre-recession levels. Fourteen HBCUs are receiving less revenue now than they received more than 10 years ago.
Source: WHIHBCU Data Dashboard, presented at the HBCU Week Conference
These new policies are severely hindering the ability of HBCUs to fulfill their founding missions. They were never meant to be distinguished by selectivity, elitism, or exclusion. HBCUs and their alums teach the world what inclusion should look and feel like. They make a college education accessible to young people who often have few other opportunities for improving their futures. But these policies restrict HBCU autonomy and student choice, inhibiting a powerful engine for inclusion that our society needs. By limiting the financial resources of these institutions and their students, we are undermining our national commitment to providing opportunities for personal advancement and prosperity to all.
Dear elite colleges, please stop recruiting students like me if you know we won’t get in
I studied business and programming, not English. I still can’t find a job
The education-reform movement is too white to do any good | New funding models undermine the founding mission of many HBCUs -- to provide education to all. |
I used to run with a GPS watch, and at the time it seemed like a technological marvel.
Made by Polar, Garmin, Nike and Timex, global positioning system watches track the distance you have run and your pace, including your average pace and your instantaneous pace. They beep at intervals, like every mile, if you want to train by doing some segments of your course at a faster pace. And when you are finished running, you can download all your data onto your computer.
But after a while, I noticed something disconcerting. My watch might record my run as, say, six miles, but according to Google Maps, the actual distance was more like 6.5 miles.
That kind of discrepancy, of course, plays havoc with your training. The pace calculated by the watch is much too slow, and the run becomes an exercise in frustration.
So I got another watch, from a different maker. It was just as bad, maybe worse. I returned it and got a third one, but that one seemed to be absolutely accurate only once, when I was running along the lakefront in Chicago, under a clear sky with no tall buildings and few trees nearby.
On Sunday, I tried a little experiment with friends who also have GPS watches. I started from my house, and Jen Davis and Martin Strauss started from her house; we met up along the way.
My route was 15.96 miles, according to Google Maps. My watch said it was 15.54. Jen’s watch, an older model, did much better. Her route was 19.1 miles. Her watch said 19.02.
Race organizers know this problem all too well. Douglas Thurston, operations director for the Competitor Group, which organizes Rock ’n’ Roll Marathons, a series of races across the country, braces himself for complaints with every race.
Runners who wore GPS watches start e-mailing him or posting comments on Facebook or Twitter afterward. The course was measured incorrectly, they will say. According to their GPS devices, it was too short.
Mr. Thurston has gotten so used to the complaints that he actually has a generic e-mail reply. No, it says, the course was not wrong. Your GPS device was.
“If someone wants to go to mat on it, I ask them to go to a 400-meter track and run on the inside lane for 12.5 laps. That’s 5,000 meters,” he said in an interview. Then, he tells the runner, check the distance on your GPS device. He guarantees it will not be 5,000 meters.
Martin illustrated this for me recently by running five times around a track at the University of Michigan, where he is a professor of mathematics and electrical engineering and computer science. When he downloaded the GPS data onto his computer, every loop around the track was a little different, and none were oval.
In fact, not one of his paths was even curved — they were short segments of lines connected to resemble an oval. Yet he had run in the same lane.
It seems clear enough that a GPS watch is not very accurate, yet online runners’ forums, like one at the Web site of Runners World, are filled with comments from confused athletes who rely on the devices. One poster, for example, ran a half marathon and wore a GPS watch that said the distance was 12.8 miles instead of 13.1.
“Many people are posting on the race’s Web site that theirs came up just as short,” the runner wrote. “I got a pretty stellar PR” — personal record — “and would hate to have a question mark hanging over it.”
Another wrote, “I did an out-and-back run on a rail trail: 5.25 miles out and 5.02 miles back. According to the GPS, I was running 40 m.p.h. for over two minutes.”
What’s wrong with those GPS devices? The problem, say their makers, is that people expect too much. The watches are very much a work in progress. “We all use pretty much the same technology,” said Corey Cornaccio, director of marketing at Polar. The technology is improving, but some inaccuracy remains. “People don’t understand that,” he said. | Discrepancies in recording distances and pace can be frustrating for those training for races. |
Good Monday morning. The stock market is having a lousy day in Europe and Asia, despite the weekend promise of the G20 to use “all policy tools – monetary, fiscal and structural” to boost the economy. The promise fell flat.
But despite short-term woes, Warren Buffett declared his faith in the U.S. economy’s long-term prospects. In his annual letter to shareholders released Saturday, the Omaha investor said: “It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve.) As a result of this negative drumbeat, many Americans believe that their children will not live as well as they themselves do. That view is dead wrong. The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.”
Buffett also was also optimistic about his big investment in IBM ibm , which has lost $2.6 billion since he made it. “We expect that the fair value of our investment in IBM common stock will recover and ultimately exceed our cost,” he said.
Meanwhile, HPE hpe CEO Meg Whitman blasted Chris Christie, after having been his finance co-chairman. Christie’s endorsement of Donald Trump, she said, “is an astonishing display of political opportunism. Donald Trump is unfit to be president.”
Polls suggest Whitman’s view is not shared by Republicans likely to vote in tomorrow’s primaries.
Subscribe to CEO Daily, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top business news of the day. | Famed investor declares his faith in the U.S. economy. |
In the woodland, I find myself scrutinising the texture of bark with renewed interest. There is lattice work and knobbly bits galore. I see a face in a hornbeam: eyes, lips, mouth.
I experiment with aperture, to determine how much of the picture is in focus; to eliminate a fence I zoom in to crop. Editing in this manner requires a conscious effort, but will create much better pictures.
The “warm” setting on my camera lends the woodland shots a sepia quality and I learn to experiment with white balance, which I hadn’t realised was possible with a compact.
“Plenty of people come along with compacts,” says Daniel. “The only major difference will be the lack of control over the depth of field, but it’s not the end of the world.”
One avid clicker is chuffed with his stunning shot of a tree trunk covered in fungi; another has been experimenting with longer exposures by using her tripod for the first time.
Inspired, the following day I head off to a local wood. I choose my subjects carefully, cropping here, zooming there, before spotting a horse chestnut by a mossy trunk and the cross section of a felled tree that resembles a green dartboard. Later, as I download my images, I can see that the course has definitely brought my photos into better focus.
White Balance: This makes white actually look white under different lighting, and all colours will benefit from setting this. Auto white balance will estimate what the colours should be.
Use a tripod: Allows for longer shutter speeds and avoids compromising other settings to get a blur-free shot.
Composition: Imagine that the image is split into thirds and place your subject on one of these lines to give the picture balance and flow, which also guides the eye around the shot.
Aperture: The “f” number, controls your depth of field – what’s in focus in front of and behind your subject. A higher number means more in focus (landscapes with detail in the whole picture), a lower one blurs the background and helps subject stand out (portraits).
Compact cameras: Try a wide-angle lens, such as 5x zoom, starting at a 28mm equivalent. Digital SLRs: The kit lens supplied is a starting point, but also look for a zoom to around 300mm (i.e. 55-300mm). | Deborah King goes on a one-day photography course to learn how to take
better photos |
The unicorns may be running out of room to fly.
Recently, there has been growing concern about the health of the private companies, mostly tech firms, that have been nicknamed unicorns because they have been valued at more than $1 billion. Fortune reported last month that a number of venture capitalists keep ‘dying unicorn’ lists, tallies of the highly valued startups that they expect to go under. And a number of these startups have recently come under attack for their business practices, accounting, or claims about their technology.
Meanwhile, the IPO market has been showing some cracks. First Data, one of the biggest IPOs of the year, ended up pricing below its range. Supermarket chain Albertsons decided to delay its IPO. And the stock performance of tech companies that have recently IPOed have been lackluster.
The result: Even if all the unicorns were originally on a path to becoming companies that generated gold at the end of the magical rainbow, it’s becoming increasingly clear that not all will complete the journey.
Of course, there are so many of these highly valued private companies in the first place because there was a sense that entrepreneurs would be keeping their companies private for longer. What’s more, many of the companies probably aren’t ready to go public.
“The proverbial IPO window is not open for all of these companies,” says Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CBInsights, which maintains a unicorn list. “The fundamentals of many of these companies are far from proven. They would get chewed up in the IPO market right now.”
But investors are eventually going to be looking for a way to cash out, especially for companies that have gone a few years since their last funding. And the IPO market is one of the primary methods to cash out. Startups also get acquired, another means for investors to collect. But given how big some of these companies have become, an IPO is more likely. As a result, more and more of the companies that were shy about going public may soon be looking to do so.
“We have to work past the erroneous mythos that ‘stay private longer’ was a good idea,” says venture capitalist Bill Gurley, of Benchmark, who has been warning that unicorns could be running into problems. “That one really bad piece of advice is going to cost the industry a ton of equity value. Many won’t be able to make the shift.”
The unicorns could make this shift, but the IPO market would have to have one of its best years ever for that to work. Here are the numbers: There are roughly 140 unicorns by the latest tallies, and just over 90 of them are based in the U.S. Based on their last recorded round of funding, those 90-plus unicorns are worth just over $310 billion. To reward early investors, most companies that go public usually do so at a higher valuation then what they were valued at when they last raised money. Add another 20%, which sounds reasonable now, but if the market gets hot again it could be much more than that, and we are up to around $375 billion.
Still, companies don’t sell all of their shares when they IPO. Over the past two decades, the average has been 35%. That means for all the U.S.-based unicorns to go public, IPO investors would have to buy $131 billion worth of newly issued shares.
That’s never happened in a single year. The best year ever for IPOs was 2000, according to data from research firm Dealogic. That year, new issues raised $105 billion. But the average for the IPO market over the past 20 years has been $56 billion. This year, the IPO market has slumped to just $35 billion, far less than what’s needed to satisfy all the unicorns’ dreams.
Then again, even if all the unicorns wanted to go public, it’s unlikely they would do so in the next year. It would probably be spread out over a few years. What’s more, most tech companies tend to sell a smaller portion of their ownership in an IPO than other companies, more like 20%. That brings the IPO ask from the unicorns down to $75 billion, which, spread out over a number of years, is possible.
Leslie Pfrang, who advises companies on IPOs at Class V Group, says the unicorn companies and their investors have nothing to worry about. She says there is plenty of capital out there for IPOs, even if a bunch of the unicorns all decided to stampede the IPO market at once.
But that’s only considering the unicorns. There are other companies looking to go public as well, some of them more established than startups. Private equity firms have lots of former leveraged buyouts – Albertsons is one of them – that they would like to take public. This doesn’t include the 68 companies that have already filed documents and are waiting to go public already, according to Dealogic. What’s more, there are more unicorns coming. CBInsights has a list of 50 other private companies, mostly based in the U.S., that are likely to soon get $1 billion valuations. The unicorn waiting line is getting longer.
The unicorns aren’t just tech companies, but a lot of them are. And if you look at just tech deals, $60 billion starts to look like a big number for the IPO market again, even over a few years. The tech IPO market peaked in 2000 at $44 billion, and it has never gotten back there, though last year was the closest it’s been. This year, 22 tech companies went public, raising just $7.6 billion.
Based on that, the current blessing of unicorns could have a very, very long wait. | For all of Silicon Valley's mega startups to go public, the IPO market would have to be blazing hot. It is not. |
A US police officer has become a viral video star after he was caught on a security camera doing the dance moves from the hit song "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)".
Officer Bryson Lystrup was at a 7-Eleven in Pleasant Grove, Utah, when he began dancing the moves to the hit song, ABC News America reports.
The manager of the 7-Eleven, Sunny Singh, gave the video to the Pleasant Grove Police Department who decided to name and shame the officer.
"WARNING: This video is a little hard to watch," the post read.
"Unfortunately it does involve one of our officers. We were alerted by the manager of a local convenience store about some suspicious behavior and the security video footage was obtained.
"To our community and to the internet as a whole, we apologize. We are looking at getting this officer some help ASAP. (His timing was way off)."
Mr Lystrup told KTVX News that the video was recorded last week when he walked into the store singing the song, and one of the employees asked him if he knew the dance.
"I was like, 'I know the dance,' so I did the dance, told them not to record it and I forgot about the surveillance cameras," he said.
"Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)", by 17-year-old rapper Silento, features instructions for its dance moves in the official video and has become a viral hit of the summer in the US.
Mr Lystrup said he hoped that his video helped show people that police are "humans too".
Do you have any news photos or videos? | A US police officer has become a viral video star after he was caught on a security camera doing the dance moves from the hit song "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)". |
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," July 28, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Joining us is Senator John McCain, who has been taking on conservatives reluctant to raise the national debt ceiling. Good evening, sir. And you know, you're getting so much information coming out of the House tonight. I don't know how much to believe and how much not. But I will tell you, the latest report from one of my colleagues, Chad Pergram, is that Congressman Chaffetz, who's opposed to the Boehner bill, says, I think they'll call the vote tonight and it will pass. So that sounds at least like he's saying that Boehner has the votes, but this seems like voodoo at this point.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: Well, I think he probably does. It's unfortunate, at least in my view, that he had such difficulty. But as you know, there are very strong feelings. There are members who were elected simply on the single issue of cutting spending and getting our mortgaging of our children and our grandchildren's future off of our backs. And so, obviously, they felt very strongly.
And so in answer to your question, I think he probably has the votes, but I think he may have to change his original proposal some -- I've heard maybe add the balanced budget amendment to it. I'm not sure that's true.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, you've been very hard on these -- and it's generally sort of the new Republicans, the Tea Parties. You've been very hard on them. They ran on that. Do they not owe it to their constituents to say, "Look, I'm running on this," and now when push comes to shove and they've got the vote, they don't -- don't they sort of have to keep their promises? They can't say, "Oh, never mind."
MCCAIN: No, absolutely they do, and I think many of them are. What I have criticized is the practice in the Senate of telling our constituents that there's some way that we're going to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in the United States Senate under its present numbers. That would require 67 votes. There is no way that that's going to happen.
And we control -- we Republicans control one third of the government, which obviously limits the amount that we can do. But to say to your constituents and our fellow citizens, Well, we can pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution -- we can't. We can't. There's not 67 votes there to do so.
And so let's be honest with the American people. We have to have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution if we're ever really going to get spending under control. I was around when Gramm-Rudman had these strong and stringent requirements on spending, and then future Congress just declared an emergency and made that legislation null and void.
So I am a strong supporter of the balanced budget amendment. I will take second place to no one as far as being a fiscal conservative. I have voted for the balanced budget amendment 13 times. But I have to be honest with my constituents and tell them this Senate is not going to pass it, but we can't give up the fight.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. So tonight -- I know that you're in the Senate, but you at least once were in the House. There's all this sort of effort to get these votes, to peel them off. What's going on behind closed doors? How does Speaker Boehner -- how does he get the votes?
MCCAIN: Well, I think he appeals, obviously, to his leadership. This is really -- his leadership of the Republicans in the House and being speaker is clearly at stake here, if he can't bring his people along. I think he is agreeing to make some changes in hopes that would pick up additional votes. I think he's trying to explain to them what I said, and that is, if they pass it through the House, it comes to the Senate, Harry Reid will, quote, "table" it, in other words, turn it down.
But now this -- the House of Representatives has acted in a meaningful and important way. They're cutting spending. They are raising the debt limit. There is no tax increases. So we have achieved a lot of the goals pretty much of what you can do controlling one third of the government.
And I think that Mitch McConnell's last option of a committee, bipartisan -- remember, we only have control of one third of the Congress, and yet this would be 50/50 Republicans and Democrats -- and that committee report out, required up or down vote on what they find, I think, and also a short-term increase in the debt limit, so we can go back and fight this again in a few months.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, let me tell you the sort of the what I think some Americans are thinking, the ones who are really -- who really sent these members of Congress to vote for a balanced budget and to fight tooth and nail for it tonight -- is I suspect that some think that what's going on behind closed doors, as someone who ran on it, who now suddenly comes out and says, I'm a (INAUDIBLE) adopting your thinking that something is better than nothing and we move forward -- is they're going to think it's a little like when Senator Harry Reid wanted to get something out of Senator Ben Nelson. And suddenly -- I mean, there's (INAUDIBLE) the suspicion is, is that, you know, like, some congressmen (INAUDIBLE) bought off with something for his district.
MCCAIN: I know John Boehner. He would not engage in that practice.
VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, not -- I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. But I'm saying...
MCCAIN: ... John Boehner wouldn't do it...
VAN SUSTEREN: ... they're wheeling and dealing. No wheeling and dealing tonight.
MCCAIN: ... simply because -- I think he's appealing to them on other grounds. If it came out that John Boehner behind closed doors -- and it would -- people like you have too many sources -- that he was doling out goodies, that would be terribly damaging.
Let me also point to one other benefit, that the House passes the Boehner bill, it comes to the Senate, and Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner then sit down and work something out.
Who's missing from this equation? The President of the United States! He has been completely divorced from the process. Last we heard from the president was Monday night, when he said he had to have tax increases as part of any legislation, and Harry Reid has already agreed not to have tax increases! The president is now a bystander. The President of the United States!
VAN SUSTEREN: What difference does it make?
MCCAIN: Talk about leading from behind!
VAN SUSTEREN: OK, suppose he's, quote, "leading from behind." If something's achieved, how does that matter?
MCCAIN: Because the President of the United States is elected to lead, Greta! The President of the United States -- every previous president I know has been not only active in the process but led in the process. That's the job of the president!
VAN SUSTEREN: Has he not been making phone calls? And is it considered leadership if he's dispatching Vice President Biden up to talk to people and if he's making phone calls and putting people in the same room?
VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, things that we not necessarily see. Is that leading or not?
VAN SUSTEREN: We got -- we got a primetime address the other night!
MCCAIN: You know what is really leading?
MCCAIN: Is to say, Here's my plan. Here's what I want us to do.
VAN SUSTEREN: Has he ever put any plan up?
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, why do they keep saying that he has a plan?
MCCAIN: He has lectured. He's lectured. Maybe -- remember Richard Nixon had a plan to end the Vietnam war? This is the best one since then! | Sen. John McCain sounds off on the debt debate, Boehner bill and putting country before ideology. |
Updated Jan 5, 2013 6:59 PM ET
The United States won the World Junior Hockey Championship on Saturday after Rocco Grimaldi scored twice and Vince Trocheck added an empty-net goal to clinch a 3-1 win over Sweden in the final.
Filip Sandberg put defending champion Sweden ahead on power play early in the second period, but Grimaldi then scored twice in a three-minute span to swing the game in the Americans' favor.
He powered from behind the net to score an equalizer from a narrow angle, and then redirected Jacob Trouba's slap shot from the blue line midway through second period.
''I was just happy (my goals) went in,'' Grimaldi said. ''Basically, I just threw it on the net (first one) and the second one just hit me in the chest and went in.''
Sweden pulled its goalie for an extra player with 1:42 left but failed to capitalize. Instead, Trocheck rounded off the win with 16.7 seconds left.
''I couldn't be more proud of our players and staff,'' U.S. coach Phil Housley said. ''And I'm also really happy for hockey fans in our country. This was a total team effort throughout the tournament. It was a very difficult challenge tonight against an excellent Swedish team.''
John Gibson made 26 saves for the victory and was the MVP of the tournament.
''We wouldn't have this if it wasn't for Gibby,'' said Trouba, who was selected best defenseman. ''We rode him all tournament, and he played phenomenal the whole tournament.''
''It feels great. I worry about the team first and winning a gold medal,'' Gibson said. ''I'll remember that more than MVP.''
Niklas Lundstrom had 31 saves for Sweden.
It was the third title for the Americans, who also won in 2004 and 2010.
''It's pretty special how a group of guys that don't play together for a whole year and then come together can form a gold medal-winning team,'' U.S. captain Jake McCabe said. ''I couldn't have asked for a better group of guys to win this with.''
Valeri Nichushkin scored an overtime winner to give Russia a victory over Canada in the bronze-medal match.
Canada trailed throughout the match, but Brett Ritchie scored an equalizer with 9 minutes left of the third period to force overtime.
In the extra 10-minute period, Nichushkin broke down the right flank on a solo effort and skated in front of the goal to score into the left corner after just 1:35.
Russia goalkeeper Andrei Makarov made 40 saves for the victory. Malcolm Subban stopped 19 shots for Canada.
It was the first time since 1998 that 15-time champion Canada finished without a medal at the event. | US skates past Sweden for title. |
(Reuters) – San Francisco became the first U.S. city to mandate six weeks of fully paid parental leave, requiring employers to shoulder much of the cost and exceeding federal and state benefit rules for private-sector employees, a city supervisor said on Tuesday.
