The naturally occurring mineral that causes foundations to crumble could be affecting thousands of homes across the state.

The post Faulty concrete caused their foundations to crumble. Now, they want the state to step in. appeared first on Boston.com.

My dog ran away last summer. My husband decided to go for a run and I decided to paint our front door. I grabbed the paint and the tarp and propped open the door. Then, when my husband went running down the road, Dodger took off out the propped-open door after him. Dodger was gone from my sight for about two minutes before I rounded the corner to find him being carried home by my husband. But during that time, I was absolutely sick to my stomach. I was praying for his safety, that he wouldn’t...

The ACI Foundation announced new Trustees and the re-election of an existing Trustee to its Board. The Trustees re-elected Keith Kesner and elected new Trustee David Lange. New ACI Vice President Scott Anderson also joins the Trustees as part of his new role.

The ACI Foundation announced its 2024-2025 fellowship and scholarship recipients.

The ACI Foundation’s Concrete Research Council selected eight research projects to receive grants this year.

The ACI Foundation’s Concrete Innovation Council gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss technology and innovation at the 2024 Technology Forum. The event took place May 14-16 at the Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza.

The ACI Foundation is now accepting applications from graduate and undergraduate students for the 2025-2026 academic year.

Heart of England Community Foundation has now received more than £7m from the unnamed person

This prestigious award goes to the charity or voluntary sector organisation that has had a truly exceptional year and whose recent achievements have attracted the admiration of the sector

Mecanoo and Beyer Blinder Belle designed The New York Public Library’s completely renovated Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. The design team selected Rockfon Alaska acoustic stone wool ceiling panels to create a cohesive, timeless appearance while providing best-level sound absorption and sustainability benefits.

Z-Wave Alliance actively recruits smart home and IoT leaders to join, direct and contribute to the completely member-driven organization on a mission to chart the course of the future of Z-Wave technology and the smart home.

The Foundation Series is a complete, off-the-shelf fire detection solution featuring addressable and non-addressable models, and a full range of Autocall devices.

The CDC Foundation has released an extensive online resource to help employers and workers improve health and safety.

Atlanta – Preventing heart disease and improving health and productivity in the workplace is the goal of “Business Pulse: Heart Health,” released April 29 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation.

Atlanta – With flu season on the horizon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation is sharing information to help workers protect themselves from the disease.

Stock is defined as a cooking liquid that is flavored by simmering animal bones and/or meat, fish, in water or wine with vegetables typically comprised of onion, celery, and carrots (also known as mirepoix) and sometimes other vegetables (or vegetables alone) until a desired flavor is achieved. T

It has been well established that long-term nutritional imbalance due to low-fiber diets leads to increased incidence of noncommunicable diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, gut dysbiosis, cancer, metabolic syndrome, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, and autoimmune diseases. 

The funds raised during the tournament will directly support the FCIF's mission of providing financial assistance to individuals within the floor-covering industry who are facing significant hardships due to illness, disability, or other unforeseen life-altering circumstances. 

Rob Menefee wants to continue to grow his business. Considering he already has three locations and $12-plus million in annual sales, that is no small task. 

The integration of Foundation Earth into EIT Food will provide the expertise needed for advocacy work to develop internationally-recognized standards surrounding the use of data to assess the environmental impact of food.

This Veterans Day, Daltile continues its ongoing partnership with the Gary Sinise Foundation, supporting the construction of specially adapted smart homes for severely wounded veterans through the foundation's R.I.S.E. Program.

A 4-storey reinforced concrete framed buildings was modelled in 3-dimensional analysis with the same sections and loadings for both rigid and weak foundations respectively using ETABS and FORM5 Softwares in accordance with Euro code provisions. The weak foundation was initially analysed and designed as a fixed column-foundation joint and later re-analysed and redesigned as a hinged column-fo...

