FINsix Laptop Power Adapter Shrinks Its Size

FINsix Laptop Power Adapter Shrinks Its SizeFINsix is a company that has managed to come up with a new kind of power adapter which was specially designed for laptops, where it will also see a reduction in size compared to the existing units. In fact, the technology that was used has managed to shrink the physical size of the power adapter by 25% thanks to the utilization of an extremely high frequency power-conversion. This results in the adapter boasting of the ability to transfer power via the battery over 1,000 times faster than usual.

In addition, this unique unit would also be more efficient, since power is delivered a whole lot more often as well as in smaller chunks. The increased frequency would mean that there is less energy which is required to be stashed away temporarily in inductors and capacitors within the adaptor, hence being able to reduce the overall size.

FINsix co-founder Anthony Sagneri explains, “If you can increase that switching frequency, you can reduce the amount of energy that you have to store temporarily in the inductors and capacitors – which make up the bulk size and weight of power bricks – during the conversion process, and that yields reduced size.”

Known as the Dart, this device will also obviously be lighter in weight, and it will be rated at 65-watts. Right now, FINsix hopes to ship the first 4,500 Dart units to Kickstarter backers who made the project possible by the time November rolls around.

FINsix Laptop Power Adapter Shrinks Its Size

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Ballmer tipped in bid for LA Clippers

Steve Ballmer, formerly of Microsoft fame, has made a bid for the Los Angeles Clippers, it has been said. The information comes from ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, who speaks on the … Continue reading

DIY Pyro Suit


Colin Furze is on a roll here for sure. First of all, he took an interest in bringing “SNIKT!” to the masses by developing a pair of realistic retractable claws that Wolverine would approve of, before working on a pair of Magneto-inspired boots. While those are not directly threatening to the safety of the masses, Furze’s latest invention might just raise alarm bells for the paranoid. Looking to Pyro, another classic X-Men villain as his inspiration, Furze has managed to work on two flame-throwing gauntlets which have the ability to fire tongues of flames as far away as a dozen feet, now how about that?

Sure, it will not be able to stand up to the might of the sentinels if what you saw in Days of Future Past on the silver screen is anything to go by, but hopefully it is safe to use – as safe as playing with fire can be, anyways, or where flamethrowers are concerned. This particular Pyro suit is not powered by any kind of X mutant gene, but rather, it is fueled by propane, and with the flick of the wrist, one is able to unleash its flammable payload in a single burst.

Furze also rigged up a pilot light to the other hand, which means that whenever the gas released at a high enough velocity from the reservoir, the flames will not be able to burn the fuel fast enough to return to the fuel stream and cause any mishap. A built-in failsafe system, so to speak, which is a good idea at all times.

DIY Pyro Suit

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The War On Coal Miners: How Companies Hide The Threat Of Black Lung From Watchdogs And Workers

Whistleblower Justin Greenwell told regulators that his company, Armstrong Coal, was misreporting the dust levels in his mine, potentially putting miners in danger of black lung disease. (Photo: Dave Jamieson)

The dust was so thick that Justin Greenwell could barely see what was in front of him.

A 29-year-old miner, Greenwell had grown accustomed to working in the coal dust below ground in the Parkway Mine in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Yet the prevalence of the dust in the air bothered Greenwell more and more. He’d labored for seven years in the mines, and already he was experiencing shortness of breath when he worked on his farm on the weekends.

Prolonged exposure to coal dust leads to coal worker’s pneumoconiosis, known colloquially as black lung. It’s a miserable disease that forces miners to live out their last days coughing and gasping for air. To protect employees, mine operators are required by law to keep their coal dust levels in check. While inspectors do some of the monitoring, the operators themselves also collect samples and provide them to federal regulators to prove they’re in compliance.

According to Greenwell, there was a simple reason the Parkway Mine managed to avoid fines despite all the dust: Its operator, Armstrong Coal, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Armstrong Energy, was submitting misleading samples to regulators.

“It’s been going on since I started there,” Greenwell alleged in an interview. “All these guys in management, they know it’s wrong. But they don’t care about our health.”

On Jan. 24 this year, Greenwell’s allegations of inaccurate sampling apparently proved true. That day, officials with the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) performed what’s known in the industry as a “blitz.” Pursuing an anonymous tip, they showed up unannounced to inspect the mine. According to witnesses, supervisors at the mine went into a panic, ordering workers to shut down their machines and stop running coal.

