MikeLigalig.com

Quote from: islander on January 25, 2019, 12:06:19 PM

i've got to send that last one to my hubby.

Iapil pood ni...

The man's doctors performed a minor surgery to explore his ear canal; during this operation, they located and removed the cotton swab tip that had gone missing. The swab was impacted and surrounded by wax and debris, suggesting that it had been there for some time, Charlton said, adding that it probably contributed to the man's recurrent ear infections over the years, culminating in the particularly severe episode.

The man spent nearly a week in the hospital and needed two months of intravenous and oral antibiotics to treat the infection, but he had no long-term hearing or thinking problems.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, he was advised to never use cotton swabs in his ears again. "They can only cause problems," Charlton said, noting that cotton swabs have been linked to ear infections, punctured eardrums and impacted ear wax.

The case was published online on March 6 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.



https://www.livescience.com/64958-cotton-swab-ear-infection.html

When he came to the hospital, doctors gave him a CT scan to examine his brain; the images revealed two abscesses, or inflamed areas filled with pus, in the bones at the base of his skull, adjacent to his left ear canal. This signaled to doctors that although the infection may have begun inside the man's ear canal, it had spread beyond that area.

The man was diagnosed with "necrotizing otitis externa," or an infection in the soft tissue of the external auditory canal. (The external auditory canal is the portion of the ear canal from the outside of the ear to the eardrum.)

Cotton tip found

The man's symptoms, however, started long before his seizure occurred, according to the report. He had been experiencing pain and discharge from his left ear for about 10 days prior to the seizure and had experienced headaches on the left side of his head that were so severe, they made him vomit. In addition, he had started having trouble remembering people's names.

But the problems in the man's ear were nothing new; he told doctors that he had experienced left ear pain and hearing loss over the past five years and had been treated twice for severe ear infections on the same side.

Even though the infection didn't enter the man's brain — it didn't progress beyond the lining — it was clearly causing neurological symptoms. The man was rushed to the emergency room after experiencing a seizure and collapsing, according to the case report.

Charlton told Live Science that he suspects that either toxins from the bacterial infection or pressure on the brain from the infection triggered the seizure.

The 31-year-old man's troubles began when the tip of a cotton swab got stuck inside his ear canal, although he told doctors that he wasn't sure exactly how or when this happened.

A bit of cotton left in the ear may sound harmless, but in this case, it wreaked havoc.

The man developed a severe bacterial infection that started in his ear canal, progressed into the bone at the base of his skull and then moved upward, into the lining of his brain, the meninges, said lead author Dr. Alexander Charlton, a member of the team of ear, nose and throat specialists involved in the patient's treatment at University Hospital Coventry in England.

A Man Cleaned His Ears with a Cotton Swab. Then He Got an Infection in His Skull.

By Cari Nierenberg, Live Science Contributor | March 12, 2019 06:51am ET



Credit: BMJ Case Reports.


A man in England has sworn off cleaning his ears with cotton swabs after developing a potentially life-threatening infection that not only affected his hearing, but also spread to the lining of his brain and caused neurological symptoms, according to a new report of his case.

Quote from: islander on February 23, 2019, 06:04:45 PM

now i know nga ig-agaw mo magtagsa ni arnie, twice removed, sa ikapitong tuhod sa anay nga manghod sa butakal.

A Clarence Court Ostrich egg compared to a medium-size chicken egg. Photo: Tim Ireland/PA.

The Marcoses' political fortunes surged after Mr. Duterte was elected president two years ago. Mr. Duterte, who often describes himself as a fan of the late dictator, has credited the Marcos family with consolidating support for him in the north.

In 2016, he allowed Mr. Marcos's remains to be reburied in a heroes' cemetery in Manila, leading toprotests. Mr. Duterte has also backed Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s appeal of his narrow loss in the vice-presidential election that year.

A spokesman for Mr. Duterte, Salvador Panelo, said Friday that the president respected the court's decision. "While we note that there are still legal remedies available to Congresswoman Marcos, this latest development underscores that our country currently has a working and impartial justice system that favors no one," Mr. Panelo said.

One of the Marcoses' daughters, Imee Marcos, is running next year for the Philippine Senate. She recently refused demands by rights groups that she apologize for her father's atrocities, calling on the public to "move on."

The government successfully recovered some $658 million that the Marcoses held in Swiss financial institutions. But officials believe that is just a fraction of the roughly $10 billion they say the Marcoses stole from the Philippines.

Ferdinand Marcos's two-decade rule was ended by the 1986 "people power" revolution. The Marcoses were sent into exile in Hawaii, where Mr. Marcos died three years later.

