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Under 3 weeks left: Obama in closing stretch of presidency | 0:59 Penn State fans gather in Los Angeles for Rose Bowl pep rally Pause
2:19 What advice did James Franklin give his players at the Rose Bowl?
1:06 You've got to see how State College's ice sculptures were made
1:33 Students hold #NotMyPresident protest at Penn State
3:07 So what can Trump actually do in his first 100 days?
3:52 Penn State's Cael Sanderson reflects on winning the NCAA Championship
3:00 Trump vows to be a president for all Americans
1:20 Cases of carbon monoxide poisoning rise when temperatures drop
4:11 No evidence of terror connection in New York City explosion, says mayor |
Homeless man arrested; accused of killing 68-year-old | LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — Louisiana police say a homeless man is accused of bludgeoning a 68-year-old man to death.
Lake Charles police say in a news release that they have arrested 29-year-old Rolando Anthony Massingill on a warrant accusing him of first-degree murder in the death of Wayne Keith Reynaud.
Deputy Chief Mark Kraus says detectives got information that Massingill was in Kinder, about 35 miles northwest of Lake Charles. He says they, Kinder police, federal marshals and Allen Parish sheriff’s deputies arrested him in a motel.
Kraus says Reynaud’s body was found Sunday night in his home. He says in an email that detectives are investigating the connection between the men and a possible motive.
Kraus says in the news release that the arrest warrant set Massingill’s bond at $1 million. |
Zacks: Lawson Products, Inc. (LAWS) Given Consensus Recommendation of “Buy” by Analysts | Shares of Lawson Products, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAWS) have received a consensus broker rating score of 2.00 (Buy) from the two brokers that cover the stock, Zacks Investment Research reports. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and one has issued a strong buy rating on the company.
Brokerages have set a twelve-month consensus price target of $28.00 for the company and are predicting that the company will post ($0.14) earnings per share for the current quarter, according to Zacks. Zacks has also given Lawson Products an industry rank of 95 out of 265 based on the ratings given to its competitors.
Separately, Zacks Investment Research lowered shares of Lawson Products from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 28th.
Shares of Lawson Products (NASDAQ:LAWS) remained flat at $23.80 during midday trading on Monday. 19,762 shares of the company’s stock traded hands. Lawson Products has a 12 month low of $15.23 and a 12 month high of $25.80. The company’s market cap is $209.39 million. The company has a 50-day moving average of $24.03 and a 200 day moving average of $19.65.
Lawson Products (NASDAQ:LAWS) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 20th. The company reported $0.20 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.06 by $0.14. The company earned $70.20 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $70.03 million. Lawson Products had a negative net margin of 0.25% and a negative return on equity of 0.85%. On average, equities analysts predict that Lawson Products will post $0.20 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
In other Lawson Products news, CFO Ronald J. Knutson sold 16,211 shares of Lawson Products stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $23.54, for a total transaction of $381,606.94. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 25,225 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $593,796.50. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, major shareholder Private Discipline Master Lkcm bought 300,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 30th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $23.45 per share, for a total transaction of $7,035,000.00. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. 21.30% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.
Large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. KDI Capital Partners LLC boosted its stake in shares of Lawson Products by 2.1% in the third quarter. KDI Capital Partners LLC now owns 853,256 shares of the company’s stock valued at $15,128,000 after buying an additional 17,418 shares during the period. Morgan Stanley boosted its stake in shares of Lawson Products by 78.4% in the third quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 6,492 shares of the company’s stock valued at $115,000 after buying an additional 2,852 shares during the period. King Luther Capital Management Corp boosted its stake in shares of Lawson Products by 4.2% in the third quarter. King Luther Capital Management Corp now owns 1,678,088 shares of the company’s stock valued at $29,753,000 after buying an additional 67,026 shares during the period. California State Teachers Retirement System boosted its stake in shares of Lawson Products by 0.8% in the third quarter. California State Teachers Retirement System now owns 13,328 shares of the company’s stock valued at $236,000 after buying an additional 100 shares during the period. Finally, BlackRock Institutional Trust Company N.A. boosted its stake in shares of Lawson Products by 0.6% in the third quarter. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company N.A. now owns 191,725 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,399,000 after buying an additional 1,183 shares during the period. 61.69% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.
COPYRIGHT VIOLATION WARNING: This news story was reported by The Vista Voice and is owned by of The Vista Voice. If you are reading this news story on another domain, it was illegally copied and republished in violation of US & international trademark & copyright laws. The correct version of this news story can be viewed at http://www.thevistavoice.org/2017/01/02/zacks-lawson-products-inc-laws-given-consensus-recommendation-of-buy-by-analysts/1138158.html.
Lawson Products Company Profile
Lawson Products, Inc is a distributor of products and services the industrial, commercial, institutional and government maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) market. The Company’s product categories include fastening systems, fluid power, specialty chemicals, cutting tools and abrasives, electrical, aftermarket automotive supplies, safety, welding and metal repair, and other.
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Kim Zolciak buys bulletproof backpacks for her children | Like every parent, Kim Zolciak and her husband Kroy Biermann don't want to worry when they send their kids off to school, and they're doing everything possible to ensure the kid's safety, including buying bulletproof backpacks.
Charles Sykes / Bravo / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
The "Real Housewives of Atlanta" star took to Instagram to post a photo of her newest purchase.
"I just asked Kroy what can we do as parents to protect our children everyday in this crazy sad world. He said, 'best thing we could do for now is get bullet proof book bags' you know I just did!," she captioned her pic. "It's better than not having anything at all. Just thought I would share with you guys. I just found this first on Amazon so I bought it. It's certified."
The mother of six's screenshot showed the bag she found cost $114.
Her purchase comes on the heels of Wednesday's horrific school shooting in Florida, in which 17 people, most of them teenagers, lost their lives when Nikolas Cruz allegedly opened fire inside Majorly Stone Douglas High School.
On Feb. 15, one woman posted a photo to Twitter of a bulletproof backpack and indicated that her husband was going to test it out.
"Please let me know thank you so much for sharing," Kim commented.
On Feb, 16, TMZ spoke to a company that sells bulletproof backpacks. The company said regular sales have seen a 30 percent spike since the Feb. 14 shooting. |
Discussions underway on replacing aging Owensboro pool - Tri-State News, Weather & Sports | Combest and Cravens pool were both built in the 70s (WFIE)
Discussions are underway on how to repair or replace aging city pools.
Last week, at the first presentation of the city's budget, the future of the pools was discussed. We learned more about the vision of a new family aquatic center.
Combest and Cravens pool were both built in the 70s.
Officials say they've had to pay for significant repairs at Cravens pool over the past few years.
Pool replacement and repair was placed in the community vision as part of the budget. That means next year, the city will save $350,000 to put toward the pool.
Parks Director Amanda Rogers says the vision would be a family aquatic center with different water features such as a lazy river, zero depth entry, and slides. However, that could cost the city anywhere from $3 to $9 million.
"I'm really doing some research and some homework; so when and if that time comes that we have issues with either one of our locations, and our elected officials are put into a position to really make a decision on how we move forward, that I'll have some education and some true real-life situations from other communities in our state," Rogers said.
Rogers says there's no real timeline on when this project could start; it really depends on when one of the current pools is beyond repair.
She said constructing a family aquatic center would take up to two years to complete.
Copyright 2018 WFIE. All rights reserved. |
Why a bitcoin crash is nothing to worry about | Here's one popular way of looking at the rise of bitcoin.
It compares the cryptocurrency's meteoric surge with that of tech stocks during the dot-com boom, culminating with the Nasdaq composite's peak in 2000.
Bitcoin vs. dot-com stocks Percentage change in market cap over 300 days (bitcoin) or 300 trading sessions (Nasdaq composite members) Nasdaq composite members Bitcoin 1,400% 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 -200 0 36 72 108 156 204 252 Days: Bitcoin (Feb. 10 to Dec. 7, 2017) Trading days: Nasdaq (Dec. 29, 1998 to March 10, 2000) THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, COINMARKETCAP.COM Bitcoin vs. dot-com stocks Percentage change in market cap over 300 days (bitcoin) or 300 trading sessions (Nasdaq composite members) Nasdaq composite members Bitcoin 1,400% 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 -200 0 36 72 108 156 204 252 Days: Bitcoin (Feb. 10 to Dec. 7, 2017) Trading days: Nasdaq (Dec. 29, 1998 to March 10, 2000) THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, COINMARKETCAP.COM Bitcoin vs. dot-com stocks Percentage change in market cap over 300 days (bitcoin) or 300 trading sessions (Nasdaq composite members) Nasdaq composite members Bitcoin 1,400% 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 -200 0 36 72 108 156 204 252 Days: Bitcoin (Feb. 10 to Dec. 7, 2017) Trading days: Nasdaq (Dec. 29, 1998 to March 10, 2000) THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, COINMARKETCAP.COM
In percentage terms, it's no contest: Bitcoin is in a different league.
Now, here's another way of comparing the two, in dollars.
Bitcoin vs. dot-com stocks Dollar change in market cap over 300 days (bitcoin) or 300 trading sessions (Nasdaq composite members). Measured in billions of unadjusted U.S. dollars. Nasdaq composite members Bitcoin $4,500 4,000 Nasdaq: $4.1-trillion 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 Bitcoin: $223-billion 500 0 -500 0 36 72 108 156 204 252 Days: Bitcoin (Feb. 10 to Dec. 7, 2017) Trading days: Nasdaq (Dec. 29, 1998 to March 10, 2000) THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, COINMARKETCAP.COM Bitcoin vs. dot-com stocks Dollar change in market cap over 300 days (bitcoin) or 300 trading sessions (Nasdaq composite members). Measured in billions of unadjusted U.S. dollars. Nasdaq composite members Bitcoin $4,500 4,000 Nasdaq: $4.1-trillion 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 Bitcoin: $223-billion 500 0 -500 0 36 72 108 156 204 252 Days: Bitcoin (Feb. 10 to Dec. 7, 2017) Trading days: Nasdaq (Dec. 29, 1998 to March 10, 2000) THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, COINMARKETCAP.COM Bitcoin vs. dot-com stocks Dollar change in market cap over 300 days (bitcoin) or 300 trading sessions (Nasdaq composite members). Measured in billions of unadjusted U.S. dollars. Nasdaq composite members Bitcoin $4,500 4,000 Nasdaq: $4.1-trillion 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 Bitcoin: $223-billion 500 0 -500 0 36 72 108 156 204 252 Days: Bitcoin (Feb. 10 to Dec. 7, 2017) Trading days: Nasdaq (Dec. 29, 1998 to March 10, 2000) THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, COINMARKETCAP.COM
This time around, the bitcoin boom is more bitcoin blip.
The comparison is somewhat apples-to-oranges, but it's worth keeping in mind as bitcoin gyrates to record highs, fuelling concerns of an imminent collapse. (A year after the Nasdaq composite's dot-com peak, the index had plummeted 60 per cent.)
The fact is, bitcoin is relatively puny, owned by few and decidedly isolated from major financial institutions. If bitcoin crashes, it's only taking so many people with it.
Just before the 2008 market meltdown, 62 per cent of American adults held stocks in some way, according to survey results from Gallup. That figure has since dwindled, with loads of middle-class households abandoning equities after the crash, Gallup notes.
Still, if the market crashed tomorrow, a slim majority of U.S. adults would be directly affected – not to mention others impacted by reverberations in the wider economy.
It's difficult to imagine anything similar with bitcoin. Ownership appears to be highly concentrated. Perhaps 1,000 people hold about 40 per cent of bitcoin, according to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article.
Granted, there are mounting ways for retail investors to get involved in cryptocurrencies, without actually acquiring bitcoin. Initial coin offerings have raised more than $3-billion (U.S.) this year, and bitcoin futures started trading Sunday evening on an exchange run by Cboe Global Markets. Plus, the race is on to bring a bitcoin ETF to market.
But for now, bitcoin and its brethren remain somewhat niche and small. The combined market cap of all cryptocurrencies was $425-billion as of Friday afternoon, or a fraction of 1 per cent of total global equity value. On an exciting day, the S&P 500's total value will shift by a greater amount.
"If the price of bitcoin fell to zero today, the paper losses would be equivalent to a 0.6 per cent fall in U.S. equity prices," said Andrew Kenningham, chief global economist at Capital Economics, in a Friday note. "As most investors have bought bitcoin at much lower prices, the relevant losses would arguably be smaller."
Moreover, if bitcoin plummets, the foundations of global finance will be spared. Wall Street has been hesitant to embrace bitcoin, to put it lightly. JPMorgan Chase chief executive officer Jamie Dimon has called the cryptocurrency "a fraud." Back when bitcoin was a mere $7,000, the CEO of Credit Suisse said speculation around it was the "very definition of a bubble."
If that's the case, keep in mind the scale of the bubble. |
Cavaliers And Warriors To Make History In NBA Finals | By Matt Citak
As sports fans, we sometimes take things for granted. It’s not entirely our fault. In this day and age, it just seems as if we’ve just seen everything. So when something truly special happens, it doesn’t always attract the appreciation it deserves.
Such is the case for the amazing rivalry that has developed between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers over the last few seasons.
We have seen some mighty clashes over the years. There’s no denying that the competition during the 1980s between Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics was fierce.
From 1980-1989, at least one of these two teams was represented in each NBA Finals. The Lakers took home five titles, while the Celtics managed to win three. Los Angeles and Boston owned the decade, but at the end of the era, these two legendary franchises only met in the championship three times in four years.
A look at rivalries in other sports reveals similar storylines.
The Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers lead the way for the NFL, having met three times in the Super Bowl. However these three match-ups occurred in 1976, 1979, and 1996. You’d have to go all the way back to the early 1950s, before the NFL-AFL merger, to find the same two teams vying for a championship in three consecutive years (the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns, 1952-1954).
>>MORE: NBA Coverage
In the NHL, you also have to turn back the clock to the early 50s, when goalies did not wear face masks, to find the sport’s latest and only trilogy. The Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens met in the Stanley Cup Finals from 1954-1956. No two teams have done this since.
It’s been almost a century in MLB. The New York Giants and the New York Yankees are the only teams to meet in three straight World Series, and it happened from 1921-1923.
Intense rivalries, at the highest level, do not happen often. This is why what the Cavaliers and Warriors have accomplished over the last few years is a truly spectacular.
For the first time in American sports history, two teams will go toe-to-toe in the championship for the fourth consecutive year.
But it didn’t always look as if the Warriors and Cavs’ round-four matchup would happen.
Golden State dealt with injuries to all four of the team’s all-stars this season. Kevin Durant and Steph Curry sat out the most of the four, combining to miss 45 games during the regular season. Curry was also absent in the postseason until Game 2 of the Conference Semifinals.
Golden State then had to get past a Houston Rockets squad that led the league in wins and was structured to match up against this Warriors squad, which obviously was no easy task. They lost former Finals MVP Andre Iguodala in Game 3, and found themselves down 3-2 — backs to the wall — heading into Game 6.
But the Warriors battled and found a way to persevere, winning Games 6 and 7 to clinch their spot in the Finals.
Things looked even more uncertain in Cleveland this season. After Kyrie Irving forced his way out of town last summer, LeBron James was left with a rather weak supporting cast.
Upon struggling throughout the first half of the season, the Cavaliers shook things up at the trade deadline. Cleveland sent six players packing to various cities while infusing the team with some youth by acquiring Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr., George Hill and Rodney Hood.
The Cavs finished the season as the Eastern Conference’s No. 4 seed, and needed seven games to get past the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the playoffs. Things also looked gloomy during the Eastern Conference Finals, as James and Co. went down 3-2 against the Celtics.
But as we’ve seen many times before, James put Cleveland on his back and guided the team to back-to-back victories, even playing all 48 minutes in Game 7.
LeBron has now scored 612 points in the 2018 playoffs, the most ever in a single postseason heading into the Finals. He needs only 148 points to break Michael Jordan’s record of 759 points in the 1992 postseason, and considering that he is averaging 34.0 points per game through the first three rounds, this seems like a realistic accomplishment.
So NBA fans, one year later, we are right back where we left off — Golden State vs. Cleveland, Round 4. And everyone should be thrilled with this Finals matchup.
We must applaud what these two franchises have done over the last four seasons. We should enjoy watching five of the last six NBA MVPs who will play in this matchup.
And, most importantly, we should appreciate the moment, as we are watching something that has never been done before, and may never happen again.
We are witnessing American sports history.
Matt Citak is a contributor for CBS Local Sports and a proud Vanderbilt alum. Follow him on Twitter. |
2 FTSE 100 growth stocks for your instant starter portfolio | The first is quality insurance test provider Intertek (LSE: ITRK). It carries out quality control tests on a range of consumer goods, industrial goods and raw…
For investors just starting to buy individual stocks, it can be difficult to sort through the hundreds and thousands of potential investment options out there. For this reason, some investors like to work their way down from the FTSE 100 to smaller indices like the AIM 100. With that in mind, I think there are two standout stocks in the FTSE 100 that growth-oriented investors may find intriguing.
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For investors just starting to buy individual stocks, it can be difficult to sort through the hundreds and thousands of potential investment options out there. For this reason, some investors like to work their way down from the FTSE 100 to smaller indices like the AIM 100. With that in mind, I think there are two standout stocks in the FTSE 100 that growth-oriented investors may find intriguing.
High test scores = high profits
The first is quality insurance test provider Intertek (LSE: ITRK). It carries out quality control tests on a range of consumer goods, industrial goods and raw materials. In recent years the group has pushed into the consumer goods space due to its increased margins, less cyclical nature and the huge addressable market that is growing rapidly as companies looking to trim costs and outsource this non-core task.
In 2017, strong growth from consumer goods more than overcame weakness in the resources division, which is itself due to the oil & gas market’s continued issues. It led organic revenue 2.1% higher year-on-year with overall constant currency sales up 3% to £2,769m. Considering revenue from the resources segment was down 8.6%, this overall performance was quite good.
