Sources: Thunder’s Anthony to opt in, take $28 million

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma City Thunder forward Carmelo Anthony plans to opt in and take the $28 million he is due next season.

The New York Times first reported the 34-year-old Anthony’s decision to bypass the chance to become a free agent. A person with knowledge of details confirmed Anthony’s choice to The Associated Press on Friday night. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly.

The Thunder traded for Anthony and Paul George to join Russell Westbrook before last season, moves that gave them high hopes of challenging Golden State in the West. It didn’t work out as planned.


The 34-year-old Anthony had been the headliner his entire career — he’s 19th in NBA history with 25,417 points — but he was more of a catch-and-shoot scorer last season instead of the isolation specialist he had always been. He averaged 16.2 points per game, but struggled at times in his new role. His playing time dwindled in the playoffs and he wasn’t happy. In Game 6 of the first-round playoff series against Utah that ended Oklahoma City’s season, he played fewer minutes than backup Jerami Grant.

It wasn’t entirely clear if Anthony would opt in. After the season, he said he prefers to play with the ball in his hands more and said coming off the bench is “out of the question.”

“So it’s something I really have to think about, if I really want to be this type of player, finish out my career as this type of player, knowing that I have so much left in the tank and I bring so much to the game of basketball,” he said.

Despite his confidence, the 10-time All-Star posted career lows in scoring average and field goal percentage last season. Thunder general manager Sam Presti said at the end of the season that he doesn’t expect Anthony’s role to change.

“I give him an enormous amount of credit for the fact that he put both feet in,” Presti said. “I personally think he did an excellent job in his first year transitioning his game, working to becoming more of an off-the-ballplayer, being more reliant on other people to generate his offense, and sacrificing a lot. At the same time, I think every player is entitled to take a step back after the season, reflect on the year they had, and in his case have to make a determination about whether or not this is a role that he wants to continue to be functioning in.”

source: sports.inquirer.net

NY Times teams with Google parent to tame comments

NEW YORK, United States — The New York Times said Tuesday it was teaming with Google parent Alphabet in an effort to help filter its online reader comments to maintain a “civil and thoughtful” atmosphere.

The newspaper said it would work with Jigsaw, a technology incubator at Alphabet, to improve and expand its comments section.

The move comes amid frustration at many media organizations which have been seeking to boost reader engagement without allowing abusive and offensive comments.

“Maintaining a civil and thoughtful comments section is no easy undertaking, as evidenced by the number of publishers who have shut down their comment capabilities in recent years,” said Kinsey Wilson, the editor for innovation and strategy at the Times.

“But the Times has been and will continue to be dedicated to providing our readers with a safe online community to discuss the most important issues.”

Currently, the prestigious daily employees a team of 14 moderators who manually review some 11,000 comments each day. Only about 10 percent of Times articles are open to comments because of the time required for review.

Jigsaw uses algorithms to help this process, based on the moderated comments in the newspaper’s archives. The open-source system will also be made available to other online publishers, according to the statement.

“We believe open sourcing nearly a decade of Times comment archives will benefit the entire journalism industry and potentially make it easier for other publishers to manage comments on their sites,” Wilson said.

The Times “hopes that the project will expand viewpoints, provide a safe platform for diverse communities to have diverse discussions and allow readers’ voices to be an integral part of nearly every piece of reporting,” according to a Times statement.

In 2014, The Washington Post and The New York Times agreed to work together on a project funded by the Knight Foundation to create open-source software that can be adapted for news websites to get a better handle on online discussions.

source: technology.inquirer.net

‘Pietà’-like photo, PH drug war story on New York Times front page

The war against illegal drugs being waged by President Rodrigo Duterte is now going global.

The New York Times in its August 3, 2016 issue featured the rise in killings of suspected drug users and pushers in the country since Duterte assumed the presidency last June 30.

The newspaper also splashed the now viral photo of Jennelyn Olaires weeping while cradling her husband Michael Siaron, a pedicab driver and alleged drug pusher, who was shot and killed by motorcycle-riding men in Pasay City last month.