The family was subsequently allowed to return home, where they re-established a base in their hometown, Ilocos Norte, in the northern Philippines.

The charges against Mrs. Marcos took more than a quarter-century to prosecute, largely because many people who could have been witnesses had died or were too old to testify.

The charges were filed in 1991, when state prosecutors accused Mrs. Marcos of creating private foundations in Switzerland and having financial interests in several companies when she was governor of Manila between 1978 and 1984. Prosecutors said the fake firms hid money that her family stole from the government.

The prosecutors wrapped up their presentation in 2015, but Mrs. Marcos's lawyers successfully delayed the hearings by not appearing in court.

Among those who testified against Mrs. Marcos was Frank Chaves, the country's late solicitor general, who filed a sworn statement that said Mrs. Marcos had used the foundations in Switzerland to hide millions of dollars of stolen wealth.

Loretta Ann Rosales, the country's former human rights commissioner, who was tortured as an activist in the 1970s for opposing Mr. Marcos, called the sentence a symbolic victory for the thousands who died resisting the dictatorship.

"I am literally jumping with joy," Ms. Rosales said in an interview. She said the ruling showed that there were still public corruption judges "who have helped keep the candles lit through these dark nights and pursued the truth."

She said the ruling also proved that the Marcoses and their cronies were guilty of raiding government coffers in order to enjoy a lavish lifestyle while millions of Filipinos lived in poverty.

Neither Mrs. Marcos nor her lawyers could immediately be reached for comment.

The court found her guilty of seven counts of graft, with each count punishable by a minimum of six years in prison. The ruling also automatically disqualifies Mrs. Marcos, who is a congresswoman, from holding any public office.

Mrs. Marcos did not appear in court for the sentencing, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. In a statement later Friday, Mrs. Marcos said her lawyer was studying the ruling and intended to file a motion asking the court to reconsider it.

The lengthy sentence drew praise from some leading opponents of Mr. Duterte, who has in the past praised the brutal dictatorship of Mrs. Marcos's deceased husband, Ferdinand Marcos.

Imelda Marcos Is Sentenced to Decades in Prison for Corruption
Imelda Marcos, the 89-year-old former first lady of the Philippines, was sentenced to 42 years in prison on Friday, but appeals and her advanced age make it unlikely that she will spend time behind bars.



Francis R Malasig/EPA, via Shutterstock


By Jason Gutierrez
Nov. 9, 2018

MANILA — A Philippine court on Friday sentenced Imelda R. Marcos, the country's flamboyant former first lady, to a minimum of 42 years in prison for creating private foundations to hide her unexplained wealth.

But it is unlikely that Ms. Marcos, a 89-year-old widow, will see any jail time. The court, which handles graft and public corruption cases, said the ruling could be appealed, and legal experts have said Ms. Marcos could fight a prison sentence because of her advanced age.

The sentence comes as Mrs. Marcos and her family have seen a political resurgence in the Philippines, having gained favor under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.

Happy New Year to my pig and monkey friends!

Anadir wan...

                                     
                               

Past forward 5 years...



                           

                     

Quote from: hubag bohol on June 02, 2012, 03:29:54 PM
Heaven can wait...

                                 

                         

Meanwhile, the sleeping, supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way would wake up. Like volcanoes, black holes alternate between peaceful dormancy and ferocious activity, depending on the surrounding conditions. Ours is in a quiet period. But the chaos of the merger would send cosmic gas swirling toward it, and cosmic gas is dinner to black holes. The resulting feast is a spectacular show. A disk of luminous, hot cosmic material swirls around the black hole at great speed, and bursts of high-energy radiation erupt from its center. Cautun says one serving of a Large Magellanic Cloud could lead our black hole to gobble up enough material to grow 10 times its current size.

And what would happen to us, if there is any kind of "us"—life in some form—on Earth when this all goes down?

Marius Cautun, an astrophysicist at Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, says that recent observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud have revealed that the galaxy has more mass than previously thought. Cautun and his fellow researchers decided to run computer simulations that took this new factor into account and fast-forwarded the conditions of our cosmic neighborhood. They tested multiple scenarios, making adjustments in mass, velocity, and other measures. In the end, the simulations predicted that in several hundred million years, the Large Magellanic Cloud will turn around and head straight for the center of the Milky Way.

"The collision between our galaxy and the [Large Magellanic Cloud] takes place in the majority of cases—over 93 percent," Cautun says.

