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http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/30/allen-iverson-jewelry-store/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160619201610id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2012/01/30/allen-iverson-jewelry-store/

Judge to Allen Iverson -- I'm Garnishing Your Wages to Pay Back Your Jeweler!!!

's bank account has been commandeered by a Georgia judge ... who's garnishing the former NBA star's earnings so A.I. can repay a 6-figure debt to his flashy GA jeweler. According to court papers obtained by TMZ ... Iverson was sued back in 2010 for allegedly stiffing Aydin & Company Jewelers on a $375,000 bill. The records show ... A.I. never responded to the lawsuit ... so a default judgement was issued in favor of the jewelry store ... allowing A&C to collect for the bling, court costs, interest and attorneys fees. But A.I. still didn't pay ... so earlier this month .. the judge signed off on an order which allows the store to recoup their loss directly from Iverson's Wells Fargo bank account. So far, it's unclear if the store has received its money. Calls to Iverson's rep have not been returned.

Allen Iverson's bank account has been commandeered by a Georgia judge ... who's garnishing the former NBA star's earnings so A.I. can repay a 6-figure…

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http://time.com/3828569/jawbreaker-extreme-heat/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160620001305id_/http://time.com:80/3828569/jawbreaker-extreme-heat/

Jawbreaker Exposed to Extreme Heat

Here’s one thing that can break a jawbreaker faster than you will ever be able to: a really hot nickel ball. Watch in awe — or horror — as green slime pours out of the rainbow-speckled orb and then browns. This video is almost terrifying enough to make you never want to eat sweets again. Almost. The aspiring mad scientists behind the YouTube channel “carsandwater” have also tried this trick with a block of ice (nearly 7 million views), watermelon (2.8 million) and ballistic gelatin (1.8 million).

Terrifying and delicious at the same time

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/style/weddings-celebrations-vows-alexandra-posen-and-nils-anderson.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160620090105id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2004/07/04/style/weddings-celebrations-vows-alexandra-posen-and-nils-anderson.html?

WEDDINGS/CELEBRATIONS: VOWS; Alexandra Posen and Nils Anderson

EVEN as a child, Alexandra Posen loved to make a spectacle for amused audiences at her parents' dinner parties. ''Our background was performance and a great love of Kurosawa,'' said Ms. Posen's brother, Zac Posen, the fashion designer. Judy Garland was also a favorite, he said, adding that he sang right along with his sister. ''We are still each other's muses.'' The theatrical possibilities of a wedding, therefore, were not lost on either of them. ''She has a great sense of imagination, humor and play,'' Mr. Posen said. ''To be a strong woman and to have a very playful side is a killer combination.'' It was her assertiveness, and not her dramatic flair, that first attracted Nils Folke Anderson, 33, to Ms. Posen, 31. In March 2001, the two arrived as artists in residence for a three-week program at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., and set about divvying up studio space. ''Before I knew it, she not only had a space there, but somehow grabbed another space in the ceramics studio as well,'' said Mr. Anderson, a painter and a graduate art student at Hunter College in New York. His interest in her was further fueled by her wild black curls and broad smile. Having retained the chivalrous Southern charm of someone who grew up on a farm in Waterford, Va., he set out to woo her. At a party, Mr. Anderson, an accomplished guitarist, serenaded Ms. Posen with love songs in Spanish. But later, when he popped in a salsa tape, she balked. ''Partner dancing made me a little nervous,'' she said. Mr. Anderson persisted. ''All of a sudden, there I was salsa dancing with him,'' she said. ''I was feeling smooth in his arms.'' At the end of the three weeks, Ms. Posen returned to Palo Alto, Calif., where she was then living, and Mr. Anderson returned to Brooklyn. They reunited in a matter of weeks, however. A native New Yorker, Ms. Posen joined her brother in Manhattan, becoming the creative director of their nascent fashion business. Soon, Mr. Posen's designs were stirring the imaginations of the likes of Anna Wintour and Natalie Portman. Mr. Anderson, meanwhile, pursued his art; in 1998 he and a close friend had founded Big Hands, a collaboration that has produced murals and other public art for the Central Park Conservancy and others. The Posen company grew, and so did the relationship between Ms. Posen and Mr. Anderson, who, his brother, Erik Anderson said, never end a phone call without saying ''I love you.'' ''He is a superromantic,'' Erik Anderson said. ''This is the first time I've seen a girl who is in tune with that.'' Finally Ms. Posen had met someone who could match her playful spirit. Before moving in together in 2002, Alexandra Posen and Nils Anderson consulted a couples' therapist. Erik Anderson explained: ''In New York there is this I-am-not-sure-if-I-am-ready-to-commit kind of thing. They hadn't been dating really that long, so it felt like a pretty big step, and Nils knew it would lead to the bigger commitment.'' When the therapist asked Ms. Posen and Mr. Anderson to write down what they loved about each other, they groaned at the tedious assignment. But once the therapist had left the room, they committed their loving words to facial tissues, which they scattered about the office. Then they treated the therapist to what Ms. Posen called an ''impromptu performance piece,'' in which they wandered about the room, randomly reading the tissues. The moment, which Nils Anderson described as ''totally joyous,'' convinced him that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Seventy-two hours before the wedding, the bride's Zac Posen dress, with its geranium-red bodice and six-foot train, was still in pieces. Twenty company employees were summoned to complete it in time. At their wedding June 26, in a meadow on the farm owned by the bride's parents in Pleasant Valley, Pa., the guests murmured excitedly when Ms. Posen appeared in the red confection, her train of organza poppies in deep fuchsia and magenta trailing across the green grass. ''I was nervous,'' said one guest, André Leon Talley, the Vogue editor at large, before the gown's debut. Later, he called it ''very original,'' yet also something that required its wearer ''to know who you are.'' At the reception, 175 guests, including the actor Billy Crudup and the actress Claire Danes, feasted on a lavish three-course, Tuscan-style meal, delivered on large platters. Ceremonial first dances tend to be theatrical, and this one was no exception. Just as Judy Garland's ''Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart'' hit an up-tempo, Ms. Posen ripped off her long skirt to reveal a short dress. An astonished Mr. Anderson, who wore a white suit, drew her back into his arms. ''Art imitating life or life imitating art is our family motto -- always,'' Zac Posen said a few days after the wedding. ''That is what we grew up on.''

Vows column on wedding of Alexandra Posen and Nils Anderson; photos (M)

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http://www.tmz.com/2016/06/18/orlando-shooting-funeral-pulse-car-crash

http://web.archive.org/web/20160621024303id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2016/06/18/orlando-shooting-funeral-pulse-car-crash

Orlando Shooting -- Car Barrels Into Victim Funeral Procession ... 2 Cops Hospitalized

Two Florida cops are in the hospital after a woman allegedly drove her car through the middle of a funeral procession for a victim of the Pulse Nightclub shooting. According to eye witnesses, there was a small break in the procession Saturday and the woman tried to quickly cross the intersection. However, she didn't see the cops coming up on motorcycles and struck them both. A rep for the Osceola County Sheriff Dept says both officers are in stable condition. Reports say the woman has not yet been charged but will be shortly.

Two Florida cops are in the hospital after a woman allegedly drove her car through the middle of a funeral procession for a victim of the Pulse…

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http://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/feds-release-excerpts-orlando-shooters-calls-police/story

http://web.archive.org/web/20160621032404id_/http://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/feds-release-excerpts-orlando-shooters-calls-police/story?id=39988579

Feds Release Excerpts of Orlando Shooter's Calls With Police

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video WATCH: Mateen identified himself as an Islamic soldier in the calls. The FBI has released portions of conversations between Orlando shooter Omar Mateen and police during the deadly assault at Pulse nightclub last week, highlighting the threats Mateen made before police decided to break through a wall at the nightclub. After police first ran into Pulse and exchanged gunfire with Mateen around 2:08 a.m. on June 12, no more shots were fired for nearly three hours -- while authorities and Mateen repeatedly spoke over the phone. Police decided to breach a wall at Pulse only after Mateen threatened to detonate a series of bombs on scene and to strap four explosive vests on victims within 15 minutes, the FBI said today. Lee Bentley, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, said today's release is intended to give the public a better idea of what officers "were dealing with" when they made the decision to enter the nightclub. The actions of officers that morning "should not be second guessed, they performed valiantly," Bentley insisted. "Lives were saved because of their heroic work." During multiple calls with police, Mateen identified himself as an Islamic soldier and pledged his allegiance to ISIS. Mateen said he was "out here right now" because America was bombing Syria and Iraq, according to excerpts of the conversations released today. About a half-hour after the initial reports of shots were fired, Mateen called a 911 operator from inside Pulse, saying in Arabic, "I wanna let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings...I pledge allegiance to [ISIS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him, on behalf of the Islamic State," the FBI alleged. The call lasted less than a minute. Federal authorities initially only released part of the transcript in an attempt to remove references to ISIS or al-Baghdadi. But later today, after criticism and questions from some lawmakers, the Justice Department decided to release a more complete version of the excerpts. The department wanted to remain "sensitive to the interests of the surviving victims [and] their families," and "did not want to provide the killer or terrorist organizations with a publicity platform for hateful propaganda," the Justice Department said this afternoon in a statement. "Unfortunately, the unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist organizations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime," so the department "re-issued the complete transcript." In later calls, according to the FBI, Mateen said: "There is some vehicle outside that has some bombs, just to let you know. You people are gonna get it, and I’m gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid. In the next few days, you’re going to see more of this type of action going on."

The FBI has released portions of conversations between Orlando shooter Omar Mateen and police during the deadly assault at Pulse nightclub last week, highlighting the threats Mateen made before police decided to break through a wall at the nightclub.After police first ran into Pulse and exchanged...

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http://www.cbsnews.com/media/celebrity-family-trees/3/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160621041613id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/media/celebrity-family-trees/3/

Quiz: Celebrity family trees

Bieber is related to both Gosling and Lavigne by way of the Mathurin Roy-Marguerite Biré line, which took root in Quebec in the 1600s. Bieber is Gosling's 11th cousin, once removed, and Lavigne's 12th cousin. Dion's connection to Bieber comes via French natives Jacques Vezina and Marie Boisdon, who emigrated to Quebec in the 1600s. The "Titanic" singer is 10th cousin, three times removed, from the singer of "Sorry." (The two here pose for a picture posted by Bieber on Twitter in 2009.)

Test your knowledge of some red carpet favorites and their distant relations

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/realestate/greathomes/26park.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160621054942id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2006/05/26/realestate/greathomes/26park.html?

The Hamptons' Most Coveted Spots

"It is spectacular — you sit there on the beach, and you look at these massive mansions from another era," said Judi Desiderio, an agent with Town and Country Real Estate in the Village of East Hampton, referring to the cavernous shingled houses that face the beach. "Twenty-five to $100 million in value, and you're sitting in between them and the ocean." Dr. Leatherman said he uses 50 criteria to rate beaches, the most important being clean water and clean sand. Main Beach has both, he said. "Then you start looking at the aesthetics, and you say, 'Wow, is this a picture postcard place or what?' " The beaches are not really that exclusive, Mr. Cantwell said. Just as Mr. Leatherman did, anyone can arrive by bicycle — or by foot or be dropped off. "And they're free to use the beach," he said. At Main Beach only and on summer weekdays only, visitors without permits can pay $15 to park for the day. The other village beaches require permits weekdays and weekends. The permits are needed from the second weekend in May to Sept. 30, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Violators are subject to towing and a mandatory $125 fine. Another option is to go to a beach elsewhere in the larger Town of East Hampton, where the 3,000 annual town beach parking permits for nonresidents have never sold out, according to Fred Overton, the town clerk. (Village permits are not good at the town beaches.) The closest town beach to Main Beach is Atlantic Avenue Beach, three miles away, in Amagansett. Another town ocean beach, Beach Lane Beach in Wainscott, is about a mile west of Georgica Beach. But the combination of the sun and the sea, the refreshments at the Main Beach pavilion, the mansions on the dunes and — let's face it — the pure cachet of Main and the other village beaches is hard to beat. Just ask Nancy Chemtob, a Manhattan divorce lawyer who as a village resident is at the pinnacle of beach parking. Ms. Chemtob waited five years for one of 176 coveted Lot 1 resident parking permit stickers, which come with a storage locker at the Main Beach pavilion. The sticker-locker combination, something of a village status symbol, is available only "after somebody dies or moves away ," she said. That must be what happened in 2001, when her family's name came up for the permit — one per household, no matter how many cars the family owns. "My husband and I look at each other every year," she said, "like, who's going to get that sticker?" Last year, Ms. Chemtob and her husband, Roland, sold their East Hampton Village home and bought a house in Southampton. But then they gave in to separation anxiety and switched homes, and Hamptons, again, moving back to the village — all within a few months. In the process, they lost the parking permit and the locker. Ms. Chemtob took her taxpayer records to Village Hall to prove she paid village taxes for all of 2005 and, she said, she "absolutely begged" officials to return the permit. It worked. "I'm a divorce attorney," she said, "so I can argue for the pettier things." The Chemtobs sometimes have had to guard their privileged residency from friends in Southampton and Westhampton who in previous years were too late to apply for nonresident permits. "People call us up and beg us to get them passes," Ms. Chemtob said. "They come out of the woodwork." It's the need to be part of such an exclusive club. "It's almost like private school in Manhattan," she said. How the Other Half Parks IF you missed the rush for nonresident permits to park at East Hampton Village beaches this summer, there are options. You can go to the village's Main Beach on weekdays. Monday through Friday only, parking is $15 for the day, no permit required. You can rent a bicycle to go to the beach. Bermuda Bikes rents bikes, including models with seats for children (36 Gingerbread Lane, near the train station; 631-324-6688; www.bermudabikes.com; from $25 for seven hours to $275 for the season). You can go to a town beach. The Town of East Hampton stretches from Wainscott in the west to Montauk Point at the tip of the South Fork. There are many ocean and bay beaches along the way. Most require town parking permits, which are valid only for town beaches. The town has 3,000 nonresident permits, $250 each. The permits are good until Dec. 31 and are available at East Hampton Town Hall (159 Pantigo Road, 631-324-4142). Not all beaches have lifeguards. The town ocean beaches closest to the East Hampton Village beaches are Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett and Beach Lane Beach in Wainscott. ATLANTIC AVENUE The beach is three miles east of Main Beach, at the end of Atlantic Avenue. Parking without a town permit is allowed for $10 on weekdays only. BEACH LANE It is about a mile west of Georgica Beach, at the end of Beach Lane. MONTAUK Kirk Park, where parking without a permit is allowed on weekdays only, for $10; Ditch Plains, for surfing; Nick's, named for Nick's Restaurant, which fronts the beach; Gin, on Block Island Sound; Hither Hills State Park, which has camping and an $8 parking fee for noncampers. AMAGANSETT Little Albert's, Albert's Landing Road and Barnes Hole. SPRINGS Louse Point Road, Gerard Drive and Maidstone Park.

In recent years, parking permits have become more important perhaps to nonresident beachgoers than the latest styles in swimwear.

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http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/25/world/european-leaders-reluctant-to-send-troops-to-rwanda.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160621133832id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1994/05/25/world/european-leaders-reluctant-to-send-troops-to-rwanda.html

European Leaders Reluctant to Send Troops to Rwanda

BERLIN, May 24— In a recent debate in the British Parliament, an opposition member asked Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd why Britain was not sending peacekeeping troops to Rwanda as it had to Bosnia and Herzegovina. "Is there one law for Europeans and another for black Africans?" the member, Kim Howells, inquired. His question reflected Europe's rising horror over the killings, which are said to have taken uncounted thousands of lives in Rwanda over the last seven weeks. Mr. Hurd's reply, lamenting that there was no clear mission for British troops in Rwanda, exemplified the fear of European governments that active involvement there could lead them into a bloody quagmire. In this conflict between humanitarian impulses and cold calculation of national interest, realpolitik is winning. European governments deplore the slaughter in Rwanda but are not willing to take the risks inherent in trying to stop it. Although Europeans are geographically and politically closer to Rwanda than Americans, they face similar issues in confronting the crisis there. Public outrage is growing, but thus far it has not led to demands for military intervention. Governments fear repeating the debacle of Somalia, where a United Nations force took publicized casualties and was ultimately forced to withdraw from the country without having pacified it. With former colonial powers no longer willing to intervene quickly in African lands, the United Nations is the only agency available to do so. But it has not yet developed a capacity for rapid reaction in such crises. After weeks of delay, the United Nations voted last week to send 5,500 peacekeepers to Rwanda. Three African countries -- Ghana, Ethiopia and Senegal -- said today that they would send troops, but it is unclear who will provide military equipment for them and underwrite other costs. Requests From the U.N. Several European countries have declined informal United Nations requests to join the force. "Denmark already contributes United Nations soldiers to many other places," the Danish Foreign Minister, Niels Helveg Petersen, said last week. "The basis for the Rwandan mission is somewhat uncertain. The question is whether the U.N. soldiers will have a reasonable chance to fulfill their mission." Italy is the only European country that has expressed willingness even to consider joining the United Nations force in Rwanda. "What is happening in Rwanda is infinitely sad," the Italian Defense Minister, Cesare Previti, said in a visit to Brussels on Monday. "The tragedy is taking place before our eyes, and we would be fully prepared to take part in an international initiative, even by sending forces." Among countries that have turned down United Nations requests for help in Rwanda are both of its former colonial masters, Germany and Belgium. Germany ruled Rwanda from 1899 to 1916, after which Belgium took over under a League of Nations mandate until independence in 1962. "We were asked to provide a 100-man medical team like we sent to Cambodia, but we are awaiting a decision from the Constitutional Court about what our forces can legally do abroad and we don't want to introduce any irritation into that process, so we have declined," said Alois Bach, a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry. "They also asked for armored transport vehicles, and we have told them that we don't have what they need. Control of Airports "As for the final request, for a plane to help with airlifts between Rwanda and Tanzania, we are willing to send one as soon as conditions are safe enough. That means that airports in Rwanda would have to be under United Nations control and that all parties to the conflict would agree to allow the flights." Coverage of the Rwanda crisis on German television has been extensive, although newspapers have not given it regular front-page attention. Many reports focus on the difficulties facing those who wish to help. "Civil wars in Africa are very hard to stop," said the German news agency DPA in a dispatch from Nairobi that appeared in several newspapers last week. "Interventions in Somalia and Liberia hardly brought freedom any closer, and in Angola and southern Sudan, fighting continues despite countless peace initiatives. Even for a country as small and poor as Rwanda, there is no quick solution." One of Germany's leading human rights groups, the Society for Threatened Peoples, urged Germany to support a change in the United Nations structure "to allow quick reaction and immediate measures to prevent genocide." It also urged the Government to help finance the United Nations' all-African peacekeeping force. "The last United Nations representatives in Rwanda were degraded to the point of being mere witnesses to genocide, since they could do nothing but count the dead," said the society's president, Tilman Zulch. Belgian Casualties Ten Belgian soldiers and seven civilians were killed in Rwanda before all Belgians there were evacuated last month. A Government spokesman in Brussels, Patrick Renault, said today that Belgium would not re-establish a presence there until the conflict was over. "At the moment we have no willingness to have contact with the so-called Government in Kigali, which consists of a gang of murderers," Mr. Renault said. In an earlier era, France might have sent troops to intervene in Rwanda, where French is the most widely spoken European language. But France is no longer eager for such missions, and in the case of Rwanda finds itself in the embarrassing position of having armed and advised the Government that is now being accused of responsibility for many massacres. Earlier this year, the American group Human Rights Watch singled out France as the principal non-African supplier of arms to the Rwandan Government, and charged that the French Government had ignored human rights concerns there. Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy of France returned from a visit to Rwanda and to refugee camps in neighboring Tanzania with horrific tales of what he called "the worst genocide of the late 20th century." Mr. Douste-Blazy reported that some marauders offered to kill victims with bullets if the victims could pay for them, using machetes to hack to death those with no money for bullets. He also said he had heard a radio broadcast urging militiamen not to spare Tutsi children. 'Let's Kill Them' "I heard a radio station saying, 'Let's avoid repeating the mistake of 1959. Let's not leave the children. Let's kill them,' " he said. Paris newspapers have criticized the United Nations for not acting sooner, but there have been few calls for direct French intervention. In Britain, public concern over the violence is increasing, but as in most of the rest of Europe, there is no strong move to send troops to join the United Nations peacekeeping force. The British Government has pledged $6 million to international aid groups working with Rwandan refugees but is unlikely to become more directly involved, a Foreign Office official said today. The official said Britain could do little more than "our bit at the United Nations." A London newspaper columnist, Simon Hoggart of the Guardian, offered his own explanation of foreign reluctance to react forcefully to killings in Rwanda. "Rwandans are thousands of miles away," he wrote. "Nobody you know has ever been on holiday to Rwanda. And Rwandans don't look like us. They have even less clout than Bosnian Muslims." On Monday the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned international reluctance to intervene in Rwanda. An editorial signed by the editor in chief, Mario Agnes, a close adviser to Pope John Paul II, compared the killings to the "slaughter of innocents" by King Herod.

In a recent debate in the British Parliament, an opposition member asked Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd why Britain was not sending peacekeeping troops to Rwanda as it had to Bosnia and Herzegovina. "Is there one law for Europeans and another for black Africans?" the member, Kim Howells, inquired.

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http://time.com/2912965/ultimate-workout-playlist/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160621135406id_/http://time.com:80/2912965/ultimate-workout-playlist/

Spotify's Popular Workout Playlist

Need some new tunes to listen to while attempting to fulfill your summer fitness goals? Well, here’s a handy playlist brought to you by the folks at Spotify and Billboard. Billboard explains the not-super-scientific methodology that led to the curation of the list: In order to put this list together, we at Billboard asked Spotify and their data science wing the Echo Nest to poll their 24 million users, and the one-and-a-half billion playlists those users have created, to generate the top songs people place in their exercise-related digital mixtapes. With the data Spotify provided, Billboard created playlists for everything from crossfit to tae bo, but the above playlist is the ultimate roundup of general workout songs. Surprisingly, it does not exclusively consist of Top 40 hits. Here’s a breakdown:

Featuring songs by Eminem, Avicii, Foo Fighters and more

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http://time.com/4149987/hotline-bling-bryan-cranston-amy-schumer/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160622001017id_/http://time.com:80/4149987/hotline-bling-bryan-cranston-amy-schumer/?iid=sr-link1

Bryan Cranston, Amy Schumer Dramatic Recitation

W Magazine managed to round up a whole bunch of your favorite celebrities and then asked them recite their personal interpretations of Drake’s “Hotline Bling.” Some celebs, like Elizabeth Banks, perform it as a rap, while others, like Kristen Wiig, go for a more serious, dramatic monologue. Others, like Brie Larson and Saoirse Ronan, get a bit more dancey with it. The real star of the show is Bryan Cranston, who takes this task very, very seriously. He seems to channel his Breaking Bad character, Walter White, and gets really menacing. Also look out for Amy Schumer, Paul Dano and Seth Rogen. Read next: This Video Proves ‘Hotline Bling’s Dance Really Was the Meme of 2015

Plus: Amy Schumer, Elizabeth Banks and more

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http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/valentine-day-rutgers-article-1.722847

http://web.archive.org/web/20160622110041id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/archives/sports/valentine-day-rutgers-article-1.722847

VALENTINE'S DAY AT RUTGERS

Corey Valentine may be best known in the Rutgers football locker room for the famous company he kept as a Lincoln basketball player. But if this off-season goes well, Valentine has a chance to make a name for himself. The 6-2, 185-pounder is vying for the starting quarterback job at Rutgers under new head coach Terry Shea. The position has been left open since the firing of former coach Doug Graber. Last year's starter (Ray Lucas) and backup (Robert Higgins) are graduating and Shea's top QB recruit (Perris Verduzco) has had legal trouble and his scholarship is questionable. So Valentine, a redshirt freshman, and Ralph Sacca, a sophomore, are fighting for the job. Both lefties, they split time with the first team during spring practice. "I'm concentrating on learning the offense and the system and I'm going to give it my best shot," said Valentine, who was the sixth man on Lincoln's state championship basketball team in 1995, which was led by Stephon Marbury. Chudney's choice: Rice point guard and Manhattan signee Chudney Gray, who has said he might want out of his letter of intent because Fran Fraschilla left for St. John's, met with Jasper officials Monday and decided to at least listen to the school's new coach. "I think I'm going to be released, but just to show common courtesy, I'll meet with him," Gray said. "I'll decide when the new coach comes. " Gray said Manhattan officials told him the school would have a new coach "in two weeks,at the latest. " Meanwhile, other colleges have been inquiring about Gray. Cincinnati, which lost MLK's Kevin Morris to Georgia Tech last week, has called, as have Fordham and Florida. Abdou sez I do: Cardozo's Abdou Sylla, a 6-7 forward from Senegal, Africa, has committed verbally to Miami of Ohio, said Judges' coach Ron Naclerio. Sylla did not play this season because of confusion over his transcript, Naclerio said, but was impressive in summer camps and AAU tournaments. Sylla's schoolmate, Charles Cranford, is headed for prep school with St. Thomas More (Conn.) as one of the choices. Hoops chatter: UNC-bound Brooklyn native Eddie Cota, an ex-Tilden star, was one of 10 players named to the Junior Olympic Team. . . . Add Scott Perry, an assistant coach at Michigan and the Wolverines' top recruiter, to the list of candidates for the Manhattan job, says the rumor mill. SOFTBALL Packer 17, Brearley 2: Laura Zinck, Kristina Babbitt and Adrian Ellman homered for Packer (3-0, 1-0 AAIS). GOLF Holy Cross 3, Iona Prep 2: Jack Lobiono shot a 45 for HC (3-1). Cardozo 4, Bowne 1: Ron Wilkins and Sam Moon both shot 41 for 1-0 Cardozo. VOLLEYBALL JFK 15-15, Smith 5-5: Abraham Kim had six kills for 3-0 JFK. Lincoln 6-15-15, Fort Hamilton 15-9-8: Lincoln's Dmitry Kagan had 17 points. Grady 15-15, Telecom. 5-11:Walter Sochaki had nine points for 4-1 Grady. Hunter 15-15, M. L. King 13-2: Ramon Marmolejos scored 12 for 3-0 Hunter. Cardozo 15-12-19, Bayside 12-15-17: Mike Chan had 17 kills and Tiago Barros 10 for Cardozo. Spellman 15-15-15, Mount St. Michael 13-10-9: Spellman's Chris Lagdamen had 14 points. Packer 15-13-15-15, N. Y. Friends 9-15-4-6: Perry Licata had five kills for Packer. NYF's Ben Sterling had eight kills. TENNIS Cardozo 5, Bayside 0: Eric Zmara and James Malhame won for Cardozo (3-0). SOCCER Midwood 2, Prospect Heights 0: Hillary Sterling recorded her fourth shutout for Midwood (4-0).

Corey Valentine may be best known in the Rutgers football locker room for the famous company he kept as a Lincoln basketball player. But if this off-season goes well, Valentine has a chance to make a name for himself. The 6-2, 185-pounder is vying for the starting quarterback job at Rutgers under new head coach Terry Shea. The position has been left open since the firing of former coach Doug Graber. Last year's starter

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/aiden-stein-ohio-boy-shaken-as-a-baby-dies-after-12-years-on-life-support/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160622153439id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/news/aiden-stein-ohio-boy-shaken-as-a-baby-dies-after-12-years-on-life-support/?

Aiden Stein, Ohio boy shaken as a baby, dies after 12 years on life support

CLEVELAND -- A 12-year-old Ohio boy who was shaken as a baby and spent the rest of his life on life support has died. Aiden Stein died Sunday at a Columbus hospital. The case drew national attention when the boy's parents fought to keep him alive after a guardian appointed by a probate judge sought to have him removed from life support. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in December 2004 that the guardian lacked the authority to make that decision. Aiden's father, Matthew, was charged with shaking his 4-month-old son. He denied it, but a jury in Mansfield convicted him of felonious assault and child endangerment in September 2005. He served eight years in prison. The Richland County prosecutor said Wednesday it was "unlikely" that further charges would be pursued against Stein.

Aiden Stein's father served eight years in prison after being charged with shaking his 4-month-old son

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http://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/24/astrazeneca-reports-profits-fall-as-predators-circle.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160622173516id_/http://www.cnbc.com:80/2014/04/24/astrazeneca-reports-profits-fall-as-predators-circle.html

AstraZeneca reports profits fall as predators circle

JB Reed | Bloomberg | Getty Images Cholesterol drugs, Crestor, left, manufactured by AstraZeneca Plc, and Lipitor, manufactured by Pfizer Inc. Read MorePharma M&A is back – can it cure the sector's ills? "It's important in our industry to become more efficient. We have tremendous pressures on all our companies." On Thursday, AstraZeneca reported a rise in revenues but declining profits for the first quarter, as the debate over its future continued. Revenues rose by 3 percent from the same time in 2013 to $6.4 billion, but core operating profit for the quarter was down 11 percent to $1.95 billion. Earnings per share fell by 40 percent to $0.40 for the quarter, following the high-profile disposal of its former flagship research center near Manchester. The company's share price fell slightly in early London trading. The company has recently become the focus of takeover speculation after it emerged that Pfizer, the biggest company in the sector, made a preliminary approach in late 2013. AstraZeneca has declined to comment on the approach. Read MorePfizer takeover of AstraZeneca isn't as crazy as it sounds One of its biggest attractions for an acquirer is its pipeline of new cancer drugs. AstraZeneca has recently brought forward several of these to the final stages of clinical trials.

The chief executive of AstraZeneca, at the center of speculation of a $101 billion takeover, has said such large-scale deals are "often disruptive."

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http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/soyuz-capsule-brings-station-fliers-back-to-earth/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160622215337id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/amp/news/soyuz-capsule-brings-station-fliers-back-to-earth/

Soyuz capsule brings three space station fliers back to Earth

Jun 18, 2016 9:02 AM EDT SciTech By William Harwood / CBS News A Russian cosmonaut, a NASA astronaut and a British flier strapped into a Soyuz spacecraft, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth Saturday, safely landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 186-day mission. Dropping out of a partly cloudy sky under a billowing orange-and-white parachute, the charred Soyuz TMA-19M descent module settled to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown at 5:15 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 3:15 p.m. local time) about 90 miles southeast of Dzhezkazgan. Russian recovery crews stationed nearby, along with NASA and European Space Agency support personnel, quickly reached the spacecraft, which ended up on its side, to help commander Yuri Malenchenko, NASA flight engineer Timothy Kopra and ESA astronaut Timothy Peake out of the cramped return module. The crew members were extracted one at a time and carried to nearby recliners for quick medical checks and satellite calls home to friends and family. All three looked healthy and in good spirits as they began re-adapting to gravity after six months in weightlessness. "Such an incredible adventure," Kopra said in a final tweet before leaving the space station. Kopra appeared a bit uncomfortable when he was pulled from the capsule, but within a few minutes, he was smiling and chatting on the phone. Peake, smiling broadly and appearing completely at ease, said, "I'd love some cool rain right now. It's very hot in the capsule." He added he would also enjoy a cold beer. All three were to be flown by helicopter to Karaganda, about two hours away, for a traditional Kazakh welcome home ceremony. From there, Malenchenko planned to board a Russian jet for the flight back to Star City near Moscow. A NASA jet was standing by to fly Kopra and Peake to Bodo, Norway, where Peake planned to catch a European Space Agency plane for a flight to the ESA astronaut training center at Cologne, Germany. Kopra will continue on to his home near the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Mission duration was 185 days 22 hours and 11 minutes since blastoff Dec. 15, a flight covering 2,976 orbits and nearly 78 million miles. Malenchenko, who logged 641.5 days aloft during five previous space flights, including a stay aboard the Russian Mir space station and a shuttle flight, boosted his total time in space to 827.4 days, moving him up to No. 2 on the list of most experienced space fliers. The record is held by Gennady Padalka, who has 878.5 days in space over five missions. Kopra, veteran of a previous station visit, has now logged 244 days off planet while Peake, the second British citizen to fly in space and the first to visit the station, spent 186 days in orbit. Left behind aboard the space station were Expedition 48 commander Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, who arrived at the lab complex aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on March 18. They'll have the station to themselves until July 9, when three fresh crew members -- Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins -- arrive aboard the Soyuz MS-01 ferry ship. During a brief change-of-command ceremony Friday morning, Kopra, commander of Expedition 47, turned the station over to Williams, saying, "It's been a tremendous honor to serve with this crew. I can't think of a better group of people to spend time with in space and to work with. I'm very, very grateful for that opportunity." Williams, in turn, congratulated the departing crew members "for a successful stay on the International Space Station." "You've made our stay so far ... extremely productive and rewarding," he said. "We wish you a safe return to Earth and a safe return to your families." During their stay aboard the International Space Station, Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake welcomed two Russian Progress freighters, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, an Orbital ATK supply craft and the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft that delivered Williams, Ovchinin and Skripochka. Kopra carried out two spacewalks totaling seven hours and 59 minutes while Peake and Malenchenko conducted one each. It was Malenchenko's sixth spacewalk over six flights. The crew also helped install an expandable crew module now attached to the aft port of the Tranquility module for two years of tests to determine its ability to stand up to the rigors of the space environment. If all goes well, larger expandable modules under development at Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas could serve as habitats for commercial space stations or eventual deep space voyages to Mars.

Russian Soyuz ferry craft brings three space station fliers safely back to Earth after 186-day mission

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http://www.aol.com/article/2010/08/30/tampa-slang/19575630/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160623010456id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2010/08/30/tampa-slang/19575630/

Tampa Slang - AOL

After nearly 30 years in Florida, I am finally well-versed in Tampa slang. Being from the North, I had to acclimate myself to the Tampa local language. At first, there were a lot of colloquialisms that I had to tune in to in order to communicate with true Gulf of Mexico dwellers, those who are southern to the core and proud Gator fans. Here's ten you better not forget, y'hear? If you are not from Tampa, you probably would pronounce this Pin-ellas County (pin, as in safety pin). Locals call it Pine-ellas (pine, as in pine tree). Who's right and who's wrong? Who's to say! This is apparently Tampa local lingo for chimney. Being that we are in tropical Florida, there are not a lot of chimneys down here, so it took me a while to get that one. Turn out is a common phrase describing how many people attend an event. A good turn out is always the greatest hope of the host. I have been thrilled and disappointed in the turn outs at my events. I thought "turn out" was a universally accepted phrase, but on the west coast of Florida, some call it a "turn around." "We had a good turn around." What does that even mean? Tons of people show up at your holiday gala, and they all spin the evening away? Being a Yankee, I grew up thinking that it was a chest of drawers. You know, that tall thing that looks like a chest with drawers in it? Not in Tampa. We have the infamous "chester drawers." Maybe funny looking ones could be "jester drawers?" Perhaps only guys named Chester should have this kind of dresser. That is the ostentatious thing that Liberace used to have on his piano. You probably know it as a candelabrum. It's a large decorative candleholder that holds numerous candles. Maybe only the ones hung in theaters should be called candleoperas. I was really confused when someone told me he had "whelps" all over his arm. The mental picture was terrifying. When I got to the bottom of this, I discovered that what he actually had were welts all over his arm. What a relief-just to me, of course. Now that says it all. Tampa slang doesn't get any better than this. Sometimes I feel like the dog whose butt is in the shade, and it is great to know that I'll soon be on the sunny side of that one. Is a phrase usually meant to describe just how sick you are. I guess you are really down and out if you have to be sick in the bed. It sure beats being sick in the car or sick on the bus. Just think of all the places you could be sick: at work, at school, in the theater. Being sick on a first date would be devastating. So, sick in the bed might not be that bad after all. "Sick on my stomach," is another one that goes along with sick in the bed. Could you be sick off of your stomach? If you were sick on your head, would you be upside down? I had to do a little research on this Tampa slang term. I have never really pictured a frog having hair. Perhaps that's the whole idea. Their hair is so fine that you can't even find it. I guess you can't get finer than that. One of my friends, a transplant from England, gave me a great phrase: "bugger all." I tried my best to figure out what he meant when he said, "She is doing bugger all." I imagined all sorts of things. I decided that it meant everything, a jack of all trades. Boy, was I wrong! Just for the record, it means doing absolutely nothing. Don't get it confused with "Bugger off." That is a whole different matter. Can't Get Enough? Discover More of Tampa More Tampa Articles From Our Partners

Getty Images After nearly 30 years in Florida, I am finally well-versed in Tampa slang. Being from the North, I had to acclimate myself to the Tampa local language. At fir

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2014/07/01/studies-show-many-studies-are-false/PP2NO6lKd7HMyTZa1iCHGP/story.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160623121352id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/lifestyle/2014/07/01/studies-show-many-studies-are-false/PP2NO6lKd7HMyTZa1iCHGP/story.html?

