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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is pushing forward with Republican outreach efforts to black and Hispanic voters, asserting in a Yahoo News interview that he doesn’t “think there’s anyone in Congress who has a stronger belief in minority rights than I do.”

His comments were delivered in the wake of controversy surrounding the senator’s aide Jack Hunter, who resigned within the past week. Hunter, the co-author of Paul’s book The Tea Party Goes to Washington, came under fire for his past radio commentary supporting neo-Confederate ideology and denouncing the possibility of “a non-white majority in America.”

Paul has addressed that controversy head-on, defending Hunter as a talented and thought-provoking writer whose previous work was designed for political shock value.

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Mozilla is known for its staunch support of its users’ privacy, but that isn’t stopping the team from exploring options for personalizing the web. In a blog post today, Justin Scott, Mozilla Labs’ product manager, discussed the possibility of incorporating your browser activity into an API that allows sites to prioritize their content based on your interests. For example, if you spend a lot of time looking up baseball scores, publishers could push related articles to the forefront just for you. Though that may sound like an overstepping of the bounds Mozilla has so strongly defended, the company insists that the ability to select what to share (if anything) with content creators will remain in the hands of the user. To read more about Mozilla Labs’ experiments and weigh in on the proposal, head on over to the source link below.

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Via: CNET

Source: Mozilla

LONDON (AFP) — A huge blue cockerel descended upon London’s Trafalgar Square on Thursday, but the artwork has ruffled feathers by putting the symbol of France in a site marking a famous British victory over Napoleon.

Standing 4.7 metres (15.5 feet) tall and coloured a vivid ultramarine, the fibreglass rooster was sculpted by German artist Katharina Fritsch and will watch over the famous square for 18 months.

Titled Hahn/Cock, it was officially unveiled by London’s Mayor Boris Johnson — who said he would try to refrain from making any rude “double entendres” about the erection of a giant cockerel at the London landmark.

“I just had an emergency briefing from the brilliant artist, Katharina,” he joked.

“She said it was all to do with a woman’s rendition of a man… or something like that. I think it’s one of those occasions where politicians have to resist any kind of artistic interpretation.”

It is the latest artwork to stand on the tourist hotspot’s “Fourth Plinth”.

Fritsch, 57, has said she did not know the cockerel was an unofficial French symbol, and that she intended it to represent strength and regeneration.

“But it’s a nice humorous side-effect to have something French in a place that celebrates victory over Napoleon,” she told the Guardian newspaper, adding: “He has come back as a cockerel!”

Trafalgar Square is named after the victory of the British Royal Navy over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, a key conflict in the Napoleonic Wars.

The cockerel will be sited on the other side of the square from Nelson’s Column, a monument commemorating the English naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was killed during the battle.

A group of conservationists had tried to get the bird banned from the square, saying it was “totally inappropriate, however fanciful and dramatic it might appear to be”.

There are four large stone plinths at each corner of Trafalgar Square, three of which bear statues. The fourth was supposed to hold a statue of a horse commissioned in 1841, but due to insufficient funds it was never completed.

Since 1998 the fourth plinth has been used to showcase temporary pieces of art, and has so far hosted works including a giant ship in a bottle and a huge nude statue of the English artist Alison Lapper, who was born without arms, during her pregnancy.

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Originally posted on Kirkus:

We live to discover new talent at Kirkus. There’s an unmitigated joy when you’re there watching right at the beginning of a writer’s career. Some of the writers on this week’s list—which features books about a surreal kidnapping, a bittersweet love story and a black comedy about zombies, among other inventive topics—have dabbled in other genres, but all of them have written debut novels that sparkle.

For more from Kirkus, click here!

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Leslie Knope is a beacon for hope for the fictional town of Pawnee on “Parks and Recreation.” She loves her town and does everything possible to make it better.

But, what if Leslie was a monster hell-bent on taking down Pawnee and everybody in it? This is what it would look like.

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