At long last, Overwatch’s gauntlet-wearing villain Doomfist is seeing the light of day. The new character has been teased since before publisher Blizzard even released Overwatch, and now, players can finally try him out on Overwatch’s public test region.
Doomfist, whose real name is Akande Ogundimu, is a cybernetic offense character whose hand cannon gauntlet knocks opponents down. Blizzard writes, “In addition to dealing ranged damage with his Hand Cannon, Doomfist can slam the ground, knock enemies into the air and off balance, or charge into the fray with his Rocket Punch. When facing a tightly packed group, Doomfist leaps out of view, then crashes down to earth with a spectacular Meteor Strike.”
His Seismic Slam move, where he leaps forward and smashes opponents toward him, looks like it will be particularly fun on attack maps.



Here’s his trailer. And, spoiler... he’s not voiced by Terry Crews:



Overwatch lore paints Doomfist as a legendary villain, the leader of more nefarious characters like Reaper and Widowmaker. On Tuesday, publisher Blizzard gave players a bit of history that foretold Doomfist’s long-anticipated arrival. In Overwatch’s world, there had been a prison break at the maximum-security facility where Doomfist was locked up.
We first heard of Doomfist in Overwatch’s 2014 cinematic trailer, where a child visiting an Overwatch museum sees Doomfist’s gauntlet showcased behind glass. In the intervening months, players encountered a half dozen red herrings in anticipation of Doomfist’s release: nearly every mysterious new hero was preceded by whispers of Doomfist. Prior to the robot Orisa’s release, a giant fist-shaped dent in a Numbani wall had players sure that Doomfist was coming—but he wasn’t just yet.
We can’t wait to try him out.

Acknowledging that Senate Republicans may not be able to pass their ObamaCare repeal legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning that action will then have to be taken to stabilize insurance markets.
“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to private health insurance markets must occur,” McConnell said a Rotary Club meeting in Kentucky on Thursday, according to multiple reports.


If the legislation is put aside, Republicans would need to negotiate a deal with Democrats on stabilizing insurance markets.
McConnell reiterated on Thursday that taking “no action is not an alternative.”
“We've got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state,” McConnell said, according to the Associated Press.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted McConnell's comments, saying the Kentucky Republican “opened the door to bipartisan solutions.”
"It’s encouraging that Sen. McConnell today acknowledged that the issues with the exchanges are fixable,” Schumer said. “As we’ve said time and time again, Democrats are eager to work with Republicans to stabilize the markets and improve the law. At the top of the list should be ensuring cost-sharing payments are permanent, which will protect health care for millions.”
Republicans have campaigned for years on repealing and replacing ObamaCare, arguing the Affordable Care Act is “failing” and in a “death spiral.”
But they've struggled to coalesce around a plan that can win over both conservative and moderate factions, who remain deeply divided on key issues like the Medicaid expansion.

Democrats and critics have also seized on a politically damaging Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, which predicted that under the legislation an additional 22 million Americans would become uninsured over a decade.
GOP leadership had hoped to vote on a healthcare bill last month, but delayed the move as nine GOP senators came out against their legislation. With a 52-seat majority, leadership can only afford to lose two senators and still let Vice President Pence break a tie.
“Either Republicans will agree and change the status quo, or the markets will continue to collapse and we'll have to sit down with Senator Schumer. And my suspicion is that any negotiation with the Democrats would include none of the reforms that we would like to make, both on the market side and the Medicaid side,” McConnell warned after a closed-door meeting with President Trump and Senate Republicans last month.
Several Senate Republicans have floated passing a bill aimed at a short-term stabilization of the insurance markets as senators continue to negotiate, but that idea has largely failed to gain traction.

Florida Governor Rick Scott recently signed a bill which enforces the stand-your-ground law and makes it harder to convict murderers who claim they were acting in self defense, even when they started the fight. Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch found the new law to be unconstitutional, and demonstrated his point in a law article referencing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. 


Under the new law, prosecutors (representing the dead victim) would have to prove the shooter was NOT acting in self defense (even if he or she began the conflict), rather than requiring the legal defense to prove the shooter’s innocence in front of a jury. It's an even more powerful version of the same legislation George Zimmerman’s legal team successfully invoked after he killed Trayvon Martin in 2012.

 Judge Hirsch wrote in his ruling that "as a matter of constitutional separation of powers, that procedure cannot be legislatively modified," referring to the bill signed by Governor Scott. To demonstrate his point, he references the courtroom scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where Harry is up against a powerful political figure who uses his position in both the executive and judicial branches to deny him a fair trial.

cradit   http://the-daily.buzz/a/a-judge-just-used-harry-potter-to-show-how-stand-your-ground-laws-are-unconstitu

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 startled many people out of their sleep in western Montana early Thursday. The shallow quake was felt for hundreds of miles from its epicenter southeast of Lincoln, including in parts of neighboring states and in Canada.
"We have no reports of injuries due to the earthquake at this time," member station Montana Public Radio reports. "Shockwaves are still being felt with decreasing intensity in parts of western Montana."
Thursday's earthquake was the strongest to hit western Montana in years; it was slightly stronger than a 5.6 magnitude quake that hit a nearby area in July of 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey says.
Some alarmed residents said via Twitter that they woke to fears that an intruder was in their house; others said their dogs had seemed to sense the oncoming quake — and jumped on their owners to seek safety.