The law, unanimously approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, grants six-week leave for fathers and mothers working for companies with 20 or more employees, nearly doubling the pay they are now eligible to collect under California law.
“Our country’s parental leave policies are woefully behind the rest of the world, and today San Francisco has taken the lead in pushing for better family leave policies for our workers,” Supervisor Scott Wiener said in a statement.
Better benefits for parents are part of campaigns across the nation aimed at combating rising income inequality. California’s governor on Monday signed into law a bill raising the state’s minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour by the year 2023.
San Francisco already offers 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave to its approximately 30,000 city employees.
On Monday, New York’s governor signed a bill granting 12-week paid family leave for private-sector workers that will phase in by 2021. California and New Jersey provide up to six weeks of partial pay, while Rhode Island offers four, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Under the San Francisco policy, effective in 2017, employers must pay 45% of wages for as long as six weeks. The remaining 55 percent of weekly wages comes from a worker-funded state disability program.
Payments are calculated as a percentage of wages up to an annual ceiling of $106,740.
Supporters said it will enable new parents to spend more time with their babies, while opponents said it would hurt profits and cost jobs.
In 2014, about 5,000 San Francisco residents accessed the state’s program for paid family leave for an average of 5.4 weeks, according to state data.
For more about parental leave, watch:
Nationally, 12 percent of workers receive paid family leave through their employers, Wiener’s office said.
Technology companies in Silicon Valley have increased family leave benefits to help recruit and retain employees. Netflix Inc provides up to a year paid, while Facebook Inc provides four months and Microsoft Corp offers eight weeks.
Federal law provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or adopted child for employees at companies with 50 or more workers. | New parents will get double the pay under current state law. |
Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj
12/09/2015 AT 09:30 AM EST
More people are getting butt augmentation surgery than ever before.
provided by the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, over 21,000 people underwent the procedure in 2014, marking an 86 percent increase from the previous year. And the "booty boom" trend seems to be continuing into 2015.
"I've seen a 20 percent increase over this past year," plastic surgeon
, who performs the most buttock enhancing procedures of any doctor in the Northeast, tells PEOPLE exclusively.
This year, Schulman performed over 300 butt augmentations, and credits
with making the elective surgery so popular.
"Kim Kardashian was huge for the 'booty boom,' " he says. "She put her butt out there for everyone to see and embraced it. I think stigma about curves has gone away [because of] people like Kim Kardashian,
While the middle Kardashian still reigns as the queen of most requested butt, her younger sister
is not far behind, along with Minaj, Vergara,
and – for those who desire a more athletic shape –
Another big cause of the "booty boom" has been the increase in popularity of social media and the rise of Instagram stars like
, says Schulman, who says Selter's butt is also a popular request.
The two most popular butt enhancing procedures are buttock implants and Brazilian Butt Lifts, both which cost upwards of $8,500.
Schulman recommends staying away from butt injections, which are not FDA approved, and are illegal within the United States.
"It can cause an inflammatory reaction or infection," he warns. "Or it can be inadvertently injected into a blood vessel and cause death."
If you are considering going under the knife to boost your derriere, Schulman emphasizes the importance of going to a board-certified plastic surgeon working in an approved medical setting. | "I think stigma about curves has gone away [because of] people like Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj and Sofia Vergara," Dr. Matthew Schulman tells PEOPLE |
The Littleover Lodge Hotel in Derbyshire, U.K. (JC Hotels)
If there’s one thing more annoying than a militant vegan, it’s a hotel chef who brags on social media that he loves to slip a little meat into his unsuspecting customers’ vegan dishes.
It’s certainly no way to beef up your business. And it’s why Alex Lambert, the former head chef at the Littleover Lodge Hotel in Derby, England, will be munching on mutton sandwiches for the foreseeable future as he stands on the unemployment line — even though he now says he never did what he said he did.
This all began when Lambert, 30, got into a spitting contest with a vegan on Instagram. As reported in The Telegraph, he posted a very old joke that goes, “How do you know if someone is a vegan? Don’t worry, they will tell you.”
“A militant vegan saw this post,” Lambert said, “and began commenting, saying I should go get heart disease and I will be responsible for the death of my daughter by feeding her animal products.
“I lost my temper, which I think is understandable given her comments, and said something completely stupid with the sole intention of pissing her off. That is basically all it was.”
What he told the woman was that "being a vegan is a minority," and that she "should find a better way to spend your time, my personal favourite [sic] is feeding vegans animal products and them not knowing."
To which she replied: "Hope you get caught one day, would love to see that…. Enjoy the heart disease :)"
But that was just the appetizer. The main course was about to play out over a spate of increasingly hostile Instagram comments as vegans around the world took their turn lambasting the chef and the hotel. Many slammed the hotel with bad reviews and demanded a main dish: Lambert’s head, preferably on a platter, au jus.
The three-star hotel suspended Lambert, saying he had spoken “in a heated moment” and that “this practice has never taken place.”
But when the vegans demanded that he should be forced to eat more than just a little crow, the hotel fired him.
“We have investigated all accusations against Mr. Lambert and found no evidence suggesting that any of these practices have taken place within this hotel,” the management said in a statement.
“However, due to the comments made by Mr. Lambert regarding specific dietary requirements the company has decided to terminate his employment which has been done forthwith.”
Lambert’s remarks showed “absolute stupidity,” said Nicholas Crooks, the hotel's general manager.
“We cater to all dietary requirements, we run a proper and professional operation here and we feel as if we've been completely battered by this.”
So … well done, Alex. If nothing else, this will be food for thought.
“I have been a chef for nine years,” Lambert said. “I have never in this time done anything like feeding a vegan animal products or slipped in contaminated food.
“My job has always been my passion and something I have always taken very seriously. It was a stupid comment said out of anger.
“For the record I have no issue with vegans.”
Unfortunately for Lambert, vegans had a big issue with him. | The chef angered plenty of vegans and vegetarians after posting about his kitchen high jinks. |
Zoom Ziplines at Mountain Creek 200 Route 94, Vernon, NJ
The Hunter Mountain zipline in New York, pictured above, is the adrenaline equivalent of a sports car whipping around the Autobahn. Mountain Creek, on the other hand, is like a lazy Sunday drive in the family sedan on the Garden State Parkway.
With her helmet firmly affixed, Jen Reilly is safely strapped into a harness for her beginner ride at Zoom Ziplines in Vernon, NJ.
The former has a spartan, action-movie handlebar, but the latter straps you into a whole supporting contraption, with a big bar, two straps (preventing you from twisting or turning at all, which is a lot of the fun sometimes) and a granny-pants harness that basically turns into a seat when you’re zipping. It’s for the less-adventurous.
And unlike the others, this one starts you with a little baby zip (200 feet long) at ground level, to get you accustomed to the feeling — like a lame bunny slope.
From there, you hop into the ski resort’s stand-up gondola and climb 1,040 feet for the remaining three ziplines. Each one crosses over a lake, though not at particularly zooming speeds, so the whole experience is more of a unique-perspective sightseeing trip, but not a major adrenaline wave. Each ride lasts less than a minute.
Instead of getting to hurl your own body over the edge, you’re released by a mechanism, and instead of having to brace yourself for a manual stop, the resort uses a big spring-loaded device to catch you.
The young guides are friendly and attentive, albeit in a theme-park sort of way.
Aileen Schafer, 39, was initially nervous about zipping, despite having gone sky diving before. Later she described the zips as “calm, relaxing.”
“In my head, I was expecting to be a little more freaked out,” she says.
The only really scary part, as she and other guests agreed, was the 200-foot-long suspension bridge you cross on the way out. The bridge is secured, but it sways and bounces like a rejected prop from an Indiana Jones movie, making you feel like you’re going to tumble into the water, and take all the other bridge-crossers with you.
As a bonus bit of adventure, the tour ends with a ride in a Unimog truck, one of those open-air, all-terrain vehicles you always see in footage of the United Nations abroad. The bumpy trip back to the gondola takes you over mountainous terrain and, in the warmer months, even passes by some of the trick-riding pro- BMXers tearing up the mountain’s bike park.
The Post’s Tim Donnelly gets harnessed and helmeted at Big Bear Ziplines.
Info: Prices are $60 for adults, $49 for youths (off-peak rates); zoomziplines.com
Thrill rating: Starts with a baby zip at ground level.
Big Bear Ziplines 817 Violet Ave., Hyde Park, NY
If the Swiss Family Robinson were a modern family on the go, it probably would have commuted on something resembling the Big Bear Zipline course. The course doesn’t start high in the mountains like the others — the tallest is only 60 feet — but it does offer more chances to zip, with eight lines ranging from 200 to 1,400 feet long.
The course goes entirely through the woods, a huge swath of property the company rents near the Hudson River, providing a rustic, summercamp quality as you zoom over old stone walls and the occasional snake.
The run contains extra challenges, too: two Tarzan lines to swing down and two steep fireman’s ladders to climb up. It’s safe, but feels a little more DIY than the others: Lines are hooked to trees instead of steel posts, and we got to throw ourselves off the platforms, or kick off a tree for even more speed, and run up a ramp to stop zipping. Using your own body adds to the adrenaline of it all.
The vibe here is casual, with our guides — the chill combo of Myke Shealy and Una Parciasepe — playing up the fear factor a bit by making you fall backward or jump off the platform with no hands.
Then Donnelly goes a little Tarzan by zipping across lines hooked to trees at Big Bear Ziplines.
The tour builds you up to the big dog, the 1,400-foot finale that zips you over the forest floor at a tight speed, which gives a liberating feeling of pseudo-flying when you take your hands off the handle and spread out.
“I like the tree where we were able to climb up the tree to get speed,” says Mike Naughton, 48, of Mansfield, NJ, who was zipping for the first time after he and his wife, Helen, finally ginned up the courage. “I like the fast ones.”
Info: Prices are $99 per person; on weekends through October and on Halloween night, the course is offering a special nighttime Zombie Zip tour, featuring costumed characters and spooky decorations, which costs $119 to $125 per person; bigbearziplines.com
Thrill rating: It seems like you’re flying along the 1,400-foot line.
New York Zipline Adventure Tours 64 Klein Ave., Hunter, NY
“Are you nervous about dying?” asks guide Tim Parquez. He’s joking, but the thin wire standing between me and the mountain floor 600 feet below is barely perceptible. “Nah,” I say as I step up to the platform and lock in, looking out at the spectacular view across the mountaintops. “What a way to go.”
Our guides have driven us up here in a minibus — its radio blasting the “Superman” movie theme song — up a bumpy pathway to the tip of the mountain. During the winter, the area would be crawling with skiers and snowboarders, but on this warm day, it’s just our three tour guides and six civilians gazing out into the abyss, shaking in our shoulder harnesses.
This is the fastest — a promised speed of 50 mph — longest and tallest zipline in all of North America. So we get a lot of instruction in zipline form and safety beforehand.
“This is not Disney World,” says guide Michael Goyette. He tells us to pay attention and react, because this is supposed to be a high-adrenaline danger sport, not a dinky skyride.
Zipsters at Hunter Mountain take a footbridge back after flying over a big valley.
To maximize pants-wetting potential, the SkyRider tour starts you right off with the big one, a line that spans 3,200 feet across the mountain valley.
Goyette gives me a 3-2-1 countdown and yells, “Zip away!” I hurl myself over the edge and hang onto the bar for dear life. The instinct is to pull yourself up and clutch the bar like you’re Sandra Bullock in that “Gravity” trailer, but in reality, you’re still pretty safe even if you just hang there.
I curl my body up into the cannonball form (knees to my chest, head back) for maximum speed, taking a few moments to digest the view. And it is breathtaking, if I had any breath left that hadn’t been sucked out by this weird backward version of flying I’m experiencing. The majesty of the Catskills sucks me in so much, one of the guides has to shake the line to remind me to open up my body, to slow down — lest I fly into the backstop like a wild pitch. It takes barely a minute to get across the longest zip, but the terror makes it feel much faster.
The rest of the zips on the tour are shorter, but the views are great. One that speeds under the tree canopy gives the feeling of being on a Speeder chasing stormtroopers through Endor.
“It’s like no other experience. It puts you in a spot you can’t get to,” says Bradd Morse, founder of the company and a worldwide zipline pioneer. “You just get a bird’s-eye perspective of the world.”
Info: Prices range from $89 for the Mid-Mountain tour to $119 for the SkyRider tour; ziplinenewyork.com
Thrill rating: Zoom along at 50 mph — without a car! | Zoom Ziplines at Mountain Creek 200 Route 94, Vernon, NJThe Hunter Mountain zipline in New York, pictured above, is the adrenaline equivalent of a sports car whipping around the Autobahn.… |
By Tom Charity, Special to CNN
updated 11:12 AM EST, Fri January 13, 2012
Lukas Haas and Mark Wahlberg star in "Contraband."
(CNN) -- This is the time of year when Hollywood traditionally gets back to basics, almost as if it's embarrassed by the number of worthy Oscar hopefuls clogging up the multiplexes.
Look on "The Devil Inside," "Contraband" and even Steven Soderbergh's "Haywire" as a kind of collective cleanse as the studios attempt to flush out all the pretension and excess accrued from the holiday period.
As rudimentary as its name, "Contraband" is a straightforward crime thriller, its only claim to novelty hailing from the significant portion of the action set on board a tanker en route from New Orleans to Panama (and back again). Mark Wahlberg is (get this) the reluctant criminal: a married-with-kids security consultant forced to return to his first love when his brother-in-law panics and deep-sixes a cocaine shipment intended for a deliciously unreasonable Giovanni Ribisi.
Wahlberg's character, Farraday, is something of a legend in these circles. He and best buddy Ben Foster were the "Lennon and McCartney of smuggling," we're told in the first scene, though it's up to us to work out which is which. In truth, Farraday seems more like a one-man band, the brains and the beauty, with the reliably unreliable Foster relegated to more of a Pete Best role.
Reworking the Icelandic film that he produced and starred in three years ago, "Reykjavik-Rotterdam," Baltasar Kormakur has assembled a very decent cast that also includes Kate Beckinsale (as Mrs. Farraday), Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, David O'Hara and Diego Luna as a crazed Panamanian gangster. But there's not much here for any of them to sink their teeth into.
A sluggish first act only occasionally sputters into life, mostly when Ribisi is given the floor.
Things pick up when Farraday's plan starts to unravel.
Approaching the docks at full speed, the tanker nearly carves out a brand new Panama Canal. Then the "funny money" he and his contrabanditos mean to ship back to the land of the free proves laughably easy to detect. And of course there's Luna's lunatic to deal with. Even then, you might come across more action, and certainly meatier drama, in a typical episode of "Breaking Bad."
"The Hurt Locker" cinematographer Barry Ackroyd does his best to inject some gritty realism into the proceedings, but several forced and farfetched plot developments might have been better served with the self-consciously flip, flash style pioneered by Luc Besson than the gloomy, low-key naturalistic approach. Not that I've nothing against a thriller taking itself seriously, but "Contraband" trades in too many clichés and contrivances to work up any genuine emotional engagement, and when it does threaten to do something risky or unpredictable, Kormakur immediately pulls his punches.
As usual, Wahlberg supplies the center of gravity and grounds the show with the kind of dogged determination that is his forte. But it's disappointing that for all the character's guile, Farraday's master stroke is stolen wholesale from a sequence in Sergio Leone's great underrated gangster saga "Once Upon a Time in America" -- which makes him a ripoff merchant at least as much as he's a smuggler.
Most popular stories right now | This is the time of year when Hollywood traditionally gets back to basics, almost as if it's embarrassed by the number of Oscar hopefuls clogging up multiplexes. |
It’s not often that an author announces his obsolescence on his very own book cover, but with “Play All,” the redoubtable Clive James has found a title that neatly demarcates how late he is to the party.
Maybe it doesn’t matter so much that this slim collection of critical essays is built around the experience of binge-watching shows on a DVD player, a platform that bids fair to join the VCR and the eight-track in the techno-landfill. Maybe it doesn’t matter that the author treats the venerable boxed set as a recent development that requires “a new critical language” to make sense of its “onrush of creativity.”
Maybe the only thing that matters is that Mr. James, who reviewed television for The Observer back in the 1970s and remains an enduring entertainment fixture in his British homeland, seems just now to be getting around to series that entered (and, in a few cases, departed) the cultural conversation years ago.
So if you were wondering what the author really thinks about “Band of Brothers” (2001) or “NYPD Blue” (1993-2005) or “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (2006-7) or “The Wire” (2002-8) — or, hell, “Shogun” (1980) — this is the volume to slake your curiosity. If you needed someone to explain to you that Frank Underwood, the antihero of “House of Cards,” owes something to Machiavelli; that “Mad Men” is “shorthand for Madison Avenue men”; that movie spectacles ask us to “switch off our brains”; and that modern television has exploded “the old idea of a single auteur,” then by all means hunker down.
The rest of us will have to gather our rosebuds where we may. Recalling the amusingly unkind Mr. James who once compared Arnold Schwarzenegger to “a brown condom full of walnuts,” we are liable to get the same kick from learning that Steve Buscemi’s teeth are “designed for biting the head off a live chicken” and that “watching ‘The Pacific’ is like being shackled to the couch and forced to see ‘Pearl Harbor’ for a second time. It almost makes you sorry that the Japanese lost.”
Recalling the Clive James who has unapologetically commuted between high and low culture, between translating Dante and hanging out at the Playboy mansion, we might enjoy seeing him refract “Boardwalk Empire” through the old master glow of Raphael and pour the nectar of Nietzsche and Camus over Bubbles, the shopping-cart philosopher from “The Wire.”
But maybe now is the time to grapple with the Clive James of today: a game but seriously ill man whose “polite but insidious form of leukemia” was diagnosed six years ago. His condition is currently kept at bay through the miracles of pharmacology, and although Mr. James concedes that “I haven’t really got a chance,” he quickly adds, “I haven’t got an end date, either.”
So, with the extra time afforded him, Mr. James has been viewing everything he can get his hands on. It is, of course, possible to wish him many more years of happy viewing — on whatever platform — while insisting that he be held to the same standards as before. By that measure, the Mr. James of old would surely have thought twice before committing the phrase “screen magic” to paper and would have dialed back such fanboy gushings as “‘The Sopranos’ is at least three ‘Godfather’ movies plus ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ and Abel Gance’s ‘Napoleon.’”
He might, too, have questioned such assertions as “There never was, and never will be, a successful entertainment fueled by pure cynicism,” or “This business of continuously good writing throughout the long run of a show really began with ‘The Rockford Files,’” or “There have always been funny women in real life, but on screen they were handicapped if they looked pretty, or even just normal.”
To that last charge, a ghost chorus of comic goddesses rises up: Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball, Katharine Hepburn, Kay Kendall. But why disturb their slumbers? This is the same Clive James who thinks that female performers, before whining too much, should consider how much less freedom they would have on Al Jazeera.
Write all this off to the generational blinders of a 76-year-old author, and then see if you have enough indulgence left to explain the author’s idolatry of Aaron Sorkin, who, in Mr. James’s mind, has provided “the most elaborately eloquent dialogue since the great days of Hollywood screwball comedy in the late 1930s and early 1940s,” and whose “West Wing” “reminded the world that America had intellectual capacity behind its economic muscle.” Was that capacity still in question? Only, perhaps, in the precincts of Mr. James’s Oxbridge worldview, where the specter of United States hegemony allows for such bizarre sentences as “This is America, whose culture insists that the love object not be objectified and that love, a thing of the spirit, must transcend lust, a thing of the mere body.”
Cotton Mather’s America, maybe. But prejudices, it seems, hang on as doggedly as critics, and critics are finally just people sitting doggedly on a couch. So it is that the most affecting moments of “Play All” come when the author is joined by his wife and daughters, all keeping the old man company as he sifts through his many hours of boxed sets. “We may well be the only people in the world,” Mr. James writes, “who have ever watched five episodes of ‘The Following’ in succession without succumbing to catatonia.”
He adds, “How you can do that much watching without using up the universe is a question we will get to later.”
200 pages. Yale University Press. $25.
A version of this review appears in print on August 23, 2016, on page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Pensive Philosopher, Finding Succor in Reruns. Today's Paper|Subscribe | In his new book, “Play All,” the author and former Observer critic ruminates on the television landscape, in some cases turning to series that are no longer on the air. |
During a Sunday morning service at Trinity Church last summer, a longtime parishioner looked around during the reading of the Gospel and counted the worshippers.
By her tally, there were 49 people in the pews of the historic lower Manhattan church — a meager turnout for the storied, 314-year-old parish.
