The focus. The determination. The body control. The complete satisfaction. It all comes together when a dog jumps in the air for a treat. It’s so fun to see, the dog jumps in the air without ever thinking about landing, it’s 100 percent concentrated on the treat. And once it chomps down, that face of happiness is gold.
After a brief battle, California’s smartphone kill switch bill is on the cusp of becoming a bona fide law. The measure has passed its final Senate vote 27 to 8, leaving just the Governor’s signature before it takes effect. For the most part, it’s the…
It’s easy to get cynical about game franchises that release every year, but from the looks of it, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is shaking things up quite a bit. For starters, developer Sledgehammer Games’ first effort brings jetpacks and frickin’…
NVIDIA’s first Tegra K1 has been making waves today in the Acer Chromebook 13, but now it’s the turn of its arguably even more interesting “Project Denver” sibling to take the spotlight. Based on NVIDIA’s own 64-bit dualcores, Tegra K1 “Denver” will be the first 64-bit ARM processor for Android, and the chip firm says it’s already working on an … Continue reading
T-Mobile already has the market cornered on low-cost, prepaid plans. They’re also not content to simply be the leader — they seem to want total ownership of prepaid. A new plan, breaking all kinds of molds in offering up ten-cent minutes and texts, speaks to that. The new Pay As You Go plan is as simple as can be. You … Continue reading
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The wealthy businessman who lavished former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife with thousands of dollars in gifts and loans said repeatedly that the couple supported his company and its signature product, former state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore testified Monday.
Kilgore, now a private attorney, represented former Star Scientific Inc. CEO Jonnie Williams in his preliminary efforts to obtain money from a state tobacco commission for university research on the anti-inflammatory nutritional supplement Anatabloc. The commission is chaired by Kilgore’s twin brother, state Del. Terry Kilgore. The company never applied for the grant, stymied in part by a lack of progress in getting two state universities on board. Kilgore recalled telling Williams that the universities were “not stepping up to the plate yet.” Williams was frustrated.
“He reminded me again of the governor’s and first lady’s support,” Kilgore said.
Kilgore, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2005 after completing his term as attorney general, said he agreed that the governor’s support would have been helpful. And he said there is nothing illegal about the governor supporting such a project.
However, prosecutors said the McDonnells’ support came with a price tag — more than $165,000 in gifts and secret loans from Williams. They are charged in a 14-count indictment with accepting the gifts and loans in exchange for promoting Williams’ products.
Even before McDonnell received the loans from Williams, he borrowed $150,000 from two others to help bail out his struggling vacation rental properties, McDonnell’s former brother-in law testified.
The prosecution called Michael Uncapher to the stand to help paint the former governor and his wife, Maureen, as a financially desperate couple. Prosecutors say money troubles from the Virginia Beach properties owned by McDonnell and his sister were one of the motivating factors in the gifts-for-favors scandal that resulted in a 14-count indictment against the McDonnells.
Uncapher testified that MoBo Realty borrowed $100,000 from McDonnell’s father, John McDonnell, in 2007 and $50,000 from Dr. Paul Davis, a radiologist, in 2009. Two loans totaling $70,000 from Williams followed in 2012, Uncapher and other witnesses have testified.
Uncapher, who said his divorce from McDonnell’s sister became final earlier this year, said family members figured when the real estate partnership was established in 2005 that it would lose $50,000 to $60,000 a year because the property was intended primarily for the family’s enjoyment.
On cross-examination, Uncapher acknowledged that his ex-wife is a successful business executive who earned more than $500,000 in 2012. The defense made that point to counter the prosecution’s financial desperation claim. Uncapher also said his own financial mismanagement contributed to the money problems.
Earlier, a state official testified that McDonnell ended a meeting in his office by touting Anatabloc’s effectiveness.
Sara Wilson, director of the Virginia Department of Human Resource Management, said that when a March 2012 meeting to discuss the state employee health plan was breaking up, McDonnell pulled a bottle of Anatabloc from his pocket and mentioned that it was helping him and his wife.
Wilson said she had met about three weeks earlier with Star Scientific executive David Dean and rejected his request that she add Anatabloc to the list of items covered by the state plan.