Even more impressive are the results of management’s push into consumer goods and cost-cutting exercises that led operating margins up 1.1 percentage points to 16.9% during the year. With margins rising, management was able to increase full-year dividends by 14.3%, reduce its net debt-to-EBITDA ratio to 1 times, and also invest more cash in margin-improving acquisitions.
With this virtuous cycle of improved margins, increased cash flow, and investments in future growth working at full tilt for several years, it’s no surprise that Intertek is richly valued at 25 times forward earnings. This is pricey, especially for a company so exposed to the business cycle, but over the long term I see plenty of scope for it to continue consolidating a highly fragmented market and pushing margins ever higher.
Cruising along comfortably
A more familiar growth option is Carnival (LSE: CCL), the world’s largest cruise ship operator. In recent years the cruise industry as a whole has been going gangbusters as soaring demand from Americans, Europeans and, increasingly, Chinese consumers has led to an arms race in building ever bigger, more action-packed boats with price tags well over a billion dollars each.
This has cemented the high barriers to entry that Carnival and other big operators enjoy, while fast-rising supply means cruises are booked months in advance at high prices, meaning high margins for operators. In 2017, these factors helped boost group revenue 6.8% to $17.5bn with adjusted net income rising to $2.7bn.
And although the tourism-reliant cruise industry is cyclical in nature, I think Carnival’s market-leading position stands it in good stead over the long term. Furthermore, with its launch last year of the first international cruise ship designed specifically for the Chinese market, Carnival is opening up considerable scope for entering this new, highly profitable market in Asia.
With its shares trading at just 15 times forward earnings while offering a hearty 2.75% dividend yield and great growth prospects, I think Carnival is one great stock for new investors to consider. |
Trakm8 Prime Expands Offering with Dash Cams | Contact
Dan Jenkins
***@trakm8.com Dan Jenkins
End
-- Trakm8 Prime, the UK's first fully-online vehicle tracking solution, is expanding its offering to include the company's RoadHawk dash cams.Designed for small to medium-sized fleets, Trakm8 Prime is the only vehicle tracking solution in the UK that allows the customer to buy online, without first having to deal with a sales person. The tracker unit can be self-installed in seconds, which means that there are no installation or removal fees - and vehicle down time is kept to a minimum.Customers can now add a dash cam to their package with Trakm8 Prime Protect. Like the Trakm8 Prime tracking unit, the dash cam is easy to self-install. Dash cams are proven to cut insurance premiums by up to 10 per cent, with some brokers now offering discounted insurance premiums to firms that fit dash cams to all company vehicles.Colin Ferguson, Managing Director of Fleet and Optimisation for Trakm8, said: "Dash cams give businesses an added level of security and peace of mind, as well as saving them money."Our fully-online Prime Protect solution makes it easy and affordable for businesses to bundle vehicle tracking and dash cams."The RoadHawk DC-2 HD GPS Dash Cam provides hard evidence that is accepted by police and insurance companies, including the exact data and time an incident occurred, as well as vehicle speed and precise GPS location.The DC-2 features full 1080p video recording, gyro-balanced image stabilisation and a high-quality sensor to record footage in low-light scenarios. A G-Force sensor triggers the creation of an event file in the case of fsbdt a collision or a near-miss, giving users quick and easy access to the footage.Trakm8 Prime Protect, the combined package of the RoadHawk DC-2 dash cam and Trakm8 Prime, is priced at £23.99 or less per vehicle, per month. Alternatively, Trakm8 Prime is available as a stand-alone product, priced at £12.99 or less per vehicle, per month. It combines GPS tracking with innovative features designed to help save time and money, including a driver coaching system and Trakm8's market-leading vehicle health alerts. It also includes well as business / private mileage management for quick and easy P11D returns.For further details on Trakm8 Prime Protect, please visit https://buy.trakm8.com/ prime/ |
Update: Fire crews are tackling 200-tonne compost fire at Colsterworth | Firefighters have been tackling a large fire at Colsterworth where 200 tonnes of compost were well alight.
Fire crews from Grantham, Corby Glen and Bourne attended the incident earlier this afternoon at Honey Pot Lane. People living nearby have been advised to keep doors and windows closed because of the smoke from the fire.
A spokesman for Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service said: “Crews are currently using one hose reel to extinguish the fire, being assisted with heavy machinery to move the compost.”
In the last half an hour all but one of the crews have left the scene. Corby Glen firefighters are extinguishing the rest of the fire. |
In the front seat with Assad as he tours territory retaken from rebels | Video released by the Syrian president's office shows Assad driving to eastern Ghouta as his soldiers appear close to defeating the last opposition foothold. Rough cut (no reporter narration). |
Morrinsville gunman: Mother makes plea to Rollie James Heke | The mother of the Morrinsville gunman, Rollie James Heke, has made an emotional plea to her son: "Please do the right thing ... turn yourself in, son.''
Marie Masalu urged her son to come forward after police again asked Heke to turn himself in immediately.
Speaking to 1 News, an emotional Masalu said: "I don't want to lose another son. I want to keep you for as long as I can.
"Son, I will come and visit you. I will be there for you. The family loves you, they care about you and they want you to know - Rollie, we're all here for you."
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With a hand on her chest, she told him: "It doesn't matter what anybody else says. It's what your whanau thinks about you and we love and care for you.
"Turn yourself in, son. I don't want to have to come and identify you in a morgue. That's from your mother. It's from Ma, Rollie.''
Heke's mother's plea comes as police continue to hunt for him following a frenzied shooting in the early hours of Sunday.
Members of the public are being encouraged to contact police if they have seen or heard anything that may help officers in their investigation and search.
Police have said Heke, 36, is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached.
Police last night carried out an hours-long standoff at a property in Morrinsville, in the hopes of nabbing Heke at the address.
A search warrant was issued at a house on Studholme St. Cordons were put up in the area, as well as road spikes.
However, the cordons were taken down by 11pm. |
Virginia Tech rallies in 2nd half to top Pitt 66-63 | 1:17 Hiking the Reservoir Canyon Trail Pause
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1:38 Flying over Paso Robles in a Ford Tri-Motor airplane |
Mike Comrie Investigated For Rape: Hilary Duff’s Ex Accused Of Sexual Assault | Rex/Shutterstock
He was once a star of the NHL, but now, Mike Comrie stands accused of rape! Hillary Duff’s ex-husband — and the father of her son — is reportedly being investigated for sexually assaulting a woman during a threesome in his Los Angeles home.
Mike Comrie, 36, allegedly met a woman at a bar on Feb. 11, law enforcement sources tell TMZ. The two reportedly went back to Mike’s West L.A. condo, where she claims Mike raped her multiple times. However, sources close to the ex-NHL player tell TMZ that Mike has known this woman for a long time, and that this sex was consensual.
Plus, Mike and this woman reportedly weren’t alone, as the sources say that this sexual encounter was a three-way, and the alleged other woman hasn’t filed a complaint. Mike’s accuser, on the other hand, supposedly went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center immediately after, where a rape kit was administered. Mike has reportedly not spoken to the officials about this incident, and HollywoodLife.com has reached out for some clarification.
For some, Mike is best known as the former husband of Hilary Duff, 29, as the couple was together for nearly a decade. They began dating in 2007, before getting married in 2010. They welcomed their song, Luca Cruz Comrie, 4, in 2012. Hilary would file for divorce in 2015, citing “irreconcilable differences” while seeking primary custody for Lucas. Ultimately, the marriage couldn’t be saved and the two finalized the split in 2016.
Despite this breakup, Hilary had nothing but positive things to say about her ex. “Mike’s amazing,” she said in the Feb. 2017 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. “We’re so ingrained in each other’s lives. I wouldn’t choose anyone else to co-parent with. We are really good friends and care a lot about each other.” Some fans thought these two were back together when they were spotted kissing in May 2016, but Hilary has since moved on. She and Matthew Koma, 29, made their relationship “red carpet official” at a pre-SAG award show on Jan. 28.
For other people, Mike is best known as a former hockey star. He spent 13 years playing in the National Hockey League, playing for a handful of teams: the Edmonton Oilers, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Phoenix Coyotes, the Ottawa Senators, the New York Islanders and, finally, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Despite the lengthy career, he never raised the Stanley Cup. After undergoing hip surgery for the third time, Mike decided to call it a call it a career and retire in 2012.
What do you think about these accusations, HollywoodLifers? Are you shocked?
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The true grit of Britain's first reality TV star | Last week, Hannah died at the age of 91, still pining for her spartan home after exchanging the farm for more modern creature comforts in the late 1980s
It was an unlikely entrance for Britain’s first reality television star: As a blizzard raged in a remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales, a solitary ragged figure battled against the bitter wind to lead her cow to shelter.
Then aged just 46, but with the strikingly white hair of a much older woman, hill farmer Hannah Hauxwell had spent more than a decade alone at Low Birk Hatt farm, eking out a meagre living from its 80 acres of land. She had no wish for fame and had never even watched television.
Yet her harsh, uncomplaining life 1,000ft up in Baldersdale, where the fields were blanketed with snow for many months of the year, became a nationwide focus of attention when, in 1973, a TV documentary revealed the details of her stoical existence.
That someone could survive alone in such brutal and simple conditions, without electricity, running water or a flushing toilet, was thought quite remarkable even at the time of broadcast 45 years ago.
How much more so, then, does her remarkable story represent a rebuke to our soft lives today; a society mired in consumerism and in which a very different sort of snowflake holds sway?
Such an impact did the programme make that it spawned three further documentaries, six books and even an invitation to Buckingham Palace.
Last week, Hannah died at the age of 91, still pining for her spartan home after exchanging the farm for more modern creature comforts in the late 1980s.
She died knowing that her legacy, and the inspiration of that simple life, have never been more relevant than today
But she died knowing that her legacy, and the inspiration of that simple life, have never been more relevant than today.
‘Most people in 1970s Britain didn’t have a clue that someone like Hannah even existed,’ explains John Fairley, executive producer of Too Long A Winter, the documentary that catapulted her to sudden fame.
‘Not only did she exist but she also had this extraordinary character and openness of speech.
‘If the programme aired now I think it would have the same appeal. There are definitely people seeking Hannah’s way of life.
‘They want to get out of the internet, iPhone and iPad era. Hannah was interested in modern life but she always wanted to return to Baldersdale. That was the thing that gave her the most pleasure.
‘It stunned the nation in a way that television can’t do now. Here, in the North of England rather than Siberia, was a local woman who never saw anybody for days or weeks on end, yet made enough to keep herself alive on this farm.’
her harsh, uncomplaining life 1,000ft up in Baldersdale, where the fields were blanketed with snow for many months of the year, became a nationwide focus of attention when, in 1973, a TV documentary revealed the details of her stoical existence
Hannah Bayles Tallentire Hauxwell had spent almost the whole of her life living and working at Low Birk Hatt farm, now part of County Durham.
Her family had moved there in 1929 when she was three, but seven years later, tragedy struck when her father William died. Hannah learned to work the land with her mother Lydia and uncle Tommy, and while the house filled with elderly relatives, all had passed away by the time she was 34 in 1961, leaving her to tend the farm alone.
This was how she was living, with one milking cow and two calves, when Yorkshire Television researcher Barbara Twigg tracked her down. Hannah, she discovered, was living on £280 a year ‘if things went well’.
Barbara recalls walking ‘over two or three fields and over walls’ to get to her house.
‘There she was with her rosy cheeks in a tatty old raincoat held together with garden twine.
Hannah Bayles Tallentire Hauxwell had spent almost the whole of her life living and working at Low Birk Hatt farm, now part of County Durham
‘She invited me in for tea. She had to get the water from a bucket outside her front door before boiling it on the coal fire. The water was nearly as brown as the tea itself but I drank it.’
The coal fire was Hannah’s only concession to comfort – the one expense she refused to economise on. Otherwise, she read by the light of an oil lamp and used an earth closet as a toilet.
The nearest road was a mile-and-a-half away down a boggy track where, once a month, the grocer would leave her provisions.
A budget of £5, which came from the annual sale of a bullock and by renting out some of the land to neighbouring farms, bought two loaves of bread – white for her and a brown one for her cat – milk and eggs, and one tin of spam.
Such an impact did the programme make that it spawned three further documentaries, six books and even an invitation to Buckingham Palace
Two chickens were delivered once a year from the man who did the hay making.
Clothes were washed in the local reservoir while plastic bags containing her food supplies hung from the rafters away from the rats.
Her only entertainment was an old organ, which she played beautifully, and a battery-operated radio.
‘I said we’d like to make a television programme,’ Barbara says. ‘She didn’t seem taken aback or excited.’
Nothing came of that first visit. But a couple of years later the producer Barry Cockcroft – now deceased – was looking for local people for a series tentatively titled The Hard Life when he came across Barbara’s notes – as a result of which he and John Fairley paid her a visit.
‘She was full of charm and very well read,’ John recalls.
‘Although she never married, she was very ladylike. She never wore make-up. Her main thing was to be warm.’
By 1988, Hannah, who was by then taking tablets for angina, concluded she could no longer live safely at Low Birk Hatt and moved six miles to the village of Cotherstone
The crew started filming in the bitter winter of 1972. After one session filming in a helicopter, the cameraman’s limbs were so stiff he had been locked into a sitting position and had to be carried to warmth and safety.
Hannah was used to the conditions but admitted she hated the terrible winters which ‘came too soon and stayed too long’.
John continues: ‘I remember one extraordinary scene in which Hannah was trying to get a bullock in to shelter from the snow.
‘She had to pull this bullock along. He didn’t want to go. I don’t know how she did it. She was as strong as an ox herself.’
The farm was routinely covered in snow for many months as temperatures plummeted to minus 15C.
The response to the show was phenomenal, with countries around the world bidding for transmission rights. The phone lines at Yorkshire Television were jammed for days; the lanes around Hannah’s home filled with tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of the unlikely star.
Bulging sacks of letters poured in, some addressed to ‘the old lady in the TV programme somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales’. Many contained money, from £100 cheques to postal orders for 50p, while local factory workers even paid for her to have electricity installed.
Viewers wrote that they had been inspired by Hannah’s uncomplaining acceptance of hardship. Many said she had changed their perspective on their own complaints, which seemed paltry by comparison.
The farm was routinely covered in snow for many months as temperatures plummeted to minus 15C
But Hannah’s new-found fame had little impact on her lifestyle and she steadfastly refused to leave the farm. Money was spent on more cattle rather than home comforts.
It did, however, give Hannah the opportunity to take a glimpse of a rather different life – one of many invitations she received was to a prestigious Women of the Year lunch in 1977.
It was Hannah’s first trip to London and Barry Cockcroft suggested another documentary, this time entitled Hannah Goes To Town.
In it, Hannah marvels at the 100mph train ride to King’s Cross station and chats amiably to the Duchess of Gloucester.
Most overwhelming was her stay at The Savoy.
She admitted shedding a tear at having to leave such opulence and return to the farm.
During one four-day power cut in 1978 everything in the house froze, including the glass of water holding Hannah’s false teeth and even the coat on her back, which had got wet while she hauled fodder up to the cattle in the top fields.
She was forced to bunk down with her favourite cow, Rosa, to keep warm, and drank her milk almost straight from the udder.
‘I would go straight to bed after finishing my work with all my clothes on, including Uncle’s old tweed coat and socks,’ Hannah recalled in her 1989 book Seasons Of My Life. ‘It was not an experience I would wish to endure often.’
But she concluded the hardships produced a ‘wonderful spirit in the community. Everybody helped everybody else’.
Still, she admitted staying on the farm was a ‘battle’.
‘The cattle and the place form chains,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I wish they weren’t there but that’s how it is. I’m attached to the place because my family have lived here since my great grandfather’s time.’
Hannah returned to London in 1980 to attend a Royal Garden Party in honour of the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday, buying a new frock and noting that Prince Charles seemed rather smaller in person.
She claimed she never wanted children but instead thought of her animals as offspring, even giving her cows names such as Her Ladyship, Rosa and Puddles
But ultimately she found London lonely. Nobody said ‘hello’ as they would in Yorkshire, she said.
‘It’s nice for a while but not on a permanent basis,’ she told an assembled throng of reporters at the lunch.
‘I would need to be quiet and get back to the hills.’
Although there were a few potential suitors over the years, including a soldier who played double bass in a band, Hannah never married or even had a boyfriend.
She confessed that she had hoped a rugged type might come stalking over the fell, but resigned herself to the fact it probably wouldn’t happen.
‘If it isn’t a success then there can be nothing worse than being obliged to share a roof with someone who you’re utterly at variance with,’ she said in Too Long A Winter. ‘It’s in other hands. One can’t go into a shop and say, I want a husband.’
She claimed she never wanted children but instead thought of her animals as offspring, even giving her cows names such as Her Ladyship, Rosa and Puddles.
By 1988, Hannah, who was by then taking tablets for angina, concluded she could no longer live safely at Low Birk Hatt and moved six miles to the village of Cotherstone. Her new cottage home had central heating, hot running water and even a phone.
Barry responded with a third film in 1989, A Winter Too Many, about Hannah’s tearful departure from the farm, her face white and wet with distress.
Modernity lost no time in catching up with Low Birk Hatt. The couple who bought the property turned it into a five-bedroom, three-bathroom farmhouse with central heating and broadband. It sold last year for £546,000.
Hannah’s film career continued with a trip around Europe for the 1992 series Hannah Hauxwell: An Innocent Abroad. Barry then accompanied her on the QE2 to New York before a tour around the US for Hannah In America, one of six books she published.
She never returned to Low Birk Hatt, spending the last years of her life quietly in a nursing home in West Auckland, County Durham. Although she enjoyed being able to watch life pass by outside her window, she always felt nostalgic.
‘Wherever I go, and whatever I am, this is me,’ she declared, the day she left the farm. ‘There’s nowhere like it.’
In some small measure, that is still the case: her main pasture on the farm, untainted by modern agricultural chemicals, has turned out to be a haven for wild flowers.