The collision would be a slow showdown, unfolding over the course of billions of years. Stars from the Large Magellanic Cloud would ricochet like pinballs, dislodging some of the Milky Way's stars from their orbits. Our galaxy as a whole would survive, but some stars may be flung right out of the Milky Way, Cautun says.

But the Milky Way may face another galactic threat before that, from a different neighbor. A new study predicts our galaxy will collide with a galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud between 1 billion and 4 billion years from now.

This is a rather surprising change in schedule, considering that the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is close enough to be seen with the naked eye, is currently moving away from the Milky Way. What gives?

The Milky Way Could Crash Into Another Galaxy Billions of Years Earlier Than Predicted
Mark your calendars for a rendezvous with the Large Magellanic Cloud.


https://www.theatlantic.com/
MARINA KOREN
JAN 5, 2019


The Milky Way above a space observatory in ChileESO / S. BRUNIER


Ah, the Milky Way, our glittering home in the cosmos. Seen in an unencumbered night sky, far from the glare of city lights, it seems magnificent and eternal in its enormity. Nothing could shift this ancient web of stars, nothing could disturb its transcendent stoicism.

Except, that is, another galaxy. Galaxies orbit millions of light-years apart, but gravity, the immutable magnet of the cosmos, can pull them together, producing spectacular collisions that reshuffle stars. According to the leading theory, the Milky Way will collide with one of its closest neighbors, Andromeda, sometime between 6 billion and 8 billion years from now.

Quote from: islander on October 09, 2018, 12:09:11 PM

LIke this:

Aprub!

Buffett's approach is certainly one that's refreshing to hear — if maybe a little bit easier to believe when you're widely loved and worth about $80 billion — and it's just another example of the famed investor bucking expectations.

Whereas plenty of billionaires might seem focused on themselves, it's hard to argue that Buffett has let his success go to his head. As a member of The Giving Pledge, Buffett has already promised to give away more than 99 percent of his enormous fortune, and he famously requested to have Congress raise his taxes in a call for fairness.

Warren Buffett's Astonishing Run of Success

Focusing on how special Buffett is frequently centers on his pearls of wisdom or his charitable heart. But it's also worth keeping well in focus his truly incredible success as an investor over the years. Given how ideas like the efficient market hypothesis and modern portfolio theory continue to point toward the idea that it's almost impossible to beat the market, Buffett has made it a habit.

Despite the fact that there are very few fund managers out there who can beat the market for any sort of sustained period, Buffett's nearly 21 percent compounded annual gain over more than 50 years, according to Berkshire Hathaway's 2016 annual report, is beyond jaw-dropping. Whereas most managers are struggling to get 1 or 2 percentage points on the S&P 500, Buffett has more than doubled its returns and done so for more than half a century.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-measures-success-four-160053074.html

Prior to Warren Buffett, asset management seemed a pretty unlikely route to achieving folk hero status. However, not only has Buffett managed to defy any conception of what was actually possible for an investor by growing his fortune from almost nothing to about $80 billion in a single lifetime, but his folksy wisdom about the importance of living a balanced life has made him a beloved public figure.

That point really gets hammered home for readers of Alice Schroeder's biography of the Oracle of Omaha when she covers Buffett addressing students at Georgia Tech. When asked what truly defined success, Buffett responded that it was actually really simple: love. Here's what you should know about Buffett's surprising tip.

Can't Buy Me Love, or at Least so Says Buffett

Here's the full quote from "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life":

"Basically, when you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

"I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is; your life is a disaster.

"That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can't buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. But the only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love. But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get."

Warren Buffett Measures Success With This Four-Letter Word
Joel Anderson
December 28, 2018


Warren Buffett once told Georgia Tech students that the only true gauge of success was love.

Buffett's approach to life would appear to be reflected in his pledge to donate almost his entire fortune to charity.

Buffett has maintained a compounded annual return of nearly 21 percent — more than double that of the S&P 500 — over more than 50 years.

"Basically, when you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

"I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is; your life is a disaster.

"That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can't buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. But the only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love. But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get."

--Warren Buffett

Qualified candidates to succeed Mattis must look at Trump's abrupt and unilateral decisions on Syria and Afghanistan and ask if they want to be part of the continuing chaos.

"Chaos," incidentally, was Mattis "call sign" on the battlefield.

Mattis may have brought chaos to enemies, but he tried to keep a lid on it during his two years in the Trump administration.

What comes next? Already, Trump has stuffed his national security team with advisers who are likely to go along for the ride, including his National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, chief Middle East adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his nominee as US ambassador to the UN, Heather Nauert.

In the court of Donald Trump, there seems to be no room for independent thinkers.

Who knows what the Trump show will now produce.

