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When Gail lost her husband, she wanted to end her life. But then she discovered amazingfacts.org—and found hope and a new life in Jesus! You can point even more eyes to heavenly truth when you give to the online evangelistic work of Amazing Facts. Thank you for sending streams of light around the world!

Thousands of church members cooperated to pull off the massive PNG for Christ event in Papua New Guinea. The evangelistic efforts resulted in more than 300,000 baptisms. Is this a sign of the last days?

A new study published by the American Cancer Society reveals that nearly half of all cancer deaths are attributable to lifestyle factors. Would a return to God’s original health plan make a difference?

A new study involving a special group of people shows significant overlap between psychedelic trips and near-death experiences. What does the Bible say about the latter?

La alcaldesa de Bogotá habló en Caracol Radio sobre la movilidad en la capital del país y del día sin carro.

Pioneering jazz bassoonist Karen Borca has had to wait a long time for her leadership debut. It arrives courtesy of the adventurous Lithuanian NoBusiness imprint, compiled from archival recordings of two appearances at New York City's fabled Vision Festival... [ read more ]

Three-time Billboard charting singer-songwriter Robin Simoneandrsquo;s new incarnation is RSHO! Vocalist for Kenny Burrelland#39;s Jazz Orchestra! Robin Simone Hollywood Orchestra (LP/CD) Seventeen super musicians, a gifted conductor/arranger, and Robin all creating an electrifying take on songs of great motion pictures, and bringing new magic to the big band stage...

I’m thrilled to release the debut album of my latest project, Wheel of Dharma. This quintet, featuring Freddie Hendrix (trumpet), Erena Terakubo (saxophone), Sameer Shankar (bass), and Dave Heilman (drums), combines my original compositions with a focus on honoring jazz’s rich history while pushing its modern boundaries....

Entering its second quarter century as committed as ever to pure jazz (All About Jazz),” SMOKE Jazz Club continues its 25th anniversary season with an exciting line-up in December. The holiday season kickstarts with “A Nat King Cole Christmas” featuring singer Allan Harris (Dec 4). SMOKE is thrilled to welcome acclaimed vocalist Catherine Russell in her club debut in a thrilling duo with pianist Sean Mason (Dec 5-8) performing repertoire off their latest album My Ideal...

Celebrated jazz Hammond organist Vel Lewis is set to release his highly anticipated new single, "I Paid The Price," a soulful and introspective piece showcasing his signature mastery of jazz, soul, and blues. The single will be available on all major streaming platforms on November 15, 2024. Lewis, known for his unmistakable touch on the Hammond organ, has crafted "I Paid The Price" to reflect his deep connection to life’s lessons, love, and the resilience that comes from overcoming challenges...

New cast members include lawyer and professional bodybuilder Farah Esmail, beauty entrepreneur Zena Nyambu and Reja Keji Ladu

Albania's Prime Minister wants to give a state and nationhood -- similar to the Vatican in Italy -- to a Muslim minority within the country.

President-elect Trump is likely to influence who's chosen as Senate and House leaders. Trump must decide who will lead the Justice Department. President Biden travels to Peru and Brazil this week.

A New York judge is set to decide whether President-elect Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution in his criminal trial, after he was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

We’re digging into the Piedmont blues, a rich style that mixes ragtime, old-time country music, jazz, gospel, hollers, and historic popular songs. A conversation and music with two younger players […]

The post American Routes – Piedmont Blues with Jontavious Willis & Andrew Alli and The Stooges Brass Band Live from New Orleans appeared first on KKFI.

First Wave returns to the genesis and evolution of Punk, New Wave, its roots, and the eventual liberation of rock n roll. It brings context to the music to understand […]

The post FIRST WAVE: CLASSIC PUNK AND NEW WAVE AND MORE appeared first on KKFI.

Is Law & Order the greatest TV show of all time? With the recent release of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, Kate Davis and Sean Cullen are taking this series to court. Then, Hunter Collins and Marito Lopez are sharp-tongued when they debate the current ease of learning a new language.

Is butter better than margarine? Derek Seguin and Matt Wright churn out jokes in a battle for the superior spread. Then, Nour Hadidi and Hisham Kelati get in the zone when they decide if Newfoundland has the best time zone.

Charlie Demers and Lisa Baker are anything but fake when they discuss if it's okay to ignore the news. Then, are windows superior to doors? Graham Clark and Charles Haycock tear a weather-strip off each other in this architectural argument.

How protests in Iran threaten the country's regime; Chinese police have set up outposts in Canada; Kelly Clarkson's best Kellyoke covers; Becky Toyne reviews Iain Reid's new thriller, We Spread; The Linda Lindas drop by for an after-school hangout; and more.