She was puzzled, then, when the next week’s church bulletin reported attendance at 113.
Trinity’s rector, the Rev. James Cooper, had decided that tourists who wander in and out of the chapel should be counted as well, she was told.
“That’s just a little snapshot into the way he presents everything,” said the parishioner, who was also a member of the governing board until she resigned in protest. “Everything has a little bit of truth to it but a lot of deception around it.”
Playing fast and loose with the numbers, and official church records, is one of the many complaints that dog the man who heads the richest parish in the Anglican world, a church with at least $1 billion in Manhattan real estate.
Cooper was supposed to be the guardian angel of Trinity. Instead, former board members say his dictatorial style of leadership and grandiose ambitions have fomented insurrection in the staid Episcopal community. They accuse him of undermining Trinity’s mission of good works since taking over as rector in 2004.
Instead of helping the poor, Cooper’s helped himself — with demands for a $5.5 million SoHo townhouse, an allowance for his Florida condo, trips around the world including an African safari and a fat salary.
Rather than building an endowment, he is accused of wasting more than $1 million on development plans for a luxury condo tower that has been likened to a pipe dream and burning another $5 million on a publicity campaign.
Cooper, 67, whose compensation totaled $1.3 million in 2010, even added CEO to his title of rector. He began listing himself first on the annual directory of vestry members.
The atmosphere has become so poisonous that nearly half the 22 members of the vestry, or board, have been forced out or quit in recent months.
“You have diminished Trinity Church, and you have created a glaring atmosphere of deceit,” the longtime parishioner wrote in a letter resigning her position on the board.
Eight members of the vestry, which includes heavy hitters in finance, law and philanthropy, abruptly left in February and two quit months earlier. Four of them were critics of Cooper who resigned immediately after not being renominated to serve for another year by Cooper’s hand-picked committee.
The relationship between the board and Cooper became so tense that, over the summer, Cooper agreed to quietly step down but requested a generous retirement package first, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Post.
But Cooper then reconsidered, and the dissenting board members were powerless to remove him. Instead, some found themselves in his sights.
“When the fox ends up guarding the henhouse, it never ends well for the chickens,” ousted board member Thomas Flexner, global head of real estate for Citigroup, wrote in a Feb. 13 resignation letter. “But this is what has happened at Trinity.”
Cooper has his defenders. A current board member, Susan Berresford, said the 600-member church has “full confidence in the leadership of Trinity’s rector.”
“Even during these challenging economic times, Trinity’s ministries are strong, flourishing and addressing a full range of social and spiritual needs,” said Berresford, former president of the Ford Foundation.
Trinity Church opened its doors in 1698 at Broadway and Wall Street, chartered by King William III of England. Seven years later, Queen Anne gave the church a wide swath of land, 215 acres that stretched from Wall to Christopher streets and the banks of the Hudson.
George Washington and Alexander Hamilton worshipped at Trinity, and Hamilton is buried in its graveyard on Trinity Place.
The original church burned down in 1776 as the British took Manhattan, but was rebuilt twice. The current Gothic Revival brownstone church, with its distinctive spire, opened in 1846.
Today, Trinity’s holdings — in addition to the church and nearby St. Paul’s Chapel — include 14 commercial buildings in the Hudson Square area of Manhattan.
The revenue from the rents is some $200 million a year, which pays the operating expenses of the commercial properties and funds the operations of the church.
When Trinity leaders were looking for a new rector in 2003 to replace the Rev. Daniel Matthews, who retired, they wanted someone who could build a true endowment for their philanthropic work, former board members said.
The search committee considered Cooper, then the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Cooper’s candidacy was originally rejected because some felt he was not up to the job, according to former board members.
But Cooper “wanted this job more than anybody else and put on a very hard sell,” according to one former director. Cooper was hired in 2004.
Among the perks Cooper negotiated was a lavish home in SoHo, a Federal-style townhouse built in the 1820s with a price tag of $5.5 million.
“He chose the residence and said this shall be the rectory,” a former board member said. “Not in recent history . . . has the church ever provided so extravagant a living arrangement for the rector, but that’s what he wanted.”
The church bought the property, located in a landmark district, and has sunk hundreds of thousands more into its upkeep and renovation, recently installing new windows to the tune of $100,000.
Cooper also convinced the church to pay him a cash housing allowance, which totaled $115,313 in 2010, ostensibly for the home he still owned in Florida.
His $1.3 million compensation package also included a salary of $346,391 and deferred compensation of $507,940, according to 2010 tax documents, the latest available.
Instead of concentrating on the endowment, Cooper began planning for a grand development on Trinity Place. He proposed tearing down two Trinity-owned buildings across from the church. One, a 25-story tower at 74 Trinity Place, housed the church offices, its preschool and a gathering place for parishioners.
Cooper wanted to build a luxury condominium tower, with church offices on the lower floors. He also looked at buying the adjacent American Stock Exchange and demolishing it, even though the building has long been considered for landmark status.
One former board member called the plan insensitive and too big for the area. Others questioned the need for such a development, which would involve borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars.
A board committee in June requested a detailed report on proposed uses of the complex, but it never materialized and the meeting minutes never reflected the request, charged Andrew Lynn, director of planning and regional development at the Port Authority, who quit the board.
“This manipulation of the minutes is part of a pattern, in which inconvenient issues raised by the vestry are air brushed out of the record,” Lynn wrote in a December missive.
Another former board member said Cooper spent years studying the condo development, “not at all paying attention to the principal focus of those that hired him, which was try to solve the problem and try to make the church more of a powerful force in the philanthropy world.”
Trinity has had a long tradition of global giving and has taken credit for being one of the early opponents of apartheid in South Africa. It gave millions to the activist Bishop Desmond Tutu.
But for years, Trinity’s grant program gave out only $2.7 million annually, despite having the resources to fund more causes, a former board member said.
More money was spent on church publicity in one year — $5 million — than grants.
Last year, Trinity doled out grants to causes including a jobs program in Bedford-Stuyvesant and to churches in Africa.
Cooper traveled to Africa on church business but found time to fit in at least one safari, with his family along, at Trinity’s expense. The church also paid for jaunts to Asia and Australia.
The longtime and respected head of the grants program, the Rev. James Callaway, was forced out by Cooper, according to a former board member.
Callaway refused to comment, and the church said he continues there as a program adviser.
The church, in response to questions from The Post, said Cooper “has taken steps to grow the liquid endowment” and is weighing a plan to repair its building at 74 Trinity Place or build a new one. Officials refused to comment on the safari. As for the Sunday Mass miscount, the church denied counting gawkers — or at least ones that don’t sit down.
“Ushers measure church attendance at services by people in the pews.”
Trinity Church is one of the largest landowners in Manhattan, with some 6 million square feet of commercial space. The holdings also include a chapel on Governors Island and a cemetery in northern Manhattan and numerous office buildings in the Hudson Square area.
74 Trinity Place 25 stories
A $5.5 million townhouse at 37 Charlton St. bought for rector the Rev. James Cooper
Selected Hudson Square commercial properties (the church owns 14) and notable tenants:
12 stories, 236,749 sq. ft.
2 stories, 38,055 sq. ft.
12 stories, 386,820 sq. ft.; 92YTribeca
9 stories, 291,064 sq. ft. | (Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Helayne Seidman) ( )During a Sunday morning service at Trinity Church last summer, a longtime parishioner looked around during the reading of the Gospel and counted th… |
About a month after Dr. Elliot Pellman stepped down from the N.F.L.’s controversial committee on concussions, Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday that Pellman had been replaced as its chief medical director.
Gary Green, a professor of sports medicine at U.C.L.A. and baseball’s adviser on performance-enhancing drugs for the past seven years, will replace Pellman, according to a statement released by the commissioner’s office.
The chief medical director for baseball serves as the primary liaison between the commissioner’s office and club physicians and trainers. For example, when swine flu cases spread across the country last year, Pellman provided recommendations to teams on how to treat personnel and players.
The 277-word statement made little mention of Pellman, only saying that he would remain on in an advisory role.
“Dr. Green has been an outstanding asset to Major League Baseball as a consultant, and we are pleased that this expanded role will provide him an opportunity to make significant contributions to our game,” Commissioner Bud Selig said in the written statement.
Green will remain in his role as the chief adviser on issues related to performance-enhancing drugs. Pellman, who declined comment when reached by phone, will remain an adviser to the commissioner’s office.
Pellman, also the Jets’ team physician, wrote many of the N.F.L.’s 13 papers published in the journal Neurosurgery that recommended policies on concussions that were at odds with outside research findings and medical opinions.
In 2005, The New York Times reported that Pellman had exaggerated several aspects of his medical education and professional status in official biographical information and a résumé prepared for an appearance before a Congressional panel. | About a month after Dr. Elliot Pellman stepped down from the N.F.L.'s controversial committee on concussions, Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday that Pellman had been replaced as its chief medical director. |
'Dark Knight Rises' Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway Leave Paris
Following the decision to cancel the Paris premiere of "
, hopped aboard a private jet yesterday at a private airport.
Warner Bros. has also canceled appearances by the cast scheduled for Mexico and Japan.
The film's director, Christopher Nolan, released a statement yesterday that read in part, "Speaking on behalf of the cast and crew of 'The Dark Knight Rises', I would like to express our profound sorrow at the senseless tragedy that has befallen the entire Aurora community ... Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families." | Following the decision to cancel the Paris premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises," the movie's stars, Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway, hopped aboard a… |
With most of the British press set against him, Thursday's TV appearance - which covered everything from immigration to economic policy -- was a rare opportunity for Miliband to talk to voters directly.
He duly used the opportunity to reject persistent criticism from some of his own lawmakers and the country's mostly right-wing press that his image as "a geek" made him an electoral liability, saying he didn't care what people said about him.
"The thing is they see you as a North London geek," Jeremy Paxman, a famously robust interviewer, told Miliband.
"Who cares? Who does?" came the reply. "You know, I don't care what the newspapers write about me."
Miliband, 45, said he had been underestimated before.
"People have thrown a lot at me over four and a half years, but I'm a pretty resilient guy and I've been underestimated at every turn. People said I wouldn't become leader and I did. People said four years ago he can't become prime minister; I think I can."
Read MoreThese charts will tell all you need to know about the UK election
Stuart Thomson, a public affairs consultant at Bircham Dyson Bell, said both men had got through the encounter without making a serious mistake, but that Cameron, the incumbent, had more to lose than Miliband, the challenger.
"There's no doubt that Miliband exceeded expectations but Cameron held his own," Thomson told Reuters. "The debate has really started the firing gun on the election and all sides know they are in a real battle."
Follow us on Twitter: @CNBCWorld | Prime Minister David Cameron won the first TV encounter of a close national election in Britain, an opinion poll showed. |
President Obama said Sunday that the United States will “go on the offensive” against Islamic State militants in the Middle East and that he will further outline his plans Wednesday in a speech.
“The next phase is us going on the offensive,” Obama said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The president said that on Wednesday he will not announce the use of U.S. ground troops or a campaign equal to the war in Iraq, and that his goal is to make clear the mission is to deal with terror threats like those over the past several years. A senior Obama administration official told Fox News imminent, new military action in either Iraq or Syria was not expected to be announced in the speech.
Obama said he has the “authority he needs” to increase attacks on Islamic State targets without congressional approval, but he did not answer repeated questions about whether he will order air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria.
A senior White House official told Fox News that Obama's primary aim in the Wednesday speech will be to update the American public on what the strategy is to deal with the militant group, saying the administration wants "people to understand how he's approaching this."
When Congress was on summer break, the president ordered strikes on the group’s military targets in Iraq, saying they were to protect U.S. personnel and requested by the Iraq government as part of a humanitarian effort to preserve infrastructure and save Iraqi minorities.
Obama said Sunday the upcoming effort is part of three-step plan that started with intelligence gathering and will include helping install a new Iraqi government.
“I’m confident we can get this done,” he said.
Obama acknowledged on "Meet the Press" that the Islamic State is unique because of its “territorial ambitions” in the Middle East.
"Over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of ISIL," he said, using an alternate name for the group. "We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we're going to defeat them."
Reps. Peter King, D-N.Y., and Adam Smith, D-Wash., each told ABC’s “This Week” that the president should take swift action instead of trying to get congressional approval and getting bogged down in a prolonged debate.
“Getting the exact language through Congress would be extremely difficult,” Smith said, “though I think that’s what we ought to do.”
Obama will outline his plan after meeting Tuesday in the Oval Office with Capitol Hill leaders -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“What I'm going to ask the American people to understand is that this is a serious threat,” Obama told NBC. “We have the capacity to deal with it, and here's how we'll deal with it. This will require some resources above what's already in there.”
Obama also said that he has not seen any immediate intelligence of threats to the U.S. homeland.
The interview was conducted Saturday at the White House shortly after Obama returned from a NATO summit in Wales, where the Islamic State threat was a key topic of discussion. The speech will come one day before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Obama restated his opposition to sending U.S. ground troops to engage in direct combat with the militants, who have laid claim to large swaths of territory in Iraq, targeted religious and ethnic minority groups, and threatened U.S. personnel and interests in the region.
At Obama's direction, the U.S. military has conducted more than 130 air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq in the past month. In retaliation, the group recently beheaded two American journalists it had been holding hostage in Syria, where the organization also operates.
Lawmakers have pressed Obama to expand the air strikes into Syria. He has resisted so far, but said he has asked his military advisers for options for pursuing the group there.
In the interview, Obama said the U.S. would not go after the Islamic State group alone, but would operate as part of an international coalition and continue air strikes to support ground efforts that would be carried out by Iraqi and Kurdish troops.
At the NATO summit, the U.S. and nine allies agreed to take on the militants because of the threat they pose to member countries.
Obama's emerging strategy depends on cooperation and contributions from regional partners, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, in addition to the formation of a new government in Iraq.
Obama said he expected the Iraqi government to be formed this week.
Last month, while vacationing on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard, Obama was criticized for heading to the golf course minutes after he appeared in public to angrily denounce the Islamic State militants for the videotaped killing of American journalist James Foley.
Asked whether he wanted a do-over by new "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, Obama said that, while there will always be tough news somewhere, he "should've anticipated the optics" of immediately going to play golf after delivering that statement in which he said he had just gotten off the phone with Foley's parents.
But Obama said the more important question is whether he is getting the policies right and whether he is protecting the American people and, on that score, he said, "I think I've done a very good job during the course of these last, close to six years."
Fox News' Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | President Obama will tell Americans in a speech Wednesday his plans to combat Islamic State militants in the Middle East. |
Imagine the wear and tear that a professional basketball player’s leaps do to the body. Now imagine the wear and tear they might cause if that player were barefoot, or if he had to shoot foul shots with his entire weight balanced on his toes.
Dancers suffer a number of injuries, and because of the leaping in ballet, about 70 percent of them are in the legs and feet, estimates Heather Southwick, director of physical therapy at the Boston Ballet.
The force of landing is equal to about 12 times a dancer’s body weight, according to Pointe Magazine, an international magazine for ballet dancers. Dancers land on a flat ballet shoe, a toe shoe, or barefoot. “None of the footwear has any support in it,” says Southwick.
And ballet dancers are especially vulnerable to overuse injury, she adds. Five to six days a week, a professional dancer spends four or more hours in rehearsal and two to three hours in a performance. Dancers also take a 1½-hour class at least five days a week.
The “constitutional flexibility” of a dancer, advantageous in many ways, increases the risk of ankle strains and of the kneecap pulling out of place, says Dr. Lyle Micheli, director of sports medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston, and attending doctor for the Boston Ballet.
In the last three decades, Boston Ballet, one of the early US leaders in dance medicine, has used numerous methods for treating injuries. They range from the commonplace contrast baths (four minutes of warm water, followed by one minute of ice cold) to hasten healing, to the daily hands-on manipulation of overused joints like the ankle to restore range of motion, to newer innovations like the Graston technique to break down scar tissue and soft-tissue restrictions, therapeutic Kinesio taping of muscles to improve stability, and iontophoresis, a noninvasive method of delivering drugs with electrical current, to help with inflammation.
More important, says Southwick, is the shift in focus to injury prevention. Fatigue, weakness, and muscle imbalance play a role in injury, so the company’s health and wellness center is like a 24-hour gym, with an exercise bike and elliptical machine to improve endurance, Pilates and Gyrotonics equipment to develop core strength, and weights and other resistance training equipment.
Dancers are screened when they join the troupe and put on individual exercise programs to strengthen weaker muscles and address alignment issues. Strength-training and high-level balance work has significantly reduced the incidence of sprained ankles, once a common injury, Southwick says.
Dancers learn to articulate the foot and toes with the same maneuverability as the hand. Consciously lifting the arch and each toe from the floor independently strengthens the foot muscles, Southwick says. She urges dancers to come for treatment at the first twinge or sign of muscle weakness to stave off more serious, lasting injuries.
Boston Ballet soloist Dalay Parrondo (her leg is below) has staved off serious injury, though she’s faced a few stress injuries in one foot. “It is really important to take the time we need to prevent future injuries,” she says. “Good physical therapy definitely helps us to get back in shape, and extra exercises help us to get the strength we need before we go back to work.” | Imagine the wear and tear that a professional basketball player’s leaps do to the body. Now imagine the wear and tear it might cause if that player were barefoot, or if he had to shoot foul shots with his entire weight balanced on his toes. Dancers suffer a number of injuries, and because of the leaping in ballet, about 70 percent of them are in the legs and feet, estimates Heather Southwick, director of physical therapy at the Boston Ballet. The force of landing is equal to about 12 times a dancer’s body weight, according to Pointe Magazine, an international magazine for ballet dancers. Dancers land on a flat ballet shoe, a toe shoe, or barefoot. “None of the footwear has any support in it,” says Southwick. |
Even with a good screening process, you may still run into problems with tenants. They may fail to pay their rent on time or cause damage to the property.
When they move in, have tenants sign a report indicating the condition of the property and appliances, Nuzzolese said. That way, you have documentation of any damage that was present before they arrived.
Your rental agreement should include the penalties you can impose if the tenant violates any part of the agreement, like getting three giant dogs when the apartment is supposed to be pet-free or installing an unauthorized satellite dish, Hall said. If the fines and fees aren't part of the rental agreement, you have no right to charge the tenant for these violations.
This is another area where it's important to understand your state and local laws. Each state has rules for how much time you must give your tenants to fix a problem before you can take legal action.
If it gets to the point where you need to evict a tenant, you take them to court, where a judge will look at the rental agreement and determine whether the tenant has violated it. If the judge orders the tenant be evicted, you cannot lock them out or force them from the property, Hall said. You must have the local police or sheriff's department remove the tenant. | Rental property investors could see big returns in 2016, but think about these factors before taking the plunge |
An entire Russian helicopter unit based in Syria was wiped out in an Islamic State attack, satellite images appear to suggest.
The attack on 14 May targeted a strategically significant airbase in central Syria used by Russian forces, and again suggests Isis forces are trying to operate outside territory held by the terror group to undermine the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
On Monday more than 100 Syrians were killed in a series of suicide bombings in Tartous and Jableh, two coastal cities in a loyalist enclave that had previously escaped the violence that has devastated the rest of the country.
The military position in Syria is extremely fluid, with reports of a looming assault on Aleppo by 5,000 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaida.
Meanwhile, a US-backed Kurdish-Arabic alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, announced in a statement that it had started an assault on the countryside north of Raqqa, the citadel of IS in Syria.
The newly released satellite images suggest four helicopters and 20 lorries were destroyed in a series of fires inside the T4 base, also known as Tiyas, in eastern Homs.
The Russian military denied that it lost helicopters at the base as a result of an Isis attack. It was originally thought that the destruction was caused by an accidental fire. But Islamic State claimed responsibility and released an image claimed to show one of its fighters firing Grad rockets at T4.
A military analyst at Stratfor, Sim Tack, said: “What the imagery tells us is that first of all this was not an accidental explosion, as some of the rumours kept saying. It shows very clearly that there are several different sources of explosions across the airport, and it shows that the Russians took a quite a bad hit.”
The T4 airbase is described as one of the most important in Syria, and is near the historic city of Palmyra recaptured from Isis by Assad forces a month ago. The base is also near a strategic crossroads of routes that lead to Deir el-Zour, Raqqa, Damascus and other key cities.
It houses two fixed-wing attack squadrons, one composed of Su-24 aircraft and the other of Su-22 aircraft. These aircraft have carried out ground-attack missions across Syria, including the operations that eventually forced Isis out of Palmyra. In addition, the Syrian air force maintains six L-39 trainer aircraft and a few Mi-8/17 transport helicopters at the base.
