Filed under: Geneva Motor Show,Bentley,Crossover,SUV,Luxury
For an interesting twist, the front and rear seats are different colors.
Continue reading Bentley's Bentayga Mulliner takes two-tone to a new level of excess
Bentley's Bentayga Mulliner takes two-tone to a new level of excess originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 10:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsHAMMOND — A late comeback to force overtime and a 36-point performance by junior guard Andrea Cournoyer weren’t enough for tor the No. 2 Merryville girls basketball team to advance in the Top 28 state basketball tournament.
Third-seeded Gueydan (22-10) beat the Panthers (24-2) in a dramatic Class 1A semifinal matchup 68-63 to end Merryville’s second consecutive trip to the University Center in Hammond.
“Good teams play hard when their ahead, great teams play hard when they’re behind,” said Merryville head coach Vic Ortiz. “They never gave up.”
After playing a vast majority of the game from behind, the Panthers fought back and forced overtime when Cournoyer hit a 3-point shot with 5 seconds left that tied the score at 58.
But the comeback proved to be too little too late,as Gueydan outlasted Merryville to reach the final for the second time in school history.
“We knew they were in trouble, and so we knew we had to take it to them,” said Gueydan head coach Randal Bertrand. “We didn’t want to rely on our outside shooting. We wanted to take it to them and get them to foul us.”
Perhaps the pivotal momentum change came in the second quarter when Gueydan scored 12 unanswered points to take a 28-18 lead.
From that point on, the Panthers had their backs against the wall, trailing with multiple starters in foul trouble.
“We had two players with three fouls in the second quarter,” Ortiz said. “We were playing with three subs on the floor at a time. We spent a lot of time in the game with a combination of people we don’t have on the floor.”
Ortiz said the foul trouble haunted the Panthers.
“Not only did it hurt us rebounding, it hurt us when (the Honeybears) were penetrating,” Ortiz said. “A lot of times our players in foul trouble would have to stop and give up the baseline to avoid a third or fourth foul.”
Cournoyer finished three points shy of the individual Class 1A single-game record in addition to tallying 10 steals, eight rebound and four assists.
She was aided primarily by fellow junior Jania Williams, who finished with 15 points.
Despite the loss, Cournoyer remained in high spirits.
She said this Merryville team surpassed its own expectations by returning to the state tournament with a relatively young roster, a fact that has her and the rest of the team confident about the future. “After losing our coach and losing three players because they were seniors … we didn’t expect to get here,” Cournoyer said. “So when we did get here, it was a big accomplishment on our part. Being so young, for sure next year we’ll be back.
“From last season to this season, I’ve seen growth in the whole team. We were more prepared for this game than we were last year, definitely.”
Staked to a two-run lead in the series opener against No. 15 Arizona before he could even toe the slab, McNeese State southpaw Bryan King fell behind the first Wildcat he faced 3-1. Mitchell Morimoto poked the next pitch for a single.
King uncorked a wild pitch in the middle of the next at-bat, which ended with another single. Runners at the corners and no out, King induced a double-play ball. Damage, nevertheless, was done.
“It’s monumental,” King said of protecting leads. “It’s something as a pitcher that you have to stay getting locked in. You have to fight getting comfortable because, once that happens, you think because you have a lead that you don’t have to be at your best. But you have to be better then and take them out of the game before they get any momentum.”
King, who will make an abbreviated start tonight against Louisiana-Monroe at Joe Miller Park, required 70 pitches to get through 31⁄3 innings, unable to protect the early lead his bats provided. No one could, really.
McNeese held a lead after two innings in each of the four games — three of which were courtesy of first-inning runs before Arizona could take a swing.
The Wildcats hardly needed to swing. McNeese’s pitching staff neglected to command much, gifting an already potent Wildcats offense 36 free bases — four wild pitches, eight hit by pitches and 24 walks — while squandering all four leads.
“Self-inflicted,” said Cowboys coach Justin Hill, whose team also committed seven errors on the weekend. “Whether we had won or not, the most important thing to me is how we played because that’s what’s going to give you the highest percentage chance to win. I’d like to see how it would have been if we had played cleaner … it would have been more enjoyable because the games would have been closer.”
Hill said King, the team’s opening-night starter who’s yet to pitch into the fifth inning across two starts, will throw no more than two innings. It’s akin to King’s normal, weekly side work or bullpen sessions that prepare him for weekend starts.