Studies show many studies are false

When a group of scientists discovered in 2011 that some particles travel faster than the speed of light, it shook the world of modern physics. The announcement drew widespread media attention and seemed to upend one of the bedrock theories of 20th-century science, special relativity. There was just one problem: It wasn’t true. It had all been a result of mismeasurement, in part from a loose cable. This may be a particularly glaring example of research gone wrong, but it’s not the only example. In fact, there are good scientific reasons to think that lots of published research is actually false. In 2005, a research professor named John Ioannidis published a much-cited paper titled: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” in which he showed how the pressures of academic life, the small size of many scientific studies, and the preference for unexpected findings mean that even premier journals are surprisingly likely to publish findings that just aren’t true. Here’s a breakdown of why, exactly, so much research turns out to be wrong and how we should treat new findings when they come out. One way we know studies are false is that they get disproved by larger or better studies. Early studies on a B vitamin called Niacin, for instance, suggested that it could help reduce heart attacks by raising so-called “good” cholesterol. Years later, a more comprehensive experiment found that it actually had no impact on heart attacks. Drug companies face this problem all the time. They read about cutting-edge discoveries being made in academic labs, but when they try to reproduce the experiments, they can’t. Scientists at a German pharmaceutical company who tried to reproduce the results in 67 published studies told the readers of Nature that they only succeeded one quarter of the time. Likewise, the American company Amgen found they could only replicate the results for 6 out of 53 published cancer studies. Not really. To be sure, there have been some colorful and high-profile cases of fraud in recent years, including a Harvard animal researcher who monkeyed with his data, and a Korean scientist who tricked editors into letting him review his own paper. Ultimately, though, these kinds of incidents aren’t a big reason that so many studies prove to be false. Imagine you’re a budding young cancer researcher trying to make your mark by investigating whether watching movies about cancer actually causes cancer. And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it doesn’t. People who watch cancer movies are, in fact, no more likely to get cancer than anybody else. Does this mean your research will all come up negative? Not necessarily. You may pick people for your study who aren’t good representatives of the population at large. Just by chance, you could end up with an unusual number of folks who like cancer movies and get cancer. You might get a false positive, meaning your study would show a link between cancer and cancer-movies even though they’re not really connected. Of course, if you take all the appropriate precautions, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll get this kind of false positive. But it isn’t impossible. Remember there are thousands of cancer researchers conducting similar studies. And with thousands of studies, the likelihood that one of them will produce a false positive increases dramatically. If you’re the researcher who gets that false positive, you have no reason to doubt your findings. In fact, if you check your math, you can prove that your experiment, considered on its own, was extremely unlikely to lead to false results. What is more, with such surprising and original results, you have a great pitch for the journals, even if it’s entirely based on a fluke. Not at all. But it does mean you need to treat even very high-quality research with a certain skepticism. Here are some tips: • Pay attention to the size of the study. The larger the study, the harder it is to get false positives. It’s the difference between flipping a coin 10 times, where someone might get all heads by chance, and flipping it 1,000 times, where the odds are much lower. • Be especially cautious if it’s the first such finding. Later corroborations and broader literature reviews are less likely to be misleading. • Trust your prior beliefs. The more unlikely something seems, the less you should trust it. If you find yourself thinking, “I guess I was totally wrong about that,” you might want to say, instead, “I guess I should be a bit less sure than I was before.” Ultimately, though, we all get taken in by new and promising findings, even the editors at top journals. Early results, though, are just the first phase in a research process that involves future studies and broader efforts at replication. For that reason, many of the breakthroughs and discoveries we hear about will end up being disproved, and what looked like an important step forward will often turn out to be a misstep.

There are good, scientific reasons to think that even high-quality studies in top journals are often wrong.

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http://fortune.com/2016/05/18/bittorrent-streaming-tv/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160623124118id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/05/18/bittorrent-streaming-tv/

BitTorrent's New Streaming TV Service Has 1 Unique Feature

Sometimes it seems as though everyone is launching some kind of streaming, cable-style TV service. Apple and YouTube are both said to be working on one—although there are reasons to be skeptical—and Hulu apparently has one coming soon. Sony has Playstation Vue, and Dish Network offers SlingTV. Now BitTorrent has one too, called BitTorrent Live. BitTorrent’s new service is launching with only a handful of little known or niche channels, including FightBox and Heroes TV. But Erik Schwartz, vice president of media at BitTorrent, says the company is in discussions with other providers about licensing their content, including a number of mainstream TV networks. “We are talking to pretty much everyone,” Schwartz said in an email. The BitTorrent executive added that the service launched with a limited roster of channels because it wanted to start with a free tier. Future versions will carry a subscription fee, and Schwartz says BitTorrent intends to be competitive with SlingTV and other services. Live is launching on Apple TV with iOS and Android versions expected later this year. What’s unique about BitTorrent’s service isn’t the content. It’s the delivery method. While most of its competitors use the normal process for digital broadcasting with central servers distributing programs to end users via content-delivery networks such as Akamai, BitTorrent’s service is based on the peer-to-peer technology it pioneered in 2001. Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter. Peer-to-peer means that everyone who is downloading or streaming a file or program is also simultaneously uploading that file or program to anyone else using the service. That structure has helped BitTorrent become one of the most successful content-delivery systems in history to the point where it accounts for an estimated 5% of all the traffic on the Internet—more than iTunes and Facebook. A huge proportion of this traffic, however, consists of illegally copied movies, TV shows, software, and other content. That has made it difficult for BitTorrent to break into traditional media markets in the past. Even though the company itself doesn’t host any copyright-infringing content, it is seen by some as enabling that kind of behavior. At the same time, the fact that BitTorrent powers a massive file-sharing network is exactly what allows it to offer a more legitimate service like Live. The same qualities that make a peer-to-peer network difficult for copyright owners to shut down are what make it a robust method of content distribution. All BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen had to do was re-work the system so that it allowed for less “latency” or lag for streaming. The company has been working on using its peer-to-peer technology for streaming video for some time. At one point, it offered BitTorrent Live via a website dedicated to streaming video, but later shut the site down after it failed to get traction with users. The company tested a mobile version of the same idea earlier this year by broadcasting live coverage of the election on Apple TV via an app called OTT (for Over the Top) News. This is why you can’t stream TV with Google or Apple. Watch: As more and more media companies focus on live video—in part because Facebook is promoting that kind of content—BitTorrent is no doubt hoping that the unique nature of its network will attract the interest of content producers. But is having a robust delivery system going to be enough to make it stand out from the crowd? Whether you are a niche channel like Heroes TV or you’re CBS, all you really want from a streaming cable-style service is an attractive licensing deal and the knowledge that your content is going to reach as many people as possible. Can BitTorrent offer that? Can it offer more than someone like SlingTV or the rumored YouTube service might be able to offer? That’s not clear, but it is starting from way back in the pack. All users are really looking for from such a service is access the channels and content that they want. Whether BitTorrent Live can come up with enough deals that allow it to do that is very much an open question. If it doesn’t have the content, having the most robust delivery system in the world isn’t going to be much help.

The streaming TV business is getting awfully crowded.

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http://fortune.com/2015/10/30/donald-trump-make-america-great/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160623125128id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/10/30/donald-trump-make-america-great/

Donald Trump just bought the "Make America Great Again" trademark

Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” may have cost him a bit of money. A nationally syndicated disc jockey claims the Republican presidential candidate, who says he is self-funding his campaign, just cut him a check to buy key rights to “Make America Great Again.” Bobby Estell, better known around the country as Bobby Bones, a syndicated country music morning host, tweeted a check that appeared to be from The Trump Organization dated Oct. 26. It all stems from the trademark rights to “Make America Great Again,” the Ronald Reagan slogan that Trump has adopted as his own. Trump owns the trademark rights for “political action committee services” – but he and his campaign never secured them for items like hats, t-shirts and other materials, all of which have become hot sellers among supporters (and for businesses not affiliated with the campaign). Estell and an associate, Meri Barnes, noticed that and filed a trademark application for the “all purpose” rights to the phrase on Aug. 5, 2015 – meaning they would own the right to put it on everything from hats and shirts to backpacks and beach bags to key cases and dog collars. Trump and team applied for similar rights to the phrase on Aug. 13. That was just shy of a week after Estell (aka Bones) took to Twitter and said he’d turn over the trademark rights to Trump in exchange for a $100,000 donation to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Later that day, he tweeted again. While Bones blanked out the amount in the picture Friday morning, the check was made to St. Jude’s with the description “Transfer of Trademark.” Some media outlets claimed Trump had paid the full $100,000, but this could not be independently verified. A representative for Estell declined to comment further. Calls to the Trump campaign were not returned. Records on the United States Patent and Trademark Office online database do not yet show Estell having transferred the rights to Trump, but there is often a delay in posting those transactions. A fight for trademark rights to a saying that was originally coined back in 1980 might seem a bit absurd, but stranger tussles have happened over mundane words. In 2014, King Digital Entertainment, makers of the mobile game Candy Crush Saga, attempted to trademark the word “candy”. (It abandoned those efforts soon after they became public and a storm of controversy erupted.) Last year also saw the ALS Association attempt to trademark “ice bucket challenge.”

A national radio host claims Trump had to pay up.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/books/review/the-secret-life-of-the-mind.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160623163203id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2006/04/09/books/review/the-secret-life-of-the-mind.html

The Secret Life of the Mind

The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. Illustrated. 510 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $29.95. Visiting Vienna for the first time some 20 years ago, I splurged on two tickets in a box at the Staatsoper so my wife and I could see a performance of "Aida" in that legendary hall, the site of so many fabled performances since its opening in the days of the city's 19th-century grandeur. The production was undistinguished, but that was far less a disappointment than our sense of the audience upon whom we gazed from our privileged perch. They were prosperous-looking, many dressed in evening clothes and seemingly attentive to the spectacle before them, but their responses were bland, colorless. It was as though they were under some inherited obligation to be in that place; they sat there dutifully and without joy. Just before the beginning of the second act, I turned to my wife and asked her what she thought was wrong. "Simple," she said. "No Jews." As Eric Kandel tells readers in the opening chapters of his scrupulously detailed yet magnificently panoramic autobiography, "In Search of Memory," Vienna was, as recently as 1939, the year he and his family fled the city for the United States, the most important cultural center in the German-speaking world. "The city's great tradition of scholarship provided a foundation for experiments in literature, science, music, architecture, philosophy and art, experiments from which many modern ideas were derived," he writes. "Vienna's culture was one of extraordinary power, and it had been created and nourished in good part by Jews." The Nazis drove out those Jews they did not murder, and with their departure a city of verve and excitement -- a city of intense intellectualism and the acme of cultural attainment -- became a prosaic place. The Jews lost a great deal, but so did the city they left behind. It is not too much to say that among its greatest losses was 9-year-old Eric Kandel. Though Kandel was only one of the many young people of enormous potential to depart to America or elsewhere, the story of his subsequent life is the distilled quintessence of their shared experience at the same time that it is its general summary. His destiny was to become one of the world's most renowned scientists, a winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, as well as a philosopher of mind; Vienna's destiny was to become a city whose physical beauty stands today as a mute memorial to past glories. Twenty-first-century culture continues to be significantly influenced by events that took place in that city during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, just as each of us continues to be influenced by every experience we have ever had. For human beings, however, "influence" is far too weak a word. We are made of memories. Every moment of our lives brings to a focus the totality of all the moments preceding it. And Kandel's life's work has been to demonstrate that memory, learning and, by extension, every other mental process are the result not of some vague set of unexplainable psychic phenomena but rather of distinctive molecular events determined by the physicochemical qualities of cellular life. Sigmund Freud repeatedly expressed his hope that psychoanalytic theory would one day be subjected to the scrutiny of basic science. There is a profound symmetry in the fact that Kandel, another son of Vienna who was exposed to even more threatening anti-Semitism than Freud was, should have fulfilled so much of that hope. And he did it in the course of research that epitomized Freud's original approach to studying the brain, by examining the single cell. Freud, who began his career as a neuroanatomist studying the structure of cells, made his greatest contributions as a psychoanalyst. Kandel did it the other way around.

Sherwin B Nuland reviews book In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R Kandel; photo (M)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/08/books/who-lost-russia.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160624102503id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2000/10/08/books/who-lost-russia.html

Who Lost Russia?

W. W. Norton & Company. $21.95. When German officials began their efforts to integrate 17 million former East Germans into the West following four decades of Communism, American diplomats and economists hoped to do likewise with over 140 million Russians, spread over seven time zones, after seven decades of Communism. The Germans will likely succeed, but it has been a much harder task than they originally envisioned. The Americans have failed. Seventy years of history's most comprehensive totalitarianism, following centuries of absolutism, left an institutional and moral void that -- compounded by the suddenness of the Soviet collapse -- has so far proved impossible to overcome. ''So great is Russia's economic and thus social catastrophe that we must now speak of another unprecedented development: the literal demodernization of a 20th-century country,'' writes Stephen F. Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University, in ''Failed Crusade.'' Even before Russia's financial collapse of August-September, 1998, in which Western investors lost tens of billions of dollars, Russia's gross domestic product was half of what it had been in the early 1990's: twice the decline of the United States economy during the Great Depression. Cohen blames bad advice from the United States for the debacle, and his terse, blistering polemic assails the entire community of Russia experts who, he claims, ''committed malpractice throughout the 1990's.'' Cohen refers to America's Russia hands as ''missionaries'' and ''evangelists.'' Suffused with post-cold-war triumphalism, they regarded Russia as ''a nation ready, willing and able to be transformed into some replica of America.'' There is almost no scholar, investor, economist or journalist associated with Russia who is not castigated (if not in the text, then in the notes) by way of an arrogant or Pollyannaish remark that the author has dug up. Cohen attacks people -- including Richard Pipes and Zbigniew Brzezinski -- who understood in the 1980's, as he did not, that Soviet Communism could not be salvaged. He fails to emphasize that the Russians never implemented much of the advice of the very experts he attacks for losing Russia. And his own advice -- that we should not have bombed Serbia or expanded NATO and that we should adopt instead the ''collective approaches'' of the United Nations, all for the sake of courting Russia -- amounts to capitulation, not engagement. Nevertheless, Cohen writes with bracing clarity on a subject obscured by euphemisms and double talk regarding Russia's so-called democratic renewal. It is precisely Cohen's insight about the Soviet system's deep roots in Russia's past -- an insight that in the 1980's helped blind him to Communism's irredeemable failure -- that has allowed him since the early 1990's to see that capitalist shock therapy would ultimately fail. According to Cohen, a people's historical experience supersedes economic theory. Thus, as he explains, what worked for Poland -- a small, ethnically homogeneous country exposed to the Enlightenment, with a rudimentary market infrastructure even before the collapse of the Berlin Wall -- would not necessarily work for Russia. Cohen provides a stimulating counterchronology to challenge the official Washington view of post-cold-war Russia as a string of qualified successes and disasters avoided, in which good democrats, led by former President Boris Yeltsin, have battled bad neocommunists, particularly Yevgeny Primakov, a former prime minister and foreign minister. Cohen writes that in 1991, Yeltsin, without any responsible preparation, abolished the Soviet Union, creating a bureaucratic vacuum. In 1992 and 1993, ''hyperinflation generated by economic shock therapy . . . wiped out the life savings of most Russians.'' Also in 1993, Yeltsin used tanks to overhaul the elected Parliament and the entire constitutional order of post-Soviet Russia. The next year, he launched a war against Chechnya, killing tens of thousands of civilians. In 1998, following a series of financial deals that failed to benefit most Russians, Yeltsin's government -- after promising never to do so -- devalued the ruble and froze bank accounts, economically decimating average citizens once again. And in 1999, after a series of apartment house bomb blasts that Russia's own security services may have set, Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, and a former K.G.B. agent, launched a second war against Chechnya, killing thousands more civilians. The war's popularity helped Putin to succeed Yeltsin as president, in nearly monarchical fashion. Cohen's thesis is that Yeltsin, rather than Russia's first democratic leader, was a neoczarist bumbler who destroyed a democratization process that, in fact, should be credited to Mikhail Gorbachev. As for Primakov, rather than the Communist-era ogre so labeled by the American media, he was a ''centrist by nature,'' and the only prime minister to rely on Parliament rather than on the oligarchs. And whereas reformers such as Anatoly Chubais, the darling of America's Russia experts, were despised throughout Russia for colluding with the oligarchs to destroy living standards, Primakov, hated in Washington, was popular at home for steering between radical reform and Communism, in order to alleviate the suffering of ordinary people.

FAILED CRUSADE America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen. 304 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $21.95. SALE OF THE CENTURY Russia's Wild Ride From Communism to Capitalism. By Chrystia Freeland. 305 pp. New York: Crown Business. $27.50.

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http://time.com/3930899/grey-copies-fifty-shades/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160624174941id_/http://time.com:80/3930899/grey-copies-fifty-shades/

'Grey' Sold More Than 1 Million Copies in 4 Days

Christian Grey has said some of the most cringe-worthy one-liners in the history of literature, but people are apparently dying to hear his point of view. E.L. James’ Grey, the retelling of Fifty Shades of Greyfrom Christian Grey’s perspective, has sold more than 1.1 million copies in trade paperback, eBook and audio editions, Vintage Anchor books announced on Monday. “This is an astonishing number of books to sell over a weekend and speaks to the engagement and passion readers have for the Fifty Shades books,” Anne Messitte, Vintage’s publisher, said in a statement. “Christian’s side of the story is proving to be irresistible.” Vintage has already gone back to press for third, fourth and fifth printings of the book, which was released last week. The first printing was for 1.25 million copies, and the next runs will bring the total number of copies in print up to 2.1 million, Vintage said. The Fifty Shades trilogy has sold over 125 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful publications in history. The first book in the franchise holds the title of all-time best-selling Kindle book. Sara Nelson, editorial director or Amazon.com, announced last week that Grey was the highest pre-order of the year, beating outHarper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman. This article originally appeared on EW.com.

It's Amazon's highest pre-order of the year

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http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/blackberry-profit-devices/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160625051115id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/06/22/blackberry-profit-devices/

How BlackBerry Plans to Make Its Devices Business Profitable Again

BlackBerry’s top priority for this year is making its devices business profitable, its chief executive said on Wednesday, even as it weighs the future of its hardware operation. “The device business must be profitable, because we don’t want to run a business that drags onto the bottom line,” Chief Executive John Chen told investors at the company’s annual meeting. “We’ve got to get there this year.” BlackBerry bbry , once the smartphone market leader before being displaced by Apple aapl and competitors run on Alphabet’s googl Android platform, has been working to reposition itself as a software and service provider with a focus on device management for large organizations. Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter. Chen took up the CEO role in late 2013 with a reputation as a turnaround artist. But the company’s stock has only gained modestly since then, with many investors waiting for signs the now-smaller company will be able to carve out opportunities. The chief executive reiterated that BlackBerry wants to grow its software revenue by about 30% in the current fiscal year, which he estimates would be double what the market is growing at. The company is also still aiming to have positive free cash flow this fiscal year, he said. Chen and other executives and board members gave limited information about the company’s current financial performance, as it is releasing first quarter results on Thursday.

But its hardware operation still looks unstable.

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http://time.com/4089074/angry-men-women/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160625093733id_/http://time.com:80/4089074/angry-men-women/

Why Angry Men Are More Influential than Angry Women

Righteous anger is one of Hollywood’s favorite devices for delineating an inspirational figure. Atticus Finch has it in To Kill A Mockingbird, Peter Finch’s newscaster has it in Network, Mr. Davis has it in 12 Angry Men and Liam Neeson has it in just about everything. Angry women, not so inspirational. It has never been clear whether it’s women’s anger that is the problem or the way women display anger. Tears, heightened voices, jabbing fingers: are women just doing anger wrong? Now a new study suggests that female anger is simply less persuasive—to both men and women—no matter how it is expressed. For the study, 210 undergraduates were on a computer-simulated jury with five other jurors. They were shown arguments, testimony and photographic evidence in a case in which a man is accused of murdering his wife, and asked to make a decision. They then interacted, through typed responses on a screen, with the other jurors as they talked about the case. Four of the jurors agreed with them and one didn’t. For some of the participants, that juror was furious, as communicated by a liberal use of the caps lock and exclamation keys. None of the responses were from real people, however. They were pre-set into the computer program that the candidates were using. The angry juror’s name was either Alicia or Jason but her/his answers were always the same. At various stages throughout the process, the study participants were asked how confident they felt about their decision. The results were depressing. “After Jason started expressing anger, people’s confidence in their opinion dropped,” says the study’s lead author Jessica Salerno, assistant professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, “but when Alicia expressed anger they grew more confident.” Jason’s passion led to 19% less confidence among participants in their opinion, on average. Alicia’s anger led to 13% more confidence in their opinion, on average. In total about 7% of participants changed their minds during the course of the experiment. When the juror was not angry, that 7% was split between people who had been interacting with Jason or Alicia. But angry Jason got 18% of people to switch their verdict. Angry Alicia changed exactly zero people’s minds. The female anger in this experiment was expressed in exactly the same way as the male anger: words on a screen, with phrases like “This is just really frustrating…” and precisely the same number of capitalized letters. So Salerno believes it’s simply the gender that was the problem. Depressingly, again, both men and women reacted the same way to Alicia and Jason, echoing previous studies that showed both male and female Harvard Business School students would want to work for the aggressive CEO in a business case study when they thought he was a guy, but wouldn’t want to when they thought she was a woman. (Turns out she was a woman, Silicon Valley executive Heidi Roizen.) Why do people react so differently to male and female anger, even in 2015? Salerno thinks it’s because we believe anger comes from a different source for both genders. “I believe that people are drawing different conclusions about where the anger is coming from,” she says. “Male anger is situational. People think they must really have a reason to be so passionate. It’s situational conviction.” Female anger, however, is assumed to be coming from within. “Female anger tends to be attributed to something internal,” says Salerno. “People think: ‘That’s just such an emotional person, she’s not thinking clearly.’ ” Salerno is a little worried the results of her study are going to stop women from expressing their anger. That would be the wrong response. The right response, she says, would be to acknowledge that these implicit biases exist. “I’m hoping this calls people’s attention to to these biases,” she says. “I’m hoping well-intentioned people will catch themselves when they do this.”Also, Hollywood, some kickass female attorney roles wouldn’t hurt. Legally Blonde can only get us so far. Salerno has another angry juror study underway, she’s already analyzing the data. It’s too early to talk about it but the some of the jurors names were Logan and Emily and others were Lakeisha and Jamal.

Jurors change their minds when guys fume

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http://fortune.com/2015/08/28/goodyear-blimp-airship-dirigible/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160625190434id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/08/28/goodyear-blimp-airship-dirigible/

Goodyear's Blimp Is Retiring; Replaced By New Airships

Long since blimps stopped being useful, besides as floating billboards, America still associates the airship, somewhat ironically, with the tire company Goodyear GT . But according to the Associated Press, the Goodyear Blimp — technically called The Spirit of Goodyear — has been retired and will be replaced by another set of airships, although they technically won’t be blimps. That’s because they will include a fixed structure that holds the gas-filled balloon in place. “It’s a brand new design. It is a much larger airship. It’s a semi-rigid dirigible,” Goodyear’s Priscilla Tasker told the AP. If you spy the blimp on TV, say hovering over your favorite high-profile sporting event, you likely won’t notice a change, as the airships will look similar to previous incarnations, and they’ll still be used as a means to take overhead camera footage.

Say hello to the Goodyear semi-rigid dirigible.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/02/18/why-ireland-has-nothing-to-fear-over-fallout-from-brexit/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160627093530id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/business/2016/02/18/why-ireland-has-nothing-to-fear-over-fallout-from-brexit/

Why Ireland has nothing to fear over fallout from Brexit

Indeed, when household, corporate and state debts are combined, Ireland remains one of the world’s most indebted countries. The Irish banking system, the grotesque expansion then collapse of which was the country’s undoing eight years ago, is also still fragile. Around 20pc of all domestic loans are non-performing, including corporate debt, and any slowdown would add to that slew of impaired assets, bringing further banking sector woes. However, the country boasts strong agricultural, pharmaceutical and tech sectors, and recent prosperity has also been built on foreign trade. Ireland often runs a current account surplus of 3 to 4pc of GDP. Yet, in an increasingly febrile world, and as financial turmoil looms, that very openness could prove harmful. Certainly, the high proportion of exports that derive from the Irish subsidiaries of multinational companies – over 80pc on some estimates – points not only to a canny ability to draw in investment, but also the size of the hole should that investment disappear. There is one fear about the Irish economy, though, which I think is over-stated: what will happen if the UK votes to leave the EU? As someone of Irish origin, who is often in the land of my forefathers talking with well-informed relatives and friends, I would say Brexit is being discussed more in Ireland than it is in the UK. Many have a feeling of dread that if the UK votes to leave, then the Irish economy will suffer. Britain is still Ireland’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 22pc of combined imports and exports, while the US generates 19pc of Irish trade and Germany 7pc. It is also the case that Ireland’s return to the top of the EU growth table has been driven in part by Anglo-Irish commerce, with the pound’s strength over the past five years making Irish goods cheaper in euros. Yet I would stress that Ireland has nothing to fear from the UK’s Brexit referendum, widely tipped to take place in June. Trade between the UK and Ireland amounts to a chunky €50bn a year. Such commercial flows, generating one tenth of all Irish jobs, could fall 20pc after Brexit, according to a recent report commissioned by the Irish government. Really? Yes, the UK is the largest overseas market for Ireland’s fast-growing service sector and the second-biggest destination for Irish merchandise exports, for one reason and one only. What is that? Not because of the EU, but because these two countries – and I’m truly honoured to be a citizen of both – are so close, both geographically and culturally. The reality is that Ireland’s fabled diaspora, and the related range of its cultural and commercial contacts, means that it is a master at drumming up trade with non-EU countries, not least the US, of course. Massive Irish-American trade is facilitated not by the EU, but by mutual investment, bi-lateral trade deals and other commercial, ethnic, cultural and psychological ties which have absolutely nothing to do with Brussels. Were Britain to quit the EU, this would all still apply. The UK and Ireland would rapidly forge an over-arching trade agreement, with London leading the charge. Why? Because despite the Republic’s consistent overall trade surpluses, and Britain’s equally consistent trade deficits, one of the few nations that regularly sells more to Ireland than it buys from Ireland is the UK. So it stands to reason that the UK will keep the trade gates wide open across the Irish Sea. The main danger to the Irish economy is not that the UK leaves the EU, but that, with Deutsche Bank looking shaky and bond yields spiking anew among the weaker euro members, the eurozone itself could be in for a battering. For months, Brussels has been spreading scare stories across Ireland about the horrendous impact of Brexit. But Britain and Ireland have done business for centuries, through peace and conflict, thick and thin. Even the years of deepest hatred could not stop the compelling logic of the back and forth of commerce and people between us. It is ridiculous to think that Britain and Ireland could not and would not rapidly agree a mutually beneficial bilateral trade deal if the UK leaves the EU, not least at a time when relations are warmer than they have been for hundreds of years. The UK and the Republic do not need permission from a bunch of eurocrats to do business together. Follow Liam on Twitter @liamhalligan

What is the fastest growing economy in the European Union?

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http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/books/flaming-swords-and-wizards-orbs.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160628010233id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1996/12/08/books/flaming-swords-and-wizards-orbs.html?

Flaming Swords and Wizards' Orbs

When matters begin to look bleak for the weary wanderers of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''Lord of the Rings,'' they rest briefly in Lothlorien, an Elven forest of surpassing beauty. The river Nimrodel's cold waters seem to cleanse the soul, trees stand with nearly immeasurable grandeur and in the fragrant grasses grow flowers whose very names -- elanor and niphredil -- seem to speak of grace and sweetness. For a reader who knows how many trials are yet to come, there is a poignancy to the sheltered forest's beauty; it is ancient and timeless, but also doomed. Even before the Dark Power's evil, spreading outward from Mordor, can turn Lothlorien's green leaves brown, the verdant land is colored by the melancholy of last days. And when, laden with Elven gifts, the travelers set off into the harsh, unsheltered landscape beyond the forest's borders, they gaze back, knowing it will be seen no more by mortal being. But what neither they nor their creator could have guessed is that some version of Lothlorien would be revisited, re-created and reproduced by succeeding generations of adventurers, or that Tolkien's mid-20th-century vision of Paradise lost and Reality gained, with its wizardry, elves, orcs, lost kingdoms, dwarfs and epic battles, would itself come to haunt the world like a lost Lothlorien. The trilogy, along with Tolkien's prelude, ''The Hobbit,'' was boosted into cultdom by the counterculture of the 1960's; since then, scores of epigones have spawned the genre of fantasy fiction. Its entries now can be seen crowding long aisles in bookstores, thousand-page volumes straining the technology of paperback binding, their jackets decorated with gleaming swords and red cloaks, dragons exhaling fire, horse-drawn carriages, wizards' orbs, battles between half-human creatures and armored warriors. ''At last, a worthy successor to Tolkien,'' a publisher's overheated proclamation might read. A recent anthology of fantasy fiction was called, ''After the King: Stories in Honor of J. R. R. Tolkien.'' And every fantasy novelist does indeed yearn to be the King's heir. These books are, like Tolkien's, multivolume epics, as if they were compilations of an alien culture's scripture, bearing subtitles like ''Book 2 of the Malloreon'' or ''The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book 3.'' They promise esoteric knowledge and powers in their grand series titles: ''Mage Storms,'' ''Sword of Truth,'' ''Keepers of the Hidden Ways.'' And they almost all require maps and glossaries to provide guidance in their often ornately designed worlds. In fact, Tolkien spawn have mutated and regenerated so much that now a simple hobbit with hairy toes -- the hero of Tolkien's fantasy -- would seem almost quaint. There are even fantasy role-playing games like ''Dungeons and Dragons'' and card games like ''Magic: The Gathering'' and the Tolkien-estate-licensed ''Middle-Earth: The Wizards.'' But now there really may be an heir of sorts to Tolkien, in attention earned if not achievement: Robert Jordan. In his saga, ''The Wheel of Time,'' which began with ''The Eye of the World'' in 1990 and continued, most recently, with the seventh volume, ''The Crown of Swords,'' which made it onto The New York Times best-seller list as soon as it was published last summer, Mr. Jordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal. Five million copies of Mr. Jordan's books have been sold. Mr. Jordan has created a universe so detailed that elaborate commentaries have developed on the Internet, news groups debate the fates of characters, sites on the World Wide Web attempt to foretell events looming in the promised eighth, ninth and tenth volume of this series. Even a reader with literary pretensions can be swept up in Mr. Jordan's narrative of magic, prophecy and battle. And given the author's almost effusive love of writing (according to the books' biographical note, he ''intends to continue until they nail shut his coffin'') and the meticulous plotting of each expansive volume, humankind may well reach its promised apocalypse before Mr. Jordan's characters do. The thousands of pages written so far contain a multicultural compendium of peoples: a stern desert culture, a female priesthood, a serf society, a seafaring folk and governments of nobility and kings. There are small-town inns, castles and wind-driven boats. And through it all moves a messianic figure named Rand. An innocent young man, he is marked by prophecies as a figure around whom the forces of the age will battle. He is blessed -- and cursed -- with an unusual ability to ''channel'' a Power that has been strictly controlled by a female priesthood. That ability will, we are told, lead him to madness; he races against its temptations, trying to mold a political and military alliance that can join in a Last Battle against the Dark One and his minions. There are echoes of Christian and biblical iconography, allusions to the Arthurian legend and subtle invocations of other authors' fantasy worlds.

When matters begin to look bleak for the weary wanderers of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''Lord of the Rings,'' they rest briefly in Lothlorien, an Elven forest of surpassing beauty. The river Nimrodel's cold waters seem to cleanse the soul, trees stand with nearly immeasurable grandeur and in the fragrant grasses grow flowers whose very names -- elanor and niphredil -- seem to speak of grace and sweetness. For a reader who knows how many trials are yet to come, there is a poignancy to the sheltered forest's beauty; it is ancient and timeless, but also doomed. Even before the Dark Power's evil, spreading outward from Mordor, can turn Lothlorien's green leaves brown, the verdant land is colored by the melancholy of last days. And when, laden with Elven gifts, the travelers set off into the harsh, unsheltered landscape beyond the forest's borders, they gaze back, knowing it will be seen no more by mortal being.