Stratfor said Russian forces had deployed a contingent of attack helicopters to the T4 airbase at least since March, supporting the loyalist offensive to retake Palmyra that same month. Based on satellite imagery as well as video of the base, the Russian force consisted of approximately four Mi-24P gunships.
A Russian defence ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said: “The burnt air and auto equipment along with many craters from shell detonations have been there for several months. This is a result of heavy combat for this aerodrome between Syrian government forces and militants of terrorist groups.”
Britain’s defence secretary, Michael Fallon, made no reference to the apparent airbase attack in a report to MPs on the UK air campaign in Syria. He said that since military action had been authorised by MPs on 2 December, the UK had fired 43 missiles in Syria, and a further 760 in Iraq.
Related: Three out of four Syrians believe a political solution can end the war
Fallon stood by David Cameron’s claim that 70,000 moderate rebels were fighting in Syria, but included the Kurdish forces in this number.
Fallon stressed it would take many months to attack Raqqa, pointing out that previous assaults on Isis-held cities in Iraq had lasted eight months.
Fallon was pressed to explain how the US government could be so dependent on Kurds to take Raqqa, and yet was not willing to allow the Kurds to attend Geneva peace talks.
Fallon said the west would not work with Russia to coordinate the assault on Isis, but for the first time suggested there may be intelligence sharing to combat groups such as al-Nusra. | US intelligence company Stratfor says satellite images suggest four helicopters and 20 lorries destroyed at T4 base |
We call it Love Only One, a contest in which we dare 17 financial pros to try to beat the S&P 500 by picking one stock each. Every year we invite a dozen experts to say which stock they believe will outperform the market over the next 12 months and five others to name a likely laggard. When the year runs out, the winners receive return invitations. The rest make way for new contestants. In Pictures: Class Of 2010--They're Off! In Pictures: Class Of 2010--Short-Sellers The S&P 500 gained 7% in the 12 months through Oct. 31. All told, neither the bulls nor the bears in our class of 2008 beat the market. The 12 long picks delivered an average price increase of 6% with seven earning an invitation to play again this year. Contrary to their goal of picking dogs last October, the contest's short picks outperformed both the bulls and the S&P 500 with average price increases of 15%. Only one recommendation finished deep in the red, and only two earned a chance to return.
Despite winners among both bulls and bears, the Love Only One class of 2009 on the whole couldn't beat its S&P 500 benchmark. Better luck next year.
1: From Oct. 31, 2008 through Oct. 30, 2009; split- and spinoff-adjusted. 2: American Depositary Receipt. Source: Interactive Data via FactSet Research Systems.
Brian Chait, president of Lynx Capital Group, smacked a home run for last year's bears. A year ago he warned that Volkswagen ( VLKAF.PK - news - people ) would suffer from auto industry malaise. The ADR was down 73% in the year through October.
Chait returns for his fifth year and now holds the longevity title among current contestants. His 2010 short pick comes from the health care sector. Amylin Pharmaceuticals ( AMLN - news - people ), specializes in therapies for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. It is also, as Chait points out, in the inherently risky business of developing drugs, burning through cash and has never earned a profit. Amylin's debt to capital ratio is also 61%.
Keith Wirtz, chief investment officer at First Third Asset Management in Cincinnati, led all bulls by selecting oilfield equipment maker National Oilwell Varco ( NOV - news - people ), up 37%, 30 percentage points than the S&P 500. Over the past year, it has continued its solid track record of beating consensus earnings estimates. For 2010, Wirtz likes Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ). He is encouraged by the pending departure of Ken Lewis as chief executive and the bank's credit portfolio to stabilize. Wirtz believes BofA could rise to $28 in 2010 from a recent $16.
The runner-up among the bulls is Robert Millen, a longtime bull and chairman and portfolio manager at Jensen Investment Management. Millen is back for his fourth year after recommending Waters Corp. ( WAT - news - people ), a maker of lab equipment and supplies that was up 31% the past year. Millen's pick this year is C.R. Bard, a maker of health care products. Millen thinks the company is a bargain trading near a 10-year low on a forward P/E basis, despite its status as an industry innovator with a solid market share and stable top- and bottom-line numbers.
Michael Balkin, a member of the Small Cap Growth team at William Blair and Co., earned a return invitation with his pick of DG FastChannel, which increased 18% over the past year. He's sticking with DG for another year, believing it has room to run thanks to a leading proprietary network that allows advertisers to deliver ads to TVs, radios and mobile devices. He believes the transition to high- definition ads, along with an improving economy, will create a nice tailwind.
Five of our eight Love Only One newcomers this year are bulls. Among them is Noah Blackstein, a global growth fund manager at Canada's Dynamic Funds, who picks Apple ( AAPL - news - people ). He expects earnings significantly higher than the consensus estimate as the company introduces the iPhone to new telecom carriers and rolls out new products, like the much anticipated Apple tablet computer. The iPhone also supports Mac computer sales by acquainting consumers with the Mac operating system in a much larger way than the iPod did.
"I believe the stock will follow the earnings higher," Blackstein says.
John Eade, president of Argus Research Co., favors Corinthian Colleges ( COCO - news - people ), which offers short-term diploma and degree programs at over 100 schools in the U.S. and Canada. The for-profit company is an industry leader with attractive growth prospects yet is trading at a discount to peers, according to Eade. Meanwhile, the company stands to benefit from consolidation within the education business, he believes.
Keith McCullough, chief executive of Research Edge, named sports apparel and footwear maker Under Armour ( UA - news - people ) as his stock to watch through next October. Analysts expect sales to grow an average 13% over the next few years, and McCullough adds that it appears to have the plan, people and infrastructure to achieve such feats. Analysts covering the stock also submitted 2010 earnings estimates that McCullough believes are 20% too low.
Matthew Harrigan, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities expects Regal Entertainment ( RGC - news - people ) to outperform in the near term. Regal's circuit of theatres generated over $2.6 billion in sales in 2008, and Harrigan is looking for the strong box office showing to continue in 2010. He also sees upside from the transition to digital cinema and in particular 3-D movies in particular. Investors may find appeal in the company's dividend yield, currently over 6%, and double-digit cash flow margin.
Fred Buonocore of CJS Securities, a firm that specializes in identifying promising small-caps, sees potential in Rand Logistics ( RLOGU - news - people ), a bulk shipping service in the Great Lakes region. High barriers to entry, such as government restrictions on foreign competition and the prohibitive cost of bringing new cargo ships into the market, are among the reasons he favors Rand. In good times shipping demand tends to outweigh supply, and in tough ones Rand's broad mix of shipments enables it to hedge against losses, Buonocore says.
Among our three new bears is Craig Maurer, an analyst at Calyon Securities, who is down on Capital One Financial ( COF - news - people ). His concern focuses on the impact the Credit Card Act of 2009 will have on the company. This new law limits credit card issuers' ability to raise interest rates and change the fees charged to consumers. Maurer believes that Capital One will see an increase in delinquencies and a big decrease in fee income.
Michael Judd, president of Greenwich Consulting picks Georgia Gulf ( GGC - news - people ) as a loser. The company manufactures and markets chlorovinyls, a material needed for products such as PVC and vinyl siding. Judd expects that Georgia Gulf will continue to be hit by a lack of demand from residential and commercial construction.
Our final newcomer among short-sellers is Robert Summers of Pali Capital Research. His target is food and drug giant Safeway ( SWY - news - people ). Summers expects unemployment will rise in the first half of 2010 and will remain elevated for some time afterward. This will put pressure on Safeway as consumers pinch their grocery budgets. Consensus 2010 earnings for Safeway are $1.90 per share, according to Thomson IBES. Summers thinks that target will prove difficult, perhaps impossible, for Safeway to achieve.
Our contestants are charged with either beating or lagging the S&P 500 in the coming year. Whoever succeeds gets asked back for another year. Brian Chait has been at this since 2005.
Prices as of Oct. 30. Source: Interactive Data via FactSet Research Systems.
In Pictures: Class Of 2010--They're Off!
In Pictures: Class Of 2010--Short-Sellers | Investment professionals pick their one favorite stock. |
The big news from Milan this week was the appointment of Lars Nilsson, formerly of Bill Blass and Nina Ricci, as Ferré's creative director.
Neither the backing of key retailers nor the support of leading society figures could spare Lars Nilsson, the designer for Bill Blass, the pain of being fired on Wednesday.
Yesterday, the Bill Blass, Ltd. company fired its head designer, Lars Nilsson, who had presented his third collection for the 33-year-old firm on Tuesday.
Judging from how hesitantly he approached the runway at the finale of his first show for Bill Blass yesterday, it seems that Lars Nilsson belongs to the school of the unassuming. | News about Lars Nilsson. Commentary and archival information about Lars Nilsson from The New York Times. |
Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory.
Researchers examining what happened to 4,248 families that were randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their high-poverty neighborhoods found no significant difference about seven years later between the achievement of children who moved to more middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn't.
Although some children had more stable lives and better academic results after the moves, the researchers said, on average there was no improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to have more behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies found.
"Research has in fact found surprisingly little convincing evidence that neighborhoods play a key role in children's educational success," says one of the two reports on the Web site of the Hoover Institution's journal Education Next.
Experts often debate the factors in student achievement. Many point to teacher quality, others to parental involvement and others to economic and cultural issues.
Some critics, and the researchers themselves, suggest that the new neighborhoods may not have been good enough to make a difference. Under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Moving to Opportunity program, one group of families received vouchers that could be used only to move to neighborhoods with poverty rates below 10 percent, one group got vouchers without that restriction and one group did not receive vouchers. Families with the restricted vouchers moved to neighborhoods with poverty rates averaging 12.6 percent lower than those of similar families that did not move, but not the most affluent suburbs with the highest-performing schools.
"There is a wide body of evidence going back several decades to suggest that low-income students perform better in middle-class schools," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Washington-based Century Foundation. "But, in practice, Moving to Opportunity was more like moving to mediocrity."
Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson said that although the families that were studied moved to neighborhoods that weren't as poor, they still had many disadvantages. Three-fifths of the families relocated to neighborhoods that were still "highly racially segregated," he said, and "as many as 41 percent of those who entered low-poverty neighborhoods subsequently moved back to more-disadvantaged neighborhoods."
The authors of one of the new reports were Lisa Sanbonmatsu, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research; Jeffrey Kling, a Brookings Institution economist; Greg J. Duncan, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern University; and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a child development and education professor at Columbia University.
They cite several possible explanations why students' performance did not improve when their families moved to less poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York areas. Some families returned to poorer neighborhoods after sampling a more middle-class environment. "For many families who remained in their new tracts, the poverty rate in their neighborhood increased around them," the researchers said.
Stefanie DeLuca, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist who wrote the second report based on interviews of Moving to Opportunity families in Baltimore, said many of the parents had little faith that better teaching in better schools would help their children. They felt it was up to their children to make education work. | Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory. |
From Sacramento â Go ahead: Accuse me of shooting the wounded. But it may be that the body already is dead.
I'm referring to the California Republican Party.
How alive could the state GOP be after suffering the pounding it took on Nov. 2, a day of historic party triumph elsewhere across America?
"It's not just wounded, it's in a coma," says Republican Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado.
Maldonado was one of several Republican victims on election day. He lost the lieutenant governor's race to Democratic San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
I wouldn't be belaboring the obvious about the party's sorry shape except for a news release that caught my eye from veteran Republican consultant Kevin Spillane. He was senior strategist for Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's campaign for attorney general.
Cooley was the biggest Republican vote-getter in California, which isn't saying much. At last count he was narrowly trailing Democratic San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris by half a percentage point in their seesaw battle.
Most surprisingly, Cooley was beaten badly â by 14 points â in his home county, where he had won three district attorney races by landslides.
Why couldn't Cooley carry L.A.? Spillane points out that local races, unlike state contests, are nonpartisan. Local candidates don't list party affiliations.
"Cooley has been elected and reelected D.A. as an individual," Spillane wrote. "The moment the word 'Republican' appeared on the ballot next to [his] name in heavily Democratic Los Angeles County, it was a huge anchor that dragged him down, exacerbated by the collapse of the GOP ticket in the final week of the campaign."
GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman wound up getting trounced by Democratic Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown.
It was the GOP as Republican "anchor" that raised my eyebrows.
Spillane added that the election results validated an October poll by the Public Policy Institute of California that found "Republican" to be a bad brand name in this left-leaning state.
The voters' impressions of the Republican Party were 2 to 1 negative: 31% favorable, 62% unfavorable. Even among registered Republicans â less than a third of the electorate â only 55% had a favorable impression of the GOP; 39% looked on it unfavorably.
Those numbers were basically reaffirmed in election day exit polling conducted for news organizations. The voters' opinions of the Republican Party were 33% favorable, 61% unfavorable. For the Democratic Party: 50% favorable, 45% unfavorable. | Go ahead: Accuse me of shooting the wounded. But it may be that the body already is dead.I'm referring to the California Republican Party.How alive could the state GOP be after suffering the |
Burglars ransacked the rented French Riviera villa of Jenson Button and his wife, Jessica — possibly after pumping anesthetic gas through air conditioning vents, according to reps for the Formula One driver.
Button and his wife were on vacation with friends in St. Tropez on Monday when thieves broke in as they slept, making off with jewelry. Among the items reported as stolen was Jessica Button's engagement ring.
Button's representatives said in a statement Friday that police have told them such thefts have become a growing problem, with thieves pumping in the gas to give them free rein in the properties.
No one was hurt, but the statement said the couple was ''unsurprisingly shaken'' by events.
The 35-year-old former world champion, who drives for McLaren Honda, married his model wife in Hawaii in December. | LONDON (AP) Burglars have ransacked the rented French Riviera villa of Formula One driver Jenson Button and his wife, Jessica - possibly after pumping anesthetic gas through air conditioning vents. |
Raf Simons, the creative director of Dior, has spoken of his shamed predecessor John Galliano for the first time, saying he believes his work is no longer "relevant" as it restricts women.
BY Bibby Sowray | 14 November 2012
Since taking the helm at Dior earlier this year, Raf Simons has kept schtum when it comes to discussing his disgraced predecessor, John Galliano - until now, that is.
Speaking in the latest issue of Vogue Australia, the Belgian designer has revealed that he no longer sees Galliano's work at the iconic design house as "relevant".
IN PICTURES: Dior spring/summer 2013
"I have so much respect for John [Galliano]'s technical skill and the fantasy, it's just something that I don't find relevant now, especially when it restricts a woman, because in every other area they have so much freedom," he said.
Whilst Simons is known, and indeed loved, for his minimalist approach when it comes to cut and colour, Galliano is famed for his elaborate, extroverted creations, many of which made for exciting catwalk shows but often did not translate in terms of wearability.
READ: Raf Simons brings Dior back into the limelight
Simons' first two collections for the famed French fashion house - couture autumn/winter 2012 and spring/summer 2013 - both received critical acclaim, and he's been praised for his ability to fuse Dior's traditional ideals with contemporary styling, bringing the house up to date without losing any of its unique charm or history.
He also discussed his departure from Jil Sander, the label he headed up before leaving to take up the coveted position at Dior.
"I felt more like a psychiatrist than a designer in the end, just to keep my team's spirits up," he said, before also revealing that he was in fact in discussions with Dior's CEO Bernard Arnault for "months" before the announcement of his appointment was made public. | Raf Simons, the creative director of Dior, has spoken of his shamed predecessor John Galliano for the first time, saying he believes his work is no longer "relevant" as it restricts women. |
After yesterday’s tweetstorm, many music fans thought Taylor Swift owed Nicki Minaj an apology — and, lo and behold, she gave her one.
I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke. I'm sorry, Nicki. @NICKIMINAJ
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 23, 2015
Half the internet was up in arms yesterday after Taylor responded to Nicki’s tweets about her VMAs snub for Anaconda with a barb, accusing Nicki of being anti-women.
@NICKIMINAJ I've done nothing but love & support you. It's unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot..
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 21, 2015
In her apology tweet, Taylor keeps it short and sweet: she thought Nicki was referring to her (and her Video of the Year-nominated video Bad Blood) directly, she was wrong, and she’s sorry.
Shortly after, Nicki responded with a tweet accepting Taylor’s apology:
The good news? We can stop making Bad Blood jokes ad nauseum. But hopefully, the conversation doesn’t stop with these tweets. We’d like to see a larger dialogue around Nicki’s thoughts about gender and race in the music industry — a dialogue that Taylor can contribute to and learn from. | Now we can all stop making 'Bad Blood' jokes, right? |
Goal: To go high enough to do a 360 and see Lake Merritt and Highway 580.
11:08 am – Take off number one, no looking back…. wish me luck.
11:08:09 am – I did it! I made it about 15 feet up before I came crashing down. It’s a beautiful day, not too much wind and very little clouds.. check out my view of Lake Merritt.
11:13 am – Since the wind is low today, I’m going to practice some landings. I’m at point A, I see point B, I think I can make this happen.
11:13:06 am – So close. I stayed pretty low and landed about five feet from my mark. It’s amazing how much wind my propellers make. Not to self, a pile of leaves is not a good mark. #BetterLuckNextTime
11:18 am – Well I practices a few more times and I finally made it to the mark. I think It’s time to fly high again, that’s so much more fun than precision practice.
11:20 am – Looks like I got a little ahead of myself. I went the highest I’ve gone ever in my life on this last fly. It was a little wobbly up there and the wind picked up and carried me further away from my starting spot than I wanted, but the 360 view of Oakland is rad.
11:22 am – ok, I need some time to catch my breath. I’m going to try to fly from point A to point B and land standing up.
11:24 am – Well, I made it there and then decided to try and make it back. The whole flying backward thing is going to take some getting use to. I did land on all fours however, just not very gracefully.
11:29 am – So remember that gracefully thing I was talking about, yeah… I’m going to have to spend some time on that. I went pretty high on this fly but had a tough crash and burn upon landing. At least my lights still work, that one was tough.
11:32 am – That’s it.. I’m all out of battery. Lights flickering, and my propellers are taking a bit to start spinning. I’m going to play it safe and not take off again today. Until next time, check out this view looking back toward the Lake Merritt neighborhood. | Date: October 10, 2013 Place: Oakland Goal: To go high enough to do a 360 and see Lake Merritt and Highway 580. 11:08 am - Take off number one, no looking back…. wish me luck. 11:08:09 am - I did i... |
Just when you think you grasp what’s going on, someone starts talking about “suspect classes” and “Article III” and “complementary authorities,” and you’re lost again.
Today, however, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her hesitant but steely way, offered up perhaps the most easily understood analogy of the season to describe the two-tiered marriage system that has taken root in our country: “The full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.”
FULL COVERAGE: Same-sex marriage ban
The courtroom erupted in laughter. Everyone knows skim milk--that thin, blue-tinged liquid that bears no resemblance to what comes from a cow--is awful.
A “skim milk” marriage is one that doesn’t seem whole, one that’s recognized, say, in California, but not by the federal government.
My gay married neighbors in Venice Beach can file a joint state tax return, but unlike my straight married neighbors, are not allowed to file a joint federal tax return. They miss out on the deductions to which heterosexual married couples are entitled.
The case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act was brought by Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old New York widow who inherited a large estate when her spouse died. Had her spouse been a man rather than a woman, she would have faced no estate tax. There was nothing low-fat about the bill she got from the feds: $363,000.
Ginsburg’s observation was a response to the argument put forth by Paul D. Clement, the attorney hired by a group of House Republicans to defend DOMA. (They did so because the president thinks the measure is unconstitutional and refused to defend it. The man who signed DOMA into law in 1996, President Bill Clinton, also thinks it’s unconstitutional. The first half of the hearing was taken up with arguments about whether the House Republicans even had the standing to represent the feds in the case).
DOMA, Clement said, prevents states from “opening up an additional class of beneficiaries,” i.e. married gay couples “that get additional federal benefits.”
Ginsburg took exception to the phrase “additional benefits,” noting that her colleague, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the presumed swing vote in the gay-marriage cases, had just said that there are at least 1,100 federal statutes that affect married couples.
“They’re not a question of additional benefits,” she said. “I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it’s pervasive. It’s not as though, well, there’s this little federal sphere and it’s only a tax question.”
Petraeus apology for affair doesn't go far enough
Prayers at Lancaster council meetings are ruled constitutional
Photographer says Rob Kardashian struck her, stole memory card | It is not always easy to follow the audio transcript of the last two days’ Supreme Court arguments over gay marriage. |
People were exhausted, but also rattled and worried.
"We were shell-shocked," one source said.