“The whole point of getting on the mound in a bullpen is to stay sharp and, the thing is, he hasn’t been sharp,” Hill said of King, who’s yielded nine hits and five walks in 7 1⁄3 innings. “I think getting back on the mound in a competitive situation will give him a better opportunity to be good than a good bullpen session. I think it’s more important to get back into the competitive environment rather than just going to throw the bullpen.”
The coaching staff has not planned specifically who will follow King, though Hill mentioned Grant Ashcraft would receive work and the game would dictate who else followed.
Ashcraft threw two clean innings last Tuesday, when McNeese shellacked ULM 32-4 in the Warhawks’ home opener, setting five program records and exploding for a 15-run fifth inning.
As most weekend starters do on midweek road trips, King stayed behind in Lake Charles while his team eviscerated the hapless opponents, pushing its record to 4-0 prior to the Arizona showdown.
“We’re going to come out and try to do it again,” King said. “Just because of our past game, it is just our attitude. We did just get swept and that’s kind of given us a vengeance and we’re coming after them.”
Filed under: Government/Legal,Ferrari,Car Dealers
A dealer employee claims a LaFerrari's value went up a cool million after its odometer was reset.
Continue reading Lawsuit alleges Ferrari diagnostic tool used to roll back odometers
Lawsuit alleges Ferrari diagnostic tool used to roll back odometers originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsFiled under: Geneva Motor Show,McLaren,Infotainment,Coupe,Performance,Supercars
That ought to come in handy when you activate drift mode.
Continue reading The McLaren 720S's gauge display folds away so you can concentrate on the road
The McLaren 720S's gauge display folds away so you can concentrate on the road originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 01 Mar 2017 09:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsWASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's new immigration order will remove Iraq from the list of countries whose citizens face a temporary U.S. travel ban, U.S. officials say, citing the latest draft in circulation. Trump is expected to sign the executive order in the coming days.
Four officials told The Associated Press that the decision followed pressure from the Pentagon and State Department, which had urged the White House to reconsider Iraq's inclusion on the list given its key role in fighting the Islamic State group.
Citizens of six other predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — will remain on the travel ban list, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the order before it is signed. Those bans are effective for 90 days.
The new order includes other changes as well. The officials said the 12-page document no longer singles out Syrian refugees for an indefinite ban and instead includes them as part of a general, 120-day suspension of new refugee admissions.
The officials also said the order won't include any explicit exemption for religious minorities in the countries targeted by the travel ban. Critics had accused the administration of adding such language to help Christians get into the United States while excluding Muslims.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump signed his original executive order in late January. It sparked immediate confusion, panic and outrage as some travelers were detained in U.S. airports before being sent back overseas and others were barred from boarding flights at foreign airports.
The federal government initially blocked U.S. green card holders before offering those legal residents special permission to come into the country. It finally decided the order didn't apply to them.
The State Department provisionally revoked roughly 60,000 valid visas in all, before a federal judge in Washington state blocked the government from carrying out the ban. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
Under the revised order, officials said, all existing visas will be honored.
In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Trump on Tuesday evening defended his effort.
"We will shortly take new steps to keep our nation safe and to keep out those who would do us harm," he said.
After Trump signed the original order, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi disputed the ban and said he would consider reciprocal measures. Many Iraqi lawmakers urged the government to ban Americans from Iraq in response, despite the potential effects that might have on the anti-IS fight.
Al-Abadi then met with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Baghdad this month and underscored the U.S.-Iraqi partnership. And Mattis walked back comments made by Trump suggesting that Americans could get another chance to seize Iraqi oil as compensation for its military efforts there.
"We're not in Iraq to seize anybody's oil," Mattis told reporters on that trip. Al-Abadi also met with Vice President Mike Pence in Munich earlier this month, where the two publicly discussed ways of strengthening cooperation.
The Trump administration's changes to the immigration order follow a report by intelligence analysts at the Homeland Security Department, which found insufficient evidence that citizens of the seven Muslim-majority countries posed a terror threat to the United States. A draft of the analysis was obtained last week by the AP.
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump gave Republican congressional leaders a rallying cry and even a roadmap as they try to push through a sweeping and divisive agenda on health care, taxes and more.
