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Emily Seal named Arts Educator of the Decade Tullahoma News and Guardian
HONOLULU — A woman from Louisiana who was honeymooning in Hawaiʻi has been fined $500 after a social media video showed her touching an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, U.S. authorities said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched an investigation last month and found the woman violated the Endangered Species Act, said Dominic Andrews, a spokesperson for the agency's Office of Law Enforcement.
A video posted on TikTok and other social media showed a woman touching the seal at a Kauaʻi beach in June. The video showed her running away after the seal snapped at her, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Thursday.
The Associated Press wasn’t immediately able to reach the couple Thursday. The couple previously apologized and told the Star-Advertiser earlier this month that they love Hawaiʻi and didn't mean to offend anyone.
There are an estimated 1,100 Hawaiian monk seals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and 300 in the main Hawaiian Islands.
Under state and federal laws, it’s a felony to touch or harass a Hawaiian monk seal. Penalties can include up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Authorities warn people must remain at least 50 feet (15 meters) away from the animals or 150 feet (45 meters) away from pups with their mothers.
NOAA also fined another traveler $500 for touching a resting Hawaiian monk seal. It is unclear when that encountered occurred, but an Instagram account shows the visitor recently visited Oʻahu in May, the newspaper reported.
Plagiarism is considered serious academic misconduct. It can cause a student to fail a class, get suspended, or even get expelled from school. But while students are aware that plagiarism is an offense, many still struggle with avoiding it and eventually end up committing accidental plagiarism. Unfortunately, the punishment for accidental plagiarism is often as severe as the punishment for deliberate plagiarism.
So how do you avoid plagiarism? What steps can you take to ensure your paper is original? In this post, we will look at what plagiarism is and what you can do to avoid it. If you recognize what plagiarism is and know how to get around it, you’ll be more likely to produce original output.
Plagiarism can be simply defined as passing off someone else’s work as your own. In the academic setting, plagiarism happens when a student submits a written project, such as an essay or research paper, written by someone else. This is considered cheating since students are expected to write their own unique papers. An example of this is when a student copies another student’s paper or takes a paper published on the Internet and then submits it as his or her own.
While plagiarism is the act of taking other people’s work and passing it as one’s own, it comes in different forms. Knowing the types of plagiarism will help you avoid them. Below are the most common types of plagiarism and their descriptions.
Direct plagiarism. Direct plagiarism is when a student copies another person’s work and submits it without making any changes. An example of this is copying sentences, paragraphs, or even entire sections from a source without enclosing them in quotation marks or citing the source’s author. Hence, the student ends up submitting a paper that is fully or partially identical to others’ works. This type of plagiarism is also known as “copy and paste” plagiarism.
Remix plagiarism. Remix plagiarism is when a student takes content from the source and changes the wording without citing the authors. For instance, the student might paraphrase or summarize the content, which enables the student to avoid submitting an identical copy. But the fact that the student took content from sources without crediting them makes the paper basically plagiarized.
Mosaic plagiarism. This type of plagiarism happens when a student combines content from different sources and then makes limited changes. For example, the student might replace some words with synonyms, change the structure of sentences, rearrange parts, and add or omit words and phrases. The paper thus ends up being a patchwork of stolen and original content.
Self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism is basically the act of submitting your own work that you have previously used for a different project. An example of this is submitting an essay to your professor when that essay was submitted to another professor in the previous term.
Misattribution plagiarism. This type of plagiarism happens when a student attributes information to the wrong source. For instance, suppose a piece of information you mention comes from your textbook. But then you cite a journal article as the source for this information. Because the source is incorrect, the piece of information is as good as without a source and therefore plagiarized. You can read more about the types of plagiarism here: https://www.customessaymeister.com/blog/types-of-plagiarism
As a student, you are expected by your school to exercise due diligence, such as by meticulously documenting the sources of your content. Familiarizing yourself with these types will help you steer clear of committing them.
Whether plagiarism is committed deliberately or accidentally doesn’t make much difference. Most schools treat any type of plagiarism as a serious offense. Learning to recognize plagiarism is therefore not enough; equally important is knowing ways of actively avoiding it. Below are some of the best strategies for avoiding plagiarism.
The best way to avoid plagiarism is by simply writing your paper from scratch. Copying and then editing content might be tempting since it’s quicker, but it is also very risky. Write everything in your own words and add quotes only when absolutely necessary.
Make sure you document all the sources you used. Add an in-text citation every time you put something that came from a source. The rule of thumb is, any specific information that you have to look up must have a citation, while information regarded as common knowledge does not need a citation. When in doubt, add a correct citation anyway since it’s safer this way.
Avoid quoting large blocks of text from your sources. Instead, paraphrase or summarize content since this helps keep the similarity index down. Of course, do not forget to include in-text citations even if you paraphrase the content.
Using quotation marks is absolutely necessary if you include direct quotes from your sources. Quotation marks indicate that the passage is not yours. Similar to when you paraphrase information, make sure that quotations come with in-text citations.
You can also enlist help from professionals to ensure that your paper is free of plagiarism. Reliable services like Custom Essay Meister employ professional writers who are experts at identifying and removing plagiarism from papers. These writers will work with you and guide you through the writing process. Their assistance will ensure that your paper is high-quality and all-original.
Plagiarism is a big problem facing many students. Accidental plagiarism, in particular, can be scary since it sometimes happens despite students’ best intentions. Knowing the ways to prevent plagiarism will help you ensure that your papers are original. But if you find yourself confused and uncertain, getting help from professionals is the way to go.
Part of learning how to avoid plagiarism is knowing the tools schools use to check papers for plagiarized content. Three of the most commonly used tools are Turnitin, SafeAssign, and Copyscape.
Turnitin. Turnitin is a web-based service that checks documents by comparing their contents to papers stored in its database as well as content from the Internet. It then delivers a report that shows which parts are plagiarized and the sources they are lifted from. The similarity index, which indicates the extent of plagiarism, is expressed as a percentage. Turnitin is a paid service and is the most widely used plagiarism checker in the world.
