- No one saw this coming. The relationship between disgraced
cycling cheater and confirmed ‘roider Lance Armstrong and his former business
partner/company he used to be a spokesperson for Nike has been so solid of
late. What with Armstrong admitting he cheated with performance-enhancing drugs
and lied about it for a decade to gain money, fame, athletic success and A-list
status, defrauding all of the companies he endorsed in the process, it’s tough
to see Nike or any other business having a beef with him. Yet here Nike is, disassociating from Armstrong. The world's
largest shoe and apparel brand has notified the Livestrong Foundation, the
charity that Armstrong helped start, that it will discontinue its line of
Livestrong-branded products by the end of this year. "Nike has made the
decision to stop producing new Livestrong product after its Holiday 2013
line," Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said in a statement. "We will
continue to support the Livestrong Foundation by funding them directly as they
continue their work serving and improving outcomes for people facing
cancer." The decision is an impactful one, given that Nike sold an
estimated $150 million of Livestrong-branded products, its most ever. During
nine fraudulent years they were in business together, the Livestrong Foundation
made more than 87 million of its Livestrong yellow rubber wristbands and . Nike
raised more than $100 million for the foundation through sales of the $1
wristbands. The foundation, from which Armstrong has severed all ties rather than
continue to drag it down, released a statement thanking Nike for their time
together. Armstrong has lost all of his endorsement deals in the past year,
including those with Nike, Trek, Oakley and Michelob Ultra………
- Outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto may want to run his comments by
his speech writers more thoroughly in the future. If he were in the habit of
doing so, he would not have had to apologize this week for implying that he
would excuse Japan's wartime military brothels. He initially sparked a sh*t
storm of criticism globally earlier this month when he said that the military
brothels had been "necessary" at the time and that Japan was being
unfairly criticized for practices other countries also engaged in. He could not
have backpedaled further from those words this week when he insisted that Japan
should apologize to the women forced to work in the brothels while suggesting
that historical research was needed to determine whether Japan "as a
state" was directly involved in human trafficking of the "comfort
women.” Oddly enough, his words have further eroded dwindling voter support for
his once-rising Japan Restoration Party and suggesting that his remarks had
been taken out of context and misunderstood won't help his case. "I am
totally in agreement that the use of 'comfort women' by Japanese soldiers
before and during the World War II was an inexcusable act that violated the
dignity and human rights of the women in which large numbers of Korean and
Japanese were included," Hashimoto said at the beginning of a three-hour
news conference before foreign and domestic media. "I also strongly
believe that Japan must reflect upon its past offenses with humility and
express a heartfelt apology and regret to those women who suffered from the
wartime atrocities as comfort women.” In recent weeks, polls have shown that only
3 percent of voters planning to cast their ballots for his party in a July
upper house election. The “comfort women” he referred to were of several
nationalities, including many from Korea. For that reason, the topic has long
been a point of contention between Tokyo and Seoul. Japan insists that s the
matter of compensation for the women was settled under a 1965 treaty
establishing diplomatic ties with South Korea, but Seoul has balked at that
suggestion as well as the notion that it should take the issue to the
International Court of Justice. "I think Japan's recent ... remarks are
throwing cold water onto our government's will to strengthen friendship between
Korea and Japan more than ever," South Korean Foreign Minister Yun
Byung-se said. Sounds like someone needs more than a hug and a non-apology
apology from their former ally………
- The world is clearly still enthralled with the flamboyant
genius of Liberace. The ratings for "Behind the Candelabra," HBO’s Liberace
biopic starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, attest to that fact. The
made-for-TV film accrued 2.4
million viewers in its premiere Sunday. With director Steven Soderbergh at the
helm, the movie was a big hit for the cable network and brought in HBO’s
highest rating for a movie since the 2004 release "Something the Lord
Made." Soderbergh has talked at length about how “Behind the Candelabra”
ended up on the small screen and has revealed that it originally was intended
as a feature film. Warner Bros. eventually backed out of the project because its
figures showed it would have had to spend $25 million to make and market the