In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Trump said largely what GOP leaders were hoping to hear Tuesday night, staying on-message and talking in optimistic tones, even weighing in at one point to settle a brewing dispute over how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday morning that Trump showed Congress and the nation his "broad shoulders, big heart, reaching out, focusing on the future." Pence spoke on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
House Speaker Paul Ryan declared the speech a "home run," pointing to Trump's embrace for the first time of tax credits — a central element in the Republican plan to replace former President Barack Obama's health care law.
Those tax credits have sparked a fierce conservative backlash in recent days, imperiling GOP efforts to make good on the party's long-stated promise to get rid of "Obamacare" and put something better in its place. Ahead of the speech congressional Republicans had been unsure how far Trump would go in backing their plan, with some pleading openly with him to do so, and many were elated at what they heard.
"We should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded health savings accounts — but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the government," Trump said, as Republicans cheered and Democrats sat silently in their seats.
It remains to be seen whether Trump's endorsement of refundable tax credits will be enough to tame rebellious conservatives in the House and Senate who have criticized them as a costly new entitlement. The initial response from one key conservative group, the Freedom Caucus in the House, was full of praise for Trump's speech without mentioning the divisions over tax credits.
"We were pleased the president reaffirmed his commitment to fully repeal Obamacare and replace it with patient-centered, market-driven policy. We share his vision," the group said.
Trump also addressed taxes, another major issue that is dividing Congress. After weeks of sending mixed signals, he provided hope to House Republican leaders pushing a tax overhaul that would tax imports but not exports. But he stopped short of explicitly endorsing the proposal.
"Currently, when we ship products out of America, many other countries make us pay very high tariffs and taxes — but when foreign companies ship their products into America, we charge them almost nothing or almost nothing," Trump said.
Without providing specifics, Trump said he will propose to change that.
Rewriting health care and overhauling the tax code are the twin pillars of the Republican-run Congress' legislative platform this year and GOP lawmakers have been eager for guidance from the president on both counts.
House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas welcomed Trump's remarks on taxes, and said "It was also great to hear the president's strong support for our efforts to repeal Obamacare."
House leaders hope to meet an ambitious goal of passing health legislation through the House and maybe even the Senate before mid-April. That was looking in doubt as divisions surfaced ahead of Trump's speech, and it remains to be seen whether the deadline will be met.
Democrats, accustomed to jeering at Trump as he veers off message, advances false claims or resorts to personal insults, argued that in delivering a speech that did none of those things, Trump gave a wrong impression of how he has comported himself as president after five weeks in office.
"President Trump's speech had an air of unreality because what he said tonight was so different than how he has governed in the first 40 days," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Schumer said Wednesday that despite Trump's call for unity, the president "hasn't reached out" to Democrats. Instead, Schumer told CNN, Trump's actions "have favored the hard, hard right. That's not where America is, that's not even where the Republican Party is."
Trump planned to continue his legislative push Wednesday, meeting with House and Senate leaders for lunch at the White House before leading a legislative affairs strategy session. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also summoned senators to a closed-door afternoon meeting on health care to hash out divisions on the issue in that chamber.
But Republicans' enthusiastic reception to Trump's speech could belie tough fights ahead. Trump called on Congress to approve a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, something likely to set up a clash with deficit hawks, and also renewed his call for money for a border wall, which could provoke a spending fight with Democrats and even the threat of a government shutdown.
And underscoring the distance that still remains between Trump and congressional Republicans, the speech made no mention of overhauling the financially shaky Medicare or Social Security, the expensive, enormous entitlement programs that Republicans have long attacked. Trump's budget leaves those programs untouched and Ryan has recently declined to say that dealing with them remains a priority.
On health care, far from his blanket statement in January that his plan would ensure "coverage for everybody," Trump on Tuesday embraced an overhaul that would "increase access," the phrase House Republicans have used to describe their more modest goal.
After a seven-year absence and step up in class, the Lady K’s are back on the big stage.
South Beauregard, the top seed in Class 3A, will make its first Top 28 appearance since 2010 tonight when they take on No. 4 Ville Platte at 6:15 p.m. in a Class 3A semifinal. Also in action today will be area teams Lake Arthur and Iota.
The Lady K’s (33-3) reached the 2A semifinals in 2010, shortly before being bumped up to Class 3A for the 2011-12 season.
