Douglas David Andrews, 29, of Woonsoket, Rhode Island, and Mark Daniel McNeil, 37, of Blackstone, Massachusetts, were headed west on I-40 just east of Cookeville around 7 p.m. June 4 when their trip got detoured.
That's when Tennessee Highway Patrol Trooper Michael Robertson stopped their GMC truck for speeding and for seatbelt violations.
The trooper said he found "several empty plastic bags and a set of electronic scales with white powder residue" in the back of the truck.
After further investigation, the trooper charged the two with possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
He alleges in warrants that the two men had pooled their resources "and purchased Percocets and had then re-sold them to try and make enough extra money to make it to California."
McNeil was also charged with criminal impersonation for allegedly giving the trooper a false name at first, apparently because there are outstanding warrants on him in Massachusetts, one warrant says.
The two men were taken to the Putnam jail, and U.S. Marshal's Task Force Agent Patrick Storie served the trooper's warrants on them, jail records say.
They have a July 13 court date.
Source: www.herald-citizen.com
California's budget crisis sparks controversial 'BYOD' plan to save money - Network World Fusion
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The state of California's staggering budget problems -- now an estimated $16 billion shortfall -- have put Chris Cruz, deputy director and chief information officer at the state's Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), in a tough situation. Because of the state's ongoing fiscal crisis, he, like other agency managers, last year was told to cut use of state-issued cellphones by 50% as a cost-saving measure. Cruz decided one way to hold down costs at DHCS, which was using BlackBerries, was to have agency employees use their own smartphones instead -- without any subsidy.
This bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy has been controversial, pitting him against the state employee unions which are fighting it since it effectively shifts device and service costs to employees who are not being given any stipend. Cruz acknowledges he also fights over BYOD with his information-security officer, who thought it too risky. But if tough times call for tough measures, Cruz is not backing down, and says his strategy to manage and secure the employee-owned smartphones is working.
MORE: Gartner: Cloud-based mobile-device management (MDM) getting hot
"As a Gen X guy," said Cruz, who spoke about his BYOD strategy during this week's Gartner IT Infrastructure & Management Summit here, I was "looking at IT" not so much as a risk as an "opportunity." And that opportunity was a form of BYOD.
"We had 1,500 BlackBerries," said Cruz, and he had to meet the mandate set by the state last year to cut cellphone use by 50%. Each was costing $110 per month, he said, and "I wanted to get rid of them."
Instead, DHCS, the large California healthcare agency which supports Medicaid and Medicare services, wouldn't buy new smartphones, but ask employees to use their own smartphone for work purposes. The employee using their personally owned device for work data would have to agree to have the mobile device management (MDM) software that was selected, called Good Enterprise, installed on their mobile device so that DHCS would have the enforce policies and the ability to wipe it if it were lost or stolen. The Good Technology software creates an "unbreakable partition" between personal and business data, Cruz pointed out.
"DHCS mandated to have all mobile devices encrypted," Cruz said, adding encryption is something that's required and audited by the agency that's part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The information-security officer last year who initially objected to the BYOD idea, thinking it too risky, had his job changed so that he now reports directly to Cruz, who says he think the job of security staff is not to stop IT but to help mitigate risk.
But Cruz hasn't been able to fend off the objections of California's state-employee unions so easily -- they don't want DHCS employees to have to bring their own phones. It may be "we can't force rank-and-file employees to buy phones," Cruz acknowledges. Negotiations are ongoing, and it's not clear right now whether there will be a compromise or what it will be exactly.
Source: www.networkworld.com
Jane Austen: A portrait of the artist as a young girl? - The Guardian
New evidence may have revealed the true face of one of Britain's most beloved authors. Using digital photographic tools analysis has revealed writing on a long-disputed oil painting that its owners claim shows Jane Austen as a teenage girl. No other professional likeness of the writer exists.
The discovered words appear to include not only the novelist's name, but also that of the suspected artist.
In the top-right corner of a reproduction of a photograph of the portrait taken before the painting was restored, the name Jane Austen is visible. Next to it is revealed in two places the name Ozias Humphry – an established portrait painter of the period. He was a member of the Royal Academy, and a friend of other better-known artists of the day, such as Gainsborough and Romney.