There was good reason for the freakout. According to Labor Department documents, Armstrong miners weren’t wearing their coal dust pumps. These are the devices that measure the amount of dust in a mine’s atmosphere; when a company is sampling dust levels, miners are supposed to wear them for a full shift as they work. At Parkway, the MSHA report says an inspector found the two dust pumps hanging away from where the coal was being mined and at the power center, where the air is much cleaner. The pumps were guaranteed to register dust levels much lower than those to which miners were actually being exposed.

The MSHA inspector cited Armstrong with “reckless disregard” for the law, saying the company demonstrated an “unwarrantable failure” in the incident — the agency’s most serious class of safety violation. MSHA has proposed a fine of $150,600, though Armstrong can fight the penalty. Greenwell said he’s been interviewed as part of an apparent MSHA investigation into the fraud allegations as well. MSHA would not confirm or deny that such an investigation is underway.

“There’s been cheating ever seen I’ve been there,” said another Parkway miner, Mike “Flip” Wilson, a 40-year veteran who’s been at Parkway since Armstrong started producing coal there in 2009.

A spokesman for Armstrong, which operates seven mines in Western Kentucky, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Fed up with what he described as dangerous working conditions, Greenwell acknowledges that he was the one who provided the anonymous tip to inspectors. Once it became apparent that other miners knew as much, Greenwell’s lawyers informed Armstrong in writing that Greenwell was responsible. Now, his whistleblowing may have cost him his career.

Greenwell’s case underscores the challenges facing federal regulators as they overhaul the rules protecting miners from black lung disease, which played a role in an estimated 10,000 deaths in a recent 10-year period, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Despite an overall decline since the 1970s, black lung has made a resurgence in recent years in pockets of coal country. After the Upper Big Branch mining disaster, which took 29 lives in West Virginia in April 2010, autopsies of the 24 miners whose lungs could be examined revealed that 17 had black lung. Five of those workers had been working in the mines for less than a decade.

Though no one can say for certain why black lung has surged in some areas, it probably has to do with the fact that much of the easy-to-reach coal in the U.S. is now gone. That means coal operators are cutting into more rock to get to the coal seams that are left. Many miners are likely now breathing nastier dust mixtures, as well as working longer hours in it.

In a step toward making good on its promise to end black lung, the Labor Department in April rolled out long-awaited reforms to coal dust regulations. The government is lowering the allowable level of coal dust in a mine from 2.0 milligrams per cubic meter of air to 1.5 — a move that should force operators to better ventilate their mines and protect workers from dirty air.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health had recommended a tighter threshold of 1.0. The 1.5 level appears to be a compromise with a coal lobby that’s long fought reform. Still, mine safety advocates welcomed the new requirement as a much-needed step in the right direction.

“This probably will be the most significant worker health and safety regulation that gets out of the Obama administration,” said Celeste Monforton, an occupational health expert and former MSHA staffer. “It is very important, and it is a big improvement.”

The new regulations also mandate the use of a personal dust monitor, a device that provides real-time readings of a mine’s coal dust level. The monitor will replace the outdated dust pumps used in the current system, which requires miners to take a series of samples every two months and then submit them to regulators for analysis. Unless they later sought out the results, most miners would never know how much dust they’d been working in.

“It’s an amazing piece of technology,” Joe Main, the head of MSHA, said of the new dust monitor. “It’s not only going to help miners know themselves, but it’s also going to be a better tracking system that leaves a trail behind. You can look at the data and determine when it’s been sitting on the power center for half a shift.”

The introduction of the real-time monitor could bring unprecedented transparency, theoretically enabling miners to refuse dangerous work in dusty conditions. But the monitors, which MSHA says cost between $13,000 and $15,000 apiece, will be used only by certain miners during designated sampling periods, much like the dust pumps now in use.

And even with the reforms, regulators will still rely on the industry to police itself when it comes to coal dust. If the new rules survive a court review requested by the coal lobby, the personal dust monitors will go into use two years from now. But the program will still leave it to mine operators to do most of the monitoring and submit their data to the government.

Main said he is confident that the reforms will make it much harder for mine operators to cheat on their samples.

