In 2016, an 18-wheeler jam-packed with cans of Budweiser made a beer run from Fort Collins to Colorado Springswith no driver at the wheel.

It was one small 120-mile jaunt for a robot big rig (and its maker, Otto), one giant leap for beer delivery. Four years on, TuSimple, another self-driving truck maker, is planning to extend autonomous beer shipmentor more accurately, whatever cargo their customers so chooseto the whole country with a coast-to-coast network of robot trucks.

This week, the company and several big name partners, including UPS and Penske, announced plans for an autonomous freight network of self-driving trucks, digitally mapped routes, terminals, and a central operations system to monitor the lot.

According to TuSimple, theyll build the network in phases. The company already operates seven routes between Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and Dallas. Later this year and into next theyll add routes to Houston and San Antonio. New routes from Los Angeles to Jacksonville will link West Coast and East Coast in 2022 and 2023. And in the following year, the company will roll out commercial availability and further expand to major shipping routes throughout the contiguous US.

Our ultimate goal is to have a nationwide transportation network consisting of mapped routes connecting hundreds of terminals to enable efficient, low-cost long-haul autonomous freight operations, TuSimple president, Cheng Lu, said in a press release.

If this strategy works, TuSimple will copy-paste it in Europe and Asia, and just like that, their robot trucks will be cruising the worlds highways loaded with goodies. Maybe.

Given the state of self-driving car timelines, which have long overpromised and underdelivered, TuSimples coast-to-coast network might sound overambitious. Indeed, the company behind that inaugural Colorado beer run, Otto, is no moreit was acquired and subsequently shuttered by Uber two years later. Starsky, another well-known self-driving truck startup, saw a Series B investment fall apart last November and, after looking for a buyer in the ensuing months, was forced to shut down when none could be found.

Still, there are reasons to believe self-driving trucks are closer to practical and mainstream commercial use than general purpose self-driving cars.

For one, there are plenty of big companies and startups working the problem, from Daimler and Aurora to Waymo and Embark. TuSimple, in particular, has long partnered with veteran shipping companies, has already raised $298 million at a valuation of $1 billion, and according to TechCrunch, is currently going after another $250 million.

Also, TuSimple isnt building their network of robot trucks from scratch. Founded way back in 2015, the company is now one of the more established players. In 2018, they started testing a route on public roads between Tucson and Phoenix and another in Shanghai. Today, they operate a fleet of 40 autonomous trucks running some 20 trips a week.

Finally, theyve adopted a sensible model based on trucks that handle themselves on highways with a human in the cab (for now). Long haul trucks spend the vast majority of their time on highways, and highways are simpler to navigate than city streets. TuSimples trucks will hand the wheel over to a human for off-the-highway driving.

The trucks use cameras, lidar, and radar to construct a real-time view of their surroundings. But TuSimple is also making digital maps of a highways every twist and turn on each route. Combining these maps with sensor data, TuSimple says their trucks can safely drive routes in any conditions.

Theyre not alone in this strategy. Volvo, which is also developing self-driving trucks, recently announced itll offer passenger cars that can drive themselves on mapped sections of highway. The software behind Waymos self-driving cars and trucks similarly relies on intricate digital maps.

Even as TuSimple maps routes across the country, its competitors will be doing the same thing. Waymo also announced this week the expansion of self-driving truck routes across the Southwest and Texas. Whereas TuSimple is building its own trucks, Waymo is focused on developing a software platform, Waymo Driver, thats compatible with anyones trucks.

In the coming years, companies will install a massive new layer of infrastructure. Under asphalt and painted lines, an invisible road in binary to keep these machines on track.

Its hoped self-driving trucks, which can be on the go 24/7no sleep, no coffeewill prove safer and more cost-efficient, even with a backup human driver in the cab. When theyve proven themselves over tens of millions of miles, and the legal and regulatory frameworks have been worked out, they may even go it entirely alone.

While this may mark the end of many long haul driver jobs, TuSimple and others argue theres already a shortage of drivers that will only grow in the future. And there will be other opportunities for work, whether its backup safety drivers to supervise trucks in the near term or drivers that can take trucks the last mile from highway to final destination.

Itll likely be years yet before trucking is fully automated. Still, you may one day pass a big rig and, with a startled glance into the cab, notice no ones at the wheel. There might not even be a cabjust a 20-ton box on 18 wheels doing 75 down the interstate.

Image credits: TuSimple

Excerpt from:

TuSimple's Robot Big Rigs Will Automate Freight Coast to Coast - Singularity Hub

Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs are at a crossroads.