SafeAssign. SafeAssign is another web-based service that checks documents. Like Turnitin, it compares a document to papers stored in its database and the Internet. It also highlights plagiarized parts and includes a similarity index. It is likewise a paid service.
Copyscape. Copyscape is similar to Turnitin and SafeAssign, except that it only checks documents against the content published on the Internet and the account owner’s private database. This means Copyscape does not check if a document has been submitted to the databases of other schools. It is also a paid service, although the cost is much lower than the ones of Turnitin and SafeAssign.
The use of plagiarism checkers is becoming more common, especially in colleges and universities. Do not make the mistake of thinking that it’s easy to get around these tools. These checkers are very sensitive and get better at identifying plagiarism over time. So rather than spending your time and energy thinking of ways to outsmart these tools, dedicate your resources to writing original papers instead.
Remember that avoiding plagiarism is not just about ensuring you don’t get penalized. More importantly, it is about learning how to write well. Writing original content and documenting sources you used do not just save you from committing academic offenses; they help you grow as a writer, student, professional, and individual.
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In the early stages of examining his district’s student data privacy practice, Perkins realized he was going to need a team. “All of the school divisions that have earned this seal have a district-level data privacy team,” Perkins says. “So, one of the first things we did was put that together.”
The RCPS data privacy team consists of nine individuals, including the district’s superintendent and its two assistant superintendents.
“We’re fortunate and a little bit unique here because our superintendent, Oskar Scheikl, was a former technology director for our division,” Perkins notes. “He also has a graduate degree in computer security.”
This made it easier to convey to leadership the importance of developing a student data privacy framework for the district, Perkins says. Scheikl gave his support to the plan right away, and once the data privacy team came together, the district was able to start meeting the CoSN guidelines.
One policy Perkins and the team implemented was a system through which teachers could request digital resources. As part of a new workflow, RCPS educators can put in a request whenever they want to start using a new resource, and the technology department then reviews it. This allows the IT team to vet any new technologies to ensure they are safe and in line with the district’s budget and curricula.
Teachers have been on board with the additional step for acquiring new resources, Perkins says. “We were careful to communicate it in terms of ‘this is about student data. It’s important, and it’s our job to protect it.’ I think teachers understand that,” he says.
Having the technology department vet resources also takes the pressure off teachers, Perkins adds, because they then don’t need to investigate the resource themselves. Educators have enough on their plates, and dealing with the consequences of a pandemic has added to that.
RELATED: Influencer Randall Sampson discusses using student data to improve equity.
The biggest shift for the student data privacy team in March 2020 was the increase in online resources. Suddenly, students and educators didn’t just want to use online tools, they had to. “The pandemic introduced even more online resources for people to use, and student data is needed to make those resources useful for students and teachers,” Perkins says.
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, a rapid decrease in urban private car use was seen globally. Satellite navigation company TomTom reported that 387 cities across the world experienced a decrease in congestion.
Similarly, a decrease in public transport usage was seen as governments across the world imposed lockdown restrictions. Many millions of people began to work remotely and the decades of technological advances in communications played a vital role in enabling our societies to continue to operate.
However, as restrictions on movements relax in some countries and a return to pre-pandemic mobility patterns starts, many cities are reporting increased congestion levels.
It seems we are at a tipping point and could revert to unsustainable and high carbon modes without clever interventions from national governments. Where people are reluctant to return to the use of public transport, research is showing that a greater focus needs to be placed upon active travel (non-motorised transport such as walking and cycling) and use of electric bikes and scooters.
Prior to the pandemic, cities such as Vancouver and Copenhagen and governments across the world were already trying to encourage people to use low-carbon methods of transport. The aim of these policies was, and continues to be, to reduce congestion, improve air quality, and ultimately to reduce our carbon emissions.
Read more: The global bike sharing boom – why cities love a cycling scheme
But there’s a possibility that a lasting impact of the pandemic may be a setback in attitudes towards public transport and therefore an increase in private car usage. Research conducted on the New York transport system has shown that public transport may only get back to 73% of pre-pandemic levels of passengers – and there could be a knock-on effect of increased private car usage.
It seems most of this decrease in public transport use is as a result of a fear of exposure to the virus. Research conducted in Dublin demonstrated that the majority of respondents in a back-to-work survey indicated a fear of using public transport for this very reason.
But the results also showed that public transport could be substituted with active travel. A similar Spanish study examined how mobility patterns were changed by the pandemic and, like the Irish study, showed that public transport was the mode seeing the biggest decrease in use.
Both of these studies have shown that there is a willingness for citizens to move to active methods of travel, such as cycling, rather than replacing public transport modes with cars. The data required to understand if this is happening yet is sparse, however many cities are reporting increases in cycling numbers, with shared cycling schemes in particularly experiencing a bounce in usage.
Transport researchers (like many other academics) are examining how the pandemic has changed how we view the world, and specifically how our transport networks may change. Working from home is one change that may become the norm for those able to do so. Many studies internationally have shown that working from home will see a shift away from the traditional morning commutes and an inevitable easing of congestion and decreased emissions.
However, it is not immediately clear what the net impact on emissions could be from an increase in working from home, many argue that the work commute could be replaced with many shorter trips by less sustainable modes. Others have also suggested that increased remote working results in employees moving further from their place of work and has resulted in them accepting longer commute times when they do travel to the office.
A number of cities across the world realised the potential impacts of increased private car use and, in response, built large amounts of cycling infrastructure during the early stages of the pandemic. This has been shown to be very successful in Europe, with cities reporting between 11% and 48% increase in cycling.
This, coupled with the explosion in the use of e-scooters, seems to be providing a sustainable mobility alternative to the car as public transport use decreases. The New York study states that active ways of travelling plus use of e-scooters and bikes could play a vital role in bridging the gap as public transport returns to pre-pandemic levels.