“When you look at all these pieces together, the miners of the future will have a better life in the mines than in the past,” he said.

Other industry observers are less confident the cheating will actually come to an end.

“Outlaw coal operations didn’t comply with the 2.0 standard. So why will they comply with 1.5?” said Tony Oppegard, a lawyer for Greenwell who’s represented miners in safety cases for more than 30 years. “If an operator thinks that way, they will find ways to get around it. There will be some creative cheating going on.”

“I think that there will always be ways to cheat,” said Ellen Smith, managing editor of Mine Safety and Health News, an independent publication covering the industry. “Simply put, the responsibility really lies with the miners themselves.”

An x-ray of the lungs of a coal miner suffering from black lung. (Chuck Nacke/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Cheating on dust samples has been something of an open secret in the coal industry for years, a fact acknowledged by MSHA. Industry watchdogs suspect that some mines often operate with dust levels above the 2.0 milligram level, let alone the new, lower threshold of 1.5. But it’s likely certain operators have avoided fines by submitting unreliable samples.

A 1998 report by the Louisville Courier-Journal detailed the ways in which miners in Appalachia have juked the coal dust numbers with the encouragement of managers over the years: placing the pumps near clean air intakes, sticking them in lunch boxes away from the dust, and wearing them only a fraction of the time they’re supposed to be worn.

According to a 2012 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NPR, MSHA secured 185 guilty pleas and convictions for sampling fraud in the mining industry between 1980 and 2002, most of them after a scandal in the early 1990s. But between 2002 and 2012, the agency had no records of any such pleas or convictions. The investigation noted that despite receiving more than 53,000 non-compliant dust samples over the course of 11 years, MSHA issued fewer than 2,400 citations, in part because the current rules allow mine operators to average their samples in a way that cancels out high dust readings.

Stephen Sanders, director of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, a Kentucky public interest law group that represents miners, said the passing grades on dust sampling at some mines under the current system are hard to square with reality.

“In Eastern Kentucky, we frequently will see miners at the gas station or the quick mart after work, and they’re just covered with this black sooty grime. That raises a flag for me,” said Sanders. “Are they really working in that kind of a dusty environment? Well, they are. It just doesn’t seem like you could get covered with that kind of grime if you were in an area at the permissible [dust] level.”

Main said that MSHA has little choice but to rely on coal companies to provide the dust samples, given that the budgets offered by Congress, particularly in an era of sequestration, don’t allow the agency to handle all of the sampling on its own. But he noted that the new reforms will no longer allow operators to average out their samples to create misleadingly low numbers, and that they’ll have to take more samples when the mine is operating close to full production — a time when conditions are dustier.

Monforton said that as long as the coal companies themselves handle the testing, the results should be viewed skeptically.

“How much are you really going to trust the samples done by operators?” she said. “They have a history of cheating. There’s cheating now going on. Even the really honest ones are suspect.”

Miners themselves play a central role in the cheating, since they’re the ones who actually wear the dust pumps. Some take part because they don’t want to get their own mine in trouble, believing it could hurt the employment prospects of everyone in the mine. Others take part because managers pressure them to. Doing dust samples on the up-and-up — even if it means protecting oneself from black lung years down the road — may not seem worth risking one of the only high-paying blue-collar jobs in town.

“They scare guys into thinking that having no [high-dust] samples is in their interest,” said Tim Miller, an international representative with the United Mine Workers of America union in Western Kentucky. “They imply heavily that your job depends on it. And young boys don’t think about their long-term health. They think they’re bulletproof. But over the years, they become an old man before their time.”

In a place like Muhlenberg County, a miner has ample reason to breathe dust without protest. The county has an unemployment rate of around 10 percent — more than three points above the national average — and a median household income below $39,000. Yet a young miner like Greenwell can clear well above that, plus overtime, if he’s lucky enough to have one of the coveted coal jobs in the area. The Kentucky coal industry employed only 12,000 miners in 2012, but it offers an average salary above $60,000, according to a report produced by the state Energy Department and the Kentucky Coal Association.

“There’s a saying: ‘If you won’t do it, we’ll get somebody who will,'” one Parkway miner, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of losing his job, said of the pressure to keep dust numbers low. If a worker had the gall to wear a dust pump properly for a full shift and bring in high numbers, the miner added, “You was gonna be dealt with.”