The words have been digitally enhanced using photographic tools and methods that have been independently validated by photographic expert Stephen Cole of Acume Forensics in Leeds, who has spent more than 20 years analysing photographic evidence in criminal cases.
Art critic Angus Stewart, a former curator of an exhibition dedicated to Jane Austen, has seen the evidence and is impressed. "To have all these words revealed on the canvas is very, very strong. I think you'd be flying in the face of reason to deny this," he said.
The painting, owned by the Rice family, direct descendants of one of Jane's brothers, has been the subject of debate almost since it came to public light in the late 19th century. The Rices say it was composed during an Austen family visit to the house of Jane's great uncle Francis, in Kent in 1789, when Jane was 13. According to the recorded family history, having commissioned the portrait Francis kept it in Sevenoaks with the rest of his family collection. It was then given by his grandson, Colonel Thomas Austen, to a close friend as a wedding present, the year after the author died in 1817, because the bride was reported to be a keen admirer of Austen's books.
However, since the 1940s art experts, led by the National Portrait Gallery, have raised objections, principally that the style of the girl's dress and the general composition date the painting after 1800. By then, Jane Austen would have been in her 20s, too old to be the girl depicted. But the new evidence also provides important clues that could contradict the established view. The digital analysis has been conducted on a photograph of the canvas dating back to 1910 when the photographer Emery Walker was hired to reproduce the image for a collection of Jane Austen's letters. The original glass plates have since been stored in the National Portrait Gallery's own reference library, and have only now been digitally reproduced.
Since 1910 the painting has undergone successive restorations which may have erased crucial clues on the surface, so this black-and-white photograph may contain evidence lost on the original.
Francis Austen was a patron of Humphry's work, and had himself sat for a portrait by the artist. Crucially, Humphry also became blind in 1797 and stopped painting – so this attribution would date the picture before then. Intriguingly the enhancements also seem to reveal the date 1789, at which time Jane Austen was 13, the right age to be the girl in the painting.
It's not possible to know whether any of this writing was placed on the canvas by Humphry himself or a later owner. But as the painting was believed to be by a better known and more prestigious artist, Johann Zoffany, it seems to experts overwhelmingly likely that the words must have been put there during or shortly after Jane's lifetime. Professor Claudia Johnson of Princeton University believes the new evidence trumps the historical objections: "Whether Humphry's name was signed by himself in the 18th century and/or by some other hand later, the attribution must be contemporaneous with Austen's lifetime or by people who knew Austen when she was alive," she said.
A definitive attribution of the portrait as Austen may represent something of an embarrassment to the National Portrait Gallery, which granted the picture a licence for sale abroad on the basis that it could not be the writer. The gallery chose not to comment.
Thanks to the scholarly doubt, the picture failed to reach a £350,000 reserve price at auction in 2007. But now the Rice family can perhaps expect a much higher sale price.
Face of a writer
For most readers seeking to picture the author of Pride and Prejudice, the face of Jane Austen is a watercolour painted by her sister Cassandra in 1810, right, although the authenticity of the sketch has remained contested. The picture, which was adapted for the front cover of her 1870 biography by artist James Andrews, has been described by Austen scholar Paula Byrne as "very Victorian, sentimentalised and saccharine".
Last year, Byrne came forward with what she claimed is a previously unseen portrait of the writer, which depicts her seated at a table with a pen in hand and with a face rather longer than the round one familar to many owners of Austen novels.
Some Austen experts who agreed that the "new" image was authentic, presenting a professional woman writer at the height of her creative powers, said they believed it dated to around 1815, two years before her death. But there was scepticism from other quarters, where it was pointed out that the timing of the "discovery" came ahead of a new book by Byrne.
In terms of popular culture's portrayal of Austen, the best known recent depiction of her has been Becoming Jane, a speculative biopic of Jane Austen's love life in which she was played by the US actor Anne Hathaway. Reviewing the film in 2007, the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw concluded that Hathaway gave a decent account of herself "although she's far too pretty in the role".
