The decades-old voices of people teaching and learning the Miriwoong language are preserved in a unique collection of magnetic strip cards.

They are a lifeline for tourist towns, but locals in the nation's regional tourism drawcards say increasing numbers of older travellers are failing to show basic etiquette.

An Irish family, who has been living in regional Victoria for almost a decade, faces deportation after their son is diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

Gold Coast woman Theresa Dalton is sentenced to six years in jail for hiring a hitman to kill her husband during their divorce battle, telling a Brisbane court it is a "catastrophic miscarriage of justice" because she is innocent.

Conservationists are claiming a coup after convincing Gold Coast Council to save a freshwater lake from being turned into a carpark.

Sydney's iconic Sirius building is sold for $150 million to developers who plan to refurbish the existing building and deliver 89 apartments, along with retail and commercial spaces.

IBM Business Partners can put the power of advertising behind their sales efforts. Take advantage of the 1Q Express Advantage advertising campaign now airing in select U.S. cities. Includes print, radio, Web banners, demand generation, mobile and search.

(United States Second Circuit) - In a copyright infringement suit brought by the company that owns the recordings of the Turtles, a well-known rock band with a string of hits in the 1960s, on behalf of itself and a class of owners of pre-1972 recordings against largest radio and internet-radio broadcaster in the U.S., the district court's denial of defendant's motions for summary judgment and reconsideration is reversed where, in response to questions certified to the New York Court of Appeals, New York common law does not recognize a right of public performance for creators of pre-1972 sound recordings.

(United States Supreme Court) - Struck down a Tennessee requirement that applicants for a license to operate a retail liquor store have resided in the State for the prior two years. Held that the residency requirement violates the Commerce Clause because it blatantly favors the State's residents and has little relationship to public health and safety, and further held that the Twenty-first Amendment does not save the state law. Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the 7-2 Court.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Answering a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Court held that New York common law does not recognize a right of public performance for creators of sound recordings and answered the Second Circuit's question in the negative.

(United States Second Circuit) - In an international trademark action involving rival claims to the "Stolichnaya" trademarks, the district court's dismissal is vacated in part and affirmed in part where: 1) considerations of international comity precluded the district court from determining that the Russian Federation's assignment of trademark rights to plaintiff was invalid under Russian law and dismissing plaintiff's claims under section 32(1) of the Lanham Act for lack of standing; but 2) plaintiff's remaining claims are barred by res judicata and laches.

(United States Second Circuit) - In a copyright infringement suit brought by the company that owns the recordings of the Turtles, a well-known rock band with a string of hits in the 1960s, on behalf of itself and a class of owners of pre-1972 recordings against largest radio and internet-radio broadcaster in the U.S., the district court's denial of defendant's motions for summary judgment and reconsideration is reversed where, in response to questions certified to the New York Court of Appeals, New York common law does not recognize a right of public performance for creators of pre-1972 sound recordings.

ASM Completes Its 150th Film Score And Retains Jonathan Firstenberg As North American Rep

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant in an action under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits the use and disclosure of personal information derived from Department of Motor Vehicles records.

Prayer and a ministry of presence can make an eternal difference.

My grandmother died ten days ago. She was 88 years old. By all accounts she had lived a colorful life, with three husbands, three children, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. She routinely stated her intention to live another decade. Even though her body was failing her through arthritis and muscle loss, she hadn’t lost her desire to live, to see those great-grandchildren grow up, to enjoy the daffodils in April. But when she was diagnosed with colon cancer in early January and decided not to put herself through surgery, she knew her days were numbered, and she started to prepare to die.

Much has been written of late about the problems with end-of-life care in America. In an earlier post (Have Christians Made an Idol of Life?) I wrote about Ezekiel Emanuel’s argument that Americans should aspire to die around age 75. For many Americans, the final years are a series of financially debilitating medical decisions that—more importantly—result in suffering for patient and family members alike. Many studies have shown that doctors aren’t well-equipped to talk about death with patients, and often physicians suggest further treatments even when they know it will not serve the patient well. For the alleviation of physical suffering and financial burden, a national conversation about health care and end-of-life care has begun. (See, for instance Dying Shouldn’t Be So Brutal in the New York Times, The Ultimate End-of-Life Plan in the Wall Street Journal, and More on Faith and Life Care here in Christianity Today.)

