Idaho lunch lady says she was fired for giving hungry 12-year-old free meal

A generous Idaho lunch lady says she was fired for giving a hot meal to a hungry child who didn’t have any money — a “theft” that cost the school less than $2.

Dalene Bowden said she lost her job in the cafeteria at Pocatello’s Irving Middle School even after she offered to pay the district back for the $1.70 lunch.

“I know I screwed up, but what are you supposed to do when the kid tells you that they’re hungry and they don’t have any money?” the former lunch lady told the Idaho State Journal.

 The human resource director of the Pocatello/Chubbuck School District sent Bowden a letter this week informing her she was being dismissed for theft of school property and inaccurate lunchroom transactions.

Bowden said she was serving up lunch last week when a 12-year-old girl told her she was hungry, but couldn’t pay for a meal. The cafeteria worker loaded up the student’s tray with food, and told the girl they would figure out payment later.

Her supervisor saw what happened, and Bowden offered to pay for the meal herself. But her bosses rejected the offer and placed her on immediate leave instead, she said.

Days later, an official letter of termination came from the district.

 Raushelle Guzman, of Pocatello mom whose children attend school in the district, organized an online petition asking the school to rehire the lunch lady. By Wednesday, it had more than 45,000 signatures.

“I think (Bowden) did the right thing and I think we need to make sure that every child that wants lunch can have lunch,” Guzman told the newspaper. “We do not need to humiliate or demean any child or worker in that situation.”


Source: nydailynews.com

Joe Jamail, A Pugnacious Giant Of The Trial Bar, Is Dead At 90

Some years ago I pulled into a gas station in Houston and spied a tall man pumping gas into a low-slung Mercedes sports car. He wore a elegantly tailored dark suit and had an unmistakable profile: Craggy features, piercing blue eyes and an enormous nose.

“Hi, Joe!” I said, walking over to Joe Jamail Jr.  Billionaire and the richest practicing attorney in the country, he was the winner of the largest court victory in U.S. history in 1985 when he convinced a Houston jury to award Pennzoil $10.5 billion in damages over a busted agreement to buy Getty Oil.

When I ran into Jamail that day, Texas Attorney General Dan Morales had just been indicted for fraud over backroom deals surrounding the state’s $15 billion tobacco settlement. Jamail had helped the case along by telling some unsavory tales about the deal several years before, after he wasn’t included among the politically connected plaintiff lawyers Morales cut in on the fees. I asked him what he thought about the indictment.

“Well, Dan,” he said, in a flat Texas drawl, “all I can say is, hogs get slaughtered.”

Jamail had his own brushes with scandal — he was reprimanded once for telling an opposing lawyer in a deposition, “you could gag a maggot off a meat wagon” — but it was typical of him not to get sucked into the tobacco scam. He was smarter than that, as well as a brilliant courtroom tactician. He died today at 90, the Houston Chronicle has reported, and it saddens me to think of the world without him.

Jamail embodied the polyglot culture of Texas and Houston. He spoke with a drawl but was born into one of the influential families of Lebanese immigrants who helped establish the business culture in Houston. He served in the Marines and then graduated from the University of Texas Law school, starting his practice in 1952. He and his wife Lee, who died in 2007, gave more than $200 million to charity including $41 million to the University of Texas.

I had the pleasure of covering him in an epic trial in Galveston by several airlines against American Airlines over American’s ill-fated attempt to simplify air fares by putting them in just a few price buckets. The other airlines sued for antitrust and Jamail was part of a plaintiff team that also included David Boies. The judge had warned everybody involved that he wouldn’t allow in evidence from a 1982 phone call that the president of Braniff Airlines had secretly recorded, in which American’s then-chairman Bob Crandall urged both airlines to raise prices at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Boies in cross-examination is like an elegant executioner, taking his subjects apart with a scalpel. Jamail was something entirely different — a dirty barroom fighter, with a shiv in his sleeve in case things got out of hand. He had a reputation for dirty tricks in Galveston — there were reports he had unusually close relations with the bailiffs, useful for monitoring what went on in the jury room — and his cross-examination of Crandall was brutal.

Dallas-Fort Worth. 1982. Braniff Airlines. Dallas-Fort Worth. On it went, until Judge Samuel Kent called a halt to the questioning, ordered the jury out of the courtroom, and then lectured Jamail. “Joe, I told you that phone call isn’t coming in and I meant it!” Kent said. “If you persist with this line of questioning, I will hold you in contempt!”


Source: forbes.com

Truck driver indicted in crash that hurt comic Tracy Morgan

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — A grand jury on Wednesday indicted a truck driver accused of crashing into a limo van last year on the New Jersey Turnpike, injuring comedian Tracy Morgan and killing one of his comic friends.

The grand jury charged Kevin Roper with first-degree aggravated manslaughter, second-degree vehicular homicide and third-degree aggravated assault in the June 2014 crash.

Roper’s attorney, David Glassman, was in court Tuesday arguing to have the initial charges of vehicular homicide and assault by auto thrown out because of adverse publicity surrounding Morgan’s settlement of a lawsuit with Wal-Mart earlier this year.

A judge tentatively set a date for early January to revisit the issue. Glassman said in an email Wednesday that the timing of the hearing would depend on how quickly he could review the grand jury transcripts.

Roper, of Jonesboro, Georgia, was driving a Wal-Mart truck when the crash occurred on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was not in court Wednesday, and an arraignment will be scheduled at a later date, said a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

The crash killed comedian James McNair and seriously injured Morgan and others. Morgan, a former “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live” star, suffered brain trauma, broken ribs and a broken leg.