Children's Geographies; 06/01/2022
(AN 156867988); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

Ann Barish, a socialite who is married to Planet Hollywood co-founder and film producer Keith Barish, secured a buyer for her waterfront Miami Beach home.  Barish, whose full name is Edith Ann Barish, owns the nearly half-acre property at 4810 North Bay Road via a trust, property records show. The two-story, six-bedroom Mediterranean-style house is […]

The post Wife of Planet Hollywood co-founder finds buyer for waterfront Miami Beach home appeared first on The Real Deal.

by Suzette Smith

The Mercury provides its readers with interesting and useful news & culture reporting every single day. If you appreciate that, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. If you read something you like, something you don't like but are glad to know about, and/or something you can't find anywhere else consider a one-time tip. It all goes in the same pot and it all goes to the editorial team. Thanks for your support!

Good Morning, Portland! When they told me a bat could be beautiful I didn't believe, but now I believe.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• As October comes to a close, so too does the Bureau of Land Management’s annual Bat Beauty Contest, which asks where the "most stunning bat photographed on BLM public lands" can be found? It's Oregon, motherfuckers! For the third year running WE HAVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BAT. YES! Despite J. K. Rowling's tarnished-as-hell legacy, we can still celebrate this feisty male hoary bat, Hoary Potter. It's also worth noting that this is the second year a bat photographed by wildlife technician Emma Busk took top beauty honors. Busk wrote, "anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been wanting to photograph a hoary bat,"—a sentiment we can all echo.

BLM's most beautiful bat is from Oregon, and I love him. pic.twitter.com/T8qQgsz5kT

— Suzette Smith (@suzettesmith) November 1, 2024

• There's also terrible news, unfortunately. Yesterday evening, a shooting at Vancouver Mall, in Vancouver, WA, killed one person and injured two in the building's food court.  A witness who spoke to KOIN described "a harrowing scene, as the shopping center was full of kids trick-or-treating." So far, police have said they do not have a suspect in custody and the person may still be armed. They told KOIN they were reviewing surveillance footage, but have not yet released a description of the shooter.

• Oh my god, Clark County are you okay? KPTV reports that Clark County Elections Office is warning voters to beware of unofficial ballot boxes. Unofficial ballot boxes are not illegal in Washington! (This also appears to be true of Oregon!) Clark County Elections encouraged voters official ballot return locations.

• The Oregonian is returning to broadsheet size, they announced yesterday in a post that did not explain what that is for readers who didn't go to graphic design school / work in at newspaper with some old dude named Phil. Somewhat surprisingly, Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss stepped in to clarify. Tabloid is hotdog style fold; broadsheet is burger. Both WW and the Mercury are hotdogs. The New York Times is burger fold.

• NPR's Up First weirdly tried to do a report on Vice President Kamala Harris "highlighting Trump's own language and using it against him," as if that's somehow something of which to be critical? Gave me the vapors of the new Hasaan Hates Portland sketch from this week:

• In two week's the city's beloved queer documentary festival QDoc will host the Oregon debut of The World According to Allee Willis, which explores the complicated life of a queer "song doctor" who co-wrote not only Earth, Wind and Fire's "September," but the Friends TV show theme. Check out Melissa Locker's review of the film.; she says it's not to be missed!

• Did you take this week's local news quiz? 

          View this post on Instagram                      

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IN NATIONAL NEWS:
• Atlanta rap star Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, finally walked free last night, after pleading guilty to "six counts, including possession of drugs and firearms... leading a criminal street gang and conspiracy to violate the RICO act, the state’s racketeering law," the New York Times reports. As part of the plea, the judge sentenced Williams to a total sentence of 40 years, but commuted the five years of prison time to the two and a half years that Williams has already served. Williams will remain on probation for 15 years, and will "be required to stay away from metro Atlanta for the first 10 years of his probation." He is also required to take random drug tests, make anti-gang presentations for children's organizations four times a year, perform 100 hours of community service a year, and "refrain from promoting gangs or being around known gang members." The ongoing Young Slime Life (YSL) court proceedings—which caused NYT's Joe Coscarelli to ask "is YSL was a record label, street gang, or both?"—have stretched into what is now the longest trial in Georgia history. Despite three other plea deals this week, it appears the trial will continue with the two remaining co-defendants.