Other depictions of Austen have included a comic inspired by the recent trend for "paranormal" mash-ups of her books. No longer able to rest in peace due to the proliferation of titles such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, the author rises from the dead intent on destroying the "abominations". Ben Quinn
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Painting of flotilla ruined by Diamond Jubilee downpours - Westmidlands.com
He was there to capture a unique moment in British history – but South Staffordshire artist Derek Baker’s big jubilee day was ruined when he got a right royal soaking.
Mr Baker was one of just 20 artists from around the country specially selected by the BBC to paint the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee flotilla.
The 51-year-old was given a prime spot on Millennium Bridge from where to capture the scene and all was going swimmingly. Until the heavens opened.
“It was one hell of a challenge,” Mr Baker said.
“You couldn’t even keep your brush level or keep the canvas still.
“I’ve never painted in conditions like it, but we cracked on and did the best we could.” Unfortunately the gusty winds and heavy rain were too much to cope with and Mr Baker, who was even forced to tie his easel to the bridge, couldn’t prevent the painting from being badly smeared and damaged.
And weather experts today said the gloomy conditions that marred the Pageant on the Thames will continue across the UK for the rest of the month.
With summer on standby, torrential rain and gale-force winds will engulf the country and temperatures are set to remain rooted at around 15C (59F).
Mr Baker is now planning to restore his painting to its full glory for a potential follow-up programme being made by the BBC – and he’s also hoping the Queen might get to look at the finished pieces.
Mr Baker, from Wombourne, added: “It was a real shame about the weather but I wasn’t too despondent. It was still a great occasion.
“I’ve got a few weeks to finish it now and the BBC will then put on an exhibition of the work.The beauty is I get time to repaint it and do a good job.”
He was using acrylic for the piece designed to capture the fun and energetic essence of the crowd, with the Queen and Prince Philip among them.
Visit www.derekbaker.co.uk to view a selection of Mr Baker’s work.
Source: www.expressandstar.com
California to vote on school aid tax rise - Financial Times
June 8, 2012 4:12 pm
Source: www.ft.com
California Leopold Conservation Award seeks nominees - PRWeb
Tim Koopmann and his family received the 2011 Leopold Conservation Award due to their tremendous work for land, water and wildlife in the San Francisco Bay area. Photo credit: Paolo Vescia
San Francisco, Calif. (PRWEB) June 08, 2012
Sand County Foundation, Sustainable Conservation and the California Farm Bureau Federation are seeking nominations for the 2012 California Leopold Conservation Award.
“Last year’s recipient, Tim Koopmann, is an exceptional land steward, but he and his family aren’t the only landowners in California doing exceptional work for natural resources,” said Dr. Brent Haglund, Sand County Foundation President. “We look forward to meeting and honoring more innovative farming and ranching families, like the Koopmanns, who are committed to the enhancement of California’s landscape.”
The $10,000 award recognizes California farmers and ranchers who demonstrate outstanding, sustainable management of natural resources. The Leopold Conservation Award is presented in honor of famed conservationist and author Aldo Leopold, who called for an ethical relationship between people and the land they own and manage.
“Farmers and ranchers are often-overlooked conservation leaders,” said Ashley Boren, Executive Director of Sustainable Conservation. “The award is a great way to celebrate those individuals and families whose sound natural resource stewardship keeps California’s environment and economy vibrant.”
Nominations are considered in two categories: Nurseries and Crops, and Livestock. Finalists will be selected in each category, with the Leopold Conservation Award winner being announced on December 3rd at the California Farm Bureau Federation Annual Meeting in Pasadena.
The deadline for nominations is July 15, 2012. Application information is available at: http://www.leopoldconservationaward.org
The Leopold Conservation Award in California is sponsored by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, The Nature Conservancy and Farm Credit.
Aside from California, Sand County Foundation presents Leopold Conservation Awards in Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
ABOUT SAND COUNTY FOUNDATION
Sand County Foundation is a private, non-profit conservation organization dedicated to working with private landowners to improve habitat on their land. In the spirit of Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, the Foundation encourages the exercise of private responsibility in the pursuit of improved land health.