Mattis was in favor of the Afghan policy that Trump announced last August, which included a troop increase and a "conditions-based" timeline for their withdrawal. This is all unraveling now.

What is particularly bizarre about these policy shifts is they do exactly what Trump repeatedly warned against during his campaign. They give America's enemies an early heads up about military plans and withdrawal dates.

During the campaign, Trump also critiqued the total US troop withdrawal from Iraq under Obama as paving the way for ISIS.

Now comes Mattis' resignation letter, which called out Trump on the need for "showing respect" to longtime allies.

Mattis reminded Trump that 29 NATO countries have fought "alongside" the US since 9/11.

Mattis also gently took Trump to task for his mollycoddling of Russia and its "authoritarian model."

In a final dig, Mattis reminded the president that he based his critique of Trump's policies on "over four decades of immersion in these issues." That was a not-so-subtle reminder that Trump is the first US president with no political or military service and a national security neophyte.

Trump won't listen, of course. But good for Mattis that he resigned on principle, a public servant in the court of Donald Trump who left with his reputation intact.

Final straws

A sign of the fraying relationship between Trump and Mattis came in October when Trump told Lesley Stahl on CBS's "60 Minutes" that Mattis was "sort of a Democrat."

Then came the twofer last week. First, Trump announced the pullout of 2,000 soldiers from Syria. This was an early Christmas present to American enemies such as Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad and his close allies Putin and Iran, as well as to ISIS and al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria. It also leaves the Kurdish forces that did almost all the fighting against ISIS on behalf of the US vulnerable to attack by the powerful Turkish military, which regards them as terrorists. In effect, Trump's decision risks abandoning an American ally on the battlefield. This was the decision that precipitated Mattis quitting.

And then came the reports of Trump's plan for a pullout of some 7,000 US troops from Afghanistan, about half the US troops in the country.

That is hardly a politically useful message to send to the struggling Afghan government, which will embark on a critical presidential election next year. Or to Afghanistan's many problematic neighbors. Or, indeed, to the Taliban, which recently started negotiating directly with the US.

A principal Taliban demand is the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. Trump styles himself as a great dealmaker, but he is giving the enemy half of what they want without exacting any concessions at all.

By contrast, earlier this month Mattis said publicly at the Reagan Defense Forum in California that "we simply cannot trust" Putin.

In June, Trump attended a much-ballyhooed summit in Singapore with Kim and later declared, "We fell in love."

This love affair has had scant impact on the dictator's nuclear ambitions. According to the New York Times last month, the North Koreans have accelerated their ballistic missile program at more than a dozen secret bases.

In June, Trump canceled joint US-South Korea military exercises, a staple of the alliance for decades. The move blindsided Mattis and was a gift to the North Koreans.

This all contrasted with Mattis' longstanding support of NATO. On his first day in office, Mattis made a point to call the NATO secretary-general, the British defense secretary and the Canadian defense minister to emphasize the continuing US commitment to the alliance. It is one of the most successful in modern history and contributed to the peaceful implosion of the Soviet Union.

NATO also proved its worth two days after the 9/11 attacks, when it invoked for the first time Article 5, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all members.

Seventeen years later, NATO continues to assist and train the Afghan army.

After treating longtime US allies with contempt, Trump has gone out of his way to give passes to and shower praise on longtime American adversaries.

Trump kowtowed to Putin at the Helsinki summit in July, saying that he didn't "see any reason why" Russia would be responsible for interfering in the US election, going against the consensus of his own intelligence community.

Tensions between Mattis and Trump amplify

Trump's idiosyncratic "America First" foreign policy has gathered steam during the past year and it created further tensions between the president and his secretary of defense.

In June, Trump attended a G7 summit in Canada. As he left the summit on Air Force One, Trump dumped on his host, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, accusing him on Twitter of being "very dishonest and weak" and making "false statements."

Trump feuded publicly with major Western allies at a NATO summit in Brussels a month later. Departing for his trip to the NATO summit and then on to the UK before a planned meeting with Putin, Trump said, "I have NATO. I have the UK, which is in, somewhat, turmoil. And I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all. Who would think?"

In June 2017, Trump endorsed the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, its neighbor and a US ally.

As the former CENTCOM commander, Mattis knew that in many ways the most important US base overseas is the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. It is not only the "forward" headquarters of CENTCOM but is also where the war against ISIS is coordinated. The massive base sprawls for miles in the Qatari desert and is home to around 11,000 American military servicemen and women.

Trump didn't seem to know about these facts or care about them when he applauded the Saudi blockade of Qatar. Mattis pushed back heavily on the blockade to no avail, while the Saudis have persisted with it, confident that Trump has their back.