• Mark Zuckerberg dressed as Fran Lebowitz for Halloween, and that's just what happened.

Mark Zuckerberg dressed as John Wick for Halloween but I thought it was Fran Lebowitz pic.twitter.com/zdXaomOMPR

— Meech (@MediumSizeMeech) November 1, 2024

• You're going to see some stuff today about "explosive new audio" recordings where Donald Trump speaks candidly to the reviled Jeffrey Epstein about his White House Staff and his disdain for the position itself. It's only really on the Daily Beast, the podcast of journalist Michael Wolff, and a few other sites. I'd rather wait til a super solid source gets it—seems like maybe they're holding off because they're checking it?—but the story is out there. Don't sound like anything particularly new, but people are saying "October surprise" because they want attention.

• Also in weird news about guys we already thought were corrupt, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is apparently pledged to some secretive religious traditionalist organization. That tracks.

• Flashback to this masterpiece, which has been floating around the zeitgeist all week.

July 3, 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the day that Brian Jones was pronounced dead. Jones founded the Rolling Stones, gave them their name and was their first business manager.

A British man has been found guilty of sexual assault and other crimes for tricking a pregnant woman into drinking a liquid that contained abortion drugs to induce a miscarriage, unbeknownst to the victim.

Luis Armando Albino was 6 when a woman abducted him in 1951 while he was playing at a park in California with his older brother, only reuniting with his family seven decades later thanks to the determination of his 63-year-old niece. 

Events that occurred this week in Christian history include the martyrdom of a Georgian king, a social reformer claims to have a vision, and the founding of a Baptist denomination.

A McCulloch County jury this week found Nicholas Miller guilty of starting fires at the historic Mason County Courthouse and an occupied residential structure on February 4, 2021.

Mos.ru photo A treasure of copper coins and part of wooden pavement of the XVIII century has been found on the Boulevard Ring in Moscow. Preparatory work for redevelopment under My Street project helped archeologists of the capital to find dozens of personal objects as well as remnants of the city infrastructure. The age is of 100-500 years. Everything was found on the Boulevard Ring while preparing trenches for further communications. There were found parts of the drainage systems, tram lines, as well as utility, and smaller household items. Remnants of the wooden pavement of the XVIII century were found on the Strastnoy Boulevard.

Bones of unknown animals millions of years of age were found in Yakutia.  In the Churapcha region of Yakutia, archeologists found a Paleolithic human site that is believed to be at least 30,000 years old. Bones of unknown animals were found during excavation works.  The radiocarbon research of the finds revealed that the found remains were from the Neogene era - a period that began 23 million years ago and ended 2.58 million years ago.

Blogger Kristina Ray was found dead in Sochi. Her body was found in a sewer. Kristina Ray (real name Kristina Kozhevnikova), the former holder of the title "Biggest Lips in Russia" went missing in Sochi. The woman stopped communicating with friends and family on September 28. Kristina's relatives told the police that she had suffered from drug addiction for a long time. A few days before her disappearance, Kristina found out that they wanted to put her in a rehab clinic. The police were able to find out that on the day of her disappearance, the woman went to get drugs. She was 35.

Startups are a lot like infants. They come into the world vulnerable and needy. And it's your job, as the founder, to protect your new business much like a parent would with a helpless baby. Businesses face numerous risks from the start. And in many regards, it's your ability to protect your fledgling business during these early days that makes or breaks your chances of long-term success. In light of this, here are a few practical tips you may find valuable in your pursuit of growth and stability: Form the Right Legal Entity One of the first steps every business owner should take is to form the correct legal entity. This legal entity will provide tax advantages as well as certain asset protections. The most common types of legal entities include:

The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) has been awarded $3.5 million, part of a larger $8 million grant from Education Initiatives, to partner with the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) to launch The Academy at Penn, an innovative five-year, cohort-based college- and career-readiness model for high school students. Foundations, Inc. and the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) were also awarded through the grant as part of the larger partnership. The close collaboration involves working together to design, implement, and evaluate the project.

