On October third, a woman with a small child in her car attempted to breach a security checkpoint at the White House. Police chased the woman through the streets of Washington DC, ending up at the Capitol Hill, where policemen shot and killed the woman. She struck a police vehicle with her car before she was stopped. The one year old child in the vehicle was unharmed according to police.
The incident raised alarms due to the recent shooting at the navy yard which left twelve people dead.
The woman, Miriam Carey, was a 34 year old dental hygienist from Stamford, CT and was the registered owner of the vehicle in question. She was pursued for 1.7 miles by secret service officers and uniform policemen before being shot. Capitol police said that there does not appear to be an immediate terrorist link, although Capitol police chief Cathy Lanier said “I’m pretty confident this was not an accident”. The Capitol building was put under lockdown and government officials were told to stay sheltered in their offices until Carey was stopped.
Police fired their weapons twice during the chase, both times in areas filled with tourists. They finally caught up with Carey outside the Hart Senate office building on Maryland Avenue and Second Street NE. The woman’s car was stuck and officers fired shots. Authorities have said that the woman was not armed.
This incident comes at an especially low point for the city, coming so soon after the aforementioned Navy Yard shootings and a government shutdown. However, law enforcement said that the incident shows the success of the security measures enacted around the city since 9/11.
Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake), the hero of Runner Runner, is a smart kid who tries to win his tuition money for Princeton by playing some online poker. When he discovers that the game is fixed, he hightails it down to Costa Rica to confront vaguely legendary gambling tycoon Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), and he allows himself to get drawn into the high life that Block offers. Filled with lush views of tropical beaches, expensive parties and apartments, and sumptuously beautiful but barely characterized women, Runner Runner is the kind of meat-and-potatoes genre picture that might be passable if the people involved in making it had given the same thought and concentration to the development of the plot and the ending as they did to the fairly involving set-up.
In its two male leads, Runner Runner offers a study in contrasts. Timberlake is still obviously excited to be headlining a movie, any kind of movie, and he takes everything he’s doing here with laudable seriousness and interest. He holds the screen, and he loves being on it. The film builds up to his meeting with Affleck’s Ivan Block, and director Brad Furman gives this key character a visually striking entrance in a steam bath while screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien give Block an entertaining, chewy monologue that many other actors might have made a meal of. But Affleck just sits there in the steam bath and talks without inflection or emotion, and his passion makes it extremely clear that he doesn’t want to be acting in this movie or acting at all. He even seems irritated that he even had to memorize his lines.
Affleck has always been a strange case. He has been in films for twenty years now, and he’s a star, but has any other star been as frankly indifferent as he often seems on screen? Unlike Frank Sinatra in some of his 1960s vehicles, his indifference is not earned. His eyes are hooded, his voice inexpressive, and his body seems sedentary even while in movement. He has none of the joy or skill of an actor, and he never really did. His lackadaisical nature and indifference in Runner Runner really just won’t do.
At the climax of the film, when his character is supposed to look surprised, Affleck merely turns his head slightly and bats his eyes like an exhausted coquette- quite anticlimactic, to say the least. As an exercise in style, “Runner Runner” has its moments, especially early on, but some of Affleck’s torpor seems to infect the film itself after a while. Inventive framing and shot selection give way finally to let’s-get-this-done conversations, filmed in unimaginative shot/reverse-shot style.
Recast Ivan Block with any number of actors and Runner Runner might have been small-time but diverting fun. With Affleck at its center, the film becomes a tedious study in a poker face with other things on its mind.
With the recent headlines grabbed by the hundreds of tons of radioactive water flowing into the Pacific Ocean, the human crisis in Japan has been overlooked. It has been more than two and a half years since the Japan’s nuclear crisis, but refugees’ lives have still not returned to normal.
Despite the almost 83,000 refugees forced to flee from the worst hit areas of north-east Japan, the government has made little to no progress on their official goal of decontaminating the area. People from the town of Namie, and ten other evacuated villages, still reside in cramped temporary housing, and meager monthly stipends, in the hopes that they can one day return to their ancestral homes.
However, the years have passed, and the afflicted areas look as though no repair efforts have been made whatsoever; the government is hopelessly behind on the cleanup schedule. Refugees have been patient, but as they wait in an emotional and legal limbo, some have begun to grown bitter and speak of government obfuscation—experts warn that the cleanup could actually take decades, and that the government just refuses to admit it for fear of sabotaging plans to reopen other nuclear plants.
The town of Namie, only five miles away from the plant, used to be a small farming and fishing establishment lying peacefully between the mountains and the Pacific. However, these days it has become a ghost town, cluttered with garbage and weeds, and divided into color-coded hazard zones. Signs warn of feral cattle, released by fleeing farmers. Traditional wooden farmhouses rot unattended, tiled roofs spilling into the streets. Visitors must be issued dosimeters upon arrival, and screened on their way out.
In a recent survey of the town, it has been found that 30% have given up on reclaiming their lives, 30% remain hopeful, and 40% are unsure.