Itamar Ben-Gvir's journey from far-right extremist to political power-broker; why Vladimir Putin wanted the bones of 18th-century Russian leader Grigory Potemkin; Becky Toyne reviews Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy's first new novels in 16 years; Haiti's political and economic crisis is fueling a public health disaster for women; five U.S. states get ready to vote on whether to close a loophole that allows for slavery in 2022; and more.

Changes to user comments on CBCNews.CA

In response to your feedback, we have made changes to make commenting on our news stories a better experience.

1. Approving and recommending comments

It can be a challenge to provide an open space for Canadians to debate and share their opinions on the news, and maintain that space as one where people feel safe and comfortable. As a result of your feedback, we have tightened up our submission guidelines. More borderline comments are now not published.

As always, if you see a comment that you feel contravenes our guidelines, click on the “report abuse” link below the comment. Our moderators will give the flagged comment a second review. We have recently added a link to our submissions policy beside the “report abuse” link.

If you simply disagree with the viewpoint expressed, you can now give it a “thumbs down.” We have reworked the existing “recommend a comment” functionality in response to user requests for the ability to “un-recommend” a comment.

2. When guidelines aren’t followed

We have always banned the most problematic users who fail to follow our guidelines, but we have also started to use a temporary suspension, or “time out.” For users that fail to follow the guidelines, we block their input to the site for 3 business days by rendering it invisible to other users. We'll still see any new posts, and can decide to lift the suspension after the “time out” period, or to ban the user.

3. When comments are disabled on news articles

Lastly, we do want to acknowledge that not all types of articles will include comments.

When we do an article on a death of an individual, we have seen comments submitted that are needlessly hurtful to the family of the deceased. To respect their loss, we disable commenting on these articles. We also disable commenting on court proceedings that involve a publication ban, and articles related to abductions, as we don't want to inadvertently publish any input that would be helpful for the abductors.

The CBC.ca moderators are working on more improvements to our commenting section that we hope to launch over the coming year. For more details, see Your Best Stuff.

In some situations, we disable commenting on stories. We do so by following certain criteria, such as if the comments may cause harm, or if there is a risk that they may break the law.

For example, we don't enable comments on stories about kidnapping, as we wouldn't want to inadvertently publish something that would assist the abductors.

We disable comments on stories concerning court cases that involve a publication ban, and on stories related to sexual assault, in order to protect the identity of the victim.

And often we don't allow comments on stories related to the death of individuals as we don't want to publish anything that may be hurtful for the family.

The decision to disable comments on a story is made after discussion among the news editorial team at CBC.ca.

Chances are you are hearing Voiceprint, an independent audio service for blind and vision-impaired Canadians that includes entertainment, news, and information, often read by volunteer presenters. Voiceprint is available on Secondary Audio Program or SAP which is an audio setting on your Television. To hear the CBC Newsworld audio, you need to have your television audio set with the SAP feature off and stereo sound on.

Turning SAP on and off is done on most television sets through a menu using the remote control. Every television set is different, so the best way to do that is to follow the instructions in your owner's manual.

CBC.ca has launched our new iPhone App for radio. We were so excited about this app that we decided to put it out before all the individual stations were ready to go. Although right now we already have 9 Radio One stations, 4 Radio 2 stations and Radio 3 on board.

We are trying to get all the other stations up within the next couple of weeks so please check back.

Go to our site iPhone for all our services.

Happy New Year. Please check out all the new shows and their websites:

18 to Life

Republic of Doyle

Death Comes to Town - Kids in the Hall

Poised to open in just six years, featuring spas, concert venues and even a Ferris wheel design, this out-of-this-world hotel will be a veritable playground for the ultra rich.

Canada intends to significantly boost immigration over the next three years to secure its economic prosperity as industries stare down a large labour shortage. The plan also calls for more immigrants to be accepted based on their works skills.

From the war in Ukraine, to unprecedented protests in Ottawa, and record-breaking inflation — 2022 was an eventful year. As we enter the new year, we're looking back once more at the stories that hit home for Canadians.

A new COVID-19 subvariant has now been confirmed in multiple provinces in Canada. The Omicron offshoot is also rising rapidly south of the border, and scientists say it could soon be a dominant strain in the U.S. and other countries.

Electro trio travels further from the dancefloor, picking up new tricks as they go.

This new recording, with a new cast, packs a hefty wallop.

NTT DATA Business Solutions has announced that Guernsey Ports has embarked on a strategic partnership to implement Hexagon's Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution.

Sagard NewGen has acquired FuturMaster, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of Supply Chain Planning and Revenue Growth Management solutions, from its founder and Cathay Capital.