A month after the beginning of the Qatar blockade, the US military brass was blindsided by a Trump tweet ordering the banning of transgender individuals serving in the US military.

This tweet came less than a month after Mattis had announced a six-month review of the matter.

Disagreements from the start

The Trump team and Mattis had substantive disagreements almost from the start about both personnel and policy.

Mattis wanted to appoint experienced, competent officials in the top spots at the Pentagon. For the key job of undersecretary for policy, Mattis wanted to bring on Mary Beth Long, a former CIA operations officer who had held senior jobs at the Pentagon under President George W. Bush. But during the campaign, Long had signed a "Never Trump" letter, and the Trump team nixed her.

For the same key position, Mattis then tried to install Ann Patterson, a recently retired top US diplomat. The White House rejected her. As US ambassador in Egypt, Patterson had performed typical functions with the democratically elected Islamist government of Mohammed Morsi, which made her suspect to Trump officials and supporters.

Clash with Obama team

Mattis ran Central Command (CENTCOM) for President Barack Obama, overseeing American military operations in the Middle East. He pressed for military action against targets in Iran after Iranian proxy forces killed American soldiers in Iraq in 2011. This sparked a furious debate at the White House. Obama wanted to complete the negotiations for an Iranian nuclear deal, and an attack on Iranian territory would surely undercut that.

Mattis was forced by the Obama team to retire from the military five months early as a result of his hostility to Iran. Mattis learned about his defenestration when an aide passed him a note saying the Pentagon was announcing his replacement at CENTCOM. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had bothered to give Mattis notice of his termination.

Surely this experience helped inform Mattis' choice to leave the Trump team on his own terms and make clear he was quitting on principle rather than being fired. After all, Mattis' close ally, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, learned of his likely firing on a trip to Africa. Tillerson hurried back only to be informed by a Trump tweet that he was out of job.

Storied military career

Mattis enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve when he was only 18 in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. He was commissioned a second lieutenant when he graduated from college in 1971.

Yet it was many years later that he first came to prominence. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, he led his Marines in the deepest aerial assault in US combat history near the de facto capital of the Taliban, Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. The Marines then seized the key Kandahar Airport.

Mattis, Gen. James Kelly, Trump's now-departing chief of staff, and Gen. Joseph Dunford, Trump's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have worked closely in various roles since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Mattis, Kelly and Dunford led the Marine force that invaded Iraq. They helped overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in a matter of weeks.

Mattis co-authored with Gen. David Petraeus the 2006 counterinsurgency manual that prompted a new US approach to the Iraq War, which had become a quagmire after the successful initial invasion. The manual was highly influential in military and national security circles and even became an unlikely New York Times bestseller.

The break between Mattis and Trump represents the most consequential split between those in the Trump administration who value the United States' international alliances and commitments and those, like Trump, who do not.

But Mattis is the longest-serving senior cabinet official to leave the administration, and he is resigning on principle, in particular, over how Trump treats America's international alliances.

Trump believes that longtime American allies are somehow "ripping off" the US rather than contributing to world order and helping the US continue as the world's only superpower. At the same time, Trump declares his "love" for the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and fawns over Russian President Vladimir Putin, longtime American adversaries.

None of this makes any sense, of course. And Mattis' resignation underlines the fact that Emperor Donald Trump I is wearing absolutely no clothes.

In 2003 during the Iraq War, Mattis explained in an email to a fellow officer why deep reading about the history of warfare can save American lives on the battlefield. "By reading, you learn through others' experience — generally a better way to do business — especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men," he wrote.

By contrast, Trump reads little except, perhaps, hagiographic works by his most hardcore supporters.

As a candidate, Trump said he received information about military affairs from "the shows" on TV. Fox News continues to be a key briefing source.

But the differences between Trump and Mattis go far beyond their preferred means of absorbing information. The break between Mattis and Trump represents the most consequential split between those in the Trump administration who value US international alliances and commitments and those, like Trump, who do not.

Of course, others went before Mattis. Trump's former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, understood American alliances and commitments, having served alongside allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also led the fight within the administration not to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan, which was Trump's first instinct.

Bromance over burgers

Trump loves this kind of smack and, before their bromance faded, he would invite Mattis to the White House to eat a casual dinner of burgers and to shoot the breeze about the state of the world.

In picking Mattis to be his Secretary of Defense, Trump said he had found his "Gen. George Patton."

Because of his ferocity on the battlefield, Mattis is nicknamed "Mad Dog," a moniker Trump rejoiced in but Mattis himself doesn't love.