"It was strong enough to wake people up across a wide area, and was felt along a line more than 500 miles long, from Billings to Spokane, Wash.," Montana Public Radio's Eric Whitney reports for our Newscast unit.
Residents reported waking to the sound of pans clattering around and the feeling of their houses being shaken.
"Woke me and my parakeet up," Terry MacPheat wrote on the MPR Facebook posting about the quake, adding, "bed was shaking like something from an Excorcist movie!"


Another MPR listener, David Buckingham, reported, "I was awake here in Bozeman, sitting at my desk, when it happened; it felt like I was on a boat in choppy seas, and all the birds in my neighborhood simultaneously made a ruckus and flew away."
At least 10 measurable temblors hit Montana from 12:30 to 1:31 a.m. Thursday, with the last two having magnitudes of 3.9 and 4.4, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The quake's epicenter was some 230 miles from Yellowstone National Park — and because it was felt from far away, the shaking led some in the area to wonder whether the Yellowstone supervolcano was finally emerging from its slumber. But the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory's most recent volcano alert level is listed as normal, and the park service has said that while the area normally has more than 1,000 earthquakes each year, its experts predict a large eruption "very unlikely" to strike in the next 1,000-10,000 years.
More details about the overnight quake from the USGS:

"The location and focal mechanism solution of this earthquake are consistent with right-lateral faulting in association with faults of the Lewis and Clark line, a prominent zone of strike-slip, dip slip and oblique slip faulting trending east-southeast from northern Idaho to east of Helena, Montana, southeast of this earthquake."

cradit  http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/06/535741701/montana-earthquake-is-felt-for-hundreds-of-miles-early-thursday

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made Chicago Public Schools the first big-city system to require a job, a college acceptance letter, gap-year program enrollment or enlistment in the military as a condition of graduating from high school. Aside from the obvious issues with the school system potentially withholding a diploma even if a student earned it, detractors say Chicago doesn’t have the resources to pull it off, mostly because of the mayor.
The Washington Post spoke with school administrators about the plan, which was approved by the Board of Education in late May, and will be begin to affect incoming sophomores planning to graduate in 2020. Graduation rates have improved in Chicago since 2012, with nearly 74 percent of students finishing high school in four years, but they are still below the national average of 83%. Last year, the district laid off 1,000 teachers and staff members.
In 2015, the Chicago Tribune reported that the financial issues faced by CPS were largely the fault of Emanuel, who delayed making payments to teacher pensions or searching for new revenue streams, and dropped fiscal responsibility measures implemented in the mid-’90s, when the state gave Chicago’s mayor control over the district following emergency state management. The Tribune notes Emanuel was just one in a line of mayors who failed the needs of CPS, but his decisions have put the district in a difficult position to implement this new requirement.
Students who want to apply for college or look for a job need help planning, which would traditionally be the job of a school guidance counselor. But in Chicago’s poorest areas, one guidance counselor might have a caseload of 400 students. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, told the Post that the requirement doesn’t consider what will happen to students who can’t get their diploma:

“It sounds good on paper, but the problem is that when you’ve cut the number of counselors in schools, when you’ve cut the kind of services that kids need, who is going to do this work?” said Lewis. “If you’ve done the work to earn a diploma, then you should get a diploma. Because if you don’t, you are forcing kids into more poverty.”

Also, as the Chicago Tribune reports, every CPS student is guaranteed admittance into the City Colleges of Chicago community college system, which essentially means that they’re already fulfilling this requirement. However, city colleges are struggling with budgetary issues, too, that would make a sudden influx of students actually applying difficult to manage:

The City Colleges system has continued to struggle with “softened” enrollment numbers, as the system also looks at burning cash reserves and making cuts because of the state’s protracted budget impasse.
At the same time, the system has said it has seen larger numbers of incoming students “without the required academic preparation,” which has led to higher demand for remedial courses and support services.

