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It reaches a tipping point, then collapses. The 2007 financial crisis was the culmination of two decades of Americans using debt to fund a lifestyle they couldn't afford, inspired by a sliver of society who could.
Policies necessary to combat the financial crisis kept the trend going. Almost everyone would be worse off without quantitative easing, but no one gained more than the richest group of Americans who own the most stocks and bonds.
The result is a three-front storm. After wages stagnate for two decades, the financial crisis takes away the last of what many Americans held onto – the stuff they bought with debt. What remains is a new economy that offers even less employment, income, and stability, and more inequality.
The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Brexit, and the rise of Donald Trump are ideologically different, but each represents a group of people shouting, "Stop the ride, I want off." And they're shouting for the same reason: An economy that set a precedent of working for them in the three decades after World War II doesn't anymore, and they're tired of it.
Almost none of this was intentional. It's just what happened, unplanned and unforeseen. "One damn thing after another," a historian once said of his field.
Pat Kilburg is committed to the arts.
As founder of Greenville Center for Creative Arts, she encourages others to embrace their inner artist, even as she continues to learn and share her own art.
Kilburg says the creative work flow, as much as the result, is what brings her happiness these days. She can often be found at the Village of West Greenville, taking in inspiration.
“I love to work in my studio on Pendleton Street, visit our community art center, Greenville Center for Creative Arts, and walk the shops and businesses along the way,” she says.
Real beauty can be seen in a person’s integrity and compassion, according to Kilburg.
As the for future, Kilburg plans to continue creating and encouraging others to follow suit.
“I want to learn more, make art and chase excellence,” she says.
photo by Francis Delapena Maria Dahvana Headley: Did someone just tell her a joke? Nope. She always has a smile on her face.
A first glance at Seattle-based playwright Maria Dahvana Headley brings the word "pixie" to mind. She's a small woman, somewhat exotic looking, with short brown hair, bright shining eyes and a smile that she wears almost permanently. She said her smile is partly responsible for her behind-the-scenes career as opposed to a life on stage.
"I was too smiley to be an actress," she said, of course, smiling. But there is so much more to the 30-year-old Headley than just her pretty face.
Raised in Marsing, Headley spent her high-school summers working in what she called "random capacities" for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, including working as an apprentice and in the costume shop.
"One summer, I was a props mistress of some sort," she said. It was that summer that she met Tom Willmorth (a member of ISF's Fool Squad), from whom she later took a drama class. Headley said she'd always been a writer and had been interested in the theater, but learning from Willmorth reinforced those ideas even more. She just wasn't sure in what direction drama study would take her. At the time, she said, she was writing poetry, even reading it aloud in front of audiences at the now defunct Dream Walker coffee shop that used to be on Main Street between 11th and 10th streets.
"I was kind of a fixture at their open-mic nights," Headley said. At some point, she said, it evolved. While still in high school, she realized she was writing and working in theater and there was no reason why she couldn't combine the two. The idea of writing plays seemed the obvious progression.
"The first play I wrote was titled Qualms," Headley said. "It was sort of an exaggerated, angsty play. We wore black dresses and white face paint going, 'Ooooohhhhh.' And at the end, we all screamed in the dark," she said, laughing.
After high school, Headley moved to New York to attend a theater-writing program at New York University. By then, she said, she had discovered that she liked the idea of creating material that would find its way to the stage rather than interpreting it.
"There were so many talented [actors] and I wasn't one of them," Headley said. "But I wanted to work with them. I think that's why I thought about going into acting in the first place. I wanted to work with those really talented people. I found I could work with them in a way I was much more capable of."
During that time, Headley was writing not only plays and screenplays, but short stories and prose. Her 2006 book, The Year of Yes: A Memoir, is about moving from rural Idaho to New York and how she thought that move would jump-start her life. "I kept thinking, 'OK, I'm here. Where's my life?'" she said.
Part of the problem lay in the lack of satisfaction Headley found dating. Headley wasn't even seeing anyone she really liked; she just kept going out with the same kind of guy. She decided that, to avoid getting mired in dating hell, she would date everyone in New York who asked her (which could be another kind of hell all its own). "I was very, very busy for about a year. And then I met my husband," she said. He's a playwright as well, and Headley said she was already a fan of his work. They've been together almost 10 years now and her book has been translated into several languages and is currently being looked at by Paramount Pictures for a screen adaptation.