Mattis is also a "warrior monk." An American four-star general is likely to move a dozen times during a long career, bringing family and household effects from one post to the next. Gen. Mattis, who has never married, instead moved his books — all 7,000 of them.

After the meeting, Trump came out to talk to the press. Framed by the imposing, white columns of his Bedminster estate, Trump posed for pictures with Mattis.

Reporters shouted questions at Trump about whether Mattis was being considered for a cabinet job. Trump replied, "He's just a brilliant, wonderful man. What a career! We're going to see what happens, but he is the real deal."

During Mattis' first interview as Secretary of Defense on CBS's "Face the Nation," host John Dickerson asked Mattis, "What keeps you awake at night?"

Without missing a beat, Mattis replied, "Nothing. I keep other people awake at night."

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 0018 GMT (0818 HKT) December 24, 2018





(CNN)Few who work at senior levels in the administration of President Donald Trump leave with their reputations unsullied. Even fewer leave on their own terms.

Jim Mattis is one of the few.

In the wake of Mattis' resignation as defense secretary Thursday, it's worth recalling that the relationship between Trump and Mattis started well. Mattis met Trump for the first time at Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey in mid-November 2016 to talk with the President-elect about the Secretary of Defense job.

'Sacramentals'

According to the statement, the bells are "sacramentals" and "sacred artifacts" that "belong in the church, not in a museum."

Zubiri's proposal "does violence to history and the sacred character and purpose of the Balangiga bells" and "must be rejected," it said.

The Senate leader said he respected the Church leaders' position but questioned their attitude. "If they don't agree, then so be it. But how arrogant are they to say that this is disrespecting the history of our country?" he told reporters.

"We're just asking it to be lent to the National Museum so that more Filipino people would know the history of our country," he said. "It's only temporary."

Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone supported the clergy, saying the bells' role in history "will not be diminished if they are placed in the Balangiga church." —WITH A REPORT FROM MARLON RAMOS
--https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1063117/not-one-bell-less-samar-diocese-nixes-zubiri-plea#ixzz5ZjXbO6K9

Zubiri resolution

US officials formally handed over the three bells to the Philippines on Tuesday upon their arrival in Manila. The bells would be brought back to Balangiga in ceremonies to be attended by President Duterte on Saturday.

Zubiri filed Resolution No. 965 to keep a bell in the museum to give more Filipinos a chance to see one of the artifacts "and be reminded of the role it played in one of the bloodiest chapters of the Philippine-American War."

It would also make the bell "accessible to the countless students who make school-sanctioned visits to the National Museum every year, providing them an opportunity to learn from the struggles of our forefathers through the study of this historically significant property," he said.

In a statement issued by the Diocese of Borongan on Thursday, Bishop Crispin Varquez and his priests said they "collectively object to and strongly stand against the transfer of one or all of the bells of Balangiga from their historical and rightful habitat, which is the Parish Church of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr, in Balangiga."

"Any effort aimed at such a transfer is a disrespectful mangling of history and the right of the Catholic faithful of Balangiga to their private property," they said.

By: Leila B. Salaverria, Tina G. Santos - @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:42 AM December 14, 2018





Just days after their return to the country, the bells of Balangiga are ringing a new controversy, this time between a senator and the Diocese of Borongan in Eastern Samar where the bells originated more than 100 years ago.

Church leaders said it would be "disrespectful" to keep any of the three bells outside Balangiga town in Eastern Samar, where they belong. Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri, who filed a resolution asking to display one of the bells in the National Museum, said the clergy were being "arrogant" in their statement.

The bells were taken by American troops as war trophies in retaliation against the people of Balangiga for the Sept. 28, 1901, attack on a US Army garrison in the town that killed 48 soldiers. One of the bells was used to signal the attack, according to historian Rolando Borrinaga.

If it is still a draw after that, two "blitz" games are played - with just five minutes per player and three added seconds per turn. In such circumstances, mistakes are much easier to make.

In the unlikely event that after two sets of blitz, the title is still tied, a sudden death variety called "Armageddon" is played.

In this chess game type, there will be a winner - a draw means a victory for the player wielding the black game pieces. To compensate, white gets more time on his clock - a minute more, but the pace is still as fast as a blitz game.

The tie-breaker will be a series of increasingly fast games.

If victorious Caruana would become the first US world champion in four decades
Carlsen will be seen as the favourite as he is considered an expert at rapid chess.

However, former grand master Garry Kasparov tweeted that he thought the draw offer indicated the Norwegian was losing his nerve.