Smaller magnet schools have had some success with programs designed to get kids thinking about potential careers and college, like Crane Medical Preparatory High School, which directs students towards the health-care industry. They provide connections to internships, college visits, and walk students and their parents through college application and financial aid processes.
But not all students want or are able to go to college or immediately set off on a career, and high-risk populations may have be facing issues outside the control of school administrators. Holding back a diploma they’ve earned based on factors outside of CPS’s purview is a further obstacle to a student’s success.
Despite the criticism and the lack of foreseeable aid for schools to pull of his plan, Mayor Emanuel told the Post that the two years schools have to get ready for the initiative is sufficient:

“I know what’s not good for kids is allowing them to go into a job market and the rest of their lives with a high school diploma when everything tells you that they need more than that,” Emanuel said.

cradit  http://jezebel.com/chicago-will-withhold-high-school-diplomas-unless-stude-1796638840

Franceplans to outlaw all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, its new environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, has announced.
It will also ban any "new project to use petrol, gas or coal", as well as shale oil, by that date.
The radical measures were unveiled at a press conference this morning as part of French president Emmanuel Macron's plans to make France a carbon neutral country by 2050 and "make the planet great again".



Mr Hulot, a former star wildlife TV presenter, announced "the end of the sale of petrol or vehicles between now and 2040."
Mr Macron promised to take a lead in fighting climate change after US president president Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords. Aping the US president's campaign slogan, Mr Macron promised to "make the planet great again" and invited American climate scientists to flock to France


 Asked about Mr Trump's withdrawal, Mr Hulot said France intended to pursue "climate diplomacy" by supporting non-governmental organisations. "I don't confuse the brutal attitdue of the Trump administration with the US state of mind," he said.


cradit   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/06/france-ban-petrol-diesel-vehicles-2040/

Wayne Rooney is set to be replaced as Manchester United captain by Michael Carrick.
The veteran midfielder, who had his testimonial at Old Trafford earlier this year, is reportedly set to take the armband with Rooney's exit edging closer.
Rooney is set to leave United for his boyhood club Everton in the coming weeks.
But Jose Mourinho is hoping to land £100million target Romelu Lukaku as part of the deal, meaning negotiations are poised to drag on.
Rooney has been held the United armband since the summer of 2014

 

 

 

But according to The Sun , Carrick, 35, will now take the reigns with Spanish midfielder Ander Herrera as his No.2.
Carrick signed a one-year contract extension with United during last season.
Rooney's future is set to be confirmed in the coming weeks after Everton chairman Bill Kenwright held talks with Rooney’s adviser Paul Stretford in London.


Kenwright is desperate to see Rooney back in an Everton shirt, 13 years after sanctioning the England star’s controversial £27m transfer to United.
But Everton are unwilling to shatter their pay structure to land Rooney, which is why they want United to subsidise more than half of his huge salary.
United are likely to have to pay around £180,000 of Rooney’s weekly wage next season for the Everton deal to go ahead, meaning a whopping payout of £9.36m.

It started with a perfectly pleasant Fourth of July tweet.
Singer Kelly Clarkson honored America's birthday by giving a shout-out to U.S. service members fighting the good fight.

 Then, out of nowhere, a troll appeared in the tweet's thread (shocking, I know).


"You're fat," user @Euger23 replied — a retort neither patriotic nor relevant, if you ask me.
Clarkson, who has amassed over 11 million followers on the social media platform, attracts trolls left and right. She has much better things to do than respond to every last Joe Schmo who clearly needs a hobby or two.
But Clarkson decided a simple, four-word response would do the trick this time.

"And still fucking awesome," the singer responded

 

 

Clarkson honestly just low-key gave the internet a master class in how to respond to trolls. So grab a pen and paper, and keep these three pointers in mind the next time you're needlessly harassed online.

1. For starters, don't stoop to their level. Unless you're a playground bully in first grade, you should know better.
2. Make sure you don't perpetuate any harmful messaging. Clarkson didn't fight back against being called fat because there really wasn't a need to. "Fat" is not a dirty word, after all; it's an adjective. Our culture often weaponizes it as an insult when it shouldn't be.
3. And then cap it off with the perfect emoji. Because nothing says "I'm above your attempt at name-calling" than a tongue-out, winking smiley face.

As for Clarkson — a happy, chart-topping, literal rockstar of a mom — she'll be just fine.
"It’s more if I’m happy and I’m confident and feeling good," Clarkson once responded to being body-shamed in 2015. "That’s always been my thing. And more so now, since having a family — I don’t seek out any other acceptance."


