In the chaotic final days of the ultimate parliamentary session of 2024, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese returned to his role in Julia Gillard's government.

He personally intervened within the arguments and negotiations as the federal government struggled to pass as much Labor laws as possible.

The end of a parliamentary yr is often chaos. But the 2024 final was greater than bad. A main minister who likes to say he’s leading an orderly government found himself in a state of chaos, where the method was thrown to the wind and quick fixes and sensible capitulations were the order of the day.

Senators would have expected the suspension of party volcano Lidia Thorpe, the Indigenous independent who defected from the Greens last yr, to remove a distraction in an exciting week. Instead, it added a wild element to Thursday's event when Thorpe shouted from the press box: “Free, free Palestine.” From the river to the ocean”. To prevent a repeat, additional security forces were deployed.

Amid the hustle and bustle, senators took time on Thursday to pay generous tributes to popular Senate opposition leader Simon Birmingham after he made a surprise announcement that he would abandon politics in favor of business within the election.

The week's political chaos delivered a serious and unexpected victory for Treasurer Jim Chalmers, but a serious defeat for Special Minister of State Don Farrell.

After the Liberals refused to support laws in September to separate the Reserve Bank board and create a special interest rate-setting committee, the plan appeared dead. But a late cope with the Greens served its purpose. Chalmers gets his restructured bank after giving in to the Greens' demand that the Treasurer retain the present (never used) right to override the bank's rates of interest.

Earlier this week the Greens agreed (without making any concessions) to support Labour's housing laws. It seems that the smaller party is putting on pragmatic clothing within the run-up to the election.

Farrell unveiled his sweeping electoral reforms aimed toward reining in “big money” just before the two-week session.

The man they call the “Godfather” still thought as late as Wednesday morning that he would finally reach what gave the look of an agreement in principle with the Liberals.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton sat down with Farrell within the minister's office. The Liberals wanted higher disclosure and donation limits. There were also heated arguments over the treatment of peak bodies comparable to the ACTU and the Business Council. Despite Farrell's willingness to be flexible, the proposed agreement fell through.

On Thursday morning, the federal government was forced to announce that Farrell would proceed discussions – which have already spanned much of the parliamentary term – over the summer within the hope of passing the law in February.

This assumes that Parliament returns in February – Albanese said on Thursday evening: “We fully expect that we will meet in February” – and that critics of the proposals don’t gain the upper hand. Reforming the electoral donations and spending system was a serious commitment of the Labor Party. Ultimately, the legislative push got here too late. Lots still must occur to ensure that the measures (which are usually not resulting from come into force until the center of the following legislative period) to be passed before the election.

The bill, which might ban children under 16 from accessing various social media sites, was passed but was also poorly implemented. While many individuals will think it's good that the laws passed, the method was horrific.

The ban could be very controversial, with many experts criticizing it. It was all of the more vital that laws be subject to appropriate parliamentary control. More than 15,000 submissions were received by the Senate committee examining the bill. The committee only took one morning's evidence on Monday and delivered its report on Tuesday.

As Labor tried to push dozens of bills through the Senate on Thursday, it had to make use of the guillotine to curb debate. However, this plan was initially rejected.

Enter Albanese. On a rare day of business and commerce, Santa arrived early.

ACT Independent David Pocock's support for the rapid passage of bills was secured by various small details, including, because the senator said in a press release, two “significant measures that will be announced in the coming days”.

Greens' spirits were lifted by the $500 million cost of public housing upgrades. There was also a commitment to “no coal, oil and gas development in Future Made in Australia”.

Albanese was personally involved within the negotiations with Pocock and the Greens.

Some interpreted the federal government's hectic pace as a sign of likely elections in March. But that’s an over-interpretation, because even the Prime Minister's acceptance gave him leeway. If the Prime Minister desires to call an election in March, it is helpful to clear the cards (albeit partially), but that doesn’t mean he’ll accomplish that.

A March poll would present the awkward problem of overlapping with the Western Australian election campaign.

Anything involving WA is a trigger for Albanese, who won numerous seats there in 2022 and may't afford too many losses within the state next yr.