[Domestic] :
Another body was found in the search for missing crew members after a fishing boat sank off Jeju Island last week.  According to the Jeju branch of the Korea Coast Guard on Monday, the body was found close to the sunken boat around 4 p.m. Sunday during an underwater search using a remotely operated ...

[more...]

In-situ diffraction measurements reveal that magnesium chloride forms a unique high-pressure phase, a heptahydrate, above 2 GPa. The hydrogen-bonding structure appears to contain orientational disorder.

The odd hydration number has so far been missing in the water-rich magnesium chloride hydrate series (MgCl2·nH2O). In this study, magnesium chloride heptahydrate, MgCl2·7H2O (or MgCl2·7D2O), which forms at high pressures above 2 GPa and high temperatures above 300 K, has been identified. Its structure has been determined by a combination of in-situ single-crystal X-ray diffraction at 2.5 GPa and 298 K and powder neutron diffraction at 3.1 GPa and 300 K. The single-crystal specimen was grown by mixing alcohols to prevent nucleation of undesired crystalline phases. The results show orientational disorder of water molecules, which was also examined using density functional theory calculations. The disorder involves the reconnection of hydrogen bonds, which differs from those in water ice phases and known disordered salt hydrates. Shrinkage by compression occurs mainly in one direction. In the plane perpendicular to this most compressible direction, oxygen and chlorine atoms are in a hexagonal-like arrangement.

The back cover photo splash from Ruth Batchelor's album "Songs for Women's Liberation: Reviving a Dream"; Credit:

I’ve been a member of the LA Film Critics Association since 1999. LAFCA is a good group - collegial and filled with real movie lovers. But it has a problem.

It's a professional organization, meaning a baseline for membership is you have to have a job, and film criticism is overwhelmingly white and male. 78 percent of the top critics listed on RottenTomatoes are male, and women write only 18 percent of the major reviews. So LAFCA is like the profession itself: overwhelmingly a platform for white men.

It's trying to diversify. It has been for years. But how do you do that when the pool you draw from has a huge institutional bias? According to film critic Claudia Puig, "Criticism has been a white male dominated field for very long. And it continues to be. And not just white males, but middle aged."

Claudia is the current LAFCA president - and a legendary critic, who wrote lead reviews for 14 years at USA Today, and now appears regularly on KPCC’s Film Week.

"Very few movies pass the Bechdel Test. Women are often just girlfriends, wives, mothers. They don't get to have a story arc of their own. But if you had more women reviewing these movies, they would point out certain things that people might not notice as potentially offensive. Because we have been harassed, or we have experienced any number of things. It's something I've grappled with through my entire career." - Claudia Puig

I'm on a committee with Claudia for the LA Film Critics. The concept is to mentor young writers - to generate diversity, from the ground up. One idea is to have a scholarship for aspiring female film critics. We thought it would be good to name it after a prominent woman from the group's past.

So I went to Myron Meisel, who joined LAFCA in 1979, just four years after it formed, and I asked him, "Is there a woman you can think of who played an especially prominent role in the history of the LA Film Critics Association?" "Oh!," Myron said. "Ruth Batchelor was the founder and driving force..." "Wait, what?" I asked. "LAFCA was founded by a woman?"

"We weren't shocked. You had Ruth, who was very much concerned with creating a Los Angeles equivalent to the New York Film Critics Association. Which she largely pulled together by force of will. While Ruth was the moving force, you really can't discount her ability to martial the enthusiastic support of Charles Champlin as a co-founder, and the imprimatur of the Los Angeles Times behind him. Ruth had an enviable ability to make everything she undertook seem inevitable." - Myron Meisel

It's poignant, isn't it? And a little creepy. A prestigious group commits to gender diversity, and somehow, it doesn't have the institutional memory to know that the pivotal figure in its history was a woman.