cradit  

At first, only a few states, like California, Kentucky, and Virginia, said no, denouncing the commission as “a waste of taxpayer money and a distraction from the real threats to the integrity of our elections today.” But over the holiday weekend, opposition to Kobach’s request dramatically increased from both red and blue states. As of Wednesday afternoon, 45 states have refused to turn over private voter data to Trump’s commission. “I’ve been studying America’s election administration since 2000, and I’ve rarely seen a firestorm like this,” wrote MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III.  
Twenty states are refusing to give Kobach any data and 25 states are handing over only limited public information on voters (a full list of the states appears below). Even Kobach couldn’t hand over Social Security numbers to himself because they’re not publicly available in Kansas. Six states have not yet responded. 
Most notable is the strong opposition from Republican secretaries of state from red states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arizona. Mississippi’s Delbert Hosemann told Trump and Kobach to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico”; Louisiana’s Tom Schedler said “the President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release”; Arizona’s Michele Reagan blasted “this hastily organized experiment.”
Also notable is the opposition from members of Trump’s own election commission, like Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, who said, “Indiana law doesn’t permit the Secretary of State to provide the personal information requested by Secretary Kobach,” and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, who told Kobach, “Upon review, the request is denied.” One member of the commission, Maryland Deputy Secretary of State Luis Borunda, has already resigned.
The outpouring of bipartisan opposition shows why Trump’s sham election commission should be disbanded before it does any more damage. The commission was set up for one purpose—to spread false information about voter fraud, like Trump’s gigantic lie that millions of people voted illegally, in order to build support for policies that make it more difficult to vote. Kobach and his ilk have long advocated for suppressive policies like strict voter-ID laws, documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and voter purges, along with weakening landmark voting-rights laws like the Voting Rights Act and National Voter Registration Act.

The commission was never going to be able to prove that millions of people voted illegally because that never happened. At most, there were a few hundred illegal votes cast in 2016. Even if this was a good-faith effort to study America’s election system, the commission won’t have access to reliable data after so many states rebelled against Kobach’s request. “Most likely, the results of low-quality matches using the voter files that do arrive will significantly overstate the amount of double voting and voting by noncitizens,” writes Charles Stewart in Politico. “If a poor match occurs, the list maintenance programs of the states will be unfairly impugned, lowering the confidence of voters for no good reason. This is why no one I have talked to who runs elections, Democrat or Republican, is happy with Kobach’s request.”
Representative Marc Veasey, co-chair of the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus, has introduced legislation to ensure that no taxpayer funds are spent on Trump’s commission. “The commission’s mission to study non-existent voter fraud cases has nothing to do with ballot security and everything to do with voter suppression and discrimination,” he said.
We need a commission to investigate the impact of Russian hacking and voter suppression on the 2016 election. We don’t need a disgraced commission on election integrity that only threatens the integrity of our elections.

The full list:

States that won’t comply with Kobach’s request: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
States that will hand over only select public voter data: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia.
States that haven’t responded yet: Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey.

cradit
 https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administrations-voter-suppression-plans-are-backfiring-badly/

Alexis Sanchez is demanding a staggering £400,000-a-week to sign a new deal at Arsenal.
It leaves Arsenal at a contract stand-off as they have so far offered in excess of £275,000-a-week but Sanchez holds the aces as he has got one year left on his current deal.
Manchester City are keen to sign him but Arsenal are desperate not to sell to a Premier League rival.
Bayern Munich have been scared off by Sanchez's demands and there is a growing feeling he is ready to see out his contract and leave on a free.
Arsenal would then face a dilemma over whether to cash in or gamble on him signing during his final year.
It is a major dilemma for Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger but the figures reveal the reasons as to why they have not been able to tie down Sanchez

Mesut Ozil has been asking for £350,000-a-week and he is also entering the final year of his contract.
Arsenal have confirmed the record £52m signing of Alexandre Lacazette and that will show their ambition and perhaps persuade Sanchez and Ozil.
They have yet to receive any firm offers despite interest from Everton and West Ham.

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Alexis Sanchez is demanding a staggering £400,000-a-week to sign a new deal at Arsenal.
It leaves Arsenal at a contract stand-off as they have so far offered in excess of £275,000-a-week but Sanchez holds the aces as he has got one year left on his current deal.
Manchester City are keen to sign him but Arsenal are desperate not to sell to a Premier League rival.
Bayern Munich have been scared off by Sanchez's demands and there is a growing feeling he is ready to see out his contract and leave on a free.
Arsenal would then face a dilemma over whether to cash in or gamble on him signing during his final year.
It is a major dilemma for Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger but the figures reveal the reasons as to why they have not been able to tie down Sanchez.

Mesut Ozil has been asking for £350,000-a-week and he is also entering the final year of his contract.
Arsenal have confirmed the record £52m signing of lexandre Lacazette and that will show their ambition and perhaps persuade Sanchez and Ozil.
They have yet to receive any firm offers despite interest from Everton and West Ham.
But Lucas Perez, who has barely played since arriving last summer, could rejoin Deportivo La

Coruna in the next few days.


But Wenger insists Lacazette's arrival will give them greater options up front.
Wenger said: "We are very happy to have Alexandre join our group. He has shown over a number of years that he can score goals and that he is a very efficient finisher.
"As well, he has very interesting technical qualities and a strong character. So he is a guy who is a great addition for us, and someone who will help us challenge at the top level this season


cradit    http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/alexis-sanchez-demanding-400000-week-10744914