film. That would have necessitated earnings of $60 million to turn a profit in
theaters. Warner Bros. clearly didn’t believe that was possible, but the numbers
for Sunday’s premiere suggest that may not be true. With movie tickets costing
$10 in most theater chains around the country, the 2.4 million who watched
Sunday night would translate into $24 million and while there is no guarantee
that everyone who watched on TV would have gone to see the movie in the
theater, those numbers represent one showing at one specific time. Factor in
the second showing on HBO that brought in 1.1 million more viewers and the
initial earnings could theoretically rise to $35 million. The star power of
Damon and Douglas would likely bring in more fans and if the movie were to have
any success at all internationally, “Behind the Candelabra” could have been a
true commercial success. Sure, it may not have the sophisticated writing and
storylines of “Fast and Furious 6” or the intricate, highbrow humor of “The
Hangover Part 3,” but there has to be money out there for “lesser” movies………
- Evelynn Hammonds might like a mulligan on this one. Hammonds, the
soon-to-be-ex dean of Harvard, will be exiting Cambridge this summer following
months of controversy over her decision to authorize secret searches of faculty
email. She announced on Tuesday that she will step down from her post but will
remain a professor at the prestigious university. If she plans to keep that
lesser job, she should probably get into the habit of not giving conflicting
accounts about important situations, something she did when addressing her
decision to scan the subject lines of email accounts belonging to 16 deans in
search of correspondence relating to a major cheating scandal among Harvard
students. Even though she apologized to the faculty last month, her hollow
words didn’t seem to mend all fences. As Hammonds explained it, her covert
email search was aimed at tracking correspondence between faculty and reporters
for the school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, who were investigating
allegations that dozens of students cheated on a take-home final exam in a government
class last spring. The scandal led to as many as 60 students being suspended
earlier this year after a school investigation into the cheating. Another 60 or
so students were placed on disciplinary probation but were allowed to remain at
the Ivy League school. Hammonds once made history by becoming the first African-American and the first woman to be appointed dean of
Harvard College and has made history once again by becoming the first African-American
and the first woman to resign from that post in disgrace. Shockingly, she did not
refer to the cheating scandal or the email search in announcing her impending
resignation. She said in the announcement that she plans to drop off the grid,
er, take a sabbatical, then return to Harvard to head up a new program looking
at the role of race and gender in science and medicine……..
- Now THIS is how technology was meant to be used. Drone
strikes on a country’s own citizens are so, well, draconian. Using those drones
to spy on teenage miscreants with nothing better to do than grab a couple cans
of cheap spray paint and tag out-of-use train cars or underpasses is the
perfect way to put drones to work. German national railway company Deutsche Bahn put
up with enough graffiti from young punks across the country and as anyone who
has traveled through Germany can attest, there are many miles of track in
out-of-the-way places and plenty of unauthorized works of art decorating them.
To combat the vandalism, Deutsche Bahn plans to enlist a different sort of
drones. They aren't the same drones that drop missiles or bombs, but would
instead be equipped with infrared cameras designed to capture vandals in action.
The drones the rail company plans to use are four-rotor, battery-powered
helicopters that can fly for up to 80 minutes on a single charge. Their top
speed is about 34 mph and they can travel up to 25 miles on autopilot.
Doing their job undetected isn’t difficult because the drones can also hover nearly 500
feet off the ground in near-silence. Where the challenge comes in is cost.
Because each drone would cost roughly 60,000 euros, buying them would represent
a huge investment in fighting a problem that, while unsightly, doesn’t directly
affect the functionality of any part of the railroad. On the other hand, there
were some 14,000 incidents of graffiti reported in 2012 that cost 7.6 million
euros to clean up. To determine whether it would be a wise investment, Deutsche
Bahn will start testing the drones over the coming weeks. It hopes to use them
to be able to dispatch security personnel in real-time and use photographic
evidence to help build a case against culprits in court. Operating within
Germany’s strict privacy and anti-surveillance laws will also be a must for the
program to continue moving forward……..
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