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France's hurricane-hit St Martin on guard for health threats

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The French-Dutch island of St Martin, where white sands and turquoise waters once drew foreign visitors in droves, is now attracting a different kind of population: rats and mosquitoes.
Just over a week after Hurricane Irma devastated the island and neighbouring St Barthelemy, killing 15 people, pools of stagnant water and mounds of trash seem to be the new normal.
Add to that the absence of fresh running water, and the situation is ripe for a health epidemic.
„Yes, there are risks of outbreaks,“ said Annick Girardin, the French minister for overseas affairs, who spent a week on St Martin following the Category five storm.
„There is an existing problem on the issue of contaminated water, the issue of trash, basically the issue of hygiene.“
In poorer neighbourhoods where many families were not able to evacuate, residents fear the spread of mosquitoes—which can carry diseases ranging from Zika and dengue fever to chikungunya.
„My son has a fever maybe due to a mosquito,“ said Natacha, a resident in the Sandy Ground neighbourhood near Marigot. „We will have to clean to prevent too many mosquitoes, or else there will be outbreaks. But it’s difficult without water.“
„If we get sick, we’ll have to go to Guadeloupe“.
According to an AFP journalist, in some neighbourhoods like Concordia, control programs had begun on Wednesday.
Boiling water
The island, which is still struggling to get its electricity and telecommunications systems back up and running, has found it difficult to reach residents and warn them about the potential health risks .
To get the word out, the French government has distributed notices and posters in French, Spanish, English and Creole.
Still, French health minister Agnes Buzyn said, „We realise there are people on the island, in certain neighbourhoods, who are not following health instructions“.
One of the most important notices reminds people that only bottled water is safe to consume, and that if it is unavailable, boiling water before use is paramount.
„We hand out fresh water all over the territory, but it remains difficult,“ Buzyn said. „There are zones not easily accessed, people that maybe we haven’t been able to reach.“
According to the government, 150,000 bottles of water are being distributed to residents every day.
But some people have still been fetching water directly from a reservoir.
A desalination plant destined for St Martin arrived Friday on Pointe-a-Pitre, on the French island of Guadeloupe, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) away.
It will continue its journey to the hurricane-hit island by barge and is expected to be operational by September 25, the authorities said.
Meanwhile drinking water has returned to St Barts, which is now able to produce about 800 cubic metres (176,000 gallons) a day.
„We are not yet at a level of signalling an outbreak, far from it,“ Buzyn said. „Today, it’s mostly an individual risk, which means it is essential that people who live on St Martin drink the bottled water that is distributed“.
Buzyn had said last Wednesday that there had been some cases of children with diarrhoea, but did not mention any signs of an outbreak.
Racing the clock
Medical epidemiologists are aware of and on the lookout for any sign of outbreaks, and will regularly track patients using health surveys, said Guadeloupe’s public health director Patrice Richard.
On Saturday, St Martin’s health services coordinator Sergio Albarello said there had been no cases of outbreak on the island.
„As of now, there have been no reported cases“ of outbreak, he told reporters, adding that as far as mosquitoes, „we are not talking about carriers of genes that are epidemiologically relevant“.
And while many buildings were flattened by the storm, the St Martin hospital is still able to treat people „in excellent conditions“, even though one of its buildings was partially destroyed.
Philippe Gustin, the French envoy in charge of the islands ‚ reconstruction, said the immediate plan was to fix the damaged buildings.
According to Gustin, about 30 percent of the buildings on the French side of the island were completely destroyed, but he cautioned that teams were still putting together a final estimate of damages—which has been put at one billion euros ($1.2 billion) or more for roads and buildings.
But repairing them before the high season, which usually starts in November and runs until April, seems nearly impossible.
Cleaning up also remains a priority for St Martin, particularly in areas where rats could proliferate.
Home to some 35,000 people, St Martin—whose livelihood rests almost entirely on tourists—attracts around two million visitors a year, most of them American cruise ship passengers.
While visiting St Barts this past week, French President Emmanuel Macron promised emergency financial aid for those „who have lost everything“.
As for the Dutch side of the island, the Dutch Red Cross said Saturday that it had collected 13.3 millions euros following a weeklong donation drive.
Explore further: Hurricane Jose spares storm-ravaged French Caribbean islands

© Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-france-hurricane-hit-st-martin-health.html
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They can’t all be zingers: 8 absurd sci-fi predictions that never panned out

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Not every film gets its future predictions right. Here are eight sci-fi movies and TV shows where things didn’t pan out as Hollywood guessed.
We previously covered science fiction movies and TV shows that eerily manage to predict the future with surprising accuracy. But not every forecast can be quite so perfect.
When it comes to guesses about either technological advances, political changes in society, or — heck — sci-fi writers’ sustained belief that the U. S. government is one financial meltdown away from organizing Hunger Games -style events, not all predictions can be winners. Here are eight sci-fi movies and TV shows that nailed their premises to a particular year, and (often thankfully) got it wrong.

© Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/sci-fi-movies-predictions-future-wrong/
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A brief recent history of Apple’s product swerves

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Apple did not make the first personal computer, nor the first tablet computer, nor the first smartphone. Measuring it against what comes first is — to..
The perennial refrain of Android fans is that Apple is just adding stuff to iOS that they’ve had for years already in their mobile ecosystem. And it’s certainly true that Cupertino makes a point of waiting until it believes a technology is properly baked and the time is juuuuust right — or at least commercially judicious — to introduce a new product or capability, one which has likely already been in widespread use across the mobile platform aisle.
Hence the company is often charged with being an innovation laggard. While its senior execs are always fielding questions about why such and such a product or feature isn’t in Apple’s line-up yet.
The company’s strategy for, you could say, mis managing expectation has seen it frequently swing from publicly rubbishing a device type or technology — to warmly embracing it a few years later. (Or, well, not, in the case of Flash .)
Steve Jobs was master of this dark marketing art. You don’t usually see his more mild-mannered replacement, Tim Cook, deploying the kind of extended public trashtalking that Jobs indulged, raging out at this or that rival tech as ludicrous, impossible to use and horribly designed. Before performing a complete U-turn down the line.
Cook mostly limits himself to getting a bit fired up about Android security and fragmentation during keynotes. But the current Apple CEO has still presided over some major swerves in its position on tech developments — from finally inflating the screen size of the iPhone, in 2014, to adding and (now) extending support for NFC, as well as introducing wireless charging in its newest iPhone 8/8 Plus and iPhone X models.
He was also at the helm when Apple outed a stylus for its iPad Pro line — braving the inexorable flak given Jobs’ very public loathing for such sticks (among many jabs at styli, Jobs left us this choice quote: “If you need a stylus you’ve already failed”).
The lesson here is that Apple has always said — and will always say — whatever it needs to in public as it bides its time, continues its analysis and waits until its target mainstream market will appreciate the utility of what it’s developing. As Jobs also used to say, the things Apple chooses not to do are as important to what it does include in the products.
And of course it does not always get this balancing act right. It was, after all, rather slow to increase smartphone screen size and move into the phablet space. Yet at the same time lots of iPhone users clearly liked the four-inch handset form factor, hence Apple subsequently re-introducing it, with the iPhone SE.
A more major misjudgment came in 2013 when it tried to offer a plastic-backed iPhone, aka the iPhone 5c. The market responded with a resounding: no thanks! — and the model was quietly discontinued. (Perhaps because offering a cheaper build material went against Apple’s grain of expanding the pool of technological innovations it offers users.)
But any statements the company makes that appear intended to rubbish rival innovations should be read as a placeholder signal which states: yes Apple is interested, yes Apple is looking, yes Apple is probably testing and prototyping; but no Apple, is not yet ready to take the plunge.
Apple did not make the first personal computer, nor the first tablet computer, nor the first smartphone. Measuring it against what comes first is — to paraphrase Jobs — a boneheaded way of looking at the company. Rather its energy is spun up and spent on doing the hard assessment work of figuring out how to make key technology innovations accessible and usable across the broadest audience. From toddlers to senior citizens.