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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/17/53-brilliant-shark-tank-quotes-to-inspire-you/21314180/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160628091500id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/02/17/53-brilliant-shark-tank-quotes-to-inspire-you/21314180/

53 brilliant 'Shark Tank' quotes to inspire you

Want to rise above the rest? Listen to what the Sharks have to say. What does it take to succeed? Just ask the Sharks. These quotes from the hosts of the world-famous show offer some keen insight into starting a company, figuring out how to innovative, and rising above the pack. 1. "A goal without a timeline is just a dream." -Robert Herjavec 2. "I see negotiations as an honest attempt to reach a deal that's great for everyone at the table. But sometimes, for whatever reason, that's impossible. You need to accept that possibility--don't make a deal for the sake of making a deal. If you do, chances are it will fall apart later anyway, with costs and headaches for everyone involved. And once you walk away, don't come back." -Kevin O'Leary More From Inc.com: Inside the World's Most Dog-Friendly Office 3. "Make your product easier to buy than your competition's, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you." -Mark Cuban 4. "A brilliant idea doesn't guarantee a successful invention. Real magic comes from a brilliant idea combined with willpower, tenacity, and a willingness to make mistakes." -Lori Greiner 5. "As an entrepreneur, you love your business like a child, and you're taught to be laser-focused on the business." -Daymond John 6. "People want to do business with someone they like. If people like you, they're going to want to do business with you. And if they don't, you're going to have an almost insurmountable obstacle to overcome." -Barbara Corcoran 7. "It comes down to finding something you love to do and then just trying to be great at it." -Mark Cuban 8. "I actually think being an entrepreneur is a state of mind. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, my thesis is that you have to sacrifice everything for some period in your life to be successful. You have to be myopic and completely focused and unbalanced in every way. Once you've achieved success, you're free to do whatever you like." -Kevin O'Leary 9. "I roll out of bed in the morning, whenever I want, and I work right away because, to me, that's the life. That's freedom. The whole point for me is that I love the freedom of being an entrepreneur, that I do what I want to do when I want to do it." -Lori Greiner 10. "Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don't be in such a hurry to grow your brand. Make sure that you and the market can sustain any bumps that may occur down the road." -Daymond John 11. "What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? It takes willingness to learn, to be able to focus, to absorb information, and to always realize that business is a 24/7 job where someone is always out there to kick your ass." -Mark Cuban 12. "All the best things that happened to me happened after I was rejected. I knew the power of getting past no." -Barbara Corcoran 13. "It pains me to see good entrepreneurs chase bad opportunities." -Kevin O'Leary 14. "Don't start a business. Find a problem. Solve a problem. The business comes second." -Robert Herjavec 15. "If you start a business and you take out a loan, you're a moron." -Mark Cuban 16. "When I had challenges, it taught me to be more on top of it for the future. Things go wrong all the time when you are running your own business, but it's how you perceive it and deal with it that matters." -Lori Greiner 17. "The road to riches is never straight and narrow. It can be riddled with financial land mines." -Kevin O'Leary 18. "Be risky at work. Be safe with your investments." -Robert Herjavec 19. "All you need is a laptop or a PC and an internet connection and you can pretty much do almost anything and create almost any type of company." -Mark Cuban 20. "Don't cry about money. It never cries for you!" -Kevin O'Leary 21. "I learned that nobody's better than you at getting your business off the ground. The experience you get is priceless." -Lori Greiner 22. "I'm not planning on giving my kids any of my wealth. They know when their education is over, I'm pushing them out of the nest. The bird you see dead under the nest is the one who didn't think about the future." -Kevin O'Leary 23. "Most people think it's all about the idea. It's not. Everyone has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry, and then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea." -Mark Cuban 24. "An entrepreneur must pitch a potential investor for what the company is worth as well as sell the dream on how much of a profit can be made." -Daymond John 25. "Make sure you pick good people to build your business with, as they'll determine 80 percent of your success." -Barbara Corcoran 26. "Downturns are the best time to start businesses, because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times." -Kevin O'Leary 27. "I'm a believer that you accomplish much, much more with direct relationships than by using an intermediary. And that cash you keep in the bank can be the difference between staying alive as a small business or not." -Mark Cuban 28. "Dear optimist, pessimist, and realist--while you guys were busy arguing about the glass of wine, I drank it! Sincerely, the opportunist!" -Lori Greiner 29. "Don't ever be enamored by what something sells for. It's more important what you get to keep in your pocket." -Robert Herjavec 30. "Everyone has an idea, but it's taking those first steps toward turning that idea into a reality that are always the toughest." -Daymond John 31. "Here's how I think of my money: as soldiers. I send them out to war every day. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there's more of them." -Kevin O'Leary 32. "Follow the green, not the dream." -Mark Cuban 33. "I don't look at failure as death. I don't look at failure as finality. I just look at it and pick myself up and say, 'We shouldn't have done that,' and move on." -Robert Herjavec More From Inc.com: 10 Leaders Share the Best Advice They Ever Received 34. "You can always find a solution if you try hard enough." -Lori Greiner 35. "The thing about branding is it isn't etched in stone. A brand is a mark or an image or a perception we stamp on a product, a concept, or an ideal, but it doesn't last forever. Like anything else, it needs to be nurtured and reinforced, or it will start to fade." -Daymond John 36. "My partners ... taught me that in order to create wealth, I needed to pair up with people whose strengths compensated for my weaknesses." -Kevin O'Leary 37. "You gotta crawl before you ball!" -Mark Cuban 38. "The difference between the real winners is how long they take to feel sorry for themselves. My winners feel it ... but they come back up and say, 'Hit me again.'" -Barbara Corcoran 39. "Always dress to what is accurate to who and what you are." -Daymond John 40. "Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas." -Kevin O'Leary 41. "It's not whether the glass is half empty or half full, it's who is pouring the water. The key in business and success at any endeavor is doing your best to control your destiny. You can't always do it, but you have to take every opportunity you can to be as prepared as--and ahead of--the competition as you possibly can be." -Mark Cuban 42. "In business, it is most often all about getting your foot in the door, and once you do, everything opens up and things start to naturally progress into bigger, and more, opportunities." -Lori Greiner 43. "Tough times never last; tough people always do." -Robert Herjavec 44. "When looking at trends, I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?'" -Daymond John 45. "It's not about money or connections--it's the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone when it comes to your business. And if it fails, you learn from what happened and do a better job next time." -Mark Cuban 46. "I had 22 jobs before I started my own business at the age of 23, and I didn't want one more boss telling me what to do. So I was motivated simply because I didn't want a boss." -Barbara Corcoran 47. "If you are under the illusion that you can start a business and run it at your life's schedule, you are mistaken. The business is like a starving puppy--when it needs to eat, then it needs to eat regardless of what you have going on personally." -Robert Herjavec 48. "Recessions are the best time to start a company. Companies fail. Others hold back capital. If you are willing to do the preparation and work, it is the best time to invest in yourself and start a business." -Marc Cuban 49. "If you can't come clean and tell investors how and why you failed, that raises a red flag. They need to see that you learned from it and came back stronger." -Daymond John 50. "I'm not trying to make friends. I'm trying to make money." -Kevin O'Leary 51. "I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't fail ... a lot. The good, the bad, it's all part of the success equation." -Mark Cuban More From Inc.com: 30 Websites That Will Make You Unbelievably Smarter 52. "In entrepreneurship, you decide to give up your day job at the point where either (A) the hobby or new business is at least making some form of ends meet, or (B) you feel that you need to dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time to it and give yourself the last hoorah." -Daymond John 53. "If you're emotional and you're great at something, the money will follow." -Robert Herjavec RELATED: The best business quotes from Mark Cuban: 53 brilliant 'Shark Tank' quotes to inspire you #1: "I still work hard to know my business. I'm continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies, and I'm always selling. Always." #2: "When you've got 10,000 people trying to do the same thing, why would you want to be number 10,001?" #3: "Because if you're prepared and you know what it takes, it's not a risk. You just have to figure out how to get there. There is always a way to get there." #4: "Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write." #5: "​In the past, people used to tell me to shut up a bit. But what I believe is to put out your opinion and let everyone else react. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong." #6: "I've learned that it doesn't matter how many times you failed. You only have to be right once. I tried to sell powdered milk. I was an idiot lots of times, and I learned from them all." #7: "Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you." #8: "Forget about finding your passion. Instead, focus on finding big problems." #9: "It's not about money or connections -- it's the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone when it comes to your business. And if it fails, you learn from what happened and do a better job next time." #10: "What I've learned is that if you really want to be successful at something, you'll find that you put the time in. You won't just ask somebody if it's a good idea, you'll go figure out if it's a good idea."

These quotes from the hosts of the famous show offer some keen insight into starting a company, figuring out how to innovative, and rising above the pack.

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http://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/09/twitter-vanishes-in-annual-workplace-ranking.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160628120854id_/http://www.cnbc.com:80/2014/12/09/twitter-vanishes-in-annual-workplace-ranking.html

Twitter vanishes in annual workplace ranking

"Twitter has had a particularly challenging year. Employees talk about their being a lot of internal reorganization, especially amongst the product and engineering teams. They have lost some talented and tenured people post-IPO," Hohman said. Asked to comment on this change a Twitter spokesperson told CNBC that "Twitter employees share a mission and great pride in building a platform that enables our users to connect everyone to their world. We're continuing to grow our global team and are always looking for talented individuals to help us reach every person on the planet." While Twitter didn't make the cut, Google took the top spot for the first time. The search giant has placed in the Top 50 for the seven years Glassdoor has released the report, but the tech company was pushed to No. 1 this year because of some improvements in its benefits. Hohman said that Google employees praised the company for benefits relating to balancing their work and family life. Other tech companies that made the list include Facebook at No. 13, LinkedIn at No. 23 and Apple at No. 22. The full study from Glassdoor can be read here. See what's happening with Twitter's stock —By CNBC's Cadie Thompson. Follow her on Twitter @CadieThompson.

The social media company has completely fallen off Glassdoor’s annual Best Places to Work list.

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http://fortune.com/2013/10/02/what-could-go-wrong-for-blackberry-now/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160628221536id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/10/02/what-could-go-wrong-for-blackberry-now/?iid=recirc_f500profile-zone1

What could go wrong for BlackBerry now

There has been a lot of discussion of what went wrong with BlackBerry. And there is no shortage of explanations: The company grew complacent with its early market share. It didn’t listen to consumers but tried to show them what they wanted. It never succeeded in courting developers. It neglected touchscreens too long. It never leveraged its messenging service into new businesses. Its leaders bickered over how to fix the company. And so on. Right now, the bigger question facing the company is what could go wrong from here. In the past few weeks, the writing on the wall has become clearer. Losses are mounting so quickly the company burned though $1 a share in cash last quarter. The company said it would cut a third of its employees and take an inventory writedown as large as $960 million. On Wednesday Blackberry BBRY said it was losing its international market share. Now, Fairfax Financial, its largest investor, is looking to arrange a buyout to take the company private. A related question, of course, is what could go right, and the answer here seems to be: not much. A merger with a deep-pocketed tech giant? Unlikely. A Dell-like DELL turnaround as a private company, emerging in two years with more competitive phones? Odds are strongly against it. A breakup into patents, messaging service, and devices? Maybe, but that’s hardly a happy ending. MORE: AT&T takes on Google in Austin, offering high-speed internet So much of the analysis of BlackBerry’s future has accented the negative. As much as the bulls would like to see a comeback, there remain several factors that are working against one, and they are pretty formidable. The most immediate threat is that the financing of the buyout may fall through. Fairfax needs lenders or co-investors to finance the proposed deal. The company has been exploring options for the past year, and if a private-equity firm wanted in, they already had their chance. BlackBerry has been a tech luminary for Canada, so Canadian pension funds may want to step up, but fiduciary responsibilities could also prompt some of them to balk from backing this deal. That reluctance comes in spite of BlackBerry’s bargain-basement valuation. The stock is priced at a fifth of the company’s revenue of the past 12 months, according to Bloomberg. By contrast, Microsoft MSFT paid 0.4 times Nokia’s NOK trailing 12-month revenue from devices and services. Already there are signs that Fairfax may lower its bid to $7 a share from the original $9 a share figure. Fairfax has a nice piece of insurance in case the deal falls through. BlackBerry agreed to pay Fairfax a $157 million breakup fee, a high amount by historical standards. That could leave Fairfax with a handsome payout for only a few months of looking for other backers. And would deter others from proposing rival deals in the meantime. Should a deal fall through, Blackbery’s value may fall to $5 a share, Bernstein Research estimates. The company’s patents, valued at around $2.8 billion, may not sell as high as they would have been a year or so ago, when Google GOOG , Microsoft, and others were paying rich premiums for them. Now these companies have robust portfolios of patents, and if they want to add to them, they’re unlikely to overpay. MORE: Kindle Fire DX: Serious competition for the iPad Mini In the meantime, the longer things remain uncertain, the more customers and partners will want to back away from the company. This is already happening with manufacturing partner Jabil Circuit JBL , and T-Mobile TMUS . And clients like Morgan Stanley MS are delaying upgrades to new BlackBerry devices as well. If such trends continue, it would hurt revenue even more and make a turnaround that much less likely. The constant stream of bad news has already dampened BlackBerry’s consumer brand in an era where mobile devices have become as much about branding as anything. The decline in BlackBerry’s average selling price suggests the phones that are selling are older models, not the Z10 and Q10 that the company developed for years. While those new phones have their fans, they’ve failed to resonate with a broad segment of the consumer market. That’s too bad, because BlackBerry’s best chances were the Z10 and Q10. They might have sold better in a less competitive market than the smartphone one is right now, but Blackberry’s struggles tarnished their image. In retrospect, the Z10 and Q10 may be seen as BlackBerry’s best chance for a sure turnaround. For now, however, there are more things going against this company than there are in its favor.

Buyout financing could fall through, leaving the company in even more of a lurch. But that's not the only problem facing BlackBerry.

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Solange Knowles Celebrates 30th Birthday with Beyonce on Vacation : People.com

Solange Knowles (LEFT) and Beyonce Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Balmain 06/26/2016 AT 11:15 AM EDT kicks off the European leg of her , she had to spend some sister time with In an Instagram post on her 30th birthday, Solange that she was going to "take a note from and have 4 parties." In the first leg of her celebrations, Solange, Beyoncé and friends headed to New Mexico for some rest and relaxation. The singer shared photos and videos of the sunny getaway, showing friends cooling off in the pool and enjoying meals at a long table adorned with flowers. On a photo of a , she joked, "I'm never coming home if you keep making honey peach and hibiscus lime popsicles." Solange also shared a photo of herself wearing an orange and pink dress, opting to go with minimal makeup and letting her hair hang loose. the entire crew all dolled up, Solange smiling as she leans on her big sister's shoulder. Solange reflected on her life so far in her birthday Instagram post, detailing ages of memorable events such as "met first love (in a parking lot)" and "gave birth to angel baby." She also gave some advice from her three decades of life. "I say all of that to say...don't eveeer let anyone write your story for you," she wrote. "They can talk, they can doubt, and they can say what they wanna, but only you have the words to narrate this ting we call life. So much gratitude for all of your wishes. So much gratitude for love. So much gratitude for freedom. So much gratitude for life." In a post of her own, big sis Beyoncé shared of Solange on Instagram with drawn-on designs.

Solange celebrated three decades of life with a sunny getaway with pals

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Why Virtual Offices Don’t Work

The Entrepreneur Insider network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question “What’s something you wish you knew before starting your business?” is written by William Vanderbloemen, founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group. When I told my friends and family that I was leaving my corporate job to start my own business in the middle of the 2008 recession, many of them told me I might be crazy. When I told them my business was going to help churches find their staffs, they told me I was definitely crazy. Almost six years later, with quarter-over-quarter growth and a team of 32 full-time staff members, it has been crazy. But it’s also been the best decision I ever made. I’ve learned a lot in the last six years. Here are a few things I now know that would have been helpful when I was starting my business: Slow and steady wins the race In my early years, I thought that rapid growth resulted in long-term success. In the last few years, I‘ve learned that rapid growth is not the secret to long-term success—repeated growth is. Rather than striving for rapid growth, having this mindset allows entrepreneurs to focus on scalability and long-term strategy instead of reactionary tactics that might get them off track. Don’t get distracted by shiny objects Entrepreneurs are notorious for letting their opportunistic outlook distract them from their core offering. I call it SOS—Shiny Object Syndrome. It can be both a gift and a curse. It’s fun and exciting to run in different directions and explore the next big thing, but chasing after ideas that you can’t trace back to your core service offering can be detrimental to your business. See also: The One Quality That Defines a Great Entrepreneur Virtual offices just don’t work When I started our business, I thought we could save on overhead by having everyone work from home and call in for meetings. Virtual was the thing to do at the time. We tried it for a while, but I began realizing we were missing opportunities for collaboration. If I wanted to help more churches, I needed to bring the team under one roof. Choosing to have an in-house team has revolutionized the quality of our work. The ability to quickly collaborate as a group or huddle into small teams to solve problems has allowed us to be agile and serve our clients better than ever. Virtual is overrated, and in-house is unparalleled. Culture is king A mantra I’ve picked up in the last six years is, “Culture trumps competency every time.” One of my first hires was an ivy-league graduate with a killer resume but a toxic work ethic. I quickly realized that I had hired for competency instead of culture. Since then, our team has worked tirelessly to build a contagious culture, and we were ranked No. 1 best small business culture by Entreprenuer.com this year. We established nine values that permeate every aspect of our team, and it’s been a game changer for recruiting and retaining high-capacity people. Our team is passionate about what we do and loves working together. These are just a few of the many lessons I’ve learned over the last six years. I hope they encourage you as you build your business. It’s been a fun journey, and I’m anticipating great things ahead. Read all responses to the Entrepreneur Insider question: What’s something you wish you knew before starting your business? What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From Apple by Michael Maven, founder of Carter & Kingsley.

They can hurt your business in the long run.

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Smartphones | Category | Fox News

According to The Telegraph, the Web giant is close to releasing its own handset. What’s the smart buy for a smartphone this summer? The choices are better than ever. The free, Russian-made photo app allows users to customize their images by feeding photos through an artificial intelligence that "repaints" them in the style of great artists like... While some fret about the government coming to take their guns, an increasing number of musicians and comedians are coming for your cellphones. When it comes to all things digital, we often learn by watching someone wow us with a trick. Here are five of my favorites. Apple's WWDC 2016 is just a few days away, and a new report says the iPhone maker may have a huge surprise in store on Monday, an announcement that targets smartphone users who may... Smartphones that fold, bend, and unfurl could be the next big thing. An Aussie mom recently penned a heartfelt thank-you note to Apple, and her story of how the company's "Hey Siri" feature helped save her 1-year-old daughter is now making the round... By this point, the recipe for Samsung to make the Galaxy S[x] Active is pretty simple: take this year's flagship Galaxy Swhatever, add some physical buttons, a rubber exterior, som...

Smartphones news articles and videos from FoxNews.com's Tech section.

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Model Denise Bidot Celebrates Women of All Shapes, Sizes, Colors and Ages with Empowering Self-Love Campaign

Say hello to, Taty, my best friend since the age of 12. We grew up together in Miami and have endured the struggle of finding and then having our voices heard. Taty is a proud and fully bilingual Afro-Latina, who celebrates her Cuban, Dominican and Haitian culture. Sadly, Afro-Latinos are still largely underrepresented in fashion and across all industries, which is why Taty had to be included in the "There Is No Wrong Way To Be A Woman" Class of 2016. As a singer/actress, Taty is often told she's not "Latin" enough or doesn't "look the part" of what society says Latinas should look like. She is a beautiful, confident, talented, outspoken, and strong Afro-Latina, who makes no apologies about her cultural diversity that makes her uniquely perfect. Read more about Taty, and the rest of the the Class of 2016, at www.thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman.com Want to become a part of our extended Class of '16? Share your story through photos and videos, using hashtag #NoWrongWay, by tagging @thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman, or via email to [email protected]. Can’t wait to hear your inspiring stories! #nowrongway A photo posted by A DENISE BIDOT BRAND (@thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman) on Jun 22, 2016 at 2:22pm PDT Howdy y’all! Meet Gina Lee, a sweet southern bell and cancer survivor. This badass warrior of a woman brings a quiet graciousness, and campy sense of humor to the "There Is No Wrong Way To Be A Woman" campaign. She came into the photo shoot with insecurities, but walked out with a glow of confidence. Exuberance, kindness, and courage ooze from this woman’s pores. To know her is to love her. A woman’s woman, that you want to call a BFF. I am proud to have her be a part of my vision, and honored to share her story. Read more about Gina, and the rest of the the Class of 2016, at www.thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman.com Want to become a part of our extended Class of '16? Share your story through photos and videos, using hashtag #NoWrongWay, by tagging @thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman, or via email to [email protected]. Can’t wait to hear your inspiring stories! #nowrongway #thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman A photo posted by A DENISE BIDOT BRAND (@thereisnowrongwaytobeawoman) on Jun 23, 2016 at 9:53am PDT Sign up for news alerts and special offers Copyright © 2016 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Don't miss a single story from PEOPLE!

Denise Bidot launched the "There Is No Wrong Way to be a Woman" campaign as a "safe place for women from all stages in life to come together without judgment"

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Body After Gastric

Growing up, "I was the kid on the beach who wore a shirt into the water," admits star Caitlin VanZandt. But one year after having lap-band surgery (which shrinks the stomach to the size of a golf ball) she has lost 90 lbs.—and all her inhibitions. "This is the first time I felt good enough to say, 'Here I am, world! And I'm in a swimsuit!'" she says. "I feel slimmer through my arms. I'm definitely showing more leg. I'm showing more of everything!" To keep her body toned, VanZandt, 23, eats a diet rich in fish, yogurt and almonds, and also attends belly-dancing and tap classes. But her goal is to lose only another 10 lbs. "I don't know if I want to reach Hollywood's standard of skinny," she says. "It shouldn't be embarrassing if you have hips and a chest!" See how Caitlin got ready for this photo at people.com/vanzandt

A Year After Lap-Band Surgery, Caitlin Vanzandt Is 90 Lbs. Lighter and Ready for the Beach

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Wade Robson -- 'Michael Jackson Was a Monster' and Sexual Abuser

The lawyer for famed choreographer was a "monster" who sexually abused Wade for seven years as a child ... and threatened him if he ever went public. , tells TMZ, "Last year, on a career trajectory that was off the charts, he [Wade] collapsed under the stress and sexual trauma of what had happened to him for seven years as a child." Robson spent many weekends with Jackson at Neverland Ranch and his other homes in L.A. and Vegas between ages 7 and 14. Gradstein goes on ... "He [Wade] lived with the brain washing by a sexual predator until the burden of it all crushed him." Gradstein says Michael would tell Wade, "If anyone ever finds out about what we did we will go to jail for the rest of our lives" and “our lives will be ruined forever.” Gradstein tells us the threats worked, and Wade kept his mouth shut, adding, "This kind of intimidation of a child by a sexual predator is tragically characteristic and effective, keeping them quiet about the abuse - often for a lifetime." Wade was steadfast for years that MJ did NOT molest him and indeed became Jackson's star witness at his 2005 molestation trial, adamantly denying any untoward conduct. The lawyer says, "Michael Jackson was a monster and in their hearts every normal person knows it." TMZ broke the story ... 30-year-old Robson has filed a creditor's claim against MJ's estate alleging the singer molested him as a child and asking for damages. Sources tell us ... Wade is claiming the reason he didn't file the claim on time is because he Gradstein says they have not asked for any specific amount of money in their legal docs, although that's clearly the point of filing a creditor's claim. He then trashes what he calls "the Jackson money machine" which he says is "at it once again to keep the truth from coming out." But he says, "This time it won't work."

The lawyer for famed choreographer Wade Robson tells TMZ, Michael Jackson was a "monster" who sexually abused Wade for seven years as a child ... and…

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Once-trendy retail brands that lost their cool

Creating the must-have item of the moment can catapult a brand from the land of the unknown into a household name. But what happens when that product's cool factor fades? A slew of retailers over the past decade have seen their success hinge on one marquee product that sent their sales—and, as a result, their shares—skyrocketing. But failure to identify the next new trend, or a fickle consumer base that deemed the brand no longer relevant, sent the companies back down to earth—slashing their stock prices in the process. Although the following eight retailers are not as mighty as they once were, it's too soon to write them off. Once knocked-down brands including Build-A-Bear Workshop, Pier 1 Imports and Heelys have either experienced or are in the process of experiencing a turnaround, proving it's not too late for these brands. Click ahead for a list of once-trendy retailers who aren't as hot as they once were. —By CNBC's Krystina Gustafson. Posted 01 July 2014

A slew of retailers over the past decade have seen their success hinge on one marquee product that sent their sales skyrocketing.

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Bank Stocks Lead Market to a Seventh Winning Week

Stocks closed higher Friday thanks to better-than-expected ) and a related rally in financial stocks that more than offset a disappointing batch of economic news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($ ) rose 55 points, or 0.5%, to 11,787, it's highest close since June 2008. The blue-chip index extended its winning streak to a seventh week after J.P Morgan Chase, the nation's second-biggest bank by assets, posted a 47% rise in fourth-quarter income and said it hopes to raise its dividend, sparking interest in financial stocks. from the money-center banks, which would be a boon for pension funds and retirees. Bank of America ( ), the No. 1 bank by assets, and American Express ( ) also helped lift the Dow. The broader S&P 500 ($ ) rose 10 points, or 0.7%, to finish at 1,293. The financial sector led all gainers, follow ed by energy stocks and the technology sector. Tech stocks, for their part, after Thursday's closing bell. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ($ ) added 20 points, or 0.7%, to close at 2,755. Damping the mood a bit were a slew of economic reports coming up short of Wall Street's expectations. December retail sales rose to $380.9 billion, up 7.9% from a year ago, but , the Commerce Department said. Excluding auto sales, totals were up 6.7% from 2009 and 0.5% from the month before, slightly less than analysts had expected. Rising gasoline prices caused consumer sentiment to to 72.7 in January, according to the latest data from Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan. Economists had forecast an increase to 75 from the now-revised 74.5 in December and 71.6 in November, according to a survey by Bloomberg. Readings on headline consumer price inflation and business inventories also missed forecasters' mark, but industrial production and capacity utilization easily beat estimates. Cort Gwon, director of research and trading at Securities, said a successful bond auction by Portugal earlier in the week allowed investors to cast aside European debt fears for the moment and concentrate on fourth-quarter earnings. "We had some very good earnings this week," Gwon says. "Intel had an [earnings per share] beat of about 10%. J.P. Morgan Chase beat earnings by about 12%.These two bellwethers showed that business is coming back." For more on Gwon's take from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange ( ), see the video above.

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Meet the Hit Song Writer, 'No Broken Hearts' Singer : People.com

Even if you don't recognize Bebe Rexha's name, you'd probably recognize her voice – and definitely know lyrics she's written. The singer-songwriter, 26, has penned tracks for pop's biggest stars. And this summer, she boasted credits on a trifecta of hits on 's Mainstream Top 40, having co-written the chorus of ," singing the hook on 's "Me, Myself & I" and cracking the charts with her breakout single, the Rexha has been musical since she was a kid, but her first major break came in 2010 when tapped her to front his experimental band Black Cards. Fast forward six years, and she's , writing for former Disney stars, touring with chart-topping talent like and working on her debut LP ( Here are five things to know about the rising star: "It all started when I was 4," Rexha tells PEOPLE. "I was watching a lot of , and I loved that movie. I was going around the house singing – I wanted to be on Disney and everything; I wanted to be a princess." Starting in elementary school, "I played the trumpet for nine years and then I joined the choir after that and then I was in musicals in high school. I wanted to be part of pop culture, so I started song writing and I got signed to my first record deal," she says. In just six short years, Rexha has written for top talent in the industry, from Selena Gomez and Tinashe to Pitbull and, most recently, Nick Jonas ("Under You" appears on Jonas' new album Her first breakthrough, though, was co-writing Eminem and Rihanna's 2013 smash "The Monster." The next year, she penned and sang the hook on David Guetta's all-star collaboration "Hey, Mama," also featuring Nicki Minaj and Afrojack. Now that her own single, "No Broken Hearts," has hit the charts, Rexha says she's still pinching herself. "When I was a little girl, my dream was just to hear my song on the radio. It was very fascinating to me, and I was like: 'How do I do that?' Now it's like, 'Oh my God, my song is on the radio!' Being around all of my friends who've had a lot of success in the industry, you can get used to it and a little jaded – so my thing is to keep it all very creative and make every moment a happy moment and just have fun with it." Rexha says being onstage transforms her during a set. "Somebody went to my show before they met me, and we actually ended up becoming really good friends," says Rexha. "We were talking once, and he was like, 'You are a totally different person in real life; you're so sweet and soft-spoken.'" After getting the idea from a producer in the studio, Rexha and her friends dubbed her Moonshine, after the potent spirit. "I like to act like a strong woman, like a superhero, which is the girl I'd like to be all the time," she says. "It's like a switch that goes off – I turn into this bad-bitch character." Having worked together on both "Hey Mama" and "No Broken Hearts," Rexha and the rapper are on first-name basis. "I grew up listening to Nicki Minaj – she's from New York City, too, and I remember when I was listening to her mixtapes back in the day, and I was like, 'Wow' as I saw her career start on the Internet. Now here we are 10 years later. So to follow her from New York to all around the world, it's just been amazing to have her on my song," says Rexha. The singer says she's learned from Minaj both from advice – and by example. "We shot the music video, and at the end she was giving me a lot of advice on how to really stick to what you love and your career and have a clear voice," says Rexha. "Working with her, I noticed that she was very passionate, and she is intentional on what she wants, and it was really nice being able to work with her and seeing that. Sometimes being a female in the music business, or any business, you know you want to be this way and sometimes I come off as being a hard chick. But it was really cool seeing her through that; it was really refreshing. She's taught me to be a boss." Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, Rexha has lived in New York City most of her life. "There's something about it that's just in my blood. I just love the city and the energy – you can't find it anywhere else." Raised by Albanian parents, Rexha says they were always supportive of her creative pursuits, but she had to find her own way to break into the industry. "I originally started wanting to get my own music out, but my parents came from another country. My mom was born here, but my dad came from another country, and like a lot of people love music, but they don't know how to get into the industry," she says. "I was like, I want to hear my songs on the radio, and they were like, 'We don't know how to do that.'" A savvy self-starter, Rexha realized early on that her best bet on getting into the biz was to first make a name for herself as a behind-the-scenes person. "I wanted to do it the right way, and I would write these songs for myself, and they would always end up for other people. I did that so it would give me somewhat of a leverage and a step into the music business because then people respect you on another level," says Rexha. "I think that helped give me the respect, but now to be able to do it as another artist is so amazing because it's what I've been always doing, but now I get to put a video behind it or put pictures behind it and make it come to life, which is the most exciting part."

Rexha sang the hook on hits like David Guetta's "Hey Mama" and G-Eazy's "Me, Myself & I"

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Johnny Manziel: ‘Friends and family with me’

TMZ caught up with Johnny Manziel in New York on Thursday, and he seemed to be at ease despite pleas from his loved ones to seek help immediately. “My friends and family, they’re all right, they’re with me,” Manziel said as his posse trailed close behind. The hard-partying 23-year-old reportedly chugged champagne behind the DJ booth at Marquee on Wednesday night, though it’s unclear who joined him. Days prior, pals of Manziel spoke about his current state, fearing the Heisman Trophy winner could wind up dead if he refuses to get his substance abuse issues in check. “If he continues this way for much longer, he will die,” an insider told TMZ. “He’s in a horrible downward spiral,” a source added. Manziel kept his alarmingly frail frame covered in a jacket and shorts during his short stay in Manhattan. The former Browns quarterback is said to be out of the metropolitan area and already off to his next destination. Among the hot spots he may want to avoid for the holiday weekend: Las Vegas. Manziel was tossed from Jewel nightclub inside the luxurious Aria Hotel last weekend, following an altercation with a fellow patron. “He’s too much of a risk,” a nightclub insider told TMZ. “He’s a good guy, but he’s a f–king mess.” Though it appears Manziel’s closest confidants have wised up to the seriousness of the situation, his family has felt helpless for some time. Following two failed attempts to get his son into rehab, father Paul issued the grim prediction that his son won’t make it to his next birthday. “I truly believe if they can’t get him help, he won’t live to see his 24th birthday,” the elder Manziel said to the Dallas Morning News. Johnny Manziel turns 24 on Dec. 6.

More parties, no problem. TMZ caught up with Johnny Manziel in New York on Thursday, and he seemed to be at ease despite pleas from his loved ones to seek help immediately. “My friends and fa…

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Walmart's lowers profit forecast as workers' raises dent bottom line

Walmart WMT made waves this winter when it announced it would raise the starting wage for half a million workers as part of its efforts to improve customer service and get its U.S. back on track. It appears the strategy is working, but at a cost: Walmart reported its fourth-straight quarter of comparable sales growth in the United States, where they rose 1.5% in the second fiscal quarter. But the raises, as well as investments to beef up its e-commerce hit the bottom line, prompting the retailer to lower its profit forecast for fiscal 2015. (Other factors that hurt its profit in the quarter included a decrease in U.S. pharmacy reimbursements, most loss of products to “shrink,” and industry term for theft or products that are lost or can’t be sold, and a strong U.S. dollar.) The world’s largest retailer announced the raises in February as it sought to fight declining customer satisfaction scores, hit among other factors by long lines in stores because of insufficient staffing at registers, stores that weren’t clean enough and shelves that weren’t re-stocked quickly enough. In April, Walmart raised the minimum starting wage in stores to $9.00 per hour, resulting in over 500,000 workers getting a raise. As Amazon.com AMZN continues to win over shoppers from brick-and-mortar stores (as evidenced by the fierce battle over Amazon Prime Day last month), Walmart and rivals like Target TGT are finding that they need to give shoppers more reasons to come into store. That can be better customer service, as well as better integration with e-commerce so that shoppers can pick up an online order at the store of their choosing. Walmart opened four new distribution centers and developed a tool to help customers find items in store more easily, among other e-commerce initiatives. But such investments, especially after years of scrimping, cost money. “I’m confident that customers are benefitting from the investments we’re making in our stores and associates,” Wal-Mart Stores CEO Doug McMillon said in a pre-recorded message about the quarterly results. “Obviously, we’d like to see it ramp higher and faster.” (For more on McMillon’s strategy, please read Fortune‘s profile from earlier this year.) Wal-Mart now expects profit of $4.40 to $4.70 per share share this fiscal year, down from an earlier range of $4.70 to $5.05. But at least the U.S. comparable sales increase of 1.5% for the quarter beat the 1% Wall Street analysts expected, according to Consensus Metrix. And more importantly, the company said it expects its customer service scores to keep improving.

The world's largest retailer reported a lower than expected profit as workers raises aimed at improving customer service hit its bottom line

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http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/one-of-the-highest-paid-execs-in-banking-is-not-even-a-banker/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160702044854id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/06/30/one-of-the-highest-paid-execs-in-banking-is-not-even-a-banker/

One of the Highest Paid Execs in Banking Is Not Even a Banker

Eugene Ludwig can likely now afford that addition to his house. Or perhaps a heli-pad or two. Ludwig is one of the best paid banking executives in the industry. He made more than $30 million as of 2013. That’s more than J.P. Morgan Chase jpm CEO Jamie Dimon, and more than the CEOs of U.S Bank usb , the No. 5 largest bank in the nation by assets; PNC Financial pnc ; and Suntrust Bank sti combined. Yet Ludwig isn’t a banker. He used to be a top regulator, but he isn’t even that anymore. Instead, Ludwig runs a consulting firm that advises the nation’s banks on regulations. One of its offerings: helping the big banks pass the Fed’s stress test. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released the results of the final round of this year’s bank stress tests, regulators’ best guess of whether a bank could survive another financial crisis. If the big banks pass, they are allowed to pay dividends, do stock buy backs, and other things that could boost the price of their shares; and, by extension, they can increase the compensation of their employees. The Fed began to release results of its stress tests shortly after the financial crisis. And it began annual stress testing in 2012. An industry has grown up around the tests to advise banks on how to get a passing grade. Last week, the Fed released the results of the first half of the test. Like last year, for the second year in a row, every bank passed the first leg. And this year, most banks fared better than last year. That could be in part because of the work of Ludwig and his firm Promontory Group. In all, banks spent $29 billion on consulting services last year. That was up from just over $16 billion in 2007, before the financial crisis. Not all of that is going toward stress testing. Banks have upped the amount of money they spend on complying with the increased regulations that have come with Dodd-Frank. But because of the importance of the stress test, banks are likely spending a lot on preparation. And a good deal of that increasing pile is flowing to Promontory, the largest firm that specializes in bank consulting services. Other players in the stress testing consulting business are the big accounting firms and some much smaller consulting firms. On top of that, a number of conferences have popped up each year that focus on how banks can deal with stress testing, and do better on the test. One such conference is run by the Boston branch of the Fed. All of this has been good for Promontory and Ludwig. The uber bank consultant, who is a regular at some of the biggest banking conferences, owns a 13,000-square-foot Washington mansion. The value of Ludwig’s home was estimated at $11.5 million three years ago. His estate also includes a tennis court and a modern art collection. Promontory’s website has a page dedicated to stress testing. It says the company assists “firms in meeting supervisory expectations for a Capital Adequacy Process, including interpretation of specific feedback from supervisors … and in developing remediation plans to address supervisory concerns.” A spokesperson from Promontory declined to comment for this article. Promontory has attracted a number of former top regulators, including Mary Schapiro, the former head of the SEC, after she left office. Schapiro has since left the firm. Last year, Promontory paid a $15 million fine to the state of New York to settle charges that it put its own interests before obligations it had to regulators in a consulting assignment it was completing for British bank Standard Chartered.