Glassman said he wasn’t surprised by the indictment after 18 months of negative pretrial publicity, the settlement, Wal-Mart admitting “full responsibility before anyone walked into a courtroom” and the prosecutor permitting the National Transportation Safety Board “to pronounce (Roper) guilty in a public hearing.”

“The real question is whether the Prosecutor will be surprised in the event it is dismissed, for all the reasons set forth above,” Glassman wrote in an email.

Glassman said last week that he faulted the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office for not stepping in and seeking a stay in the federal lawsuit.

Aggravated manslaughter carries a 10-to-30-year prison term upon conviction, while a death-by-auto charge carries a five-to-10-year prison sentence. Each assault-by-auto charge is punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

An NTSB investigation concluded in August that Roper hadn’t slept in the 28 hours before the crash, a finding Glassman has disputed.

The report concluded Roper failed to slow down immediately before the crash despite posted warning signs on the turnpike.

The board faulted Morgan and other passengers in the limo van for not wearing seat belts and for adjusting headrests, which it said contributed to the severity of their injuries when the limo was struck from behind.


Source: seattletimes.com

Alejandro De Aza and Mets Are Close to a Deal

The Mets are close to completing a one-year deal with Alejandro De Aza, who will split time with Juan Lagares in center field, according to a person in baseball with knowledge of the situation.

In spring training before the 2015 season, the Mets signed Lagares to a four-year, $23 million contract extension, betting that he would continue to improve after winning a Gold Glove Award in 2014 and showing improvement at the plate when given playing time. But over the course of the 2015 season, he continued to struggle against right-handed pitching.

De Aza, who will turn 32 in April, is a left-handed batter who can play all three outfield positions. He played for Baltimore, Boston and San Francisco last season, batting .262 with a .333 on-base percentage in 114 games over all. Having played for five teams in his eight-year major league career, De Aza has never won a Gold Glove or made an All-Star team, but against right-handed pitching, he is batting .274 with a .338 on-base percentage.

Lagares had a .253 batting average and a .271 on-base percentage against righties in 2015.

After winning their first pennant in 15 years, the Mets have targeted solid veterans to complement their younger players. They acquired Neil Walker and Asdrubal Cabrera to play the middle infield, they re-signed Bartolo Colon and Jerry Blevins to add veterans to their rotation and bullpen, and now they are nearing a deal with De Aza to add depth to their outfield. None of the signings was especially flashy or expensive, but each one filled a need.


Source: nytimes.com

Hot Stove: Cardinals agree to five-year contract with Mike Leake

The Cardinals and free agent right-hander Mike Leake have agreed to a five-year contract with a sixth year mututal option, the team announced. CBS Sports MLB Insider Jon Heyman has confirmed the agreement is worth $80 million and includes a no-trade clause.

"We are pleased to announce the addition of Mike Leake to our starting rotation," said GM John Mozeliak in a statement. "Mike is considered to be one of the game's most consistent performers and he is certainly no stranger to the National League and the N.L. Central. His proven experience and all-around ability should be a real plus for us."

Earlier this offseason the Cardinals lost John Lackey, their 2015 leader in pitcher WAR, to the rival Cubs. Leake will join Adam Wainwright, Carlos Martinez, Michael Wacha and Jaime Garcia in the St. Louis rotation next year.

Wainwright (Achilles), Martinez (shoulder) and Garcia (shoulder) all missed time with injury in 2015 while Wacha wore down late in the season. The signing pushes youngsters like Tyler Lyons, Tim Cooney and Marco Gonzales either into the bullpen or back to Triple-A for depth.

Cardinals GM John Mozeliak recently said the team will not make a "dynamic signing" this offseason, though they clearly have money to spend. They were the runners-up for David Price and also made a substantial offer to Jason Heyward. The Cardinals might not be done after signing Leake, with an outfielder the likely next target.

Leake, 28, was 11-10 with a 3.70 ERA (106 OPS+), 1.16 WHIP and 119 strikeouts in 192 innings for the Reds and Giants last season. The right hander has been pretty durable, only hitting the DL for minor injuries twice in his career. He's topped 190 innings in each of the past three seasons.

With Leake now off the board, the top remaining free agent starters are Wei-Yin Chen, Scott Kazmir and Japanese import Kenta Maeda. Maeda is currently in the middle of the 30-day negotiating period as part of the posting process.


Source: cbssports.com

What ‘schlonged’ does for Trump – and for Clinton

Donald Trump has already defied the rules of political campaigns, which is why he will almost certainly face no repercussions from defying a basic principle of running against a female candidate: Keep the sexism subtle.

When Hillary Clinton ran for Senate in 2000, it was enough for her opponent Rick Lazio to cross the debate and wag a finger at her for him to be successfully portrayed as a sexist bully. Today, after Trump said Clinton had been “schlonged” by Barack Obama in the 2008 race, those seem like innocent times.

With this most recent round, not only has Trump rendered the dog-whistle a bellow, he will likely even benefit from it.


Source: msnbc.com

‘Point Break’ remake brings extreme sports with real athletes

BRECKENRIDGE, COLO.—Johnny Utah will do almost anything to catch a criminal.

Aficionados of the campy 1990s surfboard cult classic Point Break already know that.

But the ends to which America’s most extreme FBI agent takes his daredeviling nearly 25 years after Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze partnered in the original is what makes this generation’s version of Point Break something more than a by-the-book reboot.

Snowboarding, freeclimbing, wingsuit flying, motocross — the new movie features pretty much every kind of death-defying sport you can think of and employs the best in the world at each endeavour to shoot the scenes.