A fitting legacy to a life that found beauty in even the harshest of conditions. |
Gov. Ivey holding 2 p.m. press conference on Tropical Storm Nate - WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL | Kay Ivey is Alabama's second female governor. (Source: alabama.gov)
Governor Kay Ivey on Friday will hold a news conference to give an update on Tropical Storm Nate.
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According to the National Weather Service, Tropical Storm Nate conditions have strengthened and are likely to impact Alabama.
Joining Governor Ivey will be Alabama Emergency Management Director Brian Hastings, State Meteorologist Jim Stefkovich and other members of the Emergency Operations Team to provide updated information on preparations and forecasted weather conditions in Alabama.
The news conference will begin at 2:00 p.m.
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Leader comment: Another John Swinney apology would be a sorry mess | Politicians are usually loathe to apologise, even when they should, so John Swinney should be given credit for an expression of contrition over his handling of the named persons policy.
However, the Deputy First Minister could hardly have chosen to blunder over a more controversial and sensitive policy.
Fears have been expressed about the full implications of putting an individual teacher, health visitor or other public sector worker in charge of the welfare of each child since the idea was first floated. The Supreme Court’s finding that the original policy was incompatible with human rights laws on privacy and family life only added to existing concerns. The prospect of “state snoopers” – as some have described the idea – raises Orwelliann fears that the SNP needs to allay.
A new code of practice on sharing information about children was meant to ensure everyone’s human rights were respected, but Mr Swinney accepted that his decision to share a draft version with Holyrood’s education committee had actually caused further “confusion and uncertainty”.
Experts are now to be tasked with ensuring the code will be “workable”, he added. The policy, already a tough sell, appears to be in some disarray. Scenting blood, the Conservatives’ Oliver Mundell suggested Mr Swinney might have to consider resignation if “this legislation falls apart”.
The SNP should have learned its lesson about attempting to roll out complex legislation too quickly from the Curriculum for Excellence affair, which dumped a mountain of paperwork on teachers.
Mr Swinney, seen as Nicola Sturgeon’s most competent minister, was appointed education secretary partly because of the need to sort out the resulting mess and has introduced reforms that The Scotsman, among others, has praised.
However, if his reputedly safe pair of hands are having difficulty handling the named persons policy, that will cause reputational damage not only to him but to the SNP government. And, if a flawed scheme is actually introduced, this could cause more harm than its intended good.
So Mr Swinney needs to proceed carefully. Apologise once and people may praise his candour, but if a minister has to apologise twice, they will lose faith in both the policy and the politician. |
Rotar rail cutter now available in North America | The rail cutter offers fast cycle times and high productivity, according to Rotar , which is headquartered in Genemuiden, Netherlands, with Rotar International based in Torun, Poland. The attachment features a heavy-duty rotating headpiece and an oversized slewing ring.
Start the conversation, or Read more at Construction & Demolition Recycling. |
Desmond Green says Michel Prazeres violated weight agreement, faces stacked odds | Whatever happens at UFC Fight Night 125, at least Desmond Green is going into it with a positive attitude.
Michel Prazeres, his opponent in Belem, Brazil tonight, should probably just be glad he’s going into it at all, since from the sound of it the odds are going to be stacked against Green (20-6 MMA, 1-1 UFC).
According to Green’s Instagram post just hours prior to fight time, Prazeres (23-2 MMA, 7-2 UFC) not only failed to make weight for their main card bout, he also went ahead and broke a gentleman’s agreement regarding how much weight he could put back on afterwards.
“Michel missed weight yesterday,” Green said. “He was five pounds over. I agreed that he couldn’t be over 173 on fight day, and he agreed to it too. We come to fight day, they tell me he’s 180 right now. Me, I weigh about 163.”
As everyone knows my opponent missed weight by 5lbs, this was his 4th time in 7 fights missing weight, so I gave a stipulation that he could not be over 173 today, I just found out he is 180 currently, I am still taking this fight 🐺 because I am a company man @danawhite @seanshelby @mickmaynard2 @ufc also I didn’t come all the way to Brazil to not perform, with that being said #watchmework Savages do what Savages do 👊🏿
So yeah, that’s a 17-pound advantage for Prazeres, just in case you didn’t feel like doing the math. And don’t forget, this fight was supposed to take place at lightweight. Assuming Green’s information is correct, that means Prazeres will get to walk into the cage 25 pounds heavier than the original contracted weight.
Still, as he explained, Green’s taking the fight anyway. As he wrote in his post (just before tagging UFC President Dana White, as well as matchmakers Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard), he’s doing it in part because he’s “a company man,” but also because he “didn’t come all the way to Brazil to not perform.”
No doubt the UFC appreciates his willingness to stay in the fight, since the last thing this fight card needed was another last-minute withdrawal.
Still, at this point he’s fighting a guy who’s practically at the middleweight limit, all while he’s still seven pounds shy of welterweight. That’s a big advantage to give up, especially when you’re already in hostile territory. It should be very interesting to see how it plays out for Green later tonight.
For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 125, check out the UFC Events section of the site. |
Holyoke firefighters extinguish roof fire at Appleton Street factory building | HOLYOKE - Holyoke firefighters extinguished a fire on the roof of a vacant factory at 5 Appleton St. before it could spread to the interior of the building, a fire official said.
The fire was apparently started by workers repairing the roof, and is considered an accident, according to Holyoke Fire Department Capt. Kevin Cavagnac.
No one was injured, and damage was confined to the roof and some interior supports. Firefighters had to cut holes in the roof in pursuit of hot spots.
Damage was estimated at around $5,000.
The fire was reported just before noon by 911 calls.
Firefighters from South Hadley and Chicopee assisted under mutual aid. |
High Barrier Packaging Films for Pharmaceuticals Market will Register a CAGR of 6.2% through 2027 | High Barrier Packaging Films for Pharmaceuticals Market: Overview
The demand for flexible packaging especially that made of biodegradable material is highly in demand today. People are preferring the use of sustainable products for packaging. The packaging industry is also witnessing the introduction of new and innovative packaging types for various applications in the food and pharmaceuticals industries. The packaging market consists of high barrier packaging that is used for pharmaceutical applications. High barrier films are flexible films that have certain properties that protect the primary product from deterioration and ultimately increase the shelf life of the product.
Request For Sample @https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-6402
A new research report by Future Market Insights titled ‘High Barrier Packaging Films for Pharmaceuticals Market: Global Industry Analysis 2012-2016 and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027’ depicts the current and upcoming scenario of high barrier packaging films for pharmaceuticals. The report indicates latest trends that are prevailing in the industry and are helping the global high barrier packaging films for pharmaceuticals market to grow exceptionally. Looking at the current demand for high barrier packaging films, manufacturers are coming up with new and advanced products. Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) or Controlled Atmosphere Packaging (CAP) is the emerging advancement in the packaging industry, which helps maintain the environment within the packaging as required by the product. High barrier packaging films are incorporated to manufacture such packaging; these films do not allow the exchange of gases across the packaging and control the temperature within the package.
Global Packaging Industry to Witness Increased Demand for Biodegradable High Barrier Packaging
The packaging industry largely accounts for plastic packaging that is non-biodegradable. People in developed countries are very concerned about the adverse effects of plastic use, which is fuelling the market for biodegradable products. Manufacturers are focussing on producing biodegradable high barrier packaging films that can help them stay stronger than other packaging manufacturers in the business. Manufacturers have also come up with techniques like recycling high barrier packaging films. A new technology being launched is Recycle Ready Technology. This technology renders the recycling of polyethylene barrier films with the objective to increase the post-consumer recycling process and reduce packaging waste incineration. The process is an evolution in the recycling process of flexible films that has saved immense cost of manufacturers in the recycling process of flexible films.
Request For TOC @https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-6402
APEJ to Become the Fastest Growing Region in the Global High Barrier Packaging Films for Pharmaceuticals Market
According to the research report, the North America regional market is expected to hold the highest market size of over US$ 200 Mn by the end of 2027. However, in terms of growth rate, APEJ is expected to dominate the global market with a projected CAGR of 7.2% during the forecast period. Latin America is in close competition with APEJ in terms of growth and is expected to grow at the rate of 7.0% during the forecast period.
Read more Information @ https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/high-barrier-packaging-films-for-pharmaceuticals-market-is-expected-to-reach-a-valuation-of-over-us-6480-mn-by-the-end-of-2027-676249213.html
High Barrier Packaging Films for Pharmaceuticals Market: Competitive Landscape
The report lists all the key players leading in the global high barrier packaging films for pharmaceuticals market. It also presents a brief profile of all these major players. Some of the key players mentioned in report are Amcor Limited, Uflex Ltd., Bemis Company, Inc., Winpak Ltd., The Mondi Group plc, Berry Global Group Plc, Constantia Flexibles, Glenroy, Inc, Toray Plastics (America), Inc., Cleplast Metallized Products Ltd. etc. |
Python attacks elderly woman at Coast home | Stuart studied journalism at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. He worked briefly at Central Queensland News and Warwick Daily News. He has worked as a reporter at The Chronicle since July 2009.
A WOMAN is in hospital after suffering a snake bite at a Coast home.
A Queensland Ambulance Service spokeswoman said the elderly woman was bitten on the hand by a python at a Moffat Beach home on Saturday.
Paramedics were called to assist her at 10.45am.
The woman was taken to Sunshine Coast University Hospital for treatment. |
Deputies: Pitt Co. couple arrested after drug paraphernalia found near 4-year-old son | GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — A Pitt County couple was arrested Sunday after the Sheriff’s Office said drug paraphernalia was found at their home near their four-year-old son.
Caroline Marie Cole, 31, and James Anthony Jones, 38, were arrested on charges of child neglect/abuse and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Both have been released on bond. |
WATCH: Huddersfield Town fans sent into delirium with late win over Rotherham United | WATCH: Town fans sent into delirium with late win over Rotherham
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A last-gasp winner from Tommy Smith sent Huddersfield Town's travelling away support into delirium at Rotherham United last night.
The full-back drilled into the bottom corner from just inside the area in the second minute of additional time to seal a 3-2 win at the AESSEAL New York Stadium in front of a travelling support of 2,583 Town fans.
David Wagner's side had started the game sluggishly with the SkyBet Championship strugglers Rotherham twice taking the lead only to be pegged back through goals from Joe Lolley and Elias Kachunga.
The victory sees Huddersfield Town extend their winning run to five games in the second-tier for the first time since 1999 as well as closing the gap on an automatic promotion place to just four points.
And as ever Ben Hall, who runs the Huddersfield Town YouTube channel TerriersTV, was on hand to capture it all with his footage at the top of this page.
Watch his video above and for more from Ben, visit TerriersTV Huddersfield Town home and away Vlogs or tweet @TerriersTV_YT . |
Sony tries to upload movie trailer to YouTube, posts entire movie instead | Sony Pictures Entertainment endeavored to post a trailer for its limited-release film Khali the Killer on YouTube to encourage viewers to watch the movie on Blu-ray, on streaming platforms, and in select theaters. Instead, the company uploaded the film in its entirety—apparently by accident.
Further Reading FBI claims North Korean involvement in Sony Pictures attack Khali the Killer is a violent crime drama that, based on the actual trailer, seems to draw a lot of influence from westerns and '70s exploitation films. It was released on DVD in 2017, but in the odd reverse-order world of some indie films, it's not slated for a theatrical release until later this year. In any case, this is not an example of the film being unavailable until it suddenly appeared on YouTube.
Clocking in at a feature-length one hour and 30 minutes, the video has since been removed, but it stayed up for several hours. That was long enough to earn a heavily upvoted Reddit thread making fun of the error.
"Another trailer that spoils the whole film," lamented Redditor GeraltForOverwatch in a comment with more than 15,000 upvotes. Other Reddit users shared the theory that it's actually a viral marketing effort for a film that isn't likely to attract much buzz otherwise. That's possible but unlikely given that Sony is still recovering from some embarrassing or damaging problems on the digital front—like the 2014 Sony Pictures hack that exposed thousands of employee social security numbers, emails, and more. Stunts like this would usually require sign-off from executive stakeholders at companies like this, and they probably wouldn't want to support any narrative about the company struggling digitally.
The processes used by organizations like Sony to publish videos to platforms both owned and otherwise could present opportunities for error. (I know this because I used to work for a major broadcast TV network.) It could have been as simple as a young, entry-level digital producer accidentally copying and pasting the wrong video ID number from the company's internal repository of video files into a proprietary publishing tool that bulk-publishes several videos in a daily push via the YouTube Data API and the equivalents on other platforms.
But that's just informed speculation without further word from Sony, and Sony has not yet publicly commented about the incident. |
Noida: 14-year-old help says beaten, burnt in custody, police told to file report | The girl, a domestic help in Noida, was reportedly detained after her employer accused her of theft. The girl, a domestic help in Noida, was reportedly detained after her employer accused her of theft.
THE NATIONAL Legal Services Authority (NALSA) has sought a report from Noida Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Pal following a 14-year-old girl’s allegation that she was detained, at a police chowki and a police station in Noida, for eight days, during which she was beaten, burnt with cigarettes and electrocuted. The girl, a domestic help in Noida, was reportedly detained after her employer accused her of theft.
While the police denied the charges, medical reports confirmed five injuries listed by the Noida district hospital. According to the girl’s family, she was detained on May 14. She was taken to the Salarpur police chowki, where she reportedly remained till May 16. Her relatives claimed that they were not informed, and were not allowed to meet her when they reached the chowki.
The girl was reportedly released on May 16, but detained again the next day, this time with her 17-year-old brother. The two were finally released on the night of May 22, following the intervention of an NGO, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, and an order from the Child Welfare Commission.
The CWC, on May 23, also ordered a medical examination.
Citing “alleged cigarette burn and electric spark”, the medico legal case report, dated May 26, lists two “brown-shaped circular discolorations” near her left and right wrists, linking these to “burn marks”. It also lists abrasions on the right forearm near the elbow and three discoloured abrasions on both wrists. “Duration of all above injuries is more than 10 days old and is caused by (a) hard and blunt object,” it concludes.
While Noida SSP Ajay Pal refused to comment, a spokesperson for his office maintained “the allegations were false”. Asked about the injuries, the spokesperson added, “There was a matter of theft and she was questioned. If there is truth to her allegations, the matter will be probed”.
Anil Kumar Sahi, SHO at the Sector 39 police station where the girl was reportedly detained, denied the allegations and claimed the girl was not a minor. “We interrogated her after which she was released the same day… There are no injuries… People lie about their age,” he said. But the MLC report stated she is a minor.
Following a complaint from the NGO, NALSA director Surinder Rathi, on May 24, directed the Noida district legal services authority to “procure (a) report from (the) SSP” and consider “criminal action”.
The girl’s father, a vegetable vendor, said they are yet to file a police complaint as they fear harassment. The girl’s family said that a few days before she was detained, her mother had stopped working as a domestic help with a family citing ill health. The girl alleged that the employer came to their house and demanded that she work as their domestic help instead. She said her family protested but “the man put me on his scooter and took me away in front of our neighbours”.
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Asylum seeker triage stalled by Ont. election | OTTAWA — A plan to "triage" asylum seekers crossing the Canada-U.S. border illegally, in an effort to move some migrants out of Quebec and into Ontario, has stalled because Ontario is in the midst of a provincial election.
Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau says Ontario civil servants have been working on details of the plan with the federal government and Quebec, but nothing can be finalized until a new provincial government is in place.
"There's a lot of very hard work being done by civil servants who work for Immigration Ontario to look at the whole issue of the triage, which is more than just a reception centre. It's the whole process of absorbing people who want to go to Ontario. And that entails resources — financial resources, and other kinds of resources, manpower resources," Garneau told reporters Wednesday.
"There is an election going on and, when it's all in place, there will be a requirement to get the new government of Ontario, whatever that government is, to sign onto that."
The ad hoc intergovernmental task force on irregular migration met Wednesday evening to discuss the ongoing issue of illegal border crossers and how to address pressures facing Quebec, where the vast majority of irregular migrants are arriving.
The group of federal and provincial officials also met last month, when they reached agreements on measures including the creation of a so-called triage system to identify asylum seekers interested in going to areas outside Montreal or Toronto to await the outcome of their refugee claims.
So far, the system has not materialized.
Quebec Immigration Minister David Heurtel says his province's resources are becoming strained. More than 9,000 refugee claimants have crossed into Canada through unofficial paths along the border so far this year, with 90 per cent of them landing in Quebec.
A majority of the primarily Nigerian asylum seekers who have arrived this year have indicated they want to live in Ontario. That's why Heurtel says he wants to see the triage system up and running, to help facilitate travel and other arrangements for those who want to go to Ontario.
"For us it is important to see that people who do not want to be in Quebec do not have to stay in Quebec," he said in French. |
New lese majeste law to 'scare' Cambodians: Ministry spokesman | PHNOM PENH: A spokesman for Cambodia’s Interior Ministry says the country’s new proposed lese majeste law was designed to "scare" the public.
A draft amendment to make insulting the king criminal offence was approved by the Cambodian government on Friday (Feb 2), prompting wider fears about a crackdown on civil rights and freedom of expression.
"Every human being is scared of the prison … we created the law to make people scared," Khieu Sopheak told Channel NewsAsia.
"It is not strange to have this regulation for countries that have a king reigning. Thailand even has a more serious sentence than this," he said.
Neigbouring Thailand has the world's toughest lese majeste law, with sentences of up to 15 years for each offence of royal insult. Prosecutions under the Thai law have risen since a 2014 coup and critics of the junta say it has been used as a means to silence any dissent.
Offenders of Cambodia's proposed lese majeste law would face a prison sentence of one to five years and a fine of up to US$2,500.
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Chin Malin, spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, said Cambodia should have had the regulation to punish people who insult the king a long time ago.
"The constitution already states that the king is inviolable but our criminal code does not have any regulation to punish against person who violates against the king, so it is necessary that we need to make amendment our criminal code," he said.
He added that previous comments in the media and on social networks had affected the dignity and fame of the king, as well as political leaders, a phenomenon that could be explained by "falling morality".