The poor reviews were piling up — declaring CNBC the biggest loser of the night — and the moderators Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick knew more would be published by the time the flight landed in New York.
So for some flyers, it was a sleepless night. But there was some laughter and some liquor to lighten the mood — and some speculation about how high the ratings would be.
At 12:30 p.m. Thursday they found out: 14 million people watched, easily making the much-derided debate the most-watched program in CNBC's 30-year history. Because advertisers paid $250,000 apiece, it was "also the most profitable night in the network's history," an NBCUniversal executive crowed.
There was simultaneous crowing and cringing on Thursday. Employees who spoke on condition of anonymity for this story wished for a "do-over" and pointed fingers of blame for the chaotic production. Some pointed all the way up to CNBC president Mark Hoffman, who was also aboard Wednesday night's charter.
"Everyone feels pretty embarrassed," one veteran staffer said.
Now there are even calls for changes to future primary debates and predictions that CNBC won't be in the running to host a debate four years from now.
Related: GOP candidates plot debate revolt against RNC
Related: Seething GOP candidates escalate their CNBC grievances
But some of the same CNBC employees also said they were proud that the moderators had pointedly challenged the GOP candidates and potentially changed the course of the presidential race.
And there's been some media bashing inside the network, just as there was media bashing by the candidates on stage on Wednesday night. Some staffers at CNBC feel that outside journalists have unfairly ganged up on the network rather than focusing on the candidates' misstatements and grandstanding moments.
After the debate, staffers wondered aloud: Will people remember the gripes about Quintanilla, Quick and John Harwood? Will they remember the audience's boos and the analysts' comments that CNBC "lost control" of the debate?
They second-guessed the opening question of the debate, when Quintanilla asked each candidate, "What is your biggest weakness and what are you doing to address it?" Did it start the debate off on the wrong track?
There was also disappointment about Quick's handling of Donald Trump. Toward the end of the debate she asked a question about Mark Zuckerberg that was accurate, but then said "my apologies" to Trump when he disputed it.
If there was introspection in the air during the overnight flight, the network isn't saying. The only statement CNBC released was one sentence right after the debate, around the same time the RNC joined candidates in condemning the debate questioning and said CNBC should be "ashamed."
"People who want to be President of the United States should be able to answer tough questions," CNBC spokesman Brian Steel said in an email.
There certainly wasn't much introspection on the air Thursday. Quick and co-host Joe Kernen were back in New York for the 6 am start of the network's morning show "Squawk Box," which covered debate highlights but not the media controversy. (Marco Rubio and Chris Christie did share their criticisms during interviews, however.)
As the day went on, there was less and less talk about the debate on CNBC. According to one of the employees, producers were given internal guidance to move on.
At CNBC's sister news outlets MSNBC and NBC News, producers were advised not to "pile on" the moderator controversy, according to people there.
When it came to production of the debate, CNBC was on its own. The network collaborates with NBC News, but it operates independently. In NBC's halls on Thursday, there was chatter about whether the debate would've benefited if NBC's political reporters and managers had been involved.
There was no official debrief between the moderators, producers and management on Thursday. Key people were either busy anchoring their newscasts or navigating the fallout from the debate.
By Thursday night CNBC's web site was dominated by market stories again. The main debate story, "here's who won...and who lost" only mentioned the moderator controversies in passing.
CNNMoney (New York) October 30, 2015: 11:51 AM ET | CNBC employees crowed about their GOP debate ratings but cringed at the near-unanimous criticism of it. "We were shell-shocked," one source said. |
The demotion of Pluto in 2006 to “dwarf planet” status posed a dilemma to lovers of astronomy. Generations have grown up thinking of Pluto as a first-team player in the solar system, made extra beguiling by its most remote status. But confidence in the scientific method demanded that such romantic notions be banished. If it is too small and its solar orbit too wonky, the decision of the International Astronomical Union must be respected. If Pluto remained a planet, scores of parvenu planetoids deeper in space might be eligible for upgrades. Rules are rules. Now Nasa’s New Horizons mission proves that Pluto has lost none of its allure. Images that take hours to reach Earth, travelling at the speed of light, enthral and inspire. No less impressive is the technical achievement of the mission: a probe despatched across 4.7bn km that arrives at its destination at the appointed hour, with a precision rate of 99.9%. It is a reminder of what humanity can achieve with sufficient patience, investment, collaborative effort and rational inquiry – a tribute to scientific methodology at a time when enlightenment values sometimes feel under siege. Better still, the data beamed back by New Horizons, revealing a level of climatic and geological sophistication previously unattributed to Pluto, raises hopes that it may yet achieve promotion back to the first tier of planets. We would heartily welcome that move. But only, of course, if the evidence supports it. | Editorial: Nasa’s New Horizons mission is a tribute to scientific methodology at a time when enlightenment values sometimes feel under siege |
updated 7:22 PM EST, Sat December 20, 2014
(CNN) -- Federal authorities have accused a New York man of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars and using the misappropriated funds to pay for a lavish lifestyle -- luxury cars for himself and something a bit more unusual for his wife.
Authorities say Whileon Chay spent more than $150,000 in order to have his deceased spouse cryogenically frozen. She died in "in or about 2009," according to the indictment.
Cryogenic freezing has been portrayed as a way to preserve living or dead people in order to revive them in the future, according to the Cryonics Institute.
The indictment, unsealed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, accuses Chay of soliciting more than $5 million from investors in commodities pools, which supposedly were primarily engaged in foreign exchange trading.
Chay, 38, lost more than $2 million in commodities trading and in 2011 fled the United States for Lima, Peru, according to a release from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office.
"Whileon Chay deceived investors about the commodities pools he managed, claiming to be a successful trader when he in fact was losing millions and misappropriating investors' money for his own use," said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement.
Chay has been charged with mail and wire fraud, which each carry a maximum term of 20 years in prison. He also was charged with commodities fraud, which has a maximum of 10 years.
According to Bharara's office, Chay promised investors approximate annual return rates of 24% and claimed that "[t]here is no risk in this activity."
"[W]e have never had a loosing [sic] month," he told investors, according to the release.
The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission had previously sued Chay and his company, 4X Solutions, Inc. | Prosecutors: Man accused of defrauding investors used some money to cryogenically freeze dead wife. |
I have learned to correct my family frankly but kindly when they overstep my parenting, and my husband (wisely) just seethes quietly. But it is stressful, and we feel like we can’t leave the room lest our kids be scolded for something unexpected; and when my kids are stressed, their behavior worsens. Not to mention the pressure we feel for our kids to be on their best behavior 24/7.
For the past three years, we have limited visits with my family to three days, for our sanity. The prospect of a week-long visit is already making me anxious. We plan to schedule some outings away from my family and will stay in an appropriately sized and outfitted house (outdoor pool, big yard, games, etc.).
Is there anything else I can do to make this a better situation for everyone? Is it wise to have a “family conference” at the beginning of the trip to set expectations, or send an e-mail (I write better than I speak), or say something in person beforehand? Or should I just cross my fingers, focus on my breathing and let things play out?
Why not all of the above, plus?
Yes, be frank but kind when your family oversteps; yes, minimize the time your kids and family are alone together; yes, plan to be out of the house for hours at a stretch; yes, practice deep breathing; yes, say something beforehand: “I know the kids are high-energy and can wear people down. I will absorb as much of that as I can. All I ask is that you let me handle it. In fact, please tell me when you’ve hit your limit with them. Thanks in advance.”
Plus: Consider a shorter stay. Just because your parents planned a week doesn’t mean you have to stay a week.
Plus: Consider going the philosophical route. What, exactly, has you so stressed out: Are you feeling judged as a parent by your parents and brother? For that, I suggest a mantra: “I don’t need their approval.” Are you worried the scolding will harm your kids? For that, there’s perspective. Your kids probably won’t like your folks a whole lot, but they’ll withstand these infrequent grumpy corrections. Are you annoyed that the scolding revs up your kids, thereby making your already tough kid-wrangling job even tougher? That’s a nuisance, yes, but one that expires when the vacation does.
And so on. Bringing us to this: Your family may be the source of the scolding and impatience with little-kid energy, but the pressure originates inside you.
You can de-fang it all — the pressure, the grumps, the dread, the trip itself — by choosing not even to try to present a seamless, seven-day performance of best behavior. It’s not going to happen anyway, so it’ll be a “better situation for everyone” if you don’t give yourself the doomed assignment of prostrating yourself to make it so.
Hi, Carolyn: A good friend of mine, married for four years, has confided in me that she’s being hit on by a male co-worker, and has reciprocal feelings. Based on the handful of anecdotes she has shared, it seems like they are one ill-advised after-work cocktail from making a major mistake.
So, what am I supposed to do? Talking to my friend’s husband is out of the question — my loyalty is to her. Issuing judgment and trying to talk her out of her desires seems doomed to failure, and she may resent me for it later. I have asked her point-blank what sort of feedback she wants from me, and she says she has no idea. She seems to mention it at all because she just wants someone to talk to about it, I guess. My conscience is having a hard time standing by while this unfolds. What do you think?
“Doomed to failure”? Cop out. “She may resent me”? Cop out.
I’m stunned you haven’t once said, “Gah! What are you doing?” It isn’t “issuing judgment” to try to grab someone’s belt loop when she’s leaning too far off a cliff. It’s just the kind of honesty — and integrity — that reminds us all why we bother to make and maintain good friendships. She trusts you. Be the one who says what she won’t want to hear, that a moment of weakness can dog her the rest of her life. If she resents that, so be it.
Write to Carolyn Hax, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or [email protected]. Get her column delivered to your inbox each morning at http://bit.ly/haxpost. | A clash of parenting styles has parents of high-energy kids expecting the worst on a family vacation. |
Your Twitter rants could soon get longer – 9,860 characters longer, that is.
According to Re/code, Twitter is considering expanding tweets to 10,000 characters. The change is internally referred to as “Beyond 140,” and there’s no official date set for its launch.
However, there is a catch to those longer tweets – users can write up to 10,000 characters, but only the first 140 will be appear on the Twitter timeline.
Since the micro-blogging website’s conception, users have been limited to a 140-character limit on their tweets. While Twitter has expanded users’ media options – such as the ability to post multiple photos in one tweet – the character limit has never changed, much to the annoyance of many users.
“It’s the No. 1 request we get from folks. They want to be able to say what’s on their mind and be themselves,” Twitter product manager Sachin Agarwal told The Verge when the company removed its 140 character limit from direct messages in August.
Not all Twitter users are excited about the proposed change to the platform. Some fear expanding tweets to 10,000 characters is overkill.
Twitter is weighing a 10,000-character limit for tweets, Record reports. Then it will take 25 hours a day to get through my timeline
— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) January 5, 2016
My money says Tweet length will not increase to 10,000 characters, mainly because it would destroy Twitter. Let me explain. First of all….
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) January 5, 2016
I honestly don't understand the appeal of a 10,000 character limit vs. no limit at all
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) January 5, 2016
If tweets do get longer, perhaps Jack Dorsey will also reconsider Kim Kardashian’s request. | Your Twitter rants could soon get longer – 9,860 characters longer, that is. According to Re/code, Twitter is considering expanding tweets to 10,000 characters. The change is internally referred to... |
Gabriel Hammond is a fund manager from central casting. Raised in a posh Washington, D.C. suburb, he got a degree from Johns Hopkins, spent two years at Goldman Sachs and then set up his own fund firm (current assets under management: $250 million). The one kink in his story is that Hammond, 29, doesnt dabble in growth stocks or distressed debt. His game is rusty metal tubes buried deep underground. Hammonds Dallas firm, Alerian Capital Management, taps into oil and natural gas pipelines via tax-advantaged vehicles called master limited partnerships, or MLPs.
Every day 280,000 miles of pipelines shuttle 63 billion cubic feet of natural gas around the U.S. About a quarter of them are held as MLPs. A separate 100,000- mile network hauls 20 million barrels of crude daily, with 70% in MLP hands.
The 50 exchange-listed MLP pipelines and storage units have a combined value of $120 billion. Theres more capital en route. The U.S. is expected to put another $100 billion into its natural gas infrastructure over the next decade. The pipelines income streams should hold up even if energy prices drop. Thats because they get so much per pound shipped, not per dollar of product.
These companies are all toll-road business models, says Hammond. Theyre agnostic about whether crude oil is at $30 or $115 a barrel.
The partnerships are typically formed when big companies decide to raise cash by hiving off hard assets. Once public, MLPs trade like stocks. The twist is that theyre partnerships, which means they pass on earnings and depreciation to investors. Come tax time, that means investors typically pay ordinary income taxes on about one-fifth of distributions, which have grown 8% to 10% annually in recent years.
The other 80% of distributions are considered nontaxable returns of capital that reduce a partners cost basis. That means they turn into future capital gains, taxed either much later (when the investor sells the shares) or never, if it winds up in his estate and enjoys the capital gains step-up at death. There are some further subtleties (the tax treatment of partnerships is bizarrely complicated), but the bottom line is that investors holding MLPs that own depreciating assets are taxed leniently.
The downside of investing directly in MLPs is complexity. Pipeline partnerships are a particular problem because they must calculate, and investors must report, gains and losses in each state they traverse. The resulting K-1 tax forms are so cumbersome that many financial advisers suggest bothering with MLPs only for six-figure investments.
A simpler alternative is to own the exchange-traded iShares in one of two industry stalwarts, Kinder Morgan and Enbridge. These trade, and are taxed, like ETFs and require no K-1 filings. Kinder Morgan is the largest MLP by market cap at $15.2 billion; Enbridge is valued at $4.8 billion. They are precisely the sort of workhorse pipelines that Hammond favors ( see table).
In 1997, in Hammonds freshman year at college, he put $2,000 earned as a swimming instructor into his first online brokerage account and started trading. The tech bust was raging by the time he graduated in 2001 with a double major in economics and international relations. Yet Hammonds account had ballooned to $17,000, thanks to blue chips like Caterpillar and Altria.
After graduating, Hammond, who maintains his swimmers physique on a diet that includes a gallon of egg whites a week, took a job as an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. It turned out to be a front-row seat for Enrons collapse and the shock waves it sent through the pipeline industry. Companies were selling assets to stave off bankruptcy, recalls Hammond.
As firms like El Paso and Dynegy raced to raise capital, some spun off pipelines into MLPs. When it was over, Hammond was the only one in Goldmans energy and power group interested in covering the partnerships.
In the 15 years since tax changes had paved the way for modern MLPs, a mere 15 had been launched and had a combined value of $20 billion by 2003. In the market recovery that followed Enrons collapse, however, the partnerships started to draw yield-hungry investors. Hammond was convinced the MLP business was poised for a growth spurt, like the one REITs had enjoyed a decade and a half earlier.
He began putting together Alerian in July 2004 and trading MLPs with $5 million under management from Hans Utsch, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors, whom Hammond had met at a luncheon. Hammond struggled just to pay the bills but earned 15% his first half-year in operation. That was good enough to lure investments from two Wall Street firms, which declined to be named.
A year after Alerians launch Hammond had $50 million under management. His timing was outstanding. In the four years after he set up Alerian, the MLP sectors market cap tripled and Alerians total returns came in at 20% annually. In June 2006 Hammonds little firm launched the Alerian Master Limited Partnership Index, the first to track MLPs. A year later he added BearLinx Alerian MLP Select, an exchange-traded note that trades like an ETF and tracks the firms MLP index.
Despite MLPs hefty returns over the past decade, tax-exempt institutions have shied away from investing directly in them because of tax complications. (Its similarly a bad idea to hold MLPshares in a tax-deferred account.) But they are a fine choice, he says, for retail investors in high tax brackets who can stomach the paperwork.
MLP distributions average 7.5% of market prices today, or 3.6 percentage points more than yields on ten-year Treasurys. That compares with a historical average of only 2.25 points over Treasurys, says Stephen Maresca, an MLP analyst at UBS. No surprise, hes a bull on the sector.
Subscribe to Forbes and Save. Click Here. | You want a piece of the energy business that wonÂt get hurt if oil crashes? Take Gabriel HammondÂs advice and own some buried steel. |
Let's all go "Off the Record" for a minute. Let's talk about us. We sure know how to rally in an emergency, whether that emergency be the American response to Pearl Harbor in the Pacific, Hitler in Germany or the first responders in the seconds, minutes, days and months after 9/11, or even last week, the firefighters in Boston.
In an emergency, no one tops Americans. We all work together. And how about now? I don't know about you, but I'm proud of America's response to missing Flight 370 with 239 passengers on board and their heartbroken families, 99 percent of whom aren't even Americans. But we care. We're there helping.
That's our Navy. They get lots of credit -- long hours, pouring heart and soul into this. President Obama and the Pentagon, they get credit, too. They never said "No." They said "Go." And how about the American people, the taxpayers. This is a giant debt, but the taxpayers don't say no. They don't say it's too expensive. We say "Go."
Says a lot about us, doesn't it? We claw each other's eyes out in a political fight, but in an emergency, in the time of deep sadness, we're all on board. That's America. Everyone can take a bow tonight. That's my "Off the Record" comment. | Greta's 'Off the Record' commentary, 4/1/14: When it comes to coming together and responding to crisis situations, no one outdoes the United States |
Ketamine, sweet ketamine, answer to our glutamatergic dreams. In the long November night of the soul, in the ever-dark downpour of depression, it turns out that there might be a better umbrella than Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil and their serotonin-loving ilk.
Of course, when it comes to antidepressants, nobody really knows anything, anyway, so why not go with ketamine, a mild hallucinogen known to club freaks as Special K?
Yes, yes, break out the male Wistar rats and the injection needles -- researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health announced a study recently in which 18 chronically depressed patients infused with low dosages of ketamine improved within two hours. Seventy-one percent improved within a day, and nearly 30 percent were depression-free by that time. In 24 hours! These were people who had been dealing with depression from three to 47 years. They had failed to respond to just about every drug on the market.
Most of them stayed depression-free for up to a week.
Chronic depression, one of the most common, debilitating diseases known to mankind, blown away like a flower petal on a passing breeze.
Is it not the modern nirvana, the utopia of a neurotic generation, the idea that the demons lurking in the nether regions of the cerebral cortex could just . . . evaporate? Reigning there in the wet muck of the Freudian dark, the gargoyles of the mind took ketamine like a hit of kryptonite.
Doesn't it make Prozac and friends look like punks? The subsequent news stories focused on the speed -- antidepressants generally take two weeks or longer to work -- but the true breakthrough, scientists say, is that ketamine seems to do something entirely new. It focuses on glutamate, a chemical neurotransmitter that is involved in electrical flow among brain cells. It has not been targeted by any other antidepressant medication.
Think of depression as a leaky water faucet in the kitchen of the mind. Prozac and friends start working on the problem back at the water plant and, in about half of the cases, eventually find the problem.
In this trial, glutamate (and the "glutamatergic system") was shown to be a wrench-toting plumber who makes house calls. It got right to the problem.
"It's not quite the director of the orchestra, but it's involved with many other systems in the brain than other antidepressants," said Carlos A. Zarate Jr., chief of the mood disorders research unit at NIMH, and lead author of the study.
"It's early, but this is exciting because this gives us a new target, and it's a heck of a first move on it," said J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and one of the nation's preeminent researchers on depression. He was not involved in the ketamine trials. "This is working on . . . a different set of chemicals. It says the malfunction may be in several different parts of the brain. Ketamine has problems with potential negative effects, but we could create 100 drugs to hit this target of glutamate."
If, you know, that is where the demon actually resides. | Get style news headlines from The Washington Post, including entertainment news, comics, horoscopes, crossword, TV, Dear Abby. arts/theater, Sunday Source and weekend section. Washington Post columnists, movie/book reviews, Carolyn Hax, Tom Shales. |
6 Q’s About the News Use the photo and related article to answer basic news questions.
Use the photo and related article to answer basic news questions.
WHO are the Nobel Peace Prize recipients you can name?
WHAT did President Obama say about war and peace in his acceptance speech for the 2009 award?
WHERE was the prize given?
WHEN was the prize first established?
WHY was the choice of Mr. Obama controversial?
HOW do you feel about Mr. Obama receiving this prize? HOW do you feel about what he said in his acceptance speech? | 6 Qs About the News | What did Mr. Obama say about war and peace in his acceptance speech? |
By Tom Charity, Special to CNN
updated 11:19 AM EDT, Sat October 13, 2012
(CNN) -- We'll have to wait a couple more months, safely after the election, to see Kathryn Bigelow's film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, "Zero Dark Thirty." But in the meantime, director and star Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio have found a positive spin on one of the least auspicious episodes in American foreign policy, the Iranian hostage drama that probably doomed Jimmy Carter's bid for a second term in 1980.