Head coach Chris Greene said the jump took a while to adjust to.
“In 2A, you had some of the most skilled players,” he said. “In Class 3A, there are skilled players too, but you also have great athletes. We had to shift gears hard and take a different approach to the game.”
Greene said his team is a balanced one.
“It is a unique group,” he said. “Everybody has a special talent they bring, whether it be defense, shooting, penetration. It gives us a lot of options.”
Greene said the Ville Platte (27-7) game will feature a contrast of styles. The Tigers are on a 17-game win streak.
“They are athletic and have the tall girl (6-foot-2 Ty’Reonna Doucet) that signed with UL-Lafayette inside, she is very good, can get the rebound and go coast-to-coast with the dribble. It is going to take two of us to slow her down.
“They have the other girl (Miya McKinney) that can shoot the ball well, even though she is a power forward. They are not a good matchup for us, but I told the girls we are not a good matchup for them. We are going to do what we do. Our transition offense is good, we try to shoot in the first seven seconds then chaotic pressure on defense. We know we are going to give up some easy stuff because of the mismatch, but we hope our style will win out in the long run.”
In today’s nightcap, No. 2 Iota (28-6) will face No. 6 Albany (22-14) at 8 p.m. in the other Class 3A semifinal. The Lady Dogs reached the semifinals last year before losing to Parkview Baptist. Iota earned a return trip to Hammond with a 71-64 overtime win over Madison Parish in the quarterfinals.
Class 2A
No. 2 Lake Arthur (25-5) will play No. 6 Madison Prep (24-5) at 1:15 p.m. The Tigers are led by the high-scoring tandem on Sarah Guidry and Jamara Levy. Madison Prep eliminated a pair of area teams, Welsh and Oakdale, in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
LEESVILLE — The City Council on Monday tabled a proposed ordinance designed to regulate “saggy pants” in public areas.
District 3 member Danny Dowd, sitting in for an absent Mayor Rick Allen, said the motion to accept the ordinance was being tabled so the council could seek more information on the matter.
“We would like to get more input from the public, as well as from the judicial system, before moving forward,” Dowd said. “We will continue reviewing this as a council, and together we will decide if we even want to move forward with this.”
The ordinance, introduced last month, would require “appropriate dress” for people in public areas and would prohibit pants from being worn more than 3 inches below the hips “causing exposure of the person or persons’ undergarments.”
Several residents at Monday’s meeting said they had intended to voice their opposition to the ordinance, including the Rev. Joseph Garner, who submitted a formal letter to the council asking to be included in discussions before its vote.
He said he chose not to speak at Monday’s meeting because he wanted to wait until the ordinance came up at a later date. In his letter Garner called the ordinance “unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.”
Garner wrote that the ordinance would inevitably raise questions about racial profiling.
“ ‘Saggy pants’ is a clothing style typically associated with young African-American males,” he wrote. “If enforced against those who choose this style and not against everyone whose pants may inadvertently sag, it will almost certainly be enforced disproportionately against a particular group of people who will be singled out by law enforcement for nothing more than their attire.”
Other residents said enforcement of the ordinance would burden police officers.
Dowd said that if the council reintroduces the ordinance, the public will be made aware of the date.
Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism
You might have heard: The New York Times acquired product review sites The Wirecutter and The Sweethome in October for $30 million (Recode), and the affiliate revenue-based business models have been praised as being somewhat immune to the whims of the industry (15 Minutes in the Morning)
But did you know: Amazon is cutting affiliate revenue, showing the risk of building a journalism business built on revenue from affiliate links (Nieman Lab)
When The New York Times bought The Wirecutter and The Sweethome last fall, executive editor Dean Baquet said the sites’ business models built on affiliate revenue “represents a strong step toward a further embrace of this approach.” But a clear downside to that model, Laura Hazard Owen writes, is that it gives tech companies a lot of power over their revenue. Last week, Amazon announced that it would be making its affiliate revenue “less generous” in some categories — and notably, eliminating volume pricing advantages as of March 1. “Rather than earning based on the volume of products you sell, now you’ll earn a flat rate across individual products ranges, meaning whether you sell five or 500 you’ll make the same commission on each sale,” affiliate marketing company Skimlinks explains.