In the ordinary games, each player starts with a generous time bank of 100 minutes, and more time is added as the game progresses. That means it is possible to watch a grandmaster do nothing except stare at the board for several minutes.

But in the tie-breakers, four games are played with just 25 minutes on the clock, and 10 seconds added after each move.

But in Wednesday's tie-breaker, he will again face a fierce title defence from Carlsen, who has been champion since 2013 and is the top-ranked player in the world.

On top of the prestige that comes with the title, the pair are also battling over a €1m (£880,000) cash prize.

The two players were locked in a soundproof box at the play venue for some three hours before Carlsen offered his opponent a draw.

The game's moves were live-streamed with commentary from other chess grandmasters across platforms including YouTube and popular video game streaming site Twitch.tv.

The 12-draw series in London makes it one of the most fiercely contested in history.

3 hours ago



A clash of kings: Carlsen, right, has been defending his title from Caruana


Two chess grandmasters have spent November locked in stalemate, with the world chess championship up for grabs.

After 12 games and 12 draws, American Fabiano Caruana is seeking to take the title from Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.

After drawing their final match in London on Monday, they head to a series of fast-paced tie-breakers, culminating in a game type known as "Armageddon".

If he wins, Caruana will be the first US world champion since Bobby Fischer in 1972.

"I think the most exciting thing about our study is that we show that frogs are such a strong animal group. They survived from the mass extinction that completely erased dinosaurs and boomed back quickly," he said. "However, frog species are declining nowadays because humans are destroying their habitats. Does that mean humans are making a huge extinction event even stronger than this one? We need to think about it."

Other study co-authors are Yan-Jie Feng and Dan Liang of Sun Yat-Sen University, David Hillis and David Cannatella of the University of Texas at Austin and David Wake of the University of California, Berkeley.
The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Youth Talent Support Program and the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars of China.


http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2017/07/extinction-event-that-wiped-out-dinosaurs-cleared-way-for-frogs.php

The study also indicates that global frog distribution tracks the breakup of the supercontinents, beginning with Pangea about 200 million years ago and then, Gondwana, which split into South America and Africa. The data suggests frogs likely used Antarctica, not yet encased in ice sheets, as a stepping stone from South America to Australia.

Blackburn is eager to use the new phylogeny as a roadmap for the fossil record, particularly for frogs that occurred in the Cretaceous.

"This sets up expectations of what we should or shouldn't find," he said. "It's exciting to think about what discoveries could lay ahead in the frog fossil record."

While the survival and subsequent comeback of frogs testifies to their resilience, Zhang said, their current vulnerability to disease, habitat loss and degradation is cause for concern.

The close resemblance of distantly related frog species around the world, a factor of frog evolution and biology that has long confounded scientists, might be illuminated by the simultaneous evolution of major frog clades, Blackburn said. After the extinction event decimated ecosystems and stimulated a reset, modern frogs may have faced similar evolutionary paths.

"You could easily go to Central Africa, the Philippines and Ecuador and find what look like the same frogs that might have last shared a common ancestor 120 million years ago," he said. "These different lineages seem to have diversified in similar ways after the extinction."

While the extinction event opened new opportunities for frogs, notably leading to the evolution of tree frogs worldwide, it snuffed out many frog lineages, particularly in North America, Blackburn said.

"Except for three species, all other North American frogs are 'post-dinosaur' colonists," Blackburn said. "If you could travel back to the time of T. rex in North America, there would be frogs, but the chorus you would hear at night would have been nothing like you'd hear today. They're not even the same families."

The researchers then used fossil records to translate genetic differences between frog lineages into dates at which they likely diverged from one another. When the analyses pointed to a simultaneous evolution of the three major frog clades — Hyloidea, Microhylidae and Natatanura — the researchers initially eyed the finding with skepticism, said Peng Zhang, a corresponding study author and professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Sun Yat-Sen University in China.

"Nobody had seen this result before," he said. "We redid the analysis using different parameter settings, but the result remained the same. I realized the signal was very strong in our data. What I saw could not be a false thing."

When examined in the context of the evolution of other animals, however, the finding makes sense, Blackburn said.

"Looking at bird or mammal phylogenies, we can see a reflection of Earth's history — its climatic and geologic events," he said. "You'd expect these major events — mass extinction and the breakup of continents — would have impact on frog evolution and that divergences between major lineages would relate to those in some respect. We see that in this phylogeny."

The speed at which frogs diversified after the asteroid or comet impact that triggered a massive die-off of most plant and animal life suggests that the survivors were probably filling up new niches on Earth, Blackburn said.