No need to worry, purists: There’s surfing, too, along with plenty of Keanu-like cheese to choose from — Johnny: “Ideas can be powerful.” Johnny’s love interest, Samsara: “Not as powerful as a whaling ship.” Deep thoughts.

But if anything about this remake lingers 25 years hence, it probably won’t be the lines. Rather, it will be the risk and expense the directors and athletes incurred to portray extreme sports in the most realistic light possible.

“I’ve seen a Hollywood snowboard movie where they’re showing the same, quote-unquote, trick, but it’s two different rotations,” said Louie Vito, the Olympic snowboarder who has a cameo in the movie. “It’s a lot of little things like that that we notice that can make a movie a lot more corny. But this, having the guys they had do the stunts and the riding, it stays way more true to it.”

From Xavier De Le Rue in snowboarding to Chris Sharma in freeclimbing, Point Break serves up a Who’s Who list of action-sports stars — some of whom saw opportunities open when the original movie helped bring extreme sports to the masses.

“For Generation Xers, that movie was an inspiration for us,” said wingsuit pilot Jeb Corliss, who helped with the remake. “It made you think that maybe you can earn a living doing something you love.”

The filmmakers travelled to four continents and spared no expense to shoot the action.

It took around 60 takes to produce a heart-pounding, five-minute scene of the movie’s philosophical antihero, Bodhi, and his wingsuit-wearing posse jumping off the Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, dodging mountains and skimming just above valley floors on the way to a safe landing. Corliss called it the most dangerous stunt that’s ever been filmed for a movie.

Big mountain snowboarders Ralph Backstrom and Mike Basich joined De Le Rue in playing Bodhi, Johnny and the rest for their near-vertical trip down the Aiguille de la Grande in France. One portion of the filming triggered a Class 4 Avalanche.

“Sure, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to shoot these scenes on a green-screen stage in Atlanta,” director Ericson Core said. “But honestly, that wouldn’t respect those sports at all. We pushed the limits as far as we possibly could.”

These extreme stars are no strangers to this kind of danger. But more often, their travails are performed among themselves or, at best, made into movies and videos that bypass Hollywood and are distributed straight to the niche audiences that care the most about this stuff.

It brings special meaning to a question Bodhi poses midway through the movie: “If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is there to YouTube it, did it really happen?”

Well, the tree called Point Break is dropping on Christmas — same as the NFL-medical-detective film Concussion. That movie portrays a league that, for decades, put lives on the line for the sake of entertainment while teetering between denial and reluctant acceptance of football’s life-altering consequences.

Point Break deals with some similar issues differently: Both the movie’s characters and the extreme athletes who perform their stunts are more than willing to risk their lives for a cause. They don’t shirk from their reality. They revel in it.

“I can’t tell you why any one person does it, but for me, I want to evolve as a human being, see how far I can go,” Corliss said.

Bodhi takes that ethos and pushes it to the brink — and beyond.

This isn’t really a spoiler.

Whether you memorized the first Point Break or are completely new to these movies, it’s no mystery from early-on that things cannot end well for “The Bodhisattva.”

But like its predecessor, the 2015 film is more about the morally complex and adrenaline-saturated journey than the final resting place.

Or, as Bodhi puts it: “We’re all gonna die. The only question is ‘How?’“


Source: thestar.com

2015, the year in games: Rainbow Six Siege, Fallout 4

To say the video game industry hasn’t always been a model of inclusion and diversity is a bit like noticing that the sea’s wet or that Jeremy Hunt needs to be lowered quietly into a septic tank; it’s so blindingly obvious it’s hardly worthy of comment. However, unlike the sea and the Conservative health secretary, gaming has begun to change, and not for the worse. There’s been a dramatic rise in the number of women making games, and some inspiring success stories among small, independent developers. That said, it’s still a blockbuster-driven industry that employs disproportionate numbers of men, but hey.

According to a poll conducted at the end of last year, 52% of British gamers are female. A survey of the industry taken around the same time found that just 22% of game developers were women; that’s double the number in 2009 thanks to more open recruitment practices, but still tragically low. That’s a real disparity but some recognition of the medium’s shifting audience is emerging. One simple but important change is that it’s now standard to be given a choice between playing a male or a female character. Even in traditional boys-y bastions such as Rainbow Six Siege, there are female special forces operators every bit as effective at blowing holes in walls, floors and terrorists as their male counterparts. In Fallout 4, one of the year’s highest-profile titles, the sole survivor of the nuclear apocalypse can not only be a man or a woman, but also gay, straight, or robo-sexual (for those interested in stretching diversity in new and potentially painful directions).

Greater sophistication is emerging in other areas of gaming too, as technology frees the medium from having to limit character interactions to those involving live ammunition. Life Is Strange, with its female-led cast, got you to make decisions about situations that usually had nothing to do with violence at all. Instead, it had time to explore protagonists’ friendships and motivations in more nuanced ways and with far more pronounced consequences to your words and actions. It wasn’t something you normally see in triple-A games but the mainstream is changing.

In 2015 small, independent game developers started to hit the big time, and their success started to turn heads even among the largest publishers. Indie studio The Chinese Room made its reputation with PC games such as Dear Esther, in which you explored a craggy Hebridean island while listening to a man read letters he’d written to his dead wife, and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, a dark and atmospheric survival horror. This year, it graduated to the PlayStation 4 with Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. A thoroughly English take on the end of the world – casting you as the last person left in a Shropshire village, and possibly the world – its 80s ephemera and perfectly pitched voice-acting made its mysteries a singular pleasure to unravel. It had critics in paroxysms and sold in reasonable numbers .