The research shows that people do favour lower carbon modes of transport. But this cannot be taken for granted and any efforts to take away space now given to cycling and walking back to cars needs to be resisted. As mentioned earlier, we are now at a crucial tipping point that could determine what transport looks like after the pandemic.
While electric vehicles will mitigate some of the carbon impacts of transport, they may also contribute to a return to the status quo of congestion and increased car usage. The rush to electrify our transportation networks may not keep up with the increase in carbon emissions. So avoiding a move back to previous levels of car usage should be avoided at all costs.
Ruth Weirich, author and consultant at aha! Process
Unconscious bias about economic class often surfaces in the workplace. Your brain is on autopilot, based on how you grew up. Mindsets, habits, patterns, opportunities, and experiences are all shaped by the environment in which we experience our lives. Survival, achievement, and connections are also important. Can you live without a credit card and checking account? You have employees who do. Can you move in one day? You have employees who are masters at it. Do you understand the difference between the principal, interest, and escrow payments on your mortgage statement? The more we have experienced, the more versatile we are and the more we can contribute in the workplace.
Our entry-level, lower-wage workers (who often are living in survival mode) experience higher levels of personal instability, which leads to absenteeism, health problems, violations of workplace expectations, and communication conflict. Does this sound like one of your issues? Employees living in the tyranny of the moment focus on meeting their daily survival needs while management is thinking about tomorrow, planning, and focusing on achievement. The two mindsets collide at work, creating conflict.
How can employers support employees who live in economic instability?
First, understand the environment in which you grew up in and the environment from which your coworkers come from. By doing this, better relationships can evolve, which results in less turmoil.
Second, take a look at the policies, procedures, and benefits of the business, and analyze which of them need revised to better accommodate employees living in instability. You are not lowering expectations in the workplace; instead, you are creating new pathways for business success. A good example is health insurance. You offer health insurance, but the deductible is so high that most of your entry-level employees can’t afford to use it.
If employees have lived in daily instability for generations, they may not know how health insurance works. Here are two ideas you might consider: 1) a class provided by a coworker, someone similar to themselves, on how health insurance works; and 2) depositing money during the first fiscal month of a year into employees’ flexible spending accounts so they can afford to use the health insurance benefit. This is a direct financial incentive.
Third, create relationships of mutual respect with your entry-level, lower-wage employees. Ask about their families, listen to their stories, and share lunch together. Once employees know they are respected, they will have your back. Since these employees make decisions based on relationships and survival, this is a key component in driving retention.
These three ideas simply scratch the surface of what your business can to avoid workforce instability. It starts with pre-hires and moves on with promoting employees from within. Use these opportunities to grow your brand, improve morale and productivity, and watch your profitability increase.
About the Author: Ruth K. Weirich , MBA is an author, trainer, and management professional experienced in business operations efficiency and profitability. She is also a past president of aha! Process, an education and training company specializing in economic class issues. Contact: rkweirich@ahaprocess.com; ahaprocess.com.
Start by assessing the status quo, as well as defining future needs. Develop a five-year projection of materials and required capacities. Short-term solutions very often prove to be more expensive and less satisfactory after a period of time. Most of all, know your options.
It may seem like a dull topic, but it will overcome the emotional experience that follows when you put a new mold into a machine and you find out there is not enough barrel capacity to make a full shot.
Take the time to do the viscosity curve on new molds. You will learn more in that hour than many learn in years about the process for this tool.
Identity is a slippery idea that has grown in importance as the siren call of nationalism has been sounded in country after country. Such appeals leave immigrants with a deep sense of unease. The call’s very purpose is to exclude them from a sense of belonging in the country that they live in by choice, rather than by the accident of birth. As the story of an immigrant chemist illustrates, this exclusion is a mistake.
Loukas Kyriakides was born to ethnic Greek parents in Bursa, Turkey in 1884. He was the fifth of seven children and studied at an American missionary school, Anatolia College, in Marsovan (today Merzifon). The school attracted students from far and wide; there were many ethnic Armenian children and teachers. Ambitious and confident, he graduated top of his class in 1902 and convinced his parents to let him emigrate to America. He landed at Ellis Island, the immigration processing centre in New York, penniless but full of hope.
The lab must have been a welcome refuge
Kyriakides enrolled in the chemistry programme at the University of Michigan in 1905 and graduated with a PhD on the colours of triarylmethane dyes in 1909. It was a tough four years. Michigan winters were truly frigid and money was tight. He would later tell of lining his shoes with cardboard and of fashioning a base-layer out of newspaper to keep warm in his bedroom. The lab must have been a welcome refuge.
Strategically, Kyriakides shortened his name to Kyrides (easier to pronounce, he thought). In 1913 he became one of two young chemists hired by the Hood Rubber Company to develop cheaper synthetic alternatives for natural rubber latex. The two focused first on butadiene and then its dimethyl analogue, which they could make by routine chemical steps. They successfully polymerised the olefins, thought to be the first successful preparation of an elastomer. When the rubber proved too leathery for car tyres, they switched to isoprene. But they soon realised that a viable commercial process was unlikely and the fall in the price of natural latex put an end to the project.
Kyrides was then hired by the pharmaceutical company Parke Davis to develop new drugs against syphilis. He spent six months making arsenic compounds, only for another company to disclose and patent identical work. He switched to mercury compounds, and developed a hydroxy salicylate of mercury, which he was sure was very effective. The company rejected it. Kyrides left the firm in disgust and approached a doctor friend who was doing syphilis research – and who also had an incurable form of the disease and was keen to try the drug on himself. It seemed to work, and the drug was marketed under the name Mercurosal. Although a couple of independent studies later suggested that its effect was modest, Mercurosal continued to be sold until the arrival of penicillin in the 1940s. The royalties earned by Kyrides helped support his siblings who had joined him in the US.
He then set up a chemical supplies business with a colleague, attempting to make triarylmethane and aniline dyes from scratch at a time when there were severe shortages of raw materials. Perhaps because they would sometimes sleep under the boiler in winter to keep warm either he or his partner (it’s not clear which) developed a severe occupational illness which included abdominal pain, cyanosis of the skin and lips as a result of exposure to aromatics and nitrogen oxides. Eventually the plant burned down, putting an end to the pair’s ambitions.