On Monday, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and the Greens reached an agreement, reportedly agreed to by the Prime Minister, to establish a brand new environmental watchdog to watch compliance with environmental laws. On Tuesday, Albanese canceled the deal.

Washington Prime Minister Roger Cook, who announced his conversation with the prime minister about election dates earlier this month, explained at a news conference on Wednesday how he ensured the bill wouldn’t be implemented.

Cook said he had a conversation “at the highest levels of the federal government” on Tuesday. He had reiterated the WA view that the Nature Positive laws shouldn’t be implemented in its current form. He had been assured that it might not proceed this week.

Albanese had his own version on ABC on Thursday nights. The “legislation remains stuck in the Senate,” he said. “We didn’t have a majority for it.”

He added: “I was the negotiator.”

Once again Albanese has dealt a blow to Plibersek, who he added to the environment portfolio when she had expected to get the education post for which she had been shadow minister. For Plibersek it was a character-building election period.

Years before James Brandon Lewis gained recognition as certainly one of jazz's strongest and expressive tenor saxophonists, he briefly believed he had found his calling within the church.

After graduating from Howard University in 2006 with a level in jazz studies, Lewis moved to Colorado, where he found lucrative employment within the gospel music scene. The work gave him spiritual achievement, but he felt limited in his creativity and realized he was still trapped within the mundane realities of the music business.

“I was in it because I had a relationship with God, and the only reason I didn't pursue that path was because I didn't see a lot of creative freedom there,” said Lewis, 41, who performs with The Messthetics at Felton Music Hall on Sept. 9 and on the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on Sept. 10.

“I was just playing hymns and I enjoyed it. But at the same time, the gospel music industry is different from Sunday church. It's an industry like any other.”

Eager to spread his wings, Lewis enrolled in a graduate program at Cal Arts Valencia, where he met daring improvisers Charlie Haden and Wadada Leo Smith. He had a knack for networking with experienced masters, absorbing information and jazz knowledge as recent horizons opened up before him.

“When I spent time with Wadada, he talked about systematic music-making and his approach to composition,” Lewis recalled. “I realized that we know the standards, but we can also push the boundaries. There were all these incredible stories that I couldn't find out anywhere else, like talking to Charlie about his first encounter with Ornette Coleman,” the blues-loving alto saxophonist and composer whose rhythmic and harmonic concepts greatly expanded the language of jazz within the late Fifties.

Like a snowball accumulating more mass because it rolls down, Lewis has continued to soak up recent information and experiences while maintaining a sacred core to his sound. Following his George Washington Carver-inspired album Jesup Wagon, which was named one of the best album of the 12 months in a 2021 poll of leading jazz critics, Lewis and his Red Lily Quintet have released the extraordinary double CD For Mahalia, With Love in 2023, a wonderful tribute to gospel singing legend Mahalia Jackson.

Music critics will not be the one attentive listeners who’ve taken note of Lewis' music. Sonny Rollins, the 93-year-old titan of the tenor saxophone whose shadow isn’t any less imposing ten years after his retirement from the stage, has praised Lewis' creative abilities in spiritual terms.

“When I listen to you, I'm listening to Buddha, I'm listening to Confucius,” Rollins said. “I'm listening to the deeper meaning of life. You keep the world in balance.”

Although he keeps in contact with Rollins commonly, the blessing was “totally unexpected,” Lewis said. But he has actively sought out renowned artists known for creating expansive musical worlds, corresponding to bassist/composer William Parker, who leads Lewis' Red Lily Quintet.

Lewis returns to the Bay Area not as a bandleader but as a catalyst in The Messthetics, the Washington, DC-based trio consisting of bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty, the rhythm team of legendary punk band Fugazi, and guitarist Anthony Pirog.

Lewis and Pirog, a musician who can't be categorized and infrequently works in a setting where jazz, rock and recent music collide, met a couple of decade ago at a gig in New York led by drummer William Hooker. They became friends immediately. Pirog toured Europe with Lewis' band “and always made me feel like whatever I wanted to contribute was the best,” Pirog said.