And the mass consumer adoption of these technologies is the real innovative heart of Apple.
So when this refining modus operandi means the company has to publicly change course and contradict something it’s said before, its execs don’t even feel the need to break a sweat. Because this is the reality of the task they’ve set themselves — to guide consumers one more rung up the tech ladder.
That’s the kind of engineering business Apple is in.
2013, Tim Cook: “Some people use OLED displays, but the colour saturation is awful. If you ever buy anything online and really want to know what he color is, as many people do, you should really think twice before you depend on the color from an OLED display.”
2017, Phil Schiller: “This is the first OLED display great enough to be in an iPhone.”
2012, Phil Schiller: “Having to create another device you have to plug into the wall is actually, for most situations, more complicated.”
2017, Phil Schiller: “Words can’t describe just how much nicer it is to just put it down and pick it up whenever you want to charge without every having to plug in a cable again.”
2013, Craig Federighi, touting Apple AirDrop as a better alternative to NFC: “No need to wander around the room, bumping your phone… [mimes bumping phones]”
September 2014, Eddie Cue: “We’ve got a groundbreaking NFC antenna built across the top… Apple Pay is easy and secure and it’s private.”
September 2014, Tim Cook, on Apple Pay: “It is so cool!”
2017: Apple (quietly) expands NFC support in iOS 11 beyond Apple Pay — to enable it to read NFC tags in the real world
2013, Tim Cook: “The iPhone 5 offers… a new four-inch retina display, which is the most advanced display in the industry. It also provides a larger screen size without sacrificing the one-handed ease of use that our customers love.”
2014, Tim Cook, introducing iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: “Today we are launching the biggest advancement in the history of iPhone.”
2014, Phil Schiller: “Yes, they’re bigger. They’re a lot bigger… Your photos look gorgeous and there’s more to see on each of them.
“And when you turn them in landscape we show more as well. And we took special advantage of the iPhone 6 Plus because of all those pixels to do some new things with our apps. So, for example, the messages app now has a new horizontal two-up display… We do everything to take advantage of these huge displays to make them more capable.”
2013, Tim Cook, asked about opening up iOS keyboard for third party apps: “I think you’ll see us open up more in future, but not to the degree that we’ll put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.”
2014, Craig Federighi, introducing the ability to install system-wide third party keyboards: “So now if you have a special keyboard you want to use you can install those on iOS, and by default those of course run inside of the most restricted sandbox with no network access, because we want to make sure to protect your privacy. But if that keyboard requires or you want to grant it ability it can ask for access to the network to provide extended functionality. We put those controls in your hands.”
May 2017, Phil Schiller on being asked about the Amazon Echo and Google Home: “My mother used to have a saying that if you don’t have something nice to say, say nothing at all.
“There’s many moments where a voice assistant is really beneficial, but that doesn’t mean you’d never want a screen. So the idea of not having a screen, I don’t think suits many situations.”
June 2017, Phil Schiller: “This is really exciting. The chance to reinvent the way we enjoy music in the home. I can’t think of anything that matters more to so many of us.”
2007, Steve jobs: “Who wants a stylus? You have to get em and put em away and you lose em. Yeuck! Nobody wants a stylus.”
2015, Phil Schiller: “It’s called Apple Pencil… It’s one of the most advanced technologies we’ve ever created, in a simple, beautiful form.”
2010, Steve Jobs, on 7-inch tablets needing to include “sandpaper so that your user could sand down their fingers to one-quarter of their present size”.
“There are clear limits on how you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users can not reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is why we think that the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.”
2012, Phil Schiller: “What can you do with an iPad mini that you can’t already do with the amazing Fourth Generation iPad? Well this — you can hold it in one hand.”
“This isn’t just a shrunken down iPad; it’s an entirely new design… There is nothing as amazing as this.”