With a good support system and a move back to the Northwest, Headley didn't have to look much further than her own back yard for the fodder for her play Last of the Breed.
The play is the story of Wyatt Munro, a crusty unkempt old mountain man living in a cabin on prime undeveloped real estate. To avoid the encroachment of a slew of Cape Cods with gas-guzzling emissions-emitting SUVs parked in every driveway, Munro has himself declared an endangered species. During his fight to stay on his land, he confronts two foul-mouthed developers, a tree-hugging environmentalist, a narcissistic TV-anthropologist, an arch conservative named Ross Chenowell and an arch liberal named Max Andruson (barely cloaked references to two of Idaho's most famous politicos), a huntress who plies black-market aphrodisiacs, a tough-as-nails hardass female Fish and Game employee, and Carlos the Elk and Sherman the Eagle, two talking taxidermied victims of Munro's favorite pastime: hunting.
Last of the Breed opens on a high note with the Starbucks-sucking, swearing developers and maintains a laugh-out-loud fast pace until the end. The play parodies the ecological issues people in the West are so familiar with, and Headley said the inspiration for Last of the Breed really stemmed from a 1998 statement by then Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth in which she claimed "The only endangered species is the white, Christian land-owning male." The quote bounced around Headley's head for a long while, and in 2005, longtime friend and Boise Contemporary Theater artistic director Matt Clark called her and said he wanted to commission a play. Headley knew she had the perfect piece, and in May 2007, an excerpt was read as part of BCT's 5x5 series. Headley said she had just finished the play a mere 30 minutes before the actors (some of whom have parts in the play) were given the script for the reading.
"The actors didn't even know the end of the play," she said. "And they were amazing." She said Last of the Breed was definitely informed by those actors and, in future drafts, went in different directions than she'd intended.
With the world premiere of Last of the Breed, the busy Headley, who said she works about 23 hours a day, is already turning some of her attention on her next endeavor, something she calls the Upstart Crow Project. For this project, she asked 37 female playwrights to adapt Shakespeare's 37 plays and said she was surprised that they all said yes, including Bust writer/actress Lauren Weedman. The plan is to have the plays staged concurrently across the country. But for now, Headley will concentrate on her self-described "black comedy-slash-satire-slash-romance." Yes, romance. The tiny woman with the beautiful smile knew that even a guy who doesn't smell great and whose toenails are more like talons can find love.
Headley reads from The Year of Yes on March 22 at BCT. Tickets are $30 and proceeds benefit BCT. Headley will teach a two-day workshop on The Year of Yes, March 29 and 30, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Registration is limited to 20 people, cost is $250. Also on March 29 at 7 p.m., Headley will offer a free preview reading from Last of the Breed and be available for a Q-and-A session and book signing. Last of the Breed opens April 9 and runs through May 3. For more information, call 208-331-9224 or visit BCTheater.org. Boise Contemporary Theater, 854 Fulton St.
Bolstered by visitors to the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, Lexington's Blue Grass Airport announced Wednesday that October was one of its busiest months in history. The airport had more than 56,000 passengers departing. Total passenger traffic for the month was up 35.4 percent compared to October 2009, and passenger boardings was up 39.2 percent, airport officials said in a news release.
The Games, which happened in September and October, led to 18 special event charter flights and more than three times the average private aircraft activity, airport officials noted.
The higher numbers also were linked to recently acquired non-stop service by U.S. Airways to New York's LaGuardia Airport and by Delta Air Lines to Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.
DENVER — When Tim Cullen was opening his first marijuana business four years ago, the high school biology teacher turned pot entrepreneur struggled to get resumes and references from job applicants.
Out of the closet, down the street and around the corner. That’s where the line of hopefuls stretched Thursday outside a central Denver office building that was hosting a marijuana industry job fair.
Cullen, who owns two retail marijuana shops and is a partner in a company that makes hash oil and another that makes vaporizers, was among representatives from about a dozen businesses reviewing applications.
O.penVAPE, Cullen’s vaporizers company, organized the fair to meet its own growing staffing needs and help others in the industry, said company spokesman Todd Mitchem.