How could we forget Ruth? Batchelor was nothing if not memorable. Before she became a pundit, she was a successful pop songwriter in the style of Neil Sedaka, or Goffin and King. She wrote dozens of songs, recorded by everybody from Phil Spector to the Partridge Family. She wrote Elvis Presley numbers, including "Cotton Candy Land," which might be the most hated track in the Presley catalogue.

But Batchelor also wrote "Where Do You Come From?", which is beautiful.

Elvis Presley performing Ruth Batchelor's "Where do you come from?"

Where do you come from, Ruth?

It wasn't easy to find out.

Batchelor's New York Times obituary was full of false leads. It said she was a critic for National Public Radio. She wasn't, but when NPR searched their archives, they unearthed a lead: a Film Comment article from 1982, where Batchelor is described as "Ruth Batchelor of National Public Radio's 'As it Happens.'" "As It Happens" airs on Canada's CBC.

So I placed a call. And I waited.

Meanwhile, I found a blog post about Batchelor as a songwriter on an excellent site called "Zero to 180 - 3 Minute Magic." The title of the post was riveting: "First 'Women's Liberation LP.'"

It turns out in 1971, Ruth Batchelor self-produced and financed a concept album called "Songs for Women's Liberation: Reviving a Dream." 

Myron Meisel told me about Ruth's earthy sense of humor, and it's right there in the first write-up's, where her working title is "A Quarter for the Ladies Room." A Billboard article from August 1971 quotes Batchelor about the album: "Right now I have an album of dirty Women's Liberation poems recorded, and I'm trying to sell the master." Then she laughs. "The last record company I recorded for folded."

Batchelor shopped her record. There were no takers.

But Batchelor proved unstoppable. She created her own record company and called it Femme Records. Then she put out what the leftist journal Broadside called "the first feminist record album," all by herself. "Reviving a Dream" is forgotten, bordering on lost. It's never been available for streaming, or released on CD.

Batchelor's record is a pastiche of radio styles from her era. There's Joan Baez folk, two drawling country laments, even some call and response stuff Batchelor probably learned from Phil Spector and his girl groups.

Are Batchelor's songs any good? They're amazing. Amazing just because they exist.

She fits into the churning sea of anonymous faces so seamlessly it takes awhile to realize: She's Ruth Batchelor. The woman who founded the LA Film Critics. A group currently struggling with gender diversity.

LAFCA prez Claudia Puig agreed to an interview knowing it had to do with LAFCA, but not what it was about. I played her Batchelor's song "Drop the Mop." Batchelor intended it as an anthem, scored to a tempo of marching feet.

The listen was awkward - like force feeding a roommate your iTunes playlist. Claudia took notes the whole time, to occupy her critical mind, but I could see when it ended that she was moved.

 "Yeah, it's a really interesting song," Claudia said. "My reaction is sort of...ummm..."

Claudia hesitated, looking for words.

"And this was the origin of the group. Yeah. It really kind of... It is really interesting. I'd never heard of her. She was right there, fighting that fight." 

"And here, we were looking for an avatar," I said.

"Right. Right. It means something. This is a really important discovery that you made."

A piece of the portrait was missing - an essential one. It came courtesy of Kevin Robertson, a producer for "As It Happens" at the CBC. Batchelor had been the show's "Hollywood Correspondent" in the early 1980s. There was audio in the archives. Kevin provided me with five MP3s.

Batchelor's CBC brand was gender traditional. She was the tinseltown gadfly, a niche created by Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons in the 1930s. There was gossip about Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. Richard Burton's widow. Marvin Hamlisch. TV's "Gomer Pyle."

It was kitsch heaven, so I wasn't disappointed. Not exactly. But it was still a bit like listening to Wonder Woman try to be ordinary, because hey, we all gotta eat.

Ruth Batchelor's "Mr. Principal"

The LA Film Critics get a cameo in Batchelor's Oscar season broadcast, when she mentions her LAFCA Awards vote. For awhile, I thought that would be the only audio connecting the "As It Happens" Ruth Batchelor to the feminist fireball she wanted to be.