Consultant Eugene Ludwig helps big banks pass the Fed's stress test.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160702181442id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2015/08/21/larry-flynt-jr-kylie-jenner-sex-tape-hustler-vivid/

Larry Flynt Jr. -- Kylie Jenner Can't Hustle Me ... That's a $1 Million Ass, At Most (VIDEO)

Kylie Jenner should snatch the $10 million to do a sex tape and never look back ... because no less a XXX authority than Larry Flynt Jr. says that's way more than she's worth on the open porn market. The Hustler king was at Craig's Thursday night ... and we asked about the offer Vivid Entertainment has on the table for the 18-year-old to go all "Kim K. Superstar." Larry laughs off the ass-tronomical figure, but does admit there's a market for Kylie -- and floats a hypothetical offer for her to do the nasty for Hustler. He also takes a jab at Vivid's honcho. Porn-on-porn violence ... it's gotta stop.

Kylie Jenner should snatch the $10 million to do a sex tape and never look back ... because no less a XXX authority than Larry Flynt Jr. says that's…

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Watch: 15 great movie trailers

In the decades since Hollywood first breathlessly sold its features to audiences, the art of movie trailers has changed dramatically. Click through our gallery to watch 15 of the greatest examples of coming attractions. Early studio system trailers were marvels of hucksterism -- grandiose ad copy that promised every movie to be GREATEST, the FUNNIEST, the MOST ACTION-PACKED, the MOST UNFORGETTABLE. In addition to a film's starry-eyed gloss, the trailers sold stars -- box office draws and beloved character actors -- to get moviegoers to shell out for even MORE tickets. "The Sea Hawk" trailer has all of this and more. An evocative pitch for the Errol Flynn pirate adventure, the ad is notable not just for packing in so much in the way of thrills, romance and derring-do (plus Erich Wolfgang Korngold's stunning music), but for being that rare case when the film truly lived up to the superlatives heaped upon it. If "The Sea Hawk" was an example of a studio trailer typical of Hollywood's Golden Age, Orson Welles' trailer for "Citizen Kane" is perhaps the anti-trailer, poking a bit of fun at the marketing of a film and at his own celebrity (a radio star in the late 1930s, Welles doesn't appear on camera). He introduces chorus girls ("Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, we're just showing you the chorus girls for purposes of bally-hoo. Pretty nice bally-hoo!") and the cast of his film, who mirror the conceit of "Kane" by each describing Charles Foster Kane from the prism of their own experience. Just how frequently does Humphrey Bogart wander into the Hollywood Public Library? Well, you would, too, if Lauren Bacall were there to recommend the latest mystery from Raymond Chandler. In this trailer the stars go the extra mile in promoting their film, heralding its ripped-from-the-bestselling-novel's-pages immediacy, while also showcasing Howard Hawks' moody lighting and Max Steiner's music. Among film directors, Alfred Hitchcock was undoubtedly the biggest star by the time he introduced his 1960 horror film in this extended trailer shot on the backlot and stages representing the Bates Motel and the dismal house on the hill where Norman Bates' mother lived -- and where the "most dire, horrible events" of "Psycho" took place. Backed by jokey music, Hitchcock tut-tuts about the indelicacy of even mentioning the sordid content of the film, which of course makes us laugh and want to see more. As filmmakers branched out into more counter-cultural topics and techniques in the 1960s and early '70s, trailers reflected this change in marketing. Instead of Technicolor superlatives, we were given dour messages about anti-heroes. The trailer for John Boorman's crime drama "Point Blank," starring Lee Marvin as Walker (see, he walks a lot), described as "an emotional and primitive man" seeking vengeance, tries to warn us that we will witness vengeance and "mental agony" at "point-blank range," but the real tension is -- kinda ridiculously -- provided by Marvin's constant walking. Composer Lalo Schifrin, best known for "Mission: Impossible" and "Cool Hand Luke," was commissioned to write the score for William Friedkin's "The Exorcist," which he prefaced with music written especially for this trailer -- one of the most disturbing ever made. Over flashing, black-and-white still images of a possessed Linda Blair, the strident music (reminiscent of Krzysztof Penderecki) grips us and refuses to let go. Even if you weren't familiar with William Peter Blatty's bestseller about a girl possessed by the Devil, you'd know you were in for a ride. Reaction to the trailer -- many reported vomiting, and the strobe effects must have been anathema to anyone prone to epilepsy -- was swift; the studio pulled it, and Schifrin was dropped from the picture, which ultimately made memorable use of Michael Oldfield's more reassuring "Tubular Bells" instead. Just as Hitchcock used himself to pitch his films, Woody Allen appeared in this 1973 trailer for his comedy "Sleeper," making the case that it was more intellectual and cerebral than the slapstick science fiction farce actually was. "There's very little overt comedy in the film," Allen says, a claim that, of course, the clips negate entirely. In the '30s, '40s and '50s, stars were sold for their glamour. For Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," the trailer's narrator sells Robert De Niro's critically-acclaimed talent and Oscar win for "The Godfather Part II," and promises that his Travis Bickle is "a terrifying portrait of life on the edge of madness." The narrator intones: "The taxi driver is looking for a target ... getting ready ... getting organized ... for the only moment in his life that will ever mean anything." Not a light evening's entertainment for sure, but the trailer does accurately depict the film's gritty realism, and the dichotomy that Bickle presents, as both a charmer and a threatening harbinger of death. "You've never seen a more chilling performance than this." One thing's for sure, they can't be accused of overselling. According to an apocryphal story, the ad line for Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film ("In space no one can hear you scream") was actually overheard at a preview screening. True or not (who wouldn't want to take credit for the greatest tag line ever written?), the trailer is effective in setting up the situation -- crewmembers trapped in space, where an alien threat is born -- with just enough glimpsed to set us on edge. Stanley Kubrick was behind innovative trailers for "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange," but his most stately, and disconcerting, trailer was for his 1980 horror film based on Stephen King's "The Shining." It is a masterpiece of minimalism, consisting of a single shot of an elevator at the Overlook Hotel, which unleashes a torrent of blood. Who wouldn't go see that? The science fiction-y premise of the Michel Gondry-Charlie Kaufman romantic comedy "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is laid out in the start of this trailer, as a faux commercial featuring Tom Wilkinson selling the very service he tries to sell Jim Carrey -- erasure of memories of a broken heart. It exploits the film's skewed angles and stylized visuals (why do people just disappear?), while softening the blow with bouncy music. It also prevents us from thinking this is a typical, slapstick Jim Carrey movie. Sound - incorporating the plaintive horn of a commuter train in the distance - is used exceptionally well in this trailer for "Little Children," about two stay-at-home suburbanites (Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson) who begin an affair, and the spouse (Jennifer Connelly) who begins to suspect. Ennui, leading to passion, leading to trouble. The trailer makes no mention of an extensive subplot involving a hounded child molester, but the trailer makers know that's not necessary (not when you've got Winslet's iconic red swimsuit). Of the last decade's found-footage horror films, J.J. Abrams' "Cloverfield" was one of the better examples, and its trailer made good use of that aesthetic -- long, extended handheld camera shots by a partygoer who witnesses a massive catastrophic event in New York City. The action of the trailer is kept mostly off-screen or to the side, disorienting us about the actual threat, which is mostly suggested by the panic of the actors (and that head of the Statue of Liberty which ends up in your street). I don't care if it hurtsI want to have controlI want a perfect bodyI want a perfect soul. I want you to noticeWhen I'm not aroundYou're so very specialI wish I was special... The striving heard in the Belgian women's choir Scala and Kolacny Brothers' haunting cover of Radiohead's "Creep" beautifully underscores images and messages on Facebook -- cherished moments, new relationships, love, birth, desperation and pain. The audience, already familiar with the power of sharing the most intimate aspects of their lives on Facebook, is then introduced to the narrative of the film, about a Harvard student whose very exclusive website becomes, ironically, the center of the universe for a half-billion people. The trailer pitches that irony just right. A teaser (an early release version of trailers) is often threadbare on dialogue or specific plot points; its purpose is to sell awareness, and mood. Perhaps the best use of music to suck us into the mood of a film is in this teaser for David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Accompanied by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Karen O's cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," we get quick cuts interrupting a long, stately drive into a mysterious, snow-covered estate. There is so much movement, we can't help but be carried along into the conspiratorial environment of Stieg Larsson's thriller series. The mood is capped with the punchy tag line: "The feel bad movie of Christmas." Truth in advertising! The evolution of movie trailers (Video)

Here are some of the MOST INNOVATIVE! UNFORGETTABLE! examples of Hollywood's coming attractions

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http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/23/obituaries/james-h-r-cromwell-dies-at-93-married-richest-girl-in-world.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160703045019id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1990/03/23/obituaries/james-h-r-cromwell-dies-at-93-married-richest-girl-in-world.html?

James H. R. Cromwell Dies at 93

James H. R. Cromwell, a wealthy businessman who was briefly a politician and diplomat and best known in the 1930's and 40's as the husband of ''the richest girl in the world,'' Doris Duke, died of a pulmonary ailment on Monday at the Marin Terrace retirement home in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 93 years old. Mr. Cromwell was connected to three of the greatest fortunes in America through two of his marriages and one of his mother's. While Jimmy, as Mr. Cromwell was known, was in his teens, his mother, Lucretia, married E. T. Stotesbury, a Philadelphia multimillionaire and banking partner of J. P. Morgan. Mr. Cromwell's first marriage, in 1920, was to Delphine Dodge, the daughter of Horace T. Dodge, the automobile magnate. The two were divorced in 1928. Marriage to Doris Duke Miss Duke, who became his second wife in 1935, inherited a tobacco fortune from her father, James Buchanan Duke, the founder of Duke University. Mr. Cromwell was in the public eye steadily before and during World War II while he was married to Miss Duke. Unlike the vast majority of their peers in the Social Register, they were fervent supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. In 1933 Mr. Cromwell published a book, ''Voice of Young America,'' in which he advocated measures like guaranteed bank deposits, abandonment of the gold standard, compulsory unemployment insurance and Federally aided public works, all of which came to pass under Roosevelt. Four years later, in a treatise, ''In Defense of Capitalism,'' he shocked business leaders by advocating tight control of money by the Federal Reserve System. In 1940 Roosevelt appointed Mr. Cromwell Minister to Canada, an ambassadorship at a time when the only Ambassador to a country in the British Commonwealth was the one accredited to the Court of St. James's. A Bid for U.S. Senate Mr. Cromwell resigned the post after five months to run for the United States Senate from New Jersey; he and Miss Duke lived in a mansion in Somerset County. His only bid for elective office ended in decisive defeat. The Cromwells separated soon afterward and in 1943 became involved in acrimonious divorce proceedings that went on for five years. Miss Duke, asserting that her husband wanted a $7 million ''endowment,'' won a decree in Reno, but it was voided by a court in New Jersey. Mr. Cromwell then obtained a divorce that became final in 1948. That year he was married for a third time, to Maxine MacFetridge, the daughter of a cement company manager. She died in 1968. In 1971 he married Germaine Benjamin, the widow of a financier. She died in 1987. Mr. Cromwell was born in Manhattan, the son of Oliver Eaton Cromwell, a member of an old New York family. He went to Lawrenceville School and spent two years at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Cromwell, an athletic man, piloted racing boats, played tennis with Bill Tilden and was a talented amateur boxer, once staying three rounds with Tommy Loughran, later the world light-heavyweight champion. Mr. Cromwell served in the Marine Corps in World War I. Mr. Cromwell's Career Mr. Cromwell began his business career with Drexel & Co. in Philadelphia. While married to Miss Dodge, he started an automobile finance company, Cromwell-Dodge. In the 1950's he was involved in oil and gas production in the West and in Canada; he retired in the early 1980's. He lived for many years in Southampton, L. I., before moving to the West Coast two years ago. Mr. Cromwell is survived by a daughter from his marriage to Miss MacFetridge, Hope Hampton of Belvedere, Calif., and five grandchildren. Photo: James H.R. Cromwell (Paul Parker, 1957)

LEAD: James H. R. Cromwell, a wealthy businessman who was briefly a politician and diplomat and best known in the 1930's and 40's as the husband of ''the richest girl in the world,'' Doris Duke, died of a pulmonary ailment on Monday at the Marin Terrace retirement home in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 93 years old.

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http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150309-the-fear-of-the-east

http://web.archive.org/web/20160703062828id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/culture/story/20150309-the-fear-of-the-east?

How Western art learned to stop fearing the East

On 29 May 1453, Constantinople, capital of the mighty Byzantine Empire, fell to an army of Ottoman Turks who had besieged the city for seven weeks. For three days, the victorious 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II allowed his soldiers to rampage in the metropolis, pillaging whatever they could find. From the perspective of Europe’s rulers, it was a catastrophic blow for Christendom: the balance of power in the world had changed for good. Nearly three decades later, the Ottomans struck deeper into Europe, storming the southern Italian city of Otranto, and executing more than 800 inhabitants who refused to convert to Islam. By 1529, Ottoman troops led by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent were outside the walls of Vienna. According to Haydn Williams, author of Turquerie: An Eighteenth-Century European Fantasy, published last year, Western Europe fell into “a state of shock”. In fact, the Ottoman reputation for merciless military discipline grew so great that the Islamic superpower even inspired a new term among cowed Europeans: “danger of the Turk”, or Turkengefahr, as German-speakers put it. This paranoid state of mind endured for a long time. In the 16th and 17th Centuries, the world was still a fractured place, divided between the Christian West and its Islamic archenemy in the East. At least, this is the orthodox version of history. Recent scholarship, though, suggests that the rift was not quite so antagonistic. It is true that after the fall of Constantinople a torrent of European propaganda cast the Ottomans as barbarous infidels. But there is also evidence of increasing European fascination with the Ottoman Empire, stimulated by enterprising diplomats and merchants, as well as artists, who travelled to Constantinople and witnessed Turkish culture firsthand. This spirit of curiosity, respect and exchange is explored in The Sultan’s World: The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art, a new exhibition at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, which I visited to find out how the Ottoman Empire intersected with the Renaissance. One of the most famous instances of contact between these two worlds was the visit of Gentile Bellini, an official painter of the Venetian Republic, to the court of Mehmed II towards the end of the 15th Century. The sultan had asked the Doge of Venice for a sculptor and a bronze caster who could fashion medals, and the Venetians, who were keen to encourage commercial relations with the Ottomans, were happy to oblige. In 1479, Bellini arrived in Constantinople with the Paduan sculptor Bartolomeo Bellano. Bellini’s bronze medal of the sultan survives, and we know that during his stay he also painted a view of Venice for Mehmed II, as well as portraits of members of his court. A painting from 1480 in the National Gallery in London may be a portrait by Bellini of the sultan himself. It presents Mehmed sitting behind a stone parapet and arch, wearing a puffy white turban that contrasts with his gaunt features underneath. His nose is noticeably aquiline, tapering to a point that “rhymes” with the shape of his beard. On either side, floating gold crowns represent conquered kingdoms. “He has a very noble appearance,” says Guido Messling, who has curated The Sultan’s World. “He must have commissioned the portrait to immortalise his own image for posterity. In the Ottoman context, a portrait like this was unprecedented – and Bellini had a strong impact on later Ottoman miniaturists.” During his stay in Constantinople, Bellini also executed a number of detailed drawings of its inhabitants, including a pen-and-ink study of a seated janissary (an elite soldier responsible for the sultan’s safety) wearing a distinctive tall hat. Images like this anticipated the popularity in the second half of the 16th Century of so-called ‘costume books’ that documented sumptuous and flamboyant Turkish fashions for European readers. A 1568 publication by Nicolas de Nicolay, geographer to King Henri II of France, is the best-known example. De Nicolay claimed that he had sketched Istanbul’s inhabitants “as they are and as I saw them, representing them in portraits according to nature”, but in fact he used prostitutes as models. Increasingly, European fantasies about Turks would have an erotic subtext. Following the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529, European fears about the Turkish threat began to recede. At the same time, the way that Ottomans appeared in European culture started to change. “As the Ottomans were pushed back and the danger became less acute, so their exotic features became more important,” explains Messling. “Europeans felt safer, and that made it easier to fantasise about the Ottomans.” Oriental rugs, for instance, were highly prized by Renaissance artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger, who found the pictorial possibilities of their bright, dynamic designs especially beguiling. Carpets also functioned as powerful status symbols for sitters in portraits: the prominent rug in Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533) is a good example, as is the red Ushak carpet laid on a table that dominates a group portrait painted 70 years later to commemorate the Somerset House Conference of 1604. Intricate clocks and sundials decorated with generic ‘Turkish’ figures began to be produced. Christian liturgical vestments incorporated richly patterned Ottoman textiles. Even the Holy Roman Emperor Matthias had himself depicted in a portrait of 1611-12 wearing a precious Ottoman silk caftan with a peacock pattern – reflecting the fashion of the times. Slowly but surely, in the minds of Europeans, the Ottoman Empire was becoming something not to be feared but to be desired. As Haydn Williams writes: “The stereotype of the fierce Turk metamorphosed into a more peaceable being.” And that being embodied a sense of glamour, voluptuousness and luxury. Alastair Sooke is art critic of The Daily Telegraph If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

Western depictions of the Ottomans range from terrible foe to exotic paradise. How did artists get over their horror of the orient? Alastair Sooke reports.

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http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/19/bank-tax-politics-economy-opinions-columnists-thomas-f-cooley.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160703064224id_/http://www.forbes.com:80/2010/01/19/bank-tax-politics-economy-opinions-columnists-thomas-f-cooley.html

The Problems With The Bank Tax

Last week the Obama administration announced a plan to impose significant new taxes on banks. It was high political drama. The stern-faced president was flanked by his scowling Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, and his dour chief economic adviser, Larry Summers. The whole tone of the announcement was that of a trip to the woodshed for misbehaving banks. The tax was presented as a punitive reaction to the revived profitability of the banks, something the administration had aggressively sought to bring about. The problem here is not the taxes per se. It is that the administration elected to treat the imposition as populist political theater. In doing so it missed the opportunity to articulate a well-reasoned economic policy to deal with too-big-to-fail institutions. And in the process it got completely wrong-footed with the regulatory reforms the House and Senate are currently considering. Another problem with treating the tax as punitive rather than regulatory is that it gives the banks and other financial institutions the ammunition to fight it. This administration tends to treat too many of the economic problems it faces as political. They end up being far less effective. There is a very sound argument for levying new fees on financial institutions. The financial system as it is currently structured is extremely distorted, and its distortions are due to the way the system was regulated and by the regulators’ responses to the financial crisis. Basically over time we have encouraged, through regulation or the lack thereof, the creation of large, complex, interconnected financial firms. In response to the financial crisis our regulators decided that many of these firms were too big to fail. In trying to rescue them we made them larger, more complex, more interconnected and arguably riskier. It is now clear to almost everyone except the institutions themselves that we created a big problem. Firms that are deemed too big or too systemic to fail have a safety net. They can take bigger risks and make bigger bets, secure in the belief that the government (or taxpayers) will guarantee their liabilities if they fail. Not only does this create perverse incentives for the risks that they take, it lowers their cost of raising new capital. In the heat of the financial crisis Henry Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and others decided it was better to protect all of the troubled firms (except Lehman and Washington Mutual) rather than let them fail. Rumor was that they would have arranged a deal for WaMu had the FDIC not closed them first. In almost every case they bailed out bondholders at the expense of taxpayers. That was then. Now we must figure out how to undo the damage. In a more perfect world we would do three things: 1. modify the bankruptcy code and create mechanisms to allow for the orderly failure of these institutions; 2. impose a tax on them that is proportional to the risk to the system that they create; and 3. treat that tax as an insurance premium to cover the cost of future problems, just as the FDIC charges banks for deposit insurance. Greg Mankiw, in his excellent blog, argues that the bank tax does a pretty good job at No. 2. In the administration’s proposal the tax would be levied on a firm’s liabilities. For purpose of this tax they are defined as Assets less Tier1 Capital less FDIC Insured Deposits. It would apply to firms with more than $50 billion of assets. The idea is that the tax would induce these firms to decrease their leverage by holding more Tier1 Capital. It also has the effect of favoring deposit-taking institutions since FDIC insurance currently is capped once the fund reaches a certain size. That presumably has to change given our recent history. An important flaw in the tax is that it is designed only to recover the bailout costs already incurred. It should be an ongoing charge for the insurance against risky behavior. There should be two parts to such a charge: A portion to cover the risk a firm creates for itself and its investors by taking on excessive leverage, and a portion to cover the risk that leverage creates for the system as a whole. Ideally what we want is a fund that can cover the costs of a shock to the system in the future without the involvement of taxpayers. It is curious that this proposal has been put on the table at this time. The regulatory reform proposals working their way through the House and the Senate both have many elements designed to address the too-big-to-fail problem, including proposals for fees on systemic institutions. In the hearings before the House banking committee Secretary Geithner was at odds with Sheila Bair of the FDIC and many others over whether it made sense to charge fees ex-ante or ex-post. He favored the latter, and he seemed to have lost that argument on logical grounds. It may be that this is his attempt to preempt the issue. At the end of the day what we need are mechanisms to deter excessive risk-taking at the expense of the taxpayer. The proposed tax is a very imperfect step in that direction. But we should hope that at the end of the process of designing a new regulatory structure we will have a set of measures that protect the taxpayer from having to bail out the financial system in future crises. One lesson that history teaches us very clearly is that crises will occur. Thomas F. Cooley, the Paganelli-Bull professor of economics and the former dean of the NYU Stern School of Business, writes a weekly column for Forbes. Read more Forbes Opinions here. Comments are turned off for this post.

Populist politics trumps economic reasoning once again.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160703142806id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2011/07/25/leighton-meester-mother-constance-meester-younger-brother-alex-beat-lawsuit-sued-assault-battery-bottle/

Leighton Meester's Mom: She Beat Me with a Bottle!

's mom is firing back -- claiming in a new countersuit, Leighton threw her to the ground back in December ... "repeatedly hitting her with a bottle." According to the countersuit, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, at 2:00 AM on December 11, 2010, the " " actress attacked her mom with the bottle and was so crazed she had to be pulled off her mom by her little brother. says it's true ... Leighton sent her $7,500 every month, but that was not out of the goodness of her heart. It was -- Constance claims -- a settlement for all the money she helped make for her daughter.

Leighton Meester's mom is firing back after her daughter sued her last week -- claiming in a new countersuit, Leighton threw her to the ground back in…

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http://www.tmz.com/2012/10/26/britney-spears-ex-nanny-leah-frand-video-meth-sam-lutfi/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160703161116id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2012/10/26/britney-spears-ex-nanny-leah-frand-video-meth-sam-lutfi/

Britney Spears' Ex-Nanny -- There Was NO METH in the House!

' former nanny is calling BS on ... telling TMZ he's straight up LYING about Britney using meth ... and says Sam may have even planted the drugs as a manipulation tactic. -- who worked for Britney for roughly 6 months back in 2007 ... and says she lived at Brit's home and was around the pop star 24/7. Leah tells us point blank, "I have never seen meth in that house or any type of drug." As we previously reported, Lutfi made claims in court that he found a in the house around the time of Britney's meltdown. In fact, Lutfi claimed Britney was so paranoid about getting caught, so officials couldn't test her hair for drugs. Frand tells us ... Sam is a "low life loser" who was so desperate to stay in Britney's world, he may have planted the drugs in her home ... as part of a diabolical scheme to become her life coach. Leah also claims Sam was never employed by Britney in any capacity -- "I don't know what the hell he was doing [in her life] honestly ... being Britney's bitch basically and not getting paid for it." We reached out to Lutfi for comment -- so far, no response. FYI -- If Leah looks familiar ... it's because she was the passenger in Britney's car when she ran over our photog's foot back in 2007. Don't worry ... the car was not injured.

Britney Spears' former nanny is calling BS on Sam Lutfi ... telling TMZ he's straight up LYING about Britney using meth ... and says Sam may have even…

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http://fortune.com/2015/12/17/disney-world-security/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160704063552id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/12/17/disney-world-security/?iid=sr-link2

Walt Disney World Is Installing Metal Detectors at Its Parks

Visitors to the “Happiest Place on Earth” will have a new reminder of America’s gun problem. On Thursday, Disney DIS began implementing security measures at Walt Disney World, including installing metal detectors at the entrance to its parks. Disney World will also stop selling toy guns and will prevent guests over the age of 14 from wearing costumes. The moves come after a man was arrested when he tried to bring a gun into the Magic Kingdom last weekend. In response, more security guards, local law enforcement, and specially trained dogs have been patrolling the parks. Guests entering Disney World Thursday are greeted with signs that outline the new security guidelines. “We continually review our comprehensive approach to security and are implementing additional security measures, as appropriate,” said Jacquee Wahler, director of communications for Walt Disney Parks & Resorts. Disney World’s current security measures, which include a bag search, are still in place, and the metal detectors will serve as an additional layer. Guests will be randomly selected for secondary screening. The response from fans has been positive overall, and many have taken to social media to show their support. Off Twitter for 3 hours and came back to the security news at WDW. I'm happy Disney is taking precautions, but disgusted came to this. — Epcod (@_epcod) December 15, 2015 I’m glad Disney is ramping up security. I honestly don’t trust their current set-up. A quick peak in a bag doesn’t make me feel safe. — Alex (@figmentjedi) December 14, 2015 Universal Orlando and SeaWorld SEAS have also followed suit and now have metal detectors at entry points, reported the Orlando Sentinel. The increased safety measures are also extending across the country where Disneyland and Universal Studios will use detectors, as well. Disney hasn’t said how long the detectors will remain in place.

Also bans adult costumes and toy guns.

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http://fortune.com/2016/07/01/congress-gop-gun-bill-terrorist/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160704080117id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/07/01/congress-gop-gun-bill-terrorist/

Congress Votes Next Week on Bill to Keep Terrorists From Getting Guns

With Democrats applying election-year pressure to act on gun control, Republican Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday the House will vote next week on a GOP proposal aimed at keeping suspected terrorists from obtaining firearms. Democrats indicated that by itself, Ryan’s plan would not quell the partisan showdown that has intensified since the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida. Two Republicans said the House is expected to vote on legislation resembling a National Rifle Association-backed bill that the Senate rejected last week and was opposed by most Democrats. In a conference call with GOP lawmakers, Ryan, R-Wis., said the House will consider broad legislation also aimed at preventing extremist groups from radicalizing and recruiting sympathizers. He said lawmakers will also vote on buttressing mental health programs. Ryan called it “just common sense” to keep firearms from terrorists, but said it must be done while protecting the right to own guns, according to an official on the call. Ryan said Democrats were trying to change the focus of the debate about the Orlando killings from terrorism to guns “because they cannot stand on their terrorism record,” the official said. The Orlando massacre, in which 49 victims died at a nightclub, was conducted by Omar Mateen. Killed by authorities during his siege, Mateen was an American who pledged allegiance to a leader of the Islamic State extremist group, according to a transcript of his phone calls with officials during the shootings. Last week, Democrats staged a nearly 26-hour sit-in on the House floor demanding votes on firearms curbs. With the House in recess this week, many held home-district events publicizing their effort. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., part of the House Democratic leadership, called Ryan’s announcement “a step forward” but called for votes on expanding gun buyers’ background checks and denying firearms to people on two terrorist watch lists. Drew Hammill, spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said a vote on an NRA-written bill “just isn’t going to cut it.” Ryan’s office provided no details about the House bills. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said the House measure will be similar to one by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that the Senate defeated. It would let authorities block gun sales to suspected extremists, but only if prosecutors could prove in court within three days that the would-be purchaser was likely involved in terrorism. King said he was not on Ryan’s conference call, but a second Republican on that call described the speaker’s plans the same way. King has sponsored the House version of a stronger bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the Senate killed. It would let the government block gun sales to suspected terrorists and allow an appeal by the would-be buyer after the transaction has been denied. Republicans say the Cornyn measure protects gun owners’ constitutional rights. Democrats say giving prosecutors three days to prove someone is probably involved in terrorism makes it too hard to thwart firearms sales. The officials described Ryan’s plans on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the call publicly.

Amid pressure from Democrats

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http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/18/are-chinas-a-shares-the-next-big-thing.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160704133106id_/http://www.cnbc.com:80/2014/03/18/are-chinas-a-shares-the-next-big-thing.html

Are China’s A-shares the next big thing?

More than 2,500 companies are listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges for a combined market capitalization of $4 trillion, the fifth largest globally, with their combined average monthly trading volume at around $632 billion, third globally behind NYSE and Nasdaq, it noted. HSBC projects the two markets' combined capitalization will grow to $10 trillion by 2020, for a 14 percent compound annual growth rate. It expects foreign participation could reach at least 10 percent of the market by 2020, or around $1 trillion, compared with only 3 percent currently under a quota system. (Read more: Cashin: Watching for China's 'Bear Stearns moment') "This is conservative, given the high household savings rate and the fact that stocks represent only 40 percent of financing in China, far below the 70 percent for most developed economies," HSBC said. China's household savings had reached around 45 trillion yuan (around $7.27 trillion) at the end of 2013, nearly twice the size of the A-share market, the bank noted, with plans in the works this year to set up a trial pension system, similar to 401(k)s in the U.S. (Read more: Is China the best of a bad job?) Of course, HSBC is fairly bullish on China's market even as many investors are growing increasingly wary as the country faces a spate of bond defaults and concerns over its shadow banking system. But HSBC blames the debt issues on an over-reliance on bank lending to allocate capital, which has spurred overcapacity in many of the industries now facing debt defaults.

China's A-shares have barely budged for the past few years, but a combination of debt-default concerns and reform moves may spur the market higher.

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http://time.com/14155/nigeria-gay-sex-whipped/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160706161732id_/http://time.com:80/14155/nigeria-gay-sex-whipped/

Four Men Whipped in Nigeria for Having Gay Sex

Four men were publicly whipped Thursday in northern Nigeria after being convicted of having gay sex by an Islamic court, according to a human rights activist with the Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights Network. Dorothy Aken’Ova told the Associated Press that the men were sentenced to 15 strokes and the option of a $120 fine or a year’s imprisonment. The men were first detained in a wave of arrests following the country’s January implementation of stricter criminal penalties for homosexuality. Aken’Ova said the men risk further violence in prison if human rights groups don’t come up with money for the fines. Aken’Ova said the men, all between 20 and 22 years old, were beaten before they confessed. They were later forced to prostate themselves on the floor of a regional court to be whipped. Homosexuality can carry the death penalty under Shariah law in some northern Nigerian states — typically not enforced — but the judge said he was lenient because the men promised they had changed their ways since the homosexual acts, Aken’Ova told the AP.

Islamic law in some Nigerian states can carry the death penalty for homosexuality, but the judge said he was lenient because the men promised they had changed their ways.

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http://time.com/3543614/baby-communications-emotions-eyes/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160707104804id_/http://time.com:80/3543614/baby-communications-emotions-eyes/

University of Virginia Study on Babies, Communication and Our Eyes

Babies, as anyone who has had one might have noticed, are not that good at stuff. They can’t talk to you, they suck on everything no matter what it’s supposed to be used for, they can’t run errands, they soil themselves. But they can recognize different facial expressions just from looking at someone’s eyes, apparently as early as seven months. How? It’s all to do with the whites of the eyes. A new study out of the University of Virginia and that Max Planck Institute that was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that babies respond differently to eyes alone, if the eyes were showing different expressions. “Their brains clearly responded to social cues conveyed through the eyes,” said Tobias Grossmann, one of the study’s authors, “indicating that even without conscious awareness, human infants are able to detect subtle social cues.” Humans, it turns out, are the only primates in which the whites of the eye are visible. The amount of sclera, as the white is known, is often an indicator of the emotions of a person. Wide open eyes, with a lot of visible white, express surprise or fear. When people smile, on the other hand, their eyes often narrow, hiding the whites. Fellow humans use the eyes a lot to detect what a person is really feeling, which is why movie villains, prison guards, and Vogue editor Anna Wintour wear mirrored or dark glasses even inside and on overcast days. If people can’t see the whites of each other’s eyes, they’re not really communicating. The sociologists were trying to establish how consciously or unconsciously humans respond to eye expressions, whether it’s learned behavior or innate to the human condition. So they hooked the babies up to shower cap like EEG devices that measure brain activity and showed them pictures of eyes for 50 milliseconds—way too short a time for the conscious brain of a baby of that age to have any idea of what was going on. Some of the eyes were wide open showing a lot of white, some were narrowly opened, some looked straight ahead, and some had an averted gaze. The babies’ brains responded differently to each type. “This demonstrates that, like adults, infants are sensitive to eye expressions of fear and direction of focus, and that these responses operate without conscious awareness,” Grossmann said. “The existence of such brain mechanisms in infants likely provides a vital foundation for the development of social interactive skills in humans.” The moral of the story is: you may want to ditch the mirrored sunglasses when playing with your baby. He or she would probably just suck on them anyway.

Study shows the unique response of human babies to eye expressions

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http://www.tmz.com/2013/03/26/ashley-greene-nightmare-neighbor-tenant-apartment-fire/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160707141037id_/http://www.tmz.com:80/2013/03/26/ashley-greene-nightmare-neighbor-tenant-apartment-fire/

Ashley Greene -- Nightmare Tenant

but also not totally shocking to other residents in the building, who say the actress was trouble. Multiple sources in Ashley's West Hollywood condo building tell TMZ ... the actress was an utter nuisance -- they say her unit was a revolving door for her fellow actors, friends and others who came and went in the middle of the night. The people who lived below Ashley say there was so much commotion above them they had trouble sleeping. On top of that, residents complained that Ashley didn't control her dogs -- which were incessant barkers. We're told residents complained to building management, but nothing happened. Here's the kicker ... The owner of the unit will be fixing it up, and she says Ashley is welcome to live there again -- that's because Ashley has always paid her rent. Wow.