+ Noted: Time Inc. asks potential buyers, including Meredith and Edgar Bronfman Jr., to submit their acquisition offers by next week (Bloomberg); After Amazon servers malfunctioned on Tuesday and brought down a host of news organizations’ websites (Poynter), Amazon Web Services says it has fixed the cloud storage problems at its Northern Virginia data centers (GeekWire); Before BuzzFeed published the unverified Trump dossier, the FBI planned to pay the former British spy who wrote it, which shows the FBI “considered him credible and found his information, while unproved, to be worthy of further investigation” (Washington Post); Emmis Communications sells its magazines in Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Orange County, Calif., to Hour Media Group (LA Observed)
‘How building trust with your audience is like dating’ (Poynter)
“Relationships take work. You don’t get intimacy without putting in some time. You don’t ask for favors without offering the equivalent yourself. You earn trust by being there consistently, and by listening,” Joy Mayer writes on how building trust with your readers is similar to dating. Mayer outlines four dating rules that also apply to your relationships with your readers: Talk about things the other person is interested in, don’t ask for more engagement/intimacy than you’ve earned, listen to the answers to the questions you ask, and reflect back on what you’ve heard and learned about the other person.
In the Global South, donors and newsrooms don’t always agree on ‘the difference between acceptable involvement and interference’ (Nieman Lab)
A new report from the Center for International Media Assistance shows that in the Global South, donors and the news organizations they fund sometimes have different ideas of what’s acceptable involvement. The report shows that from 2010 to 2014, 23 percent of private grants given to support “journalism, news, and information” were given to report on topics important to the donors. And while the report suggests that the relationships between donors and newsrooms are “generally positive,” the report also says, “Interviews also suggested that perceptions vary markedly between the donors and media houses, and even within media houses, as to what constitutes the difference between acceptable involvement and interference.” In some cases, donors suggested topics for coverage, while in others they suggested specific story ideas or sources.
+ Earlier: Our report on the ethical terrain of funding nonprofit journalism and guiding principles for how nonprofit news outlets and funders can navigate those relationships
A question to ask when building a new product: What is someone going to stop doing when they start using your product? (Signal v. Noise)
When building a new product, Jason Fried writes that we often think about all the new things people are going to be able to do with it. But Fried says we should be asking ourselves, what is someone going to stop doing when they start using our product? Think about what your product is replacing, what they’re switching from, and how your product is improving that experience for them. “Habit, momentum, familiarity, anxiety of the unknown — these are incredibly hard bonds to break. When you try to sell someone something, you have to overcome those bonds. You have to break the grip of that gravity,” Fried writes.
Margaret Sullivan: President Trump and his aides condemn leaks to journalists — unless the leaks are coming from them (Washington Post)
“President Trump and his aides despise and condemn anonymous leaks to reporters. Except, of course, when they are the ones doing the leaking,” Margaret Sullivan writes. The result for news consumers, Sullivan argues, is confusing. “It’s almost impossible to know whether an unnamed source is someone courageously taking a risk to get information out or a powerful official who is eluding responsibility … You could have both of these kinds of unnamed sources in the same news story — maybe in the same paragraph,” Jay Rosen tells Sullivan.
+ Sean Spicer was the source of a Washington Examiner story about a Politico reporter laughing at the death of a Navy SEAL after the reporter published an unflattering anecdote about Spicer, Erik Wemple reports (Washington Post); CNN reports that Trump signed off on Spicer’s decision to collect and check aides’ phones for evidence of communicating with reporters; Spicer denied that, saying: “(Trump) did not sign off or even know what I did. That is not accurate” (CNN)
+ The New Yorker says it will not attend White House press briefings until the exclusion of some news outlets is ended (New Yorker); At a private lunch, Trump tells news anchors that “he simply wanted to be treated fairly by the press” (Huffington Post)
CNN will attend the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and bring journalism students as their ‘celebrity guests’ (Hollywood Reporter)
After journalists have debated the merits of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and President Trump said he would not attend, CNN says they’ll attend the 2017 dinner — but they’ll bring journalism students in place of the usual celebrity guests. While CNN will be attending, organizations including Vanity Fair and The New Yorker have said they’ll skip out on this year’s event. “We feel there is no better way to underscore our commitment to the health and longevity of a free press than to celebrate its future,” CNN said in a statement on the CNN Communications Twitter account Tuesday.
The post Need to Know: Mar. 1, 2017 appeared first on American Press Institute.