Mike “Flip” Wilson said he regrets helping coal operators submit deceptively low coal dust samples. He now has black lung disease. (Photo: Dave Jamieson)

Under the law, dust pumps can be collected only by miners who’ve been certified for the job by federal regulators. The idea is that a miner with a “dust card” credential has been properly trained to maintain the integrity of the samples.

At the Parkway Mine, these duties fell to an employee named William Martin. An inspector’s notes indicate that Martin was overseeing safety the day Armstrong was caught with its dust pumps in clean air. (In the notes, Martin’s name was apparently transposed as “Martin William.”)

Greenwell and Wilson said that Martin helped run a program in which accurate samples were rarely collected. The dust pumps were often exposed to coal dust for as little as a half-hour before they were moved to cleaner air for the remainder of the eight-hour shifts, they said.

The miners didn’t begrudge Martin for the way they said things were being done. The way they saw it, he was merely doing what was expected of him.

“He knows it was wrong,” said the Parkway miner who requested anonymity. “But that’s what he was supposed to do.”

After MSHA issued Armstrong with its “unwarrantable failure” citation, Martin was fired. Reached by telephone, Martin declined to comment on the allegations of fraud at Parkway. The miners interviewed for this story said they knew of no other managers who were fired due to the incident.

Wilson said that Martin was “thrown under the bus” after the citation.

“He was doing exactly what the coal company wanted him to do,” Wilson, 59, said of Martin’s alleged sampling strategies. “He just got caught, that’s all.”

Wilson has been working in Kentucky coal since 1974. For much of that time, he’s run the machine that actually cuts the coal, which means he’s been working in the dirtiest part of the mine and has often had to wear a dust pump for sampling.

“I was told … ‘Do whatever you gotta do for this thing to come in'” clean at Parkway, Wilson said. “And that’s exactly what I did.”

Wilson himself now has black lung. He suffers from shortness of breath and chronic coughing, and he often finds himself hacking up black mucus. His health has gone noticeably downhill over the past year. He said he’s come to rue the cheating he took part in.

“It ain’t good for the man, but it’s good for the company,” Wilson said. “The way they look at it, there ain’t a man down there that can’t be replaced.”

Within days of the blitz on Parkway, word made it through the mine that Justin Greenwell was the one who’d tipped off investigators. According to discrimination complaints filed with MSHA by Greenwell’s lawyers, a manager seized a notebook that Greenwell had been using to document working conditions at the mine. Pages related to work hazards were stripped out of it and given to the mine superintendent.

The job quickly became unpleasant for Greenwell. In an effort to “ostracize” and “shun” him, managers told rank-and-file miners that Greenwell was keeping notes on them, according to one of four discrimination complaints Greenwell has filed with MSHA against the company, accusing Armstrong of harassing him due to his safety activism.

Greenwell’s co-workers became cold. A fellow miner allegedly confronted him in the locker room at the end of the shift. “Someone needs to shut you up,” he told Greenwell, according to one of Greenwell’s complaints.

On Feb. 28, Greenwell became a certified miner’s representative, a designation from MSHA that gave him the right to accompany federal inspectors and point out safety problems as they made their rounds. Managers and even many miners often look down on diligent miner’s reps, since their work can bring fines and even work stoppages. At one point, Greenwell revealed hazards that got a section of the mine shut down for two shifts until they were fixed, according to an MSHA filing.

“Miners like Justin are very rare,” said Oppegard, who’s representing Greenwell alongside Wes Addington of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center. “When you have a miner who insists on a safe workplace and is willing to fight for a safe workplace, most of his coworkers are seeing something they’ve never experienced before. They really don’t know how to react. I think it scares other people.”

“He’s a rare breed for sure,” Oppegard added. “Particularly at a non-union mine.”

In late April, Greenwell told MSHA through his lawyers that he believed his foreman had falsified the record book detailing mine fire drills, according to MSHA. On April 21, MSHA came to the mine, conducted an inspection and cited the mine for violating its fire drill plan.

According to one of his complaints, the next day Greenwell was suspended. Six days after that, he was fired. The same foreman accused Greenwell of sleeping on the job — a charge Greenwell denies.

Greenwell participated in a two-hour on-record interview with The Huffington Post before he was suspended and fired. He said in the interview that he believed he could be ousted for his whistleblowing.