Ashley Greene's condo fire was tragic but also not totally shocking to other residents in the building, who say the actress was trouble.Multiple sources…

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http://time.com/4170591/bernie-sanders-immigration-conservatives/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160709021317id_/http://time.com:80/4170591/bernie-sanders-immigration-conservatives/

Why Conservatives Praise Him

When it comes to immigration reform, Bernie Sanders has checked all the boxes for a Democratic presidential candidate. The Vermont Senator supports a path to citizenship. He would protect the vast majority of undocumented immigrants from deportation. He’d abolish most detention centers and allow the undocumented to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Nevertheless, the liberal senator has drawn approval from some unlikely quarters. Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA, a group that seeks to dramatically reduce legal and illegal immigration to the United States, said this week that after studying Sanders’ record and rhetoric, he sees some common ground. “I think in his gut he believes his obligation as president would be to the workers of America, not to the workers of the world,” Beck said in an interview. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the adamantly pro-life co-chair of Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign who has dismissed global warming as a hoax and repeatedly supported shutting down the federal government, praised Sanders’ immigration stance several times in August. “I admire Bernie’s passion and I notice that his immigration position is closer to mine than it is some of the presidential candidates on the Republican side,” King said in an interview with an Iowa radio station over this past summer. “He’s said ‘Let’s take care of American workers.’ I’m all for that.” Read More: Bernie Sanders Volunteers Develop Canvassing App Also this summer, King compared Sanders with Republican candidate Donald Trump, saying they’re “both speaking with non-politically correct language, and Bernie has taken some positions that I agree with. And part of his immigration policy is something that I agree with.” To be sure, Sanders differs from conservative boosters like Beck and King on most counts. Sanders has long supported a path to citizenship and called for better treatment of undocumented immigrants. (NumbersUSA has given Sanders an “F-” grade on immigration policy.) But the praise is not accidental. Sanders’ opposition to the 2007 immigration reform bill and his rhetoric about the effect of immigrant labor on American workers have dismayed immigration activists and liberal allies in the past. He has expressed concern repeatedly over the years that guest workers in the United States depress wages and squeeze Americans out of their jobs. Sanders opposed comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 on the grounds that it would expand the number of guest workers in the United States. It included a measure that would allow 200,000 guest workers to stay in the country for two years on temporary visas. The bill was widely supported by immigrant rights groups and would have put the undocumented on a path to citizenship. “If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive waged down even lower than they are now,” Sanders said in a television interview in June 2007. Joining Sanders in opposing the 2007 bill was the AFL-CIO, the largest coalition of labor unions in the country—as well as staunchly conservative members of Congress like King and advocates like Beck. “The reality is employers hire desperate aliens who will work for much less than Americans, driving wages down and making it impossible for American workers to compete,” King said in May 2007. Read More: How Bernie Sanders Evolved on Gay Marriage Sanders’ past positions reflect a peculiar and tenuous agreement between the far right and the far left on immigration. Both Tea Party conservatives and many labor activists argue that immigration can depress wages and squeeze Americans out of work, particularly when immigrants are undocumented immigrants or come through low-skilled guest worker programs. The unlikely groups are not exactly allies. King, for example, has outraged the left with inflammatory remarks, once saying that some immigrants have “calves the size of cantaloupes” from carrying marijuana across the desert. He has often compared illegal immigrants to animals. When he called for an electrified border wall in 2006, King said it would discourage immigrants from “fooling around.” “We do that with livestock all the time,” he said. (King was not available for comment.) But labor unions have often been at the forefront of opposing temporary work visas, arguing that guest workers push low-skilled American workers out of their jobs. Sanders has followed the unions, with whom he is closely allied. Immigration activists have taken note of Sanders’ votes and his rhetoric. Sanders has “pitted immigrants as an obstacle to tackling unemployment on a number of occasions,” said Alida Garcia, director of coalitions and policy at the pro-immigrant group FWD.us. “He’s evolved on this issue since his campaign launched, but where his prior statements have been troublesome is within his economic framework of welcoming new immigrants to our country.” Read More: Bernie Sanders Racks Up Key Support From Liberal Grassroots Javier Valdes, co-executive director at Make The Road New York, another immigrants advocacy group, also said Sanders was on the wrong side of the 2007 bill. “We were upset that he did not push for it at that time,” Valdes said. “I think he now understands the weight of that vote. The consequences resulted in millions of people being torn apart in largest deportation program this country has ever seen… [But] Sanders’ views on immigration have evolved over the years.” Sanders ultimately voted for the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform legislation along with ever other Democrat in the Senate, but was still opposed to guest worker program for low-skilled workers, saying it could lower wages for American workers. Sanders’ policy advisor, Warren Gunnels, said that Sanders objected to the poor treatment of guest workers when they arrive in the United States. “It was not just about American workers. It was about the extreme abuse that guest workers were facing in this country,” Gunnels said, explaining opposition to the 2007 bill. “He did not believe we should have massive expansion of temporary guest worker programs that did not have any proper protections for those guest workers.” The Vermont Senator has faced scrutiny throughout the campaign for his votes in earlier years. He supported an amendment with Sen. Chuck Grassley in 2009 that would have prohibited banks that received federal bail-out funds from hiring guest workers. Sanders also supported an amendment in 2005 that would have eliminated 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to people from countries with low immigration to the United States. He eventually voted for the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill, but not without qualms over the guest worker program—using the kind of rhetoric those on the right might approve of. “It does not make a lot of sense to me to bring hundreds of thousands of those workers into this country to work for minimum wage and compete with Americans kids,” Sanders said in 2013. But in his current campaign for president, Sanders has been unequivocally in favor of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and he has spoken passionately on protecting families from deportation. Many immigration activists note that Sanders’ plan is more detailed than Hillary Clinton’s. “It is time to bring our neighbors out of the shadows. It is time to give them legal status,” Sanders said last year in Nevada, in what has become a common refrain for the Vermont senator on the campaign trail. “We are a nation of immigrants… Hard working families coming to the United States to create a brighter future for their children.” Read More: Why Bernie Sanders’ Tax Pledge Matters

He's gotten support from some unlikely quarters.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/nyregion/donor-apologized-to-sister-for-seduction-of-husband.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160709055452id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2005/01/13/nyregion/donor-apologized-to-sister-for-seduction-of-husband.html

Donor Apologized to Sister for Seduction of Husband

NEWARK, Jan. 12 - In an emotional handwritten letter in August, Charles Kushner, a major developer, political donor and philanthropist in New Jersey, apologized to his sister for hiring a prostitute to seduce her husband, who was cooperating in a federal investigation against him, and then sending her a videotape of the encounter. "What I did as an act of revenge was wrong in every way," Mr. Kushner said at the start of a five-page letter to his sister, Esther Schulder. "I only ask that you forgive me for resorting to such despicable behavior, which is disgraceful. I was wrong and I committed a terrible sin. How did I let hatred invade my heart and guide my actions?" The letter was among 165 letters, most citing his generosity and compassion and appealing for leniency for Mr. Kushner, that were ordered released on Wednesday by Judge Jose L. Linares of Federal District Court. The judge is to sentence Mr. Kushner in March for filing false tax returns and campaign finance reports, and for retaliating against his brother-in-law, William Schulder. Mr. Kushner pleaded guilty to those charges in a plea agreement with United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie on Aug. 18 and is expected to be sentenced to 18 to 24 months in prison. He wrote the letter to his sister 13 days later. Judge Linares ordered the release of the letters and a sentencing memorandum submitted by Mr. Kushner's lawyers after two New Jersey newspapers, The Star-Ledger in Newark and The Record of Hackensack, filed a motion last month seeking the memo and about 700 letters written by Kushner supporters on his behalf. Judge Linares limited the release to 165 letters cited by Mr. Kushner's lawyers in their sentencing memo. In his ruling, the judge said, "These letters have been, by defendant's choice, thrust into the public domain by virtue of their inclusion in a public document." The defense had argued unsuccessfully that releasing the letters would be an invasion of privacy. The judge also ordered Mr. Christie's office to release its sentencing memo. That document is to be made public on Thursday, after federal prosecutors remove references to any continuing investigation. About 10 letters written on Mr. Kushner's behalf by past and present public officials in New Jersey will also be released Thursday under the judge's order. The defense sentencing memo called Mr. Kushner a man of considerable wealth who was generous with employees of his real estate development company, Kushner Companies, various charities, strangers and family members. Letters mentioned in the memo were written by a cross-section of people, including his wife and four children, neighbors, present and past employees, business associates, rabbis, church leaders, community leaders, college officials and doctors. Many of the letters focused on his compassion and generosity. One noted that he often provided World Series tickets to ailing children. The Rev. John J. Myers, archbishop of the Diocese of Newark, wrote that Mr. Kushner was "extremely generous" with donations to programs for the poor of many religious faiths. Mr. Kushner started his letter to his sister by saying he was writing with a "shattered heart and tears in my eyes." He mentioned his feuding with other family members. Those arguments, the authorities said, involved disagreements about Mr. Kushner's making political donations with funds from the Kushner Companies and about 100 smaller business entities it controlled. The donations and the family dispute led to the federal investigation. Mr. Kushner wrote that he did not fear the judge or the impending prison sentence, "but I do fear that God will not forgive me for acting in such a despicable and reprehensible manner." At another point, he wrote: "Mom and Dad are crying. I visit their gravesites often and ask for their forgiveness for making them failures in death while they were such successes in life. How did hatred and sibling rivalry make us all go so astray and prove to have such a tragic outcome for everyone involved. No one is a winner in this pathetic saga."

Federal Judge Jose Linares releases 165 letters appealing for leniency for Charles Kushner, New Jersey real estate developer, political donor and philanthropist who faces sentencing for filing false tax returns and campaign finance reports; photo; one letter, from Kushner himself, apologizes to his sister for hiring prostitute to seduce her husband, William Schulder, who was cooperating in probe, and sending her videotape (M)

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-tesla-elon-musk-may-be-aiming-too-high/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160709104858id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/news/at-tesla-elon-musk-may-be-aiming-too-high/

At Tesla, Elon Musk may be aiming too high

Ordinarily, Wall Street would be cheering a high-flying tech startup that reported earnings that exceeded the consensus forecast of Wall Street analysts. However, nothing is "typical" about electric vehicle maker Tesla (TSLA) and its equally colorful CEO Elon Musk. Indeed, Musk, the native of South Africa who made his fortune as a co-founder of PayPal (PYPL), quickly quashed whatever positive feelings investors had over his earnings "beat" when he abandoned his earlier forecast that Tesla would free cash flow-positive this year. As if that weren't enough, Musk also announced plans to increase the company's production rate to 500,000 vehicles in 2018, two years earlier than expected, and raising it to 1 million by 2020. UBS analyst Colin Langan estimates that Palo Alto, California-based Tesla will need about $2 billion to ramp-up production. "Ultimately, we see the new volume targets as too aggressive, setting up investors for disappointment," wrote Langan, who rates the company's shares as a "sell," in a note distributed to clients. After the shares climbed immediately following the latest earnings release on Wednesday, the stock traded down 5 percent, or $11.03, to close at $211.53 on Thursday. The shares have fallen about 12 percent this year, regaining some lost ground recently after Tesla announced that it has received about 400,000 preorders for its Model 3, which is due to go on sale in 2017. Many experts say Musk's production goal is unrealistic. "At 300-400 (thousand)/year, it would be the third-best selling (luxury) vehicle," behind Mercedes Benz and BMW, wrote Langen, who's skeptical that Tesla can produce the Model 3 profitably. "Customers may be underestimating the price with desired options and overestimating the EV (electric vehicle) tax credit." CNBC's Jim Cramer went even further, accusing Musk of getting away with "financial murder" and noting that Tesla delivered only 14,810 vehicles in the quarter, below the company's guidance of 16,000. Almost 30 percent of the stock's float is held by short-sellers, investors who profit when a stock price falls, further highlighting the skepticism many have about Musk's plans. Not surprisingly, Musk says the criticism doesn't bother him. "As for convincing all the naysayers, I think that will basically be never," he said during the company's earnings conference call. "There's always going to be naysayers. ... what I find ironic about a lot of the naysayers is that they -- the very same people will transition from saying it was impossible to saying it was obvious. I'm like, 'Wait a second. Was it obvious or impossible? It can't be both.' Right?" Another company associated with Musk, Solar City (SCTY), has plunged nearly 60 percent in the wake of disappointing earnings. The largest installer of solar equipment, whose board he chairs, is due to report earnings on April 9. Neither Tesla nor Solar City is profitable (Space X, the Musk company that's pioneering the use of reusable rockets, isn't publicly traded). Solar City is also a favorite of short sellers, who control about 40 percent of the stock's float. At Tesla, Musk has set a high bar for expectations, so a lot hinges on whether he hits or misses those targets.

The electric-car maker's CEO unnerved investors by making what some say are unrealistic production targets

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http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/petition-jesse-williams-bet-speech/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160709192003id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/07/06/petition-jesse-williams-bet-speech/

Grey's Anatomy Creator Blows Off Petition to Fire Jesse Williams

This piece originally appeared on People.com. Dr. Jackson Avery isn’t going anywhere! A Change.com petition calling for Jesse Williams to be fired from Grey’s Anatomy for his speech at the BET Awards has garnered nearly 5,000 signatures. According to the petition, “Jesse Williams spewed a racist, hate speech against law enforcement and white people at the BET awards. If this was a white person making the same speech about an African American, they would have been fired and globally chastised, as they should be, but there has been no consequences to Williams’ actions. There’s been no companies making a stand against his racist remarks and no swift action condemning his negative attitude.” “Why was Burke’s character fired from Grey’s Anatomy after his inappropriate homophobic slur, but nothing for Jesse Williams?” it continued. For more on racial issues, watch this Fortune video: However, show creator Shonda Rhimes is not listening to the drama. “Um, people? Boo don’t need a petition,” Rhimes, 46, tweeted to her 1.25 million followers with the hashtag “#shondalandrules.” Williams, 34, also took to Twitter to respond to the controversy. “Do not promote empty people & their tantrums,” he wrote. “Pure clickbait to gain followers, attention & money, for themselves, not you. Never you.” Do not promote empty people & their tantrums. Pure clickbait to gain followers, attention & money, for themselves, not you. Never you. — jesseWilliams. (@iJesseWilliams) July 3, 2016 After receiving the Humanitarian Award for his efforts to raise awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement, Williams told PEOPLE that his speech was about letting people know they aren’t alone. “Words are only as good as the response to those words,” he said. “But I’d like to think that I give people a sense that they are not alone.” “If we keep poisoning our children to believe that we are nothing and that white people are everything, that’s when it finds itself reflected in the way we treat each other,” continues Williams. “It’s not that complicated. The truth we are teaching is that every contribution in the history of the planet came from blonde people. It’s not true and it’s destructive, and people are getting killed long term as a result. People don’t believe that we deserve it.”

Viewers had complained about Jesse Williams' 'racist' BET Awards speech.

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http://nypost.com/2013/12/26/nypd-daily-crime-blotter-64/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160709224148id_/http://nypost.com:80/2013/12/26/nypd-daily-crime-blotter-64/

NYPD Daily Crime blotter

A young mom was assaulted as she walked with her 7-year-old daughter in Midwood, cops said. The suspect (right) approached the 33-year-old woman on East 12th Street near Elm Avenue at 2:45 p.m. Saturday and punched her in the back of the head, according to police. She fell on her hands and knees and suffered minor injuries, cops said. The child was not harmed. Police released this sketch of the man, who was last seen wearing a green jacket, black wool cap and jeans. A man was struck and badly hurt in a hit-and-run moments after getting off a city bus, authorities said. The victim had just stepped off the bus at Third Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue at 9 a.m. Wednesday when he was hit by another vehicle, which zoomed away, cops said. The man was taken in critical condition to Lutheran Hospital, where his condition was later upgraded to stable. An investigation is ongoing, police said. A boozed-up MTA mechanic plowed into two parked cars in Borough Park and kept going before cops arrested him nearby, authorities said. Emmanuel Raymond was driving on East Ninth Street at Cortelyou Road when he lost control of his vehicle, hit the cars and took off, police said. Cops found the 49-year-old MTA employee a few blocks away, on East 14th St. near Avenue I, where he was arrested. Raymond, who was off-duty at the time of the incident, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, DWI and refusal to take a ­Breathalyzer test, according to police. A man was fatally shot in front of his Coney Island home, cops said. Yaquin English was on Bayview Avenue in the Gravesend Houses at about 7 p.m. Tuesday when the gunman squeezed off multiple rounds, striking him in the torso. English was pronounced dead at the scene. No arrests had been made as of Wednesday evening. A 16-year-old boy was shot in the chest in Melrose, but is expected to survive, cops said. The victim was standing on East 156 Street near Concourse Village East at around 1:45 a.m. Wednesday when the assailant opened fire and fled, according to police. The teen suffered a gunshot wound to the upper left chest and was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition with a wound that was not considered to be life-threatening. No arrests had been made as of Wednesday evening. Cops have arrested a 23-year-old man who they say fatally stabbed a co-worker in an Elmhurst Restaurant last weekend. The victim, Furman Herrera-Martinez, was in Taco Veloz on Roosevelt Avenue near Junction Boulevard at around 5:50 a.m. Saturday Dec. 21, when Abel Galdino, 23, knifed him in the chest and arms after a verbal dispute over a woman, according to police. Herrera-Martinez was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Galdino has been charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon, cops said. He has one prior arrest, for possession of a forged instrument, for allegedly using a fake identification card. A man was shot yesterday afternoon in the Rockaways, police said. The victim was on Beach 54th Street in the Arverne section when he was wounded. He went on his home to St, John’s Hospital in Far Rockaway, where he was treated for non-life threatening injuries, police said. The relationship, if any, between the victim and his shooter was unclear, police said. A 24-year-old restaurant worker was nabbed in Bloomfield for driving drunk, according to cops. Agustin Montez-Esponza had just left a party when he was caught swerving in a 2003 Nissan on the Goethals Bridge at around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, Port Authority cops said. Officers followed Montez-Esponza into New Jersey, where he was arrested. He allegedly admitted to drinking several beers at a party before he started heading back to his home in Freehold, NJ. He was charged with DWI. Furthermore, he was driving without a license and the car was unregistered, police said. A man was shot by a gunman in Dongan Hills, cops said. The victim was standing outside the Berry Houses on Richmond Road near Dongan Hills Avenue at around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday when the assailant opened fire and fled. The victim was rushed to Staten Island University North, where he was treated for a wound that was not considered to be life-threatening, authorities said. No arrests had been made as of Wednesday evening.

Brooklyn A young mom was assaulted as she walked with her 7-year-old daughter in Midwood, cops said. The suspect (right) approached the 33-year-old woman on East 12th Street near Elm Avenue at 2:45…

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http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/jesse-williams-bet-awards-speech-sparks-petitions/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160710015149id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/amp/news/jesse-williams-bet-awards-speech-sparks-petitions/

Jesse Williams' BET Awards speech sparks petitions

Jul 5, 2016 10:35 AM EDT Entertainment Jesse Williams is the subject of dueling online petitions following the actor's fiery speech after receiving a humanitarian honor at the BET Awards last month. One petition calls for the "Grey's Anatomy" star to be fired over the June 26 speech in which he criticized police in America, saying: "We know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day." Another petition filed in response supports Williams, calling him "a brave leader." "Grey's Anatomy" creator and producer Shonda Rhimes has given her own thoughts on Twitter , writing "Um, people? Boo don't need a petition." Williams has played Dr. Jackson Avery on the ABC drama for seven seasons. Um, people? Boo don't need a petition. #shondalandrules

​Jesse Williams is the subject of dueling online petitions following the actor's fiery speech at the BET Awards

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160710143051id_/http://nypost.com:80/2016/01/21/sorry-hillary-women-care-more-about-their-president-than-his-or-her-agenda/

Sorry, Hillary: Women care more about their president than his (or her) gender

Hillary Clinton was counting on voters — particularly American women — to salivate at the prospect of shattering the highest glass ceiling by electing a woman president. She’ll need a backup plan. It turns out women aren’t nearly as gender-obsessed as Hillary thinks they are, or wants them to be. Clinton’s strategy does make some sense. After all, President Obama was buoyed by the widespread sense that his election wasn’t just his personal triumph, but all of ours, in burying the vestiges of America’s racist past. Given that women were also once treated as second-class citizens, why shouldn’t Hillary expect a similar wave of excitement and sense of history? Perhaps the string of female secretaries of state and Supreme Court justices, as well as presidential candidates like Carly Fiorina and Clinton herself, has made the idea of a female president seem less than revolutionary. The feminist movement — which appears unwilling to acknowledge women’s gains — may also have overplayed its victim status. Young men with few job prospects and a lifetime of being bested by female schoolmates may not be overjoyed to applaud yet another sign of women’s ascendance. The person of Hillary Clinton herself undoubtedly helps dampen enthusiasm about the prospect of a female president, and not just among Republicans who disagree with her political philosophy. The media is currently pondering how the re-emergence of her husband’s brutal treatment of ex-lovers impacts voters’ opinion of Hillary. But Mrs. Clinton’s role as the long-suffering first lady to a roguish leading man is just one of her problems; her reputation as a scandal-drenched, corporate-backed and largely failed public servant has always made her an awkward feminist heroine. Regardless of the explanation, the simple fact is most voters aren’t particularly anxious to see a woman — let alone Hillary Clinton — in the Oval Office. Pew Research Center’s new report explored attitudes about women in leadership, and found that most Americans see women as just as capable political leaders as men. Women scored about equally on some key leadership traits such as intelligence and capacity for innovation, and received higher marks on attributes such as honesty, ability to compromise, compassion and organization. Pew found big differences between how Democrats and Republicans viewed the sexes as potential political leaders. But before liberals start lamenting sexist conservatives’ “war on women,” Republicans didn’t see women as less capable, rather Republicans “are more inclined to say there isn’t any difference between men and women,” while “Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to say that women do a better job than men.” In other words, Republicans were more likely to truly see women and men as equals, while Democrats see one sex — men — as inferior. But just because Americans see women as just as qualified and capable political leaders doesn’t mean they’re eagerly awaiting a female president. Just four in 10 (38 percent) of all adults “say they hope the US will elect a female president in their lifetime,” while a majority (57 percent) “say it doesn’t matter to them.” Women are more likely to want to see a female president, but even that doesn’t translate into big support for Hillary. Take New Hampshire, where the latest poll shows just 38 percent of Democratic women voters plan to vote for Hillary compared to 52 who favor Sen. Bernie Sanders. Clinton is losing women’s support not just in Iowa and New Hampshire: A nationwide poll just released by Monmouth University found that Clinton’s edge among women has fallen from plus-45 percentage points in December to just 19 now. Feminists may take the lack of excitement as more evidence that the deck is stacked against women. But this phenomenon can also be seen as progress: Women have come so far that it’s no longer big news for women to advance to a higher level of power. People really are judging others based on the content of their character and the skills they bring to the position rather than as a representative of any particular demographic group. This makes it more likely that when we get a woman president (and three out of four surveyed by Pew expect to see it during their lifetime) she’ll have reached that position based on her qualifications, not out of a sense of obligation among voters. Now that’s something to be excited about. Carrie Lukas is the managing director of the Independent Women’s Forum and vice president for policy of the Independent Women’s Voice.

Hillary Clinton was counting on voters — particularly American women — to salivate at the prospect of shattering the highest glass ceiling by electing a woman president. She’ll need a backup plan. …

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http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/california-chef-brings-cannabis-fine-dining-500-person-n567636

http://web.archive.org/web/20160711053329id_/http://www.nbcnews.com:80/business/consumer/california-chef-brings-cannabis-fine-dining-500-person-n567636

California Chef Brings Cannabis to Fine Dining, for $500 per Person

Cannabis may join the herb and spice rack in California kitchens as the most populous U.S. state prepares for the possible legalization of recreational marijuana in November. Chef Chris Sayegh is leading the way by taking haute cuisine to a higher place with his cannabis-infused menus in private homes for as much as $500 a head, or in "pop-up" banquets around Los Angeles for $20 to $200 a person. For now, diners must show their medical marijuana cards. Marijuana buds at the International Cannabis & Hemp Expo in Oakland, California. REUTERS/Mathew Sumner REUTERS Sayegh, 23, who cut his teeth in the kitchens of top restaurants in New York and California, said incorporating cannabis into his recipes creates an entirely new consciousness for diners that goes beyond the effects of a fine wine. "To me, this is a cerebral experience," he said during a demonstration at his Hollywood apartment last week. "You're eating with a different perception with each bite, with each course. You're literally changing your brain chemistry and you are viewing this food differently than you did five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago." Edible marijuana products are nothing new, and the market for them has evolved into a multimillion-dollar industry. Cannabis dining, on the other hand, is a relatively new concept, and Sayegh wants to bring it to the masses. Marijuana has been legally permitted in California for medical purposes since 1996, and voters are widely expected to pass a measure on the upcoming November election ballot to legalize pot as a recreational drug for adults statewide. Sayegh said he began experimenting with cannabis cuisine after growing tired of pot-baked brownies and other snacks. "It really wasn't until I started to break it down into a science that I realized that cooking with cannabis ... was much, much different than baking with it," he said. In the kitchen, Sayegh uses oil containing an extract of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of cannabis, and a "vaporizer" to infuse ingredients with THC. "You'll never taste the cannabis in my cooking unless I specifically want you to taste it because it's not a pleasant taste. ... It throws off the whole flavor of the dish," he said, adding that he "micro-doses" his dishes to the desired potency of individual clients. At his apartment last Friday, he prepared an elaborate three-course meal for a friend. Carrot confit gnocchi with cannabis-infused pea emulsion was followed by New York strip steak with parsnip puree and a "medicated" red wine reduction. The finale: a sticky toffee pudding with toasted coconut and pot-infused chocolate. Read More: Bud for Buddy, as People Give Marijuana to Their Pets

A Californian chef is leading the way by taking haute cuisine to a higher place with his cannabis-infused menus in private homes.

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http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/29/scenic-road-trips-lifestyle-travel-road-trips.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160711073639id_/http://www.forbes.com:80/2009/05/29/scenic-road-trips-lifestyle-travel-road-trips.html

America's Prettiest Road Trips

In his famous novel Big Sur, Jack Kerouac describes the Californian locale of the same name as a “poor haunted canyon which again gives me the willies.” For modern travelers less prone to fits of melancholy and yawning depression than Kerouac, Big Sur is actually quite pleasant. And, according to a panel of travel professionals, this particular stretch of the California coastline makes for one of the most beautiful road trips on the planet. In Depth: America’s Prettiest Road Trips “You haven’t understood the raw power and utter beauty of the West Coast until you’ve driven the Pacific Coast Highway,” says Patricia Schultz, author of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. “Particularly the short stretch around Big Sur, inarguably the drive’s highlight.” Travelers needn’t go all the way to the Golden State, however, to quench their aesthetic wanderlust. Spectacular thoroughfares crisscross the U.S., from the sparse scrubland of New Mexico’s Turquoise Trail to the rocky Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachians. Even residents of New York City can plan an escape on Connecticut’s bucolic Merritt Parkway. Reporter’s Notebook: The Merritt Parkway, Behind The Wheel Of A Porsche In order to come up with our list of America’s most beautiful road trips, we polled three travel professionals: Kellie Pelletier of Kayak.com, Heather Hunter of the American Automobile Association and Schultz. We collected their nominations and included those that appeared on at least two of their lists. All 10 of our top trips are on AAA’s list of All-American Roads and National Scenic Byways. Cruisin’ USA–North, South, East, West The old-fashioned road trip looks better than ever as households cut back on extravagant vacations in the midst of the recession. According to a recent poll by the Associated Press, nearly one-third of Americans have canceled at least one trip this year due to financial concerns. Fortunately, there are cheap trips for travelers in every region. If you hail from the Midwest, look no farther than the North Shore Scenic Byway and its 150 miles of rocky coastline in Minnesota. “Leave behind the small-city charms of Duluth and head northward through sweet waterfront villages,” advises Schultz. “On your right [you'll find] the infinite horizon of Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake.” Residents of the Southeast shouldn’t miss the Blue Ridge Parkway. Start in Asheville, N.C., and drive through the mountains all the way to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. There you’ll catch sweeping views of the surrounding mountains. Pelletier recommends exploring the region’s myriad hiking trails and visiting nearby Monticello, former home of Thomas Jefferson. Out West, check out Beartooth Scenic Byway in Montana and Wyoming. But be warned: This dazzling drive is not for the faint of heart. The byway crests at 10,974 feet at the aptly named viewpoint Top of the World. “It’s one big breathtaking photo opportunity,” says Schultz. She recommends a pit-stop in the mountain-chic town of Red Lodge, where the Pollard Hotel makes for excellent dining, hospitality and atmosphere. Northeasterners can take the Merritt Parkway across most of Connecticut on the way to popular destinations like Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard. The Parkway wends through suburbs that are as woodsy as they are wealthy, laced with bridges built in the Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s. What’s more, this winding road is an ideal place to take a corner-hugging sports car–for intrepid journalists, a borrowed Porsche, perhaps. Just don’t expect to be the only one with a nice car. For mere mortals, if stunning sights aren’t enough to entice, consider the price. A gallon of gas now costs $2.45, down 38% from the national average of $3.95 a year ago, according to GasBuddy.com–making a trip on one of America’s best byways an unusual bargain. If the prospect of a cross-country trip is still too daunting, there’s always Kerouac; On the Road is a worthy approximation. In Depth: America’s Prettiest Road Trips Reporter’s Notebook: The Merritt Parkway, Behind The Wheel Of A Porsche Comments are turned off for this post.

Experts agree, these routes are the most beautiful in the U.S.

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http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/police-suspect-mans-wife-commit-suicide-murdered-part-38097136

http://web.archive.org/web/20160711093252id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/2020/video/police-suspect-mans-wife-commit-suicide-murdered-part-38097136

Police Suspect Man's Wife Didn't Commit Suicide, But Was Murdered: Part 2

Transcript for Police Suspect Man's Wife Didn't Commit Suicide, But Was Murdered: Part 2 hour old, and the small Evans Colorado police department is already dealing with its first violent death of the year. Do you see a lot of violent crimes in this area? We probably average one or less homicides a year. And unfortunately a number of suicides. They're not uncommon. Reporter: Evans police chief Rick Brandt, whose department responds. Sergeant Dan ranous shows me what the scene was like. She was laying on the north side of the bed. She was not breathing, but her throat muscles were moving, indicating she was trying to breathe, but the obvious issue was the trauma to her head. Reporter: What does the room look like from what you remember? I distinctly remember the blood spatter on this north wall. I also remember seeing the bullet hole in this east wall. Reporter: Is there anything on the ground? There are two pictures on the ground over here, and I distinctly recall the TV was playing the times square new year's eve celebration. Reporter: A woman shot with only her spouse in the room is always cause for suspicion. Tom, my name is Rita. I don't know if I ever met you before. Reporter: Tom Fallis has volunteered to come to the police station to answer questions from detective Rita Wolfe. He's the only witness to a gunshot wound situation. So we want to hear what he has to say. What's your wife's name? Ashley. I want to see her. I want her to be okay. Reporter: It's emotional. Tom is distraught. Still wearing the blood stained t-shirt. And at this moment, apparently still hoping Ashley will survive. As a video camera records it all. Reporter: Are you suspicious of him at that time? I would say he was under suspicion at that time. You want to pin somebody down to a story and then you want to keep going over the story to see if it changes. Reporter: Tom's story starts with the trauma before that new year's eve party. So she was kind of down today. Reporter: Ashley, devastated when she believes she's suffered a miscarriage. We just lost, could've lost -- or had our third miscarriage. Do you know how depressing that is for a woman? Reporter: Especially for Ashley, he says. All day she had been talking about it. Reporter: Knowing how unlikely another pregnancy would be since she had her tubes tied after their son Blake was born -- which Tom says was her mother Jenna's idea, just one source of lingering resentment between them. This was no Brady bunch, right? Fallis didn't get along with Ashley's family. There's just no two ways about it. Reporter: Still, he tells detective wolf Ashley was holding up okay most of the night. We danced to our song just an hour and a half before this. Reporter: But remember when Ashley's uncle asked her to smoke marijuana? That is when Tom says everything went south. She's wanting to do it because she's so down because she's just had either a false positive or a miscarriage. Reporter: That's when he admits he flew off the handle. Yelling at Ashley's family as he stomps upstairs to the bedroom. I turned around and made a comment, I was like -- she doesn't need to get High. She doesn't need to take your advice, just like she didn't need to Have her tubes tied. I walked into our room. That was the only negative thing that was said the whole night. Reporter: Now he says he goes into the walk-in closet to change his clothes. I was standing right here. Reporter: At one point he even sketches out where he was as Ashley enters. She's going, I'll Do what I want and I said fine do whatever you want. I was pissed. I probably said, do whatever the You want. Reporter: He says they're on opposite sides of the bed in this tiny room. Tom still lashing out at her from inside that closet. I did swear at her. I did tell her go Do whatever the You want. Reporter: Ashley is either kneeling or sitting on her side of that bed, Tom says. He can't really see her. But he can hear her cocking a gun. She has a 9-millimeter taurus that she keeps on the gun rack. I looked out and I was like what are you doing and before I even had a chance to finish my sentence or close the door. There was smoke. I heard it. And it was just smoke. Reporter: Tom says he tried to staunch the blood coming from his wife's head, while he called 911. So you're saying, no fighting at all. That she for some reason just takes a gun out and shoots herself for some unknown reason. I already told you what happened. That wound on the back of her head isn't where she could do it herself, Tom. It is not. . . . If you get upset like this -- You're accusing me of killing my wife. I'm not supposed to get upset? That doesn't make sense. Reporter: And that's when detective Wolfe reveals officers already have learned something incriminating from a next door neighbor. There was somebody awake. And they actually heard your argument and your conversation between you and your wife. Really? What conversation is that? She's telling you, get off of me. Get off of me. And you're saying, don't leave me. Don't leave me. I didn't say that! That's hard for me to believe. Reporter: He denies anything more than a verbal battle. But the more she presses, the more heated it gets. I didn't shoot my wife! Tell me what happened then. Tell me what happened. I just told you. Why do you have those scratches on your body? Reporter: She's referring to these. What look like red abrasions on Tom's chest. But he insists he shaved there as a surprise for Ashley. And any marks they see came from his own scratching. Because he says it's itchy. Okay. See this? This is a shaved chest. Do you know how bad this hurt and itches? When I'm sitting there, I do this all freaking day. I mean, really? I shaved my chest for the first time in my life today? And got scratches all over myself? Reporter: But the detective is skeptical. Those scratches, you need to explain. Reporter: And with the tension mounting. Tell me what's going on with my wife. Please. Reporter: The detective breaks the news. I have to let you know, your wife did not make it. Your wife did not make it. She was breathing. She was breathing when I was holding her. She was breathing. They told me she was breathing when she left the house. I didn't shoot my wife. I wasn't even by her. Reporter: Tom is sticking to his story. I didn't do this. Oh, my god. I'm telling you right now. Reporter: After about two hours the detective gives him a compassionate touch. And with still no admission of guilt, she has no reason to hold him. Tom is free to go. You let him go. Why? If nothing else, it didn't appear to be a solid or a clear homicide. And we knew we had a lot of work to do. Everybody that I talked to said, I'm at a loss for words. Reporter: Tom delivers a eulogy at the funeral five days later as Ashley is laid to rest. And so it seemed was the case, that is until two years later. Fox 31 Denver investigation is leading to a new police probe. Reporter: When something was unearthed on this newscast, actually someone no one ever expected. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

During questioning with Evans Police Det. Rita Wolfe, Tom Fallis denies shooting and killing his wife Ashley.

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http://www.9news.com.au/World/2016/07/11/07/21/Portugal-wins-Euro-2016-final-beating-France-1-0

http://web.archive.org/web/20160711120419id_/http://www.9news.com.au/World/2016/07/11/07/21/Portugal-wins-Euro-2016-final-beating-France-1-0

Portugal defeat France to win Euro 2016 Championship

Portugal has won the Euro 2016 final after substitute Eder scored in extra time. Portugal has claimed victory in the Euro 2016 final, beating France 1-0 in extra time, the goal scored by substitute Éder. The win marks the nation’s maiden international title. A devastated Cristiano Ronaldo was robbed of the chance to lead Portugal to victory after being stretchered off with a leg injury earlier in the match. Ronaldo was clearly hampered by the problem after he was clattered into by Dimitri Payet after eight minutes, but he managed to soldier on until the 17th minute. Yesterday the team’s manager, Fernando Santos, said he would like nothing more than for his team to win the Euro 2016 final, after living with criticism of his team's playing style through the tournament. "Let them continue saying the same thing, that Portugal won without deserving it," Santos, whose news conferences are littered with dry humour, told reporters. "I would go home really happy." Santos said he always believed Portugal would win the tournament and he was sticking to his guns, even though he recognised that France were favourites. "Now they are in the final and playing at home, France are the favourites. But it's one thing to be favourites and another to win and I believe that Portugal will win," he said. This is a breaking news article. More information will be added as it comes to hand. Download the 9NEWS Alerts app for iPhone or Android to get push notifications when a major story breaks near your location. © Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Portugal has claimed victory in the Euro 2016 final, beating France 1-0 in extra time, the goal scored by substitute Éder. 