Freedom of expression nowadays is full of anarchy beyond the law and without responsibility, which sometimes affect the king, Malin said.
"So in the context of the freedom of expression without responsibility and such anarchy, it demands there be a regulation to prevent and punish, in order to protect the dignity and the fame of the king," he said.
The lese majeste law is expected to be passed before the general election, Malin confirmed. The ruling party’s dominance of the National Assembly means there will be no obstacles to the legislation being approved.
"WE CANNOT CRITICISE AS WE DID BEFORE"
Current monarch King Norodom Sihamoni has performed a mostly ceremonial role as head of state and has been almost completely absent from daily politics, unlike his father King Norodom Sihanouk who was an active political figure throughout his life.
King Sihamoni is required to sign off on laws, which in recent times has prompted some criticism from those who felt he should intervene more to prevent the dismantling of democracy.
In October 2017, he signed off on four sets of controversial amendments to Cambodia’s electoral laws, officially approving provisions that will allow seats belonging to the opposition – Cambodia National Rescue Party – to be redistributed in the event of its dissolution.
Following that, former Deputy Prime Minister Ly Lay Sreng criticised King Sihamoni in a private conversation. His conversation was recorded secretly and distributed without his permission on Facebook, leading to a defamation suit filed by lawyers of Prime Minister Hun Sen and Lay Sreng’s former party Funcinpec.
In September, another woman Moeun Lihor, a vendor in Banteay Meanchey province, was arrested and imprisoned for insulting the king and Hun Sen in a Facebook post.
Legal expert Sok Sam Oeun said it was the duty of the government to protect the king.
"The constitution stated that the king is inviolable so if there is no regulation to punish those who insult the king, it means that the constitution is meaningless.
"Expression is freedom but we cannot make any expression that violates or is prohibited by the constitution."
He added that in order to make this law is more effective, authorities needed to broadly disseminate the information to the public and strengthen the implementation of the law.
Although King Sihamoni is Cambodia's head of state, Hun Sen has dominated the Southeast Asian country for more than 33 years.
Rights groups said they feared the new law could also be used to target critics of the government, which last year had the main opposition party shut down and its leader, Kem Sokha, arrested on treason charges he says were politically driven.
"The cabinet's approval of a lese majeste law appears to be a further attempt by the government to weaponise the country's legislation against its perceived opponents," said Kingsley Abbott, ICJ's Senior International Legal Adviser.
"The government's ongoing misuse of the law is particularly concerning given the lack of independent and impartial judges to provide appropriate checks and balances on its power," he added.
University student and activist Kong Raya, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2016 for calling for a "colour revolution" and criticising the king in a Facebook post, said he will continue his criticisms regardless of the law amendment, but with caution.
"My opinion is a democratic opinion so I will still keep criticising but we have to be more careful than before. We cannot criticise as we did before," Raya said.
"I will still maintain my democratic principals when I see someone did something wrong. I will keep criticising and criticise in a constructive way." |
Western Mail letters: Tuesday, December 12, 2017 | Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
People here do not want solar farm
After Anglesey Council approved a 200 acre solar farm at Rhyd y Groes near Cemaes, the developers thanked Plaid Cymru for their 100% renewable energy target.
However the people and Community Councils in north Anglesey don’t want this development, the size of Cemaes, obliterating their local landscape. Neither do they want to pay yet more for their electricity as their bills have already doubled in recent years.
Following a 9% price hike last year the Treasury warns of seven more years of price rises in the pipeline due to costs associated with unreliable renewables.
Averaged over the year solar pv produces just 10% of the 50MW capacity claimed by these developers, with hardly any during the depths of winter. Reliable power stations like Wylfa are still needed. Politicians should listen to communities; do the maths; understand the data and acknowledge that solar farms are costly, unsightly and unnecessary for decarbonisation.
Mairede Thomas
Menai Bridge, Anglesey
Pontypridd is really not part of Cardiff
Calling a spade a brush does not make it a brush. So Benjamin Netanyahu saying Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for 3,000 years does not mean his present day state that has existed for only 68 years has claim to this ancient and international city.
Biblically, Jerusalem has existed as far back as the stories of Cain and Abel are said to have taken place. So for Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to have any validity one would also have to accept other Israelite dates, such as creationism, which says the earth is only around 10,000 years old.
The Welsh Government have created a “Cardiff Capital Region” of which Pontypridd is part. I challenge anyone to find someone from Pontypridd willing to accept they are part of Cardiff just because Carwyn Jones has decided it is.
Coun Jonathan Bishop
Pontypridd
Tree discussion must branch out
Re: Planning application A170264 - tree sculpture plan for Borth. I know, off by heart, the planning reference number, the proposed height and dimensions of the structure, the number of pages in the planning report and the number of objectors the artist spoke to in the consultation. I know these facts because they have been repeated time and time again like a stuck record.
What concerns me is that, just days from the planning decision being made, there are lots of things we still don’t know about planning application A170264. There has been no opportunity to question that which is contained in the 134-page report and move the discussion beyond its confines. This discussion needs to branch out – pun intended!
Throughout this process I have been shocked by how little local democracy counts in local decision making, by how little protection our designations for special places actually carries and how our regulatory bodies can act to harm that which they should be protecting. We have seen that the local community council objections to the application carry no weight in the planning system, and therefore that there is no representation of the local view from those elected to be the voice of their place. We have watched the ease with which the specific safety concerns from our local water safety experts have been dismissed and over ridden by those of higher office but with no experience of local conditions. This clever tactic of continually going over the heads of the local voice is at the root of sense of injustice that is felt by so many on the ground.
There are still unresolved issues with the planning application. There is land included in the planning diagrams that the applicant has not got permission to use. There are details lacking in terms of the composition, construction and form of the piece. The artist has is no previous work in this media that demonstrates his competencies or abilities. Interestingly he does have work based on Formula 1 racing, a sport not known for its environmental credentials.
Whatever the outcome of the planning decision A170264 will for me symbolise the breakdown of local democracy, the eternal struggle of the small versus the system and the importance of action by communities to stand up for what they believe in. I am of this place, I know my roots, I understand the wild it needs no adornment to tell its tales.
Kim Williams
Borth, Ceredigion
Advertising should be held to account
Every adult citizen in Britain knows quite certainly, that the eating disorders, such as anorexia, caused by an internal fear of being the wrong shape, in the minds of our vulnerable teenagers, is an evil product of the billions of pounds which the British economy wastes on the advertising industry, hectoring children that they must conform to their standards. And yet, when a young girl dies as a result, the media and the ombudsman produce a report which lays the blame on the overworked NHS staff who sought to save her. Not a word from educated officials, about the dangers to the next child. That is the measure of how far the British Establishment and Tory voters have turned their backs on the ethical principles which once founded the NHS, condemning themselves. They have no intention to tackle an unnecessary but terrifying social problem.
These are our children, but you cannot find a responsible parent who believes that Government should prevent directors of that industry from having the power or the money to destroy young lives. Indeed, the mindless theories of this government include the view that such visual advertising is a valuable part of the nation’s economy.
Neville Westerman
Brynna
Yorktown, Singapore and now Brussels
Mrs May has maintained the British Government tradition of selling ones friends and buying ones enemies.
Mrs May, the Prime Minister of a country that pays in far more than it gets back, flies to Brussels in the dead of night to make obeisance to a financially incontinent, unelected, crypto-fascist entity. If there is such a thing as a British tradition, this humiliation will rank alongside Cornwallis at Yorktown and Percival at Singapore. If the railway carriage used for the armistice in 1918 and the French surrender in 1940 hadn’t been destroyed, it would have been shunted to Brussels for the photo opportunities.
John Lewis
Bridgend
Syrian refugees should learn Welsh
A broadcast on Wales news highlighted the under-achievement of Syrian refugees in their quest to be conversant in English language.
The concern sought to emphasise a lack of funding by UK government, as at present moneys available didn’t provide for more specific courses.
I am not aware of any WAG donations to this cause. So I thought what an ideal time to transfer some of the resources for Welsh language provision and teach them Welsh.
After all only a few days ago there was concern that there were insufficient Welsh speakers in Cardiff to fulfil ministerial appointments, so here is a golden opportunity to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.
What an ideal opportunity for the Welsh language lobby to further promote bilingualism.
Windsor Davies
Blandford
This is why we struggle in snow
So it snows heavily and some people repeat the often-heard cliche, “Why does everything in this country stop just because we’ve had snow? Other countries seem to manage.”
These folk need to understand that it snows heavily in these other countries on many days during the winter, and this is repeated every year, so they prepare for it and spend a lot of money in the process.
It rarely snows here. We often go years without any snow to write home about. If we spent a fortune preparing for these rare events, these same people would complain.
John Bevan
Cyncoed, Cardiff |
Ukraine lawmaker sparks scandal by shooting man in leg | New Year's Eve passed off peacefully enough in war-torn Ukraine -- until a senior lawmaker shot a man in the leg during a testosterone-charged road rage incident.
The ensuing duel saw Khimikus whack Pashynskiy in the head with a bottle before the lawmaker shot him in the leg.
"I used the gun only after being hit by a glass bottle and firing a warning shot in the air," various media quoted Pashynskiy as saying.
The deputy added that his gun was licensed and his actions legal.
... |
Police remain at the scene in Centre Square where incident took place overnight | Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Police remain at the scene where an incident took place overnight from Friday to Saturday.
An area of grassed verge close to Middlesbrough Council Civic Centre at Centre Square in Middlesbrough was taped off by police early on Saturday morning.
Police are remaining tight-lipped about the nature of the incident.
The cordoned off area was guarded throughout the day by an officer in an unmarked car.
The Gazette has contacted Cleveland Police for comment. |
Not Gauhar Khan but Ajay Devgn appeared on Stardust cover; actress in trouble for ex Kushal Tandon? | Gauhar Khan hogged much limelight after she shared a picture on social media, in which she is seen sizzling on the cover of Stardust magazine. Her former boyfriend too praised her for the "oomph" factor but looks like the diva is now in trouble for sharing the picture.
Amy Jackson's private pictures leaked online after actress' phone gets hacked
The picture that Gauhar had shared gave an impression that she appeared on the cover of the magazine but in reality, it is Ajay Devgn who graced the latest Stardust cover. Gauhar's photo is meant for one of the inside pages and the masthead in the photo was added separately.
This did not go down well with the magazine and they have decided to take legal action against the person who has used the masthead without due permission. Stardust has issued a statement in this regard.
"Stardust would like to clarify that the post of Gauhar Khan on Instagram with the Stardust masthead has nothing to do with us. Ajay Devgn is gracing the cover of Stardust February issue. We have come across a few articles that state that Gauhar is on the cover, so we would like to clear the air by saying that the news is false," said the statement published in Hindustan Times.
The magazine also claimed that they asked Gauhar to delete the picture but she refused to do so as it might give rise to more speculations on rumours of her reconciliation with ex beau Kushal.
"Gauhar was also contacted for the same by us and unfortunately she cannot delete the post as she thinks the media will make news of the same and again, question her reconciliation with Kushal Tandon. And legal action will be taken against the one who has used the masthead without our permission, thus defying our company policy," the statement added. Below is the actual Stardust cover of February.
Well, things have definitely turned awkward for Gauhar now. Earlier, Kushal also shared the photo on Instagram with the caption saying, "saw this picture...click by my brother Haider Khan...couldnot resist myself to share this picture of this stunner...@gauaharkhan lady with grace, panache, ooomp and style with a golden heart." This post by Kushal soon had given rise to rumours that the fomer couple are again in a relationship. |
Test captaincy awaits Mitch Marsh after elevation to Australia A skipper | Mitch Marsh’s status as a future Australian captain has been underlined after his appointment to lead the Australia A team in India in September.
The West Australian skipper, who is set to succeed WA coach-in-waiting Adam Voges as Perth Scorchers captain, will use the next three months to recover from ankle surgery as he prepares to take on the greater leadership roles.
Marsh, 26, had bone spurs removed from the front and back of his left ankle as well as having seven pieces of floating bone removed from the joint. He had identical surgery seven years ago and was told at the time that he would probably require another operation this year.
Marsh expects to start running within two weeks and hopes to be able to bowl in the two four-day matches in India in early September.
The 12-month suspensions of former Australian captain Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner have seen Tim Paine parachuted into the leadership roles, with the Tasmanian set to captain the Test and one-day teams this summer.
But Marsh could be fast-tracked into the Test captaincy by the Ashes series next year when he would become just the third West Australian after Kim Hughes and Adam Gilchrist to lead the national team.
“We are looking for leaders for future Australian teams,” selection chairman Trevor Hohns said.
Marsh could be Paine’s deputy later this year as Cricket Aust-ralia searches for its next generation of leaders. “It is there, but it is not something I am focused on solely and with where we are as the Australian cricket team, I want to become the best cricketer and best person I can be,” Marsh said.
“If that means in time I become the Australian vice-captain then so be it, but I am just worried about getting my ankle right and getting back to playing some good cricket. But I must be doing something right and I am looking forward to the opportunity (for Australia A).
“I have grown into the role (as WA captain) but right now I feel my leadership has grown over the past 12 months and I am looking forward to getting my teeth stuck in during the next few months.”
Marsh won the domestic one-day cup in his first outing as WA captain last season and revealed an attacking flair in six Sheffield Shield matches in charge. Marsh endorsed Voges as WA’s next coach and said he would be an ideal successor to Justin Langer, who replaced Darren Lehmann as national coach.
Voges is understood to be the only candidate and the WACA board is expected to ratify his appointment as early as today.
“He is a great human being and has a wealth of knowledge about the game of cricket,” Marsh said. “He is so well respected in West Australian and Australian cricket and it would be a great starting point if he was appointed coach of WA.” |
BRIEF-Clarocity Corp signs letter of intent to acquire intellectual property assets | April 5 Clarocity Corp-
* Clarocity Corporation signs letter of intent to acquire intellectual property assets
* Clarocity Corp - signed a non-binding letter of intent for an aggregate purchase price of us$1.6 million
* Clarocity Corp - signed non-binding loi pursuant to which co will acquire certain intellectual property assets from ernie durbin and steve ferguson Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: |
Journalist Known For Criticism Of Kazakh Government Goes On Trial | ALMATY -- A Kazakh journalist known for his criticism of the government has gone on trial for alleged money laundering, a charge he and his supporters say is fabricated.
The trial of Zhanbolat Mamai, acting chief editor of the independent Sayasi Qalam-Tribuna (The Political Pen-Tribune) newspaper, opened in Almaty on August 14.
Investigators say Mamai was involved in laundering money allegedly stolen by fugitive Kazakh tycoon Mukhtar Ablyazov.
Mamai denies any connection with Ablyazov and says the case against him is politically motivated.
Ablyazov, a former head of Kazakhstan's BTA bank, who is currently living abroad, is a major opponent of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev.
He is wanted by Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine on suspicion of embezzling some $5 billion. Ablyazov denies the accusations, saying they are politically motivated. |
BRIEF-Toyota Motor North America reports 4.4 pct decrease in April sales | German ministry says disagrees with regional bans on diesel cars
BERLIN, June 14 Germany's federal government is against individual states and cities banning cars with diesel engines to reduce pollution, a transport ministry spokesman said on Wednesday following reports that local authorities in Munich are considering such a step. |
Jayson Tatum Reveals New Number While Debuting Celtics’ 2017-18 Jersey | The Boston Celtics will sport a new look for the 2017-18 season. But thanks to Jayson Tatum, there still will be plenty of nostalgia in the TD Garden.
The Celtics are among multiple NBA teams that will feature sponsored logos on their new Nike uniforms, with General Electric’s branding set to appear amid the iconic green and white. With more than two months to go before preseason play, rookies Tatum, Ante Zizic and Semi Ojeleye are providing early glimpses of the new garbs.
And although fan-favorite Avery Bradley won’t be around, his former jersey number will.
Finally in the @celtics green! Cant wait to get the season started. Go check out my 1st trading card #Celtics https://t.co/pHLahkkxyJ pic.twitter.com/mEqqVim4zb — Jayson Tatum (@jaytatum0) August 11, 2017
Finally in my @celtics uni! Thank God for this opportunity! Check out my 1st trading card #PaniniNBARookie https://t.co/PLCZRPC7Hz pic.twitter.com/17vseRt5Me — Semi Ojeleye (@SemiOjeleye) August 11, 2017
The No. 0 arguably is one of the coolest numbers in sports, so it’s good to know someone from the Celtics is picking it up. And while getting used to these soccer-style uniforms might be difficult for some NBA fans, they’re probably not as bad as many feared.
As sharp as the Celtics’ new jerseys are, though, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ new “Fitbit” look is much tougher to digest.
Thumbnail photo via Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports Images |
The Latest: Germany urges freedom for Venezuela prisoners | CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - The Latest on Venezuela's political crisis (all times local):
2:45 p.m.
Germany is calling on Venezuela to release all political prisoners and end its forceful crackdown on the opposition.
A government supporter dressed as Uncle Sam, a personification of the U.S government, holding a fake nuke and a placard showing OAS president as a dog, participates in an anti-imperialist march to denounce Trump's talk of a "military option" for resolving the country's political crisis, in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, Aug. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert says Germany backs last week's resolution by a dozen mostly Latin American countries and Canada condemning the breakdown of democracy under Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Seibert said Monday that Venezuela's new constitutional assembly is "illegitimate."
He told reporters in Berlin that Germany wants "a peaceful return to democratic order. There must be an end to indiscriminate arrests and excessive violence against the opposition."
Seibert also called for deposed chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz to be protected and political prisoners to be released. |
Dolores Leis Antelo Is Spanish Donald Trump Doppelganger | Delores Leis Antelo might just be the female doppelganger of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has received quite a bit of backlash since becoming president of the United States. He has received quite a bit of hate from different groups for quite a few different things. Among the most popular issues are his alleged cheating scandal with Stormy Daniels and the “bully” mentality that he ran his campaign on.