Wilson described a February meeting with Dean as a salesman’s “cold call” and said that, to her knowledge, McDonnell had nothing to do with it. She said she was interested but wanted to see scientific studies. Instead, he brought marketing material to a meeting.
Meanwhile, the maker of Anatabloc, now known as Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals Inc., said Monday it was halting sales of Anatabloc and another supplement called CigRx while it sorts out issues with the Food and Drug Administration.
Late last year, the federal agency sent a warning letter to the company saying that its products contain a new dietary ingredient that requires approval before it can be marketed.
The agency also said the company’s website had improperly promoted Anatabloc as a drug by suggesting it can be used to treat various diseases.
In cities of the Global South, where a lack of affordable and adequate housing is all too common, effort has been made by governments, NGOs, and local communities to make inclusive housing a reality. One crucial solution that has been found effective in several cities is participatory planning, which allows the urban poor to participate in the process of urban planning.
In Mexico City, the government’s Housing Institute partners with local NGOs and CSOs to include the poor and vulnerable in housing plans through microcredit, affordable mortgages, and the preparation of housing construction materials. The program’s success comes from its participatory nature: beyond giving subsidies, it involves diverse stakeholders along with the government and civil society representatives to empower the entire community.
Every two decades, the Mumbai municipality updates its most basic and essential plan for the development or redevelopment of public land in the city – the Development Plan. Last year, planning authorities agreed to open up the process to public scrutiny after it was revealed that the existing plan had misappropriated public land for other uses. Since then, numerous organizations have come together around concerns in the revision of the Development Plan. An informal coalition of more than 80 organizations formed a City Development Plan Forum and drafted the People’s Vision for Mumbai – the first vision for the city drafted by the people themselves in the history of Mumbai (and maybe in India). Although these consultations are not mandated, participating groups are hoping to motivate other groups around India and thereby permanently change the discourse on planning in cities to an inclusive and participatory process.
In Surabaya, where older public housing units are decaying into slums, the city government is now rebuilding the housing units with resident participation. The process of re-design required an intensive approach working with inhabitants to understand their wants and needs. For example, inhabitants requested a common public space in the building, which architects created by designing semi-circular buildings, with an open space in the middle. The government also coached the slum communities about the importance and the procedure for land legalization, and encouraged the formation of land rights community groups. These strategies were successful because low-income communities were motivated to get involved as their active participation made a real impact on their living conditions.
In Jakarta, the government faces the challenge of building homes in cooperation with construction developers while at the same time sanctioning their misconduct, such as license misuse. Developers often ignore the balanced residential policy, which requires homes to be built with “1:2:3 composition”: for every luxury home built, two medium-sized houses and three low-cost homes must also be built. There have also been cases of building permit abuse, as many of the low-cost homes are inhabited by middle- and even high-income families instead of the poor. The current government is now taking a firm position and has performed a sweep to check the identity of the occupants of the low-cost homes to ensure they have the right to be there. The local community, through participatory design, also plays a big role in this matter, as they submit information or findings of any violations during the construction process. They also report any unusual transactions, or if there is no public facility actually being built.
Participatory planning integrates the poor and vulnerable into the housing development process and ensures that good intentions are translated into impact for the community. Join us on URB.im to read about housing and inclusive planning solutions from other cities and join the discussion.
Photo credit: ATM & Indra Sarathan
The very rich don’t think very highly of the rest of us. This fact is driven home to us through fluke events, like the taping of Mitt Romney’s famous 47 percent comment, in which he trashed the people who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and other forms of government benefits.
Last week we got another opportunity to see the thinking of the very rich when Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, complained at a summit with African heads of state and business leaders that there is even an argument over the reauthorization of Export-Import Bank. According to the Washington Post, Immelt said in reference to the Ex-Im Bank reauthorization, “the fact that we have to sit here and argue for it I think is just wrong.”
To get some orientation, the Ex-IM Bank makes around $35 billion a year in loans or loan guarantees each year. The overwhelming majority of these loans go to huge multi-nationals like Boeing or Mr. Immelt’s company, General Electric. The loans and guarantees are a subsidy that facilitates exports by allowing these companies and/or their customers to borrow at below market interest rates.
As a practical matter, whether the bank is reauthorized or not will have no noticeable impact on the economy. If the government took away the subsidy on this $35 billion in exports, it would probably lead to a decline of between 10 and 30 percent in these exports ($3.5 billion to $10.5 billion), while costing Boeing, GE, and the rest some of their profit margin on the portion they continued to export.