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160712005533id_/http://nypost.com:80/2014/05/09/browns-take-hobos-word-on-manziel-over-100k-of-research/

Why did the Browns pick Johnny Football? A hobo told them to

They paid $100,000 for an advanced analysis of which quarterback to draft, then they took a homeless man’s advice instead. That’s the punchline for the Cleveland Browns, who dared to take electrifying, opinion-dividing quarterback Johnny Manziel with the 22nd overall pick in the NFL Draft Thursday night after a flurry of trades — and some very interesting avenues of research. During the ESPN broadcast, reporter Sal Paolantonio related a bizarre story he heard from Browns owner Jimmy Haslam. “Here is Cleveland, everywhere I go, people know me,” Haslam reportedly told ESPN, “and I was out to dinner recently and a homeless person was out on the street, looked up at me, and said, ‘Draft Manziel,’ just like that,” and that convinced him that the Cleveland Browns’ fans wanted Manziel. Mind you, Haslam is not officially involved in personnel decisions, but the encounter did seem to carry some weight. This folksy origin story comes on the heels of a report, also from ESPN, the Browns shelled out six figures for a study that used advanced analytics to evaluate quarterback prospects. The $100,000 conclusion: Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater, whom the Browns bypassed multiple times, including when they liberated Manziel from the green room. That project was commissioned by former team president Joe Banner, who has since left the team, putting general manager Ray Farmer in charge of the draft process.

They paid $100,000 for an advanced analysis of which quarterback to draft, then they took a homeless man’s advice instead. That’s the punchline for the Cleveland Browns, who dared to ta…

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http://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/trump-back-washington-face-wary-republicans/story

http://web.archive.org/web/20160712041027id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/amp/Politics/trump-back-washington-face-wary-republicans/story?id=40394625

Trump Goes Back to Washington to Face Wary Republicans

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video WATCH: This is Trump's second appearance on Capitol Hill in two months. Nearly two months after his first visit Capitol Hill to charm the GOP, Donald Trump is returning to Washington Thursday for meetings with rank-and-file members of Congress grappling with the potential down-ballot effects of his controversial presidential campaign. While Republican leaders spoke cautiously of party unity after huddling with Trump following his victory in the primaries, backlash to the real estate mogul's candidacy has complicated Republicans’ plans on Capitol Hill, and potentially endangered their House and Senate majorities. Since then, Trump has done little to reassure Republicans hoping for a more disciplined candidate. His attacks against a federal judge of Mexican heritage presiding over a Trump University lawsuit overshadowed House Republicans’ rollout of their election-year agenda, and insinuations that President Obama and the Orlando nightclub shooting left Republicans scratching their heads. At one point, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, stopped taking questions about Trump at his weekly news conferences, and recently said he “clearly needs to change” to win in November. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, who quietly endorsed Trump in an op-ed in his hometown newspaper, has repeatedly criticized the presumptive nominee in the month since. “I expect to cringe a lot between now and November,” Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-North Dakota, one of Trump’s early Hill supporters, said in an interview. “I didn’t endorse a perfect candidate.” Vulnerable Republicans, like Reps. Bob Dold, R-Illinois, and Mike Coffman, R-Colorado, are scrambling to distance themselves from the New York billionaire. The warier GOP members –- many of whom are skipping the GOP convention in two weeks -- aren’t sure they’ll meet with him Thursday. “I haven’t looked at my schedule yet. I’m very wrapped up at the moment,” said, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. Dold, the Illinois Republican from a purple Chicago-area district, won’t attend Thursday’s meeting. But even some skeptics, like Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, a conservative who endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz for president, want to hear what Trump has to say. “I’ve got too many questions,” he said wearily in an interview Wednesday. “I’m interested in what he’s like in a smaller, personal setting,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, another former Cruz supporter. “All I’ve seen of him is on television, on his show or giving a speech.” Even Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wisconsin, who vowed not to support Trump in December, plans on attending the meeting, a spokesperson confirmed. Trump’s boosters in Congress say he’s different behind closed doors. “I do think that it’s important for our members to take the opportunity to get to know Donald Trump. Every time they do, I think their appreciation for him goes up,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, a potential vice-presidential pick. For his part, Trump has repeatedly said he can win against Hillary Clinton without Republican help. “We need unity in the Republican Party,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina Wednesday. “I think I win without the unity, but we need unity in the Republican Party.”

Nearly two months after his first visit Capitol Hill to charm the GOP, Donald Trump is returning to Washington Thursday for meetings with rank-and-file members of Congress grappling with the potential down-ballot effects of his controversial presidential campaign. While Republican leaders spoke...

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http://web.archive.org/web/20160712173353id_/http://nypost.com:80/2012/06/27/youll-ryu-the-dinner/

You’ll Ryu the dinner

Scott Disick, famous only for his proximity to Kourtney Kardashian, is Ryu’s principal owner. (GG/FameFlynet Pictures) Reality bites — but it shouldn’t bore. Yet that seems to be the goal at Ryu, a mind-, ear- and palate-numbing “Japanese” joint opened by Kourtney Kardashian’s baby-daddy, Scott Disick. At a Meatpacking District spot launched by the nation’s most notorious televised sleazeball, you want something to make you hold your sides laughing — like a house-full of drunk Kardashians, or the sight of Disick vomiting into a garbage can, as he did recently in Atlantic City. But kiss your C-list sighting dreams goodbye. The only definite impression one night was a trifecta of horrible beverages — flat ginger ale, a “straight-up” whiskey sour served on the rocks and soapy-tasting sauvignon blanc we sent back. Sapporo in a can was fine. “It’s a young chicken,” the waitress promised of a roasted number that posed no immediate threat to The NoMad’s famous masterpiece dish. But Ryu is full of young chicks. A table of 10 giggly high school girls, some with suspiciously Kardashian-esque features, celebrated a birthday over soft drinks in a half-full house. The staff didn’t seem to fret over empty seats on a night when most every Meatpacking District spot was overflowing. Is Ryu a restaurant, or just an occasional stage set for the “Keeping Up” clowns? A few nights later, when it was busier, a fivesome of young pretties in the back-room Siberia bolted before ordering anything, presumably seeking a nearby place with more juice — say, Bill’s Bar & Burger. Ryu might have the neighborhood’s dullest design: a generic front room with big, round pleated booths and a rear zone hung with body-art images. Japanese characters on the wall remind you it’s Japanese. Or supposed to be. It’s hard to believe Jesse Camac, a VP of Zak Pelaccio’s scintillating Fatty Crabs and Fatty ’Cues, is somehow involved with Disick at Ryu. “I hope you’re not copying our recipes,” the waiter chuckled when he caught me using a camera. Rest assured! Except for a few plausible but overpriced entrees ($32 for a morsel of king salmon), most of the “izakaya”-style (casual boozing and noshing) menu would be at home at any saloon happy hour. “Tempura rock shrimp” were of the common popcorn variety; Wagyu beef sliders devoid of anything Asian; and skewered pork belly a chain of fat globules without a molecule of meat. A generous bowl of cold, thin soba noodles with lobster, radishes and a convincing ginger-soy vinaigrette was the only decent, reasonably priced dish — $18 and enough for two. You might go back for it, except it would mean enduring the worst soundtrack outside a cell where terror suspects are denied sleep. Why doesn’t my Shazam app recognize old hits by The Doors and lesser artists? Because they are not by those artists. Covers of KC & the Sunshine Band! Yes! Ryu’s friendly floor crew tries to make up for not having enough to do by applying more zeal to a given task than required. A blond bartender shook a tumbler furiously enough to kill a medium-size dog. Black-clad, arms-folded waiters stood guard like the guys who break up fights on “The Jerry Springer Show.” If only Ryu produced that kind of drama — or laughs.

Scott Disick, famous only for his proximity to Kourtney Kardashian, is Ryu’s principal owner. (GG/FameFlynet Pictures)Reality bites — but it shouldn’t bore. Yet that seems to be the goal at Ryu, a …

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http://nypost.com/2015/01/24/older-singles-are-getting-frisky-on-tinder-for-seniors/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160712174551id_/http://nypost.com:80/2015/01/24/older-singles-are-getting-frisky-on-tinder-for-seniors/

Older singles are getting frisky on ‘Tinder for seniors’

Forget worrying about being single at 30. Paula Paulette is going to be 80 in April — and she’s online dating. And she’s not just looking for someone to eat ice cream and play bingo with. “The last thing I want is a [platonic] male companion, unless he’s gay,” says the vivacious senior. “Do I want to have solo sex for the rest of my life? No. I would love to find another soulmate, or, at least, another man I have chemistry with.” The greatest joy for me was being in love with a man who loves you back. Paulette was widowed at 70 after a very happy marriage of nearly 50 years. Now she’s looking online for potential partners — and she’s got plenty of options. As the baby boomer population ages, more and more dating Web sites are focusing on retirees looking for love, and no wonder: About 30 percent of baby boomers are single. IAC, which owns sites like Match.com and Chemistry.com, started Ourtime.com in 2011 for 50-and-over singles looking to date. “We saw a fervor for something just for them,” says Joshua Meyers, CEO of People Media, the targeted- dating subsidiary of IAC. In April, Stitch.net, a Tinder-like dating app for the over-50 set, launched, and it’s set to debut a local New York section next month. Like Tinder, it shows users just one profile at a time, and it alerts them to profiles where a person they’ve liked has liked them back — so they’re less likely to reach out to someone and be met with silence. Stitch co-founder Marcie Rogo, 29, says she first became aware of the need for a site for seniors when she worked at an assisted living facility in 2010. “Seniors aren’t the elderly babies that people stereotype,” she explains. “They’re real people with real pride, and it’s very hard to go up to someone and say, ‘Hi, I’m Lucy. I like bocce ball. Will you play bocce with me?’ And if you’ve lost your spouse, it’s really hard to meet someone new.” Paulette finds Stitch especially appealing because it conducts extensive background checks — something she appreciates since she’s had bad experiences in the past with dishonest dudes online. Do I want to have solo sex for the rest of my life? No. “So many men on dating sites are married,” she says. Five years ago, she went out with a man she met on Match who acted quite strangely. “All he did was talk very inappropriately about his ex-girlfriend and said horrible things, like that she was stalking him,” she recalls. “Then [he] started in with sexual things! And I started looking at how I could leave.” Rogo explains verification means that anyone who signs up has to submit their first and last names and Social Security number. “We don’t want to let any scam artist through the site,” she says. She also says one important feature of Stitch is that it allows people to search for romantic or nonromantic companionship. The pressure many sites put on dating “can turn people off if they’re recently widowed,” Rogo notes. But Paulette is looking for more than just companionship. “I have known great joys in my life, children and grandchildren,” she says. “But the greatest joy for me was being in love with a man who loves you back.”

Forget worrying about being single at 30. Paula Paulette is going to be 80 in April — and she’s online dating. And she’s not just looking for someone to eat ice cream and play bingo with. “The last…

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/average-student-you-could-win-5000-scholarship/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160712211652id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/news/average-student-you-could-win-5000-scholarship/

Average student? You could win $5,000 scholarship

(MoneyWatch) Are you just an average student who feels utterly unqualified to win a college scholarship? Perhaps you are a "C" college student. Maybe you spend a lot of time playing video games in your dorm room. Like a lot of college students, you may skip more classes than you should. Maybe you are hung over right now. Take heart. Being an underachiever could help you win a $5,000 scholarship. CollegeHumor recently announced that it was awarding two $5,000 scholarships to the "most average" college students it could find. Here is CollegeHumor's explanation for its new scholarship contest: The contest asks applicants to upload photos and videos that "highlight your averageness." Click on this College Humor link to apply. And good luck, I guess. © 2013 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

Most college scholarships are awarded to stellar students, but CollegeHumor website is handing out prizes to less motivated ones

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http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/e-cigarettes-teen-use-growing/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160712212933id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/07/11/e-cigarettes-teen-use-growing/

Study Finds That E-Cigarettes Are Getting More Kids to Smoke

Cigarette smoking among American teens is on the decline. But adolescents who may have never tried cigarettes are now vaping with e-cigarettes, new research suggests. E-cigarettes’ popularity has soared in the past five years and ballooned into a $3.5 billion market. But while manufacturers claim that the products are healthier alternatives to traditional tobacco, public health officials have questioned their safety and pushed for regulations. Much of the concern has centered on younger Americans who may be drawn to the high-tech smoking devices which often come with flavored nicotine. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently found that an alarming 5.3% of middle school students and 16% of high school students reported using e-cigarettes in 2015—sharp rises from the figures reported at the beginning of the decade. Click here to subscribe to our new Brainstorm Health Daily Newsletter. The new study by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) tracked nearly 5,500 Southern California teens over the course of 20 years (1995-2014) and measured their smoking habits. In 2004, before vaping technology was around, 9% of 11th and 12th grade students were “current smokers,” meaning they’d smoked in the past 30 days. Fast-forward to 2014 and 13.7% of those students currently smoke cigarettes or e-cigarettes. That sharp spike in the combined smoking data, the researchers wrote, “suggests that e-cigarettes are not merely substituting for cigarettes and indicates that e-cigarette use is occurring in adolescents who would not otherwise have used tobacco products.” Trends like these, as well as research showing that some vaping products contain high amounts of carcinogens like formaldehyde and acetaldehye, have spurred federal officials to crack down on the industry. In May, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finalized new regulations treating e-cigarettes, hookah, and cigars like traditional cigarettes. That means that any e-cigarette manufacturer whose products weren’t already on the market by February 15, 2007 will have to seek marketing approval from the FDA. They’ll also have to put labels on the devices’ packaging warning about nicotine’s addictive properties, and states will be strictly prohibited from allowing e-cigarette sales to minors (a practice that was previously permitted in several places). But the rules have drawn sharp rebukes from the industry. Smaller e-cigarette manufacturers say that the types of studies required to pass the FDA’s regulatory muster will favor Big Tobacco companies like Imperial Tobacco and Reynolds American, which also make popular vaping brands like blu and VUSE. A final resolution over the rules, as The Hill notes, may be determined in the courts. A compendium of e-cigarette companies and trade organizations including Nicopure Labs, the American Vaping Association, and the Right to be Smoke-Free Coalition, among others, have recently filed complaints against the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) calling the regulations “unreasonable” since vaping products contain just nicotine and not tobacco.

Including ones who may have avoided tobacco products entirely.

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http://www.people.com/people/article/0%2C%2C20795290%2C00.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160713001507id_/http://www.people.com:80/people/article/0,,20795290,00.html

Russell Brand Cancels Shows Following Mother's Breast Cancer Diagnosis : People.com

Russell Brand and his mother Barbara 03/09/2014 AT 12:30 PM EDT has canceled two dates of his Messiah Complex tour following news of his mother Barbara's "Sorry to eff you around with gigs," . "My mum ain't well. Tix will be honoured or refunded." "My mother has currently got breast cancer," Brand said he posted Wednesday, adding that she's attending support groups. notes that Brand's mother survived uterine cancer when he was 8 years old. The comic is very close with his mother, who raised him alone after divorcing Brand's father when he was just 6 months old; he has mentioned her strength in

The comic promised to refund or reschedule the cancelled shows

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http://nypost.com/2016/03/15/an-audience-of-morons-riled-up-whoopi-goldberg/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160713113921id_/http://nypost.com:80/2016/03/15/an-audience-of-morons-riled-up-whoopi-goldberg/

An audience of morons riled up Whoopi Goldberg

I saw a play Monday night with one of the most annoying audiences ever. Technically, I can’t be sure it was among the dumbest — it just felt that way. Sitting next to those morons was mortifying. Let’s back up a bit. Each Monday, a different actor performs the solo “White Rabbit Red Rabbit.” The concept is that the actors are given the script for the first time when they step onstage. Assuming they haven’t Googled the show, they discover it along with the audience. Nassim Soleimanpour’s text is designed to accommodate any gender, race or age, which is how Nathan Lane could do the inaugural performance last week and I could see Whoopi Goldberg on Monday. Coming up are Patrick Wilson, Cynthia Nixon, Wayne Brady and Mike Birbiglia, among others. Goldberg was game and focused, but too many of her fans behaved like numbskulls. Starting with the lady near the front who took photos and videos the entire time, and shouted “Love you on ‘The View’!” as Goldberg was trying to find her bearings. The star stepped out of character and shot back: “Don’t yell any more s - - t because this is nerve-racking!” When a cellphone inevitably went off, Goldberg snapped that “there must have been some announcement before the show, and could you please turn off your phones?” She added profanity, so we knew she meant it. Things didn’t get any better with the audience participation — the planned one, as opposed to the impromptu one. Soleimanpour is Iranian, and he was in Tehran when he wrote “White Rabbit Red Rabbit.” The show is clearly influenced by living in an authoritarian regime. It’s playful and often funny, but there’s a serious undertone — the rabbits are part of a lengthy allegory about peer pressure, obedience and repression. But as my theatergoing companion put it, Soleimanpour could not have imagined the inane narcissism of an American audience. The one I saw the show with was less interested in what the play was trying to say than in taking pictures and videos. (Note to the Westside Theatre ushers: Shouldn’t you at least try to stop all that cellphone action? Do we need to bring in Patti LuPone?) At one point five volunteers went onstage to help enact the rabbit story. At the end of the show, one of them loudly yelled out: “Did anybody take pictures of the five of us? Can you please send it to me?” This young lady must have thought she was at an amusement park. A possible explanation for the crowd’s attitude was Goldberg’s presence — hey, Whoopi’s funny, right? She took her job seriously, but was defeated by the expectations placed on her by others. I’m ready to bet the mood will be more serious when Brian Dennehy hosts on March 28. But that doesn’t help those of us who endured smug idiocracy this week. “White Rabbit Red Rabbit” is at the Westside Theatre. Go to whiterabbitredrabbit.com for lineup and tickets ($29-$125).

I saw a play Monday night with one of the most annoying audiences ever. Technically, I can’t be sure it was among the dumbest — it just felt that way. Sitting next to those morons was mortifying. L…

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http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/11/international-luxury-realestate-cx_sc_1111home_ls.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160713134929id_/http://www.forbes.com:80/2005/11/11/international-luxury-realestate-cx_sc_1111home_ls.html

International Property Buying Guide

Charming Tuscan villas lure with views of lush olive groves and ancient hill towns. Beachfront retreats in the Caribbean call like modern sirens. While traveling abroad, who among us hasn’t been tempted to splurge on an exotic vacation home? But international real estate is more than an impulse buy–or, it should be if you’re smart. Along with the appeal of owning a second (or third, or fourth) home, there are pragmatic reasons for buying abroad. It can be a way to diversify an investment portfolio or provide rental income. Buy in Dubai, and you automatically receive a visa that permits you to do business there. Some international purchases made a decade ago would be considered very wise today. “It turns out investing in Europe has been a good idea, because the euro has increased in value to the dollar,” says Delores Conway, director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast at the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. Of course, there are risks as well: Currencies can slide, taking with them the value of overseas investments; political changes can affect ownership laws; and the buying process can be complex and confusing. So while it may seem like a lark, international buyers should put even more care and thought into purchasing internationally than at home. “You should make no assumptions whatsoever that the system is like your own,” says Ian Payne, vice president and managing director for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific for Cendant Mobility, a global relocation firm that is part of Cendant . “Everything from how it’s marketed to the tax system can be different.” There are some principles that should be followed when buying real estate anywhere. It is common sense to make sure that the person selling you your dream home–whether it’s in Miami or Mexico–has full title to the property. Check that the company behind that new development in Thailand or Toronto has a rock-solid reputation. Every country has different rules and conventions, which means prospective buyers need to take a number of issues into consideration, including ownership restrictions, tax ramifications, development regulations, currency issues and political climate–before they fall in love with a home. There are no statistics available on the number of people who buy real estate abroad. But U.K.-based estate agent Knight Frank says international markets are burgeoning. Overseas home ownership by British households rose by 95% between 1993 and 2003, according to a report by the company. Buyers have been encouraged by increasing affluence, as well as by a travel industry that has made the world easier than ever to explore. “I think it’s safe to say that more people in this country are looking overseas,” says Jim Gillespie, president and chief executive of Parsippany, N.J.-based Coldwell Banker Real Estate. “The world is smaller. There are more job opportunities overseas.” But before you jump into a deal, experts say it’s smart to get to know a place in more than a passing fashion. Gillespie advises that prospective buyers take several trips to an area and rent a house instead of staying in a resort. “Real estate is very local,” Conway agrees. “You require enormous local information about the investment–it is not like simply buying into a mutual fund of overseas companies.” Check whether you are legally able to own property as a foreign national. Until a few years ago, foreigners could not own in Dubai, says Tony Layson of Elegant Properties Realty, which is marketing new developments there. Mexico’s constitution bans foreigners from owning within 30 miles of the coastline or 60 miles of the U.S. border. So, until a dozen years ago, ownership was only permitted through a 28-year trust, says Chris Snell of Snell Real Estate in San Jose del Cabo. The regulations have been relaxed; though foreigners must still own through trusts, they now last for 50 years and can be extended indefinitely. Once you ascertain that you are willing–and able–to buy, you may discover that there are differences in how properties are marketed. “The multiple-listing system that you enjoy [in the U.S.] is not prevalent in Europe,” Payne says. “You have to go from real estate agent office to real estate agent office and put together your own schedule of viewing.” That’s especially true in Spain, where many properties are offered privately and require local contacts to track down, he says. Offers may also be made differently. In the U.K., when a buyer’s offer is accepted, there is no deposit required, Payne says–but also no contract. “Between that point and the point of any binding agreement, you have mortgage applications and inspections,” Payne says. “You would end up spending money before you even have a binding agreement.” When buying internationally, it’s important to consider currency risks as well as government controls. “If I invest my U.S. dollars in Italy, does the seller take U.S. dollars, or do I need to convert them to lira to pay him?” says George Damianos, of Damianos Sotheby’s International Realty in the Bahamas. “Once I sell my property, am I able to freely take out my money without being taxed by that country?” In the Bahamas, he explains, you can obtain a verification from the government that you have invested in the country. If you sell and want to wire $1 million back home, you can easily exchange the money and send the cash from a commercial bank. That may not be true everywhere, however. Tax and estate laws are another concern. Some countries have no taxes, other have very high taxes. Some levy taxes only on legal residents, others may tax foreigners at a higher rate. Will there be a huge capital gains hit if you sell for a profit? In some places, if a property owner dies, the government automatically divides the estate evenly among survivors, Payne points out. “Also check with your tax person here in the U.S.,” Gillespie says. “You can’t escape paying taxes just by buying a house in France and saying you’re living there.” And if concerns about historical restrictions (local laws may say that charming stone cottage can only be repaired using original materials), security (who will look after the place in the off-season?), transportation (Costa Rica is known for rutted and bone-jangling roads) and utilities (in some countries, a water connection isn’t part of the real estate deal, Conway says) aren’t exhausting enough, there are political issues to consider. Is a place safe? Is it stable? Does the government respect property rights? Conway knows people who have bought in Shanghai, hoping to see dramatic appreciation in their investments. But they acknowledge, she says, that their ownership cannot be taken for granted. She points out that–in addition to tax problems, historical restrictions, security concerns and possible devaluation–in some countries, the government can repossess your property. “It really is not for the faint of heart.” Wade through the challenges, and the rewards of owning property internationally can be endless. But choose the wrong place, and the hassles can be endless as well. See our list of international luxury properties. Comments are turned off for this post.

Drawn to Dubai? Turned on by Tuscany? What you need to know before buying your international dream house.

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http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/16/us/reagan-s-doctors-find-cancer-tumor-but-report-removal-leaves-hischances.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160713142550id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1985/07/16/us/reagan-s-doctors-find-cancer-tumor-but-report-removal-leaves-hischances.html?

REAGAN'S DOCTORS FIND CANCER IN TUMOR BUT REPORT REMOVAL LEAVES HISCHANCES EXCELLENT

WASHINGTON, July 15— Doctors announced today that the large tumor removed from President Reagan's abdomen was cancerous, but they said there was more than a 50 percent chance that he would live out his normal lifespan. ''There is a greater than 50 percent chance that the President has no cancer whatsoever, that there are no cancer cells in his body, and he is completely cured,'' said Dr. Steven Rosenberg, the chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute and a member of the surgical team that removed the malignancy from Mr. Reagan's large intestine on Saturday. At a news conference today at Bethesda Naval Medical Center with Dr. Dale W. Oller, the head of surgery there, Dr. Rosenberg described Mr. Reagan's chances of living a normal lifespan as ''excellent.'' He said: ''The majority of patients in exactly the President's situation would certainly survive five years and beyond.'' 'I'm Glad That's All Out' The doctors and Nancy Reagan told the President of the diagnosis in a five-minute meeting in his hospital suite in midafternoon. ''Well, I'm glad that's all out,'' Dr. Oller quoted Mr. Reagan as saying. Dr. Rosenberg said: ''The President was reading a book when we entered the room. He indicated that he had been waiting to hear the results. When he heard the results, the President indicated that he was glad there was no evidence of tumor spread and that was basically the substance of the discussion.'' Doctors told Mrs. Reagan of the pathology findings before they went to the President. Although Mrs. Reagan was described by White House aides as alarmed and under strain by her husband's major surgery, she continued with plans later in the afternoon to appear in Mr. Reagan's place at a White House reception. The announcement came two days after surgeons at Bethesda removed the polyp, or growth, about two inches in diameter, from Mr. Reagan's colon in a 2-hour, 53-minute operation. After the surgery, the team of civilian and military doctors said they turned up no immediate evidence that the tumor had become cancerous. The doctors made it clear, however, that definitive tests on the large polyp would not be completed until today, and tension built this afternoon at the hospital as well as at the White House as staff aides and reporters awaited the results. By the time the nationally televised news conference began, numerous offices at the White House had stopped functioning as staff members gathered around television sets. ''We've got a White House on hold,'' said one aide. Another official said that the mood in the White House was a mixture of gloom about the evidence of cancer and relief that the disease had apparently not spread. Meanwhile, Vice President Bush canceled a trip to Springield, Mo., St. Louis and Cincinnati on Tuesday and Wednesday to raise money for Republican candidates. Instead, Mr. Bush is scheduled to preside over a session of the National Security Council, meet the Senate Finance Committee in Mr. Reagan's absence and perform other unspecified duties, possibly even preside over cabinet meetings, White House aides said. Mr. Reagan is expected to remain in the hospital in suburban Maryland for five to eight more days, White House aides said. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, together with Dr. Oller and Dr. Rosenberg, appeared grim as they stepped to the stage of the third-floor auditorium in the sprawling hospital center this afternoon. After a brief introduction by Dr. Oller disclosing the findings, Dr. Rosenberg said: ''There are many forms of cancer,'' he added, and began explaining the specifics of Mr. Reagan's case. ''The President has a cancer confined to the wall of his colon, or bowel,'' Dr. Rosenberg said. ''It had not spread in that area outside of the bowel wall. All of the lymph nodes surrounding the colon had no evidence of tumor. There was no evidence of any tumor invading any blood vessels or nerves, and all of these were optimistic findings with respect to the future course of the disease.'' Dr. Rosenberg indicated that no further treatment with radiation or chemicals would be necessary ''at this time.'' But the 44-year-old doctor, who is chief of surgery at the Federal Government's leading cancer institution, said the doctors treating Mr. Reagan needed to ''gather all of the available information'' before making a firm decision. Dr. Rosenberg made it clear that Mr. Reagan, who is 74 years old, would have to have ''regular, methodic, periodic'' physical examinations in the future ''to be sure that no evidence of spread appears.'' Asked about Mr. Reagan's prospects of survival for five years, Dr. Rosenberg replied: ''It's certainly greater than 50 percent.'' At another point Dr. Rosenberg said: ''The cancer invaded into the muscle walls of the bowel. The majority of patients in exactly the President's situation would certainly survive five years and beyond.'' A White House official said that one of the doctors, during the five-minute meeting with Mr. Reagan, informed the President that his own father had faced similar surgery and a similar prognosis 12 years ago, and was still alive.

Doctors announced today that the large tumor removed from President Reagan's abdomen was cancerous, but they said there was more than a 50 percent chance that he would live out his normal lifespan. ''There is a greater than 50 percent chance that the President has no cancer whatsoever, that there are no cancer cells in his body, and he is completely cured,'' said Dr. Steven Rosenberg, the chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute and a member of the surgical team that removed the malignancy from Mr. Reagan's large intestine on Saturday.

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http://www.aol.com/article/2011/02/07/frontierville-peach-cobbler/19831614/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160713195258id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2011/02/07/frontierville-peach-cobbler/19831614/

FrontierVille Peach Cobbler Issues: Just a typo, sorry folks

Before you go, we thought you'd like these... The land expansion Goals have dropped in , but several players have reported issues to . More specifically, there seems to be a problem with the Goal titled "Reach an Agreement" within the . Players have reported that no matter how many Peach Cobblers they amass for the eight required, they're simply not enough to complete the Goal. 's bad, guys--the required item is actually eight and was entered in error when first placed into the game. That's cool, it's not as if we didn't spend all weekend collecting cobblers when we should have been grabbing pies. Granted, they both come from harvesting Peach Trees, but it's said that Pies are far more difficult to find than Cobblers. Isn't Cobbler good enough?

The land expansion Goals have dropped in FrontierVille, but several players have reported i ues to FrontierVille Info. More specifically, there seem

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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-releases-Treasure-Island-addresses-where-5719052.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714040344id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/SF-releases-Treasure-Island-addresses-where-5719052.php

Radiation levels at Treasure Island sites called no health threat

Photo: Michael Short, The Bay Citizen The San Francisco skyline viewed through a fence protecting one of Treasure Island's radioactive cleanup sites. The San Francisco skyline viewed through a fence protecting one of Treasure Island's radioactive cleanup sites. Based on the new report, the Navy must test other sites on the island and begin cleanup operations similar to this one. Radioactive signs are posted on the fence surrounding the clean up site of Building 223. Based on the new report, the Navy must test other sites on the island and begin cleanup operations similar to this one. Radioactive signs are posted on the fence surrounding the clean up site of Building A radiation cleanup site near the former location of a nuclear war training facility. A radiation cleanup site near the former location of a nuclear war training facility. Warning signs posted by The Shaw Group, a Navy cleanup contractor accused by state health officials of mishandling a radioactive cleanup. Warning signs posted by The Shaw Group, a Navy cleanup contractor accused by state health officials of mishandling a radioactive cleanup. Construction next to the Boys & Girls club, which is closed until school starts next week on Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed children to radioactive dust at a Boys & Girls club and at a child development center on the island. Construction next to the Boys & Girls club, which is closed until school starts next week on Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might The Boys & Girls club is closed until school starts next week on Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed children to radioactive dust at a Boys & Girls club and at a child development center on the island. The Boys & Girls club is closed until school starts next week on Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed The Duran family including dad Tony Duran (left) playing ball and his sons Seth Duran (red cap), 12 years old, Michael Duran (white shirt), 11 years , and Nathan Duran (right, hanging), 9 years old, while waiting at a bus stop on Gateway St. and 13th Ave, a block from the Boys & Girls club on Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The boys are part of the Boys & Girls club. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed children to radioactive dust at a Boys & Girls club and at a child development center on the island. The Duran family including dad Tony Duran (left) playing ball and his sons Seth Duran (red cap), 12 years old, Michael Duran (white shirt), 11 years , and Nathan Duran (right, hanging), 9 years old, while An overview of Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed children to radioactive dust at a Boys & Girls club and at a child development center on the island. An overview of Treasure Island, Calif., on Thursday, August 16, 2012. The health department alleged a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed children to radioactive dust at a Boys & Girls club Aerial view of Treasure Island. August 27, 1986. Aerial view of Treasure Island. August 27, 1986. Treasure Island is on the base closing list. Photo taken November 3, 1993. Treasure Island is on the base closing list. Photo taken November 3, 1993. Aerial view of Treasure Island Naval Station in the San Francisco Bay in this 1987 file photo. Pentagon sources reported in 1990 the closure of Treasure Island and two other San Francisco Bay area naval establishments. In background is the San Francisco skyline. Once the site of the 1939 Exposition, Treasure Island, at right, houses Navy personnel. Aerial view of Treasure Island Naval Station in the San Francisco Bay in this 1987 file photo. Pentagon sources reported in 1990 the closure of Treasure Island and two other San Francisco Bay area naval The USS Pandemonium, a mocked-up ship where sailors were trained in cleaning up radioactive contamination on Treasure Island. Dated September 1969. The USS Pandemonium, a mocked-up ship where sailors were trained in cleaning up radioactive contamination on Treasure Island. Dated September 1969. A decontamination exercise on the training ship Pandemonium on Treasure Island, circa 1954. A decontamination exercise on the training ship Pandemonium on Treasure Island, circa 1954. A good imitation of the atomic blast's mushroom cloud was created at 9 a. m. yesterday on Treasure Islands as the Navy set off a mock nuclear explosion for some 200 scientists attending the closing session of a symposium on medial problems of modern warfare. The make-believe atomic bomb was composed of 300 gallons of napalm, 300 pounds of TNT, and phosphorous and smoke grenades touched off by a blasting cap electrically detonated, it sent up a fireball 150 feet in diameter. Then this black could soared to 600 feet before turning in to a doughnut and dispersing. The dry-land ship at right is the USS Pandemonium. It put on a show too, as its crew of sailors set off the vessel's sprinkling system to demonstrate how to wash down the hull and superstructure after going through radioactive fallout. Photo taken October 18, 1957 A good imitation of the atomic blast's mushroom cloud was created at 9 a. m. yesterday on Treasure Islands as the Navy set off a mock nuclear explosion for some 200 scientists attending the closing session of a Treasure Island - drill team. Photo taken November 5, 1960. Treasure Island - drill team. Photo taken November 5, 1960. Admiral Toney reassigned to Hawaii, in a very large Pomp and Ceremony type exchange of command. About 1000 guests were in attendance. Photo taken 01/19/89 Admiral Toney reassigned to Hawaii, in a very large Pomp and Ceremony type exchange of command. About 1000 guests were in attendance. Photo taken 01/19/89 Treasure Island offers some of the more spectacular views and settings in the Bay Area. The base is being considered for closure. Photo taken March 7, 1993. Treasure Island offers some of the more spectacular views and settings in the Bay Area. The base is being considered for closure. Photo taken March 7, 1993. Radiation levels at Treasure Island sites called no health threat San Francisco officials this week released the addresses on Treasure Island where higher-than-normal radiation readings were detected underground in recent months. And they again sought to assure the public that the tests did not indicate there is a health threat. All three locations - an occupied home at 1240-D Northpoint Drive, a storage shed behind an occupied home at 1241-B Northpoint Drive and a vacant home at 1303-F Gateview Avenue - fell well below the threshold for concern set by the Navy and state health officials, said Treasure Island Development Authority development director Bob Beck. That threshold was 10 millirem of radiation per year - less than the EPA standard for requiring a cleanup, 15 millirem per year. The highest reading, showing potential exposure of 5.5 millirem a year, was found under the empty home, Beck said. The reading under the occupied unit came in at 2.8 millirem a year, and the reading under the storage shed was 1.7 millirem per year. The Navy undertook the extensive radiation scans after The Chronicle and other news media raised concerns about contamination on the island, where San Francisco began moving largely low-income residents in 1999. The Navy is in the process of cleaning up the former base and transferring ownership to the city, which is redeveloping the island. Beck said the Navy finished the most recent tests on Aug. 19, which focused on "the ground floors of the residences, garages and storage sheds in the residential neighborhood on Treasure Island." "The surveys complement earlier surveys of the open spaces and roadways around the residences to provide a complete picture of the residential area," he said in an e-mail. Marisa Lagos is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @mlagos

All three locations - an occupied home at 1240-D Northpoint Drive, a storage shed behind an occupied home at 1241-B Northpoint Drive and a vacant home at 1303-F Gateview Avenue - fell well below the threshold for concern set by the Navy and state health officials, said Treasure Island Development Authority development director Bob Beck. The Navy undertook the extensive radiation scans after The Chronicle and other news media raised concerns about contamination on the island, where San Francisco began moving largely low-income residents in 1999.