Among the employers at Thursday’s job fair was a tour company looking for guides to help pot tourists navigate Colorado’s newest industry. Hemp Temps, a specialist staffing agency, and Medicine Man, a dispensary, were also hunting for candidates. Job descriptions included bud tender, sales representative and web designer.
Voters in Colorado and Washington approved sales of marijuana for recreational use in 2012, and recreational sales began first in Colorado, in January. This week, in the world’s first such accounting, the Colorado Department of Revenue reported the state made roughly $2 million in marijuana taxes in January; that is expected to grow as more retailers are licensed.
Organizers said they had heard beforehand from more than 600 jobseekers who planned to attend. Mitchem said the company may need a bigger venue for the next fair, which he said is already in the works.
Ian Howe, among the jobseekers in line on Thursday, said he was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and hoped to find work with a company that infuses marijuana into foods, or try his hand at growing marijuana.
Howe, 23, said he moved to Colorado just 3 1/2 weeks ago, and found the state a good fit.
“I’ve always been an outdoorsy guy, and I’ve always liked to smoke weed,” he said.
Near Howe in line, Michael Rubens and Tim Miller chatted about what they hoped to get out of the fair. Rubens said he wanted to find a business that might want to exploit his ideas for marijuana ice cream.
Miller said he was an IT financial specialist who could offer the marijuana industry expertise on banking. The federal government earlier this year issued guidance for banks that at least recognizes that many operate in states where marijuana sales are legal. It did not, however, clarify how banks can do business with pot shops and stay on the right side of federal law, which outlaws the drug.
FRIDAY 6 PM, 9TH UPDATE: No major box office changes to report except that The Dark Knight Rises is running less today than Marvel’s The Avengers but had more midnight business. So the two films are running neck and neck. As of 6 PM, The Dark Knight Rises in 4,404 domestic theaters was Friday $80M and weekend $180M estimates.
EXCLUSIVE… FRIDAY 2 PM, 8TH UPDATE: Based on matinee projections, The Dark Knight Rises is looking to open with a gargantuan $80M-85M today (which includes $30.6M from midnights). That’s about even with Marvel’s The Avengers opening Friday of $80.5M. Hollywood is making weekend projections of $180M-$200M but Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures remain mute.
Meanwhile, the official North American midnights number for The Dark Knight Rises is public now: it opened with $30.640M from 3,825 locations (for $8,010 per location). Included in the overall total are IMAX grosses of $2.232M from 330 locations (for $7,041 per location). This 2D midnights number shatters the $18.4M midnights generated by 3D Marvel’s The Avengers earlier this summer. Still, with international grosses from 9 countries totalling $10.4M, that’s already $71M worldwide for the mega-pic before it’s even in wide release today. Remember that the largest grossing 2D North American opening weekend ever remains 2008’s The Dark Knight at $158M – and there’s no doubt The Dark Knight Rises will beat that. (Not adjusted for inflation or higher ticket prices). But can it beat Avengers‘ all-time $207.4M collected from 2D, Digital 3D, RealD, and IMAX 3D theaters?
EXCLUSIVE… FRIDAY 6:30 AM, 6TH UPDATE: I’ve just learned that Warner Bros’ and Legendary Pictures’ 2D The Dark Knight Rises is “headed north of $28M” for its 3,700 midnight showings of the pic.
EXCLUSIVE… FRIDAY 3 AM, 5TH UPDATE: Fans waited in long lines for hours despite the sweltering heat and the torrential rains in some parts of North America just to attend one of the 3,700 Thursday midnight show locations for Warner Bros’ and Legendary Pictures’ 2D The Dark Knight Rises. Now my sources are tracking this final installment of Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy to open with a whopping $27+M. “The West Coast is still selling tickets with some theatres adding 3 AM shows,” a Warner Bros exec told me. “This is effing huge!” The Dark Knight Rises’ 2D midnights number shatters the $18.4M midnights generated by 3D Marvel’s The Avengers earlier this summer. With pre-sales of $30M and international grosses from 9 countries totalling $10.4M, that’s already $67.4M worldwide for the mega-pic before it’s even in wide release. Hollywood began emailing me they thought this weekend could generate between $185M-$210M in domestic grosses and possibly set a new weekend record.