While many do not like Trump due to his policies and morals, others make fun of the way he looks. Whether it be the orange skin or his famous hairstyle, Trump may be the most iconic human being when it comes to his own personal style and looks.
It may not seem likely that Trump would have a doppelganger, but Delores Leis Antelo might very well be the Spanish female version of Trump, as Newsweek noted.
As you can see from the below photo, Delores does look quite a bit like Trump.
'It is because of the color of my hair' says Spanish woman who looks like Donald Trump https://t.co/jtDX4xF2Iu pic.twitter.com/DMSCh4jNiK — Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 24, 2018
She has noticed her name traveling around the internet and has commented on her appearance being similar to that of Donald Trump.
“My photo seems to have traveled far. I say it is because of the color of my hair.”
Ana, who is Delores’ daughter, also commented on the situation.
“Imagine if we were in Donald Trump’s family!”
Delores talked about social media and shared that she does not use any social media platforms herself. In fact, she doesn’t even own her own cell phone. She did mention that she does look at what her daughters show her off of social media.
“I have never been curious to have one but I do look at what my daughters show me. They say this picture will make me famous but I don’t get why.”
Newsweek had a hilarious quote to finish out their article about Trump’s doppelganger.
“Swap the hoe for a golf club and Antelo could easily pass for President Donald Trump looking at a putt he is particularly pleased with on his Palm Beach Florida golf course.”
All of that being said, Delores Leis Antelo is going to be very famous because of this picture going viral. She may not understand why, but that won’t stop the internet from taking this and running with it. |
BRIEF-Yext anticipates IPO price will be between $8-$10/shr | March 28 Yext Inc:
* Anticipate that IPO price of common stock will be between $8.00 and $10.00 per share - SEC filing
* Yext Inc - Yext Inc is offering 10.5 million shares of its common stock
* Yext Inc - proposed IPO price is an estimate solely for purpose of calculating SEC registration fee Source text: (bit.ly/2nqiZFb) |
Maple Leafs beat Bruins to force Game 7 | Sign up for one of our email newsletters.
TORONTO — Frederik Andersen stopped 32 shots to lead the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 3-1 win over the Boston Bruins on Monday night, forcing a decisive Game 7 in the first-round series.
William Nylander, Mitch Marner and Tomas Plekanec scored for the Maple Leafs, who trailed the series 3-1 before winning two in a row. They also trailed 1-0 early in the second period of this one. Nikita Zaitsev added two assists, and Marner and Plekanec each had one.
Jake DeBrusk scored for the Bruins, and Tuukka Rask — pulled in Game 5 at home, finished with 27 saves.
Game 7 is Wednesday night in Boston with the winner advancing to face Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
There was a moment of silence before the opening faceoff at Air Canada Centre to honor the 10 people killed Monday when a van mounted a sidewalk in Toronto's north end and struck multiple pedestrians. Fifteen others were injured.
Scoreless after an end-to-end first period, the Bruins grabbed a 1-0 lead 1 minutes, 2 seconds into the second when David Krejci won a faceoff after an icing against Auston Matthews right to DeBrusk, beat Andersen between his arm and body.
Toronto responded just 35 seconds later when Nylander buried a rebound of a Jake Gardiner shot from the point for his first goal of the playoffs.
The Leafs appeared to go ahead at 3:04 when Zach Hyman beat Rask with a no-look backhand as he fell to the ice. The Bruins challenged the play for goalie interference, and replays showed the forward knocked the stick out of Rask's hands as he cruised through the crease just before scoring.
Boston appeared to control the play after that as Toronto could barely get out of its own zone or complete a clean breakout. Andersen, who recorded 42 stops in a 4-3 victory in Game 5 on Saturday, made great saves on shots by Rick Nash, Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron to keep things level.
The Maple Leafs, however, wend ahead with 6:35 left in the period when Marner was quickest to a loose puck in the slot and beat Rask with a backhand to the far post after Marchand couldn't clear.
Toronto killed off its first penalty early in the third and was then left fuming when David Backes elbowed Andersen in the mask, but was only assessed an offsetting roughing minor when Roman Polak came to his goalie's defence.
The Leafs couldn't connect on their third power play moments later, and Andersen stoned Sean Kuraly with under 10 minutes to go.
Rask then robbed Nylander off a great feed from Auston Matthews.
The Bruins went back to the power play with under six minutes left, but the best chance came when Rask stopped Kasperi Kapanen on a 2-on-1 that turned into a breakaway before stoning Krejci on a one-time shot that brought the towel-waving crowd to its feet.
Rask followed that up by stopping Matthews on another 2-on-1 off a pass from Plekanec before Plekanec sealed the win with an empty-netter with 1:14 to play.
Both goalies were on their game in the first as the clubs combined for 27 shots on goal, including 17 from Boston.
Andersen made a nice stop on Nash less than two minutes in after a Maple Leafs turnover before Rask, who allowed four goals on 13 shots before getting pulled in Game 5, fought off Zaitsev's point shot.
Marchand came close when his shot off another turnover struck the inside of Andersen's pad and bounced out the other side.
Rask held the fort on the game's first power play, and Andersen followed up with his second incredible stick save of the series when he swatted a Backes attempt from in tight with Nash lurking. |
Corus and Bell end specialty channel deal | TORONTO — Corus Entertainment Inc. says it and Bell Media Inc. have agreed to end a deal on two Quebec specialty television channels after the proposed sale was blocked by the Commissioner of Competition.
Corus said on Monday it was reviewing the commissioner's rejection of the deal to sell French-language channels Historia and Series+ to Bell.
When the companies announced the sale in October 2017, they valued the transaction at about $200 million.
In addition to Competition Act approval, the deal had required approval from the CRTC. |
Superman star is unrecognisable now | ’90s Superman star Dean Cain looks very different these days. Picture: TMZ/MEGA
’90s Superman star Dean Cain looks very different these days. Picture: TMZ/MEGA
HE WAS one of the major heart-throbs of the '90s - but if you saw Dean Cain on the street now, you probably wouldn't even notice.
The actor, 51, who launched to stardom playing Superman in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman from 1993-97, has been spotted hanging out in Washington D.C. this week.
He kind of just looks like someone’s dad now. Picture: TMZ/MEGA
Cain looked happy and relaxed in a polo shirt over a T-shirt, with a poppy pinned to his chest to mark Memorial Day.
Most people would remember him as Clark Kent, but the actor has a number of other credits to his name. He's appeared in dozens of TV shows, including the original Beverly Hills 90210, Just Shoot Me!, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Law & Order: SVU, Frasier, Smallville, Entourage, and Don't Trust the B**** in Apartment 23, although his most recent TV appearance was in Supergirl.
So dreamy.
Scrolling through thousands of these old Superman photos for … research purposes.
Cain and his former Lois & Clark co-star Teri Hatcher sent fans into a spin last year after turning up in Sydney together for the Supernova Comic Con and Gaming Expo.
Despite reports they didn't get along during filming, the pair looked like the best of friends as they posted a happy snap at the peak of the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb.
Reunited — in a slightly less impressive airborne adventure.
"Soaring together again. So fun to reunite. Thanks to #bridgeclimbsydney #loisandclark #deancain," wrote Hatcher on Instagram.
Hatcher and Cain have both said they would reunite for a Lois & Clark reboot.
would love to bring back @RealDeanCain and i for a Lois and Clark reboot #Supergirl — Teri Hatcher (@HatchingChange) May 23, 2017
Cain is a father of one - he has a 17-year-old son, Christopher, with ex-girlfriend and Playboy playmate Samantha Torres. |
Cattle ban: SC issues notice to Central Govt. on hearing PIL | [India], June 15 (ANI): The Supreme Court today issued a notice to the Central government on hearing the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a Hyderabad based Non-Government Organisation (NGO) over cow and cattle slaughter ban issue.
The apex court's vacation bench, headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and comprising Justice R.K. Agarwal issued notice to the government for July 11.
The petitioner NGO had moved the apex court challenging the Centre's notification that bans sale and purchase of cattle from animal markets for slaughter, a move that received flak since its announcement.
The petition was filed by a Hyderabad-based lawyer, Fahim Qureshi, stating that the order was discriminatory and unconstitutional, as it prevented cattle traders from earning their livelihood. On May 25, the Centre through an order imposed a ban on the sale of cattle, including cows, for slaughter and restricted cattle trade solely to farm owners. Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Harsh Vardhan had ordered that the ministry has notified the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017 to ensure that the sale of cattle is not meant for slaughter purposes. Regulating animal trade is a state business, but animal welfare is a central subject, thereby providing the window for the ministry to notify the rule. In lieu of this, there was widespread opposition of the order, with many states openly denying accepting the notification. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan last month said he would call for a meeting of all the Chief Ministers, asserting that the Union Government does not have the right to issue such an order on cattle slaughter ban. Vijayan further said that the Centre's new rule is an impermissible encroachment into the domain of the State Legislatures which is a clear 'violation of the spirit of federalism.' On June 1, the students of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT- Madras) staged protest against the same. With the police deployed in front of the IIT campus, the students protested at the main gate and raised slogans against the Centre's controversial notification. (ANI) |
I Posted A Huge Note For The Thief Who Stole My Bike. Then My Doorbell Rang | The bike that was given to Needham after hers was stolen. She plans to pass it on to someone who needs it
My bike was stolen on a weekend in early March. It was half my fault, half my husband's fault, and 100 percent the fault of the person who stole it. Left with a lock, a front wheel and a heavy heart, I did the only thing I could think of: I decided to leave the thief a little note.Okay, it was a big note. Armed with yellow paint, I crafted an 8-by-3-foot cardboard sign and hung it across the entire front of my landlord's Brooklyn brownstone (with his permission). It said:"To the person who stole my bicycle"I hope you need it more than I do."It was $200 used, and I need it to get to work. I can't afford another one."Next time, steal a hipster's Peugeot."Or not steal! PS: Bring it back."(For those of you who are not into bikes, Peugeots are fancy bikes that can cost thousands of dollars.)I felt a little foolish writing the sign. After all, if my husband and I had spent nearly as much time double securing my bicycle as I did writing the sign, I might not be in the situation. But I knew other people's bicycles had been stolen in the neighborhood, and the least I could do was acknowledge what had happened. I left it up for seven days.The following Wednesday evening, I got the first knock on my door. Standing outside were two young African American men, maybe 24 and 16. One of them was carrying a blue mountain bike fit for a teen."Are you the one who got your bike stolen?" asked the guy, who introduced himself as Michael. "I had that happen to me as well, and I had this bike lying around, so I figured you might be able to use it."I was flustered by the offer and tried to deflect, saying I really appreciated it, but wasn't sure if I'd be able to use it. What was clear, however, was that it wasn't about the bicycle, it was about their desire to help. I accepted, touched by the humanity of the gesture.A snowstorm came the next day, and my husband suggested I take the sign down. I refused - my bike was stolen on the weekend, so the sign would stay up until the next weekend.The next Saturday morning, I got a second buzz on the intercom. On my doorstep was a petite, middle-aged Hispanic woman in a pink Gap sweatshirt and leggings. She said she lived in Jersey but worked in the neighborhood and made her husband drive twice around the block so she could fully read my sign. When she read that I needed it to get to work, she made him stop the car to see if there was anything she could do."What kind of bicycle do you need?" she asked. "I don't know much about bicycles, but if I find one, I'll bring it to you."I told her that I had signed up for the CitiBike bike-sharing program as a stopgap, and since it was $14.99 a month, I could use that for now. I told her what mattered most was that she stopped. I thanked her again."I looked up that Peugeot you wrote about and that's an expensive bike!" she exclaimed."Yes it is!" I laughed in agreement.Then she leaned in and gave me a big hug.I was invigorated. This sign was changing things. So much decency was pouring out from such a simple gesture of opening myself up to the universe.The buzzer rang again the moment I got upstairs."Take down the sign, Amanda!" my husband yelled after me as I turned to run back down the stairs.This time, it was an energetic, salt-and-pepper haired white guy."Is this your sign?" he asked. "I passed it on the way to my studio, and took a picture, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should do something.""That's very kind of you," I said, and explained how I'd also received a kid's bike and a hug, and what mattered most was that people cared."Well, I posted a picture on Instagram, and a few of us started talking, and I was wondering if I could buy the sign off of you for . . ." he pointed to the yellow-letters written on my sign " . . . for $200?"I laughed out loud and told him that if he indeed did that, I would most certainly buy a new (used) bicycle with his money."I'm an art dealer," he explained, "and there's definitely some craftsmanship in this sign."His name was Steve Powers, and I told him the sign was his, and that he could auction it for $40,000 for all I cared (as long as I was invited to the party). As we pulled the cardboard away from its string attachments, he said that there was an Instagram conversation going about it. He and Robert Young, an antiques dealer in Britain, had agreed to each purchase an equal share of my sign.The #KarmaCycle had gone global. It was quite a morning. First of all, I had $200 in cash that I actually needed if I'd ever be able to afford a new bicycle. But I was also part of a wave of goodness that felt beautiful and real and inspiring. I realized I didn't want it to just stop with me.I went up the street to Court Cycles, the local bicycle store run by JoAnne Nicolosi, a female mechanic and small business owner since 1987. I told her what happened, and asked if she could help me fix up the kid's bicycle that Michael gave me and help find it a home. It's just a regular department store kid's bike - but I figure someone out there can use it more than I can. So that's what we're doing. In exchange for fixing it up, I helped set her up on Instagram and Twitter so we could share the story of the #KarmaCycle, and maybe keep it going. |
Can a Business-Friendly State Protect the Environment? | The Trump administration has not been shy about its skepticism of programs designed to protect the environment. Donald Trump has said that environmental regulations are “out of control,” he has proposed slashing the budget and staffing levels at the Environmental Protection Agency, and he has appointed as head of that agency Scott Pruitt, who has spent a career repeatedly backing business over regulators. Last month, Trump signed an executive order aimed at reversing a signature Obama-era climate policy, the Clean Power Plan. In North Carolina, the state government has taken a similar approach to its own environmental regulatory agency over the past few years. I went there to see how the state’s regulatory rollback is playing out so far. My trip brought me to the home of Amy Brown, who lives with her husband and two sons in a small single-story home in Belmont, not far from Charlotte. Inside, bottled water is stacked in corners and against the walls. Her boys, ages 11 and 4, use the bottled water to brush their teeth. Brown uses it to make them oatmeal in the morning and spaghetti at night. That’s because the Browns’ well water contains elevated levels of a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium and another potentially dangerous compound called vanadium. In 2015, the state advised the family and their neighbors not to drink the water or cook with it.
The Browns live a few hundred yards from a coal-fired power plant, the Allen Steam Station, and it is this plant, according to some environmentalists and homeowners, that is polluting the local well water. Duke Energy, which runs that power plant and 13 others in the state (seven of which, including Allen, still burn coal), disagrees. Burning coal creates a residual material called coal ash, which some environmentalists say contains dangerous levels of heavy metals; Duke Energy contests the allegation that coal ash is hazardous. Duke stores its coal ash in pits near plants where it still burns coal and those where it formerly burned it. At many Duke Energy sites, including Allen, the coal ash is mixed with water and stored in unlined pits—essentially ponds—where, environmentalists say, the mixture seeps into the groundwater. Area wells then act like straws, they say, pulling up the polluted water into households like the Browns’. “It’s like our state is deaf, and the only voice they can hear is Duke Energy.” But whether it’s the coal ash that is polluting the drinking water is a matter of dispute. Duke Energy says that coal ash is not what’s responsible for the contamination, and it points to an October 2016 study from Duke University that concluded that, though the coal-ash ponds are potentially polluting groundwater near the pits, the hexavalent chromium that is contaminating the well water is naturally occurring.
North Carolina regulators have embraced Duke Energy’s version of events, environmentalists say, and have slowed down efforts to get the company to address pollution problems near coal-ash sites. Cleanup was further set back, they say, after Republicans gained control of the North Carolina legislature in 2010 and then practically came to a halt when Pat McCrory, who had worked for Duke Energy for 28 years, won the race for governor in 2012. In an effort to become more business-friendly, the state favored industry over environmental organizations, critics say. The McCrory administration was “very quick to cater to whatever special interest would come forward with an idea to roll something back; they were enthusiastic about it,” Chuck McGrady, a moderate Republican state legislator who favored environmental protections, told me. Over the last five years, the state’s GOP leadership consistently cut resources from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (renamed the Department of Environmental Quality in 2015). Former department staffers said the cuts made it extremely difficult to carry out their jobs. And however the drinking water was contaminated, the state confused residents like Brown about its safety, playing down the health risks and pushing back against directives from health officials that instructed families not to drink their tap water. Even after a massive coal-ash spill from a Duke Energy plant polluted 70 miles of the Dan River in North Carolina in 2014, the state was wishy-washy on coal-ash cleanup, ultimately passing a bill that allowed the company to leave many of its coal-ash sites in place as long as the company made repairs to the basins and provided a supply of clean drinking water to households located near coal-ash sites.
And so, Brown and her family still live on bottled water, she still hustles her husband and children through the shower, and they never take baths. The Browns’ in-ground pool, which has elevated levels of arsenic, among other chemicals, is strictly off-limits. “It’s like our state is deaf, and the only voice they can hear is Duke Energy,” Brown told me. one of Governor McCrory’s top priorities when he was elected in 2012 was to make the state more business-friendly. “The reason I’m running for governor is to represent business,” he said while campaigning. His win signaled the end of two decades of Democratic control of the North Carolina governor’s office, and McCrory immediately began pushing the state to weaken regulations and become more favorable to companies; he also lowered taxes and cut staffing levels at various state agencies, including those tasked with protecting the environment. McCrory appointed as the head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) a man named John Skvarla, a climate-change doubter who took the business-friendly objective very seriously. One of Skvarla’s first actions was to rewrite the mission statement of DENR so that a cost-benefit analysis was applied to environmental matters whenever possible. The new mission statement also emphasized that personnel should be a “resource of invaluable public assistance” rather than a “bureaucratic obstacle of resistance.” Links and documents about climate change also disappeared from DENR’s website once Skvarla took over.