In my grandmother’s case, good health insurance, financial plenty, devoted family members, and a daughter who had worked for years as an oncology nurse secured ...

Continue reading...

Music celebrating the Emerald Isle--from Purcell to Beethoven, from John Field to Victor Herbert.

#3 Billboard Chart Debut As National Coverage Continues To Grow: People Magazine, Elmore Embrace Killer New CD; Tour Dates Confirmed Through The End Of Year

(United States Second Circuit) - Affirmed. Various Connecticut Liqour Control Act and related regulations were hybrid restraints on trade but the plaintiff failed to plead facts that they constitute per se violations of the Sherman Act.

(United States Second Circuit) - Held that Connecticut law governing liquor pricing is not preempted by federal antitrust law. Affirmed the dismissal of a liquor retailer's complaint, which challenged certain provisions of Connecticut's Liquor Control Act and related regulations.

(United States First Circuit) - Held that the government did not breach its plea agreement with a defendant by arguing, at least implicitly, that the agreed-upon 60-month sentence for his weapons charge was too low. The defendant contended that prosecutors undercut the plea deal. Finding no breach of the parties' agreement, the First Circuit affirmed.

Work at Lockheed Martin continues during the coronavirus outbreak — and so does hiring.

Stephanie Rossi, like many teachers across the country, is forced to bid adieu to the great passion of her life from her kitchen counter as the new coronavirus prompted the closure of school buildings and end to most in-person learning.

Stephanie Rossi, like many teachers across the country, is forced to bid adieu to the great passion of her life from her kitchen counter as the new coronavirus prompted the closure of school buildings and end to most in-person learning.

There are striking parallels between Bud Black and Kyle Freeland. Both men are counting on that connection to get Freeland back on track.

Fighting towards the light of the Lord will change lives.

The R&B singer wows the crowd at the BET Awards Pre-Show.

She also teased the Xscape biopic.

The R&B singer wows the crowd at the BET Awards Pre-Show.

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Synthesis 47: Repairing and Maintaining Airport Parking Structures While in Use provides information on developing and implementing successful maintenance and repair strategies for in-use airport parking structures that involve the least impact on the airport patrons, revenue stream, and facility operations.

Have you heard of Heath Freeman? He's a thirty-something hedge fund boss, who runs "Alden Global Capital," which owns a company misleadingly called "Digital First Media." His business has been to buy up local newspapers around the country and basically cut everything down to the bone, and just milk the assets for whatever cash they still produce, minus all the important journalism stuff. He's been called "the hedge fund asshole", "the hedge fund vampire that bleeds newspapers dry", "a small worthless footnote", the "Gordon Gecko" of newspapers and a variety of other fun things.

Reading through some of those links above, you find a standard playbook for Freeman's managing of newspapers:

These are the assholes who a few years ago bought the Denver Post, once one of the best regional newspapers in the country, and hollowed it out into a shell of its former self, then laid off some more people. Things got so bad that the Post’s own editorial board rebelled, demanding that if “Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell the Post to owners who will.”

And here's one of the other links from above telling a similar story:

The Denver newsroom was hardly alone in its misery. In Northern California, a combined editorial staff of 16 regional newspapers had reportedly been slashed from 1,000 to a mere 150. Farther down the coast in Orange County, there were according to industry analyst Ken Doctor, complained of rats, mildew, fallen ceilings, and filthy bathrooms. In her Washington Post column, media critic Margaret Sullivan called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”

And, yes, I think it's fair to say that many newspapers did get a bit fat and happy with their old school monopolistic hold on the news market pre-internet. And many of them failed to adapt. And so, restructuring and re-prioritizing is not a bad idea. But that's not really what's happening here. Alden appears to be taking profitable (not just struggling) newspapers, and squeezing as much money out of them directly into Freeman's pockets, rather than plowing it back into actual journalism. And Alden/DFM appears to be ridiculously profitable for Freeman, even as the journalism it produces becomes weaker and weaker. Jim Brady called it "combover journalism." Basically using skeleton staff to pretend to really be covering the news, when it's clear to everyone that it's not really doing the job.

All of that is prelude to the latest news that Freeman, who basically refuses to ever talk to the media, has sent a letter to other newspaper bosses suggesting they collude to force Google and Facebook to make him even richer.