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Over the next three weeks, well be preparing for the NBAs long-awaited restart by attempting to answer the single most important question facing every franchise that will be present and accounted for in Orlando. This is 22 Questions.

For the last 24 seasons, Gregg Popovich has proven his bonafides as the greatest basketball coach of all time. Although Popovich may not be able to match Phil Jacksons six championships (let alone Red Auerbachs 11), his adaptability and versatility are unmatched. Over the course of three decades and five championships, Popovich has continually reinvented and reimagined the San Antonio Spurs, gradually folding in more and more creativity and movement until they fully evolved from a stolid post-up leviathan in the 90s to the hardwood singularity that they achieved during their most recent title run in 2014. Along the way, Popovich sprouted the richest coaching tree in the league; seven current head coaches, including the Milwaukee Bucks Mike Budenholzer, have worked for the Spurs organization under Pop. In this light, to watch any NBA game is to indirectly witness Popovichs greatness. And yet, while Popovich has long lifted the Spurs from inertia and mediocrity, he now might be trapping them in it.

Popovich, as all great coaches are, has been blessed by great players: Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli and Kawhi Leonard, to name a few. But more than simply collecting talent, hes maximized it, winning a very nice 69 percent of regular-season games since his abridged first season. Most impressively, hes holistically developed his own stars (none of Parker, Ginobli or Leonard were considered particularly special pre-draft prospects), in large part because the Spurs organizational stability enabled him to invest in the margins of the roster; Duncan, arguably the best player of the generation sandwiched between Michael Jordan and LeBron James, was unequivocally That Dude and enabled the Spurs to focus on supporting him with unproven youngsters and veteran reclamation projects. Similarly, the trust and equity that Popovich built afforded him the privilege to take a long-term view and avoid short-sighted panic.

Just as Kawhi Leonards ascendance to the NBAs most rarefied air seemed to mark an eternal endurance of the Spurs dynasty, his 2018 trade demand marked its spiritual end; Popovich, for the first time, panicked. Rather than opt for hearty packages draft picks and and young all-stars like Jaylen Brown or Brandon Ingram, the Spurs shipped Leonard (and role player extraordinaire Danny Green) to Toronto for DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and what would become the 29th pick in last years draft. Even though this was very clearly a below market-value return, the logic behind it was clear: a young core takes time to gestate, so by the time the Spurs would be ready to compete, Popovich would be in his mid-to-late 70s, an age associated with more leisurely pursuits like running for President. As a result, the team committed to respectability, prioritizing their present with Popovich over their future without him.

After a successful 48-win season last year, the Spurs now languish at 27-36, four games out of the playoffs with odds of winning a championship that require a working understanding of significant figures to decipher. Worse, years of success have caused a dearth of promising youngsters, while the current team remains too good to truly bottom out. The present iteration of the Spurs is a fairly talented squad, but an unworkable one a knotty, Frankensteined gumbo of malapportioned parts. The two leading scorers, DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge, are both masterful mid-range shooters, albeit ones who occupy the same spaces of the court and uneasily trade 15-foot jumpers like dueling pianists. Dejounte Murray and Derrick White, the teams two most productive young players, overlap as big predatory defensive guards who are similarly deficient in elements of basketball such as making shots and doing good passes. Too, the team lacks any clear internal paths to improvement, unless Lonnie Walker and Jakob Poeltl can actualize their potential. The 21 year-old Walker is a supremely likable guard with weapons-grade athleticism, but is prone to mental lapses that relegate him to Popovichs doghouse. In the wake of Aldridges injury, Poeltl will have the chance to prove himself as a starting center, potentially answering whether his shockingly elite advanced stats are an accurate representation of his impact or merely the skewed product of a noisy but small sample size.

Overall, the Spurs are a cautionary tale what happens when a win-now gamble doesnt actually result in winning. In an honorable attempt to give Popovich the send-off he deserves, theyve inadvertently wandered into the bland dellof mediocrity that theyve so deftly side-stepped for years. Interestingly, this upcoming offseason could be an inflection point for the franchises and Popovichs future: DeRozan will most likely enter free agency. The face of the Spurs post-Kawhi era, DeRozan is the NBAs ur-floor-raiser, a warhorse scorer who can prop up a mediocre offense through volume alone, but lacks the dynamism or efficiency to succeed at a higher level (tellingly, DeRozans regular season stats have always far outpaced his playoff output). By resigning DeRozan, the Spurs could signal their commitment to Popovich, delaying the rebuild in favor of letting their coach bow out with dignity. If DeRozan walks, though, it would usher in the kind of protracted shittiness that could force Popovich to finally pass the reins to Becky Hammon, the WNBA legend whos become his protg. Either way, its evident that San Antonios era of good feelings will end with a whimper, not a bang. The Spurs have reached their expiration date, whether theyre willing to admit that now or in a few years. Whenever that may be, the prevailing wisdom of rebuilding is uncompromising nothing old can stay.