12:39 AM today leaving 14 dead and 50 wounded after a lone gunman opened fire in a packed suburban movie theater at the Aurora Town Center where The Dark Knight Rises was showing just after midnight. Now no one in the movie business knows how this terrible event will affect box office today. Despite isolated incidents, nothing on this horrific scale has ever occurred inside film theaters. “Not what you expect to happen when you’re waiting in line to go to the blockbuster film of the summer,” one local TV anchor told viewers.
Moviegoers at first thought the gunshots were part of the film’s action sequences. Police told TV stations the shooting was first reported at 12:39 AM after the gunman “just appeared” from the front of Theater 9. Then police arrived and found the suspect in the rear of the theater. The adult male attired in protective gear had a rifle and two other guns when he was taken into custody, authorities said.
In other parts of the country, first fans lined up for hours ahead of time to see The Dark Knight Rises at the midnight screenings at NYC’s AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 Theater. Scalpers had been selling those tickets for $65 and as much as $100 for days prior. At the AMC Uptown in Washington, crowds endured torrential rain and lightning but kept standing in line even when the theater didn’t open its doors on time.
THURSDAY 7:15 PM, 4TH UPDATE: The Dark Knight Rises began its international release Thursday by “dominating everywhere”, according to my sources. I’ve learned the foreign gross so far is an incredible $10.4M from only 9 countries. This is 83% higher than 2008’s The Dark Knight in the same markets. (Not calculating for inflation and higher ticket prices.) The 3 key territories that opened today were: Australia AUD$3.66M (US$3.74M) from 628 screens. That’s 60% ahead of The Dark Knight‘s opening day. “This is particularly spectacular considering that today is not a holiday versus TDK’s holiday opening day,” an exec tells me. As good as Chris Nolan’s Batpic finale’s opening day is, it was well below Marvel’s The Avengers, which smashed the Australian box office on its opening day of release with a record breaking AUD$6M (USD$6.2M). Of course Avengers was 3D and also opened on one of Australia’s biggest holidays: ANZAC. Whereas The Dark Knight Rises opening didn’t include a holiday. And Korea KRW 3.15b (US$2.7m) from 1059 screens, which is 131% higher than The Dark Knight‘s opening. And Taiwan NT$ 26.3m (US$878k) from 228 screens, which is 175% ahead of The Dark Knight. Australia began The Dark Knight Rises foreign rollout: Warner Bros this coming weekend is releasing into only 17 international markets, representing 6,300 screens. These include 4 of the Top Ten markets: UK, Spain, Australia, and Korea.
THURSDAY 6 PM, 3RD UPDATE: A Warner Bros executive just told me, The Dark Knight Rises is tearing up the box office at midnight. It should pass Marvel’s The Avengers‘ $18.7M as the largest superhero midnight show of all time.” And remember: Avengers also holds the domestic record for the largest opening weekend gross. Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ mega-movie has 2,500 sold-out showtimes on Fandango, and today is trending to be one of that big online ticket vendor’s top-selling Thursdays in the company’s 12–year history. Most interesting is that Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy finale is outpacing the early summer blockbuster Marvel’s The Avengers in ticket sales at the same point in Fandango’s sales cycle. “Today’s ticket sales are relentless, just like the action in the movie,” a Fandango executive just told me. Disney began releasing Avengers in Digital 3D, RealD and IMAX 3D after midnight into about 2,500 locations around the U.S. and Canada, and some theaters kept playing it around the clock into the wee hours. Whether The Dark Knight Rises will screen 24/7 on Friday will depend on how many theaters can convince staff to work overtime. This actioner opens in a whopping 3,700 midnight domestic locations. Like the big theater chain did with Avengers, AMC will be hosting a special showings in IMAX and 2D – the entire Batman trilogy beginning at 6 PM for $40/$25 complete with commorative poster and special lanyard. At its widest release, The Dark Knight Rises will debut in 4,404 domestic theaters from Friday through Sunday, including 332 IMAX locations.
EXCLUSIVE THURSDAY, 2ND UPDATE: According to Fandango, domestic box office online ticket sales for Warner Bros’ and Legendary Pictures’ The Dark Knight Rises currently represents 91% of Thursday’s ticket sales. MovieTickets pegged their number at 87.5% for Wednesday. Earlier this week, Fandango surveyed the pic’s ticket-buyers and discovered that: 97% said the darker tone made them more interested in seeing the movie, 89% claimed the new villain Bane made them excited to see the film, 72% consider themselves fans of director Christopher Nolan, 62% said they’re excited by the fact that more than an hour of the film was shot in IMAX, and 58% said that Christian Bale was the actor they most preferred as Batman.