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http://abcnews.go.com/Business/12-towns-sale-pray-mont-auction-launches/story

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714094148id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/Business/12-towns-sale-pray-mont-auction-launches/story?id=16653510

12 Towns For Sale: Pray, Mont. Auction Launches

As home prices are slowly edging up in various parts of the country, the housing slump may be reaching its end, which may be good news for the owners of the town of Pray, Mont. The town is available for sale through Internet bidding and will have a live auction on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. mountain daylight time. The minimum starting bid is $100,000. Here are 12 towns that have been for sale: Located 22 miles from Livingston, Mont. and 30 miles from Yellowstone National Park, the town of Pray is on sale for $1.4 million. Sitting on five acres, the town is named after the congressman Charles M. Pray, who helped officially incorporate the town, which has been privately owned since it was founded in 1909. The current owner and mayor since 2007, Barbara Walker, is a professional photographer whose business has become more mobile, reported the Aspen Business Journal. Mason and Morse Ranch Company has the listing. Henry River Mill Village, N.C., is on sale for $1.4 million after being used as the set of the downtrodden community of District 12 in the film "The Hunger Games." Wade Shepherd, 83, is selling the 72-acre property, with 22 buildings. The mill burned down in 1977, but no matter to die-hard fans of the book by Suzanne Collins and the film, which topped the box office for three straight weeks. "Day and night, they're driving through, taking pictures, getting out and walking," Shepherd told the Associated Press about the film's fans. "I'm just bombarded with people." Shepherd said the home is available for auction through Hollywood Treasure, the Syfy channel show, until July 31. However, Shepherd said he is authorized to sell it on his own before then. He said the most recent interested party is based in New York. "If you have anyone with a briefcase of money, send them my way," Shepherd told ABC News. The village is about 70 miles east of Asheville and south of the town of Hildebran and Interstate 40. On sale for $2.5 million, the town of Toomsboro, Ga. is about halfway between Atlanta and Savannah. David Bumgardner, a developer in south Georgia, is trying to sell 28 properties in the town, which has 700 residents. Bumgardner purchased over 50 acres from preservationist Bill Lucado and through an auction about a decade ago, the Associated Press reported. About 119 miles southwest of Atlanta and 137 miles northeast of Savannah, Toomsboro may be ideal for a movie production company that needs a set, Lucado told the AP. Lucado said he is now working for Bumgardner to help sell the properties. Lucado calls it an "almost complete town from the early 19th century" in "amazing" condition. The town has an old opera house that seats 500 people, a barber shop, and a hotel with 18 bedrooms and baths built in the 1880s. Lucado said it is in "immaculate, A-1 condition," with over $1 million in restoration work. The town also has an old bank with brass teller cages that is "off the charts." The town also includes an operating grist mill, syrup mill, cotton warehouse, railroad station and about a dozen houses. The French village of Courbefy, 280 miles southwest of Paris, was up for auction in February for an asking price of $400,000, or 300,000 euro, but no one bid. But an American buyer bought the property for about $649,594, (520,000 euro), from the French Bank Credit Agricole. Ahae, a South Korean-born photographer based in New York, purchased the property in an auction on May 21, the Guardian reported. Ahae, who did not disclose his plans for the property, did not immediately return a request for comment. His photography exhibition opens at the Louvre Museum in Paris on Wednesday. Credit Agricole previously held the mortgage to this French hamlet after its owners, who had run a luxury hotel and restaurant, stopped making payments and abandoned it around 2008. The property has a tennis court, horse stable, more than a dozen buildings and a swimming pool. The village's 12th century chapel, however, is not for sale. Called "the nation's smallest town" at about 10 acres, Buford, Wyo. was auctioned on April 5 for $900,000. Don Sammons, Buford's only resident, sold the town through Williams and Williams, an auction company. Bidding for Buford, 28 miles west of Cheyenne and just north of the border with Colorado, began at $100,000. Included in the sale were the Buford Trading Post, which is a convenience store and gas station, U.S. post office boxes, a cellular tower with lease, five buildings and about 10 acres of land. Reported to be the second-oldest town in Wyoming, Buford was built in 1866 for workers building a railroad but the population, once 2,000, plummeted when the railroad bypassed the town, Williams and Williams reported. The Sammons family moved from Los Angeles to Buford in 1980 after Don Sammons bought the town's trading post in 1992, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reported. Set between Seattle and Spokane, the small mountain town of Monse, Wash., was on sale for $575,000 in 2003. The town had an old schoolhouse, seven houses, a general store and a post office. But even with views of the Okanogan River and several serious offers, it remained unsold for years until the town's owners split up the 60 acres of land it into parcels. Donna and Fritz Van Doren decided to sell the land when they moved out of Monse, according to the Associated Press. One family bought six acres of land in 2006 "for peace and quiet and to get out of the rat race." The 46 acres around Scenic, S.D., were on sale for two years with an asking price of $3 million until the price dropped to $799,000 in July 2011. The owner, rodeo legend Twila Merrill, had bought the land slowly over several decades but she and her family decided to sell because of her declining health. In August, the Iglesia ni Cristo church, established in the Philippines in 1914, bought the 12-acre town and surrounding land, but the group has not made its plans known. David Olsen, the Coldwell Banker real estate selling agent in Rapid City for Merrill, said there is someone from the church living in the town and making basic repairs. Though Scenic has had a relatively mild winter without much snow, it is still difficult to move dirt because the ground is frozen. "Come spring, we'll see a lot of activity," Olsen told ABC News. There's still a post office in the town, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service. No decision has been made if it will close; there is a moratorium on office closings until May 15. In January 2008, Chris Kortlander, owner of Garryowen, near the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, announced plans to sell the town and the Elizabeth Bacon Custer Manuscript Archive for $6.5 million. Garryowen comprised part of Sitting Bull's camp in 1876 when the Battle of the Little Bighorn began. Sioux and Cheyenne Indians defeated five companies of the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Custer. The property includes a trading post, museum, office complex, bed and breakfast, post office, gas station, restaurant and a 4,000-square-foot residence, according to the Associated Press. Kortlander has been in a protracted legal battle with the government which has raided his memorabilia for alleged dealings in fraudulent artifacts. No charges were filed and the government dropped its investigation in 2009. Founded in 1859, The Grove was a farming community until it became a ghost town after a highway was re-routed away from it in the 1930s because some residents wanted less traffic. An antique collector, Moody Anderson, bought the old buildings in 1972 and opened the Country Life Museum there. Anderson attracted tourists but failed to attract eBay bidders in 2008. Instead, he held a sale through the Burley Auction Group and a woman from San Jose, Calif., whose grandfather formerly owned the town's general store, bought it for $200,000, the San Jose Mercury News reported. It may not be an entire town, but the Orlando Sentinel reported in October 2008, that downtown Eustis, Fla., was on sale for $7.8 million on eBay in October 2008. The Lake Community Foundation listed the 11-acre property in the lakefront city. There were no serious offers. The foundation received the property in 2003 after the previous owner, a hospital, moved to a neighboring town. Soon, the collapse of the real estate market led to difficulties in developing the land. Virginia Barker, executive director of the charitable foundation, told ABC News four city blocks are still for sale, three of which cost around $1 million each. In June 2007, half of the ghost town of Rocky Bar, Idaho, sold for $250,000. The buyer was Michael Ciluaga, a construction company owner from Boise. He got 8.9 acres of land, a hotel, mine, wading pool, town jail plus timber and mineral rights, the Associated Press reported. Ciluaga told the AP he wants to restore the old buildings, which date back to the 19th century, with the help of preservationists. "I'm a third-generation Boisean," Ciluaga said. "When I read the story about it being for sale, I knew immediately that I wanted it." An unnamed buyer bought Palisade, Nev., in an auction for $150,000 in 2005. The 160-acre town was once a railroad connection for nearby mines and included a cemetery, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Located halfway between Reno and Salt Lake City, the town is 135 years old. The town emptied out after activity at the nearby mines ceased. The Chronicle said the biggest event that may have happened in the town was, according to local legend, the possible attempted assassination of President Herbert Hoover in 1932. The local Gazette paper reported that as Hoover was making his way to Palo Alto, Calif.: "On the way, three miles west of Palisade, Nevada, a watchman found 22 sticks of dynamite near the trestle the train would pass over a few minutes before Hoover's arrival. Two men skirmished with the watchman and fled, and the plot to kill the president was foiled."

The town of Pray, Mont. will be auctioned on Wednesday, with a minimum starting bid of $100,000.

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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Dyson-Corp-questioned-about-broken-rods-4393574.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714104444id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/Dyson-Corp-questioned-about-broken-rods-4393574.php

Dyson Corp. questioned about broken rods

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle The bike path that runs along the Southern edge of Eastern section of the new Bay Bridge in Oakland, Calif., on Friday Nov. 2, 2012. Plans are coming together for the access to the Bay Bridge bike path from the East Bay. However, the path won't go all the way to Yerba Buena/ Treasure Islands for at least a year because a chunk of the old bridge sits in the way. The bike path that runs along the Southern edge of Eastern section of the new Bay Bridge in Oakland, Calif., on Friday Nov. 2, 2012. Plans are coming together for the access to the Bay Bridge bike path from the The fractured anchor rods - one of eight clusters of rods - are on Pier E-2 of the eastern section of the new Bay Bridge. Thirty-two, or about one-third, of the rods have snapped. The fractured anchor rods - one of eight clusters of rods - are on Pier E-2 of the eastern section of the new Bay Bridge. Thirty-two, or about one-third, of the rods have snapped. Pier E-2 of the new eastern section of the Bay Bridge contains fractured anchor rods that are up to 24 feet long. Caltrans' investigation is focusing on the galvanization process. Pier E-2 of the new eastern section of the Bay Bridge contains fractured anchor rods that are up to 24 feet long. Caltrans' investigation is focusing on the galvanization process. Pier E-2 of the eastern section of the new bay Bridge which contains the fractured anchor rods, (at bottom center ) as CalTrans conducts a boat tour of the impacted areas of the bridge on Wednesday Mar. 27, 2013, in Oakland, Ca. Inspections earlier this month found that 30 large bolts on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge have fractured. Pier E-2 of the eastern section of the new bay Bridge which contains the fractured anchor rods, (at bottom center ) as CalTrans conducts a boat tour of the impacted areas of the bridge on Wednesday Mar. 27, Dyson Corp. questioned about broken rods Caltrans is investigating a small, family-run company in Ohio that makes giant fasteners for public-works and nuclear-power projects - and is also looking at two of the company's subcontractors - to determine why a large number of galvanized bolts failed on the Bay Bridge project. Thirty-two tension rods made at Dyson Corp.'s plant in Painesville, Ohio, snapped when workers on the new eastern span tightened them two weeks ago - a failure rate of about 1 in 3 bolts. Caltrans officials have called that rate far too high and say the steel in the bolts may have become contaminated during the galvanization process. The threaded steel rods are 2 1/2 inches around and as long as 24 feet. They are used to fasten four large steel boxes known as shear keys to the eastern span's decks and to a large concrete beam that spans two columns and supports the decks. The shear keys are supposed to keep the bridge stable in a large earthquake. But if too many of the bolts break, the shear keys could be useless. Bridge builders have so far tightened 96 of the 288 bolts installed on the eastern span, and the number of breakages shows that there was "clearly a quality-control failure," said Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. "Any kind of reasonable sample, in my opinion, should have caught that," he said. The failed bolts cannot be simply replaced because the bridge roadbed now rests atop the large concrete beam with only 5 feet of clearance - preventing access to allow new bolts to be installed. Caltrans is drawing up plans to use steel collars around the shear keys and clamp them down by attaching them to the concrete beam with new bolts. Officials have said the work is not likely to delay the scheduled opening of the eastern span to traffic the day after Labor Day, but they concede they have no firm timetable or cost of the repair work. In addition to Caltrans' quality-control efforts, attention has focused on Dyson Corp., which won the contract to make the bolts. Tony Anziano, Caltrans' toll-bridge program manager, said the agency was "in the process of evaluating" whether Dyson was to blame for the problem. "Most people know that when you buy something, you are supposed to get something that doesn't break - generally, that is true," Anziano said. "But this is a complex job, and with the specifications we have, it's not that simple." The company was saying little Thursday, referring questions to Caltrans and the eastern span's general contractor, a joint venture called American Bridge/Fluor. Representatives of that organization did not return calls seeking comment. "We are well aware with the situation and we are continuing to work with Caltrans and American Bridge on the issue," said Brian Rawson, chief executive officer of Dyson. "At this point, we need to resolve this issue." He said that, despite the conflict, the "partnership remains strong." The company was created when founder Joseph Dyson opened a forge shop in Cleveland in 1884 to make specialty parts for industry. Dyson Corp. now employs about 175 workers to fabricate and supply large bolts, screws, nuts and studs. Its products have been used in ships, nuclear plants and railroads as well as other bridges. Dyson's website boasts that the firm provided parts for the existing Bay Bridge, which opened in 1936. One issue at the heart of the Caltrans probe is who galvanized the bolts. Dyson's website says the company markets galvanized parts, but does not specify whether the firm does the work itself. Anziano said Dyson has two subcontractors that do galvanizing work for it, but that it was unclear which firm worked on the bolts that failed on the eastern span. He did not identify the companies. The steel bolts are galvanized by being dipped in hot, liquid zinc. Experts say the process is risky because hydrogen - from water or other contaminants - can migrate into the steel during the zinc immersion and become trapped. The trapped hydrogen bubbles make the steel weaker and subject to cracking, a phenomenon known to structural engineers for well over a century. The only way to remove the trapped hydrogen is to bake the component long enough to drive it out, said Jun Song, an assistant materials engineering professor at McGill University in Montreal. Deciding how long to heat the pieces is "quite difficult," he said. "You don't really know" when the hydrogen has been eliminated, he said. The temptation is not to overbake the metal, he said, because the process is expensive. Anziano said Caltrans inspectors apparently went to the galvanization plants as part of the agency's quality-control process. He said he had no reports of problems. Anziano said, however, that he did not know for certain whether the rods had been heat-treated after being galvanized. "We are going to go through the (manufacturing) process pretty methodically," he said. Once the bolts arrived at the eastern span construction site, Caltrans would have had no way to examine each one for problems, Anziano said. "There are no good tests with respect for hydrogen on rods of this size," he said. Heminger said one area being examined is whether the bolts were overtightened. "Usually these events involve a combination of failures," he said. Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected]

Caltrans is investigating a small, family-run company in Ohio that makes giant fasteners for public-works and nuclear-power projects - and is also looking at two of the company's subcontractors - to determine why a large number of galvanized bolts failed on the Bay Bridge project. Clear failure Bridge builders have so far tightened 96 of the 288 bolts installed on the eastern span, and the number of breakages shows that there was "clearly a quality-control failure," said Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The failed bolts cannot be simply replaced because the bridge roadbed now rests atop the large concrete beam with only 5 feet of clearance - preventing access to allow new bolts to be installed. Caltrans is drawing up plans to use steel collars around the shear keys and clamp them down by attaching them to the concrete beam with new bolts. Officials have said the work is not likely to delay the scheduled opening of the eastern span to traffic the day after Labor Day, but they concede they have no firm timetable or cost of the repair work. The company was created when founder Joseph Dyson opened a forge shop in Cleveland in 1884 to make specialty parts for industry. The trapped hydrogen bubbles make the steel weaker and subject to cracking, a phenomenon known to structural engineers for well over a century. 'Quite difficult' The only way to remove the trapped hydrogen is to bake the component long enough to drive it out, said Jun Song, an assistant materials engineering professor at McGill University in Montreal.

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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Murder-verdict-in-case-of-state-2694748.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714104454id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Murder-verdict-in-case-of-state-2694748.php

SAN FRANCISCO / Murder verdict in case of state nominee's slain son / 21-year-old faces life term for 2001 Potrero Hill robbery-shooting

Bruce McPherson, left, was embraced by his wife (sorry I couldn't get her name) just before the verdicts were announced. Clifton Terrell was convicted of murder one in the killing of Hunter McPherson, son of Secretary of State-designate Bruce McPherson Wednesday. The jury was unable to decide some robbery charges. Action in the hallway of Hall of Justice. Brant Ward 3/3/05 Bruce McPherson, left, was embraced by his wife (sorry I couldn't get her name) just before the verdicts were announced. Clifton Terrell was convicted of murder one in the killing of Hunter McPherson, son of Bruce McPherson, left, Hunter's girlfriend Alexa Savelle (check spelling, center, and Mrs. McPherson ran past the media following the verdicts. Clifton Terrell was convicted of murder one in the killing of Hunter McPherson, son of Secretary of State-designate Bruce McPherson Wednesday. The jury was unable to decide some robbery charges. Action in the hallway of Hall of Justice. Brant Ward 3/3/05 Bruce McPherson, left, Hunter's girlfriend Alexa Savelle (check spelling, center, and Mrs. McPherson ran past the media following the verdicts. Clifton Terrell was convicted of murder one in the killing of Friends and members of the family of Clifton Terrell hurried past the media after the verdicts were announced. Clifton Terrell was convicted of murder one in the killing of Hunter McPherson, son of Secretary of State-designate Bruce McPherson Wednesday. The jury was unable to decide some robbery charges. Action in the hallway of Hall of Justice. Brant Ward 3/3/05 Friends and members of the family of Clifton Terrell hurried past the media after the verdicts were announced. Clifton Terrell was convicted of murder one in the killing of Hunter McPherson, son of Secretary SAN FRANCISCO / Murder verdict in case of state nominee's slain son / 21-year-old faces life term for 2001 Potrero Hill robbery-shooting A San Francisco jury convicted a 21-year-old man of first-degree murder and robbery Wednesday in the 2001 slaying of Hunter McPherson, the son of a former state senator who has been nominated to become California's secretary of state. Clifton Terrell Jr. faces a maximum of life in prison without parole for killing 27-year-old McPherson. The jury also convicted him of trying to rob McPherson and of robbing McPherson's girlfriend, Alexa Savelle, as they were walking on a Potrero Hill street on Nov. 17, 2001. Terrell showed no emotion as the guilty verdict was read. One of his relatives fled the courtroom in tears. McPherson's father, Bruce McPherson, showed no reaction as he sat with family and friends. He and his wife comforted Savelle as she wept. The elder McPherson, a former GOP state senator from Santa Cruz, was nominated last month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to succeed scandal-plagued Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. McPherson, who attended nearly every day of the trial, left the court without commenting. But in a statement read outside court by prosecutor Harry Dorfman, the family said the verdict "doesn't mean closure for Hunter's family and numerous friends. The only thing that has been closed is Hunter's life more than three years ago. He was the most caring, loving, likable, humble, God-loving person one could ever meet. We remember him every hour of every day." The jury returned its verdict after more than three days of deliberations and nine days of testimony. In his closing argument, Dorfman had told the panel that Hunter McPherson "lost his life to Terrell's bullet for absolutely no good reason" in what amounted to a "city dweller's nightmare." Prosecutors said that Terrell and an acquaintance had committed a string of armed robberies across the city that night but that Terrell alone had robbed Hunter McPherson and his girlfriend, then shot McPherson for refusing to hand over his wallet. The couple were confronted on Mariposa Street as they walked home on Potrero Hill after spending an evening with friends. McPherson, who worked for BizDevEx, a firm that provides sales expertise for tech companies, had been mugged before and had given up his wallet. But that night, the gunman demanded his money three times -- and McPherson refused each time. Terrell was arrested soon after the shooting. In a phone call to his mother that homicide investigators secretly recorded, Terrell said that McPherson had tried to grab his gun and that it had gone off. The defense sought unsuccessfully to keep the recording from being played for the jury. Outside court Wednesday, Dorfman said the verdict was justice for a "cruel and pointless" crime. "This is as it should be," he said. Terrell's defense attorneys argued that he had been sleeping off an ecstasy binge when McPherson was shot. They said he had come to believe he committed the murder only after police lied to him and after his partner in the alleged robberies, Dwayne Reed, told him he had shot McPherson. Reed testified for the prosecution. Defense attorney Ira Barg depicted Reed as a manipulator who made the younger Terrell his dupe and got him to admit on the stand that he had lied to authorities several times about what had happened the night McPherson died. "He scammed not only Mr. Terrell, he scammed the police, the D.A. and this court," Barg told the jury. Reed, 25, agreed to a plea bargain that could enable him to walk free after the trial. Defense attorneys had no comment on the verdict. The jury convicted Terrell of murder, one count of attempted armed robbery and one count of armed robbery but acquitted him of two robberies that Reed said Terrell had been accused of committing earlier that night. The panel told Superior Court Judge John Stewart that it was hopelessly deadlocked on whether Terrell had taken part in another robbery of a couple in North Beach. Stewart ordered the panel to continue deliberations today. In their statement, the McPherson family thanked the jury and the prosecution. The verdict, the statement said, "means Clifton Terrell Jr. will not be able to rob and murder again. This is another very sad example of how drugs and guns don't mix."

SAN FRANCISCO / Murder verdict in case of state nominee's slain son / 21-year-old faces life term for 2001 Potrero Hill robbery-shooting A San Francisco jury convicted a 21-year-old man of first-degree murder and robbery Wednesday in the 2001 slaying of Hunter McPherson, the son of a former state senator who has been nominated to become California's secretary of state. [...] in a statement read outside court by prosecutor Harry Dorfman, the family said the verdict doesn't mean closure for Hunter's family and numerous friends. Prosecutors said that Terrell and an acquaintance had committed a string of armed robberies across the city that night but that Terrell alone had robbed Hunter McPherson and his girlfriend, then shot McPherson for refusing to hand over his wallet. The couple were confronted on Mariposa Street as they walked home on Potrero Hill after spending an evening with friends. The jury convicted Terrell of murder, one count of attempted armed robbery and one count of armed robbery but acquitted him of two robberies that Reed said Terrell had been accused of committing earlier that night.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/7-year-old-donates-money-in-piggy-bank-to-vandalized-mosque-texas/

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714151151id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/news/7-year-old-donates-money-in-piggy-bank-to-vandalized-mosque-texas/

7-year-old donates money in piggy bank to vandalized mosque

AUSTIN, Texas -- When a local mosque in Pflugerville, Texas, was vandalized with feces over the weekend, community members of all faiths and backgrounds stopped by the center to donate money for the cleanup and lay flowers at the doorstep. But one donation stood out among the rest. It came from 7-year-old Jack. Laura Swanson brought her son Jack to the Islamic Center to teach him a lesson about kindness and acceptance, reports CBS affiliate KEYE. "What happened in Paris is not what is happening in Pflugerville," Swanson told KEYE. "We should all be here supporting each other." Swanson and her son gathered what money they had, $20, to donate to the Islamic Center in hopes to help cleanup what vandals left behind. But if you ask Board Member at the Islamic Center in Pflugerville, Faisal Naeem, it means so much more than that. "It's $20 bucks but coming from Jack, collecting his pennies, it's worth 20 million bucks to me and to our community," he said. The Pflugerville Police Department is searching for the vandal or vandals responsible for vandalism at the Islamic Center of Pflugerville on Windermere Drive. Investigators say a member of the center arrived just before 6 a.m. Monday to find a torn apart Quran with a large amount of feces on it at the front entrance of the mosque. Vandalism at Pflugerville mosque in Texas. CBS affiliate KEYE via Pflugerville Police Department Police have classified this case as a hate crime. A spokesperson for the police department said there have not been any previous known threats to the center, KEYE reports. The last time anyone was at the Islamic Center was on Sunday night around 10:00 p.m. There was no physical damage to the facility, and the clean up costs were estimated to be approximately $150. "They are brothers and sisters in humanity and that is first and foremost," said one Christian woman who brought flowers and signs in support of the center. Several Muslims from different Mosques around Austin also showed up Monday night. "We wanted to express our support and say we are hear for you as your Muslim brothers and sisters," said a Muslim woman. Board Member at the Islamic Center in Pflugerville, Faisal Naeem Naeem tells KEYE that misconceptions about Muslims and Islam may be the root of the vandalism. "This is very unexpected and quite honestly, shocking," said Naeem. With vandalism also comes fear, Naeem explained. "Can something like Wisconsin, the Sikh temple thing, happen here? If you would have asked me this question yesterday I would have said, no, this is Austin," said Naeem. "But, that is no longer true." Naeem said the fear extends to his children -- born and raised in the United States -- who will struggle to understand the hatred they may face. "What do I tell them? That they are Americans, but not quite?" Naeem said. © 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mother brought her young son to a vandalized mosque in Texas to teach him a lesson about kindness and acceptance

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http://www.people.com/article/gretchen-carlson-speaks-out-first-time-roger-ailes-fox-news

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714154932id_/http://www.people.com/article/gretchen-carlson-speaks-out-first-time-roger-ailes-fox-news

Gretchen Carlson Speaks Out for the First Time : People.com

07/13/2016 AT 01:20 AM EDT has spoken publicly for the first time since filing her against Fox News Chairman and CEO Carlson, 50, opened up to the about how Ailes, 76, allegedly made sexual advances toward her and did not renew her contract with the network because she complained about "severe and pervasive sexual harassment" at Fox News. saying Carlson's "defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously." one week ago, Carlson revealed she "finally felt it was time" to speak up. "I just wanted to stand up for myself, first and foremost. And I wanted to stand up for other women who maybe faced similar circumstances," she said. As for her former workplace, Carlson, who was on Fox's morning show from 2006 to 2013, shared what it was like to be an employee of the network. "Everyone knew how powerful Roger Ailes was. I certainly felt intimidated by that," she explained, adding, "The culture of After Carlson's lawsuit was made public, came forward claiming that they had similar experiences with Ailes over multiple decades. Amid public backlash over Ailes' alleged sexual advances, many have come to Ailes' defense including . When asked about her former colleagues standing by Ailes, Carlson said, "They're still being paid by Fox." As for what she hopes to gain from filing the lawsuit, Carlson simply wants "to stand up for what happened to me and what was the truth." Barry Asen, the outside legal counsel for Ailes, released a statement to PEOPLE saying, "It has become obvious that Ms. Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue."

"I wanted to stand up for other women who maybe faced similar circumstances," Carlson told the New York Times

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http://www.people.com/article/mischa-barton-topless-instagram-photo-greece

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714160920id_/http://www.people.com/article/mischa-barton-topless-instagram-photo-greece

Mischa Barton Posts Topless Instagram Photo from Greece : People.com

07/13/2016 AT 10:35 AM EDT You can't top this view! opted to take in the picturesque view from a balcony in Greece sans shirt, posting a sultry shot of herself on In the shot, the former contestant perches on a railing during her Greek getaway as she wears only jeans and a thin veil of cigarette smoke. Blurring out her chest to adhere to the social media app's nudity policies, Barton captioned the photo, "Island vibes, #Mykonos #Censored." Other posts from her vacation have been less well-received: Barton, 30, recently faced after posting a now-deleted photo of herself in a bikini holding a wine glass memorializing , the man fatally shot by police in Baton Rogue last week. "I'm truly heart broken to watch videos like the #altonsterling execution. This may have been going on forever in the United States but thank god the pigs get caught on camera now," she wrote. "It's unthinkable and an embarrassment to America. The country I was brought up in. Somebody make change. We need gun control and unity." Barton deleted the bathing suit image and posted more appropriate ones, including a photo of Sterling's family using and a photo of a sign that read, "If you are not angry you are not paying attention." an apology: "I'm human I'm not perfect and I'm sorry if my Instagram post went out of context I didn't mean to offend anyone."

The model and actress shared an Instagram photo wearing only jeans

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http://www.people.com/article/lyle-jeffs-wanted-escaped-fugitive-allegedly

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714161607id_/http://www.people.com/article/lyle-jeffs-wanted-escaped-fugitive-allegedly

Lyle Jeffs Allegedly Used Olive Oil to Slip Out of Ankle Monitor, FBI Says

07/12/2016 AT 08:40 PM EDT Lyle Jeffs, the alleged leader of the polygamous FLDS Church, is wanted for fleeing from his home pending trial, PEOPLE confirms. Jeffs, who is the brother of former , was ordered to home confinement while awaiting trial in October for his alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar food stamp case, authorities tell PEOPLE. Authorities believe Jeffs used olive oil to slip out of his court ordered ankle monitor to flee from his home unnoticed. On June 18, neighbors spotted a dark colored Mustang enter the garage of Jeffs' Salt Lake City home. Twenty minutes later, the vehicle left the property, FBI spokesperson Sandra Yi Barker tells PEOPLE. "Federal probation officers had communication with him earlier that day," Barker says, however, authorities did not suspect anything until they were unable to make contact with Jeffs. On June 19, officers entered Jeffs home and realized he had escaped. "We believe [his escape] was premeditated and he had help," Barker says, adding Jeffs may be armed and dangerous. Barker would not comment on whether Jeffs' brother, Warren, who is A week before his disappearance, Jeffs was released from jail and ordered to home confinement after he was indicted and charged in February with conspiracy to commit Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to an FBI news release. Barker urges members of the public to report any information that could lead to Jeffs' arrest: "No tip is too small." "We would also like to make the public aware that Jeffs has possible hideout locations in the U.S. and out of the country, including Canada and Mexico, where there are known FLDS communities," Barker adds. "He also has access to various modes of transportation, including planes and boats." Anyone with information should contact their local FBI bureau.

Lyle Jeffs, leader of the FLDS, is missing pending a trial for charges of food-stamp fraud

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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Keep-drones-grounded-during-Fleet-Week-in-S-F-6552595.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714203732id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/Keep-drones-grounded-during-Fleet-Week-in-S-F-6552595.php

Keep drones grounded during Fleet Week in S.F., FAA warns

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Four members of the Blue Angels pass in front of Alcatraz Island as pilots run through a final rehearsal in the skies above San Francisco, Calif., on Friday October 5, 2012. Four members of the Blue Angels pass in front of Alcatraz Island as pilots run through a final rehearsal in the skies above San Francisco, Calif., on Friday October 5, 2012. Jason Lam, founder of AeriCam Hollywood, pilots a six propellor "hexicopter" in a demonstration flight at Sierra Point in Brisbane, Calif. on Tuesday, July 21, 2015. Officials are seeking authorization to disable drones that block the flight path of firefighting aircraft that make water drops above wild fires. Jason Lam, founder of AeriCam Hollywood, pilots a six propellor "hexicopter" in a demonstration flight at Sierra Point in Brisbane, Calif. on Tuesday, July 21, 2015. Officials are seeking authorization to The Blue Angels fly over Alcatraz Island during Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels fly over Alcatraz Island during Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week Super Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels fly over downtown during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels fly over downtown during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels fly over downtown during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels fly over downtown during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels perform over the San Francisco Bay during the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, October 7, 2012. The Blue Angels fly past the Golden Gate Bridge during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly past the Golden Gate Bridge during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly in their classic delta formation during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly in their classic delta formation during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels perform at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels perform at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly past the Golden Gate Bridge during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly past the Golden Gate Bridge during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly in formation over the bay during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels fly in formation over the bay during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Oracle aerobatics stunt plane performs in front of Alcatraz at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Oracle aerobatics stunt plane performs in front of Alcatraz at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. A United Airlines jumbojet flies towards the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. A United Airlines jumbojet flies towards the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. A UNited Airlines jumbojet flies low and slow over the bay during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. A UNited Airlines jumbojet flies low and slow over the bay during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Patriots Jet team performs during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Patriots Jet team performs during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Patriots Jet team performs during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Patriots Jet team performs during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. A stunt plane performs a loop during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. A stunt plane performs a loop during the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. War planes from three different eras fly in formation at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. War planes from three different eras fly in formation at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels pilots break off into six different directions after flying in formation at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Blue Angels pilots break off into six different directions after flying in formation at the Fleet Week air show before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Canadian Navy destroyer HMCS Algonquin sails past Alcatraz in the traditional parade of ships at the annual Fleet Week festivities before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The Canadian Navy destroyer HMCS Algonquin sails past Alcatraz in the traditional parade of ships at the annual Fleet Week festivities before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, The San Francisco fireboat Phoenix is the lead vessel in the traditional parade of ships at the annual Fleet Week festivities before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012. The San Francisco fireboat Phoenix is the lead vessel in the traditional parade of ships at the annual Fleet Week festivities before the America's Cup World Series in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Oct. 6,

Residents with a hobby of using the flying machines to take picturesque videos of Coit Tower, Golden Gate Park and the city skyline will face flight restrictions between Oct. 8 and Oct. 11, while aerial demonstrations take place, agency officials said. Aircraft operations both manned and unmanned aren’t allowed to fly within a five mile radius of the Sausalito Vortac airspace. For more detailed information on restriction times and longitude latitude coordinates, visit http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_5_9858.html.

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http://www.nbc.com/the-night-shift/credits/character/paul

http://web.archive.org/web/20160714222230id_/http://www.nbc.com:80/the-night-shift/credits/character/paul

Paul - NBC.com

Robert Bailey Jr. plays Paul on NBC's medical drama "The Night Shift." Still learning the ropes, Paul tries a little too hard to fit in and, although he excelled in medical school, he is still adjusting to the rigors of life as a surgical resident. Born in Minneapolis, Bailey was just three years old when Family Circle magazine came to his school looking for children for an advertising campaign. Bailey landed the job out of hundreds of others and by age six, he knew he wanted to be an actor. Bailey's film credits include M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening," starring Mark Wahlberg; "Coraline," with Dakota Fanning; "To Save a Life;" "Dragonfly," starring Kevin Costner and Kathy Bates; and "Mission to Mars." Bailey played the lead role in Hallmark Hall of Fame's "Little John," and has enjoyed starring roles in the TV documentaries "Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Diff'rent Strokes" and VH1's "Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story." On television, Bailey had recurring roles on "The Parent 'Hood," "Diagnosis Murder" and "Becker," the latter of which garnered him a Young Artist Award. Bailey was also a series regular on "Wanda at Large" and had guest-starring roles on "E.R.," "The Practice," "Touched by an Angel," "CSI: Miami," and "Memphis Beat."

Meet Paul from The Night Shift on NBC.com.

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http://www.people.com/article/alton-sterling-family-coping-shooting-death

http://web.archive.org/web/20160715001639id_/http://www.people.com/article/alton-sterling-family-coping-shooting-death

Family Speaks Out About How They Are Coping : People.com

Veda Washington, Alton Sterling's aunt is comforted by friends on July 6, 2016, as the protest continue in front of Triple S store on N. Foster in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's been nine days since police Nine long days, Sterling's aunt, , tells PEOPLE in an emotional interview. "That's why I lost my voice," she says. "I've been screaming since they murdered my nephew." She adds: "Not all police officers are murderers, not all of them are murderers and I know they're not. But I know for sure – I know for sure – that these two police officers are murderers, and I'm gonna get some justice." Authorities have said Sterling was fatally shot early July 5 after officers responded to a 911 call about a man matching Sterling's description who had allegedly been brandishing a weapon at a convenience store. Video of his shooting death, showing officers Howie Lake II and Blane Salamoni pinning Sterling to the ground in the parking lot before firing on him, circulated widely in the immediate aftermath, sparking widespread protests. The officers said they fired on Sterling "to stop the threat" because they allegedly saw him attempting to reach for a gun in his pants, according to an affidavit for a search warrant . A gun was retrieved from Sterling's pocket after the shooting, an eyewitness Sterling's death. Officials have said only one officer fired on Sterling, but have not specified which one. Neither Lake nor Salamoni, who are both on leave, has spoken publicly. PEOPLE has not been able to reach them for comment. "The night Alton died, I felt like a part of me was ripped out of my belly," Washington tells PEOPLE. She says she has spent hour after hour, day after day, out in the community protesting his death. She says she returns to her home only briefly, to be by herself and reflect with God. "I have to stand back and let God do this," she says. But she adds: "While I'm standing back, I'm going to stand back on a corner with a sign and my [hand] raised high: 'No justice, no peace.' " Washington says her family is standing with her, including Alton's other aunts and uncles. "The media is trying to say that our family is broken," she says. "We're not broken, we're not broken. We're hurting and we're mourning." this week that Alton was a good father. "I really want everyone to know, everyone nationwide, everyone in this world, to know that Alton Sterling was a good man," he said. "No matter what anyone else has to say about him, truly in my heart, I know he was a good dad." Alton's younger sister, Jade Edwards, told PEOPLE last week that he was a joyful father to his five kids – always playing with them, indulging them, and making them laugh. "That's what he did on his 'him time.' He took time out with his family," she said. for carnal knowledge of a juvenile. But Edwards said Alton should not be judged on his past. Washington declined to comment on the allegation that Alton was reaching for a weapon when he was killed, but she reiterated her desire that Lake and Salamoni be charged in his death. She says she has felt compelled to speak out, to crack any shell of silence around Alton's death. "My voice will be heard, yes sir, my voice will be heard," she says. "I'm not going to stop."