The 74-year-old Hiroko Watabe is part of this second group. Every month, she returns to weed her abandoned home (square in the code-orange area) armed with a surgical mask and radiation measuring device. Watabe refuses to give up her home to the ravages of time—unlike her neighbors, who have chest-high weeds blocking the doorways of their homes.
It has not been an easy task though; in the time Watabe has been doing this, a wild boar has invaded her yard—which she chased off—her husband’s car dealership has been robbed, and the dosimeter shows radiation levels more than two times above evacuation levels.
She has driven here from the city of Koriyama, one hour away, with her husband Masazumi. She states that in her heart, she knows they can never live there again, but continues doing this to give herself purpose and prove to herself that this is still their home. Her youngest son though now lives in Tokyo suburb, worried about the social stigma that could result from being associated with the nuclear disaster, as the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki face. He has vowed never to return.
“The young people have already given up on Namie. It is only the old people who want to come back,” Watabe stated.
As of October 17, the US has finally exited its government shutdown. 800,000 government employees had been furloughed and many more are working without pay. Low-income children lost their access to food and education. Research studies that promised cures for terminal, crippling illnesses were closed temporarily. In short, we have been failed by the politicians who we elected to represent our interests and keep the country out of these kind of messes.
You’d think these esteemed men and women would set aside their differences (which caused this problem in the first place), reach across the aisle and pass some legislation that would reverse this crisis and get this country up and running again, albeit with some concessions from both parties.
Instead, both parties engaged in a flurry of vehement finger-pointing while very little is actually being done. Everyone played the despicable blame game—the President, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and pretty much every other politician with a mouth and a microphone.
Not least of these elected officials is right-wing firebrand Ted Cruz, who made news with a 21-hour speech which detailed the evils of Obamacare, such as Green Eggs and Ham and White Castle hamburgers. However, this speech had absolutely no purpose. The point of this filibuster is to talk through the time period when a vote was scheduled to be taken to delay that voting session and undermine whichever reviled bill the congressperson or senator is speaking against.
However, Cruz did no such thing; he ended his speech an hour before the vote was scheduled. So why did he deliver this useless sermon, especially when he ended up voting for the bill that was being voted on? For the same reason politicians nationwide are playing this idiotic blame game—to appeal to the base of their political party and to increase their chances of a nomination in 2016.
How dare they have the audacity and the gall to put their own careers above the needs of their people who chose them to represent their interests. Politicians are called public servants for a reason, and it’s time for them to serve the people of the US.
The two week freshmen class election excitement and anticipation bubbled until the release of results on October 17. This year, many thrilled freshmen are running for the positions of President, VP, Secretary, and Treasurer.The elected Class of 2017 officer team is as follows: Sam Schatmeyer (President), Madison Irene (Vice President), Laura Zu (Secretary), and Sarina Divan (Treasurer).
Speeches were delivered on October 15th, when candidates had the chance to sway their future constituents with well-placed words, a winning smile, and in the case of Timmy Finley, a flip. Interestingly about this year, due to the unprecedented number of 23 students running for office, the speech assembly was forced to be cut short. Never before had candidates given such short, one minute speeches, and the East tradition of asking a mystery question to candidates was forgone for the sake of time.
On the 16th of October, only four out of almost two dozen students were voted into their positions by their Class of 2017 peers. From the number of students interested in serving their class, it is easy to see how much school spirit the Class of 2017 has acquired within its two short months of being Flames.
One candidate, Trisha Pickelhaupt, told us the reason why she decided to run for her position as Vice President. “I really want the opportunity to change East,” she said, “and I think this is the right way to go about it!” When also asked about how this would look on her college transcript, she explained, “Right now, I’m not focused entirely on my college transcript because my main goal is to help East. I’m not running simply for the Vice President title – but for the opportunity to lead many new changes at East and to encourage others to become a part of something great.”
This year, the road to Election Day was a long and bumpy one due to the many promising students that decided to run for class office. Candidates, as in all elected, were not concerned about how class office would look on their burgeoning resumes; their desire to run is fuelled by their wish to support their class and their friends. “I really want the opportunity to change East,” said Pickelhaupt, “and I think this is the right way to go about it!”
Another candidate for Vice President, Edward Shen, stated, “I wanted to give back to [the friends and peers] who gave so much to me.” The elected treasurer Sarina Divan stated during her campaign that she wants to “help make our freshman year fun and to get involved!” Still others wished to use their previous experience in administrative roles to enhance their class. “I’ve been in the secretary for the Chinese Youth Club which I have been involved in for four years now,” said secretary Laura Zu, “and I really enjoy it and know what it takes.”
Though all students that ran for office were enthusiastic about the chance to serve their fellow classmates, the tension throughout the class is also evident. With the campaigning having begun long before the official starting date, you could tell that all freshmen students were pumped for voting day, which approached rather quickly.
English teacher Mr. Huber said, “It takes guts to run for an office and want to make a difference. But remember, no matter who emerges triumphant, students can still make an impact on the school by leading other clubs and serving on the Steering Committee all year long.”
Timmy Finley’s poster displayed in Student Street for all to see.Laura Zu, Class of 2017 Secretary, smiles after her win.