The movie quickly and smartly fills in the back story, reminding us how Western powers propped up the monarchy in Iran until the Islamic revolution of 1979, a popular uprising that gave vent to anti-American fury in the region. Fifty-two U.S. citizens were captured in the American Embassy in Tehran -- but six escaped undetected in the melee and found refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. The challenge then for the CIA: how to get them out from under the noses of the ayatollahs.
Enter Tony Mendez (Affleck), an "exfiltration" specialist (who knew?) who doesn't think much of the State Department's plan to send in bikes and road maps. Challenged to come up with something better, he concocts an improbable scheme about a phony movie: posing as a Hollywood producer, he'll connect with the six under the guise of scouting locations. It's far-fetched, but that's the beauty of it. Who would make up something like that? Anyway it's the best bad idea they've got.
Artfully recreating the look and feel of '70s suspense films by accentuating the grain and resisting the impulse to blow stuff up every 10 minutes, Affleck has crafted a compelling middlebrow thriller that probably wouldn't have stood out from the crowd in that period, but which is easily one of the must-sees in 2012 -- a shoo-in for Oscar consideration.
It's a well-paced and gripping entertainment certainly, even if you might roll your eyes at the contrived race-against-the-clock climax. More unexpectedly, and winningly, Affleck opens up a second front, a very droll insider satire on Hollywood hubris when Mendez enlists a makeup artist and producer to beef up his cover story.
John Goodman and Alan Arkin work up a delicious comic double act, daintily skewering the rampant egomania of the movie business as well as its endless capacity for self-denial. "If I'm doing a fake movie, it's going to be a fake hit!" declares Arkin's Lester Siegel before reluctantly lending his name to a bottom-drawer sci-fi adventure script -- "Argo" -- which calls for a vaguely Middle Eastern cosmos.
It's the very opposite kind of movie to the one Affleck makes. There's nothing showy or spectacular about his filmmaking. He puts the emphasis squarely on story and situation. He may not probe his characters very deeply, but they're believable victims of dire circumstance. He also casts very well: Bryan Cranston as Mendez's CIA boss, Victor Garber as the Canadian ambassador, Christopher Denham as the most skeptical and reluctant of the hostages. They're all absolutely on point.
Affleck himself turns in a quietly impressive movie star performance. Tony Mendez is a kind of anti-Bourne, comfortable with his anonymity, living off his wits, not his fists. Smart, courageous and modest -- that's a rare combination in a man, and in movies, too.
Most popular stories right now | Ben Affleck has crafted a compelling thriller with "Argo," about the Iranian hostage crisis. |
The U.S. will boost the number of refugees it accepts from around the world to 100,000 annually, up from 70,000 now, as part of an effort to help Europe cope with a migration crisis, Secretary of State John Kerry said.
The increase would include at least 10,000 Syrian refugees that the White House has proposed admitting to the U.S. next year,... | The U.S. will boost the number of refugees it accepts in the coming years to 100,000 annually, from 70,000 now, as part of an effort to help Europe cope with a migration crisis, Secretary of State John Kerry said. |
We continue our Presidential Geography series, a one-by-one examination of each state’s political landscape and how it’s changing. Here is a look at Wyoming, the Cowboy State. FiveThirtyEight spoke with Erich Frankland, a political science professor at Casper College, and James D. King, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming.
Early on in Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama and Mitt Romney began sparring over energy, where to get it and how to achieve energy independence. It was probably at that point when the ears of Wyomingites perked up.
With just under 570,000 residents, Wyoming is the smallest state by population. Less than one-fifth of 1 percent of Americans live in Wyoming.
But Wyoming is also the 10th largest state in land area, and that land is filled with oil, natural gas and coal — especially coal. Wyoming is the nation’s top coal producer, accounting for 40 percent of all the coal mined in the United States in 2011. Wyoming is also one of the nation’s top natural gas producers and top oil producers.
Mining accounts for almost 1 in 10 Wyoming jobs, and — as is the case in West Virginia — the perception that the Democratic Party is hostile to coal has hurt the party in Wyoming. But Wyoming’s pro-coal position is just one of many characteristics that make the state a Republican bastion.
Wyoming is among the least diverse states. It is the top gun-owning state. Wyoming is also one of the least urban states. The biggest city, Cheyenne, isn’t very big; about 60,000 people live there. The state’s second-largest city is Casper, which has about 56,000 residents.
“Regardless of what the Census Bureau might call urban,” Mr. King said, “there really is not an urban area in Wyoming.”
It’s all a recipe for a reliably red state: according to Gallup’s State of the States survey, 59 percent of Wyomingites lean Republican and just 26 percent lean Democratic, placing it second behind Utah in Republican support. Wyoming was where Mr. Obama made his worst showing in 2008. He received less than 33 percent of the vote there.
Wyoming once had a fairly defined partisan landscape. In the south, blue-collar workers like those who built the Union Pacific Railroad favored Democrats, and the southern string of counties in Wyoming leaned left. In fact, Wyoming was once a national bellwether. From 1900 through 1940, Wyoming picked the winning presidential candidate in every election.
But those days are long gone. Wyoming is now a sea of red. There are now “degrees of Republicanism rather than Republican regions versus Democratic regions,” Mr. King said.
The northeast is probably the most Republican-leaning part of the state. It is also the state’s largest coal-producing area, mostly due to Campbell County. Counties in the southwest, which are also uniformly Republican, are heavily Mormon. Nine percent of Wyoming’s population are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The state is tied with Nevada for the third-highest percentage of Mormons in the country.
There are just two blue islands in the state. Mr. Obama won 61 percent of the vote in Teton County, in northwest Wyoming, where Jackson Hole has attracted affluent liberals from out of state. Mr. Obama also carried Albany County, home to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Hispanics, at 9 percent of the population, are the largest minority in Wyoming. They are concentrated in the southern and eastern part of state, Mr. Frankland said. Over the last decade and a half, many Hispanics have come to Wyoming for jobs in agriculture (Wyoming’s third largest industry) and tourism (the state’s second biggest industry). Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Hole each attract millions of visitors a year.
Over the last three presidential elections, Natrona County has become more Republican-leaning and an improved barometer for the statewide vote. In 2008, it matched the state almost exactly. Although the shift could be statistical noise, Natrona County was three percentage points more Democratic than Wyoming over all in 2000, two points more Democratic in 2004 and one point more Republican than the state as a whole in 2008.
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite to carry Wyoming’s three electoral votes. Wyoming has not favored a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
At the state-level, however, moderate Democratic governors have been very competitive. Former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat who served from 2003 to 2011, had the highest approval ratings in the nation at one point. Wyoming’s electorate is small enough that moderate and charismatic Democrats can overcome the state’s partisan gravity.
But currently Republicans have a thorough hold on Wyoming, and the state’s main ideological fault line doesn’t even involve Democrats. It divides the relatively socially moderate, libertarian wing of the Republican Party and the more conservative side, Mr. Frankland said.
In the Wyoming Republican Party, “there’s a real divide between the libertarians and the social conservatives,” Mr. Frankland said. “And so we’ve had battles here in the state over abortion and other issues. The libertarian side seems to win out usually, but it’s an ongoing struggle within the Republican Party.” | A look at the political landscape of Wyoming. |
BY Erin Durkin DAILY NEWS WRITER
Sunday, October 2nd 2011, 1:12 PM
The Brooklyn activist who led the resistance to the Atlantic Yards project has angered his new neighbors with a construction project of his own.
Daniel Goldstein, whose Prospect Heights condo was seized by eminent domain to make way for the new Nets arena and 16-tower project, bought a new home in Park Slope earlier this year - and neighbors are seething over his plans to build an addition.
Next-door neighbor Kathryn Roake, 59, says Goldstein's 18-foot, three-story addition to the back of his building will block the light to her beloved fruit and vegetable garden.
"I was so horrified," said Roake, who has lived in her 15th St. home for 21 years. "It's going to block all the sunlight to my garden and the back of my house.
"That was the whole reason why we bought , was I wanted a garden," said Roake, who grows rhubarb, blackberries, and currants, and keeps bees. "It's going to wreck the garden."
Goldstein, a co-founder of the activist group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, got a $3 million settlement from developer Bruce Ratner to move out last year. The state had seized his Pacific St. condo after he lost a long legal battle to stop the project.
Roake said that soon after the house next to hers was bought for $812,000 in May, she started seeing architects and builders scoping out the place and learned about plans for the addition.
Besides wreaking havoc on her garden, the structure will block the light to her kitchen windows, said Roake - and she's afraid construction work will damage her walls and foundation.
Neighbors wrote a letter to Goldstein and his wife this summer, but said they got no response.
"I respectfully request that you reconsider your plans. It would be more pleasant and less expensive than 6 year lawsuits, stop work orders and Building Department violations," they wrote.
Johanna Frost, 63, who lives with her elderly mother on the other side of the house, joined in the letter. She said she's worried about structural damage from the project.
"It would be nice if they discussed it with us since it's going to really affect us," she said. "It's just a lot of aggravation that we don't need."
Goldstein did not respond to requests for comment. | The ooklyn activist who led the resistance to the Atlantic Yards project has angered his new neighbors with a construction project of his own. |
Sixteen-year-old competitive swimmer Grace Lesce looked up at her doctors during a two month checkup, following the nearly 11-hour surgery to reshape and expand her skull, and asked her most burning question — when could she get back in the pool?
“You can go back anytime,” said Dr. Mark Souweidane, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Komansky Center for Children’s Health, after examining her head.
“Like tomorrow?” Grace asked with a huge smile.
Her other doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Ascherman, chief of Plastic Surgery at NY-Presbyterian/Columbia Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, assented, but told her to go easy.
“Everything’s going in the direction it’s supposed to,” he said.
Grace, who lives in Fanwood, N.J., was born with the bones in her skull prematurely fused in a rare condition called craniosynostosis. When Grace was just six months old, Souweidane first operated on her, reconstructing her elongated and misshapen skull to accommodate her growing brain. She needed several subsequent ear surgeries, but soon thrived.
She started swimming competitively at age 8, and joined the year-round team at the Fanwood-Scotch Plains YMCA. In 2013, she came within a second of a national qualifying time for the 100-meter breast stroke.
However, last summer she started getting intense headaches, which worsened and made it difficult for her to practice.
“It would be throughout the day but it would just get worse at night. For about six months it got really bad,” she said.
She returned to Souweidane, and he determined that there was not enough space in her skull to accommodate pressure on her brain — the fused bone plates had limited her head’s growth.
It was a difficult diagnosis, because Grace did not have signs of pressure on the back of her eyes, Souweidane said — but an MRI showed her brain was cramped.
He explained that the brain’s structures can be described as rooms with open windows. “If there’s not enough room then some of the brain can kind of push through those windows, and you can see that on the MRI scan to some degree,” he said.
Souweidane recommended major surgery to reconstruct Grace’s cranial vault, and teamed up with plastic surgeon Ascherman. The pair do about two surgeries a month together. They operated on Grace on March 21 at Weill Cornell.
“I mentally prepared myself, and told myself, ‘Don’t be nervous,’ because I didn’t want to make my parents nervous,” said Grace.
“I just went through it, like, ‘Go with the flow.’”
One of the most difficult things for Grace was getting her head shaved before the surgery, but a friend came up with a fun way for her to prepare to cut her long, pretty brown locks — a hair-dyeing party.
“We all dyed our hair different colors. I did mine blond, bleach blond, about ten inches. Other people did crazy colors, like pink and green and blue — it was just fun,” Grace said.
Swim team parents collected T-shirts with notes and good-luck wishes from their kids and made a quilt, which Grace brought with her to the hospital.
Grace went in to surgery early, around 6 a.m., said her dad, Louis Lesce. Other patients came in and left, new patients arrived in the afternoon and exited, but the Lesces kept waiting.
“The doctors were both very good about coming out every few hours and letting us know what was happening and that she was doing well,” he said.
Souweidane and Ascherman’s plan was to bring Grace’s forehead forward and lower, as well as eliminate an indentation above her eyebrows, giving her brain more space. The surgery was more challenging because of her age — any gaps in the bone won’t just fill in on their own, Ascherman said. They had to split some of her bones in half so they could fill in the entire space.
Ascherman first made a zig-zag incision across the top of Grace’s scalp and brought it forward to expose the bone down to her eyes. Then Souweidane cut and removed the appropriate bones — and Ascherman put her skull back together as they had planned, using absorbable plates and screws.
The first few weeks of Grace’s recovery were very painful, but as the pain subsided, she was relieved to find her headaches had disappeared. “As the pain went away it got a lot easier,” she said. “And it was just like a breeze from there.”
Both doctors plan to attend one of her swim meets this summer, and Grace is really excited for them to see her in her element.
“I love them. They’re not like regular doctors,” she said. “They’re really fun, and they’re into their patients.” | SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD competitive swimmer Grace Lesce looked up at her doctors during a two month checkup, following the nearly 11-hour surgery to reshape and expand her skull, and asked her most burning question — when could she get back in the pool? |
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
FORT DRUM, N.Y. Vice President Biden said Wednesday that it is "much too premature" to judge the Obama administration's policy in Afghanistan, but he said this week's release of classified war documents increased public skepticism.
"I'm sure it does raise concern with the American people," Biden told USA TODAY during an interview here, after greeting troops returning from Iraq. "I don't blame them for being confused."
Biden said the White House won't be able to assess whether President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more servicemembers to Afghanistan is working until December, when a formal review is due. "We will know by then whether or not the approach we're taking is bearing fruit," he said.
Asked whether the U.S. would send more troops if the strategy isn't working, Biden said: "I do not believe so."
Biden emphasized that the administration must do a good job continuing to explain the current plan. "No war can be sustained without the informed consent of the American people," he said.
Most Americans continue to support the war as part of a broader mission to wipe out al-Qaeda. Support has eroded, however. In a Gallup Poll two weeks ago, six in 10 said the war was going badly for the United States.
The release of nearly 77,000 classified reports to the website WikiLeaks.org probably didn't help, Biden said. The reports bolstered concerns that the war is unwinnable and our Pakistani allies unreliable.
Biden said the documents, covering 2004-09, related mostly to events during the Bush administration. "There's a war that was neglected for basically eight years, six years at least," he said.
In Congress, some Democrats aren't willing to wait for Obama's policies to pan out. On Tuesday, when the House passed $33 billion for war funding, 102 Democrats voted "no."
Biden said there will be some Democrats and Republicans who oppose continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan. "I'm not criticizing them," he said. "I respect their view."
You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. | Vice President Biden said it is much too premature to judge the policy in Afghanistan, but he said the release of war documents hiked concern. |
Obama wants India for Security Council
New Delhi, India (CNN) -- In another major sign of growing ties between India and the United States, President Barack Obama on Monday backed a permanent seat for India in the U.N. Security Council.
"In the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member," he said in an address to the Indian parliament.
The statement came as Obama made a wide-ranging address that envisioned closer economic and security ties between the United States and India, standing "shoulder to shoulder" with the world's largest democracy.
In a swift reaction, Pakistan said it is discounting the possibility of such a development. The Foreign Ministry said that "India's aspirations for recognition as a global power notwithstanding, there are reasons enough to discredit this proposed direction of the process of UNSC reforms."
It cites "India's conduct in relations with its neighbors and its continued flagrant violations of Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir," a disputed region that the nuclear rivals have fought about.
Ben Rhodes, a top White House aide, told reporters before the speech that the Obama administration wants to "send as clear a statement as possible" that the United States sees India as a "rising player" on the international stage.
But Rhodes said the United States is "not getting into" details about the time frame in which the United States would like to see India get the permanent seat and whether it will push to get India veto power as well.
Rhodes, a senior staffer on the National Security Council, said the president's endorsement "speaks volumes" about U.S. support for India and the administration will let the key details be "hashed out" by the United Nations itself.
At present, there are five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France. All have veto power.
Actually getting India a permanent seat will not be easy. Obama administration officials acknowledged that they and previous administrations have supported Japan, Germany and Brazil at various times for permanent seats on the Security Council without any success so far.
Before Monday's announcement was made, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alluded to the deal during a joint news conference before Obama's speech to parliament in which he highlighted the close cooperation on major issues typically confronted by the United Nations.
"As states possessing nuclear weapons, we have today put forth a common vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and decided to lead global efforts for non-proliferation and universal and non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament," Singh said.
"This is a historic and bold bilateral initiative. We have also decided to strengthen cooperation to tackle nuclear terrorism, and we welcome U.S. participation in the Global Center for Nuclear Energy Partnership, which will be set up in India."
Pakistan, noting that reform is a "difficult process and will take significant time," said it hopes that the United States "will take a moral view and not base itself on any temporary expediency or exigencies of power politics."
"Pakistan believes that U.S endorsement of India's bid for its permanent seat in the Security Council adds to the complexity of the process of reforms of the Council," the Foreign Ministry's written statement said.
"Pakistan's position on U.N. Security Council's reforms is based on principles. Any reform of the Council that contradicts the very fundamental principles of the U.N. Charter -- including the principle of sovereign equality; of equal rights and self-determination; and the principle of collective security -- would gravely undermine the system of international relations based on the U.N. Charter principles."
Obama, who mourned the deaths of American citizens in the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai and the killings of Indian citizens in the September, 11, 2001, strikes in the United States, said the shared bond is prompting both countries to work together to fight terrorism.
He addressed the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan in his speech.
"America's fight against al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates is why we persevere in Afghanistan, where major development assistance from India has improved the lives of the Afghan people."
He said the United States is working with Pakistan to address the threat of terror networks, such as those in Pakistan that were responsible for the Mumbai attacks, and it welcomes "dialogue" between the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad.
"The Pakistani government increasingly recognizes that these networks are not just a threat outside of Pakistan -- they are a threat to the Pakistani people, who have suffered greatly at the hands of violent extremists," said Obama.
"And we will continue to insist to Pakistan's leaders that terrorist safe-havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice. We must also recognize that all of us have an interest in both an Afghanistan and a Pakistan that is stable, prosperous and democratic -- and India has an interest in that as well."
Obama said India and the United States "are now ready to begin implementing our civil nuclear agreement," a measure he called a "landmark" deal. At the same time, he talked about the importance of reducing the spread of nuclear weapons.
"The United States and India can pursue our goal of securing the world's vulnerable nuclear material. We can make it clear that even as every nation has the right to peaceful nuclear energy, every nation must also meet its international obligations -- and that includes the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Obama also said Monday that "the world cannot remain silent" as "peaceful democratic movements are suppressed," citing the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"For it is unacceptable to gun down peaceful protesters and incarcerate political prisoners decade after decade. It is unacceptable to hold the aspirations of an entire people hostage to the greed and paranoia of a bankrupt regime. It is unacceptable to steal an election, as the regime in Burma has done again for all the world to see," he said.
He said India shouldn't avoid condemning human rights violations.
"If I can be frank, in international fora, India has often shied away from some of these issues. But speaking up for those who cannot do so for themselves is not interfering in the affairs of other countries. It's not violating the rights of sovereign nations. It's staying true to our democratic principles. "
Obama hailed Mahatma Gandhi, who used peaceful non-violence to help India gain its independence, and he noted Gandhi's influence on Martin Luther King and the non-violent resistance that typified the American civil rights movement.
"I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as president of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared and inspired with America and the world," the president said.
Obama lauded India's rise on the world stage, saying that "for Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging; India has already emerged" and he said the country is unleashing an "economic marvel." He envisions, he said, U.S.-Indian relations as "one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century."
He said India has overcome critics who say the country was too poor, vast and diverse to succeed, citing its Green Revolution and investments in science and technology.
"The world sees the results, from the supercomputers you build to the Indian flag that you put on the moon."
Obama praised India's democratic institutions: its free electoral system, independent judiciary, the rule of law, and free press. He said India and the United States have a unique link because they are democracies and free-market economies.
"When Indians vote, the whole world watches. Thousands of political parties. Hundreds of thousands of polling centers. Millions of candidates and poll workers, and 700 million voters. There's nothing like it on the planet. There is so much that countries transitioning to democracy could learn from India's experience; so much expertise that India can share with the world. That, too, is what's possible when the world's largest democracy embraces its role as a global leader," he said.
Noting the country's rise as a world power, Obama said he sees the United States cooperating with India in various international and regional alliances. He praised India's role in the climate change negotiations and its role as a top contributor in U.N. peacekeeping missions.