Beginning in 2013, DENR staffers were instructed to focus on customer service, the “customers” being permit-seeking businesses, said Amy Adams, who worked at the department from 2004 to 2013, most recently as a regional-office supervisor. Staffers were no longer sure if they were even supposed to be doing enforcement actions, a range of tactics the state can deploy to compel corporate compliance with the law. “There was a new push to work with and handhold corporations rather than hold them accountable to the level that we always had before,” Adams said. At the same time, the state began slashing DENR’s resources and consolidating departments. The number of full-time employees at the department fell from 5,221 in January 2010, to 4,053 in January 2012, to 1,685 in January 2016, according to the state, although many of these employees were transferred, along with the work they did, to other departments. Since 2013, a total of 69 compliance and enforcement positions were eliminated in the department, according to Jamie Kritzer, a Department of Environmental Quality spokesman. The reduced staff numbers made it hard for DENR to conduct inspections to make sure permits were being followed, Adams said. Enforcing permits and fixing violations is a difficult process to begin with, but with fewer and fewer workers, it became nearly impossible. Resources were put into issuing permits, not enforcing them, she said. Adams, for instance, supervised an area covering 21 counties’ worth of wetlands and streams, and after the Republicans took over, her staff shrank from six people to two. “There really was this overall feeling of: ‘We don’t send violations; we’re not going to do enforcement. We’re going to be customer-friendly, service-friendly,’” she said. DENR’s lack of enforcement actions didn’t sit well with career staffers. In September 2013, Susan Wilson, who had worked for the department for 25 years as a water-quality regulator in Asheville, resigned publicly, writing in an open letter to Skvarla that “I see no reason to continue here—because my own mission—to assist all citizens and protect those that don’t have a voice, would be compromised.”
Adams resigned just a few months later, in December 2013. She wrote an op-ed in Raleigh’s News & Observer that criticized the “soul-crushing” takeover of the department by “politically and ideologically motivated lawmakers.” Staffers “are under great pressure to essentially trust the industry’s word that everything is in order,” she wrote, likening the system to a fox guarding the henhouse. “‘Do more with less’ has become the mantra of upper management, but we in the ranks heard the message loud and clear: ‘Do less. Period.’” Skvarla responded to Adams with his own op-ed, saying her article was full of “emotion, hyperbole, and conjecture.” Then he defended DENR’s new business-friendly approach. Under his supervision, the department had been turned from “North Carolina’s No. 1 obstacle of resistance into a customer-friendly juggernaut,” he wrote. “This is progress!” Power companies have been burning coal and disposing of its waste for decades. The plants themselves have become much cleaner over time, but in recent years, environmentalists have begun to worry about the dangers of byproducts like coal ash. In 2008, a dike failure at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee dumped 5 million cubic yards of coal ash into waterways, destroying nearby homes and focusing national attention on the substance. Coal ash contains low levels of arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and a collection of other metals. There is some dispute over what level of exposure to these materials is acceptable: The group Physicians for Social Responsibility says that prolonged exposure to coal ash can cause cancer and other diseases. Duke Energy counters that coal ash contains only very low levels of these elements and that anything can be toxic at high levels. The Environmental Protection Agency in 2014 designated coal ash a nonhazardous waste.
Until recently, there were few regulations governing how coal ash was stored, and many energy companies, including Duke Energy, routinely put coal ash into wet basins near their power plants—Duke has 31 such ponds in North Carolina. The ash settles at the bottom of the ponds, and the water on the top of the pond is cleaned and then filtered into nearby waterways. Federal law now requires that ponds with potential structural issues be closed over the next decade, and Duke says it plans to close all of its ponds by 2029. “Instead of enforcing the law, the state was … working hand in glove with Duke, as a way to stop citizen law enforcement.” In the meantime, the way that Duke Energy has discharged the water from its coal-ash basins over the last few years has caused controversy in North Carolina. Companies receive permits that govern how they dispose of the byproducts of burning coal, and in 2011, the Southern Environmental Law Center looked into whether Duke Energy was following its permits. The group alleged that Duke was in violation of its permits under the Clean Water Act, because it was discharging polluted water contaminated by coal-ash toxins into nearby rivers and streams in areas where it didn’t have permits to do so. Duke disagreed, saying it believed it had complied with all applicable permits. The Clean Water Act allows citizens’ groups to file lawsuits against companies violating the law, but it requires them to file a 60-day notice to state regulators first. In 2013, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed one such 60-day notice, saying it planned to sue Duke Energy for violations of the Clean Water Act at a power plant in Asheville. The plant had been allowed, by permit, to discharge treated wastewater at one location, but it was releasing water contaminated by chemicals from coal combustion—including barium, cobalt, iron, and manganese—at other locations, the complaint said.
But on the 59th day of the 60-day period, right before the Southern Environmental Law Center was going to file its lawsuit, the state stepped in. North Carolina said it was taking its own enforcement actions against the plant, which meant that the organization was prevented from suing Duke Energy. The same thing happened when the Southern Environmental Law Center filed another 60-day notice for a Clean Water Act violation at another plant: At the 11th hour, the state stepped in and said it was doing its own enforcement, and the center once again could not sue Duke Energy. The Southern Environmental Law Center alleges that the state was intervening not to hold Duke accountable, but to stop the environmentalists’ lawsuit from proceeding. Even after stepping in, the state procrastinated on investigating potential pollution at coal-ash sites and on requiring Duke to address water-quality issues, Frank Holleman, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, told me. “Instead of enforcing the law, the state was using this tool, working hand in glove with Duke, as a way to stop citizen law enforcement,” he said. “It was a way to circumvent Duke having to clean up coal-ash pollution.” (A new governor was elected in North Carolina in November, and the people who were in charge during the time period this story covers are no longer in office. The current administration said it would not comment on actions taken by the previous administration, but that it was working with the Southern Environmental Law Center and other environmental groups “to find acceptable solutions to protect public health and the environment from coal ash.”)
Later in 2013, after a series of public-records requests, the center found that the state and Duke Energy were collaborating on how to proceed. Internal emails showed that after the Southern Environmental Law Center filed its initial 60-day notice, a Duke lobbyist scheduled a meeting with DENR officials, and Duke and the state corresponded over what direction the state would take in its enforcement actions. Duke Energy spokeswoman Paige Sheehan told me that these conversations were not unusual and that Duke has to correspond with regulators to ensure they are following the law. “It is absolutely appropriate for a highly regulated utility to have constructive conversation with the regulator who is overseeing our work,” she said. In July 2013, months after preventing the Southern Environmental Law Center from filing its own lawsuits, the state announced it had come to an agreement with Duke Energy, a $50 billion company: Duke would pay a fine of just $99,111 for violations at the two sites. The low amount drew attention from national regulators like the Environmental Protection Agency, which told the state that the amount “seems low considering the number of years these facilities are alleged to have been out of compliance.” The proposed settlement was proof that the state was getting far too “cozy” with Duke Energy, said Ryke Longest, the director of the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Duke University’s School of Law. “It’s a one-two punch,” he said. First, the state “tell[s] the judge that advocates have no place at the table,” and then, it turns around and “reach[es] a settlement with the polluter.” But the Southern Environmental Law Center persisted, pledging to fight the settlement. It was preparing a new round of 60-day notices for violations at other sites when the state filed more preemptive enforcement actions—for all 12 of the other sites in the state. The move prevented the center from taking legal action at any other plants in the state, including at the Dan River power plant.
A judge would soon question whether the state investigations into the Duke Energy sites were comprehensive enough. In 2014, the Southern Environmental Law Center sued Duke Energy over coal-ash disposal at its Buck plant, this time for violating federal requirements that the state was not seeking to enforce in its own investigation. Duke Energy filed motions arguing that the center was barred from taking legal action against it. But after looking into the state’s efforts at Buck, District Judge Loretta Biggs in 2015 allowed the lawsuit to continue. It did not seem that the state “was trying diligently or that its state enforcement action was calculated, in good faith, to require compliance with the [Clean Water] Act,” she wrote. The state had been supposedly litigating its enforcement action for two years, the judge found, but it had taken no depositions or filed any motions requiring Duke to clean up its sites. The state’s prosecution “does not inspire confidence,” the judge wrote. Duke Energy disputes that the state was lackadaisical in its enforcement. Sheehan told me that there is a “robust” system in place to monitor water quality at plants throughout the state and that Duke Energy and the state are constantly engaged in dialogue about how Duke can comply with the law. The state, for example, has required Duke to come up with ways to address what are called seeps of water at coal-ash basins. “History will demonstrate that the state has been very tough on us,” Sheehan said.
It was while DENR was ostensibly carrying out enforcement actions at all 14 Duke power plants in the state that a pipe below a coal-ash pit burst at a Duke Energy plant in Eden, North Carolina. The Dan River Steam Station spilled 39,000 tons of ash into the Dan River in February 2014. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the spill site extended 70 miles downstream from the Dan River plant. It’s possible that the Dan River spill would have happened regardless of who was in state office, but the Southern Environmental Law Center said that many of the problems that led to the spill at Dan River could have been fixed before 2014 if the state had not tried to stymie efforts to get Duke Energy to change its coal-ash disposal policies. “If the state had been assertive and diligent in enforcing the law, and if Duke itself had been careful and diligent in monitoring the site, the Dan River spill need not have occurred,” Holleman said. Duke Energy pled guilty to environmental crimes after the Dan River spill and agreed to pay $102 million in fines and restitution. In its plea agreement, Duke said that its own engineers had asked for funding to run a camera up a pipe at Dan River to inspect it for corrosion but that the company had refused the request. The camera inspection would have cost Duke $20,000, according to the plea agreement. The state also found unpermitted seeps of chemicals into water sources at the Riverbend and Asheville plants, according to the plea agreement. At the Riverbend site, the agreement notes, “one or more individuals” created an “unpermitted channel” to allow water contaminated with arsenic, chromium, and a host of other substances to discharge into the Catawba River. Though the state’s inspection was completed in 2012, the discharges continued through at least 2014, according to the plea. The state “had enough data to say there’s a big problem, but they chose not to require any remedy,” said Sam Perkins, a scientist with the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation, a nonprofit that looks after state waterways.
Duke Energy says that the water that flowed into the river at the Riverbend site did not impact water quality. The Department of Environmental Quality frequently visited Duke Energy’s sites and was aware of how the company was managing seeps of water from coal-ash basins, Sheehan said. A spokesman for the Department of Environmental Quality told me the state knew about the discharges and that most of them have dried up and are no longer discharging wastewater. The Dan River spill drew national attention to Duke Energy’s tight relationship with the state. “North Carolina citizens have good reason to wonder just whom their environmental regulators are trying to protect,” read a 2014 editorial in The New York Times. “The state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources has engaged in a series of maneuvers that seem designed to protect the state’s largest utility, Duke Energy, from paying big fines for water pollution from coal ash ponds.” The plea agreement admitted to unauthorized discharges of polluted water at Duke’s sites in Asheville, Riverbend, Cape Fear, Lee, and on the Dan River. The first two of those sites were also the first sites where the Southern Environmental Law Center had filed 60-day notices of legal proceedings—and where the state first stepped in to stop those proceedings. “Oh my God, what have my children been exposed to? … How many meals did I cook with this water?” Yet, even after the Dan River spill, North Carolina regulators seemed uninterested in holding Duke Energy accountable. In March 2015, for example, the state fined Duke $25 million for groundwater violations at the Sutton power plant. Duke challenged the penalty in an administrative court, claiming the Sutton plant fine was “unprecedented” and that the state had calculated the fine in a way it never had before. The Department of Environmental Quality subsequently agreed to downsize the $25 million fine and required Duke to pay only $7 million—and not just for the Sutton site, but for groundwater violations at all coal-ash sites in the state. What’s more, in the settlement, the state also announced it was settling all groundwater claims with Duke Energy, including all current and future claims that Duke had polluted groundwater.
To some local media outlets, the deal was yet another example of enforcement problems in the state. “This tepid response to reprehensible threats of environmental problems related to coal ash only underscores the attitude of the governor and GOP legislative leaders that business should be left alone with regards to regulation,” read an editorial in The News & Observer about the deal. An administrative court had issued the order approving the settlement, yet the groundwater claims were under review in another court, so environmental groups immediately challenged the administrative court’s approval. In 2016, a Wake County judge, Paul Ridgeway, questioned the legality of the approval. He required that Duke Energy and the state alter the language of the order approving the settlement so that it would not apply to all groundwater claims. He also questioned the language of the original settlement. “I do find that the circumstances of this agreement—and quite frankly the insistence of clinging to the language of this agreement—is disturbing,” Ridgeway said to lawyers in court, according to The News & Observer. “I have to suspect that there’s some ulterior motive.” Amy Brown knew nothing about coal ash when she and her husband moved to Belmont in 2006. Drawn to the area by the good schools and quiet streets, the Browns bought a house at the end of a road, where their sons can safely ride their bikes. Their house has an in-ground pool, where the family used to have big parties every summer. And the neighborhood feels more rural than its proximity to Charlotte—just 30 minutes away without traffic—would suggest. The Browns weren’t concerned that the house was just a stone’s throw from Duke Energy’s Allen power plant: Such plants have been outfitted with emissions technologies that make them much cleaner than they used to be, and Brown said she barely noticed the plant. “It’s not like I can see a big, ugly, nasty pit through the trees,” she told me.
But then, in late 2014, in the wake of the Dan River spill, the Browns received a postcard in the mail telling them they could have their water tested because they lived near a coal-fired power plant. They agreed to have the testing done, and in April 2015, they received the results. The well water, the testing showed, contained elevated levels of vanadium, which can cause lung damage and symptoms such as nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps, breathing difficulty, and eye, throat, and skin irritation. Brown’s water was found to have 6.8 parts per billion of vanadium; the state recommended a maximum level of 0.3 parts per billion. Subsequent testing also found elevated levels of hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen made famous by Erin Brockovich, who investigated levels of that chemical in the water in Hinkley, California. Brown’s water had 2.2 parts per billion of hexavalent chromium; the state’s recommended maximum level was 0.07 parts per billion. (Concentrations of hexavalent chromium in Hinkley ranged, depending on when the testing was done, from 1.2 to 3.1 parts per billion.) Brown was shocked. For years, she had been cooking for her children with this water, cutting juice with it, rinsing off bottles and dishes with it. Now, she was being told that the water was not safe to drink. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have my children been exposed to?’” she told me. “Your mind starts doing all this work, thinking, ‘How many meals did I cook with this water?’” Scientists aren’t sure what is causing the elevated levels of hexavalent chromium in the water. The scientific community is in agreement that keeping coal ash in ponds can contaminate groundwater, which is the water found below the surface in cracks and spaces in soil. Groundwater supplies drinking water for about half of the U.S. population.
“I think it’s fair to say that most of these impoundments that have not been built to contain and prevent leaking are in fact leaking and are in fact polluting the groundwater,” said Patrick Parentau, a professor of law at Vermont Law School who studies water-quality issues. There are a number of documented cases in which coal-ash basins have contaminated nearby groundwater and surface water. In March, a federal judge found that arsenic from a coal-ash pit operated by Dominion Virginia Power was leaking into the groundwater, which then made its way to the surface water in violation of the Clean Water Act. The Environmental Protection Agency, in coming up with rules on the disposal of coal ash, documented more than two-dozen proven “damage cases” where coal-ash ponds had contaminated groundwater and surface water with chemicals, including arsenic, cadmium, and chromium. The agency listed three sites in North Carolina. Yet whether the substance is contaminating drinking water is a matter of dispute. It can be difficult to determine the direction that contaminated groundwater is traveling—to do so requires expensive tests that include sinking wells in various locations and testing the water pulled from those wells, Parentau told me. “When it comes to toxicology, that’s an incredibly technical thing to establish,” he said. Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University, told me that his team had spent 10 years studying coal ash in the South. In the case of North Carolina, he said, they found that coal ash was potentially polluting the groundwater but not the water in wells. “It polluted groundwater that is not used for drinking,” he told me. The homeowners with elevated levels of chemicals were seeing those elevated levels because of factors unrelated to coal ash, he said. The Southern Environmental Law Center says a separate study from scientists at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, has found that drinking-water wells near the Allen Plant, where Amy Brown lives, are indeed drawing groundwater contaminated by coal ash. But an author of that study, William Langley, said it was a draft that modeled a worst-case scenario that may not represent what is actually happening on the ground.
Whatever the source of the contamination, families probably shouldn’t drink the water, and most people in North Carolina agree on one thing: The state did not do a good job of communicating the health risks to residents. That’s because, in addition to recommending that the homeowners avoid drinking their water, letters from the state also contained a line that read, “While this recommendation represents the maximum in health protection, your well would still meet all the criteria of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act for public drinking water sources.” But this was misleading: The water met federal standards only because there is no federal Safe Drinking Water Act standard for vanadium, and while there are such standards for total chromium, they do not specifically address levels of hexavalent chromium. Meanwhile, the water did not meet standards calculated by the state health department for hexavalent chromium, which used the threshold of a one-in-a-million cancer risk—essentially the presence of one additional case of cancer during a lifetime in a population of a million people. The McCrory administration was essentially countermanding public-health officials’ judgment over what levels of chemicals in the water should be considered troubling. The letters about the water “were very poorly handled,” McGrady, the moderate Republican legislator, told me. “I don’t think anyone in the state thinks the state handled that well.”