Kyrides worked on a bewildering range of projects
Over the next few years, Kyrides worked in New York, Philadelphia and then Buffalo, where we went back to making dyes with the National Chemical Aniline Company, one of the largest producers in the US. On spare evenings, Kyrides would spin across the parquet ballroom dancing – he was apparently a superb dancer.
In 1928 he joined Monsanto’s research labs in St Louis, Missouri in 1928. He was a complete lab rat who worked on a bewildering range of projects. There were sulfa drugs, solvents and insect repellents. He developed commercial preparations of food flavourings, and plasticisers based on catechol and phthalic acid esters for the growing consumer plastics market.
Even when promoted to director of organic chemistry research, he refused to sit behind a desk. ‘The laboratory is my life, and happiness comes to me only when my hands are doing things that may someday prove of lasting benefit to mankind,’ he said, adding that if he died at the bench, he wouldn’t mind. An indication of this passion for lab work is in a footnote to a 1941 Organic Syntheses procedure, in which Kyrides suggests using a rubber sleeve, lubricated with a drop of glycerol, slipped over the end of the adapter to seal a mechanical stirrer. Much simpler than messy mercury or oil-sealed bearings for glass stirring rods, the method appeared in the next edition of Vogel’s Practical Organic Chemistry and caught on widely.
In parallel with his day job, Kyrides set up a new chemical intermediates company. The company expanded fast and in 1945 was bought by Miles Laboratories, with Kyrides as chief executive. Now wealthy, but still a modest man, Kyrides never forgot his old school Anatolia College, which had suffered horrendously in the 1915 genocide of the Armenian community. Re-established in Greece in the 1920s it gradually expanded again, supported by generous gifts from Kyrides and other alumni. When he retired in 1962, Kyrides returned to Greece, buying a plot of land close to the College.
I wonder how Kyrides would have described himself. Greek? Turkish? American? Maybe, like so many of us, he saw himself as a quantum superposition of states, collapsing differently in different situations. Yet the more important question to ask is why should the answer matter?
Live music and food trucks will help mark the Marine Mammal Care Center’s annual celebration Saturday, July 31 — though the stars, as usual, will be the San Pedro facility’s adorable seals and sea lions.
The annual Seal Day event, returning live and in person for the first time since 2019, celebrates the work the center does to rescue and rehabilitate sea lions and seals that arrive sick, injured, malnourished, stranded or orphaned. The center takes in animals from more than 70 miles of beaches, stretching from Malibu to Seal Beach. Once they are strong enough, the animals are released back into the ocean.
Seal Day, usually held in June each year, highlights the center’s work while offering games, information booths, prizes, music, refreshments and opportunities to see the animals as they are cared for and fed.
It’s also a fundraiser for the facility, located in Angel’s Gate Park, 3601 S. Gaffey St.
“Las year, due to the pandemic, we were not able to have this event,” said center President Amber Becerra. “We feel grateful to be able to come together with our community who have been our biggest supporters and celebrate the important work we do.”
Admission is free but donations are encouraged. Online reservations are required and early time slots are filling up quickly. Face masks will be required.
What: Seal Day
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 31
Where: Marine Mammal Care Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., in San Pedro
Cost: Free, but donations encouraged
Information and reservations: marinemammalcare.org/sealday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a $500 fine each in two separate cases involving visitors who touched a resting endangered Hawaiian monk seal.
NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Law Enforcement initiated investigations in the cases and found the visitors to be in violation of the Endangered Species Act, according to spokesman Dominic Andrews.
Two separate videos posted online that show the visitors touching a monk seal sparked anger among many Hawaii residents after they were widely circulated on social including on Hungry Hungry Hawaiian Viral’s Instagram page. The @hhhviral account is no longer available.
In response to the unlawful actions seen in the circulated videos, Gov. David Ige had posted on his social media accounts a stern warning that anyone who touches or disturbs the seals “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
One of the cases involve a Louisiana woman who was on her honeymoon with her husband in Kauai in June after they got married in Maui. A TikTok video showed Lakyn posing next to a resting monk seal on June 7. Once she touches the seal, it snaps at her.
Andrews said they issued the Louisiana woman a summary settlement of $500 for the violation.
In a July 12 phone interview with the Star-Advertiser, Lakyn’s husband, Stephen, apologized profusely and agreed to pay the fine. He said they love Hawaii and respect the culture and did not mean to offend anyone.
The couple had received death threats after the video went viral on social media and requested their surname not to be published.
The federal agency also issued a $500 fine to another visitor, Alex Magala, after he posted a video online that show Magala touching a resting seal on a rocky shoreline. It’s unclear when the encounter took place, however, his Instagram page revealed he visited Oahu in May.
The video shows Magala approach and touch the resting seal. The seal snapped its tail up, causing Magala to step back. Soon after, the visitor again approaches the seal at which time the seal barked at him. The mammal then entered the water and swam away.
Magala has apologized for his actions in a recent Instagram post.
Andrews said they take these incidents very seriously.
Protected by state and federal laws, Hawaiian monk seals are critically endangered species with only about 1,100 seals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and 300 seals in the main Hawaiian islands.
It is illegal to touch, harass, injure or kill a Hawaiian monk seal. Violators face penalties of imprisonment or fines.
Officials say the public must maintain a distance of at least 50 feet to view monk seals and 150 feet for a pup with its mother.
To report any illegal activity of wildlife harassment, call NOAA’s marine wildlife hotline at 888-256-9840 or the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Enforcement hotline at 643-DLNR.
Five retired Navy SEALS are running for Republican seats in the House of Representatives in a collective effort to get more veterans in Congress.
Retired SEALs Brady Duke (R-Fla.), Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mt.) joined Fox News’ Steve Doocy on "Fox & Friends" to discuss why they are running and what they plan to accomplish.