Warner Bros should be announcing the first foreign box office results. The Dark Knight Rises opens in only 17 international markets this weekend, representing 6,300 screens. These include 4 of the Top Ten movie markets: UK, Spain, Australia, and Korea.
In North America, I can report exclusively that The Dark Knight Rises has already banked $25M in pre-sales.
EXCLUSIVE WEDNESDAY: Here we go again! Another gigantic Hollywood comic book blockbuster opening just after Thursday’s clocks strike midnight. But can The Dark Knight Rises beat Marvel’s The Avengers in weekend grosses and records? Some moguls are telling me no, some moguls are telling me yes. Remember that the largest grossing 2D North American opening weekend ever remains 2008’s The Dark Knight at $158M – and there’s no doubt The Dark Knight Rises will best that by a lot, maybe as much as $195+M. (Not adjusted for inflation or higher ticket prices). But can it best Avengers‘ all-time $207.4M collected from 2D, Digital 3D, RealD, and IMAX 3D theaters? In summary, the reasons pro are: kids are out of school, people are on vacation, this is the last and scariest of the series. The reasons con are: it’s only a 2D movie whereas Avengers made 52% of its money from 3D, it has a 21-minute longer running time than Avengers’, this is a movie about one caped crusader with no superpowers whereas Avengers was billed as the ‘Superhero Team-Up Of A Lifetime’, it’s following both Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man this summer, and the Viacom-DirecTV battle has prevented a lot of Dark Knight Rises TV ads from appearing. Now the only question is how big is big for this $250M film?
MovieTickets.com tells me the pic scooped up 80% of all online ticket sales for Tuesday and Fandango 85%. (The figure for Avengers was 95% for that Thursday.) MovieTickets surveys found that, of the people aware of The Dark Knight Rises, 78% said they would see it opening weekend. Overall, on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being little or no interest and 5 being significant interest in seeing it in a movie theater, it averaged 4.8 out of 5 for intent to see. Scalpers reportedly are re-selling The Dark Knight Rises’ midnight IMAX tickets for $65-$100 apiece on both Craigslist and StubHub for NYC’s AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13. — higher even than for Avengers. Yet this may be my favorite Dark Knight Rises pre-release factoid so far: “All the major circuits have asked for more frequent pickups from their Brink’s Truck drivers to deposit the record amount of cash they are anticipating,” a Warner Bros exec told me today.
Related: ‘THE AVENGERS’ NOW BIGGEST OPENER!
This final installment in its Batman trilogy directed by Chris Nolan will be playing in a whopping 3,700 midnight locations around North America and then 4,404 domestic theaters from Friday through Sunday including 332 IMAX locations. (Nolan utilized IMAX cameras for an hour of the footage from the film. That’s even more extensively than he did on The Dark Knight, the first time ever that a major feature film was partially shot with IMAX cameras.) But don’t expect a gigantic foreign number right away. Remember that Disney’s international gross of $441.5M was collected because The Avengers played almost everywhere around the globe for the first 12 days including Friday in Russia ($17.9M) and Saturday in China ($17.4M). By contrast, Warner Bros this coming weekend is releasing The Dark Knight Rises into only 17 international markets, representing 6,300 screens. These include 4 of the Top Ten movie markets: UK, Spain, Australia, and Korea. The Dark Knight Rises already has taken £1 million in advance booking at BFI IMAX, breaking all previous sales records.
The studio will open another 40 markets over the second weekend and include all major markets with the exception of Italy (August) and China where The China Film Group, which sets release dates for U.S. films, wants to pit The Dark Knight Rises against Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man on August 30th. “That August date is not written in stone, and we are in talks with China Film to find a date that works for everybody,” a Warner Bros exec tells Deadline. “Warner Bros would never not release the film in China.” In total overseas, the film is projected to show on approximately 20,000 foreign screens.