Likewise, Psyonix’s Rocket League, sold on the unprepossessing-sounding premise “football with cars”, has become a runaway hit that will no doubt spawn imitators and big-budget sequels. Meanwhile the most anticipated title of 2016 is Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky, a game that lets you explore the entire universe, made by a small team in Guildford.

So, the indies are coming, and the influence of their more thoughtful, experimental approach is educating players. There’s a long way to go, but the days of video games as an exclusive club for simulated gun-toting adolescent boys are finally on their way round the U-bend of history.


Source: theguardian.com

Patriots notebook: Marcus Mariota no easy mark

FOXBORO — Stats are for losers, and the Patriots want to turn Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota into another statistic.

Rookie quarterbacks are 5-17 against Bill Belichick’s Patriots since 2001, and the second overall pick will have a heck of a time trying to overcome those odds today at Gillette Stadium, particularly against a cruising Pats defense that is ranked eighth in scoring.

But the Patriots defense isn’t taking the challenge lightly.

“You’re talking about a quarterback with inexperience, but I don’t see Marcus Mariota being a young, rookie quarterback,” defensive end Chandler Jones said. “I’ve seen him make some great throws and great reads, and I’ve also seen him make some great decisions as far as pulling the ball down and running. With a guy like him or any quarterback, you want to have a good, solid game plan. A lot of our success with rookie quarterbacks just comes from just good game plans.”

Generally, rookie quarterbacks don’t have much success against anyone, as they’re either a high draft pick taking over a rebuilding team like Mariota or a backup whose drop-off in talent has put his team at a disadvantage. Mariota has shown some potential by completing 62.4 percent of his passes for 2,786 yards, 19 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, but the Titans have failed to score more than 14 points in six of his 11 starts.

The Patriots know they have to get after Mariota to have a successful day. Their 42 sacks are the second most in the NFL, and the Titans’ 44 sacks allowed are the second most in the league. Mariota has been sacked 35 times.

“To be honest with you, that (sack total) is appetizing to look at, but we still have a game to play,” said Jones, who leads the Pats with 10.5 quarterback takedowns. “They are where they are (in terms of) giving up sacks, but those guys are going out there and actually getting the sacks. You can’t just show up and think you’re going to go out there and sack them 50 times. You’ve got to go out there and actually sack them 50 times.”

And Jones reinforced Mariota’s age won’t mean a thing today. The outcome won’t be decided by anything other than how the Patriots handle their own business.

“I don’t want to go into the game thinking about his lack of experience,” Jones said. “It’s more about what we do and less about what he’s doing.”

License to ill

Quarterback Tom Brady’s status didn’t change yesterday and he’s still expected to play today despite an illness, according to sources. Brady is officially listed as questionable on the injury report.

Brady missed Friday’s practice, but a source told the Herald there was no reason to be concerned about his health. That was reaffirmed by a source yesterday.

Barring some type of drastic, unforeseen setback overnight, Brady will be good to go today.

Nothing afoot

Wide receiver Julian Edelman will not play today, according to a source.

Edelman is listed as doubtful but has participated in the Patriots’ last four practices on a limited basis.

Edelman will miss his fifth consecutive game with a broken foot that he suffered in the first quarter against the Giants. At the time of the injury, which required surgery, the absolute earliest Edelman could’ve returned was Week 16 against the Jets, but the possibility existed that he could miss the remainder of the regular season.

It’s still too early to know whether Edelman could return next Sunday against the Jets.

Second helping

Cornerback Leonard Johnson had an impressive debut last week when he broke up both passes thrown his way against the Texans, including third- and fourth-down stops that were huge for the Pats’ momentum.

“I just know I want to do the same thing,” Johnson said. “I want to come out and play the same exact way if not better. There are definitely some things I need to do better, but I definitely want to be as productive as I was this upcoming Sunday.”

Roster moves

The Patriots promoted fullback Joey Iosefa from the practice squad and waived linebacker Eric Martin with an injury designation.


Source: bostonherald.com

SpaceX Aims For Sunday Launch And Ground Landing

SpaceX is one step closer to launching its Falcon 9 rocket again.

The commercial space company's Falcon 9 launch is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, Dec. 20 at 8:29 p.m. following several delays, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk. 

SpaceX postponed the ground testing of the rocket's engines and its systems, also known as a static fire test, from Wednesday until Friday.

"Static fire test looks good," tweeted Musk. "Pending data review, will aim to launch Sunday."

SpaceX is set to launch its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, carrying a payload of 11 ORBCOMM-2 satellites. The low-Earth orbit satellites will provide reliable communications to and from remote areas of the world.

The Falcon 9 is set vertically on Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in position for launch.

"We are excited to report SpaceX completed their static fire test of Falcon 9 this evening," ORBCOMM announced on Saturday.

Musk shared on Twitter on Saturday morning SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9 rocket booster at Cape Canaveral instead of a drone ship as they have in the past.

The first stage will attempt to make a controlled landing at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1, previously a U.S. Air Force testing range known as Space Launch Complex 13, according to a SpaceX news release.

This will be the first ground landing attempt for Falcon 9.

The Orlando Sentinel has learned the Federal Aviation Administration issued a license on Friday for the ORBCOMM-2 launch. The license includes SpaceX's plan to "fly-back" the first-stage rocket booster, according to a statement from the FAA.