Ryan Zinke, the former interior secretary, plans to address the division in America.
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"A lot of my friends say, ‘look, the U.S. is falling apart. It can't be fixed.’ It certainly can be fixed," he said. "There’s no one better in crisis than SEALs Special Forces. We're going to win, and we're going to save America."
When asked why he wants to run for Congress, 14-year military veteran Morgan Luttrell said, "I don’t."
"It's just most certainly out of necessity," Luttrell said. "We have to bring our country back to center. That's why we're all running, because we believe so much in the red, white and blue. "
Brady Duke, operating as a sniper during his deployment to Afghanistan, views Congress as another opportunity to serve his country.
"What I learned as a Navy SEAL, we go through high-intensity training. We adapt to stress really well. And I think we perform our best under stress," Duke said.
JASON CHAFFETZ: DEMS' SPENDING SPREE – HERE'S HOW THE STATES CAN TAKE CHARGE OF OUR FINANCIAL FATE
"We learn to prioritize and execute and take decisive action when there are dire consequences. And I think that's absolutely what needs to happen at this point in our country."
Derrick Van Orden, who served five combat deployments during a 26-year career in the military, emphasized the consequences of inflation. He plans to address "irresponsible, out-of-control spending" by Congress.
Eli Crane joined the military after 9/11 and, like Duke, views Congress as another chance to serve America.
REPUBLICAN PARTY LAUNCHING NEW ELECTION INTEGRITY COMMITTEE
"Most of us don't want to go to Washington," Crane said. "We have no desire to do that. But we're concerned about this country, and we want to do something about it."
Crane plans to focus on election integrity, if elected, but noted that the border crisis is also a big priority for the people he would represent in Arizona.
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All five veterans emphasized a continuing desire to fight for their country.
"Our Constitution, our country is worth fighting for," Zinke said. "Liberty always wins. We're going to win. We're going to save this country."
8 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
June, the month of LGBTQ + pride, appears to be a gigantic celebration in different countries of the world. People with extravagant clothes and colorful flags come out to flood the streets of their city. Although it is true that this is a very striking part of the movement of this group, seeing only that side is clouding with ignorance.
Surely you have seen that many brands seem to paint rainbows to support the LGBTQ + community and do not mention them again the rest of the year. This is known as rainbow washing .
The term rainbow-washing refers to when a business, organization or personality uses images and symbols of the LGBTQ + community to promote a product or service without maintaining substantial support for the movement.
“It is very easy to decide that you are going to start a rainbow campaign, but it is just as easy to decide that you are going to donate a percentage of your profits to a queer organization. That's something they should do from the beginning, ”says Andy Reynolds, an expert in LGBTQ + advertising in an interview with Entrepreneur en Español .
Sadly, many brands take advantage of the colorful and attractive side of the fight to generate merchandise. Other businesses only paint themselves in colors and claim to be allies in June, but neither strategy usually has much of an undertone. They would have to generate profound internal changes to truly consider themselves companies that support the LGBTQ + struggle.
Image: Mercedes Mehling via Unsplash
It is important to understand why rainbow washing is harmful to the LGBTQ + community. Many will think that it is beneficial for them that big brands give them visibility, even if they keep the money. It is not a direct damage, perhaps, but the way in which Pride is presented in this superficial way, makes all the struggle behind the celebration invisible.
The history of the community is very strong and violent . The people that make it up have lived through aggression and oppression for centuries. To use the flag representing people fighting for their freedom only as a marketing strategy is to show only a very small portion of what it means to be part of the LGBTQ + movement. The media is also partly to blame for the image of pride around the world because it only shows what the audience wants to see, which are usually controversial cases that are fashionable or very entertaining.
Reynolds is a publicist who focuses on LGBTQ + clients or businesses that want to appeal to them. He has 20 years of experience in the business and has worked with very different people throughout his career. He says that solely LGBTQ + media has been declining, but that today there are many allies writing about it on more mainstream sites. However, it is difficult to get these media to talk about topics that are not trending or are not as striking as others, so advertising LGBTQ + and trying to give visibility to these people is very complicated.
It also tells how companies make an attempt to make the community visible during the month of June, but even the way they present it on their websites lacks authenticity because, instead of putting it on their home page, they create a separate one where it is concentrated all your LGBTQ content *.
Put it on your home page! If you have the courage to do that, you are telling the world that all the people who are part of this community are welcome in your company. In this way, you also show that you openly support the laws in favor of it ”, the expert comments.
Businesses are willing to "show" their support to the community to appease their consumers who are allies or are part of it. But when it comes to taking a political position in favor of the community, many do not, and that is not substantial support.
Image: Jonathan Kemper via Unsplash
“It is first about what is happening within companies. It is the biggest action they can take, not a rebranding campaign where they are trying to create a new face. What are you doing now? Are your employees happy? Where is he on the list of 'Best Places to Work for LGBTQ + Equity?' ”Says Andy
What the community needs goes beyond representation in advertising campaigns. They need a safe place to work. Being an ally goes beyond marketing. A company has to speak out about the issues its LGBTQ + employees face and create policies that protect them.
To understand more about how it can be solved from within, I spoke with Nico Barawid, CEO and co-founder of Casai, a company that has a technology platform that provides accommodations in Latin America and was built with ideals of inclusion. Nico talks about how, being part of the LGBT community, it is important to him that the company reflects his values and is able to help with his services.
“It is important that it sells inclusive products, supports inclusive organizations and is a workplace where people can live and love openly. You don't achieve those goals by putting a rainbow in your logo, ”says Nico.
Nico shares with us three things that seem essential to him when building a company that wants to be inclusive.
Image: Delia Giandeini via Unsplash
Many people believe that being a conscientious consumer requires a lot of research. On the one hand, this is true, but Andy Reynolds points out that now only one person is required to find out and share it on social media. You can review the lists that come out annually that list the best companies to work for. There are also different blogs or network accounts that you can review.