ABOUT SUSTAINABLE CONSERVATION
Sustainable Conservation believes protecting the environment can also be good for business. The organization’s climate, air, water and wildlife initiatives promote practical solutions that produce tangible, lasting benefits for California. Founded in 1993, Sustainable Conservation’s effectiveness lies in building strong partnerships with business, agriculture and government – and establishing models for environmental and economic sustainability that can be replicated across California and beyond.
ABOUT CALIFORNIA FARM BUREAU FEDERATION
The California Farm Bureau Federation is California's largest farm organization. It works to protect family farms and ranches on behalf of nearly 85,000 members throughout California, including farm families and those who support the farming way of life.
Source: www.prweb.com
Romney's California neighbours outraged over noise at candidate's beach house as $12million home gets major renovation - Daily Mail
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A full-scale construction project is underway at Mitt Romney’s $12million lavish beach house - and it's ticking off his new neighbours.
The likely Republican nominee’s vacation home in the La Jolla neighbourhood of San Diego, California, will eventually feature a car elevator and its own lobbyist to add to its incredible ocean view.
But until then, it's a cacophony of hammers and drilling, and those who live nearby have had enough.
Tear it down: Mitt Romney's 75-year-old beach house just isn't big enough. He plans to level it and replace it with a mansion two and a half times the size, featuring a car elevator
An elderly woman who lives next door to the home at 311 Dunemere Drive told The New York Times that her car has repeatedly been boxed in due to the construction.
Neighbours told the paper that as many as six gay couples reportedly live within a three-block radius, which may cause some tension at the next block party.
One couple, Michael Duddy and his partner James Geiger jovially suggested to neighbours that they hang a gay pride flag from the pine tree on their property 'so that Romney’s motorcade has to drive under it.'
Irritated: Michael Duddy and his partner James Geiger disagree with Romney's stance on same-sex unions
Mark Quint, who lives several houses away, told the Times that he's tired of seeing the modest beach houses levelled to make room for sprawling properties.
He told the paper that he fears the 'nightmare of construction.'
The house came under scrutiny back in March, when Romney's political foes made public the plans for the construction project and began wielding them as another claim that the super-rich former Massachusetts governor is out-of-touch with Americans.
Ironically, in 2004 when Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he took a shot at Sen John Kerry, the Democratic presidential contender, over the size of his house.
He told a conference of governors: 'There's a senator of my state who wants to be elected president and I don't know why he'd want to do that, because he'd have to move into a small house,' Romney joked.
Romney, whose wealth is estimated at $250million, is in the process of tearing down the 76-year-old home and replace it with a building more than two and a half times the size.
The plans call for a 3,600-square-foot basement that is - by itself - bigger than the existing home.
Included in blueprints, obtained by Politico.com, are a split-level four-car garage with an elevator for the vehicles.
Romney defended the garage as a way to fit more vehicles into a compact space.
Opposition: Romney's house came under scrutiny in March, when political foes made public the plans for the construction and used them as another claim that he is out-of-touch with Americans
The Romneys will keep the home's outdoor lap pool and add a shower and a 'water feature' (it's unclear what, exactly, this is.)
And to make sure the construction permits and paperwork are shepherded through the San Diego bureaucracy, the project comes with a lobbyist.
Romney has paid $21,500 to San Diego lawyer Matthew A. Peterson to be his liaison to city government and answer questions that city officials might have.
The La Jolla beach house is one of three homes that Romney currently owns.
Headache: Critics have seized on the plans for a 'car elevator' as yet another sign that Romney is too wealthy to identify with most Americans
He has a six-bedroom, three story summer home that sits on Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, which he bought for $3million in 1997.
With a guest house and a 5,400-square-foot main home, the estate is worth an estimated $10million today, according to the real estate blog Zillow.
In 2010, he picked up a two-bedroom townhouse in the Boston suburb of Belmont.
At a mere $895,000 for 2,100 square feet, the Romneys reportedly keep it to maintain their residency in Massachusetts.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
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