There’s been plenty of (metaphorical) eye-rolling, and head-shaking, over the pronouncements of “body-language experts” who have turned up on TV this election season to parse the candidates’ fist bumps and grimaces. Finger-pointing, according to Tonya Reiman, on Fox, represents a “tough guy”; Janine Driver, on ABC, said, of John McCain’s leaning against a lectern, “It’s as if he’s saying, ‘I need a little more support here.’ ” It’s comforting, in this atmosphere, to encounter the quasi-scientific talk of Laban movement analysts—a group of dance teachers, therapists, and others schooled in the techniques of Rudolf Laban, the early-twentieth-century artist turned industrialist. Laban came up with a way of describing people’s movements based on two categories—Space Harmony and Effort—which can be broken down into subcategories, like Weight, Space, Time, and Flow, and special terms: Float, Punch, Glide, Slash, Dab, Wring, Flick, and Press. (There is a lot of capitalization in this system.) It takes five hundred hours of training to become a Certified Movement Analyst, or C.M.A. “It makes us sound like a cult,” Janet Kaylo, a practitioner, said recently.
A few months ago, an argument about Hillary Clinton broke out on a Laban e-mail list. It was around the time of the Maryland primaries, and most people on the list had been discussing how the “coccyx-heel connection” affects skiing. Three C.M.A.s sent out a gloss of Obama’s movement at a campaign event, praising his exceptional Flow, an indicator of empathy: “At one point, a woman handed him a baby. . . . He held the baby out at face level. The baby and Senator Obama looked each other in the eyes for a good three seconds, as if they were communing on some deeper level.” Clinton supporters on the e-mail list took offense. “A little ‘gushy,’ ” one wrote.
Clinton changed, the analysts agreed, during the course of the primaries. She dropped the “not very smart” habit of nodding vigorously after making a point, Kaylo said, and she toned down some facial expressions, including “the very exaggerated ‘Oh, hi! Great to see you!’ ” Karen Bradley, a dance scholar, said recently, “She was clearly getting some kind of training.” Could the candidate have come under Labanian influence?
Pena will miss 10-to-15 days with an oblique injury, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Pena suffered the injury during Tuesday's game against the Phillies. A two-week return timeline would still give him a bit of time to get ready for Opening Day, though his chances of breaking camp with the big-league team were reduced when the club signed Matt Wieters in late February.
Usually, students are the ones that seek out firms that can help them travel abroad for further studies. However, the reverse is the case with Avail International Consul Limited (AICL), which is seeking to help students get into secondary and tertiary institutions in the United Kingdom (UK), United States and Canada irrespective of the funds they have.
Mrs Bola Agunbiade, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), AICL, said in an interview with The Nation at the firm’s Ogba, Lagos office, that they can help brilliant students with good grades in their Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) attract scholarships from reputable institutions outside Nigeria.
“There are several scholarship opportunities abroad that people are not even aware of. We want to be able to reach out to students, especially those who are intelligent who have come out in flying colours in their O/levels. They may not have the financial capability to travel abroad; however, there are opportunities for such students to get scholarship. It may be full scholarship, it might be tuition reduction,” she said.
After evaluating their credentials, Mrs Agunbiade said the firm would help scholarship potentials to present their applications to the universities. She added that for the next two months especially, AICL would offer its services free to all categories of students in commemoration of its second anniversary. She said they would benefit from visa counselling, evaluation and tutorials.
“We are inviting students and their parents to come in from June 26 all through July and the whole of August. We are looking at them going in for September. We are encouraging them to come here and it is going to be free. We are inviting them to celebrate our second anniversary.
However, despite the firm’s enthusiasm to help potential students get admissions abroad, Mrs Agunbiade said it only assists those with genuine intention to study. She said if they go abroad for other reasons and misbehave, they spoil the country’s reputation.
She added: “It is easy for me to tell if the student is genuine. Their parents may have money and just want them to travel. But by the time I talk to them, forgetting even their credentials, I can tell. They might not have the genuine intention to go abroad and really study and its not good for us because institutions come back and blame us that why did we send a student that is not serious.
Daniel Radcliffe is in the frame to play beat poet Allen Ginsberg in a new film.
The feature debut from writer/director John Krokidas, follows the young Ginsberg’s introduction to the Manhattan beat scene, focussing on his relationships with Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr, according to The Guardian. Carr was jailed for second-degree murder in 1944 after stabbing his stalker, David Kammerer and dumping the body in the Hudson.
Jesse Eisenberg had previously been linked the role of Ginsberg, with Chris Evans and Ben Whishaw lined up for Kerouac and Carr.