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A Mostly Typical Saturday In Washington, D. C.: Political Rallies — Plus Juggalos: The Two-Way: NPR

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Some worried the convergence in the nation’s capital of a rally for fans of a rap group and two dueling Trump-related protests would lead to violence. But the gatherings remained mostly peaceful.
As a rule of thumb, it is not big news when multiple political rallies overlap in the same weekend in the nation’s capital, a prime setting for anyone trying to send a message to governmental power.
But there are exceptions to every rule. And certainly, in this case, an exception for a large gathering of Juggalos airing their grievance against the Federal Bureau of Investigations. (More on this later.)
Downtown Washington, D. C. was home Saturday to three prominent demonstrations that some feared might combine violently but they instead stayed largely separate and peaceful, with modest attendance.
The self-described “ Mother of All Rallies,“ designed to support President Trump and „defend American culture,“ was staged on the National Mall for late Saturday morning.
Around the same time and several blocks away near the White House, was a separate rally to “ Protect American Democracy,“ which organizers say was meant to tell the president to take a tougher stance against Russian interference in American elections.
The rally garnering the most attention was “ Juggalo March,“ an assembly set near the Lincoln Memorial of so-called Juggalos, fans of the horrorcore rap duo Insane Clown Posse who often wear face paint, tattoos and other symbols worn by the band’s members. The march was described on its website as „a collective statement from the Juggalo Family to the world about what we are and what we are not.“
ICP was founded in 1989 and, despite disdain from many in response the group’s crude and sometimes violent lyrics, developed a considerable and dedicated following of Juggalos. (The term derives from a 1992 ICP song, as NPR’s Tanya Ballard Brown reported.)
In a 2011 report, the FBI classified Juggalos as a „loosely-organized hybrid gang“ following violent incidents allegedly committed by fans of ICP. Juggalos, in tandem with the ACLU, sued the government in 2014, claiming Juggalos‘ „constitutional rights to expression and association were violated“ by the FBI’s classification. The case was first dismissed then later reinstated.
The Juggalos say the gang label has, through unfair discrimination, made it difficult to live a normal life for many of their members, some of whom were scheduled to speak on stage in Washington on Saturday as part of the effort to express their anger to the FBI.
„We are taking our [sic] fight to the streets. Literally,“ said a statement on the „Juggalo March“ website.
As for politics, however, the „Insane Clown Posse and most Juggalos consider themselves very apolitical,“ pop culture writer Nathan Rabin told NPR’s Scott Simon .
By the account of reporters from NPR and WAMU present on the national mall, the crowds at all three events were enthusiastic but modest in size.
The pro-Trump „Mother of All Rallies“ featured a float with signs saying „secure our borders“ and „drain the swamp“ and drew some prominent names from the so-called alt-right, including Jack Posobiec. The rally’s organizers wrote on their websites that Confederate flags and racism would not be allowed, clearly hoping to distinguish themselves from the march of white supremacists that turned deadly last month in Charlottesville, Va.
Nevertheless, as NPR’s Windsor Johnston reported, some counterprotesters attempted to tie the MOAR rally to Charlottesville, including one who held a sign featuring an image of the woman killed by a motorist there.
Officials kept all three protests far from each other, which, along with a heavy police presence, appeared to keep the Saturday events peaceful, reported WAMU ’s Sasha-Ann Simmons.

© Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/16/551502217/a-mostly-typical-saturday-in-washington-d-c-political-rallies-plus-juggalos?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news
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Białoruś zaprosiła siedem krajów, w tym Polskę, do obserwowania ćwiczeń Zapad-2017

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Władze Białorusi poinformowały w sobotę o zaproszeniu przedstawicieli siedmiu państw, w tym Polski, Ukrainy i trzech krajów bałtyckich, do obserwowania na białoruskim terytorium manewrów Zapad-2017, w których uczestniczą wojska Białorusi i Rosji. – Sprawdź najnowsze wiadomości i wydarzenia z Europy i ze świata. Poznaj komentarze i podyskutuj na forum.
Białoruś zaprosiła przedstawicieli Łotwy, Litwy, Estonii, Polski, Szwecji, Norwegii i Ukrainy do obserwowania ćwiczeń Zapad-2017 od 16 do 20 września – głosi komunikat wydany przez białoruskie ministerstwo obrony.
Dziś (w sobotę) przybyło do Mińska po dwóch przedstawicieli każdego z zaproszonych krajów – dodano. Sprecyzowano, że zaproszenia wystosowano w duchu „rozwoju współpracy i dobrego porozumienia między sąsiadami, jak również zasad wzajemności, otwartości i przejrzystości“.
Manewry Zapad-2017 rozpoczęły się w czwartek i potrwają do 20 września na Białorusi i w Rosji. Aktywna faza ćwiczeń będzie się odbywać w dniach 17-19 września.
Według oficjalnych informacji ma w nich wziąć udział 12 700 żołnierzy i 700 jednostek sprzętu z obu krajów. Jednak kraje zachodnie szacują, że Rosja planuje wysłać na manewry ponad 100 tys. żołnierzy.
Na terenie Białorusi miejscem manewrów są poligony Borysowski, Domanowski, Różański, Lepielski, Osipowiczowski, Loswido, a także dwa miejsca na terenie obwodu witebskiego – w okolicach miejscowości Dretuń i Głębokie.
W Rosji żołnierze mają ćwiczyć na poligonach w obwodach kaliningradzkim, leningradzkim i pskowskim; poligony Łużskij, Strugi Krasnyje i Prawdinskij.
Mimo zapewnień władz w Mińsku i w Moskwie, że scenariusz ćwiczeń jest czysto obronny, wywołują one duże zaniepokojenie wśród sąsiadów Białorusi, zwłaszcza na Ukrainie, która w 2014 roku padła ofiarą rosyjskiej agresji.
Swoje obawy w związku z ćwiczeniami wyrażały także m.in. Litwa i Polska. NATO zapowiedziało, że będzie się im „uważnie przyglądać” i wyraziło ubolewanie, że trzej natowscy obserwatorzy zostali zaproszeni na dni zorganizowane dla „gości“. Te zaproszenia są niewystarczające z punktu widzenia przejrzystości wymaganej przez OBWE – powiedział na początku września sekretarz generalny NATO Jens Stoltenberg.