The loss of exports would be in the range of 0.2 percent to 0.5 percent of total exports or 0.02 percent to 0.06 percent of GDP. (This assumes that none of the exports include imported parts, which is obviously not the case.) In short the impact on the economy of ending the subsidies from the Ex-Im Bank would be almost invisible.
If the folks pushing for the Ex-Im Bank reauthorization were really concerned about jobs created through trade, we could generate far more jobs with even a modest decline (e.g. 1 percent) of the dollar against other currencies. This would make our exports cheaper to people in other countries and would reduce the price of domestically produced goods relative to imports, thereby leading consumers to purchase more U.S. made goods.
While ending the Ex-Im Bank would have little impact on trade and jobs it would be a big deal to Mr. Immelt’s company and presumably to Mr. Immelt’s compensation. Therefore it is not surprising that he might find it “just wrong” that we should even have to argue about it.
For some additional context, it is worth noting that Mr. Immelt is one of the members of the Peter Peterson initiated group, Fix the Debt. In that capacity he has gone around the country arguing for the need to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. So we have someone who makes $25 million a year, at least in part from taxpayer handouts, who runs around the country complaining about retired workers getting $1,300 a month from Social Security, whining because he has to argue to continue the handouts he receives.
It would be nice if Immelt were just another crazed one percenter who had no credibility outside of his country club, however this is not the case. It was not an accident that Mr. Immelt was at this summit. He is a highly respected business leader and apparently is close enough to president Obama to have been made head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
The reality is that the Immelts of the world are able to put muscle behind their sense of entitlement because politicians need their campaign contributions to be credible candidates. For this reason, they are almost certain to secure the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, which has the support of most of the leadership of both parties.
The rest of us just have our votes. But if the public has a clear understanding of the agenda of the Immelts of the world, and their political allies, it will be better positioned to protect the entitlements that workers depend on and have paid for. Gutting Social Security and Medicare should be far more unthinkable than not reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank.
“Five hundred twenty five-thousand six hundred minutes” is one of the most iconic lyrics in Broadway history, and for one lucky bride and groom, it will now be a sweet reminder of their wedding day.
That’s right, when Conor and Claire Flynn tied the knot recently their friends decided to surprise them during the reception by belting out “Rent’s” most famous song “Seasons Of Love.”
The video — posted to YouTube on August 5 — is not only adorable, but also impressive considering that some of these wedding guests have major pipes!
Check out the video above if you love smiling and then be prepared to have this song stuck in your head for the rest of the day.
Keep in touch! Check out HuffPost Weddings on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Sign up for our newsletter here.
SEATTLE (AP) — Authorities have tracked and killed the otter that attacked a boy and his grandmother as they were swimming in a river near Seattle, state wildlife officials said Monday.
Federal officials shot the male otter near the place on the Pilchuck River where the attack took place at the end of July, about 30 miles northeast of Seattle, according to Capt. Alan Myers of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s police force. Officials said they’re nearly certain they got the right otter because of his unusually aggressive behavior. Otters are more likely to avoid people than to attack them.
The investigation aided by otter experts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services was originally focused on female otters, because they suspected a mother protecting her pups may have attacked someone she perceived as coming too close.
When wildlife officials “hazed” female otters in the area, however, the animals left the popular recreational area.
“This very large male could not be persuaded,” Myers said.
The otter that was shot Sunday afternoon with a .22-caliber pistol with a silencer was at least 4 feet long, officials said.
A necropsy was being conducted to find out if some disease or injury may have contributed to his aggressive behavior. Although the otter will need to be tested for rabies, the diseases is all but unheard of in otters, Myers said.
The 8-year-old boy who was attacked needed stiches for bites, and his grandmother was at risk of losing an eye from the attack near Lake Connor Park, which is between Lake Stevens and Machias.
Both have been released from the hospital, and Myers said the last he heard they were recovering.
Myers said it’s safe to go swimming in the Pilchuck River again, but people should always remember that interactions with wildlife can be dangerous.
“It’s important that people are always aware of their surroundings. When they see wildlife, try to avoid it as much as possible,” he said.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