When Lewis signed to the ANTI- label in 2022, he featured The Messthetics on his first single, the blistering track “Fear Not,” and when he sat down with the trio at New York City’s Winter Jazzfest the next 12 months, “he was a perfect fit for the band energetically,” Pirog said.

The collaboration got here into full effect with the discharge of the album “The Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis” in March on Impulse!, a label inextricably linked to musical exploration. As a quartet, the group now covers the whole lot from the crisp funk of “That Thing” to the sublime lyricism of “Boatly.”

“I've always liked the combination of guitar and saxophone, starting with Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall,” said Pirog. “It's also a big theme in surf music.”

Lewis collaborates with one other extraordinary guitarist on September 22 on the SFJAZZ Center as a special guest to have a good time the seventieth birthday of Marc Ribot, best referred to as a palette-expanding muse for artists corresponding to John Zorn, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.

“I'm saying something that everyone knows by now,” Ribot said. “James is one of the greatest saxophonists, if not the greatest tenor player of our time.”

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JAMES BRANDON LEWIS

With the Messthetics: September 9, 8 p.m., Felton Music Hall, Felton; $22-$37; www.feltonmusichall.com; September 10, 8 p.m., Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco; $20; rickshawstop.com

Celebration of Marc Ribot’s seventieth birthday: September 22, 7:00 p.m.; SFJAZZ Center; San Francisco; $25-$95; www.sfjazz.or

Street dancer for the primary time from 15 countriesalong with a girl from the Refugee Olympic Teamfight for gold, silver and bronze, Breakdance will make its debut on the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Sport has come a great distance from its origins within the BronxBut the body-contorting, mind-boggling moves once seen only in playgrounds and street festivals will now thrill billions of spectators world wide.

When you first see Breakout, you might be amazed that folks may even perform these moves without injuring themselves.

As a former dancer, currently a performing arts physiotherapist and biomechanics researcher, I study how dancers twist and bend their bodies in unexpected ways. I train them to have the option to perform safely even once they push their bodies to the limit.

Breakdancers – also often known as B-Boys, B-Girls or Breakers – not only must give you creative moves, they must develop incredible strength and body control to tug them off – and nothing is as intimidating because the headspin.

No routine when breaking

Breaking is a type of street dance that developed within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies and has influences from hip hop, martial arts and gymnastics.

At the Olympic Games, two athletes compete against one another at the identical time in improvised competitions during which the competitors take turns attempting to outdo one another with their best moves and elegance.

A jury evaluates the dancers based on five criteria: Originality, technique, musicality, execution and vocabulary, which refers back to the range of movements used. It is analogous in some ways to gymnastics or figure skating, but due to the backwards and forwards between the 2 competitors, breaking requires so much more improvisation.

Fighting requires athletes to be extremely versatile and react to the talents of their opponents, meaning that those with probably the most robust and varied training protocols have the very best likelihood of scoring probably the most points and coming away unscathed.

The headspin particularly requires strong neck muscles and will puzzle some spectators. How can breakers spin on their skulls while supporting their body weight without breaking their necks?

The biomechanics of the pinnacle spin

Although there is just not much research on the precise mechanics of headspins, A spinning top might help explain how this amazing trick works..

A rotating object maintains its rotational state as a result of what’s often known as the conservation of angular momentum. When the thing rotates around a vertical axis, gravity doesn’t cause it to decelerate or tip over. Only when friction slows the rotation or the thing begins to wobble does gravity do the job and let it fall.

So, to perform a headspin, breakers must ensure they're spinning fast enough – and that their upper body is stiff enough. To maintain a smooth spin, the upper body must be placed as vertically as possible on the pinnacle and the neck muscles must be stiff to support it – all while avoiding any bending or strain on the neck.

Breakers can modulate the speed of the rotation by moving their legs and arms closer to or away from the axis of rotation. They also can stop, start or speed up by pumping their arms.

When a crusher rotates, the rotational forces can actually reduce the downward pressure on the pinnacle. It may even cause some slipping and displacement of the pinnacle along the bottom.

Head spinning may look easy for elite B-boys and B-girls, nevertheless it puts a variety of strain on the neck and may result in serious injuries.