The photo, which was likened to Michelangelo’s sculpture “Pietà,” went viral and was even described by the firebrand President as “melodramatic” during his first State of the Nation Address (Sona).

“Eh tapos nandiyan ka nakabulagta (And there you are slumped on the ground) and you are portrayed in a broadsheet na parang (like) Mother Mary cradling the dead cadaver of Jesus Christ. Eh ‘yan ‘yang mga yan magda-dramahan tayo ditto (That’s what I call being melodramatic),” Duterte said.

The Times story which accompanied the photo is titled “Body Count Rises as Philippine President Wages War on Drugs.”

The story gave an overview on Duterte’s crackdown against illegal drugs and cited a letter penned by the International Drug Policy Consortium urging the United Nations drug control agencies “to demand an end to the atrocities currently taking place in the Philippines” and to state that extrajudicial killings “do not constitute acceptable drug control measures.”

It also quoted political analyst Ramon Casiple who said that people should give the President “100 days” to see if his war against drugs has been effective.

The photo of Olaires and Sairon was first featured by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on its front page last July 24. CDG

source: globalnation.inquirer.net

Sexting scandal shocks US high school

A massive sexting ring is rocking a high school in Colorado, with at least 100 students trading nude pictures and posting them on social media, news reports said Friday.

Some of the kids in the photographs were as young as 12, and included eighth graders from the middle school, The New York Times reported.

The students, many of whom are on the football team at Canon City High School, could now face criminal charges, reports said.

The school district announced Wednesday that "a number of our students have engaged in behavior where they take and pass along pictures of themselves that expose private parts of their bodies or their undergarments."

Noting that a "large number" of the high school football team players were implicated int he scandal, the district said it was canceling the high school's last football game of the season.

"Because we can't guarantee that every kid we put out on the field would be clean of this circumstance, we would just rather not put a team out at all," Canon City Schools Superintendent George Welsh told NBC television affiliate KOAA.

Noting it first learned of the behavior on Monday based on anonymous tips and student reports, the district stressed that taking a picture of yourself showing a naked private body part and sending it to another person was a felony.

The same applies if receiving such a picture and forwarding it to another person, or receiving such a picture and retaining possession of it over time.

According to The New York Times, police and the district attorney's office are weighing whether to file child pornography charges -- including felony charges -- against some of the participants.

Students circulated up to 400 lewd photographs, it added.

The police probe is focusing on whether any adults were involved, the school district said.

Students used password-protected "phone vaults," apps that often appear to be simple calculators at first glance, to hide the photos from their parents and school officials.

"It's been going on for years," one Canon City student told KRDO13, an affiliate of ABC television.

The student said some fellow students, especially girls, had been pressured to take pictures of themselves.

The school administration held an assembly Thursday to warn parents and explain the technology that allows their children to hide photos.

Canon City Sheriff Paul Schultz said the problem extends far beyond the town limits.

"With the new technologies, this is happening everywhere," he said. "Should parents be worried? Absolutely." —Agence-France Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Obama won't let Islamic militants create caliphate – NYT

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said he was willing to consider broader use of military strikes in Iraq to beat back Islamist militants, but Iraqi political leaders must first figure out a way to work with each other, the New York Times reported.

In a wide-ranging interview conducted on Friday, Obama also expressed regrets over not doing more to help Libya, pessimism about prospects for Middle East peace, concerns that Russia could invade Ukraine, and frustration that fellow economic superpower China has not stepped up to help.

Obama on Thursday authorized the U.S. military to conduct targeted strikes on Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq, a limited operation designed to prevent what he called a potential "genocide" of a religious sect and also protect American officials working in the country.

But in the interview with Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Obama said the United States may eventually do more to help Iraq repel the militant group, which seeks to control its own state.

"We're not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq," Obama said in the interview, excerpts of which the Times posted on its website late on Friday.

"But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void," he said.

He praised officials from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region for being "functional" and "tolerant of other sects and religions" and said the United States wanted to help.

"But, more broadly, what I've indicated is that I don't want to be in the business of being the Iraqi air force," he said.

Obama has faced growing criticism for being too reluctant to intervene in thorny foreign policy issues which have piled up under his watch.