The Labor Department filed a motion to have Greenwell temporarily reinstated on the job, arguing that his firing amounted to illegal retaliation under mining law. For the time being, the company has offered to pay Greenwell his salary so long as he doesn’t work, an arrangement he’s agreed to. He can’t be permanently reinstated unless he wins his discrimination case.

Greenwell is now in the position of fighting to win back a job he believes was slowly ruining his lungs. He said he’s been forced to make the choice that regulators have long said he shouldn’t have to make: his livelihood, or his health.

“I already have shortness of breath, and I’m only 29,” he said. “I can tell a difference in my breathing now and five years ago. Just working on the farm I get winded, and I shouldn’t. I’m angry about it. It’s not fair for us miners to have to work in this atmosphere when the law says we don’t have to.”

Outside of the mines, his $50,000 salary is hard to come by for someone without a college degree in Western Kentucky. If he can’t win full reinstatement and get back underground, Greenwell isn’t sure how he’ll support his wife and three young daughters and cover payments on his small farm.

Now at the tail end of his own career, and already in the first stage of black lung, Wilson said he wishes he’d spoken up as a young miner like Greenwell.

“I’ve got a pretty decent living,” he said. “I’ve worked hard for it and done what I thought I needed to do for the coal company. But now I’m regretting a lot of it.”

Due to his black lung, the Labor Department recently certified Wilson to be a “part 90” miner. The designation gives him the right to work in a less dusty part of the mine at the same rate of pay he’s been earning — a consolation of sorts for ruining his lungs in the mines.

Some mine operators don’t care for part 90 miners, since they can’t work them as they see fit. Wilson claims that management discouraged him from accepting the status, and that they cut his shift by an hour once he did, a move that could be illegal under federal law. He’s filed discrimination complaints with MSHA against the company.

Wilson said he’s hoping that his part 90 status will make it easier for him to breathe during his last years on the job, but he knows better than to look forward to a comfortable retirement.

“I figure in another year and a half I’ll be on oxygen anyhow,” he said.

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Eat for Abs

Today, all over Instagram underneath every healthy food photo is the popular hashtag #eatforabs. Equally relevant to the conversation is the hashtag #eatforhealth. Even if you are not trying to eat your way to a washboard stomach, the underlying key to improved physical health is proper nutrition.

And it starts with self meal preparation.

Cooking your own meals throughout the day is a vital step in gaining control of weight management. Michele Smith, owner of Forever Fit With Michele and certified nutritionist out of NYC, concurs with the idea, stating, “It’s a lot healthier because you have direct control on what’s going into your food.” Knowing what you’re eating is half the battle, and according to Michele, “If you want to know exactly what you’re eating, you have to be responsible for making your own meals.”

However I often hear a complaint from people wanting to lose weight that cooking simply takes too much time. Ironically enough, the same person that makes this argument can also be seen standing in the Starbucks line for 20 minutes waiting on coffee and a bagel. Sound familiar? If we break down the actual time it takes to prepare a quick and easy meal this lost time can easily be discovered.

Let’s examine breakfast, unanimously considered by health professionals as the most important meal of the day. New York City certified nutritionist and health and wellness expert Rhonda Huff believes that “with the right combination of foods to start your day, you can have more energy, prevent cravings, and ultimately eat less throughout the day.” This is critical for someone looking to regulate their health and weight.

Overnight oat recipes have become very popular trends in the health community. They require minimal preparation and are a readily available option for those with busy morning schedules. To prepare it is easy. The night before, whether you’re in the kitchen cooking dinner or chowing down on the Chinese take-out you waited half an hour for, consider spending an extra 5 – 10 minutes to prepare this effortless overnight oatmeal recipe.

Ingredients:

1) 1/2 cup of dry oatmeal
2) fruit (banana, raisins, etc)
3) 1-2 cups of 2 percent milk (or almond milk)

Add fruit for extra vitamins, nutrients, and a natural sweetener. Place them in a container with the dry oatmeal and your liquid of choice. If you like sweeter oatmeal or want more flavor, look to add either honey or cinnamon. A favorite oatmeal recipe of Rhonda’s contains “apples, walnuts, and a little bit of honey.” Once the ingredients are combined, stir or blend and then cover the container before placing it into the fridge. That’s it. When you wake up in the morning the oats will be chewy as if you had cooked them and will be ready to eat! You can enjoy it cold or warm it up in the microwave. The whole process literally only takes five minutes. You cannot purchase a quicker breakfast anywhere.