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22 Questions: Would the San Antonio Spurs Be Better Off Without Gregg Popovich? - InsideHook

Our funds focus on individual health; thus, obviously, we view the impact of the COVID crisis from a unique VC perspective. Here are some observations that have emerged from our recent experience.

COVID is accelerating changes in health care.

With hospitals overwhelmed, clinics closed, and practitioners locked down, digital and AI platforms that before the pandemic only contributed to supplemental care are now being asked to actually dominate care. We have long expected the transition from institutional centricity toward personal centricity in care but thought it would take years to happen. Due to COVID, it is happening now. The shift toward at-home individually-driven care will expand hugely this year and will never return to the status quo ante.

COVID is increasing consumer focus on personal space.

Being isolated at home, consumers are rethinking their views on personal space, how to use it, and what it means to them. In the pre-COVID world of external work and outside activities, for many, the home was a place mostly just for quick breakfasts and sleeping. In a locked-down world, it has become the center of existence. We are seeing a persona rethink of furniture, water, food, entertainmentevery aspect of personal space. Its too soon to know exactly how this shift will play out, but were experiencing a deep change in the concept of home and hearth. Even when things open up, personal space will remain a much more specialized and transformed element of life.

COVID is deepening existing trends toward self-reliance.

The rising generation is showing increasingly worldwide signs of self-reliance. They want to be the masters of their universe. They co-participate. They demonstrate. They speak truth to power. They dont want to be dependent on any traditional power structures. This has expressed itself for some time in increasing interest in products that allow one to stand alone to control ones own outcome. COVID is radically accelerating this alteration. We are seeing products focused on growing ones own food, controlling personal water, directing personal experience, and owning individual mental health and mood. We stand at the edge of an era of self-reliance. Products and companies that facilitate self-reliance will rise.

COVID is altering the worldwide approach of science.

Science has always been more collegial and cooperative than business or politics. But suddenly, pressed by the desperate need to find a COVID vaccine, science has become entirely borderless. Efforts and data are shared worldwide as never before. All the brainpower and capacity of global science is brought to bear on a single problem in an unprecedented way. Individual government policies dont seem able to blunt this forceful internationalization of effort. We hope and expect that the genie of coordinated worldwide problem-solving in science, once loosed, will never be limited again.

COVID isnt a singularity it is the initiation of a new normal.

We know life will open back up. It already is in many places. But whatever happens post-COVID, it wont be a return to what we had before. The phrase a new normal has been bandied about enough to become trite. But COVID will produce exactly that. Our future will not entirely resemble our past.The power of the pandemic has propelled the world to an alternate track. It will take years to fully know how the new normal will differ from the old, but we can see already that those differences will be profound.

We dont live in the same world we did a few months ago. COVID has driven a fundamental alteration of the individual health landscape.

Read more:

Individual Health in the Time of the Pandemic - AlleyWatch

Marcus Wheldon, CTO at Nokia, explained why 5G is accelerating the fourth industrial revolution and how it will impact peoples daily lives.

Imagine using augmented reality (AR) to deeply learn any topic in real time from the comforts of your home. Once a plot point from The Matrix, it is becoming a closer reality on a daily basis as 5G networks are rapidly integrated.

During a short presentation at this years online Collision conference, Marcus Wheldon, CTO at Nokia (NYSE:NOK), spoke about 5G and the ways it is accelerating the fourth industrial revolution.

Describing an AR knowledge overlay outfitted on everything, Wheldon talked about the ability to have perfect knowledge.

I think being perfectly augmented is the one (5G aspect) that I like to focus on, he said. That I will become a superhuman in some ways. Not by putting on a suit and growing muscles and laser beams coming out of my eyes or whatever it is, but by having access to perfect knowledge.

When asked if this would lead to the singularity, a hypothetical point in time when machines become smarter than humans, he was clear it would not. Wheldon pointed out that he prefers the idea of augmentation, or assistance using a machine, to the scarier singularity concept.

If you think about the (main) problem confronting humanity in terms of data and information, it is an overwhelming deluge of data and information, said Wheldon, who is also president of Nokia Bell Labs.