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China's Washington envoy says US should stop threats over North Korea

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China's ambassador to Washington on Friday called on the United States to refrain from making threats over North Korea, which a day earlier launched another missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Current top breaking Philippine headlines regarding the nation, world, metro manila…
WASHINGTON – China’s ambassador to Washington on Friday called on the United States to refrain from making threats over North Korea, which a day earlier launched another missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Ambassador Cui Tiankai told reporters at an embassy event: „Honestly, I think the United States should be doing… much more than now, so that there’s real effective international cooperation on this issue.“ „They should refrain from issuing more threats. They should do more to find effective ways to resume dialogue and negotiation,“ he said. President Donald Trump and others in the United States and beyond have urged China to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on its Communist ally to help resolve the standoff over North Korea’s weapons programs. China fought alongside North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Chinese leader Mao Zedong lost his eldest son, and Beijing has long been Pyongyang’s chief ally and primary trade partner. But the Chinese government has pushed back against the notion that it has any control over Pyongyang, and says it is the United States that should be doing more. Trump tweeted earlier this month that the United States was considering halting trade with countries doing business with North Korea. Cui on Friday cautioned against putting China-US trade on the table. „Efforts to undermine Sino-US trade, or even slapping sanctions on China, I think would be off-target,“ the Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted Cui as saying on Friday at a Chinese National Day reception. „If someone were to pressure China or impose sanctions on China over the DPRK, it would not be supported by many US citizens,“ Cui said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. „Workers at US airplane factories, farmers growing soybeans, companies that sell smartphones to China, manufacturers that enjoy large market shares in China, companies in the service sector that have gained trade surplus in China, US states that engage in robust trade with China would all stand against it,“ Xinhua quoted him as saying. — Reuters

© Source: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/world/626104/china-s-washington-envoy-says-us-should-stop-threats-over-north-korea/story/
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Gillmor Gang: Staff Infection

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The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, September 15,2017. Topics: Bitcoin,..
The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, September 15,2017. Topics: Bitcoin, Apple Watch 3, iPhone X, commodity cloud.
G3: Control Panel recorded Thursday, September 14,2017 with Denise Howell, Elisa Camahort Page, Mary Hodder, Kristie Wells, and Tina Chase Gillmor. Topics: Equifax, Tesla, Apple Watch 3, Face ID.
@stevegillmor, @dsearls, @kteare, @kevinmarks, @DenisPombriant
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Liner Notes
Live chat stream
The Gillmor Gang on Facebook
G3: Control Panel
G3 chat stream
G3 on Facebook

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St. Louis cop's acquittal triggers second day of protests