In case that is not available to you or you cannot find information about the company you are looking for, Nico recommends paying attention to what they do throughout the year, not just in June.
“It is important to see the marketing that they use throughout the year. Are the people who appear diverse? Are there of different races, genders and orientations throughout the year or only when there is a month in which it is expected of them? It is also very important to look at the product, is it made for everyone or just for a particular type of person? ”Explains Nico.
Dev Patel plays a medieval hero on a mysterious quest in David Lowery’s adaptation of the 14th-century Arthurian romance.
Let’s get one thing straight: He isn’t a knight. People sometimes call him Sir Gawain, and then he has to mumble out a correction, which is embarrassing. He’s a failson, a nephew, a hanger-on at the Round Table, coasting on his charm, his good looks and his family connections. King Arthur (Sean Harris) is his uncle, and his mother (Sarita Choudhury) is a powerful sorceress. He shows up at the royal court now and then, but mostly divides his time between the tavern and the bawdy house.
As played by Dev Patel in “The Green Knight” — David Lowery’s sumptuous, ragged and inventive adaptation of the anonymous 14th-century chivalric romance — this Gawain combines a recognizable modern type with a venerable literary archetype. Patel, who has starred in “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Lion,” is something of a specialist in quest narratives. He can be shrewd or guileless, bumbling or brave, and he’s adept at signaling both the comedy and the pain of a young man’s search for meaning, identity and adventure in a hostile world.
Patel is a magnet for the audience’s sympathy, and Gawain is a personality we can recognize — an Everyman, to mix up the English-major references — amid the ambient strangeness and magic. Lowery, a master of spooky atmosphere and metaphysical mummery (see also “Ghost Story,” “Pete’s Dragon” and “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”), starts the movie with horror-movie sound effects, spells and flames and tremors of spooky portent. As seriously as he takes the spiritual and moral significance of the story that follows, he is also clearly having fun with it and with us.
From Wagner to “Game of Thrones” and back again, pop-cultural medievalism has a habit of leavening sublimity and solemnity with heavy doses of intended or inadvertent silliness. The most sincere compliment I can pay “The Green Knight” is that it often feels like a tribute to “The Seventh Seal” by way of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Or maybe vice versa, with some Led Zeppelin deep cuts thrown in. (The metal-acquainted score is by Daniel Hart.) It’s a movie about death, honor and the desire to take control of fate that is also a knowing exploration of the preposterousness of such notions. It has haunting, heartbreaking, erotically unsettling moments, as well as monsters, fools and a magical fox so cute it could be a Disney sidekick.
Like “Die Hard,” this is a Christmas movie, which is to say a religious allegory in sometimes hokey holiday dress. At a Yuletide gathering, the melancholy king asks his nephew for a story of real-life adventure, and Gawain, who has spent the morning in the arms of Essel (Alicia Vikander), has nothing to share. The party is interrupted by a somber green giant (voiced by Ralph Ineson), who offers a challenge that only Gawain is foolish enough to accept. He can smite the Green Knight on the condition that, the next Christmas, he allows the knight to smite him back.
This playground challenge results in a beheading and sends Gawain on a hallucinatory journey toward, around and through the inevitability of death. He encounters treacherous thieves (led by Barry Keoghan), a reanimated Saint Winifred (Erin Kellyman), a lord (Joel Edgerton) and his lady and other figures conjured from the mists of time by Lowery, his cinematographer (Andrew Droz Palermo) and the special-effects artists.
Sometimes the going is murky, both visually and thematically. England in wintertime has rarely been gloomier, and when the wan daylight fades you have to squint and crane your neck to see what’s going on. Similarly, you may stroke your chin, emoji-style, as you ponder the shaggy-dog plot and its layers of significance. Part of the persistent charm of old texts like “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” lies in their stubborn unknowability. They come to us from a sensibility — and a language, in this case the Middle English of the English Midlands — that lies tantalizingly beyond our reach, even though many of the words, ideas and tropes are uncanny in their familiarity.
Lowery respects this weirdness, adding eccentric flourishes of his own. This is hardly a faithful cinematic rendering of the Gawain poem, if such a thing were even possible. Lowery layers in ambiguities peculiar to his chosen medium, casting some performers in more than one role and allowing the linear movement of the story to stop, reverse and come unraveled. The question of whether Gawain is dreaming or awake — alive or dead, one self or another — is at times urgent, at times moot. Similarly indeterminate is the puzzle of his free will. Is he acting out a preordained script, or writing the story of his life? Is he learning anything of value, or just stumbling along in search of the next adventure? Is this a concept album or a jam session?
These questions are charged with perhaps surprisingly intense emotion. “The Green Knight” is always interesting — and occasionally baffling — but at the end it rises to a swirling, feverish pitch of feeling and philosophical earnestness. One feature of quest romance as a genre is that the experience of reading (or in this case, watching) mirrors the journey of the hero. As he comes to understand the reality of his condition, so do we. The self-knowledge he acquires through his ordeals is also available to us.
Gawain encounters and enacts cruelty and mercy. He survives his own death, in a way that seems more mundane than miraculous — as if it were something that had happened to everyone. The lessons he learns about honor, grace and courage are startling in their simplicity and relevance. He returns to where he started and knows the place for the first time. This movie is worth watching twice.
The Green Knight
Rated R. Medieval, man. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters.
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Rep. Pfluger’s bill to seal tunnels between U.S. and Mexico advanced by House Committee on Homeland Security ConchoValleyHomepage.com
Google is set to bring some updates for Drive users starting September. It is now showing a notification on Google Drive that speaks of a security update that will apply to some users' files in Drive. On Drive, there are two methods by which Google users can share a file. The first one is when users share a Google file with specific Google accounts and another is through the Get link option where anyone with the link can access the file. Now, by bringing the security update, Google aims to reduce how these links -- which are reportedly guessable, can be accessed by anyone by adding a resource key through the shared drive links making it harder to guess.