Obama talked about the two countries pursuing joint research efforts, such as starting green jobs. He talked about reducing barriers to foreign investments, helping India improve weather forecasting before monsoons and aiding families in saving water.
He mentioned improved food processing and sharing India's knowledge with African farmers, with support for India's efforts to battle disease and increase educational exchanges. | In another major sign of growing ties between India and the United States, President Barack Obama on Monday backed a permanent seat for India in the U.N. Security Council. |
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11d ago By Oliver Teves, Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines A cruise ship with 1,000 people on board that had drifted for 24 hours after being disabled by a fire was headed toward Malaysia following repairs, the Philippine coast guard said Saturday.
Scoop - New Zealand News
that are, frankly, rather important.” He warned also that the government’s over-riding responsibility was to manage the New Zealand economy soundly, and extravagant or overly costly solutions would not fly. “That limits political soft choices,” Groser said.
Scoop - New Zealand News
Lynch April 12 (BusinessDesk) - Michael Hill International Ltd., the listed jewellery chain, posted flat same store sales as New Zealand, Canada and the US markets made up for shrinking sales in Australia, its largest market. Total sales rose 5.1 percent to
gases - for example, one New Zealand Unit confers the right to emit two tonnes of carbon. International agreements require New Zealand to buy emission units from another country if our carbon emissions exceed agreed targets. Submissions on the consultation
flood relief assistance. "We are organising several container loads of food rations and clothing for the flood victims from New Zealand. "These will be distributed to the needy upon arrival and VHP Fiji is thankful that the Prime Minister has allowed all such
13d ago By Josh Roberts, SmarterTravel.com
We're taking you behind the scenes for a look at the filming locations used to bring this fantasy epic to life.
By Nick Perry, Associated Press
It's a sticky black sandwich spread that much of New Zealand adores, though detractors liken it to axle grease. And when it runs out, it's Marmageddon. | Collection of all USATODAY.com coverage of New Zealand, including articles, videos, photos, and quotes. |
The wife of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man charged with planting bombs in New York and New Jersey, has returned to the U.S., law-enforcement officials said Thursday, as investigators continued pressing to figure out who, if anyone, knew about the bomb plan.
Asia Bibi Rahami arrived in New York late Wednesday night, officials said. She had left the U.S. in June, traveling to Pakistan. As the bomb plot unfolded this weekend, she was en route back to the U.S., according to officials.
As part of the New York bombing investigation, officials said, U.S. investigators had placed her name on a no-fly list, so she was stopped in the U.A.E., a transit point for her journey back to the U.S. Officials said Mrs. Rahami sought out Federal Bureau of Investigation agents based in U.A.E. and gave them a statement. The officials described her as cooperative and helpful.
The investigation began Saturday night when one of the bombs Mr. Rahami allegedly built exploded on a street in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, wounding 31 people. An unexploded bomb was found four blocks away. Earlier that day, a pipe bomb exploded near a 5 kilometer race in Seaside Park, N.J., and Sunday night, a set of pipe bombs was discovered in a backpack outside the Elizabeth, N.J., train station. None of the New Jersey bombs injured anyone.
Fingerprint, cellphone, and other evidence tie the bombs to Mr. Rahami, officials have said.
What Mrs. Rahami knew about her husband’s activities in the period leading up to the attacks is a key area of interest for counterterrorism investigators, who are also intensely focused on what his family and close friends in New Jersey saw or heard him doing in the weeks and days before the attacks, according to officials.
Mr. Rahami’s father has said he had “no idea’’ what his son was planning, though in 2014 he called his son a “terrorist’’ and told investigators he was concerned he was hanging out with a dangerous crowd.
Two days before the attack, a video was recorded on a phone belonging to one of Mr. Rahami’s relatives showing him lighting incendiary material in the family’s backyard, according to court charging papers. Officials have said the relative was one of his sisters.
Mr. Rahami has been mostly unconscious since a Monday morning gunfight with police officers who found him sleeping in a doorway in Linden, N.J. Officials said Thursday he had suffered more injuries than previously disclosed—he was shot seven times and has been intubated for much of his hospital treatment, unable to speak with investigators.
That shootout with police began when officers approached Mr. Rahami sleeping in the doorway of a bar. As they neared, he pulled out a gun and began firing. The officers returned fire, with Mr. Rahami firing back as he walked away, officials said. One officer was struck in his bullet-resistant vest, while another suffered cuts to his head from broken glass.
Officials said Thursday that Mr. Rahami bought his handgun at a gun store near Roanoke, Va., using an identification with an address in that area, where he has relatives. He passed a background check to get that weapon, officials said.
Investigators are still trying to determine exactly what those around him knew about his planning and whether anyone helped or trained him. Officials have said they have found no evidence so far of any other conspirators in the bomb plot, but that the investigation is fluid.
Another central question for the FBI is whether Mr. Rahami’s travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan—he stayed in the region for a year, stretching from 2013 to 2014—played a role in his radicalization and movement toward violence.
The FBI opened an inquiry into Mr. Rahami in 2014 but closed it two months later after failing to find any incriminating evidence against him, law enforcement officials have said.
Write to Pervaiz Shallwani at [email protected] and Devlin Barrett at [email protected] | The wife of Ahmad Rahami, the man charged with detonating bombs in New York and New Jersey, has returned the U.S. days after she voluntarily went to federal agents in the United Arab Emirates and gave them a statement, law-enforcement officials said. |
...by winning the slopestyle with an amazing spin-to-win run of 10s and 12s. Kazuhiro Kokubo beat Iouri Podladtchikov and Louie Vito to claim victory in the halfpipe. Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent...
...MEDAL AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES Scotty Lago is a member of the 2010 U.S. Olympic Snowboarding team along with Shaun White and Louie Vito. Previously, he was best known for being the last world quarter piper champion. Today, all eyes are on him as he enters his...
...(SUI) stepped it up with a mind-blowing run that included a backside 1260 double cork in the middle of his run. Then Louie Vito (USA) topped Iouri by nailing three double corks in his first run, taking the lead by a mere fraction of a point. But it was Kazuhiro...
STRATTON, Vt. — In his first competition since winning the bronze medal at the 2010 Olympics in the halfpipe competition, Seabrook's Scotty Lago competed in the slopestyle and halfpipe events at the 2010 Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships, where
...stepped things up a notch with a mind-blowing run that included a backside 1260 double cork in the middle of his run. Louie Vito then topped Podladtchikov by nailing three double corks in his first run, taking the lead by a mere fraction of a point. But it...
Shaun White's big night has been followed by his big day in the sun, literally. The scarlet-maned director of the boards has been generating buzz around the world, so here's a quick question-and-answer session by USA TODAY's Sal Ruibal on the gold medal winner and his fellow American snowboarders.
Even when Shaun White isn't putting on a show, he's still putting on a show. White blew away the competition during the qualifying rounds of snowboard superpiope Thursday night at the Winter X-Games.
The U.S. Olympic snowboard team announced Monday includes some of the biggest names in the sport. The U.S. is going to need them to sustain the momentum the team has built since the sport made its Olympic debut in 1998.
For the USA's top two ice dancing teams, winning an Olympic medal in Vancouver is a possibility. For two teenagers, it's their turn to take the stage in women's figure skating, the marquee event of the Winter Games.
With Penn State poised to finally win one in the Big Ten, Jordan Taylor emerged to bail out No. 19 Wisconsin and add to the Nittany Lions' misery. Taylor scored the last eight points of regulation to tie the game, then went on to score 10 more in overtime as the Badgers beat the Nittany Lions 79-71 on Sunday.
The newest U.S. Snowboard halfpipe team for the Vancouver Games looks a lot like the 2002 and 2006 teams, which is not a bad thing. Returning from the dominant 2006 men's and women's teams are men's gold medal winner Shaun White and women's gold medalist Hanah Teter plus women's silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler. From the 2002 squad that won four of six medals in Park City is women's gold medalist Kelly Clark.
Defending men's Olympic halfpipe champion Shaun White resumed his winning ways in the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix Olympic qualifying series with a big win in Friday night's snowy event in Park City.
01/21/2010 12:14 AM By Meri-Jo Borzilleri, Special for USA TODAY
At the top of the massive halfpipe here, the nation's best snowboarders are getting ready to drop in and duke it out for U.S. Olympic team slots.
01/21/2010 12:06 AM By Meri-Jo Borzilleri Special to, USA TODAY
At the top of the massive halfpipe here, the nation's best snowboarders are getting ready to drop in and duke it out for U.S. Olympic team slots. | Collection of all USATODAY.com coverage of Louie Vito., including articles, videos, photos, and quotes. |
March 12: President Obama delivers remarks at the dedication of Abraham Lincoln Hall at the National Defense University in Washington. (AP photo)
Nearly 65,000 people have signed an online petition protesting President Obama's scheduled May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, saying the president's views on abortion and stem cell research "directly contradict" Roman Catholic teachings.
"It is an outrage and a scandal that 'Our Lady's University,' one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage," the petition at notredamescandal.com reads.
The Cardinal Newman Society, an advocacy group for strengthening ideals at the nation's 224 Catholic colleges and universities, created the Web site to end what it calls the "travesty" of Obama's selection. The petition, which had garnered 64,051 signatures as of midday Tuesday, asserts that thousands of other "accomplished leaders" in business, law or education would have been more appropriate selections. The group says it is sending the list to an independent firm Wednesday to ensure that there are no duplicate names.
"Instead Notre Dame has chosen prestige over principles, popularity over morality," the petition reads. "Whatever may be President Obama's admirable qualities, this honor comes on the heels of some of the most anti-life actions of any American president, including expanding federal funding for abortions and inviting taxpayer-funded research on stem cells from human embryos."
David Constanzo, communications director for the Cardinal Newman Society, said Notre Dame's tradition of inviting sitting U.S. presidents to its commencement should be rethought.
"There is a time when policies need to be reconsidered in light of the fact that the individual invited may have a history of standing in direct opposition to some of the most prominent aspects of our faith -- the biggest case in point is that of the pro-life agenda," Constanzo said. "The obligation of Notre Dame as a Catholic institution is to follow the directives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who clearly stated in 2004 that Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."
Meanwhile, the Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend has indicated he will not attend the commencement ceremony.
"President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred," Bishop John D'Arcy said in a statement issued Tuesday. "While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life."
D'Arcy said he learned that Obama had accepted Notre Dame's invitation just before White House officials announced the move on Friday.
"I wish no disrespect to our president, I pray for him and wish him well," the statement continued. "I have always revered the Office of the Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith 'in season and out of season,' and he teaches not only by his words -- but by his actions."
George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the invitation is not a "neutral act" and will significantly damage Notre Dame's reputation in Catholic circles following Obama's decision to reverse restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and for family planning groups that provide abortions.
"I think Notre Dame should not have issued the invitation," Weigel told FOXNews.com. "This is a colossal mess. This is their mess to fix right now, but they should know that they have forfeited an enormous amount of credibility as an institution that takes moral reasoning seriously."
Weigel said he was not surprised by the outpouring of criticism following the university's announcement on Friday that Obama would become sixth U.S. president to speak at its commencement. Obama will also become the ninth U.S. president to receive an honorary degree from the university.
"Major donors have the most effective leverage in situations like this," Weigel said. "I hope the donors are paying attention."
Asked if Notre Dame is considering rescinding its invitation to Obama, university spokesman Dennis Brown said Tuesday: "I can't foresee that occurring. We made an invitation to the president and he's accepted. We expected criticism and it's nothing beyond what we expected."
The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In a statement issued Monday, the Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, said Obama will be honored as an "inspiring leader" at the commencement.
"Of course, this does not mean we support all of his positions," Jenkins said. "The invitation to President Obama to be our Commencement speaker should not be taken as condoning or endorsing his positions on specific issues regarding the protection of human life, including abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Yet, we see his visit as a basis for further positive engagement."
But Ralph McInerny, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame for more than 50 years, likened the invitation as a "deliberate thumbing of the collective nose" at the Roman Catholic Church.
"By inviting Barack Obama to be the 2009 commencement speaker, Notre Dame has forfeited its right to call itself a Catholic university," McInerny wrote in a column for The Catholic Thing. "It invites an official rebuke. May it come." | Nearly 65,000 people have signed an online petition protesting President Obama's scheduled commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, citing the president's views on abortion and stem cell research that |
Updated APR 12, 2014 8:39p ET
The Clippers tuned up for the playoffs with a clinic on scoring in transition, whether it was going coast-to-coast for layups or ferocious dunks.
The display produced a 117-101 victory over the Sacramento Kings on Saturday, giving the Clippers their franchise record-tying 56th win of the regular season. Blake Griffin had 27 points and nine assists, DeAndre Jordan had 21 points and nine rebounds, and Chris Paul added 17 points and 10 assists.
"We're still playing for something," Paul said. "We can keep building confidence on defense. We're at our best when we're running and getting stops."
J.J. Redick had 13 points and Matt Barnes scored 12 in helping the Clippers improve to 33-7 at Staples Center, breaking the franchise record for home victories in a season.
"When we got stops, got out and moved the ball from side to side, we were able to get what we wanted," Griffin said. "That's the key for us, just playing our offense and not letting what they do dictate our game."
Los Angeles completed a season sweep of the Kings and has won seven straight against them at home.
"I just hated our defense," Sacramento coach Mike Malone said.
DeMarcus Cousins had his seventh straight double-double with 32 points and 12 rebounds to lead the Kings, who lost their fifth in a row in their last road game of the season. Rudy Gay scored 16 points, and former Clipper Reggie Evans had 14 points and 14 rebounds.
Cousins and Ben McLemore combined to score 24 of the Kings' 32 points in the third quarter, including their last 20. McLemore hit consecutive 3-pointers, the second one just beating the clock at the end of the period, to leave the Kings trailing 85-79 going into the fourth.
"We couldn't get any stops," Malone said. "Defensively, they just got whatever they wanted. It was just layup after layup after layup."
McLemore finished with 14 points, hitting all six of his free throws, before getting his second technical and being ejected with 10:51 left in the game.
"That's the crazy thing about it," he said. "I've never gotten kicked out of a game in my life."
The Kings closed within two on a three-point play by Cousins in the fourth. The Clippers answered with a 12-2 run to go up 103-91, capped by Jamal Crawford's back-to-back 3-pointers. He landed in the lap of courtside fans after the first one.
"Those two 3s Mal hit were backbreakers," Paul said.
Crawford returned after missing five straight games with a sore left Achilles' tendon. He finished with 10 points in 20 minutes.
"I felt good, rusty obviously, but my teammates did a good job getting me easy looks," he said.
Los Angeles outscored the Kings 25-5 on fastbreak points and 54-42 in the paint.
"When a team lives in your paint, especially a good team like they are, you're going to have a hard time beating them," Malone said.
NOTES: Clippers F Danny Granger sat out his seventh straight game because of a strained left hamstring. ... Kings G Isaiah Thomas missed his 10th straight game with a right quad contusion. ... Sacramento fell to 11-30 on the road and 7-19 against the West away from home. ... The Kings topped the 100-point mark for the first time in five games. | Clippers beat Kings 117-101 for 56th win |
Photo: Jason Henry, Special To The Chronicle
Crashing waves form tide pools on the rocks at the north end of the beach creating a home to a variety of interesting creatures at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, Calif., Thursday, April 9, 2015.
Crashing waves form tide pools on the rocks at the north end of the beach creating a home to a variety of interesting creatures at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, Calif., Thursday, April 9, 2015.
Body of UC Santa Cruz student swept into ocean by wave is found
The body of one of two missing college students from the Bay Area was found washed up on a Santa Cruz County beach near where they where knocked off a rock and swept into the ocean last week, officials said Tuesday.
A biker was riding on the bluffs above Strawberry Beach in Wilder State Ranch on Monday when he saw what he believed to be a body near the surf line on the beach and called police, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office.
The body was recovered and later identified as Shireen Ahsan, a 19-year-old missing UC Santa Cruz sophomore from Palo Alto, officials said.
Ahsan, along with 25-year-old Ahmad Nourzaie, a senior from San Jose, and another student were knocked from a rock they were standing on during a hike near Bonny Doon in unincorporated Santa Cruz County on Jan. 18, officials said. While the other student was able to swim to safety, Nourzaie and Ahsan disappeared in the surf, officials said.
A search for the students was later suspended. On Tuesday, the search for Nourzaie resumed, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office.
Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @haleaziz | The body of one of two missing college students from the Bay Area was found washed up on a Santa Cruz County beach near where they where knocked off a rock and swept into the ocean last week, officials said Tuesday. A biker was riding on the bluffs above Strawberry Beach in Wilder State Ranch on Monday when he saw what he believed to be a body near the surf line on the beach and called police, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office. Ahsan, along with 25-year-old Ahmad Nourzaie, a senior from San Jose, and another student were knocked from a rock they were standing on during a hike near Bonny Doon in unincorporated Santa Cruz County on Jan. 18, officials said. |
WHAT IS IT? A retractable hardtop version of McLarenâs ferocious 12C.
HOW MUCH? $268,250 base, $321,080 as tested including sport exhaust ($6,330), navigation with Meridian sound system ($7,200) and Volcano Yellow paint ($5,400).
WHAT MAKES IT RUN? 3.8-liter V-8 with twin turbochargers (616 horsepower, 443 pound-feet of torque), 7-speed dual-clutch automated manual transmission.
HOWâS THE WARRANTY? Coverage for three years with unlimited mileage. Thatâs right: on mileage, the warranty beats Hyundaiâs.
IS IT THIRSTY? Rated at 15 m.p.g. in the city and 22 on the highway, the 12C prioritizes performance over fuel economy.
Turbochargers make wonderful noises. A turbocharger is a lot like a miniature jet engine, but most car companies seem to think that drivers donât want to hear the LaGuardia taxiway as theyâre merging onto the highway.
Thatâs a shame. I used to have a Saab 9000 Turbo with a low-restriction air intake, and its dominant aural signature was the Lilliputian Top Gun dogfight that erupted beneath the hood every time the turbocharger spooled up. Unfortunately, modern cars donât much let you hear their turbos at work.
Well, except for one: McLaren 12C, youâre first in line, cleared for takeoff.
Squeeze the throttle on the retractable-hardtop 12C Spider and a symphony of howls and gurgles erupts from the mid-mounted, twin-turbocharged V-8 as unsuspecting air is belligerently funneled into the hungry maw of an 8,500 r.p.m. monster. The turbos issue a high-pitched whine under throttle, then dump excess boost with a breathy exhale. Maximum boost is a formidable 29 pounds per square inch, a statistic that helps to explain how a 3.8-liter V-8 generates a staggering 616 horsepower.
The Spider seemed decidedly more vocal than the coupe I drove last year, so I asked McLaren if anything was changed to uncork the intake cacophony. As a matter of fact, yes, there was. The 12Câs Intake Sound Generator â programmable by the driver â is more aggressive, increasing the decibel level as the driver moves up through Normal, Sport and Track powertrain modes.
So then, whatâs an Intake Sound Generator? I asked McLarenâs new chief executive, Mike Flewitt, who explained: âItâs basically a tube with a valve in it, so it lets the sound pass through without carbon dioxide getting into the cabin. But itâs not creating anything that isnât really there.â
Mr. Flewitt did not mention BMW, but the latest M5 augments its V-8âs soundtrack by playing engine noises through the carâs sound system. The 12C isnât doing that. Itâs more akin to sticking your head under the hood, while youâre driving, to take a listen.
Of course, if you want even more visceral exposure to the engine, you can wait 17 seconds for the hardtop Spider to transform into open-air roadster. The Spider uses the same carbon-fiber tub as the coupe, so the power roof exacts a weight penalty of only 88 pounds, for a still-svelte total of 3,033 pounds. The 0-to-60 m.p.h. time remains unchanged at 3.1 seconds, but over a quarter-mile those 88 pounds will slow you down, from a 10.6-second elapsed time to 10.8 seconds. (Trap speed drops from 136 m.p.h. to a still-impressive 134.) I think I could probably live with that. The Spider also gains a bonus auxiliary trunk â the area where the top stows doubles as storage space if the roofâs up.
As for demerits, the main drawback seems to be that the seam in the middle of the hardtop turns into a channel that funnels rainwater onto your head when you exit the car. The solution, which Iâm sure many Spider owners will embrace, is to live in Malibu.
I drove in steady New England rain during my time with the 12C, which meant that I became frustratingly familiar with the carâs traction-control system. On a wet road, the 12C has the power to effortlessly spin those giant rear tires at 45 m.p.h. But find a stretch of dry pavement, and a 12C coupe is one of the few cars that can outpace a 12C Spider. And even then, not by much.