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Noisy demonstrators marched through an upscale shopping mall Saturday to protest the acquittal of a white former St. Louis police officer in the fatal shooting of a black man, pickup up after…
ST. LOUIS (AP) – Noisy demonstrators marched through an upscale shopping mall Saturday to protest the acquittal of a white former St. Louis police officer in the fatal shooting of a black man, pickup up after a night of mostly peaceful demonstrations that escalated into scattered acts of vandalism and violence.
A few hundred people walked through West County Center in Des Peres loudly chanting slogans such as „black lives matter“ and „it is our duty to fight for our freedom“ to decry the judge’s verdict Friday clearing ex-St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley of first-degree murder in the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith.
Susanna Prins, 27, of University City, showed up at a meeting to plan the action carrying a sign stating, „White silence is violence.“
„I feel helpless and I feel just rage,“ Prins said. „Not saying or doing anything makes you complicit in the brutalization of our friends and neighbors.“
Smith’s death is just one of several high-profile U. S. cases in recent years in which a white officer killed a black suspect, including the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson that sparked months of angry and sometimes violent protests.
Republican Gov. Eric Greitens was highly critical during his 2016 campaign of how former Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon managed the Ferguson protests, suggesting that with the right presence and leadership there could have been peace by the second night.
In advance of the Stockley verdict, Greitens met with Smith’s fiancée, black state lawmakers, black St. Louis faith leaders and law enforcement in the hopes of projecting a shared message that peaceful protest would be tolerated but violence wouldn’t.
Before the verdict, Greitens put the National Guard on standby, and some troops were deployed Friday night to guard fire stations and other „critical infrastructure“ that Greitens didn’t specify. He was in St. Louis Friday night and met with local law enforcement officials.
Police erected barricades around their own headquarters and the courthouse and dozens of officers in flak jackets and helmets who wielded batons and shields corralled demonstrators throughout the day and evening.
Demonstrators occasionally lobbed objects into the fortified line of officers, who used pepper spray to repel the crowd.
Tensions flared several times, including when protesters blocked a bus full of riot officers, damaged a police cruiser with rocks and later broke a window and spattered red paint on the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson.
After a tense standoff at the mayor’s home, police used tear gas to clear the area.
Police said they made nearly two-dozen arrests before dark and more in the evening, though they still hadn’t provided an updated figure more than 12 hours later.
Police reported that 10 officers suffered injuries by the end of the night, including a broken jaw and dislocated shoulder, and some journalists reported being having equipment damaged and being threatened by protesters.
Anticipating more demonstrations Saturday, the band U2 canceled its evening concert in St. Louis because the police department said it wouldn’t be able to provide its standard protection for the event, organizers said.
The civil disobedience followed the acquittal of Stockley for fatally shooting Smith after the suspected drug dealer crashed his car after leading the officer in a chase.
Stockley testified that he saw the 24-year-old holding a silver revolver as he sped away and felt he was in imminent danger as he was approaching the vehicle later.
Prosecutors said Stockley planted a gun in Smith’s car after the shooting – Stockley’s DNA was on the weapon but Smith’s wasn’t. Dashcam video from Stockley’s cruiser captured him saying he was „going to kill this (expletive), don’t you know it.“ Less than a minute later, he shot Smith five times.
Stockley’s lawyer dismissed the comment as „human emotions“ uttered during a dangerous pursuit and the judge said it could be ambiguous.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson said prosecutors didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Stockley murdered Smith or that the officer didn’t act in self-defense.
In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the verdict, Stockley, 36, said he understands how video of the shooting looks bad, but that he did nothing wrong.
„I can feel for and I understand what the family is going through, and I know everyone wants someone to blame, but I’m just not the guy,“ said Stockley, who left St. Louis‘ police force in 2013 and moved to Houston.
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© Source: http://www.cbs46.com/story/36381170/st-louis-cops-acquittal-triggers-second-day-of-protests
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Brooks backs Moore in Alabama Senate slugfest

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Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks is throwing his support behind former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in the state’s Senate primary runoff against Sen. Luther Strange following the congressman’s stinging loss in the first round of primary voting last month.
Strange is the favorite of the Republican establishment and is the candidate of choice for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold onto the seat held for two decades by Jeff Sessions, now attorney general.
President Donald Trump endorsed Strange before the primary, tweeting, „Senator Luther Strange has done a great job representing the people of the Great State of Alabama. He has my complete and total endorsement!“
Brooks took 20% of the vote in the initial ballot August 15, while Strange received 33% and Moore 39%.
Brooks declined to endorse either candidate after losing in August. However, in his conciliatory comments he appeared to speak more highly of Moore than Strange.
„I want to compliment Judge Roy Moore on the high quality race he ran,“ Brooks said to supporters at the time. „He ran a very honest campaign — perhaps most importantly, a very honorable campaign.“
Brooks‘ endorsement highlights a rift within the Republican Party between the GOP establishment and the conservative wing Moore is counting on.
„We must be strong during the 10 days left before the election,“ Brooks said in his remarks Saturday. „The Strange/ McConnell forces care not one twit about truth; they freely use malicious lies in their non-stop, scorched earth, campaign of personal destruction.“
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also both recently endorsed Moore.