Theres something called the Buckminster Fuller Knowledge-doubling Curve, he added. In a 1982 book, Buckminster Fuller suggested that until 1900, knowledge had doubled every century; at the time he was writing, the doubling rate had increased to every 18 months.

According to Wheldon, knowledge is now doubling at a staggering rate of every 12 hours. Meanwhile, human capabilities to absorb this massive influx of data have not increased.

He then referenced the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This theory states that humans forget learned knowledge in only days or weeks if the new information isnt reviewed consistently.

Wheldon believes artificial intelligence (AI), AR and 5G will come together to allow humans to absorb, interpret and then deploy new information.

So if you think of that as the perfect setup, the only way that works is this incredibly reliable, high-performance fabric that connects human, machine and AI systems. And thats the 5G network. So yes, its the nerve system of the future, said Wheldon.

AR may seem like the fodder of science fiction, but there are many ways 5G is already impacting our lives. Especially in the last few months of growth due to the spread of the coronavirus.

As countries locked down in March, the majority of the global workforce switched to working from home. The shift was widely facilitated by enlarging 5G networks.

But what I think COVID-19 has taught us is that fundamentally, all businesses need the ability to remotely optimize themselves over a digital media, Wheldon told listeners.

Since March, remotely controlling, managing, diagnosing, operating on, interacting with and having an expert at a distance have become part of our daily routines.

The transition to work-from-home software and programs has not been seamless, but it has proven to be efficient. These technologies will only be made more useful and harmonious as 5G-enabled AR and virtual reality systems become mainstream, according to the Nokia CTO.

The mining sector is one space that is presently utilizing 5G to advance. Mining has been in the vanguard of automation because of the perilous nature of the mining task, said Wheldon.

He went on to explain that autonomous vehicles programmed to drive the roads in and out of open-pit mines reduce the chance of human injury or error.

Other areas, like offshore oil rigs and energy-generation systems, as well as agriculture, will all benefit from the functionality that 5G-enabled remote access provides.

Its this massive amount of efficiency that could be improved, he said. I love the phrase necessity is the mother of invention. The ones that have led industrially are the ones where theres the greatest need.

Dont forget to follow us@INN_Resourcefor real-time updates!

Securities Disclosure: I, Georgia Williams, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

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Nokia CTO: 5G Networks are the Nerve System of the Future | INN - Investing News Network

HBO Max has won an auction and committed to a put pilot on Chinos, an original animated series idea from Fresh Off the Boats Eddie Huang. The writer/producer (and food personality) is executive producing the series with his producing partner Raf Martinez, acclaimed tattoo artist Dr. Woo and comics artist/designer Bernard Chang, who will also serve as art director.

Chinos is a show that will shatter the model minority myth and hopefully usher in a generation of Asian American storytellers that do not feel beholden to the expectations of others, Huang told Deadline. It is a project that seeks to shine a light on our singularity as individuals and the shared problems that bring us together as a community. Even my mom approved of this deal, excited to do this with HBO Max.

Audiences will witness the urban subcultures of Los Angeles through the lens of the Asian-American experience with Chinos. The show will shatter the model minority myth and hopefully usher in a generation of Asian American storytellers that do not feel beholden to the expectations of others, Huang added.

Huang is currently in post on Boogie, the film he directed for Focus Features with Taylour Paige, Taylor Takahashi, Domenick Lombardozzi and Mike Moh starring with the late Pop Smoke. He will direct Elephant Mountain in Taiwan, based on his original idea.

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HBO Max wins bid to put pilot on animated series 'Chinos' - - Animation Xpress

For nearly two months, protesters around the world filled city streets, marched on government buildings and demanded justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and Andres Guardado all who died during encounters with law enforcement.

But for every high-profile police-related killing, there have been countless others where the names and faces of the victims never made national headlines. Much of what we do know about these deaths comes from the work of one man.

D. Brian Burghart, a former reporter and editor, has dedicated eight years to doing what federal agencies have not done: meticulously track every known law enforcement officer-involved killing in the United States. The result is Fatal Encounters, a national database that shines a light into the darkest corners of policing in America.

As of July 10, Fatal Encounters lists more than 28,400 deaths dating to Jan. 1, 2000. The entries include both headline-making cases and thousands of lesser-known deaths.

Burghart uses whats known as open-source information gleaned from news reports and public records to chronicle each reported killing. Users can search by name, age, race, gender, date, city and more to find people who have died during interactions with police.