Radcliffe hinted at the role recently, telling the French media that he would be playing a gay character next year. He can next be seen in ghost story The Woman In Black, the trailer for which you can watch below.
Knife crime is an epidemic. Do we care enough to look for a cure?
The figures revealed by the Guardian on Tuesday, which show knife deaths among children and teenagers approaching a 40-year high, should shock us all. What’s more, this year is no outlier. Knife crime is back on the rise in a big way. Last year hospital admissions for knife assault wounds jumped by 21%, which followed a 13% rise the previous year. And the majority of these victims? Young people.
Police forces across the country are seeing a rise in knife crime: 38 of the 44 police forces in England and Wales have reported an increase. And the age of those carrying knives is getting younger. When 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds are walking around with knives, something has gone very wrong.
Behind these numbers, behind every headline, are communities and families in shock. In my area in Croydon, where two teenagers have been killed in recent months, every single youth organisation is reporting increasing anxiety and trauma from the young people they work with.
So why is it getting worse? Police cuts are a major issue of course, but we can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem.
We brought young people to parliament last week to meet MPs and talk about their experiences of knife crime. The issues go deep – from mental health to social media, from poverty to fashion. Deterrents and punishments are important of course, but they aren’t the only answer to tackling this in the long term.
Youth centres are closing and schools are under huge pressure, leading to the “managed moves” of difficult children – often regardless of undiagnosed special needs. Youth workers regularly talk about the “PRU to prison pipeline” of disengaged young people in pupil referral units getting into a cycle of trouble.
Social media is having a big impact, intensifying the cycle of violence and enabling widespread bullying. Many people want to see technology companies take more responsibility for how their platforms are used, but we also need to look at the channels collating and sharing inappropriate content.
What do we need to do to turn this around? First we need to recognise that this is a public health crisis. For too long we’ve been focused on the symptoms – we need to look at the causes, not just the crime. We need a cross-government programme of action with multiple departments and long-term ambitions. Five months ago, the prime minister promised me action – but she has yet to deliver anything meaningful. On Wednesday in prime minister’s questions I called again for government intervention. To place youth workers in all major trauma centres in England would cost as little as £6m a year. These interventions are proven to be highly effective at taking young people out of the cycle of violence.
I know from experience how important this is. My local police force saved the life of a young man, putting their fingers into stab wounds in his neck to stop the flow of blood. A week later he was caught on the streets with a stab vest and a knife, looking for revenge. And of course, the justice system is important here. There is more to be done in banning certain horrific knives, improving the use of electronic tagging and cracking down on moped crime, reflecting the changing nature of crime.
But ultimately we need to treat this as an epidemic and cut it off at source. Violence breeds violence. Mental health, social media, youth services, education and poverty are all part of the problem and we need to decide if we care enough to act. How much do we really value these young lives?
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' pay keeps climbing.
Hastings, Netflix's co-founder, took home a total of $24.4 million last year, according to a company filing Monday. His pay rose 5% in 2017 from the year before.
Most of Hastings' paycheck came from stock options the company granted him. Stock options allow employees to buy or sell company shares at a pre-determined price and time. Since options take time to vest, they're widely used as performance incentives.
Hastings' base salary was $850,000 last year, but he was awarded $23.5 million worth of options.
He has not received a cash bonus in the last three years. Netflix's (NFLX) stock has more than tripled in that time.
Hastings' annual salary has fallen in recent years in favor of higher options. That will continue again this year. Hastings' base salary for 2018 will be lowered to $700,000, but options will go up to $28.7 million.
Chief content officer Ted Sarandos got an 18% raise last year to bring his total pay to $22.4 million. Sarandos got a $9 million cash bonus.
Netflix announced last year that it's eliminating bonuses and transferring them into salaries because of the new tax law. The tax code eliminated a loophole for executive compensation.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a budget with a provision meant to rein in executive pay. The law taxed executive salaries over $1 million a year, but allowed an exemption -- section 162(m) -- for "performance-based" targets. Companies like Netflix used the loophole to deduct bonuses and stock options linked directly to performance.
Now that 162(m) is dead, Neflix is raising executive base salaries.
Sarandos received a $1 million salary in 2017, but it will jump to $12 million in 2018 and he'll get $14.2 million in options. Chief product officer Greg Peters got a $1 million salary last year, and it will climb to $6 million this year.