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Ballet BC offers plenty of style, not enough substance – Orange County Register

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Ballet BC presents an evening of intriguing works that lack sufficient craft but showcase some spectacular dancers.
Ballet BC is the other major company at this year’s Laguna Dance Festival, and though all the fuss has understandably been lavished on Paul Taylor’s better-known ensemble and work (and it’s a treat for Taylor’s company to be seen in an intimate local venue), this Vancouver-based group presented choreography on Friday that contrasted well with Taylor’s program of classics.
The Paul Taylor Dance Company brought us three Taylor pieces that exemplify the first generation of choreographic postmodernism. Ballet BC artistic director Emily Molnar has programmed an evening of three ambitious works, all created by her and two other female choreographers, which reveal the highly stylized path that some post-Taylor modern dance has taken. It was illuminating: we clearly saw the strengths and weaknesses of this aesthetic.
The evening began with Molnar’s “16 + a room,” set to a loud, often cacophonous sound design by Dirk P. Haubrich. The 13 dancers stride with intent, stand in robotic stillness, and often burst into jagged bursts of sliding, off-center tilts, rapidly flung arms and lots of frenetic running.
It’s hard to miss the influence of choreographer William Forsythe in Molnar’s work – she was a member of Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt – but “16 + a room” lacks a sense of Forsythe’s sense of proportion, long-term shape and compositional rigor. It’s all process – interesting ideas and moments that beg to be harnessed to an overarching structure. Without that, the work is undermined by a sense of sameness and lack of development. The signs that occasionally appear – “This is a beginning” and “This is not an ending” – are a red herring. They don’t provide insight. Neither do the black costumes and low lighting, which often obscure shapes and phrases.
Crystal Pite, the best known of the choreographers, created the evening’s strongest work, “Solo Echo.”
Pite, like Molnar a former Ballett Frankfurt dancer, has also been steeped in Forsythe’s work. But whereas Molnar used a soundscape without discernible form, Pite’s music is two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms, which she wisely employs to help give her work the formal structure that Molnar’s lacked. Inspired by a Mark Strand poem about coldness and death, the piece starts with an enchanting snowfall effect. “Solo Echo” is full of images that depict longing and loss: bodies that slip through and past each other, agitated solos that burst through like an outpouring of spontaneous grief, unusual multi-body shapes. Dancer Brandon Ailey was a standout here.
“Bill,” by Sharon Eyal and fellow Jerusalem native Gai Behar, closed the concert, and it can only be described as classic Gaga. For 18 years Eyal worked at the Batsheva Dance Company with artistic director Ohad Naharin, the creator of the distinctive style.
“Bill” begins with a series of spectacular solos. Every dancer is clad in a flesh-colored body stocking and covered in dust. Their movements are highly individualistic yet related in their sinuous quirkiness and unpredictability. Christoph von Riedemann, Justin Rapaport, Peter Smida, Ailey and Kirsten Wicklund were all outstanding.
That’s followed by a long section of zombie-like stop-start movement: sharp twists, robotic stutter-steps, twitches, quick freezes, all set to an ominous sound design by Ori Lichtik. But what is initially mesmerizing eventually becomes too much; like Molnar, Eyal and Behar don’t shape their fascinating material into a work with momentum and a dramatic arc. The mood becomes oppressive, as if there’s no escape from this dark world.
“Dark” was the operative word for the evening. A few flashes of color notwithstanding, everything was minimally lit, and black was the non-color of choice. These works might all fare better apart, each set in a concert with more stylistic variety. As presented (and they are often programmed like this), it’s too big a dose of a single mood, and (Pite’s work excepted) there’s not enough craft to make the choreography rise above the murk.
When: Friday, Sept. 15
Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach
Next: Paul Taylor Dance Company performs at 7:30 p.m.,; Ballet BC performs at 2 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $35-$40, students; $65-75, adults
Information: lagunadancefestival.org

© Source: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/09/16/ballet-bc-offers-plenty-of-style-not-enough-substance/
All rights are reserved and belongs to a source media.

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