You can see the full letter here:

Let's go through this nonsense bit by bit, because it is almost 100% nonsense.

These are immensely challenging times for all of us in the newspaper industry as we balance the two equally important goals of keeping the communities we serve fully informed, while also striving to safeguard the viability of our news organizations today and well into the future.

Let's be clear: the "viability" of your newsrooms was decimated when you fired a huge percentage of the local reporters and stuffed the profits into your pockets, rather than investing in the actual product.

Since Facebook was founded in 2004, nearly 2,000 (one in five) newspapers have closed and with them many thousands of newspaper jobs have been lost. In that same time period, Google has become the world's primary news aggregation service, Apple launched a news app with a subsription-based tier and Twitter has become a household name by serving as a distribution service for the content our staffs create.

Correlation is not causation, of course. But even if that were the case, the focus of a well-managed business would be to adapt to the changing market place to take advantage of, say, new distribution channels, new advertising and subscription products, and new ways of building a loyal community around your product. You know, the things that Google, Facebook and Twitter did... which your newspaper didn't do, perhaps because you fired a huge percentage of their staff and re-directed the money flow away from product and into your pocket.

Recent developments internationally, which will finally require online platforms to compensate the news industry are encouraging. I hope we can collaborate to move this issue forward in the United States in a fair and productive way. Just this month, April 2020, French antitrust regulators ordered Google to pay news publishers for displaying snippets of articles after years of helping itself to excerpts for its news service. As regulators in France said, "Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile." The Australian government also recently said that Facebook and Google would have to pay media outlets in the country for news content. The country's Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg noted "We can't deny the importance of creating a level playing field, ensuring a fair go for companies and the appropriate compensation for content."

We have, of course, written about both the plans in France as well as those in Australia (not to mention a similar push in Canada that Freeman apparently missed). Of course, what he's missing is... well, nearly everything. First, the idea that it's Google that's causing problems for the news industry is laughable on multiple fronts.

If newspapers feel that Google is causing them harm by linking to them and sending them traffic, then they can easily block Google, which respects robots.txt restrictions. I don't see Freeman's newspaper doing that. Second, in most of the world, Google does not monetize its Google News aggregation service, so the idea that it's someone making money off of "their" news, is not supported by reality. Third, the idea that "the news" is "owned" by the news organizations is not just laughable, but silly. After all, the news orgs are not making the news. If Freeman is going to claim that news orgs should be compensated for "their" news, then, uh, shouldn't his news orgs be paying the actual people who make the news that they're reporting on? Or is he saying that journalism is somehow special?

Finally, and most importantly, he says all of this as if we haven't seen how these efforts play out in practice. When Germany passed a similar law, Google ended up removing snippets only to be told they had to pay anyway. Google, correctly, said that if it had to license snippets, it would offer a price of $0, or it would stop linking to the sites -- and the news orgs agreed. In Spain, where Google was told it couldn't do this, the company shut down Google News and tons of smaller publications were harmed, not helped, but this policy.

This surely sounds familiar to all of us. It's been more than a decade since Rupert Murdoch instinctively observerd: "There are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production... Their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not fair use. To be impolite, it's theft."

First off, it's not theft. As we pointed out at the time, Rupert Murdoch, himself, at the very time he was making these claims, owned a whole bunch of news aggregators himself. The problem was never news aggregators. The problem has always been that other companies are successful on the internet and Rupert Murdoch was not. And, again, the whole "misappropriation" thing is nonsense: any news site is free to block Google's scrapers and if it's "misappropriation" to send you traffic, why do all of these news organizations employ "search engine optimizers" who work to get their sites higher in the rankings? And, yet again, are they paying the people who make the actual news? If not, then it seems like they're full of shit.

With Facebook and Google recently showing some contrition by launching token programs that provide a modest amount of funding, it's heartening to see that the tech giants are beginning to understand their moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism.

Spare me the "moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism," Heath. You're the one who cut 1,000 journalism jobs down to 150. Not Google. You're the one who took profitable newspapers that were investing in local journalism, fired a huge number of their reporters and staff, and redirected the even larger profits into your pockets instead of local journalism.

Even if someone wants to argue this fallacy, it should not be you, Heath.