Then Batchelor starts riffing on "Partners," a buddy cop farce about a straight cop who goes undercover as a gay man. The film had sparked protests from the gay community. Batchelor is unsympathetic, which is surprising in a civil rights pioneer. Her reasoning is devastating.

"You know if women got angry every time there was a movie against women," Batchelor says, "there wouldn't be any movies."

Batchelor died of cancer early - she was just 58. 25 years later, men still direct most mainstream movies - 93 percent as of 2015. They have 70 percent of the speaking parts, and play 88 percent of the leads.

While women get to be naked twice as often in American movies.

Men review almost all movies too. Maybe that's why Ruth Batchelor founded the LA Film Critics. Because she lived in that world. She covered it. Spoke to it. Fought hard against it.

And then left behind a hidden legacy.

"She is our avatar," Claudia says, as our interview time runs out. "It sort of makes me want to redouble our efforts to honor her spirit."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Gabriel Luna (L) and Robert Rodriguez attend the "Terminator: Dark Fate" Screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Slaughter Lane on October 29, 2019 in Austin, Texas. ; Credit: Gary Miller/Getty Images

Movie theaters are starting to reopen, and moviegoers are starting to return. All eight of the Laemmle’s theaters are now reopened, its Glendale location the last to do so a couple weeks ago. Tickets are now on sale for the first time in a year at American Cinematheque's Aero theater. 

Last weekend, “A Quiet Place: Part II” opened with very strong box office grosses. And one of the locations that sold a lot of tickets for the sequel was the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Los Angeles. The Texas-based boutique chain filed for bankruptcy reorganization in early March. Unlike the Arclight and Pacfic theaters, Alamo was able to come back quickly with many of its theaters reopening in May.

KPCC’s John Horn called up Tim League, Alamo’s founder and executive chairman, to talk about his circuit’s return, the future of moviegoing in a streaming era, and whether or not Alamo might be a buyer of the closed Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. 

Correction: The original broadcast said that American Cinematheque announced screenings at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena, which was a mistake. 

With contributions from John Horn 

Guest: 

Tim League, founder and executive chairman of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rescue workers move a stretcher containing recovered remains at the site of the collapsed Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla., on Monday. Rescuers have recovered three more bodies and officials say the demolition of the building will accelerate search efforts.; Credit: Lynne Sladky/AP

Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on Monday morning that three more victims have been recovered from the ruins of the collapsed condo tower in Surfside, Fl., bringing the total death toll so far to 27.

Cava added that the demolition of the rest of Champlain Towers South "was executed exactly as planned" the previous evening, and that it would now allow rescue teams to work on a section of the collapsed building that was previously inaccessible. She noted that 118 individuals remain unaccounted for.

"Truly, we could not continue without bringing this building down," Cava said. "The area closest to the building was not accessible, due to the enormous risk to the team of first responders, because of the instability of the building."

According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the newly accessible section of rubble is also from a part of the building where many bedrooms were located, and may contain the remains of many victims. The building collapsed in the middle of the night.

Authorities had been concerned that an approaching tropical storm might topple the standing part of the building onto the section that had already collapsed. That would have been a massive setback in the search for victims and for clues to the cause of the disaster.

Tropical Storm Elsa now appears to be tracking further to the west, and is more likely to hit the west coast of Florida, rather than the site of the disaster. But officials at the National Weather Service say the storm's course still could change.

Cava acknowledged that demolishing people's homes "is a devastating decision" and said that "our teams are doing everything possible to help those who lost their home begin to rebuild."

She said that authorities are working with insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to streamline claims and help those who've lost homes and property.

One animal rescue volunteer had gone to court to stop the demolition of the rest of the tower, asking the court to allow more time to rescue pets that might still be trapped inside. The judge denied the motion.

Cava said in her Monday briefing that Miami-Dade rescue teams had already gone through parts of the building that were still accessible, "searching in closets and under beds" to find missing pets.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today named the 2018-2019 class of RWJF Health Policy Fellows.

On Sunday, Sept. 30, during its 2018 annual meeting, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will present two awards for extraordinary impact on the engineering profession.