Last month, Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin successfully landed their New Shepard rocket’s first stage in West Texas after launching it to the edge of space. If SpaceX sticks their landing Falcon 9 would become the first orbital rocket to make a ground landing.

There is a 10 percent chance that weather conditions could delay the launch, according to the Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron. If the launch is delayed the next possible launch date available is Monday, Dec. 21.

SpaceX will livestream the launch starting at 8:05 p.m.


Source: orlandosentinel.com

NASA And Sony Work Together With PlayStation VR To Train Space Robots

The Sony press conference is held in conjunction with the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) which focuses on gaming systems and interactive entertainment, featuring introductions to new products and technologies.

NASA has been sending robots to space in lieu of human astronauts, but has encountered difficulties controlling them from Earth.

Enter Sony's PlayStation VR hardware, which NASA is now using as it tries to figure out a better way to control their robots, but this time with human input.

Having "Sony", "VR" and "space robots" in the same sentence would lead many to assume the context must relate to a PlayStation game.

Being NASA of course, the VR demo does take the delay into account by allowing the operator to see a ghost resemblance of their hands moving without the delay, while the robot's hands are reflected shortly afterwards. The program, which runs on a PlayStation 4, lets an operator use a PlayStation VR headset to view the environment and decide on the next course of action based on the robot's real-time situation.

The green shadow shows the time delay between the operator and the robot's hand. Sony's software guides users to compensate for the time delay by way of a shadow on screen. "However, even in our simulation, there are a still a number of problems to solve".

In the meantime, NASA experts are still learning how to operate the robots more efficiently, as well as develop ways to reduce the lag as much as possible. In essence, it gives the operator the chance to practice controlling a humanoid in space, like how to do a task or move around objects. Has it helped restore your faith in PlayStation VR?


Source: canonplace.com

VLC Media Player Finally Available On Chrome OS

The much loved VLC media player is already available on every significant desktop operating system, and even a few obscure ones, with one major exception: Chrome OS. But that's about to change.

The nonprofit VideoLAN organization on Friday announced that the free, open source, cross-platform VLC multimedia player is finally available on Google's Chrome OS. Like the desktop version of VLC, the new Chrome OS iteration can play most video files, as well as network streams and DVD ISOs. It's also a full audio player capable of playing even "weird audio formats" like FLAC.

"VLC is intended for everyone, is totally free, has no ads, no in-app-purchases, no spying and is developed by passionate volunteers," VideoLAN President Jean-Baptiste Kempf wrote in a blog post. "All the source code is available for free."

Other features include a media library for audio and video files, support for cover art and subtitles, and a widget for audio control. The first time you use it, you'll need to select a folder where all your media is located; this is where the media database will index from.

VideoLAN has tested the current version on a Chromebook Pixel and HP Chromebook 14.

"It is possible that there are issues with other machines, and we ADVISE to use the latest Chrome 48 or the current beta version, to test VLC," Kempf wrote. "Be careful, it's just the first release, but for now, Enjoy!"


Source: pcmag.com

UCSF Medical Center suspends kidney donor program

Medical Center has voluntarily suspended its living-donor program initiated for kidney transplant after the mysterious death of a kidney donor. According to medical protocols, when such an event occurs, it is customary for the transplant center to cease activity in the case of living donor transplants.

Following the death, the cause of which is still unknown and is under investigation, the hospital immediately notified the United Network for Organ Sharing. On the other hand, the patient who received the kidney from the deceased donor is stable as the transplanted kidney is working properly. They wouldn't discuss the case further.

The UCSF Medical Center has managed to reach a conclusion concerning the case of the four deaths registered after undergoing a kidney transplant procedure.

Other transplant programs are not impacted, such as the deceased donor kidney transplantation and living donor liver transplantation. He said it's unclear whether the donor death was related to the organ procurement surgery, caused by an underlying medical condition or some other reason. Doctors said that kidney donor's death risk after surgery is around.03% or three deaths in every 10,000 cases. In 2014, two deaths of kidney donors were reported in the US, while another two have died in 2015.

"Any healthy person can safely donate a kidney", said the statement.

The shutdown of the program leaves patients with kidney failure hanging.

The principal of a San Francisco high school will donate a kidney to a 20-year-old former student who was diagnosed with a deadly illness a year after he graduated. And to top it all up, according to hospital records, it would seem that the UCSF and OPTN tag-team managed to secure over 10000 transplants since 1964.

Physicians at California Pacific, which also has a robust kidney transplant program, said they are scheduled to take over the donor side for several transplant surgeries that are scheduled before the new year. The hospital is not on probation with the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/UNOS.

Even if the program is now suspended, the UCSF will continue its transplants from dead donors.

"Our goal is to help (UCSF and its patients) as much as we can", Katznelson said.


Source : tpmelectioncentral.com

Westchester Jail Inmate Treated For TB

A 45-year old inmate at the Westchester County jail has tested positive for tuberculosis, an infectious disease that can spread easily among people sharing close quarters.

The male inmate is being treated at Westchester Medical Center. State and local health officials are testing and evaluating other inmates and staff members who were in contact with him to see if they were infected.

A Mass scheduled Monday at the Valhalla jail by Cardinal Timothy Dolan will be held.

TB is spread when an infected person sneezes or coughs, sending microscopic bacteria through the air, putting others at risk. If left untreated, lungs weaken and a person develops chills and fever and eventually dies.

The bacteria thrive in poorly ventilated, crowded quarters shared by many people who breathe the same air for long periods.

Rates of tuberculosis have been dropping nationwide since a spike in the early 1990s.