"We think there were massive alterations of ecosystems at that time, including widespread destruction of forests," he said. "But frogs are pretty good at eking out a living in microhabitats, and as forests and tropical ecosystems rebounded, they quickly took advantage of those new ecological opportunities."

Frogs rose to become one of the most diverse groups of vertebrates, with more than 6,700 described species. But sparse genetic data has hindered scientists from reliably tracing their evolutionary history and the links between frog families.

Blackburn joined researchers from Sun Yat-Sen University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley to tackle the mystery of frog evolution with a dataset seven times larger than that used in prior research. The team sampled a core set of 95 nuclear genes from 156 frog species, combining this with previously published genetic data on an additional 145 species to produce the strongest-supported evolutionary tree, or phylogeny, to date. The tree represents all 55 known families of frogs and generates a new timeline of frog evolution.

The mass extinction that obliterated three-fourths of life on Earth, including non-avian dinosaurs, set the stage for the swift rise of frogs, a new study shows.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers presented a new tree of life for frogs that helps solve longstanding riddles about relationships and sheds light on the history and pace of frog evolution.

Unexpectedly, their analyses showed three major lineages of modern frogs — about 88 percent of living species — appeared simultaneously, evolving on the heels of the extinction event that marked the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Paleogene 66 million years ago. Previous research suggested a more ancient origin to many of these modern frogs.

"Frogs have been around for well over 200 million years, but this study shows it wasn't until the extinction of the dinosaurs that we had this burst of frog diversity that resulted in the vast majority of frogs we see today," said study co-author David Blackburn, associate curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus. "This finding was totally unexpected."

Despite Trump's message on Thanksgiving in which he claimed, as the Independent transcribed, that "this country is so much stronger now than when I took office you wouldn't believe it," foreign rulers perceive Trump as laughably weak, according to Robinson.

"In Riyadh, they must be laughing at President Trump. In Pyongyang, too, and in Tehran. In Beijing and, of course, in Moscow, they must be laughing until it hurts," Robinson wrote. "They look at Washington and they don't see a champion of freedom and human rights. They see a preening, clueless clown."

Why is Trump willing to ignore the brutal murder of a U.S.-based journalist by a foreign government?

"The Saudi royals got on Trump's good side by hosting his first foreign visit and fawning over him as if he, too, were an absolute monarch. North Korea's Kim Jong Un was gracious and deferential to Trump at their summit — and now continues his nuclear and ballistic missile programs unmolested. Russia's Vladimir Putin complimented Trump's political skill — and escaped any meaningful punishment for meddling in the 2016 election," Robinson recounted. "There cannot be a strongman ruler in the world who fails to see the pattern — and the opportunity."



Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman (l) with Donald Trump (r).
Mark Wilson / Getty Images

"Trump's reaction — or non-reaction — to the Saudi regime's brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe," Robinson wrote in a Thanksgiving Day column. "It shows them that if you just shower Trump with over-the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo jumbo and make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made goods in the future, he will literally let you get away with murder."



Pulitzer-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.
Alex Wong / Getty Images


Khashoggi's killing — during which he was reportedly suffocated with a plastic bag over his head and then dismembered — was allegedly audio-recorded inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. But as the Inquisitr reported, Trump has refused to listen to that tape, even though it is in possession of the CIA.

In the statement issued Tuesday, as CNN reported, Trump said that the U.S. will do nothing beyond already-imposed sanctions against 17 individual Saudis in response to the October 2 slaying of Khashoggi. The Central Intelligence Agency has concluded with "high confidence" that Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered the murder of the journalist, per a separate CNN report. Khashoggi was an outspoken critic of bin Salman's rule and often expressed his views in columns for the Washington Post.

But Trump has shrugged off the CIA findings, saying in a statement that, "it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn't!"

But Trump's response, according to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson — who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2009 — shows only that bin Salman, and other foreign rulers, know that they can have their way with Trump by appealing to his vanity.

https://www.inquisitr.com/5175432/donald-trump-preening-clueless-clown/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=yahoo&utm_campaign=homepage
November 23, 2018


Foreign Leaders Look At Donald Trump And See 'Preening, Clueless Clown' Says Pulitzer-Winning 'WaPo' Columnist


Despite Donald Trump's own claim that America has become stronger since he took office, foreign leaders see him as easily manipulated, a top 'Washington Post' columnist writes.



CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES BUZZWORTHY


Jonathan Vankin


A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post says that Donald Trump's statement earlier this week in response to the murder of United States-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabian agents has only made foreign leaders — especially those leaders of authoritarian regimes — see Trump as a laughingstock, easily manipulated by flattery.