Google notes that users who have already had access to the security updated files can still view those files but those who do not will still have to request access. The changes will start taking place from September 13 and Google is giving users the option to remove the update for files and drives for the content they want to share publicly.
To view the files where Google has applied these Settings, users should go to Google Drive, where they will be able to see a security update banner. Click on See Files. Alternatively, users can also click on My Drive to see their impacted files to see the impacted files in that Drive. To remove the security update from these files, users should hover over the file they want to remove the security update from and click Remove security update. Users can also go to a file and right-click on Share > Get link > Settings > check or uncheck Apply security update. Earlier in the month, Youtube brought a similar update to its shareable or unlisted links, killing all the unlisted links before 2017.
In related news, Google has also revamped its Android backup tool by introducing Backup by Google One. The redesigned tool will be available for all Google users, and they will be able to back up photos, videos, and MMS messages, SMS text messages, device settings, call history, and contacts. However, the backup data will be counted towards the 15GB account storage cap that Google recently introduced. Google has also added a Data Restore Tool app to PlayStore that, as the name suggests, allows users to hold on to content from their old devices while setting up their new devices. The Data Restore Tool allows users to transfer apps, photos, contacts through a cable or cloud backup while setting up a device. The Data Restore Tool is expected to allow iPhone users to move their WhatsApp chats to a new Android device.
Formally recognising the status and importance of the councillor as an elected representative in law would help prevent Covid leading to increasing centralisation, writes the emeritus professor of local politics at De Montfort University.
In a report approved by the governance committee of the Council of Europe, a 47-member pan-European body, I set out how councillors face two possible futures.
The first is a ‘doomsday scenario’ in which increasing centralisation (especially in response to the Covid pandemic) and the fragmentation of the landscape of public services and governance continues to diminish councillors’ standing, roles, and responsibilities. The second is ‘sunlit uplands’ where national and regional governments assert the role of councillors as vital to democracy and genuine devolution grants new powers, freedoms, autonomy, resources and support to councillors to govern their communities. The pendulum however, is swinging depressingly towards doomsday.
The report, The Future Role of the Municipal Councillor, displays the tendency across the Council of Europe’s membership for central and regional governments to see councillors as somehow ineffective, deficient and simply not of the same quality as politicians elected to other levels of government. While this view is deeply offensive it is also hugely inaccurate.
As the report shows councillors, wherever they are located and on whatever tier of local government they sit, share a set of common experiences, relationships, functions and expectations as representatives, governors and political and community leaders. If a councillor from Copeland in the north west of England was magically transferred to Tsarevo municipality in south east Bulgaria, language difference to one side, the councillor would broadly know what was expected of them, find the responsibilities familiar and recognise the limitations on their office.
Familiarity can and does breed contempt and worse many see councillors as targets for social media and personal abuse
Councillors’ role as a link between the council and the community and as a channel of views, opinions and values between the council as an institution and the localities it covers as a community is a fundamental part of the process of local government. Indeed, the proximity of the councillor to those represented and governed is a unique and precious element of the office; no other elected representative, regionally or nationally is as embedded in or part of the areas they represent. That proximity as well as being of great value brings with it problems - familiarity can and does breed contempt and worse many see councillors as targets for social media and personal abuse.
The report shows how councillors are often under-resourced and supported by their municipalities especially when it comes to participating in the complex and fragmented networks which make up the landscape of public sector provision. Indeed, councillors are spending more time attempting to influence, shape and bring coherence to these networks and their players and drawing them into alignment with the objectives and policies of the council. Indeed, as the only players in such networks with an electoral mandate and legitimacy councillors are a vital part of holding such networks and their players to account.
To avoid the doomsday scenario and ensure councillors enjoy the sunlit uplands, the report sets out bold recommendations for regional and national governments; from these recommendations the most challenging for our system are the following:
Importantly the recommendations apply to all councillors, not just leaders and portfolio holders, so new forums for central and local interaction are needed. These changes are needed to ensure councillors are supported as a vital part of the governance of the country and to redress creeping centralisation.
The Council of Europe is currently assessing the UK’s compliance with the Charter of Local Self Government and the results of that review will be telling for the distance we have to go to achieve these recommendations.
Colin Copus: emeritus professor of local politics, De Montfort University; visiting professor, University of Gent
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Fatal 2015 shooting of Tampa Navy SEAL tests ‘stand your ground’ defense WFLA
WASHINGTON The House Committee on Homeland Security advanced Rep. August Pfluger’s bill to mitigate criminal activity on the border on Wednesday, a press release stated.
Pfluger’s bill, the DHS Illicit Cross-Border Tunnel Defense Act (H.R. 4209), reportedly aims to secure the southern border by directing CBP to develop a plan to counteract illegal underground tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border.
This bill will thwart drug cartels and human traffickers who utilize the more than 230 tunnels currently in existence to smuggle narcotics, weapons, and cash back and forth on the border, the press release detailed.
“I am thrilled that my bill to seal cross-border tunnels has advanced through the markup process in committee,” Pfluger stated in the press release. “We cannot secure our border if we continue to allow drugs, narcotics, weapons, and to be smuggled unabated back and forth underground and right under our noses. We must seal these tunnels and defend American communities.”
A dead seal that was likely bitten by a shark washed ashore in Plymouth on Wednesday, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
The seal washed up on White Horse Beach in Plymouth.
There were “signs of shark predation,” reads the confirmed shark sighting on the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app.
“Unknown time or location of interaction,” the sighting report added of the shark/seal interaction.
Great white sharks usually attack seals along the Outer Cape during the summer months. Sharks in recent days have been spotted along the Chatham coast, where they frequently hunt for seals.
However, sharks also spend time in Cape Cod Bay, including off of Plymouth.
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He designed a ring and made a plan. Coast lineman died before he could get on one knee. Biloxi Sun Herald
If you called central casting for a senator to cut a bipartisan infrastructure deal, you’d get Rob Portman.