Even so, the disease killed 1.5 million people worldwide in 2014, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most TB cases in New York occur in New York City and surrounding areas, including Westchester.

There were 30 active cases diagnosed in Westchester in 2013, according to the state Department of Health, down from 62 cases in 2008.

TB cases among prison inmates are a particular concern because the illness is spread easily.

The number of cases reported by the state Department of Corrections has been declining since 1991, according to the state. Some 4 percent to 6 percent of  of TB cases reported nationwide occur among people incarcerated at the time of diagnosis, according to the CDC.

There were no cases reported in prisons in New York in 2011 and 2012.

TB can be treated by antibiotics that must be taken for several months, although antibiotic-resistant strains have been reported.


Source : lohud.com

Environment And Lifestyle May Play A large Role In Cancer

(CNN) The greater majority of cancer may be influenced by environment and lifestyle factors.

That's what the authors of a new study in the journal Nature argue. External factors such as exposure to toxins and radiation are a major risk factor in developing cancer, the new study says.

"Environmental factors play important roles in cancer incidence and they are modifiable through lifestyle changes and/or vaccination" the authors write.

Looking at the increasing incidences of various types of cancers, including lung cancer, the authors concluded that "large risk proportions for cancer are attributable to changing environments" such as smoking and air pollutants. Exposure to the sun and poor diet play a role.

This has been widely known among scientists, and might sound like the advice you hear from your doctor. But what this study does is build upon a conversation about how cancer starts and why there is some variability in the kinds of cancers.

Earlier this year a study that ran in the journal Science set off a public health debate when media interpretations of the work concluded that many of the cancers were due to "bad luck." In fact, the authors of that paper Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a prominent geneticist, and biostatistician Cristian Tomasetti said they were merely talking about variety in cancers in 31 different tissue types.

Vogelstein and Tomasetti believed some of the variation -- for example, why there were more instances of colon cancer than brain cancer -- may be in part due to random mutations that came up during DNA replication in normal, noncancerous stem cells, the study said. That means some people develop cancers because of "bad luck" at the cellular level, they said in the paper.

The authors of that study said that did not give people license to start smoking or start using tanning beds. Essentially, the authors wanted researchers to take this factor into consideration when they do more research to figure out how to fight cancer.

What may have contributed to some of the misinterpretation was a typographical error in the last sentence of the work that said "primary prevention measures are not likely to be effective" for 22 cancers including melanoma.

Tomasetti said they actually said that "primary prevention measures are not 'as' likely to be effective." Without the word "as," the meaning of the sentence changed. It has since been corrected in the online version of the story.

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer issued a press release at the time that said the agency "strongly disagrees" with the conclusion of the report. It said "concluding that 'bad luck' is the major cause of cancer would be misleading and may detract from efforts to identify the causes of the disease and effectively prevent it." Nearly half of cancers, the agency argued, could be prevented if people changed their lifestyle or reduced their environmental exposure to cancer-causing agents.

In building on the numbers from the earlier study, this latest research used four different approaches to estimate the causes of cancer. Their work including computer models, genetic evaluation and population data to conclude that only 10% to 30% of cancers started because of this "bad luck" factor. The greater majority of cancer might be due to outside factors. Co-author Dr. Yusuf Hannun said this is still early-stage work.

"We all advocate strongly for much more research how cancer starts and we want to know more about what are the risk factors and how do they work," Hannun said.

Bottom line: If you smoke or are overweight or use a tanning bed, you worsen your odds getting cancer. You can do a lot to reduce your cancer risk, and you can't just blame "bad luck" for getting sick. 

Source: edition.cnn.com

Ovarian Cancer Deaths Could Drop By 20 Percent With Annual Blood Test

Scientists have carried out 14-year trial into the disease and suggest a yearly blood test could save 15 lives for every 10,000 women screened

Ovarian cancer deaths could be slashed by 20% with an annual blood test, experts say.

In the biggest ever study into the disease , scientists found that carrying out screening in women who are at risk can reduce the numbers who die from it.

The 14-year trial suggested a yearly blood test for levels of a particular protein could prevent 15 deaths for every 10,000 women screened.

Health experts hailed the work as a “landmark step” in tackling ovarian cancer but warned more research was needed before the screening process should be widely introduced.

The study - the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) - was carried out by scientists in the UK and Australia with the backing of the Department of Health, the UK Medical Research Council and cancer charities.

Ovarian cancer kills around 4,000 women each year in the UK and is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage, with 60% of patients dying within five years of diagnosis.

UKCTOCS tested more than 200,000 post-menopausal women for 14 years at 13 centres across the UK.

The study compared those who received no screening, those who were given a yearly ultrasound and those who received an annual blood test for levels of the protein CA125, with an ultrasound as a second-line test.

During the period of the study 1,282 women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Results suggested that for women who received the annual blood test, the current reduction in death rates is estimated at 15%.

This was made up of an 8% reduction for the first seven years, followed by a 23% relative mortality reduction between years seven and 14.

Analysis that excluded cases of the cancer already being prevalent estimated that a long-term effect of such a screening was approximately a 28% fall in death rates after year seven.

The study found that around 15 deaths could be prevented by the blood test for every 10,000 women screened. However, for every woman with a positive screening who subsequently received surgery and was found to have ovarian cancer, two did not.

The report said: “After excluding women who, when they joined the trial, had undiagnosed ovarian cancer, there was a significant reduction in deaths with an average mortality reduction of 20% and in years seven to 14 of 28%.”