A study showed that although breakers didn’t have greater neck flexibility than non-breakers, They had significantly more neck strength in all neck movements and in maintaining the neutral position, which is crucial for achieving a headspin. Another study showed that nearly half of all breakers report neck pain and tension.

There is even a term for a spinal cord injury brought on by extreme stress on the neck from fractures, first described within the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985: “Breakdance neck.”

So, to all of you who’re competing on the world stage for the primary time: good luck – but not your neck.

Commentators and observers are concerned about the opportunity of Tie within the presidential election in November 2024One possibility is that Both candidates of the main parties receive 269 electoral votes – one vote wanting the 270 needed to win. Another scenario is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who appears to be attracting a whole lot of interest from voters, can gain a number of electoral votes and stop Biden or Trump from reaching the magic variety of 270.

But what then? In recent a long time, electoral ties have occurred everywhere in the country and have been resolved through bizarre, often comical procedures. What all of those methods have in common is that the desires of the people play no role. Voters are completely excluded from what’s speculated to be a democratic process.

Strange tiebreakers

For example 2006 Alaska Local School Board Elections was decided by a coin toss, which re-elected a girl who had actually died on election day.

In June 2009 Thomas McGuire and Adam Trenk tied within the race for a seat on the Cave Creek, Arizona city council. They each received 660 votes. The city judge pulled a deck of cards out of a cowboy hat, shuffled them, and asked McGuire and Trenk to attract cards. McGuire drew the six of hearts. Trenk drew the king of hearts and won the council seat.

A city council election in Florida in 2014 was decided by a Series of steps with a coin toss and a bag of numbered table tennis balls.

And in January 2018an official of the Virginia State Board of Elections, following the foundations of 1705, dipped his hand right into a ceramic bowl made by an area artist and pulled out certainly one of the 2 containers. The paper within the container read “David Yancey,” indicating that Yancey, a Republican, had won a seat within the Virginia House of Delegates. This was the ultimate decision in a tie vote, with Yancey and his Democratic opponent, Shelley Simonds, each receiving 11,607 votes.

Other ties were decided by drawing lots. cylinder and a Tricorn hat.

A algorithm

The tiebreak rules vary from place to position. New Mexico Law stipulates that a tie must be resolved by a game of probability, resembling poker, while Connections to the Nevada Caucus requires drawing cards from a deck that has been shuffled at the very least seven times, with the best card winning.

While researching my book “Making democracy count: How mathematics improves elections, voting cards and representation“I actually have found that greater than half of the states such a lottery or game procedure to interrupt ties. Some require a runoff election between tied candidates, while others let the governor or state election board determine the winner. In all cases, the procedure is either random, subject to private or political whim, or starts the election process once again.

More than half the votes?

This absurd theater isn’t only going down on local stages. One of essentially the most confusing sets of rules for decision-making also applies to the largest election within the country: the election of the US president.

As already stated in Article 2 of the US Constitution, the winner of a presidential election greater than half of the electoral college votesBut if nobody gets the crucial majority (currently 270), the choice goes to the House of Representatives.

The nonsense that then happens is manifold. First, in keeping with the twelfth Amendment, the House of Representatives can choose from the highest three places within the counting of the votesThe winner doesn’t should be the winner of nearly all of votes or certainly one of the 2 candidates who were tied in the primary vote count.

The 435 members of the House of Representatives don’t all have a vote either. Rather, each state's delegation as a complete receives one vote. So there are 50 electors, all of them equal. At this stage, California and Wyoming have equal power, as do each of the opposite 48 states. It doesn’t matter that California has about 66 times more people than Wyoming and 52 times the variety of representatives.

If a state delegation – that’s, all of its representatives together – cannot agree or is split, it loses its vote. The winner must receive the votes of a majority of the states. Any deadlock in the method would should be resolved through negotiations among the many representatives.

This is how a president is elected. If nobody wins a majority within the Electoral College, the Senate chooses the vp, but the foundations are barely different: each senator is allowed to vote individually and might only select from the 2 electoral votes with essentially the most votes for vp. The twelfth Amendment requires a straightforward majority of senators to declare a winner. It isn’t clear what would occur if the Senate vote were tied, but resolving that issue would likely require political intrigue.