According to former state toxicologist Ken Rudo, the line that the water met federal standards was added by state environmental regulators against the wishes of state health-department staff, which had been pressured to downplay the risks of drinking the water. In a deposition, Rudo said that he was asked to send out letters warning people that the drinking water contained elevated levels of chemicals. But just as he was about to send out those letters, he later testified, the state contacted him and wanted him to add a line telling people the water was safe to drink. Rudo and his colleagues objected—because of “ethical reasons more than anything,” he said in the deposition—and said if the state were to send out such language, he wanted his name taken off the letter. The state added the line anyway, when he was on vacation, Rudo said in the deposition. “They added language basically saying this was the maximum risk, literally right after we are telling people not to drink their water,” he said. “And it was just amazing, misleading, and dishonest language.” In 2015, McCrory appointed a new deputy secretary in the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, Randall Williams, who pushed back against the staff recommendations on the levels of chemicals that could safely be in the water. Williams thought that the standards the state health department had used to issue the do-not-drink letters were too conservative, and he had the department send out another round of letters telling well owners that their water was safe to drink. “Now that we have had time to study and review more data, we have concluded that it is appropriate to return to drinking and using your water for cooking and other uses,” the letter read. No new testing had been done—Williams instead used a different standard from the one Rudo used when issuing the initial health recommendations.
The McCrory administration, Duke University’s Longest said, was essentially countermanding public-health officials’ judgment over what levels of hexavalent chromium and vanadium in the water are dangerous. “It was really about allowing the health director to use concern about political fallout to influence a risk decision, which is completely unprecedented,” he said. The controversy over whether the well water was safe to drink didn’t end there. Once Rudo’s deposition became public, Tom Reeder, an official with the Department of Environmental Quality, and Williams, the deputy health secretary, published an open letter in August 2016 questioning Rudo’s calculations about whether the water was safe to drink, calling his approach “unprofessional.” Many people in North Carolina, however, stood by Rudo. “It’s clear that the state’s overall water quality is at risk under an administration and a legislature that see environmental regulation as a nuisance that hinders industry,” The Charlotte Observer wrote in an editorial last August. The direct attack on a state scientist also rattled health-department staffers. Megan Davies, who was at the time North Carolina’s state epidemiologist, told me that Rudo had arrived at the levels for vanadium and hexavalent chromium in compliance with a North Carolina law passed in 2014 that referenced state groundwater rules. These rules specify that recommendations for groundwater contain no more than a one-in-a-million increase in the risk of cancer, she said, which is how the environmental agency’s toxicologists came up with the number 0.07 parts per billion for hexavalent chromium. Soon after Reeder and Williams published their letter attacking Rudo, Davies resigned. In her resignation letter, she reminded the state that other departments had approved of the way Rudo had calculated the water standards, and she accused Reeder and Williams of misinforming the public. “I cannot work for a Department and an Administration that deliberately misleads the public,” she wrote.
After the Dan River spill and the controversy over the drinking water, some state legislators redoubled their efforts to get Duke Energy to clean up its coal-ash basins. But they said they were largely stymied by pressure from the company and from the governor’s office. “It’s nearly impossible to do anything in the legislature that Duke Energy hasn’t signed off on,” Pricey Harrison, a Democrat in North Carolina’s General Assembly, told me. Harrison has been trying to pass coal-ash cleanup bills since 2008 but says that she “keeps running into all kinds of roadblocks due to Duke’s pervasive influence in the legislature and the governor’s office.” Duke Energy says those allegations are “ridiculous.” Duke works for the best interests of its customers, Sheehan, the spokeswoman, assured me, and does so using science-based decisions “that protect people, the environment, and manage costs.” But Harrison isn’t convinced. There are two main ways to get rid of coal ash. The most thorough—and expensive—way is to excavate the basins, which means the ponds are drained and the coal ash is dug up and moved away from waterways. (Dry pits can also be excavated.) But the pits can also be capped in place, which means the ponds are drained of water, covered with a synthetic liner, and contained. Though North Carolina initially said Duke Energy would likely have to excavate all of its basins in the state, it later reversed itself, Harrison said, due in large part to pressure from Duke Energy.
Compare this with the state’s neighbor, South Carolina, where every utility company is excavating the coal ash from their unlined waterfront coal-ash basins, according to Holleman. That’s in part because the Southern Environmental Law Center filed lawsuits against two power companies in South Carolina in 2012 and 2013 over coal-ash pollution, and South Carolina’s environmental agency did not intervene, Holleman said. The Southern Environmental Law Center then reached settlements with the two power companies, and both are now digging up coal ash and moving it elsewhere. (Duke Energy also operates in South Carolina, and it is excavating the coal-ash basins at its two plants there.) For a short time, it seemed that the state of North Carolina would force Duke Energy to dig up all its coal-ash basins as well. In 2014, the state passed the Coal Ash Management Act, which McCrory claimed was at the forefront of such legislation nationwide. That law required Duke to evaluate all its coal-ash basins across the state. The Department of Environmental Quality was then required to review Duke’s evaluations and rank the sites as presenting high, intermediate, or low risk, which would in turn determine whether they’d be excavated or capped. High- and intermediate-risk sites would have to be excavated; low-risk sites could potentially be capped in place. Environmentalists oppose the capping approach because they say it puts a bandage on, but does not address the crux of, the problem—covering the coal ash, rather than removing it. Duke Energy, however, says that excavation is time-consuming and expensive, and that it can cause more environmental damage, through truck traffic and pollution, than leaving the pits in place. Few communities want new coal-ash pits nearby, so it can also be difficult to find a place to put the material. |
Abe hopes to corral parties' support for revising pacifist Constitution | Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is gunning for support from parties, including Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike’s Kibo no To (Party of Hope), on amending the Constitution after the Oct. 22 Lower House election.
In an interview Friday, ahead of the start of official campaigning on Tuesday, Abe said his Liberal Democratic Party will seek to cooperate broadly with other parties in proposing a first-ever revision to the 70-year-old Constitution.
“While deepening the debate within our party, we want to cooperate with any other party,” Abe said.
In its election platform, the LDP said it will aim to make any amendment to the Constitution “on the basis of sufficient debate inside and outside the party.”
One issue is the question of adding a specific mention of the status of the Self-Defense Forces. The SDF is currently governed by its own law and is not referenced in the Constitution. The charter’s Article 9 requires Japan to renounce war as well as the maintenance of “war potential.”
On Friday, Kibo no To released its manifesto, calling for debate on proposed constitutional amendments, with Koike saying that Article 9 should be discussed.
Abe said that even if the LDP were to maintain a majority in the Lower House, this would not mean that the public has given it a mandate for its views on revising the Constitution. He said each party’s position will need to be considered in both houses of the Diet.
In May, Abe called for the acceleration of debate on an amendment so that, if approved by citizens in a referendum, it could come into force in 2020.
“I did express a certain target for the schedule … but what we hope for is first to deepen national debate on the Constitution,” he said.
Koike’s party, founded last week, aims to challenge the ruling coalition of the LDP and Komeito on a “reform conservative” platform.
One area where the parties differ is a planned increase in the consumption tax from 8 percent to 10 percent in October 2019.
While the LDP wants to go ahead with the move, the Abe administration’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said Friday that the hike would be deferred if the economy deteriorates to the point it did before Abe returned to power in December 2012.
Kibo no To says it would freeze the hike.
Abe has been critical of the new party’s tax pledge.
“I don’t know what they are trying to assert,” he said. “We cannot bring economic policies or diplomacy to a standstill.”
Since her party’s establishment, Koike has repeatedly denied that she might step down as governor to run in the Lower House election. The law requires prime ministers to be lawmakers, and by convention, they need to be in the lower, more powerful chamber.
Regarding any potential run by Koike, Abe said stressed that “voters will judge her conduct.”
He also voiced skepticism about the rapid reorganization of opposition parties over the past two weeks, saying new party “booms” in previous decades had “sent politics into (a state of) confusion and caused the economy to stall.”
“Rather than having (our campaign) end in temporary (political) theater, we will keep doing what’s important until the very end and achieve results, and I think that’s what voters are looking for,” Abe said.
On the economy, he said he wants to “spread the trend of raising salaries far and wide throughout Japan” while also helping “regions maintain their energy and carve out a future.”
Abe reiterated Friday that he dissolved the Lower House on Sept. 28 for the election partly to renew public support for his government’s “strong diplomacy” policy toward nuclear-armed North Korea.
At the same time, he acknowledged that the election campaign will raise further questions about two scandals.
Abe and other officials were accused of involvement in arranging special treatment for projects led by acquaintances of the prime minister.
“If (the public) has something further to point out, I will carefully explain (myself),” Abe said. |
NORTH EAST FOOTBALL RESULTS | Yesterday afternoon in the National Lotteries Authority/FLOW/Hairoun North East Football Championship, Greggs FC won by default from Biabou FC at the Chili Playing Field in Georgetown.
Jebelles FC defeated Jebelles Chapmans 3-1 in yesterday afternoon’s second match. Dacota Hoyte scored 2 goals for Jebelles FC and Javon Sayers scored the third.
The single goal for Jebelles Chapmans was scored by Terro Joseph.
The Championship will continue tomorrow at the same venue.
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Doctors pinpoint early symptom of Alzheimer’s | Students are excited about the study, which could help family members with the disease.
Temple researchers made advancements in identifying early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, under the direction of Dr. Domenico Praticò and his team in the Center for Translational Medicine. COURTESY LEWIS KATZ SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine believe they have pinpointed one of the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
The information, uncovered by Dr. Domenico Praticò and his research team from the Center for Translational Medicine, could be beneficial in developing treatments and improving chances for early identification of Alzheimer’s disease, which destroys memory and other mental functions.
“There have been several studies indicating that a deficit in glucose levels in the brain is a risk factor of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” Praticò said. “But nobody knew exactly how this happens.”
The study was twofold, Praticò said. First, the study investigated whether low glucose levels in mice impaired their memory or learning processes. Second, the scientists tried to understand the mechanisms behind the correlation between glucose levels and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
“The brain is a very peculiar organ because it demands a lot of blood and energy compared to other organs,” Praticò said. “At the same time, it’s able to produce energy for its functions only using glucose. The brain is always in this fragile equilibrium, and anytime that glucose level shifts, it’s bad for your brain.”
The study compared two kinds of mice: genetically modified mice that were treated with a specific compound that blocked glucose from entering their nervous systems and mice that had normal levels of glucose in their brains.
At the end of the eight-week treatment, Praticò said the mice with glucose deficits had an impairment in their ability to learn and remember tasks.
The mice lacking glucose had nerve cells that struggled to communicate with each other, and that this was due to cells accumulating a compound that is toxic to normal function, Praticò said.
This compound, the researchers found, was called phosphorylated tau, a protein that tangles and kills nerve cells and is known to be very toxic. When the brain is deprived of glucose, an enzyme is released to create the protein.
“We were able to dissect the mechanism by which a chronic deficit in glucose can trigger this cascade in events which culminates in Alzheimer’s disease,” Praticò said.
Praticò said this new information will help develop preventative treatments and help doctors identify if an individual has a high risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Having this knowledge now, we can imagine a scenario where we can prevent that cascade of events that ultimately would result in the disease,” Praticò added.
This prospect has excited Temple students who have seen Alzheimer’s disease affect their family members.
Sierra Volkert, a sophomore exercise and sports science major, has a grandmother who was diagnosed with the disease nine years ago.
She said when she heard about the research done by the Katz School of Medicine, it “hit close to home.”
“It’s that much greater hearing that my school is advancing this research, since someone that I love is affected by the disease,” Volkert added.
Kerianne Mullen, a freshman early childhood education major, also had a grandmother diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who passed away two years ago.
“It’s really exciting to know that people care enough to spend their time on finding more information about the disease,” Mullen said. “My family struggled a lot seeing my Grandmom suffer from this horrible disease, and to know that people want to help someone like my Grandmom is really touching.”
Despite the discoveries the researchers made, the study is far from over.
“Science always has to move forward,” Praticò said. “The word ‘end’ doesn’t apply.”
The researchers plan to test their results on a different mouse model, as well as begin experimenting to see if this new knowledge can help reverse damage caused to the brain after Alzheimer’s disease has completely developed.
Noah Tanen can be reached at noah.tanen@temple.edu. |
La Marque officer-involved shooting under investigation after... | LA MARQUE, Texas - A La Marque police officer was involved in a deadly shooting Sunday while responding to a burglary, officials said.
According to investigators, an armed man threatened a resident just after 10 p.m. inside a home in the 800 block of Retama and ran.
WATCH: La Marque officer-involved shooting update
The officer, Jose Santos, and K-9 found the suspected robber, Gregory Ray Ham, 62, in a building near the victim’s home, officials said. Santos and the K-9 entered the home and found Ham in a room with a sword, officials said.
Officials said Ham struck Santos in the face and the K-9 with the sword during the attack. Officials said Santos pulled out a gun and shot Ham once.
Ham was pronounced dead at the scene.
Santos sustained minor injuries and was treated at a nearby hospital. The K-9 was also injured and treated at a veterinarian.
Santos, a seven-year veteran, have been with the La Marque Police Department since October 2014.
Galveston County sheriff's officials could be seen interviewing neighbors Monday morning on Retama.
The Galveston County District Attorney's Office told Channel 2 that there are three separate investigations underway
into the shooting. The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office will conduct a criminal investigation.
La Marque police said an internal investigation might be opened, as well.
The officer who was involved in the incident was still on duty as of Monday afternoon.
Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved. |
Breakthrough Protection Device Designed To Help Dentists Protect Hearing | Custom Dental Ear Plugs Provide Dentists A Way To Stop Rapid Rise Of Tinnitus In The Industry
Big Ear Inc, a company that specializes in products that provide hearing protection, has released The One®Dental Protection Premium Series. The custom dental earplugs were created to prevent dentists from enduring low-level noise that affects hearing while still being able to hear patients and colleagues throughout the day.
The dental industry has seen a spike in dentists developing tinnitus and hearing loss. Due to the equipment used in dental clinics on a daily basis, dentists constantly put their hearing at risk. The One®’s revolutionary design and features allows dentists to eliminate noise while still being able to communicate easily and effectively.
The One®is a set of custom dental ear plugs worn by a dentist while working with patients. The earplugs allow a dentist to hear his or her patients clearly. It also enables a dentist to hear others within the room. The major difference with The One®and other earplugs used by professionals is the feeling that dentists get from the protection device. The One®is light and it doesn’t cause the wearer to miss out on important dialogue with a patient or a colleague. It simple eliminates the sounds that damages hearing over the long-term.
Big Ear’s TheOne®works using two filters. The main filter reduces the sound that enters the device, while the second filter allows natural sound to move through the custom dental earplugs. The second filter makes hearing natural sounds possible until the noise pressure reaches 85 db. Once the figure is reached, the pressure is unable to pass through the device. This is one of the ways the custom dental earplugs prevent dentists from suffering hearing loss.
Throughout the day, dentists are bombarded by natural and unnatural noises that damage hearing. Dentists must hear patients while the sounds of suction and drills ring out all day long. The custom dental earplugs will give dentists the opportunity to eliminate unwanted sounds and preserve their hearing.
TheOne®Premium Series comes with four sets of filters, one set of silicon full stop earplugs, one set of lanyard plugs, one tactical piece for interoffice communication, one lanyard and one premium case.
For more information please visit https://bigearinc.com/product/premium-dentist-custom-earplugs-the-one/.
Contact: Big Ear Inc
Name: Glenn Hood
Website: https://www.bigearinc.com
Email: ghood@bigearinc.com
Phone: 719-271-9081
Address:231 Oleander Mill Dr.
City: Columbia
State: SC
Zip: 29229
Country: United States |
Homers by Bryant, Rizzo power Cubs to 15-5 rout of Reds | Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Asher Wojciechowski delivers during the first inning of a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Photo: The Associated Press)
CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago Cubs waited all season for a hot streak from NL MVP Kris Bryant. Now that he's on one, they want it to last a while.
"My history with him is when he gets it, it stays there," manager Joe Maddon said.
Bryant and Anthony Rizzo hit back-to-back homers to cap a five-run fourth inning, and the Cubs continued their recent dominance of the Cincinnati Reds with a 15-5 victory Monday night.
Bryant went 2 for 4 with a walk and has reached safely in 16 of his last 20 plate appearances.
"It's a special stretch," said Rizzo, who was 3 for 5 with a season-high five RBIs. "It was a matter of time before he's doing what he's doing. It's fun to watch."
Jon Jay had three hits with an RBI and finished a home run shy of the cycle as the Cubs extended their NL Central lead to 1 1/2 games over idle St. Louis. Jose Quintana (3-2) allowed two runs, one earned, and four hits in five innings to snap a three-start winless stretch.
Chicago has 25 wins in its last 32 games against the Reds. The Cubs have swept the last two series at Wrigley Field between the teams going back to last season, and won 11 of the past 13 meetings there the last two years.
Scooter Gennett hit a two-run homer, his 20th, in the eighth for the Reds, who have five players with at least 20 home runs to tie a club record. Gennett also mopped up on the mound after beginning the game at second base.
Cincinnati catcher Devin Mesoraco broke his left foot when he was hit by a pitch in the second.
Joey Votto went 3 for 5 to set a Cincinnati mark by reaching base at least twice in 19 consecutive games. It's the longest streak in the majors since Barry Bonds did it in 20 straight in 2004.
"We had a lot of guys on base today; both teams did," Reds manager Bryan Price said. "They were able to take advantage of it a bit more."
Reds starter Asher Wojciehowski (3-2) appeared to settle down after a rough first inning, but couldn't get the final out in the fourth.
With Jason Heyward at first and two outs, Jay tripled into the right-field corner to give Chicago a 3-2 lead. Tommy La Stella followed with an RBI single to make it 4-2. Bryant then cracked a two-run homer and Rizzo followed with a solo shot for a 7-2 edge.
The Cubs scored six times in the seventh — highlighted by reliever Mike Montgomery's two-run double and Rizzo's two-run single — to make it 12-2.
After the Reds scored three times in the eighth, Javier Baez hit a two-run homer off Gennett in the bottom of the inning.
The game marked the beginning of a stretch of 24 straight for the Cubs against teams currently with losing records.
BAYLOR REMEMBERED
Don Baylor, who managed the Cubs from 2000-02, was honored before the game with a moment of silence and a video tribute on the Wrigley Field scoreboard. Baylor died last week from cancer at 68.
FOUR ACROSS
Maddon used four outfielders when Votto came to the plate in the fifth. He still managed to double down the right-field line.