He quipped that he sometimes wished the United States was more like China: a superpower that no one expects to intervene.

"They are free riders, and they've been free riders for the last 30 years, and it's worked really well for them," Obama said.

He told the Times that he regretted his government did not do more to help rebuild Libya after NATO-led air strikes in 2011 that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. The nation has been wracked by fighting and chaos.

"So that's a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, 'Should we intervene militarily?'" Obama said. "Do we have an answer the day after?"

Obama's administration has also been trying to encourage ceasefires in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinians, and applying economic sanctions against Russia to try to get Moscow to stop supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine.

He expressed doubts about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could come to the kind of longer term peace deal that former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was able to broker, and that former Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin accepted.

"In some ways Bibi's too strong, in some ways Abbas is too weak to bring them together and make the kind of bold decisions that a Sadat or a Begin or a Rabin were willing to make," Obama said.

Obama said he feared that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not back down from eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has supported separatists.

"He could invade," Obama said. — Reuters

US eyes bankruptcy link in GM ignition defect probe – report

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities are investigating whether General Motors hid an ignition switch defect when it filed for bankruptcy in 2009, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The Justice Department's investigation of the automaker includes a probe of whether GM committed bankruptcy fraud by not disclosing the ignition problem, a person briefed on the inquiry told the Times on Friday, the paper said.

Authorities are also investigating whether GM understated the defect to federal safety regulators, the Times said.

The ignition switch problems led to the recall of 1.6 million vehicles last month.


GM has handed over documents to federal investigators in New York, the person, who was not identified, told the Times.

The automaker cannot comment specifically on the Justice Department investigation, spokesman Greg Martin said in an email on Saturday. "We are cooperating fully with authorities on several fronts and we will continue to do so," he said.

The investigation is being run by FBI agents and federal prosecutors who worked on the fraud case against Toyota that ended in a $1.2 billion settlement last week, the paper said.

On Wednesday, GM was hit with a lawsuit demanding that the company be held liable for allegedly concealing ignition problems before its 2009 bankruptcy.

GM is a different legal entity than the one that filed the 2009 bankruptcy that shook the U.S. economy. The so-called new GM is not responsible under the terms of its bankruptcy exit for legal claims relating to incidents that took place before July 2009. Those claims must be brought against what remains of the "old" or pre-bankruptcy GM.

But the proposed class action, filed in federal court in California, said plaintiffs should be allowed to sue over the pre-bankruptcy actions "because of the active concealment by Old GM and GM."

The lawsuit also said GM was responsible for reporting to the federal government any safety-related problems for cars made before its bankruptcy.

It is one of several lawsuits filed against the company since the recall was announced. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Angelina Jolie has double mastectomy to elude breast cancer

LONDON -- Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer and says she hopes her story will inspire other women fighting the life-threatening disease.

Jolie wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday the operation has made it easier for her to reassure her six children that she would not die young from cancer, like her own mother did at 56.

"We often speak of 'Mommy's mommy', and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me," wrote Jolie, 37.

"I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene."

The Oscar-winning actress said her doctors had estimated she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

"Once I knew this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much as I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy," she said.




Partner and fellow Hollywood star Brad Pitt was by Jolie's side through three months of treatment that ended late in April, she said. The two got engaged last year.

Jolie said that even though she had kept silent about her treatment while it was going on, she hoped her story would now help other women.

"I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested."

Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization. It is estimated that one in 300 to one in 500 women carry a BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene mutation, as Jolie does.

Her decision was hailed by breast cancer patients and charities.

Richard Francis, Head of Research at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity in Britain, said it demonstrated the importance of educating women with the gene fault.

"For women like Angelina it's important that they are made fully aware of all the options that are available, including risk-reducing surgery and extra breast screening," Francis told Reuters.

Breast Cancer Campaign Chief Executive Baroness Delyth Morgan said Jolie's openness in talking about her experience and her decision to have surgery would raise awareness of the disease and its risk.

Jolie won a 1999 best supporting actress Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted".

She lends her star power to a range of humanitarian campaigns, including serving more than 10 years as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

In April, she urged governments to step up efforts to bring wartime sex offenders to justice. - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com