These parallel processes mean that the House of Representatives could elect a president of 1 party while the Senate chooses the vp of the opposite party. And if the House cannot agree on a president however the Senate chooses a vp, then elected Vice President becomes President until the House of Representatives decides.

draw

There have been ties in presidential elections before. The first occurred in 1800. After Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 votes within the Electoral College, the 16 states of the Union voted for certainly one of them 36 times, but again the vote led to a tie. Jefferson was eventually elected president On the thirty seventh ballot, Burr was elected Vice President.

But Jefferson and Burr had been competitors, not opponents, so the result revealed a complication of the unique Constitution. In 1804 twelfth Amendment was passed to make clear the method for electing the President and Vice President, and specifically to require that separate electoral votes be forged for every.

In 1824, nevertheless, the presidential election was again held by the House of Representatives. Andrew Jackson, who ran as a political outsider, won nearly all of the favored vote and more electoral votes than the opposite three candidates, although not a majority. After political maneuvering, the House of Representatives elected the runner-up, John Quincy Adams – an insider whom Jackson had rejected – as president.

A vital weakness of the US elections

All of those decision-making processes are essentially arbitrary. Chance, not the people, decides who gets to function their representative. But the decision-making processes are only crucial because most Americans have a critical weakness with regards to voting for many offices: Voters forged their ballots for the person they like, and the winner is set by who receives essentially the most votes.

The downside is that voters only indicate their favorite, so the method doesn’t provide any information that might be used to resolve deadlocks in an informed way. What stays is a reliance on centuries-old traditions, rules and laws which might be at best outdated and infrequently just plain ridiculous.

For presidential elections, Abolition of the Electoral College or otherwise Changing the methods by which states award electoral votes wouldn't help – because there could still be tied votes within the state or federal referendum. With so many citizens, they could be less likely, but they’re still mathematically possible, so any latest system would want to incorporate a technique for coping with tied votes.

To avoid leaving the final result to probability, our electoral systems would want to supply voters the chance to offer more details about their preferences than simply their first selection. There are already other voting methods that allow this. Ranked selection voting, for instance, requires voters to point not only their first selection, but additionally their second, third, and subsequent decisions, depending on what number of candidates there are. In the event of a tie, rankings beyond the primary selection would allow election officials to decide on a winner based on voters' wishes – fairly than letting democracy be determined by a deck of cards.

By Lilit Marcus and Wayne Chang | CNN

Three flight attendants are receiving praise for successfully defusing a physical altercation between two passengers on board an EVA Air flight.

In a press release to CNN, the airline said the altercation began when a passenger was reportedly coughing and the person next to him tried to maneuver to a different seat to get away. However, the person's try to swap seats failed since the seat he selected already belonged to a different male passenger. The two men then got into an argument over seating, which became a physical altercation, in accordance with the airline.

Three female flight attendants then stepped in to get the situation under control, says EVA.

Flight BR08 was about three hours into its 12-hour journey from Taipei to San Francisco on Wednesday, May 8, when the incident occurred. Taiwan-based EVA told CNN that the 2 arguing passengers were each foreigners, but didn’t provide details about their countries of origin.

“The company has always had a zero-tolerance policy towards harassment of passengers,” EVA said within the statement to CNN.

“The company will provide appropriate rewards [the three cabin crew members] later.”

According to EVA, the plane's captain contacted San Francisco police mid-flight and the 2 argumentative passengers were taken in for questioning upon arrival.

This isn't the primary time a mid-air incident on EVA has made headlines. In 2019, an chubby male passenger allegedly forced female flight attendants to assist him undresswent to the bathroom after which cleaned it as he was physically unable to achieve this.

Following the incident, EVA publicly expressed its “sincere gratitude” to its employees and promised to further investigate the incident.

In the identical yr, EVA modified his policy declared that it might only hire women as flight attendants and announced that it might also hire men as flight attendants.

The CNN Wire
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