Source: mirror.co

Dana Milbank: Lowa’s Radical Privatization Of Medicaid Is Already Struggling

On Jan. 1, 30 days before Iowa caucus-goers cast the first votes of the 2016 presidential race, the state will gain another national distinction, but of a dubious variety: It plans to launch the most sweeping and radical privatization of Medicaid ever attempted.

In an extraordinary social policy experiment, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Branstad is kicking about 560,000 of the state’s poorest residents out of the traditional Medicaid health care program for the poor and forcing virtually all of them to sign up with private insurers. The trend toward managed-care for Medicaid has been underway for decades and some 39 states do it to some extent. But experts inside and outside government say no state has tried to make such a wholesale change so quickly — in Iowa’s case, launching the program fewer than 90 days after signing contracts with private health care companies.

Iowa is conducting an extreme test of a familiar premise of free-market conservatism: that the private sector is more efficient at management and service delivery than government. But the results so far should give pause to those who automatically make such assumptions. The transition of Iowa’s $4.2 billion Medicaid program has made the rollout of HealthCare.gov look orderly.

An Iowa administrative law judge late last month recommended that Iowa throw out the contract it awarded to WellCare, one of the four companies hired to manage the new program, noting that the company failed to disclose details of its “integrity agreement” with the federal government after the 2014 convictions of three former executives involving the misuse of Medicaid money. In addition, WellCare had paid $138 million to resolve claims that it overbilled Medicare and Medicaid.

The Des Moines Register has reported that the four companies selected to operate the Iowa program have had more than 1,500 regulatory sanctions combined and have paid $10.2 million in fines over the last five years. These involved canceled appointments, privacy breaches, untimely processing and failure to obtain informed consent.

The Iowa rollout has been hampered by delays, and some beneficiaries of the program are only now getting their enrollment packets, though the deadline for signing up is Dec. 17. Health care providers complain that they are being forced to sign incomplete contracts or face a penalty, and that some contracts don’t cover services that had been covered under the existing Medicaid program.

Branstad’s administration has answered critics by saying the new program will save $51 million in its first six months. But he has been unable to come up with documentation to justify the cost savings.

Branstad had the authority to implement the new program without input from the state Legislature. But officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were in Iowa last week and will make a ruling soon on whether the plan can proceed.

“The rollout has been an absolute unmitigated disaster,” alleges Democratic Sen. Joe Bolkcom, the chamber’s majority whip. “CMS and the Obama administration need to protect vulnerable Iowans from this train wreck.”

Branstad has implicitly acknowledged some difficulty. Last week he extended until April the “safe-harbor” in which Medicaid providers will receive 100 percent reimbursement regardless of managed-care network.

In response to my inquiry, Branstad’s office sent me to the state’s Department of Human Services, where a spokeswoman, Amy Lorentzen McCoy, said all is well. The state, which now has 12 percent of Medicaid recipients in managed care, would have gone this way anyway, she said, but the urgency increased with the recent Medicaid expansion (Branstad was one of the few Republican governors to accept the Obamacare expansion of the program).

As the nation’s attention turns to the Iowa caucuses, Iowans will likely be witnessing either a fight between Branstad and Obama (if the federal government forces a delay in the Iowa program) or chaos (if the program is allowed to proceed). Other states, such as Kansas and Kentucky, have tried similar experiments, but they either moved more deliberately or didn’t extend the private program to vulnerable populations such as the disabled.

“A lot of issues have been raised with the pace of the rollout” in Iowa, said Julia Paradise, a Medicaid expert with the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The provider networks for the plans have not yet been established. There’s a lot of confusion among beneficiaries.”

Branstad could recognize this, and slow things down. In failing to do so, he’s relying more on dogma — faith that the private sector always does things better — than reality.


Source: stltoday.com

Kaiser Permanente Plans Medical School In Socal In 2019

Kaiser Permanente Thursday announced plans to open a medical school somewhere in Southern California in 2019.

The facility will be called the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, Kaiser said in a statement from its headquarters in Oakland.

It said the school will redesign physician education around “strategic pillars” — high-quality care beyond traditional medical settings, collaboration and teamwork to inform treatment decisions, and addressing disparities in health.

“Opening a medical school and influencing physician education is based on our belief that the new models of care mean we must re-imagine how physicians are trained,” said Bernard J. Tyson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.

“Kaiser Permanente has been a catalyst for change in care delivery, and we will be a catalyst in medical education, through the opening of the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine,” added Dr. Edward M. Ellison, executive medical director of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

Source: patch.com

FDA allows Just Mayo to keep its name despite being egg-free

NEW YORK—Just Mayo says it will get to keep its name, a decision that caps a roller-coaster year for the vegan spread that has rattled the egg industry.

After months of discussions, Just Mayo’s maker Hampton Creek says it worked out an agreement with the Food and Drug Administration that lets the eggless spread keep its name, as long as a few changes are made to its label. The resolution comes after the FDA sent a warning letter to Hampton Creek in August saying Just Mayo was misbranded because mayonnaise is defined as having eggs.

A representative for the FDA was not able to immediately confirm that it had resolved the matter with Hampton Creek.

As part of the deal, Hampton Creek says Just Mayo’s label will make it clear that the product does not contain eggs. The changes include making the words “egg-free” larger and adding “Spread & Dressing” on the label. An image of an egg with a pea shoot inside will also be smaller.

The agreement would bring closure to one of the challenges in the past year faced by Hampton Creek, a San Francisco startup that has made headlines with its $120 million in funding and a feel-good mission of improving the food system with options that are healthier, more affordable and better for the environment. The attention has been enough that The New York Times declared “mayo” to be one of the “top new food words” of 2015 earlier this week.