Facebook created the Facebook Journalism Project in 2017 "to forge stronger ties with the news industry and work with journalists and publishers." If Facebook and the other tech behemoths are serious about wanting to "forge stronger ties with the news industry," that will start with properly remunerating the original producers of content.

Remunerating the "original producers"? So that means that Heath is now agreeing to compensate the people who create the news that his remaining reporters write up? Oh, no? He just means himself -- the middleman -- being remunerated directly into his pocket while he continues to cut jobs from his newsroom while raking in record profits? That seems... less compelling.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple News and other online aggregators make billions of dollars annually from original, compelling content that our reporters, photographers and editors create day after day, hour after hour. We all know the numbers, and this one underscores the value of our intellectual property: The New York Times reported that in 2018, Google alone conservatively made $4.7 billion from the work of news publishers. Clearly, content-usage fees are an appropriate and reasonable way to help ensure newspapers exist to provide communities across the country with robust high-quality local journalism.

First of all, the $4.7 billion is likely nonsense, but even if it were accurate, Google is making that money by sending all those news sites a shit ton of traffic. Why aren't they doing anything reasonable to monetize it? And, of course, Digital First Media has bragged about its profitability, and leaked documents suggest its news business brought in close to a billion dollars in 2017 with a 17% operating margin, significantly higher than all other large newspaper chains.

This is nothing more than "Google has money, we want more money, Google needs to give us the money." There is no "clearly" here and "usage fees" are nonsense. If you don't want Google's traffic, put up robots.txt. Google will survive, but your papers might not.

One model to consider is how broadcast television stations, which provide valuable local news, successfully secured sizable retransmission fees for their programming from cable companies, satellite providers and telcos.

There are certain problems with retransmission fees in the first place (given that broadcast television was, by law, freely transmitted over the air in exchange for control over large swaths of spectrum), and the value they got was in having a large audience to advertise too. But, more importantly, retransmission involved taking an entire broadcast channel and piping it through cable and satellite to make things easier for TV watchers who didn't want to switch between an antenna and a cable (or satellite receiver). An aggregator is not -- contrary to what one might think reading Freeman's nonsense -- retransmitting anything. It's linking to your content and sending you traffic on your own site. The only things it shows are a headline and (sometimes) a snippet to attract more traffic.

There are certainly other potential options worth of our consideration -- among them whether to ask Congress about revisiting thoughtful limitations on "Fair Use" of copyrighted material, or seeking judicial review of how our trusted content is misused by others for their profit. By beginning a collective dialogue on these topics we can bring clarity around the best ways to proceed as an industry.

Ah, yes, let's throw fair use -- the very thing that news orgs regularly rely on to not get sued into the ground -- out the window in an effort to get Google to funnel extra money into Heath Freeman's pockets. That sounds smart. Or the other thing. Not smart.

And "a collective dialogue" in this sense appears to be collusion. As in an antitrust violation. Someone should have maybe mentioned that to Freeman.

Our newspaper brands and operations are the engines that power trust local news in communities across the United States.

Note that it's the brands and operations -- not journalists -- that he mentions here. That's a tell.

Fees from those who use and profit from our content can help continually optimize our product as well as ensure our newsrooms have the resources they need.

Again, Digital First Media, is perhaps the most profitable newspaper chain around. And it just keeps laying off reporters.

My hope is that we are able to work together towards the shared goal of protecting and enhancing local journalism.

You first, Heath, you first.

So, basically, Heath Freeman, who has spent decade or so buying up profitable newspapers, laying off a huge percentage of their newsrooms, leaving a shell of a husk in their place, then redirecting the continued profits (often that exist solely because of the legacy brand) into his own pockets rather than in journalism... wants the other newspapers to collude with him to force successful internet companies who send their newspapers a ton of free traffic to pay him money for the privilege of sending them traffic.

Sounds credible.

-Album Details- Title: Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY JIRITSU Publisher: Square Enix Music Catalog Number: SQEX-10659~60 Release Date: September 20th, 2018 Ripped by: dancey -Info- Nothing new or revelatory here other than it was only available at TGS2018, enjoy nonetheless.