It seems that the traditional tradeoff between coupe and convertible, wherein the droptop is an overweight, cowl-flexing Fat Elvis version of the coupe, no longer applies to certain carefully designed two-seaters, the 12C chief among them. In choosing between the two 12Cs, youâd find a Meyer-Briggs personality test more relevant than a stopwatch. Are you the type of person whoâs out on the Miley Cyrus side of the extroversion spectrum, the kind of person whoâs ready for the attention that comes with a roofless McLaren?
Iâm not sure I require that level of hedonism. Roof up, windows down, a dry road and turbos singing: that sounds good to me. EZRA DYER | The retractable-hardtop McLaren 12C Spider offers a symphony of howls and gurgles from its mid-mounted, twin-turbocharged V-8, and a staggering 616 horsepower. |
MOSCOW — With his droopy eyeglasses and boxy suits, Alisher B. Usmanov is at no risk of being mistaken for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. But the Russian steel tycoon is poised to make billions of dollars from the initial public stock offering of Facebook this week — in the same league as many of that social networking company’s early backers.
Mr. Usmanov, an industrial and media magnate who has demonstrated a keen ability to take advantage of the opportunities that appear in a financial disaster, is reaping the rewards of an ambitious bet on Facebook made amid the global economic recession in 2009.
As other investors were demanding tough terms, he said in an interview this week, he and his Russian business associates were willing to buy almost 10 percent of the company while giving up the voting rights on those shares to Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.
Now the Russian-led investments of less than $900 million, made through two entities, Mail.ru and Digital Sky Technologies, will be worth more than $6 billion, based on the midpoint of the $34 to $38 price range that Facebook’s bankers have set for the stock.
Mr. Usmanov, 58, who got his start in the plastic bag business and was reared in a remote part of the Soviet Union, said he learned the benefits of acting boldly during the ruble crisis of 1998.
“I have a theory of crisis that you must employ crisis to create additional margin,” he said this week in a telephone interview. “You need to understand when the moment of growth is coming, and invest just before that.”
Mr. Zuckerberg turned to the Russian investors in 2009 at a meeting quietly brokered by Goldman Sachs. Other sources of financing had slowed because of the crisis. And, because of the popularity of online social games in Russia, investors here had a keen sense of the value of social networking sites and were willing to pay more than others for a stake in Facebook.
The Russians were also willing to accept another condition important to Mr. Zuckerberg. Despite owning 10 percent of Facebook, they would get no voting rights or seat on the board. They would also have no say in the site’s policies on privacy or political organizing — preserving independence that has become especially important as Facebook has played a major role in domestic politics in Russia.
Mr. Usmanov, who is close to the Kremlin, has not hesitated to use his media properties to support the government. Last December, he fired the publisher and editor at one of Russia’s most respected newsmagazines, Kommersant Vlast, after it published detailed accounts of bald falsification in national elections. Mr. Usmanov said he fired the executive not for the political coverage per se, but for printing a picture of a ballot defaced with an obscenity insulting Vladimir V. Putin, then prime minister of Russia and now president.
But Mr. Usmanov said the Russian venture into Facebook was purely commercial. “Americans started investing abroad after 100 years of capitalism at home,” he said. “We are doing it after 20 years.”
The precise details of the Russian ownership in Facebook are difficult to assess. The investments were made over two years though the Russian Internet company Mail.ru and the investment fund Digital Sky Technologies, also known as D.S.T., which is run by the venture capitalist Yuri Milner. Although Mr. Usmanov was the leading backer, other investors were involved.
Mr. Milner met with Zuckerberg in 2009 before the first investment, though Mr. Usmanov has never met him.
Mr. Milner said his focus on social networking reflected insights gained from watching the Russian Internet market develop in the last few years. In 2005, D.S.T. began investing in Internet companies in Russia and Eastern Europe, where, as in parts of Asia, people took to social games and the trading of virtual goods faster than in the United States.
The print media market was already weak, a legacy of the Soviet breakup and political controls on national newspapers, leaving a freer space for crowdsourced media like social networks.
Mr. Milner said that this led to an understanding that social networking business models involving tiny payments from large numbers of users had vast potential in emerging markets.
“At the time, I was probably the best-informed person in the world about social networking monetization,” he said.
Russia remains one of the few major markets today where Facebook does not dominate social networking, because of the strength of local companies like VKontakte and Moi Mir. (Other markets where Facebook is weak include South Korea, where it is gaining, and China, where government firewalls block the site because of its potential to be used in organizing dissent.)
Mr. Usmanov said that, after the series of investments from 2009 until 2011, he and Mr. Milner owned about 9 percent of Facebook at one point, but now own about 6 percent and will hold about 4.5 percent after the initial public offering. The other shares they originally controlled have gone to other investors, clients of D.S.T. and corporate entities.
Evelyn M. Rusli contributed reporting from New York. | Alisher B. Usmanovâs investments in the social media giant could be worth at least $6 billion when the company goes public. |
What if Tony and Maria had met on Facebook? If Anita Twittered, would she feel tweety? Those are some of the questions posed by “Web Site Story,” a video parody of “West Side Story” that’s making the virtual rounds.
The video was written and directed by Sam Reich, the president of original content for CollegeHumor.com (where other theater-related offerings include “Waterworld the Musical” and “Food Court Musical.”). The music and dancing in the slickly produced piece mimic “West Side Story” almost note for note.
“I was a theater nerd with a love for Sondheim,” said Mr. Reich, who as a teenager played Action from “West Side Story” as part of a high school musical review.
Instead of star-crossed romance on the streets of New York, Mr. Reich’s version follows a group of people who love Web sites, including Hulu, Google Earth and Twitter. Read more… | “West Side Story” meets Twitter in a parody video from CollegeHumor.com. |
This just in: USC is still guilty.
They were caught, they were cheaters and they couldn’t go to a bowl game last season, and won’t go again this season.
It has nothing to do with the University of Miami’s problems other than the fact that the joker who worked as the Hurricanes' former athletic director provides an immediate guffaw.
And no one needs a good guffaw like the USC football fan who just can’t seem to get past the fact his football program was tagged for cheating.
Dee is now being labeled a “hypocrite" for lecturing USC on its wrongdoings as chairman of the NCAA’s Infractions Committee while serving as Miami AD, but anyone who participates in name-calling from USC is one as well.
Dee’s involvement with USC is a nice piece of trivia, but USC’s problems were its own, and no matter who sat as chairman, the school was due for a spanking.
USC has maintained from the start that the NCAA was too heavy-handed, and with developments at Ohio State and Miami, it’s an argument that won’t die any time soon.
But the NCAA didn’t know what was taking place at Ohio State and Miami at the time it dealt with USC -- Dee failing to mention it to the NCAA -- and so it treated USC’s problems as if they were the very worst thing going on in college football.
No one likes to be punished; USC fans the worst of all.
But this has been good for USC, Pete Carroll no longer walking on water at the end of his run and Athletic Director Mike Garrett replaced by Pat Haden.
It also provided some USC fans with a tailgating break, their weekends again their own as the Trojans play their practice games.
And the practice games have allowed Lane Kiffin to develop without the overbearing pressure of winning every quarter every Saturday. He’s been given time to find his place in college football again and become a respected head coach, and he might really be a good one.
Who knows, but I’m not sure he would have been allowed to mature if stuck in the college spotlight with Garrett looking over his shoulder. He’s been given two years to ready USC's program for another championship run without having to explain why it fell short of the big bowl game to end up in El Paso or some other outpost.
Many USC fans have never gotten past the point where they had it all, blaming the NCAA for ruining their party.
Garrett said it best on behalf of all Trojans a few hours after the NCAA had lowered the boom on USC: “... Nothing but a lot of envy ... hey wish they were all Trojans.’’
Later new AD Haden would say over and over again in appeal that USC had made a great case for leniency, but that comment from Garrett had to hang heavy in the air with the NCAA.
It was funny reading some of the comments below many of the stories detailing Miami’s problems Wednesday, and Dee’s involvement as AD.
The best was this one: “So can someone explain to me again why USC is in trouble?’’
The implication was obvious; look what USC did in comparison to Miami.
I’m sure there are prisons full with similar comments, and while I’m not suggesting that's where we send emailers, I would guess there are criminals wondering why they’re doing 20 years when the guy in the next cell obviously has done far worse.
Miami could take a major NCAA hit
Pac 12's Larry Scott, those connected to USC, react to Miami report
How do the allegations against Miami affect former AD Paul Dee?
Top photo: USC running back Reggie Bush, left, is congratulated by quarterback Matt Leinart after scoring a touchdown against Fresno State in 2005. Bush was at the center of an NCAA investigation that led to sanctions being imposed on the USC football program. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times. Right photo: Former USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett poses in front of his Heisman Trophy at USC's Heritage Hall. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times | T.J. Simers: Miami has problems, but USC still cheated |
Russian divers recovered a giant piece of the Chelyabinsk meteorite from a lake in Central Russia on Wednesday.
“I’m surprised they found a piece that was so big,” said geologist Denton Ebel from the American Museum of Natural History to the Daily News. “The other pieces that I’ve seen are very small and this is huge compared to those.”
Last February, the fiery space rock exploded over the nation's Ural Mountains with the force of 20 to 30 Hiroshima atomic bombs. The shockwave injured more than 1,600 people and caused millions of dollars in property damage in the nearby industrial city of Chelyabinsk, shattering windows and knocking down walls.
PHOTOS: FALLING METEORS HIT RUSSIA
"People 30 miles away went outside to see what the light was about and were knocked off their porches," Bill Cooke, leader of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, told The News at the time.
It was the largest recorded strike since 1908 when a meteor crashed into a remote, wooded area of Tunguska, Siberia. This particular chunk of the meteorite — the largest recovered — crashed to the bottom of Chebarkul Lake.
"It acted as kind of a wake-up call that we need to start thinking of planetary protection seriously. No one got killed — that’s amazing," Ebel said.
RELATED: SOCHI OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS TO GET METEORITE GOLD MEDALS
Scientists weighed the near-Earth asteroid chunk on a large steelyard balance on site that put its weight at 1,256 pounds, before it split off into three separate pieces.
Sergei Zamozdra, a professor from Chelyabinsk State University, confirmed to local media near the lake that the piece was, in fact, part of the meteorite.
"It's got thick burn-off, the rust is clearly seen and it's got a big number of indents," Zamozdra said, as reported by the Interfax news agency. "This chunk is most probably one of the Top 10 biggest meteorite fragments ever found."
RELATED: WATCH: FALLING METEOR PROMPTS PANIC IN CENTRAL RUSSIA
"It is beautiful! It's gorgeous. Its size is approximately like this," Nikolai Mizulin of the Aleut Company said to the Associated Press, stretching his arms out wide. "It has traces of melting, and it looks like the other fragments that we have retrieved earlier."
On a mobile device? Watch the video here. | Russian divers recovered a huge piece of the Chelyabinsk meteorite from a lake in Central Russia on Wednesday. |
The upfronts–TV networks’ schedule announcements for advertisers–are back, and If there’s one thing that stays the same at them each year, it’s talking about change. Fox is trying to ditch pilot season and program series year-round; broadcasters are experimenting with limited-run series and seasons of differing lengths; and every old legacy network is figuring out its place in the world of cable, streaming, and Aereo.
NBC too is trying something new this year: being in first place! For the first time since its Friends-era heyday, the network is ending the season tops in viewers among 18 to 49. (I know, measuring success among that age range is unfair–it gets less fair each year I get older!–but that’s what advertisers pay for, and this isn’t a charity.) The upfronts are all about puffing out your chest and looking big, so you’re going to boast, especially if your corporate logo is a peacock. “We’re number one, you’ve heard it a lot of times,” network head Robert Greenblatt told advertisers. “Get ready, you’re going to hear it a lot more.”
So that’s great for them. But unlike in the glory days of the ’80s, ’90s, and turn of the aughts, NBC isn’t doing great great. The network did have a respectable new drama hit in The Blacklist, the network has held its lead in late night, and The Voice still brings in the eyeballs, if fewer. But some of its success has to do with football, which is seasonal, and the Olympics, which doesn’t come around next year. And it’s ended up number one partly by default, simply doing less badly than the other broadcasters this season. Maybe fittingly, even the grandeur of the event seemed diminished; it was not, as in some years past, at one of Manhattan’s great theater palaces, but the charm-free Javits Center, located, as emcee Seth Meyers put it, “In the heart of Manhattan’s stabbing district.”
So number one or not, NBC is cleaning house (Parks and Recreation and Parenthood are gone after next year). It’s readying a lot of new shows for next season: 16 so far, depending how you count them. For the first time in ages, it has no comedy block at 8 p.m. Thursdays, maybe recognizing that comedy is not exactly the network’s strong suit anymore. (Meyers joked that he was behind on his TV watching, “So nobody tell me whether Sean Saved the World.”)
Another familiar development here: most of the stuff that sounds really compelling (at least potentially) won’t come around until midseason–for instance, the Tina Fey and Robert Carlock comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, starring Ellie Kemper. (The sitcom, about a woman rescued from a cult after years separated from civilization, was easily the best and most intriguing preview NBC showed this morning. You’ll have to keep waiting for it!) What NBC does have scheduled for fall looks–mind you, this is judging only by the promotional trailers–looks aggressively meh. Among them:
A to Z: Or How I Met How I Met Your Mother‘s Mother, a romantic comedy starring HIMYM’s Cristin Milioti and Mad Men‘s Ben Feldman (both nipples intact!) as the hopeless romantic who falls in love with her at first sight.
Marry Me: Another romantic comedy, this time with Ken Marino and Casey Wilson as a couple trying to get their relationship on track after a botched engagement proposal. Like the stars, not sure if the premise sustains a series, but NBC really believes you want to see a romantic comedy next fall!
Bad Judge: Kate Walsh follows up her naughty-widow Fargo role with a naughty-judge role in a comedy about hard-drinking jurisprudence.
State of Affairs: Katherine Heigl and Alfre Woodard take national security very, very seriously.
The Mysteries of Laura: The unconvincing trailer for this cop show starring Debra Messing features Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady,” which also pretty much seems to be the premise of the show. She’s a woman with kids and a personal life but also a homicide cop–who’d have thought it!
Constantine: Based on a comic-book franchise, this companion to the supernatural Grimm on Friday nights stars Matt Ryan as a master of the occult fighting threats from Hell.
We’ll have to see what the finished products look like, but on the face of it these shows seem to be solidly within NBC’s current brand, namely, “Not too groundbreaking, but eh, it looks professional.” Which, to be fair, has done better for NBC–with The Blacklist and various shows with “Chicago” in the title–than radical departures like Community, which just radically departed. NBC’s ambitions may simply be the least-worst broadcast network, but these days, that strategy can just get you to number one. | After a decade of painful ratings, NBC is about to finish the current season number one. At its presentation for advertisers, it unveiled more of the not-too-ambitious fare than got it there. |
Orville Redenbacher in 1987. A woman claiming to be his granddaughter was busted in Indiana on Sunday for drunk driving and fighting with cops.
She's the bad kernel of the family.
A great-granddaughter of prim snack kingpin Orville Redenbacher is in an Indiana prison after she was popped by police for drunk driving and assaulting cops and nurses at a hospital.
Jordan Jones, 22, told a judge in Valparaiso on Tuesday morning that her college is paid for by a trust fund set up by her grandfather, the late popcorn magnate, who died in 1995, the Post-Tribune newspaper reported.
Jones was arrested Sunday morning after she called police around 4 a.m. to say her car had become stuck on some train tracks.
A train eventually hit the 2003 Pontiac Sunfire, but Jones, who was locked out of the car, was not hurt.
When cops arrived, they cuffed Jones for drunk driving, the newspaper reported.
In the back of the squad car, the popcorn heiress became increasingly salty, cops said, and started bashing her head against the divider until she knocked herself out.
At an emergency room later, Jones attacked and injured two cops and a nurse trying to stitch her forehead, the newspaper reported.
It eventually took eight people to restrain her, police said. Blood tests showed Jones' blood alcohol content was 0.23, nearly triple the legal limit to drive.
She was charged with battery, resisting arrest and battery by bodily waste.
Her status as an heiress to a snack food fortune came out at Tuesday’s hearing after she requested a public attorney.
A Redenbacher family member confirmed to the Daily News that Jones was Orville's great-granddaughter.
A judge denied the request and set her bail at $7,500, the Post-Tribune reported.
She’s due back in court in February.
A spokesperson for food giant ConAgra told the Daily News that a request for comment had been forwarded to the Redenbacher family.
Jones' bust comes less than six months after the city of Valparaiso erected a statue of the bow-tied Redenbacher to honor his memory. | Jordan Jones, 22, was arrested Sunday after her car was hit by a train. She told a judge her education was paid for by a trust set up by the late popcorn magnate. |
By Sue Kirchhoff and Barbara Hagenbaugh, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON The stimulus law signed by President Bush on Wednesday provides what he called a "booster shot" to the economy, but the medicine might not be strong enough to ward off a recession.
The $168 billion package of personal tax rebates and business tax cuts will likely help shore up consumer spending later this year, economists say. That could minimize the pain of a possible downturn. But it won't resolve longer-term issues bedeviling the economy, such as a free fall in home sales and prices and a credit crunch that has persisted despite aggressive Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.
"A lot of Americans are worried about their economic future. … Growth has clearly slowed," Bush said at a White House ceremony.
Also Wednesday, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., unveiled a long-term plan to spend $210 billion to create jobs in construction and environmental industries.
The nation isn't in an official recession, but growth has slowed dramatically. The economy expanded at an anemic 0.6% annual rate in the final three months of 2007. The unemployment rate has ticked up from 4.5% to 4.9%.
The stimulus law aims to bolster consumer spending, more than two-thirds of economic activity, via rebates to Americans, from seniors on Social Security to more affluent earners.
People who had income of at least $3,000 in 2007 (wages, Social Security or disability payments) but paid little, if any, income tax, would be eligible for a rebate of $300 for an individual, or $600 for a couple.
Those who paid 2007 income taxes would get rebates of $600 to $1,200. Rebates phase out for individuals with more than $75,000 in adjusted gross income, and couples with more than $150,000. Those qualifying for a rebate are eligible for another $300 per child.
The White House hopes to start sending out rebate checks in May. A key issue is how much of the rebate money will be spent.
Consumers spent about two-thirds of rebate checks doled out in 2001, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Lower-income consumers were more likely to spend, not save, the money.
The authors argue the rebates of $300 or $600 per family played a big part in ending the eight-month-long recession, which concluded in November 2001 and is considered one of the most mild in U.S. history.
A number of economists say consumers are unlikely to spend as much this time around. In 2001, the rebates were accompanied by tax cuts, leading consumers to expect more money in their bank accounts over a longer period and making them more likely to spend, says Global Insight U.S. research director Nigel Gault.
Still, the economic consulting firm expects consumers will spend half the checks within the first year. "It's enough to make quite a substantial difference," he says. "The timing could be very good."
A recent survey of 1,000 consumers by the International Council of Shopping Centers and UBS Securities found 43% would use the money to pay off debt, 26% said they would save it and 24% said they would spend it. The rest said they will not be eligible for a rebate.
"Lenders will see the money before retailers," ICSC chief economist Michael Niemira says. "But still, about $25 billion will head into the spending stream, and that is positive."
The stimulus law also includes business provisions. Effective for 2008, companies with less than $800,000 in annual capital investments can write off the first $250,000. That's up from a prior limit of $128,000. Firms are also eligible to write off a "bonus" 50% of new investment this year. Dorothy Coleman of the National Association of Manufacturers says firms boosted investment after a similar measure in 2003.
"If a company is anticipating investing at some point in the near future … this is a powerful incentive to do it in 2008," Coleman says.
Global Insight's Gault says the impact of the provisions will be "very, very little." Firms must still feel confident enough to spend the money.
Jason Furman, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, says Congress must still address issues like long-term unemployment. More than a million jobless workers will exhaust their benefits between now and June. Lawmakers should also step up efforts to aid homeowners who are falling behind on their mortgages, Furman says.
"The goal of the stimulus bill was to increase the deficit to expand overall demand," Furman says. "I don't think we should do another stimulus bill for the sake of the aggregate economy."
Conversation guidelines: USA TODAY welcomes your thoughts, stories and information related to this article. Please stay on topic and be respectful of others. Keep the conversation appropriate for interested readers across the map. | The nation isn't in an official recession, but growth has slowed dramatically. The economy expanded at an anemic 0.6% annual rate in the final three months of 2007. The unemployment rate has ticked up from 4.5% to 4.9%. |