- Not a
fan of your impressive new title, India? New Delhi has pumped up its pollution
in recent years to match its overcrowded population and those efforts have earned
it the title of world's most polluted city. It’s not a title easily won when
China commonly has about 80 percent of the most-polluted cities on the planet
within its borders, so New Delhi really should be proud of what it has done.
Instead, India's capital announced new measures this week to fight extreme air
pollution. Beginning Jan. 1, private cars will only be allowed on New Delhi's
roads on alternate day for a period of several weeks, with assigned driving
dates determined by whether the vehicle’s license plates end in even or odd
numbers, said Kewal Kumar Sharma,
the city's chief secretary. Delhi’s pollution peaks during the cold winter
months and to further offset those issues, the city also plans to shut down one
of its oldest and least efficient thermal power plants. The Badarpur plant uses
outdated equipment and often breaks down, as one might expect for a plant commissioned
in the early 1970s. Police working the traffic beat will be enforcing rules that
diesel-guzzling trucks, which transit through the city at night, enter only
after 11 p.m., two hours later than normal and hopefully averting the massive
traffic jams they often cause. Because of the massive nature of the problem,
it’s not clear how long the measures will remain in place. Sharma said the
government also plans to buy special vacuum cleaning equipment to clean the
roads and combat the dust that cloaks the city. Yes, industrial vacuum cleaners
are the solutions upon which New Delhi is hanging its hopes these days, which
doesn’t seem at all desperate………
- The
face of Spider-Man keeps changing, but his popularity remains high - high
enough that the latest face of the web-slinging hero will appear in “Captain America: Civil War.” British actor Tom Holland currently inhabits the role and
another of the film’s stars, Robert Downey Jr., has confirmed that Holland will
make his debut in the project. Downey said he witness Holland's Spider-Man in
action on the film's set. "[Don] Cheadle and I are just going, 'Wow, dude,
look at this.' We're now like the old guard, and our storyline carries real
weight just because of our history in the [canon]," Downey said. "But
we're also looking around like, 'Who thought that Falcon and Black Panther and
Ant-Man and now Spider-Man…?' I mean it's like wow, this thing is just
crazy." Fellow cast member Chris Evans noted that Spider-Man’s
scenes are not guaranteed to make the final cut, but it seems insane to go to
those lengths to get and use the character and leave him on the editing room
floor in the end. With or without Holland, the cast is massive and star-studded
with Paul Rudd's Ant-Man, Scarlett Johansson's
Black Widow, Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye, Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch, Paul
Bettany's The Vision and Don Cheadle's War Machine. Frank Grillo's Crossbones
and Emily VanCamp's Sharon Carter will
be involved as well and Daniel Brühl will play super villain Baron Zemo. With
or without Spider-Man, the movie will hit theaters on May 6 and Marvel’s plot
summary lays out a scenario in which the movie picks up where “Avengers: Age of Ultron” left off as
Captain America leads the new team of Avengers through the fallout from another
international incident amidst political pressure and divisive issue about the
future of heroes…….
- He’s
known simply as Steve, but go ahead and add hero to his title. He’s a Stockton,
California resident who went full-on badass when a gas station clerk he had
befriended faced a potentially deadly situation. It was an attempted robbery that
took place late at night on the 3300 block of West Hammer Lane in Stockton. Tuyet
Tran was working her spot at the counter when she came face-to-face with a
gunman. Tran said the gunman seemed impaired or intoxicated in some way, a fact
evidenced by him urinating on some firewood stacked up outside the store. Tran
told Steve, who was inside the store at the time, to move a cone that was
propping open the store door, but that didn’t stop the drunken idiot outside.
After being robbed two weeks ago, Tran found herself staring down the barrel of
a gun. “The guy comes in, he has the gun out, and he says, 'Give me all my
money,'" she said. Reacting based on her previous robbery experience, Tran
hid behind the register while Steve put a plan in motion. He’s been hanging out
in the store more since his friend Tuyet was robbed two weeks ago and this
time, he removed the store’s fire extinguisher from its place on the wall and
opened fire - pun intended. He sprayed the fire retardant all over the place,
hitting the assailant in the face. Eventually, the man decided he’d had enough
and fled, jumping in his car and driving away. When Tran asked Steve why he’d
risked his life, he told her it was because she has three children. Sadly, the
store’s low-end surveillance system didn’t get definitive evidence of what
happened, so the thief got away without being identified………
- He’s
made beleaguered New York Knicks fans hope once more, but star rookie forward Kristaps
Porzingis might be biting off more than he can chew in trying to pump new life
into the moribund rivalry between his team and the one with which it shares a
city, the Brooklyn Nets. The Knicks and Nets are both subpar NBA teams with no
legitimate expectations of winning a title any time soon, so even though they
inhabit the same overcrowded island and vie for the same basketball fans, there
just isn't much to stoke the fires of rivalry between the two. Porzingis is
trying to change that, but he’s going to need much better ammo if he’s going to
succeed. "I know our fans are better than Brooklyn's fans," Porzingis
said ahead of Friday night’s tussle between the two teams at Madison Square
Garden, won by the Knicks. “Brooklyn, they're struggling this season. But they
will try to win the rivalry as we want to win." The fourth overall pick in
last year's draft has outperformed expectations, averaging 13.8 points and 9.3
rebounds per game, so he’s clearly done his part to make the Knicks and their
fans happy that they tabbed the 7-foot-2 Latvian star with their top pick in
this year’s draft. He just can’t make a game matter when the Nets boast a 5-14
record and the Knicks are looking like rock stars by comparison with a 10-10
record. "Sometimes I see someone with a Brooklyn hat on, I say, 'What is
that? You need a Knicks hat,'" Porzingis said. "I joke around with
them. Sometimes I seem them. Not as many as Knicks fans, though." You’re
going to need better smack talking if you want to make this rivalry matter, K.,
but nice try anyhow……….
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