As listed by the Whole Grains Council, additional benefits of regular oatmeal consumption include an increase in appetite-controlling hormones, a reduction of bad LDL cholesterol levels due to the high fiber content, and improved insulin sensitivity. However, if the idea of preparing breakfast the night before is too foreign or you’re just not an oatmeal person, another quick, easy, and healthy recipe are microwaved eggs in a cup.

Ingredients:

1) 2 eggs
2) 2 slices of whole wheat toast
3) topping of choice (turkey, ham, tomato, etc.)

To prepare the eggs, all you have to do is crack two of them in a cup, season with salt and pepper, stir, and microwave on high for 45 seconds. Take them out and stir once more before microwaving for an additional 30-45 seconds. Once the eggs are done you can assemble a quick and easy egg sandwich by scooping them between two slices of whole wheat toast. Some common additions are turkey, ham, or a tomato slice, but you can add whatever toppings you like (with a health-conscious mind of course).

If you are accustomed to the convenience of eating out, preparing your own foods will seem difficult at first because it is going to require a change of habit. Michele affirms this notion with the belief that “nutrition is one of the most intimate habits and requires many behavioral changes.” But if your physical health or body image is of priority to you then it is your worth your while to invest the energy into making these changes. It can be as easy and painless as you want it to be. Not only will you be saving yourself money, but you will also be saving yourself time. And since time equals money that’s double the savings!

Dragon V2 Spacecraft Unveiled By Elon Musk At SpaceX To Ferry Astronauts

HAWTHORNE, California (AP) — Billionaire Elon Musk has taken the wraps off a new spacecraft designed to ferry up to seven astronauts to the International Space Station.

The unveiling of the cone-headed craft dubbed Dragon V2 occurred Thursday evening at the Southern California headquarters of Musk’s company, SpaceX. Musk calls the new spacecraft a big leap forward in technology.

SpaceX is one of several private companies competing to build “space taxis” for NASA to replace the retired space shuttle fleet. It previously flew four cargo missions to the space station, delivering food and supplies.

NASA has been relying on Russian Soyuz rockets to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit until a commercial spacecraft is ready to take over the task.

Roger Goodell Responds To NFLPA Criticism

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell responded Thursday night to criticisms by NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, who contended a double standard exists when it comes to the league doling out punishments.

In comments to ESPN earlier Thursday, Smith specifically addressed the delayed discipline of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, who has yet to be punished by Goodell after being arrested in March for allegedly operating a vehicle while intoxicated and while in the possession of prescription drugs and $29,000 in cash. Irsay was formally charged Friday. “The personal conduct policy applies to commissioners, owners, players, coaches,” Goodell told reporters at the New England Patriots’ team facility. “It applies to all of us. We all have a responsibility to do things the right way. There are several players that we haven’t taken any action on, either.

“We like to get the facts, we like to be thorough and we like to understand them. Charges were just filed last week. I don’t believe there’s a credibility gap.”

Goodell was at Foxborough to speak at a football safety clinic for mothers, a program aimed at furthering safer play at all levels of the game.

Smith pointed toward Goodell’s swift and sometimes harsh action when dealing with troubled players in the past.

“The commissioner understands that there is a significant credibility gap that exists in the National Football League,” Smith said. “What troubles our players is the speed and the deliberateness of the punishment that they have seen in the past when it comes to a player.

“There isn’t the same speed or deliberate action when it comes to an owner, and that’s a problem.”

Goodell said the league has yet to collect all the facts on Irsay’s case.

“You can judge us when we make our final determinations, which you undoubtedly will, and so will everybody else,” he said. “That’s fair. But don’t make judgments until we’ve had an opportunity to do what’s in the best interest of everyone, which is getting the facts. Everybody wants process. DeMaurice Smith talks about process all the time.

“The process is important.”

The safety program organized by the Patriots comes more than a week after a group of retired players filed another lawsuit against the league, accusing team doctors and trainers of supplying them with powerful painkillers and other drugs that allowed them to keep playing despite injuries, but led to serious complications later in life.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of more than 500 former players, charges the NFL with placing profits ahead of players’ health.