The Ohio Republican, a former White House budget chief with two terms under his belt as well as the ear of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is an ideal bridge between his party’s two wings. Portman acquitted then-President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial but later backed an independent commission on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. And a looming retirement from Congress frees Portman from the political burden of facing voters next fall, leaving him able to shrug off Trump’s attacks on his work.
Yet Portman is finding it hard to clinch an agreement, no matter how much insider savvy he brings as the lead GOP infrastructure negotiator. Even if an infrastructure bill can be written, Portman still must shepherd it across the floor and to President Joe Biden’s desk amid attacks from his own party.
It’s the kind of legacy-defining challenge he has long sought. But Portman warned his colleagues on Tuesday at a party lunch that everything could fall apart: Though he’s optimistic, he said the deal could still blow up and alleged that any collapse would be on Democrats’ shoulders, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
Democrats will be happy to return the favor and blame Portman because there’s entrenched skepticism within the caucus that he can hit such a massive target and deliver 10 GOP votes. Still, Portman said in a Tuesday interview that he’s not going to walk away as talks turn hairy.
“It’s much more comfortable to stay on the right and the left and be negative,” he added, taking the subtlest of shots at his critics in both parties. “What takes courage is to find that middle ground and embrace the fact that our job here is not to simply express our points of view through our partisan rhetoric. Our job is to actually get beyond that and accomplish something.”
New signs of possible progress emerged Wednesday as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber could vote to advance an infrastructure accord by the evening.
Before that, the bipartisan group of senators sensed an impending impasse in collective negotiations and tapped Portman to finish the job with White House counselor Steve Ricchetti — a role that puts even more pressure on Portman. He said it’s “overstated” to assume it’s just him and Ricchetti making the big decisions: “We’re physically sitting down and trying to work out these issues, but we’re both checking back with our respective groups.”
The mild-mannered Portman is a veteran U.S. trade representative, tax wonk in the House and now a senator with seniority and stature, the furthest thing from a bomb-thrower built for the Trump era. Portman was handily re-elected in 2016 but chose retirement over navigating the post-Trump landscape in the GOP.
Senate Democrats still question whether the buttoned-up Ohioan can take the risks required to reach a deal with nearly $600 billion in new spending that's bound to anger the right. Several of Portman's colleagues in the majority privately criticized his legislative courage but didn't do so out loud, lest it upset the fragile talks.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she’s worked well with Portman but that the “proof is in the pudding” whether he can deliver on infrastructure. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) added: “I will believe there’s a deal when I see there’s a deal.”
“Everybody's wondering: What's his end game? What's the impact of him getting ready to retire? What's the impact on his long-term relationship with McConnell?" said one Senate Democrat, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity. “There's a general suspicion ... why is this taking so long?"
It's already been a month since Portman joined Biden and his fellow nine negotiators to unveil a framework. Now he has an opportunity to complete that work, shaping his party in a more conciliatory mold and dispelling Democratic suspicions that he and fellow Republicans only want to slow the president down.
First, he has to deliver.
“He’s got the horsepower from the policy standpoint. But he’s also got the right temperament,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who added that if Portman can’t seal the deal, then “nobody can, I don’t think. He’s probably the perfect guy on our side for this.”
Portman was a lead negotiator on arcane battles over tax cuts and Obamacare repeal and has led the Senate’s work on fighting opioid addiction. His office boasts that he’s helped shepherd 150 bills into law since assuming office in 2011.
Though he's a reliable Republican vote, he has tacked to the center on several issues, notably opposing Trump’s national emergency declaration at the border and working with a bipartisan group of senators last year on a coronavirus relief package.
But Portman is not a traditional moderate and can be a tough vote to get. His 2013 efforts to insert an e-Verify amendment in the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill ran aground as Democratic leaders sought to fold it into the larger bill instead of giving Portman the standalone vote he hoped for. Portman ended up voting against the bill, leaving Democrats livid.
He also opposed both of Trump’s impeachment trials, though he did work with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on a compromise during the failed effort to start an independent Jan. 6 commission. As that effort fell apart, Portman stepped into his lead role with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on funding roads, bridges and broadband.
Sinema described Portman as “super nerdy. And I mean that as a compliment.” She said she had no reservations about his ability to finish the legislation and get it into law.
“We were talking about this, like, kind of alone in his hideaway months ago," she recalled. "I don’t know why you would [walk away] if you weren’t interested in taking this to the finish line. He’s the one who is selling to his conference. And he will be the person that continues to do that.”
While Portman is leading a bipartisan group of 10 senators on infrastructure, some in the chamber are skeptical that rank-and-file members can replace the knowledge of committee chairs who might normally take the lead on a massive bill like this. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said that formula is “rife with a lot of problems.”
“When you have these negotiations and the gangs, there's no mechanism that forces people off of dead center and you're in pursuit of this mythical consensus," Cornyn said.
Should Portman strike a bipartisan deal, he will then have to ensure that Republicans sign on. Trump is growing increasingly vocal against the infrastructure talks and McConnell has yet to weigh in, only telling his caucus to view the bipartisan deal as separate from Democrats’ $3.5 trillion social spending package. Making matters harder for Portman, the Wall Street Journal editorial page recently described the infrastructure package as the “most one-sided bipartisan deal in decades.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he didn’t know why any Republican “would be complicit” in cutting a deal on infrastructure knowing full well Democrats plan to pass a subsequent multitrillion-dollar spending bill on social programs, fighting climate change and raising taxes on the wealthy.
While acknowledging his balancing act is a difficult one, Portman said it was harder to talk across the aisle on health care, taxes or even on trade issues: “I’ve negotiated with China. I’ve been in much tougher negotiations.”
“This is difficult as all bipartisan negotiations are these days — more difficult than it used to be because both sides tend to go into their corners,” Portman said. “If it was health care, tax cuts, I’d feel differently about it. But this is infrastructure. At the end of the day, I think there’s enough interest, enough goodwill that we can get it done.”
ragamnyakabar.blogspot.com Glen Rose’s downtown — lined with boutiques, antique shops, bookstores and cafes in early 20th century building...