New thinking in online fulfilment order picking that combines long established warehouse ‘wave’ picking techniques with state-of-the-art sorting robots is delivering eye-catching improvements in picking rates, says Frazer Watson, Global Vice President of Rainbow Dynamics.

On December 1st, 2020, Nasdaq filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt additional listing rules requiring enhanced board diversity and disclosure of firm diversity efforts.  The new listing rules require Nasdaq-listed companies to have on their board of directors, at least two diverse directors, including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+.  If the firm does not meet this listing requirement, it must explain why they do not have at least two diverse directors sitting on their board.  Additionally, the new listing rules require Nasdaq-listed companies to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics regarding its board of directors.  Nasdaq defines underrepresented minorities to include Black or African America, Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, two or more races or ethnicities.  Smaller reporting companies and foreign companies have additional flexibility in satisfying these new listing requirements by seating at least two female directors.  These new listing rules require approval from the SEC.

NASDAQ's stated goal for requiring diversity among its listed companies board makeups is to provide the investing public with a "better understanding of the company's current board composition and enhance investor confidence that all listed companies are considering diversity in the context of selecting directors, either by including at least two diverse directors on their boards or explaining their rationale for not meeting that objective." To support this new listing requirement, Nasdaq pointed to over 24 studies that found a link between diverse board and more robust financial performance with better corporate governance.  Under this proposal, Nasdaq-listed companies are required to publicly disclose board-level diversity statistics within one year of the SEC's approval of the rule.

CNN reports that Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman stated, "Nasdaq's purpose is to champion inclusive growth and prosperity to power stronger economies." Non compliance by Nasdaq-listed companies could lead to delisting.  

Nasdaq's move is part of a growing momentum to see that corporate board diversity is taken seriously across the United States.  California has for two years been requiring gender diversity on corporate boards and has recently begun requiring racial and ethnic diversity on California boards as well.  Goldman Sachs has recently announced that it will require any company that it assists in taking public must include at least one diverse board member. 

The Corporate Justice Blog has long advocated for board diversity as a priority for expanding human capital and realizing greater financial benefits for the firms and its shareholders. We argue that a commitment to diversifying the board, both in gender and racial diversity as well as worldview diversity enhances the performance of the corporations that so commit.  See here, here, here and here.

hat tip:  Deepali Lal, 3L, Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law 

photo: courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

 I just published a new law review article with the Seattle University Law Review entitled: Students for Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action and Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity? The article can be downloaded here: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sulr/vol47/iss4/7/. Here is the abstract:

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater institutional efficacy, including possible race-neutral alternatives. The programs also failed to break down stereotypes through the introduction of a critical mass to empower diverse voices. The programs thereby resembled prohibited quotas or racial balancing. As such, the programs at issue violated Grutter, which still governs race-based affirmative action in college admissions. More importantly, the Roberts court paved the way for more expansive diversity-based admissions programs by permitting institutions to value individual racial experiences, which authentically further an institution’s mission and interests. After SFFA, the use of race as a factor could well face time limits. Contrastingly, individualized racial experiences may benefit college applicants at institutions that embrace diversity in an authentic way without facing any time limitation. Further, institutions with distinct missions may value diversity in a race-conscious way but without any racial preference. In sum, the Roberts Court guides the use of race in college admissions toward a race-neutral, diversity-based paradigm such that institutions may still unlock the empirically proven benefits of cultural diversity with only de minimus interference from the courts. This approach rests upon a powerful policy basis that leads to superior innovation, macroeconomic outcomes, social cohesion and, therefore, superior national security for the United States. This approach thus could support a powerful interest convergence.

The article shows that Supreme Court did not overrule its prior affirmative action precedents, and in fact paved the way for universities to embrace cultural and cognitive diversity to enrich their educational missions. This is important because the case has been widely misconstrued.

My next article will extend the Court's holding to corporate DEI efforts and demonstrate that such efforts are not only remain lawful but also essential to rational human resources management.

Currently, the nation and perhaps the world struggles with the recent jury verdict against Donald Trump finding him guilty of 34 felony counts. Trump claims that the verdict proves Joe Biden uses the criminal justice system as a political tool intended to defeat his political opponents, in this case him. On the other hand, many take the position that the case demonstrates the triumph of the rule of law because it proves that even the most privileged and powerful of citizens must ultimately reckon with legal accountability. I opt for the conclusion that the case exemplifies a healthy rule of law operating to impose reasonable and predictable accountability and consequences for even the most powerful governing elites in American today for the following six reasons.