The spotlight has also made Hampton Creek a target.

Last year, Hellmann’s mayonnaise maker Unilever filed a lawsuit saying Just Mayo’s name was misleading. After facing backlash from Hampton Creek supporters, Unilever dropped the suit.

Behind the scenes, Hampton Creek was also raising concerns at the American Egg Board, which promotes the egg industry and is responsible for the “Incredible, Edible Egg” slogan. The group’s CEO, Joanne Ivy, tried to stop the sale of Just Mayo at Whole Foods, according to emails obtained through a public records request by Ryan Shapiro and Jeffrey Light, Freedom of Information Act experts.

The attempt to stop Just Mayo’s sale raises regulatory issues because the board is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, making it a quasi-governmental body. After The Associated Press reported on the emails Sept. 2, Ivy retired earlier than planned and the USDA began an investigation into the egg board.

The USDA has said the investigation is ongoing.

Josh Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek, said the company was able to find common ground with the FDA over its label after explaining its goal of trying to improve the food system.

Hampton Creek had enlisted the help of Stuart Pape, a former attorney with the FDA based in Washington, D.C., who now advises clients on labelling and regulatory issues at the law firm Polsinelli.

Source: thestar.com

Adobe Releases 3D Modeling App, Fuse, Updates Photoshop

The latest Photoshop CC update includes an interface refresh and Fuse, a flexible human-form generator.

Why should video gamers alone have the fun of creating a 3D, realistic avatar? Now the designer users of Adobe Photoshop CC, can use a preview version of Adobe Fuse, a creative application acquired from Mixamo, and now part of the Creative Cloud family.

While Fuse is the biggest Photoshop-related update, the image editor itself gets an interface refresh today, with more touch support for devices such as Microsoft's Surface Pro 4$1,299.00 at Target tablet, and the ability to customize the program's iconic toolbar buttons. Adobe announced the updates on the Photoshop Blog and briefed PCMag.com in advance.

"There are a lot of things we've done to the user experience to improve it for our users, and also greater efficiency and expanded creative possibilities, with significant improvements to design and photography-focused features," said Adobe's Senior Product Manager for Digital Imaging, Stephen Nielson.

Photoshop itself presents a new start experience—thumbnails of your recent files and access to presets and libraries from the start page. The page will also show personalized tutorial content at the bottom. Those who'd rather stick with the start experience they're used to can switch back to that in settings—Adobe has apparently learned from the user backlash that followed its total redesign of Lightroom's import experience.


Source:  pcmag.com

This is the Commercial That's Breaking the Internet's Heart

It’s gone viral.

German supermarket chain EDEKA has released a truly depressing Christmas ad that’s gone viral on social media.

The commerical, which is a minute and 46 seconds long, features an elderly man receiving a letter from his daughter that she won’t be able to make it for a Christmas visit. So, the man is forced to celebrate alone, preparing a lonely-looking meal for himself.

A year appears to pass and it’s time for Christmas once again. But the ad takes a dark turn: the elderly man has apparently passed away. The scene cuts to a hospital and the shocked faces of his daughters.

Dressed in black, the man’s family gather together to mourn their loss. Only there’s a twist—and you’ll have to watch it to the end to find out.

Source:   fortune.com

Will Zuckerberg and Chan's $45bn pledge change philanthropy?

It seems fitting that on the day that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History unveiled its Giving in America exhibit — with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett presiding — Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, and his wife Priscilla Chan, made a claim for the inauguration of a new chapter in the history of philanthropy, one dominated by the mushrooming fortunes of Silicon Valley.

In a post on Facebook to their newborn daughter Max, the couple announced that they would turn over 99% of their Facebook shares — with a current value of around $45bnn — “during our lives” to advance a mission of “advancing human potential and promoting equality for all children in the next generation”. This is a big deal, one of the largest philanthropic pledges ever made. But how much of a rupture it represents in the tradition of modern US philanthropy isn’t entirely clear. The Smithsonian might not need to add another display case just yet.

It’s worth dwelling a bit on that phrase “during our lives,” for with it, Zuckerberg and Chan place themselves at the forefront of an important development in the philanthropic sector: the Giving While Living movement. It’s not exactly new: more than a century ago, in his Gospel of Wealth, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie sought to steer millionaires away from the charitable bequest toward warm-blooded inter vivos giving. Only in this way could they assume active stewardship over the disbursement of their fortunes, applying the knowledge, expertise and temperament that gained them their piles toward the difficult task of giving them away. This idea has once again come into vogue, but with a significant new twist. The tech and finance booms have allowed individuals to accumulate enormous sums of money at a startlingly young age. So there is even more giving and even more living to do than ever before.


Source:  theguardian.com

Yahoo up on possible sale of Internet business

New York • Shares of Yahoo are up sharply Wednesday on a report that the company will discuss the sale of its Internet business.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday that the board of Yahoo Inc. is meeting this week to talk about what shape the company will take going forward. The article, citing anonymous sources, says private equity firms are among those looking at Yahoo's websites.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, declined to comment Wednesday.

Last month, activist investor Starboard Value urged Yahoo to scrap a planned spinoff of its lucrative stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and sell its own Internet business — which it is known for — instead. Starboard's plan would leave the company with its Alibaba investment and Yahoo Japan.

Yahoo runs several web properties including Yahoo Finance, blogging platform Tumblr and fashion site Polyvore.

Shares of Yahoo rose $1.93, or 5.7 percent, to $35.64 in morning trading Wednesday.


Source:  sltrib.com