Goodell addressed the league’s continued role in the education and pursuit of safer play.

“We want you to learn the right techniques from the moment you play, regardless if you play one year, two years, or if you play flag football,” he said. “I think our popularity, the platform we have, gives us an opportunity and it’s part of our responsibility to make the game safer, not only at the NFL level to protect our players, but also at every other level of football, and frankly, sports in general.”

Patriots owner Robert Kraft said the health and safety of his players have never been greater in his 20-plus years of owning the team.

“I know I’m a better human being from having played the game, and when I played, it wasn’t as safe as it is now,” he said. “So, I’m a big believer in the lessons you learn in football.”

Kraft also was asked about the arraignment Wednesday of former New England tight end Aaron Hernandez, who pleaded not guilty to two more counts of first-degree murder stemming from a 2012 double homicide. Hernandez already is facing charges for the 2013 slaying of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd. Hernandez was released by the team following his arrest last summer.

“A year ago when he was arrested, we cut him from the team, I made a statement,” said Kraft, who at the time said the organization was “duped” if the accusations were true. “I was very clear about it, and you can go back and read what I said then, and that’s the way that I continuously feel.”

___

AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL

New York Rangers Reach Stanley Cup Finals For The 1st Time Since 1994

NEW YORK (AP) — Dominic Moore scored in the second period, Henrik Lundqvist bounced back from his worst performance in the playoffs and the New York Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens 1-0 on Thursday night to advance to the Stanley Cup finals.

The Rangers are in the championship round for the first time since winning it all in 1994.

Lundqvist and the Rangers shook off a 7-4 road loss Tuesday night and took out the Canadiens on home ice. Lundqvist needed to make only 18 saves in his team-record tying ninth postseason shutout. He was pulled after allowing four goals in less than two periods Tuesday.

Lundqvist had been 0-5 since 2009 in non-Game 7 clinching games. He leaped several times in his crease with his hands raised as streamers were fired off from the rafters.

Montreal’s Dustin Tokarski, who replaced injured No. 1 goalie Carey Price after Game 1, was solid in making 31 saves.

The Stanley Cup finals will begin Wednesday at either Chicago or Los Angeles, which leads the Western finals 3-2.

Scripps National Spelling Bee: Ansun Sujoe, Sriram Hathwar Declared Co-Champions

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — For the first time in 52 years, two spellers were declared co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday.

Sriram Hathwar of Painted Post, New York, and Ansun Sujoe of Fort Worth, Texas, shared the title after a riveting final-round duel in which they nearly exhausted the 25 designated championship words. After they spelled a dozen words correctly in a row, they both were named champions. Earlier, 14-year-old Sriram opened the door to an upset by 13-year-old Ansun after he misspelled “corpsbruder,” a close comrade. But Ansun was unable to take the title because he got “antegropelos,” which means waterproof leggings, wrong.

Sriram entered the final round as the favorite after finishing in third place last year. Ansun just missed the semifinals last year.

They become the fourth co-champions in the bee’s 89-year history and the first since 1962.

“The competition was against the dictionary, not against each other,” Sriram said after both were showered with confetti onstage. “I’m happy to share this trophy with him.”

Sriram backed up his status as the favorite by rarely looking flustered on stage, nodding confidently as he outlasted 10 other spellers to set up the one-on-one duel with Ansun. The younger boy was more nervous and demonstrative, no more so than on the word that gave him a share of the title: “feulletion,” the features section of a European newspaper or magazine.

“Ah, whatever!” Ansun said before beginning to spell the word as the stage lights turned red, signaling that he had 30 seconds left.

Although they hoisted a single trophy together onstage, each will get one to take home, and each gets the champion’s haul of more than $33,000 in cash and prizes.

Gokul Venkatachalam of Chesterfield, Missouri, finished third, and Ashwin Veeramani of North Royalton, Ohio, was fourth.

Both champions are Indian-American. The past eight winners and 13 of the past 17 have been of Indian descent, a run that began in 1999 after Nupur Lala’s victory, which was later featured in the documentary “Spellbound.”

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Associated Press Writer Joseph White contributed to this report.

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Follow Ben Nuckols on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APBenNuckols.

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