In an emotional interview this week, aunt Veda Washington spoke to PEOPLE and said the family still seeks justice

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http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/10/new-bigfoot-evidence-screened-as-expert-claims-proof-of-existence

http://web.archive.org/web/20160715013802id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/blogs/technology/2013/10/new-bigfoot-evidence-screened-as-expert-claims-proof-of-existence

New Bigfoot Evidence Screened as Experts Claim Proof of Existence

Bigfoot is real, and now at least one scientist claims there is proof. A group of Sasquatch researchers who have been collecting over 100 pieces of evidence over the past five years screened "never before seen HD video" of the alleged creature at a news conference in Dallas on Tuesday. The footage, which came from a similar effort dubbed The Erickson Project, led by Adrian Erickson, included what the group said was a sasquatch moving through wooded areas in Kentucky. Dr. Melba Ketchum, who has led the group of researchers called the Sasquatch Genome Project, has been working on a $500,000 analysis of DNA samples from an unknown hominin species. Ketchum calls the project "a serious study" that concludes the legendary Sasquatch exists in North America and is a human relative that arose approximately 13,000 years ago. "They're a type of people, they're a human-hybrid, we believe. And all of the DNA evidence points to that. And they can elude us, so if you get [footage] at all, it can be fleeting," Ketchum told ABC affiliate WFAA. Ketchum, who was initially a skeptic, says she implemented strict protocols as DNA was extracted from the collected samples. "We soon discovered that certain hair samples - which we would later identify as purported Sasquatch samples - had unique morphology distinguishing them from typical human and animal samples," Ketchum said in February of the research. "Those hair samples that could not be identified as known animal or human were subsequently screened using DNA testing, beginning with sequencing of mitochondrial DNA followed by sequencing nuclear DNA to determine where these individuals fit in the 'tree of life,'" she said. In total, 111 specimens of purported Sasquatch hair, blood, skin, and other tissue types were analyzed for the Sasquatch Genome Project's study. The samples were submitted from 34 different hominin research sites in 14 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. At Tuesday's press conference, Dennis Pfoul, the group's project manager, showed footage of footprints of what he believes belongs to a Sasquatch in the snow in Colorado. "We've all had experiences that have changed our lives, I mean, literally shook the foundation of what we believe in," Pfoul said at the news conference. Funding for the Sasquatch Genome Project comes from Erikson and entrepreneur Wally Hersom, according to Ketchum. The Erikson Project has in the past teased footage of supposed Sasquatch sightings, notable in a November 2012 trailer for "Sasquatch: The Quest." Watch the trailer here. Todd R. Disotell, a professor at the Department of Anthropology at New York University, told ABCNews.com that Ketchum's research is nonsense. "It's just a joke," he said. "She is a laughing stock of people that are of a community that are already kind of wacko." "This was not reported in any scientific way whatsoever. It's complete junk science, and then she misinterprets it. She hasn't published in peer-reviewed papers on this stuff. I don't know how this got put together," he said. Disotell says that he has disproven samples from being what they're claimed to be many times, including debunking a yeti, a chupacabra, and a sasquatch eight times, including once on ScyFy's "Joe Rogan Questions Everything." "You can't prove something doesn't exist," he said. "You can prove that every sample you're brought isn't what they're claiming, But you can't disprove this. It will go on forever. We'll always have it."

'Never before seen HD video' was screened by the Sasquatch Genome Project.

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http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160711-five-surprising-uses-of-poo

http://web.archive.org/web/20160715020606id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/earth/story/20160711-five-surprising-uses-of-poo

Five surprising uses of poo

For many, it's a subject and object to be avoided. We're talking poo. Faeces, excrement, or any of the euphemisms used to describe a substance that, in reality, is fundamentally important to life. But rather than avoid it, BBC Earth can reveal how astonishingly versatile it really is. Here's five surprising and important uses of poo. Scientists have created a museum of poop Yup – it’s true. Scientists at the Isle of Wight Zoo in the UK have erected a poo shrine, allowing zoo-goers to get up close and personal with 20 individually encapsulated stools. The poos come from various animals: there are samples from the zoo’s lions, as well as from meerkats, skunks – there’s even human baby poo. “They all vary in size and shape and texture and detail – it continues to be an extraordinary unfolding of information,” says the museum’s curator Nigel George. While none of the team members are scatologists, George says even a layperson can tell a lot about an animal by examining a sample of its faeces. Poo continues to be an extraordinary unfolding of information They show what animals are eating – crow poo, for instance, generally contains quite a lot of bones or beetle wing cases in it. “The carnivore poos tend to be a lot smellier than the herbivore ones,” he adds. One herring gull bird sample had remnants of plastic in it, showing how there is now a human impact on animal poo. With an average poo containing about 75% water, the team have learnt by trial and error how to encapsulate the turds to “make them less smelly and safe for the public to look at”. To do this they spent a year inventing a poo-drying machine. “It’s simple but it does the job,” says George. He describes the machine as a long pipe with ‘poo hammocks’ that go into a poo dryer. Depending on the size of the faeces it will stay in the dryer for anything from a day to a couple of weeks. It’s then covered in resin and encapsulated, with vacuum chambers used to remove the air bubbles. The end result looks a little like a crystal ball. Except it has a poo in the centre. “When you see them on their little podiums, I don’t think anyone has any idea how much effort has gone into making it,” says George. The end result looks a little like a crystal ball. Except it has a poo in the centre He says the public’s reaction has taken them by surprise: “What we’ve noticed is that people’s initial reactions aren’t what they think they [would] have. The disgust instantly evaporates and people are there with their noses pressed against the samples, wanting to see what’s inside.” George says the concept has gone global since the museum opened in March. “Clearly everyone wants to talk about poo.” Whale poop makes the world’s nutrients go round While most marine animals eat close to the water’s surface and poo in the deeper waters, whales do the opposite. It’s this, Joe Roman says, that makes all the difference. “When whales come up to the surface, right before their last dive, they do a big dump,” says Roman, a biologist at the University of Vermont, US. This faecal plume, as it’s known, is rich in nutrients, depositing vast quantities of nitrogen, iron and phosphorus at the water’s surface. When whales come up to the surface, right before their last dive, they do a big dump “So they can fertilise the ocean,” says Roman. “[They] bring the nutrients back to the surface.” The effect is known as the whale pump – and it’s something that Roman has spent the past 10 years studying. Once the nutrients are at the water’s surface, fish such as salmon can consume them. These fish are then in turn eaten by seabirds who transport the nutrients from the sea to their breeding colonies onshore, where they are subsequently eaten by land animals such as bears. In this sense, Roman says “whales play a part in bringing [the world’s nutrients] from the bottom of the ecosystem to land”. He and his colleagues have even tracked how nutrient movement around the world has evolved through Earth’s long history. Until about 60 million years ago, there were no whales. It was around that time that one group of land mammals began dipping their toes into rivers, eventually becoming fully aquatic and colonising the ocean as whales and dolphins. The whales started feeding on fish and crustaceans and so evolved the ability to break down chitin – a component of the hard shell or exoskeleton that surrounds some shellfish. “Most mammals can’t break this down. It’s meant that the microbial community of whales is completely different from what we realised,” he says. The makeup of whale faeces depends a lot on the individual whale responsible, and its diet, says Roman. If the whale feeds on krill, its poo tends to be in the form of red or pink logs about the size of a fist. But if they’re feeding on fish, it’s diffuse and a dark green, about the size of a research vessel, he says. “It’s an immediate injection of nutrients. Both have the same impact but in different ways.” Some animals eat poo – and despite this, they can be surprisingly clever While most of us think of dung as an unwanted waste product that’s evacuated from the body, for some animals it’s a precious resource worth consuming. “Dung feeding animals are living on the last bit of nutrients that the original eater couldn’t get out of the food,” says Marcus Byrne of Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa. “It’s really the knife edge.” Byrne first began studying poo-eating animals – which include dung beetles, fly larvae maggots and even the delicate butterfly – in Australia in the 1980s. Dung feeding animals are living on the last bit of nutrients that the original eater couldn’t get out of the food “There were already 300 [species of] dung beetle in Australia but they were adapted to eating roo poo and not cow poo,” he says. Cow poo is 80% water and comes out in large, sloppy dollops, whereas kangaroo poo is generally more like little, firm pellets. “Australian dung beetles weren’t adapted to this different dung type,” he says – so it made sense to bring in beetles that had evolved to handle cowpats to deal with the dung produced on Australia’s cattle ranches. It was a very important biocontrol programme that went for some 20 years, he says. Despite having a brain the size of a grain of rice, dung beetles have some pretty impressive talents, says Byrne, They mould the poo they harvest into spherical balls and then roll it away from the competition. He says the way they procreate and fight over mates is remarkably developed given their small size. Males advertise their fitness through massive horns on their heads, he says. “They’re tiny animals but they fight for females like they’re antelope, deer or caribou.” There’s this stupid little animal that’s basically looking at the edge of our galaxy The small males of the species have also evolved to have larger testes than the bigger beetles. Apart from being sexual stallions and impressive poo-ball rollers, what really sets the dung beetles apart is their navigation skills. “They look at the sky and use signals to orientate and navigate themselves,” says Byrne. While we humans are map navigators, the beetles can perceive things we can’t see such as polarised light, colour gradient and intensity gradient. Byrne showed that one species even uses the Milky Way as a celestial compass to orientate itself, allowing the beetles to shift their poo balls by night. “It’s romantic and impressive. There’s this stupid little animal that’s basically looking at the edge of our galaxy,” he says. Ancient horse poo might explain ancient history For those who don’t know their ancient history (ahem, this author), Hannibal was the leader of the North African Carthaginian army during a war with Rome, which lasted from 218 to 201BC. Hannibal is generally considered one of the greatest military commanders in history, and archaeologists have painstakingly attempted to piece together his movements during this 16-year conflict. One part though – where Hannibal crossed the Alps with his army and 15,000 horses (and several war elephants) – has remained an enigma. Some have suggested this crossing from modern-day France into Italy was at a pass called the Col de Traversette, 3000m above sea level. If you’ve got 15,000 to 20,000 horses in the one place for two days, you’re going to have some sort of residue “There was a lot of circumstantial evidence that this was the route but no one has ever come up with something that’s scientific evidence in that it can be tested,” says Chris Allen, an environmental microbiologist at Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. The mystery has been debated for the past two millennia by historians, statesmen, academics and even by Napoleon. It might soon be solved thanks to a whole heap of ancient horse droppings. “If you’ve got 15,000 to 20,000 horses in the one place for two days, you know you’re going to have some sort of residue,” says Allen, who has been labelled a ‘dung boffin’ by his local press. Partnering with archaeologists, Allen and his team found a hole the size of a football pitch not far from the Col de Traversette. Using genetic analysis and environmental chemistry, the team managed to unearth a mass deposition of animal faeces. They took soil samples at 5cm intervals to a depth of 70cm, which took them through soil horizons that would have formed 2,200 years ago during Hannibal’s life. “This churned up layer shows something very physical and distinct happened about 2,180 years ago,” he says. “It suddenly becomes very physically disturbed.” The disturbed layer was rich in ancient horse dung, which the team could carbon date to about 200BC – very close to 218BC, which is when Hannibal is thought to have crossed the Alps. The soil sample was also really high in Clostridia bacteria, a microbe commonly found in the stools of horses. “Twelve percent of soil samples had this Clostridia and its bang on the dates that it’s expected. There is a six-fold increase at the correct date,” says Allen, equating the findings to a ‘genetic time capsule’. 2,200 years ago a very large number of mammals went through this place and they left something behind These observations, along with a number of others, create a “fairly convincing story that 2,200 years ago a very large number of mammals went through this place and they left something behind”. So far faecal matter has not featured much in archaeology, says Allen. If more archaeologists team up with dung boffins, who knows what they might discover… Poo-sniffing dogs can save endangered animals From the old bloodhound chasing the criminal, to airport sniffer dogs – pooches have shown themselves to be extremely good at smelling out most things. “You couldn’t build a sniffing machine as good as dogs,” says Robert John Young, a wildlife biologist at the University of Salford, UK. And even if you could, “it won’t be able to run around a complex 3D environment like dogs can very quickly. Plus they’re cheap and obedient. It’s these attributes that mean some poor pups are being trained to chase the smell of poo. It’s helping conservationists track down turds in the wild, so they can know where the animals living. It also helps them learn what the animals are eating. You couldn’t build a sniffing machine as good as dogs “It’s not the dog’s breed that’s important but their disposition,” says Samantha Bremner-Harrison from Nottingham Trent University, UK. Bremner-Harrison says pound dogs are often best as they’re high energy and very responsive to rewards. She has worked with breeders in California, training the dogs to sniff out the stools. She’s now starting up a similar centre in Nottingham. “The big issue with wildlife is often we want to find faeces because from faeces we can get lots of biological information,” says Young – who keeps poo samples from Brazilian monkeys in his fridge. When Young began his career 25 years ago, students’ sifted poo under microscopes to find out what animals had been eating. From faeces we can get lots of biological information “Now with the new tests and online genetic tools we can get so much more out of it.” Measuring hormone levels in poo is an effective way to assess an animal’s stress levels (for example, to see how stressed they are by ecotourism) and its sex hormones (to work out when females are ovulating). This is being done to boost numbers of the Northern Muriqui Monkey - one of the most endangered primates in South America, says Young. Scientists can also use the stool samples to sequence the animal’s DNA. By smearing the poo on a special form of filter paper used in DNA analysis, we can see if two groups of gorillas separated by a mountain range are genetically connected, says Young. Amongst promiscuous species, we can see who’s fathering the offspring and what genes individuals have. “Give me a bit of a monkey poo and I can tell you if a monkey is colour-blind or not,” says Young. There are a whole host of ways that people have been using faeces to manipulate behaviour to benefit conservation. For example, ecologists from San Diego Zoo in the US wanted to translocate black rhinoceros in South Africa to areas of lower poaching. Making those sorts of moves is difficult though: rhinos are very territorial and so introducing new individuals into another rhino’s territory can result in attacks. Give me a bit of a monkey poo and I can tell you if a monkey is colour-blind or not With the knowledge that rhinos mark their territories with faeces, conservationists can lay the ground for new arrivals. They can take stool samples from the rhinos to be introduced and use them to artificially mark out a territory in the new habitat. Then, when the rhinos are actually introduced to the area a few weeks later, the local rhinos have already become familiar with them. “Then a few weeks later, the rhinos were like – oh, that’s Fred, we know him,” says Young. Poo is, obviously, a waste product. But for science – and many animals – faeces are anything but useless. That’s something to bear in mind the next time you flush the toilet. Join over five million BBC Earth fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

Faeces are astonishingly versatile, helping to reveal human history and conserve endangered species

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Ted Cruz auditions for "The Simpsons"

Apparently, Senator Ted Cruz is a fan of “The Simpsons”. The Republican presidential hopeful took some time off from his campaign to show off his impersonation skills of various characters on the hit TV show. The video, produced by Buzzfeed, comes in the wake of the news that longtime voice talent Harry Shearer is leaving the show. Cruz enthusiastically stepped up to the plate to audition for his replacement. Watch:

What happens when Senator Ted Cruz auditions for "The Simpsons"?

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In Pictures: The 10 Most Expensive Speeches

The Learning Annex, 2006 And 2007 The Donald earned a staggering $1.5 million per speech at The Learning Annex’s “real estate wealth expos” in 2006 and 2007. Trump appeared at 17 seminars and collected this fee for each one. Trump was contracted to speak for an hour at each appearance, but “he usually goes a couple hours” if you include the time he spends fielding questions from the audience, according to Learning Annex founder and President Bill Zanker. Comments are turned off for this post.

Our list focuses primarily on speakers whose fees have been made public through financial disclosure forms and press reports.

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Chelsea Manning Starts Tweeting from Prison

Chelsea Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence in a Kansas military prison for leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks, appears to be on Twitter. A Twitter handle with her name sent a series of tweets beginning mid-day Friday that called for an online conversation. By Friday evening, the account had more than 18,000 followers. Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, was sentenced to jail in 2013 for passing hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to Wikileaks. Since being jailed, the soldier has transitioned to female. In February, she was approved for hormone therapy. She is not allowed Internet access, according to the Guardian, and in her tweets she notes the difficulties of tweeting from prison. She says she is dictating them by phone and that the Twitter handle is run by Fitzgibbon Media, a communications firm. Manning also says that she plans to tweet daily or weekly, and activists supporting her told the Guardian that her Tweets will be “her own candid thoughts and comments.” This is my new twitter account =P — Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) April 3, 2015 Tweeting from prison reqs a lot of effort and using a voice phone to dictate #90sproblems — Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) April 3, 2015 It will be hard, but I don’t want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation — Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) April 3, 2015

“It will be hard, but I don’t want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation,” she tweeted.

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Bastille Day massacre: Suspected terror truck driver 'a dad-of-three with no extremist links'

The man who drove a truck into a crowd at Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, killing at least 84 people and leaving 202 hospitalised, was a father-of-three with a violent past known to police. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old French-Tunisian, hired the vehicle days before the attack, choosing the biggest from the fleet of lorries, a 19-tonne truck used for removals. French authorities say 10 children were among those killed and 52 remain in critical care, 25 of whom are on life support. Bouhlel's former wife, who he split from in 2012, is being held for questioning by police as authorities race to establish if he acted alone or had accomplices. Though Bouhlel had previous convictions for threats, violence and petty theft, he was "totally unknown" to French anti-terror groups, said prosecutor Francois Molins. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has told TFI television he could not confirm that the Nice truck attacker was motivated by religious extremism. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls however has labelled Bouhlel a "terrorist...probably linked to radical Islam in one way or another”. Bouhlel was convicted for the first time on charges of road rage in March this year, French Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said. "There was an altercation between him and another driver and he hurled a wooden pallet at the man," Urvoas said. As it was his first conviction, Bouhlel was given a suspended sentence and had to contact police once a week, which he did. About a dozen neighbours have spoken to journalists, portraying Bouhlel as a loner with no obvious religious affiliation. They said he rarely spoke and did not even return greetings when their paths crossed in the four-storey block, located in a working-class neighbourhood of Nice, being searched by police. A victim is rushed to hospital after a gunman drove a truck into a crowd at Bastille Day celebrations in Nice. (Getty) Investigators examine the bullet-riddled truck on the morning after it was used in a terror attack in Nice. (Getty) Sebastien, a neighbour who spoke on condition that his full name was not used, said Bouhlel did not seem overtly religious, often dressed in shorts and sometimes wore work boots. He had a van parked nearby and owned a bike, which he brought up into his first-floor apartment. Of those who were interviewed, only one, a neighbour on the ground floor, said she had had any concerns about him — he was "a good-looking man who kept giving my two daughters the eye", she said. Bouhlel was identified by an identity card found in the truck after he was killed in a shoot-out after ploughing through the crowd on Thursday, zig-zagging in the truck for 2km leaving the palm-lined Promenade des Anglais strewn with bodies as hundreds fled in terror. Two automatic weapons, ammunition, a mobile phone and a bank card were also reportedly found. 'Many foreigners and children' among 202 people injured French officials say 202 people were injured, including 52 in critical care. Among those are 25 still in intensive care, though numbers are expected to increase. At least 10 children are among the dead. "There are French among the victims and also many foreigners from every continent and many children, young children," Mr Hollande said from a hospital in Nice, adding many were "in a critical condition between life and death". American Sean Copeland, 51, and his 11-year-old son Brodie have been named as victims of the Nice attack. (Supplied) American Sean Copeland, 51, and his 11-year-old son Brodie were among the first victims named. "We are heartbroken and in shock over the loss of Brodie Copeland, an amazing son and brother who lit up our lives, and Sean Copeland, a wonderful husband and father," family said in a statement to the Austin American-Statesman. They were on a holiday of Europe that started in Spain "when this unthinkable and unfair act of terror took Sean and Brodie from the world far too soon", family friend Jess Davis told the newspaper. "It is a terrible loss." 'We should learn to live with terrorism' Prime Minister Manuel Valls earlier announced three three days of national mourning and said France must "learn to live with terrorism". He said the threat of terrorism weighed heavily on France. "We are facing a war that terrorism has started against us," he said. "The objective of the terrorists is to insult fear and panic. France will not allow itself to be destabilised. The French flag flies beside the Australian on the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a sign of solidarity after the Nice attack. (AAP) "Times have changed and we should learn to live with terrorism. We have to show solidarity and collective calm. "France has been hit in its soul on the 14th of July, our national day. They wanted to attack the unity of the French nation. "The only dignified response is that France will remain loyal to the spirit of the 14th of July and its values." French President Francois Hollande said the attack was of an "undeniable terrorist nature". "France was struck on its national day ... the symbol of freedom," Mr Hollande said. In a video viewed more than 3000 times on Facebook, a trembling Tarubi Wahid Mosta recounted the horror on the promenade, where he took photos of an abandoned doll and pushchair and came home with a victim's Yorkshire terrier. "I almost stepped on a corpse, it was horrible. It looked like a battlefield," he said. Forensics officers collect evidence from the truck used in the massacre. (AAP) The truck riddled with bullet holes. (AFP) In a series of posts, he described the sense of helplessness faced with the carnage. "All these bodies and their families ... they spent hours on the ground holding the cold hands of bodies dismembered by the truck. You can't even speak to them or comfort them." As the sun rose over the picturesque bay, forensic police swarmed the resort, which has drawn sun-seekers and the jet-set since the 19th century with its pebble beaches and clear blue water. The truck was riddled with bullet holes and badly damaged, with burst tyres. Robert Holloway, an AFP reporter who witnessed the white truck driving at speed into the crowd, described scenes of "absolute chaos". "We saw people hit and bits of debris flying around. I had to protect my face from flying debris," he said. On Twitter, there were desperate pleas from those looking for news of loved ones. Pictures of a young girl with braces or a teenager pulling a funny face were among dozens posted. An Australian citizen, Emily Watkins, who was caught up in the chaos told the ABC she saw the truck but did not realise what had happened. "There was a lot of screams coming from ahead of us where the truck was, and people just running towards us and without really knowing what was going on we turned and ran as well," she said. "People were tripping over and trying to get into hotel lobbies and restaurants or car parks or anywhere they could to get away from the street." © Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

More than 70 people are feared dead after a truck ploughed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French town of Nice in what authorities believe could be a terror attack.

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'Honey Boo Boo' Star -- Hell Yeah, I Wanna Do a Redneck Porno!

is so dang excited by the recent redneck porn boom ... he's ready to make a hillbilly skin flick of his own! We broke the story ... sales of -- increasing 250% in the last two years -- thanks in part to the redneck reality TV craze and shows like "Honey Boo Boo." "Crazy" Tony -- HUGE hillbilly porn fan -- tells us ... he's "honored" to have sparked the trend and is gunning to get in on the action -- by bumping uglies with another bumpkin in his very own porno! His lone concession: he doesn't want any crazy porno names ... claiming "Everybody already knows me as 'Crazy' Tony, so why change it?” No word on whether his

"Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" star "Crazy" Tony Lindsey is so dang excited by the recent redneck porn boom ... he's ready to make a hillbilly skin flick of…

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Jon Stewart to return to 'The Late Show' for RNC coverage

Jon Stewart will return to the “Late Show” set on Monday to help new host Stephen Colbert kick off coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, according to Vulture. Colbert will be taping two weeks of live editions of “The Late Show” from New York as the election cycle heats up, but there’s no word yet on how Stewart plays into the mix. Stewart left his hosting seat in August 2015, but has stopped in to his old haunt several times, including Colbert’s first show in September and an appearance in December for a Donald Trump impression. Paul Ryan denies he wants GOP nom in 3 languages on ‘Late Show’ In May, the Comedy Central vet joined David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast to complain about Donald Trump, an easy target in the late night comedy room. “What does that say about your constituency that you’re saying, ‘Look, the only way that I can win this part of the race is by being an unrepentant narcissistic a--hole, ‘cause that’s what my voters like — but once I have to appeal to everyone, I’ll be cool’?” Stewart said. His return to “The Late Show,” the same night that the RNC opens, will surely be as vitriolic toward the GOP presidential nominee. The list of “Late Show” guests for convention coverage also includes Elizabeth Warren, Anthony Weiner, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney, Keegan-Michael Key and John Oliver, according to Vulture. Lauryn Hill slammed after arriving two hours late to Atlanta show Zoe Saldana, Jennifer Saunders and Ron Suskind are scheduled as guests on Monday night. Colbert’s RNC coverage will be titled "The 2016 Trumpublican Donational Conventrump, Starring Donald Trump As the Republican Party* *May Contain Traces of Republican.” The DNC week will be called “The 2016 Democratic National Convincing a Technically Historic Event: Death. Taxes. Hillary.”

Reunited at last.

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Independence of Japan's nuclear regulator questioned after shakeup

In disclosures to the NRA in April, Tanaka said he received at least 500,000 yen in the year to March 2012 from the foundation. NRA nominees are only required to disclose funding received in the past three years. For the year to March 2012, Tanaka told the NRA he also received a total of 1.1 million yen from Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy and Taiheiyo Consultant, an engineering firm. None of the original NRA commissioners received funds from a utility or nuclear plant operator for their research in the three years leading up to their appointment, according to disclosures made when the NRA was set up. Read MoreChina accuses US, Japan of 'provocative action' Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa received about 1.5 million yen in fiscal 2009-10 from Nuclear Fuel Industries for research he did with Japan's sole producer of nuclear fuel, an NRA filing showed. The NRA's most critical voice, seismologist Kazuhiko Shimazaki, will retire in September after two years as its deputy, a period in which he angered the industry with safety demands that in one case effectively scuttled a reactor restart. Read MoreJapan's sales-tax hike turns shoppers away Activists and some NRA officials had hoped Shimazaki would remain, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. But the government said he and a former Japanese ambassador to the United Nations, Kenzo Oshima, wanted to leave at the end of their two-year terms. Shimazaki has not spoken publicly about his retirement and the NRA declined to make him available for comment. It's not clear who will be the NRA's new deputy. "The main objective of this shuffle is to remove commissioner Shimazaki," said Tetsunari Iida, executive director of Japan's Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, an anti-nuclear group. "The industry would never be satisfied if he wasn't replaced." An official at a utility who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic called Shimazaki's retirement a "small victory" and said utilities hoped restarts would now move ahead quickly. Read MoreSprint deal makes Masayoshi Son man of the hour The first restart, at the Sendai reactor on Japan's island of Kyushu, is expected to be approved in the coming months after the utility resubmitted its application following demands from Shimazaki to upgrade its assumptions over earthquake risk. The NRA chairman acknowledged the regulator was under pressure "from all different directions". "We have worked together to create the functions and the independence of the regulator," Shunichi Tanaka, who is no relation to the new commissioner, told a recent news conference. "This is a groundbreaking thing, and we will all work toward protecting it."

Japan's nuclear authority is scrutinized after appointing a commissioner who has received nearly $100,000 from nuclear-related entities for research.

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Uber and Lyft: The Effect on Taxi Drivers

Gary Englander, 64, has been driving a yellow cab in New York City for 38 years. It was a job he enjoyed—until very recently, that is. “I loved my job,” he says. “The independence. The meeting of people and minds. I learned every day.” What’s changed for Englander in the last two years? It’s not just that ridesharing apps are now in the picture, he says, though he calls Uber a “money-laundering operation.” Englander’s issue is that it is now possible for drivers with little-to-no knowledge of city streets to work alongside more experienced—and, frankly, better—drivers such as him, rendering the entire role a commodity. “They’re not good,” he says of the thousands of newcomers hired by the ridesharing apps. “And they rely on technology, which also isn’t very good.” For more on Uber, watch this Fortune video: Englander still relies on his decades of experience when it comes to tracking traffic patterns and knowing where to pick up work. The native and proud Brooklynite says the increased competition (and, consequently, lower earnings) are now causing him to leave town. “My income is down, my stress level is up,” he laments. Englander says he and his wife plan to move to San Diego, where he hopes to find “some kind of customer service job.” He says he’ll miss being a driver, despite how much the job has changed in an era of mobile apps. Says Englander: “I’ve met the most wonderful people driving.” This article is part of the Future of Work article from Fortune’s July 1, 2016 issue. Click here to see the entire package.

More access means taxi drivers just don't know roads as well as they used to.

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Obituary 1 -- No Title

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to [email protected]. A version of this archives appears in print on August 8, 1952, on page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Obituary 1 -- No Title. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Samuels, Fred E

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Back From the Dead, a Secret Agent Is Ready to Save the World Again

There are a few shows that are sophisticated and also have a childish appeal. Even some of the most jaded television snobs look forward to the season premieres of "The Sopranos" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm," as if those HBO shows were Christmas morning. On Fox, a new "24" also has the power to make grown men squeal. And amazingly, the new season, which once again drags the special agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) back into the line of duty, does not disappoint. "Sleeper Cell," a Showtime series about an undercover F.B.I. agent who infiltrates a Muslim terrorist cell in Los Angeles, is a spookier, subtler thriller. But "24" still provides an irresistible blend of iPodish computer wizardry and "Perils of Pauline" cliffhanger suspense. Fox asked critics to swear a blood oath not to reveal the plot of the first 10 minutes of the four-hour premiere that will be shown in two parts on Sunday and Monday nights, and even most spoiler Web sites have shown admirable restraint. But obviously, dire things happen, leaving many lives and national security at stake. Bauer, who last season saved the nation from a cataclysmic nuclear attack and then had to fake his own death to avoid extradition to China, is the one man who can save the day, or in this case, Day 5. This countdown clock begins ticking at 7 a.m., 18 months after the end of Day 4. (Each episode takes place over one hour of a 24-hour day that ends at the conclusion of the season.) Bauer, who is still officially dead, has assumed a new identity as Frank, an oil rig worker who lives in Mojave, Calif., with a girlfriend, Diane (Connie Britton), and her surly teenage son, Derek (Brady Corbet). There has been considerable turnover at Bauer's old office in the Los Angeles branch of the counterterrorism unit, but fortunately, the best computer savant, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub), is still hard at work in the unit, and she remains as delightfully irritable and awkward as ever. This season, she has a suitor, of sorts, yet even romance does not soften her demeanor. And she is still willing to break rules to decode and reroute all kinds of computer data to help Bauer. Mr. Sutherland does the best he can to suggest the inner turmoil of Jack Bauer, a character who is too busy fleeing his friends and pursuing his enemies to reveal much personality. Haunted and hard-boiled, Bauer is a classic action-adventure hero: a man of few words but many tricky martial arts moves. So color on "24" is mainly provided by secondary characters. Unfortunately, Jack's annoying daughter, Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), is fated to make a return appearance. But at least there are a few, new enjoyable faces. Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) is still a Nixon-lite president of the United States - vain, volatile and prone to panic. (He routinely lashes out at senior aides, who stare back at him with dismayed stoicism.) This time, however, the story includes his wife, Martha (Jean Smart), who appears to be mentally unstable and somewhat paranoid when off her medication - a latter-day Martha Mitchell. The first lady suspects that a sinister plot is afoot, but her husband and his top aides keep assuring her that she is imagining things, like Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight." But they sometimes do have a point: no first lady in her right mind would wear plunging décolletage and thigh-high stockings to a summit meeting with the Russian president. Well, maybe in a West Coast White House. "24" was created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, both of whom worked on the hit series "La Femme Nikita." Their latest endeavor has an indelible Los Angeles flair: the counterterrorism unit office looks more like the headquarters of Creative Artists Agency than the Central Intelligence Agency, and for some reason, all the villains, be they Islamic fundamentalists, drug smugglers, American oil brokers or Russian separatists, keep picking Los Angeles as a target for attack. This could be a signal that the world now views America as a superpower in show business alone, and that the epicenter of any first strike should be Hollywood. More likely, the show's creators preferred to keep location shoots close by. It doesn't really matter; the series is not meant to be plausible, it is supposed to be cathartic - a way of working out our worst fears of modern-day terrorism, be it bio, cyber or nuclear, in a fantasy that brings us right to the brink of destruction until one superhero prevails. It's the same scenario every season, and each one provides the same, ever-escalating brushes with catastrophe. Keeping any thriller going for 24 episodes is not an easy matter, however, and each season is over-packed with contorted plot twists, false leads and red herrings. Inevitably, there are moments when the series's creative verve starts to flag. "24" is a little like childbirth: by the end of each season, the process seems unbelievably long and painful, but once it is over, that is forgotten and most are ready to start all over again. Fox, Sunday and Monday nights at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. Created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran; Brian Grazer, Mr. Surnow, Mr. Cochran, Howard Gordon and Evan Katz, executive producers; Kiefer Sutherland, co-executive producer. A production of Real Time Productions and Imagine Television in association with 20th Century Fox Television. WITH: Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer), Connie Britton (Diane), Brady Corbet (Derek), Gregory Itzin (President Logan), James Morrison (Bill Buchanan), Roger Cross (Curtis Manning), Louis Lombardi (Edgar Stiles), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe O'Brian), Jean Smart (Martha Logan), Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida), Kim Raver (Audrey Raines), Sean Astin (Lynn McGill) and Elisha Cuthbert (Kim).

The new season, which brings Jack Bauer back and includes iPodish computer wizardry and cliffhanger suspense, does not disappoint.

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/07/18/despite-failed-turkish-coup-stocks-tick/iGTqKCh1XVk2efliD4Z0rL/story.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20160720165625id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/07/18/despite-failed-turkish-coup-stocks-tick/iGTqKCh1XVk2efliD4Z0rL/story.html

Despite failed Turkish coup, stocks tick up

Stocks ticked higher Monday as investors looked past the failed coup in Turkey and nudged the Standard & Poor’s 500 to record high for the fifth time in six days. The stock market has been on a mostly upward swing since February, with a few setbacks, after shrugging off worries about fragile economies overseas, weaker profits at home, and sundry other challenges. Add one more to the list: Friday’s military uprising in Turkey. By the time stock markets around the world opened Monday, most traders reacted with a shrug, and the Turkish lira recovered some of its steep losses. The coup was quickly halted. Plus economic reports around the world have been coming in better than expected. On Monday, technology stocks led the way, rising 0.7 percent after SoftBank Group agreed to buy British chip designer ARM for $32 billion. ARM’s US-listed shares soared 40.6 percent. Financial stocks gained after Bank of America’s earnings were better than expected; its stock rose 3.3 percent. Banks have struggled with low interest rates, which limit the profits on loans. Financial stocks are the only sector of the S&P 500’s 10 that are still down for 2016.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 set another record.

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