On his website, Burghart modestly calls Fatal Encounters a step towards creating an impartial, comprehensive and searchable national database. Observers have been far more laudatory. A 2019 critical review of his work by the Journal of Open Health Data called it the largest collection of PRDs [Police Related Deaths] in the United States and remains as the most likely source for historical trend comparisons and police-department level analyses of the causes of PRDs. Other databases do exist, including The Counted by The Guardian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post Fatal Force project, but neither go as far back as 2000.

In the years since Burghart started the project, national news organizations have come to see the import of this sort of large database, both as a means of educating the public and encouraging transparency between law enforcement and civilians.

For Burghart it began with one death. It started when the government told me, No, he said. Im a journalist. You dont tell me No.

In 2012, Burghart drove by a scene that was plainly chaos. Everything about what he saw - the heavy police presence and flashing lights instinctively told Burghart, an investigative journalist by training, that someone had a fatal encounter with law enforcement.

Burghart went home, turned on his police scanner and waited. Police officers had pulled over, then shot and killed a man named Jace Herndon, who was driving what turned out to be a stolen car.

Burghart scanned local news reports. He wanted to know how many other people in his area had died during interactions with police. But that information was missing from every story.

That bothered him. A few months later, an 18-year-old college student, Gil Collar, was killed by University of South Alabama campus police. Again, Burghart wondered how often that happens.

The earliest thing I found out was that nobody knew, he said.

At the time Burghart was the editor and publisher of The Reno News & Review in Nevada, a free alternative weekly based in the biggest little city in the world. As he became more and more intrigued by the lack of information surrounding the deaths of Collar and Herndon, Burghart channeled his interest in data to begin the task of figuring out just how many people die each year during interactions with law enforcement.

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He started with the official counts. I always feel like the numbers are the truth, he said.

His initial plan was to get the mailing addresses of every law enforcement agency in the country he estimates there were about 16,000 at the time that participated in the Department of Justices yearly Uniform Crime Report, the largest collection of crime data available in the U.S.

He then intended to crowdsource public records requests to each one of those agencies. But he knew not all agencies are required to participate; there is no national mandate to report local crime statistics to the federal government.

Burghart hit a roadblock with the FBI, which told him the agency did not maintain a running list of all law enforcement departments in the country that contribute to the Uniform Crime Report. Undeterred, he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for new information and was eventually able to submit some 2,500 additional requests to various agencies.

I think I got through the entire states of Texas and Nevada, he said, laughing at the memory. Ive got FOIAs still out from that time period.

Some agencies did not respond to his queries while others asked for tens of thousands of dollars in payment for copies. Eventually he received data in the form of two CDs filled with spreadsheets saved as jpegs. But images arent searchable every photo had to be manually combed, a painstaking process. As he described it nearly a decade later, he felt like "the FBI was messing with me.

Burghart still bristles at how difficult it was to find accurate numbers for police-involved killings.

It offended me on a couple of different levels, he said. Rankling him most was the very peculiarity of his own singularity: Why am I the guy figuring this out?

About 4 years ago Burghart quit his day job to focus exclusively on Fatal Encounters. In that time he has been forced to reckon with the fact that because the federal government does not systemically track every police-involved killing in the U.S., Americans, lawmakers and even law enforcement departments dont have a complete picture of what policing in this country truly looks like.

Unquestionably its a failure, Burghart said. It enables people who dont want to know.

Over the years, as more people have been killed by law enforcement and video footage of these incidents continues to surface, Burgharts decision to aggregate the information began to feel almost prescient. Sociologists and criminologists from all over the country now use data mined from Fatal Encounters to further their research.

Last month Harvard researchers used his data in publishing a study that mapped fatal police violence encounters across U.S. cities from 2013 to 2017. They found that police were six-and-a-half times more likely to kill Blacks than whites in Chicago and its western suburbs.

Brians dataset is incredible, enormous and a huge effort for one journalist to have undertaken, said Brian Finch, a sociology and spatial sciences research professor at the University of Southern California.

Finch is one of several researchers who have combed through Burgharts numbers to reveal patterns in deadly interactions with law enforcement.

In a 2018 USC study using Fatal Encounters, Finch found that police homicides represent between 5 and 12 percent of all homicides in the country in any given year. He also found that the New York Police Department held the lowest police-homicide rate compared to the citys overall murder rate, while the Los Angeles and Houston police departments had among the highest police-homicide rates. Finch concluded that police-involved homicides have actually increased over time while violent crimes and murders have decreased.