First, and foremost, the guilty verdict reflects the unanimous conclusion of 12 jurors, after careful deliberation and judicial instruction, empaneled pursuant to pre-announced New York Law. Donald Trump, like all criminal defendants, held the power to refuse a limited number of jurors without cause and to move to strike jurors for cause. The jurors hailed from Trump's former home state and the headquarters of the Trump Organization—New York. It is noteworthy that not a single juror dissented from the verdict and that they reached the verdict without any judicial cajoling through, for example, an Allen charge. The jury questioned the evidence and the instructions to assure they acted properly. They deliberated about 12 hours after spending five weeks listening to witness testimony and reviewing other evidence including extensive documents. Trump's high-powered legal team exercised their right to cross-examine witnesses, explain away evidence and submit their own exculpatory evidence. Despite these rights, the best legal team money could buy failed to raise any reasonable doubt with even one juror, on even one count, regarding Trump’s guilt.

Second, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg holds a well-earned reputation as a professional prosecutor who gets the job done and gets it done professionally. Recall that Bragg endured severe criticism for declining to prosecute Trump for tax fraud in 2022, prompting two prosecutors to resign. Bragg apparently found the case against Trump too risky to warrant pursuit. Instead, he meticulously built this case which proved bullet-proof. Bragg won his office through an election of local voters and does not work for Joe Biden or even the federal government. The man holds total legal independence from the Biden Administration and proved himself as a non-partisan prosecutor by letting Trump walk on other fraud charges in 2022. The fact that he sought a Grand Jury indictment against Trump on this case suggests that there was probable cause that Trump committed the crimes—a fact that the jury's verdict fully vindicates.

Third, Justice Juan Merchan presided over the entire Trump matter with appropriate judicial restraint. Given Trump’s contemptuous misconduct and constant threats of violence against the judge, his family, his staff and the jury, Merchan certainly held the power to imprison Trump for contempt. He held his fire and allowed the jury to do its job. Despite Fox “News” reports to the contrary, the evidence suggests the Judge ruled on objections and other procedural matters with judicious wisdom. He righteously rejected Trump’s efforts to dismiss the charges, as proven by the unanimous jury verdict on all counts. Again, Merchan, a New York state judge, holds total legal independence from the Biden Administration and, Trump and his team produced zero evidence that Biden even attempted to influence Merchan.

Fourth, Trump himself knew he faced an uphill battle once he decided not to testify and take the stand to declare his innocence. Due to Trump’s decision the jury never heard Trump deny the charges, claim innocence or explain the mountain of evidence against him in the form of witnesses, key documents, or the tape-recording directing Cohen to pay Daniels by check. In fact, there was no defense theory of the case. Trump would not exude credibility as a witness due to his history of fraud, and he would risk a finding of perjury if he claimed innocence under oath or if he simply made-up stories on the stand. In any event, many defendants face challenges testifying on their own behalf, but Trump made that call, not Joe Biden.

Fifth, after reviewing the jury instructions, I saw no error, in that the instructions fairly reflect governing law in New York. While some complain reasonably that the jury was not required to identify the precise crime that transforms misdemeanor falsification of records into a felony, there is Supreme Court authority in support of this. Juries typically do not need to identify with particularity (nor even agree upon a particular predicate crime) a predicate crime to a felony charge; here the crime Trump intended to further with false business records. The US Supreme Court might well make up some means of saving Donald Trump (see Trump v. United States and Trump v. Anderson). Justice Merchan, however, cannot read the minds of the conservative Court majority and it is not his job to predict ways the Supreme Court can throw lifelines to former President Trump. Merchan’s instructions reflect the law today and that is the goal of jury instructions, not to craft new innovations to save Trump.

Sixth, all the cries of conspiracy theory and a rigged justice system from Trump and his minions lack any evidentiary foundation. They produced zero evidence that Joe Biden masterminded this entire prosecution. The claim is facially absurd. Biden did not set up Trumps illicit and adulterous liaisons, Trump did. Biden did not meet with David Pecker to set up a scheme to hide Trump’s prior bad acts in the run-up to election 2016. Trump signed the checks reimbursing Cohen the hush money paid to Trump’s co-adulterers. Trump can only blame Trump for his 34 felony convictions.

In light of the above, I conclude that Donald Trump enjoyed all the due process the US Constitution accords criminal defendants. Of course, with his billions, Trump can afford the very best lawyers which most defendants cannot. As former President, Trump enjoys the right to argue before many justices he appointed which most defendants do not. From a rule of law perspective the case proves that even the richest and most politically powerful must answer for their crimes.

KEEN lawn bowlers will be able to enjoy the game they love at Ingleburn Bowling and Recreation Club without feeling the heat this summer.

Justice Crew’s Samson Smith has embarked on one of his most exciting ventures yet.