"I did it in Tampa Bay with (Jim) Thome, (David) Ortiz and (Travis) Hafner and, I think, Josh Hamilton, too," Maddon said. "Votto right now is ungodly, so whatever you do you're taking chances."
Said Votto: "No matter the alignment in the infield or outfield, I do the exact same thing. When I get caught up with what's going on defensively is when I get myself in trouble with my approach."
TRAINER'S ROOM
Reds: OF Scott Schebler (left shoulder strain) will begin a rehab assignment Tuesday with Triple-A Louisville.
Cubs: SS Addison Russell (strained right foot) is eligible to come off the 10-day DL, but isn't close to returning. "He's coming along slowly," general manager Jed Hoyer said. . 2B Ben Zobrist was scratched an hour before the game with a stiff neck.
UP NEXT
Cubs right-hander Kyle Hendricks (4-4, 3.70 ERA) faces rookie righty Luis Castillo (2-5, 3.73) in the second game of the four-game series Tuesday. Hendricks is 3-0 with a 2.22 ERA in five career starts against Cincinnati.
___
More AP baseball: https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
Budding filmmaker Santhosh Kateel drowns at Ermai falls in Belthangady | Budding filmmaker Santhosh Kateel drowned during a photoshoot at Ermai falls in Belthangady, Karnataka, on Wednesday, May 30.
Santhosh Kateel, who made his directorial debut with Kanasu – Kannu Theredaga, had gone to the falls with his friends for a photoshoot of his next movie Gandhada Kudi/Chandan Van. Due to the incessant rain, the rocks were slippery and they reportedly ignored advice that it was not safe to be around during the rainy season.
But it fell on deaf ears and the team continued with its plan. As per the requirement, Santhosh was supposed to don a heavy costume in the flowing water. It is alleged that he lost control during the photoshoot and slipped into the falls.
"He was trying to capture safe and appropriate locations for the shooting near the waterfall. However, as he tried to capture more images, he must have turned around and taken a misstep over the slippery rocks and slipped into the water. We suspect, Santhosh had some heavy gadget tied to his leg and he was not able to swim to the surface of the water," a police official said.
The incident occurred between 10.15 am and 10.30 am and his body was found at 12.30 pm on Wednesday. It has to be noted that the region has witnessed heavy rains in the last couple of days.
Santhosh Kateel had an animation degree and worked in Kannada TV channels before turning filmmaker. He had also edited two short films - Kabbina Haalu and Kanasu.
The director had completed 90 percent of the shooting of his latest movie Kanasu – Kannu Theredaga. The team had arrived in Ujire, 6.5km from Belthangady, on Tuesday evening and planned for the photoshoot on Wednesday morning.
The police have registered a case against four people who accompanied Santhosh. The investigations are on.
The video of the making of a song from the film can be watched below: |
United Airlines, Chicago agree to preserve evidence in dragged passenger incident | United Airlines and the city of Chicago have agreed to keep video and other records from a flight where a passenger who refused to give up his seat was dragged off the plane, the passenger's attorney said.
Attorneys for the passenger, David Dao, took the first step toward a lawsuit last week, asking the Cook County Circuit Court for an order requiring United and the city to preserve records of the incident and the personnel files of the Aviation Department officers who pulled Dao from the plane.
A hearing scheduled for Monday morning was canceled because United and the city "agreed to preserve and protect the evidence requested," Dao's attorney, Thomas Demetrio, said in a statement.
United declined to comment, citing the potential litigation. "Our focus is reviewing our policies so something like this doesn't happen again," said spokesman Jonathan Guerin.
Dao, 69, of Elizabethtown, Ky., was one of four passengers picked to be bumped from a flight from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Louisville, Ky. to make room for airline employees added to the flight shortly before it departed April 9.
When Dao refused to leave his seat, Aviation Department officers dragged him from the plane. Dao suffered a significant concussion, a broken nose and a sinus injury and lost two front teeth, according to Demetrio, who said the incident likely will result in a lawsuit.
United, facing fierce criticism after videos of the incident went viral, said it is reviewing its policies around oversold flights. Results of that review are expected by the end of the month. The airline already has announced some changes, including requiring United employees traveling for work to book seats at least an hour in advance to avoid displacing customers already on board an aircraft.
United also said it will not ask law enforcement officers to remove passengers from flights unless it is a matter of safety and security and plans to improve training programs "to ensure our employees are prepared and empowered to put our customers first."
lzumbach@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @laurenzumbach |
Google announces updates to Cloud Speech API | Google (GOOG, GOOGL) announces updates to its Cloud Speech API, which allows companies or developers to integrate the company’s speech recognition tech into third-party products.
The API will now offer timestamps, which can make it easier for users to locate a particular word or phrase within the audio and provides a simultaneous text transcript while listening to the audio.
Maximum audio length is extended from 80 minutes to 180 minutes.
Google also added 30 new languages, bringing the total to 119. The new languages include Swahili, Amharic, Bengali, and Urdu.
Previously: Google cancels diversity staff meeting (Aug. 11) |
Mitchell: Henfield should resign if he votes against Interception of Communication Bill | By RICARDO WELLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
rwells@tribunemedia.net
IF Senator Ranard Henfield does vote against the government's proposed Interception of Communication Bill, he should resigned immediately or be terminated, Senator Fred Mitchell insisted yesterday.
Over the weekend, Mr Henfield indicated on social media his intention to vote against the controversial Bill as "a matter of conscience" when it is debated in the Senate.
Twitter
A post on Twitter said: "It should be clear where one stands today on an issue that one vehemently fought yesterday. For the record, I have no intention to abstain or vote in favour of this Bill. 'Those who are opposed, will say nay'…"NAY." A matter of conscience."
Addressing the comments yesterday, Mr Mitchell accused the self-proclaimed "independent Senator" of merely striving to "have his cake and eat it too".
Mr Mitchell said the 'We March' activist, in his post as government whip in the Senate is responsible for keenly presenting the government stance on matters up for debate.
In this case, Mr Mitchell said Henfield was taking up a position that not only opposed the government's views, but would delay a critical piece of government legislation.
"The party whip is bound by the same collective responsibility as the Cabinet. So I raised before this question in the Senate: how can the whip openly disagree with government policy?" Mr Mitchell told The Tribune.
He continued: "I said the Opposition could no longer rely on the government to put its position because the government would be speaking with forked tongue.
"If he goes ahead and votes against the bill which is a major piece of the government's legislative agenda, then he should resign upon taking that vote or the Prime Minister is entitled to fire him."
Referring to the Bill itself, Mr Mitchell furthered: "The PLP worked to have most of the objectionable bits taken out. So why he thinks it's a matter of conscience is a mystery."
"I am not shocked," Mr Mitchell added.
However, in a separate interview with The Tribune this week, a senior Cabinet minister explained Mr Henfield's post as government whip doesn't prevent him from voting his conscience in any circumstance, because the post doesn't really exist.
That Cabinet Minister said: 'There really is no office of whip in the Senate."
Whip
"He is called that simply because he prepares our list of speakers. There is no true whip in the Senate because unlike the House, Senators are appointed not elected. The elected must be whipped into line. The appointed get dis-appointed."
The Interception of Communications Bill was passed by Parliament last week without input of Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis who once opposed the bill, and in the face of strong push-back by members of the Official Opposition.
The FNM's advancement of the Bill comes a little more than a year after the party used the Christie administration's draft Bill to castigate the Progressive Liberal Party in their general election campaign. |
Key features & specifications of ‘Nokia 5’! | On the occasion of Independence Day, Nokia finally is all set to begin with the sale of its brand new much awaited smartphone ‘Nokia 5’ in India from tomorrow. The smartphone will be available in retail stores in 10 cities while it will also be available on Amazon India exclusively.
The Nokia 5 is priced at Rs. 12,499, and some launch offers have also been revealed by HMD Global. Vodafone customers will get 5GB data per month at Rs. 149 per month for 3 months on the smartphone. Buyers will also get Rs. 2,500 off (Rs. 1,800 on hotels & Rs.700 off on domestic flights) on Makemytrip.com.
The Nokia 5 comes with a fingerprint scanner mounted on the home button and sports a 5.2-inch HD (720×1280 pixel) display. It runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC coupled with 2GB of RAM. It comes with 16GB of inbuilt storage, which is expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB). Nokia 5 packs a 13-megapixel camera on the back along with a flashlight and while an 8-megapixel sensor sits at the front.
The design of Nokia 5 is highlighted with a “seamless aluminium 6000 series” body that wraps around the edges for a smooth, rounded shape, which the company says is a “perfect fit for those who need great design, specs at its price.” It measures 149.7×72.5×8.05mm and houses a 3000mAh non-removable battery. |
Trodox is a business name for sale on BrandBucket | Re: How to buy this name What comes with my purchase The price of this name Other |
Gingrich on Charlottesville reaction: Anti-Trump movement 'will never, ever be satisfied' | President Trump “came out against bigotry, against racism, against hatred” after the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va. -- but nothing he says will ever silence some of his critics, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reacted.
More than a dozen people were injured and one woman was killed amid clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters at the Charlottesville rally on Saturday. Two police officers monitoring the situation via a helicopter were also killed when their aircraft crashed.
As the events unfolded, President Donald Trump spoke out and condemned the violence on “many sides.” Those remarks led to an outcry that Trump didn’t forcefully speak out against the white nationalists and the president received criticism from those on the left and right.
TRUMP CONDEMNS 'WHITE SUPREMACISTS,' VOWS 'JUSTICE WILL BE DELIVERED' IN CHARLOTTESVILLE ATTACK
But Gingrich said that he thought the president spoke appropriately, arguing that the comments were not “particularly inappropriate or particularly weak.”
Trump said bigotry and violence are “un-American,” Gingrich said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” Monday night. “But clearly there was a hunger for him to use the specific phrases about white supremacists and about the KKK and about Nazis. He came back today (Monday afternoon), he said every single thing that his critics on the left want. So now you have crowds that are saying ‘well, he didn’t say it soon enough.’ I just want to suggest to you – there’s an anti-Trump movement in this country that will never, ever be satisfied as long as he’s president.”
The reasons for the violence, Gingrich, a Fox News contributor argued, are “deep.”
OFFICER ON FATAL CHARLOTTESVILLE CRASH: 'HAHAHAHA LOVE THIS'
Related Image Expand / Collapse
“I think the gap in the country right now is that deep and that real,” he said. “I think the people on the left have a radically different vision of America’s future than traditional Americans. And I think there’s a small element on the right – which has been there for a long time – which is genuinely crazy.
“And let me say this, as a historian, Nazism was an anti-Christian, totalitarian, anti-Semitic evil. Any person who tells you that they are a neo-Nazi is telling you they’re signing up for evil. And I think we have every right as a country to decide that we’ll do everything we can to make it impossible to have an effective Nazi movement in this country, just as we should have an effective anti-Ku Klux Klan movement, which is focused, in a way, against Americans.”
But, Gingrich argued, Trump has denounced racism before Saturday’s events.
“By the way, remember, it’s Donald Trump who, last year, in the campaign, repudiated David Duke, he repudiated the KKK and in his inaugural, he said ‘all of us bleed the same color’ and ‘to be racist is to be un-American,’” Gingrich said.
“We ought to be a country focusing on the future,” Gingrich said, “not a country frothing at the mouth about the past.”
Watch the full interview above. |
Rigondeaux: Tired of Calling People Out; Always An Excuse | His first fight in nearly a year is a bit more than a week away, usually the time for fighters to at least mention potential future opponents. Rigondeaux is in no mood to play amateur matchmaker these days because the undefeated Cuban southpaw considers it almost pointless.
Start the conversation, or Read more at Boxing Scene. |
Sovereignty of Gibraltar remains unchanged - Johnson | LUXEMBOURG There will be no change to Gibraltar's sovereignty without Britain's consent, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Monday, while his Dutch counterpart called for calm after a British politician raised talk of defending the outpost.
"The sovereignty of Gibraltar is unchanged and is not going to change, and cannot conceivably change without the express support and consent of the people of Gibraltar and the United Kingdom, and that is not is going to change," Johnson said on arrival at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
A former leader of Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative party said she would even be prepared to go to war to defend the territory, as then prime minister Margaret Thatcher did with Argentina over the Falkland Islands 35 years ago.
Asked by reporters if Gibraltar could become a military issue, Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders urged everyone to keep their cool in Britain's exit negotiations from the EU.
"You can now see how difficult the divorce is," Koenders said. "Let us be cool and carry on and not use too harsh language. Let us negotiate, I think that's the most important."
(Reporting by Robin Emmott, writing by Robert-Jan Bartunek) |
Friendship Advice From 'Grey's Anatomy' Will Speak To Your Soul Now & Forever | While many of us look for a solid piece of advice from family and close friends, we also go to our favorite TV characters for some words of wisdom. From Cristina Yang and Meredith Grey, to Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber, Grey's Anatomy is chock-full of awesome duos who have made permanent marks on our hearts. You may think this beloved TV show is all about dramatic storylines and swooning over Jackson Avery's baby blues, but there's a ton of friendship advice from Grey's Anatomy that you can snag every week.
In my opinion, it's actually the relationships that make this show so popular. I mean, hello, it's been on for 14 seasons for a reason, and I can assure you these on-screen personalities are what keep us coming back. It's the besties like Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang who call each other their "person" who really speak to you and your bestie. It's friends like Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber who are each other's work wife and work husband. We see these friendships and it gives us these seven moments of true advice we can take to heart.
You may have thought you were just watching doctors save people each week, and of course, that is true. But you're also receiving the ultimate lesson on how to be the best BFF you can be.
1 Apologize Like You Really Mean It Vixin24 on YouTube Sadie used to be really close with Meredith, like the kind of friendship she has with Cristina, so when she saw these two friends fighting, she knew she had to step in. She dropped the solid advice to Mer that when you apologize to a friend you have to do it like you genuinely mean it. An empty apology is just words.
2 Always Stick Up For Your Friends allierocksoutloud on YouTube When you see your friend going through something, even if it's their own doing, you stick by them. Meredith taught us that sometimes you need to insert yourself in your friend's business to help out, like when she asked the other doctors to let Cristina "off the hook." Cristina had consistently been her person, so she had to have her back.
3 Be Their Biggest Cheerleader When They're Going After Their Dreams Oana Capraru on YouTube A great friend should be your biggest cheerleader. They should want you to continue to succeed, and will always be there to push you to be your absolute best. No one is better at showing us this than Bailey and Webber. When Bailey struggled on her first day as Chief, Webber was there to motivate her with his awesome Webber wisdom — I'm making this a thing — and an engraved stethoscope.
4 Always Keep Your Promises Loucos Por Series on YouTube DeLuca made a promise to Amelia before her surgery that he would help her with her recovery process the way she wanted. It went against Dr. Koracick's orders, but DeLuca stuck by his word. Even though it broke our hearts watching Amelia be in so much pain, we got to see DeLuca be a true friend and keep his promise. Luckily, it all worked out.
5 Be Sympathetic When Your Friend Is Going Through Something The Pompeo Method on YouTube When April was upset about not being with her baby that night, Arizona could relate. She offered up some wise words that you'd want to hear from a friend who had gone through something similar. Then, she joined her despite having a hot date waiting for her. That's a true friend right there. |
Spain rescues 104 migrants crossing Mediterranean Sea | MADRID — Spain’s maritime rescue service says it has saved 104 migrants trying to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea to Europe from North Africa.
The service says its rescue craft Guardamar Concepcion Arenal intercepted two boats carrying 53 and 22 migrants each overnight and early Sunday in the Strait of Gibraltar. The same rescue vessel also took on board another 25 migrants that a Civil Guard patrol craft had picked up at sea.
Another rescue craft, the Salvamar Denebola, later spotted a tiny rubber boat carrying four more migrants that it took to shore.
Tens of thousands of migrants try to reach Europe each year in small smugglers’ boats unfit for the open sea, with thousands dying in the attempt. |
Romelu Lukaku disputes Jose Mourinho's account of why he didn't start the FA Cup final | Romelu Lukaku has dismissed Jose Mourinho’s suggestion that he made the decision not to start the FA Cup final earlier this month, with the Belgium striker also insisting his relationship with his Manchester United manager remains strong.
Romelu Lukaku has dismissed Jose Mourinho’s suggestion that he made the decision not to start the FA Cup final earlier this month, with the Belgium striker also insisting his relationship with his Manchester United manager remains strong.
Mourinho made several hints that Lukaku had decided he was not ready to start at Wembley as he tried to overcome an ankle injury, with his late appearance in the second half failing to avert a 1-0 defeat for United.
"When a player tells you he is not ready to play, when the player tells you he is not ready to start the game, then the question is how many minutes you think you can," Mourinho told the media. "But how can I convince a player who tells me he is not ready to play? That makes no sense." Now Lukaku has moved to dismiss Mourinho’s suggestion that he had opted not to start the final, as he insists the decision was taken out of his hands due to his injury concerns.
"It was a difficult situation. Obviously me and the manager had a conversation, he’s the one that made the decision," insisted Lukaku. "We had a conversation after the game, where we were both disappointed that we lost the game. I said to him, ‘I’m looking forward to next season’, to see the team that he is going to prepare for next year to hopefully challenge Manchester City.
"Everybody is thinking me and the manager have a big issue or something, but it’s not like that, me and the manager have a perfect relationship. We had a little chat after the game and everything is all clear." Lukaku expects to be fully fit to lead Belgium’s forward line at this summer’s World Cup final, as he tried to play down his nation’s hopes of an extended run in the competition.
"Before we went to Brazil (World Cup 2014) and France (Euro 2016), I said I wanted to go to the final and win the tournament, because talent-wise I think we have one of the most talented teams," Lukaku added. "From the past experiences that I’ve learned, that’s not the best thing to say. You have to show your talent and ambition on the pitch.
"For us now we are using these three weeks to make sure we are prepared, and make sure we win as many games as possible. If you do that, you can have a lot of nice results."
Online Editors |