Every cricket follower fervently needs to watch real-time cricket suit. Nothing can change the excitement, delights and excitement of real-time cricket suit. Live cricket suit is of much worry for a fan during any recurring series or competitions. Every cricket… Continue Reading →

Online criminals have been systematically targeting TurboTax, filing fraudulent tax returns of individuals, and diverting their tax refunds to prepaid debit, cards, stealing their personal information, and using and impairing their credit ratings. Continue reading →

Tres proyectos que proponen mejorar la interacción y la experiencia de los jóvenes usuarios con servicios bancarios móviles, fueron reconocidos hoy por Banorte, IBM y el Tec de Monterrey como resultado del Reto Banorte en el marco de la Semana i, que la institución educativa llevó a cabo del 21 al 25 de septiembre en todo el país.

In this episode, Michelle Drumm speaks to Mairi O'Keefe, Chief Executive of Leuchie House national respite centre, based near North Berwick since 2003. The only facility of its kind in Scotland, Leuchie has specialised in providing short respite breaks for people and their families living with MS, Parkinson's and other long-term conditions.

In 2010, Mairi successfully led the Save Leuchie campaign, saving the centre from closure and setting it up as an independent charity in July 2011. In 2015, she received an MBE for services to people with disabilities.

Confirming that she will be leaving Leuchie House in November 2018 Mairi O'Keefe said:

Everyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about Leuchie House and the very special service we provide. It was always going to be difficult to step down, but I know I can do so feeling proud of everything we've achieved. I've been honoured to experience on a daily basis just how much of a difference Leuchie makes to all the hundreds of families we support every year.

Freshly Squeezed aims to 'squeeze' information and inspiration from key influencers in social services in Scotland.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

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By Gretchen Becker
Posted: October 12, 2008
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A planned $2 million recreation of a historic balloon flight would give Conner Prairie visitors a bird's-eye view of the Fishers living-history museum.
The project was expected to be announced today, said Ellen Rosenthal, Conner Prairie president and chief executive officer.


Beginning in June, a $10 ticket would let museum guests take a 15- to 20-minute hot-air balloon ride at an elevation of 350 feet.
Rosenthal said Friday that the Balloon Voyage exhibit commemorates John Wise's 1859 launch of the first manned balloon intended to travel cross-country, from Lafayette to New York.
"It is one symbolic event that draws attention to how much progress and scientific advancement was being made," Rosenthal said. "At this event, 20,000 people were there. There were only 19,000 people in Indianapolis then. (Since) 2009 is also the 150th anniversary . . . it's now or never to do the exhibit."
Wise, a Philadelphia native, was trying to prove that mail could be delivered across the country by air, Rosenthal said. Winds on Aug. 17, 1859, sent him south instead of east as planned, so he landed 40 miles away in Crawfordsville. Although a train eventually delivered the mail, the landmark launch was still considered a success.
Dan Freas, Conner Prairie's director of museum experience, discovered Wise's story, Rosenthal said. To learn more, museum representatives visited the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., to which one of Wise's relatives donated his journals and notebooks.
Tom D. Crouch, a senior curator of the Smithsonian's aeronautics division, told Conner Prairie representatives he'd waited years for an exhibit like this to introduce people to early flight attempts in America.
The exhibit is to be installed in the current Clowes Common area next to the main museum center. Before that can happen, Conner Prairie must appeal a Fishers zoning rule to allow for the equipment, Rosenthal said.
The museum plans to renovate Clowes Common to make concessions look the way they would have in 1859, Rosenthal said. Plans also call for an outdoor exhibit to engage guests in activities such as filling gas balloons and trying on the helmets of balloon pilots, or aeronauts.
The Balloon Voyage would join other living-history experiences at Conner Prairie, which include recreated towns from 1836 and 1886 and a Lenape Indian camp from the early 1800s, when white settlement of the area was beginning.
• Call Star reporter Gretchen Becker at (317) 444-2805.

The Better Breaks funding programme is focused on improving the range and availability of short break opportunities for disabled children and young people, particularly those with multiple support needs, including short break opportunities that families can enjoy together, or which allow parents and siblings to have time away from their caring responsibilities. This is the summary report.

Recently Donald Trump tweeted the word "TREASON?" in light of the New York Times op ed that was published on Wednesday. The article was supposedly written by someone within the Trump Administration, calling themselves part of the "resistance." 

After Trump's "treason" tweet, people on Twitter began making their own amusing parodies, which you can read below!