Arriving at these conclusions would have been nearly impossible without Burgharts work, Finch said.

Its unheard of to work as Brian does, he said, adding that Burghart doesnt rely on programs or algorithms. Instead, he inputs every field by hand.

Burghart is now working with a team of artificial intelligence experts to create new ways of processing information. He isnt ready to release any details about the project, but said the work he has undertaken as a private citizen would be better completed at the federal level.

And yet the attention Fatal Encounters receives is episodic, according to Burghart.

It goes away for a little while until something so excruciating happens again to ignite the flame, he said.

Recently, that flame was sparked by the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police in May. His killing inspired both lawmakers and activists to revisit criminal justice reform efforts.

Burghart isnt sure if the national outcry will last this time around, but he warns that a lack of transparency within law enforcement agencies could lead to continued unrest.

The number of people killed by police is microscopically small compared to the general population, he said. But those deaths are so important to the families of the people who were killed because they symbolize systematic racism.

A self-professed numbers guy with an appetite for adventure, Burghart was preparing to embark on a four-leg journey from the Arctic Circle in Alaska to Alabama when he spoke with NBC News.

The same curiosity that compels Burghart to travel is also what inspired him to undertake a mammoth enterprise like compiling two decades worth of data into a spreadsheet available to any journalist, researcher and interested individual.

Some cases never leave him. He still thinks about the death of Daniel Shaver, an Arizona man shot by police after crawling on the floor of a Mesa hotel and sobbing for his life, and Kelly Thomas, a California man who had been living on the street before a fatal encounter with the Fullerton police.

Even when I'm done with this, it will be a part of me forever, Burghart said.

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Fatal Encounters: One man is tracking every officer-involved killing in the U.S. - NBC News

Date published: Thursday 9th July 2020 7:51

Jesse Lingard being linked with a move to Everton feels significant. Not because it would represent a particularly good or bad move but because it feels like were rapidly approaching some kind of transfer rumour singularity here.

It just absolutely stands to reason that Everton are going to sign someone who isnt quite good enough for Manchester United. Thats what Everton do. And if they arent actually interested in signing Lingard then youd still say they were anyway because it just all makes sense, doesnt it?

Once someone mentions the idea of Lingard to Everton, you actually find yourself surprised that he hasnt in fact been there for a season and a half already with seven goals to his name from 48 games. Could be enough to get him back in the England reckoning.

Stats arent everything, but Lingard is without a goal or an assist in his 20 Premier League appearances this season. Not even Ole Gunnar Solskjaers fondness for quintuple substitutions is getting Lingard any minutes right now hes not made a Premier League matchday 20 since Uniteds first game of Project Restart at White Hart Lane 2.0 and has played two minutes of league football since January. Its one thing to have fallen behind Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes in the pecking order, another to be so firmly behind Nemanja Matic. Frankly, Lingard might as well have been at Everton for the last 18 months.

I challenge you to come up with a more predictable transfer rumour than Jesse Lingard, fringe Manchester United player and sometime England international, to Everton, perennial Premier League underachiever and welcoming home for those not quite good enough to shine at the Big Six.

And if you answered Jesse Lingard, fringe Manchester United player and sometime England international, to David Moyes West Ham, perennial Premier League underachiever and welcoming home for those not quite good enough to shine at the Big Six then you still lose because that ones happened as well this weekwith the added bonus of some Phil Jones thrown in for good measure. It must be the huge success that Moyes had with his United raids for Paddy McNair and Adnan Januzaj at Sunderland that has him keen to go back for more.

Everton, though. Thats the real place when youre not quite good enough for Manchester United. Cleverley, Gibson, SchneiderlinSessions. A group designed to thoroughly debunk the myth that you have to be pretty good to have played a number of games for Manchester United. Wayne Rooney, to be fair, was pretty good but even his emotional return to Everton could hardly be called a great success.

The Toffees also tried to sign Marcos Rojo in January, because of course they did.

And its not just United who have managed to use Goodison Park as a dumping ground; Arsenal have also successfully offloaded Theo Walcott and Alex Iwobi on a club that should frankly by now have learned their lesson.

All right, Romelu Lukaku from Chelsea well give you. That one was pretty good. But it was also six years ago now. The failures are more frequent and more recent.

Enoughs enough now, surely. If Evertons plan is to bridge the gap between them and a splintering Big Six and hiring a manager of Carlo Ancelottis calibre is a pretty clear indication that it is then theyve got to do more than signing their cast-offs, has-beens and never weres. Leave that sort of thing to West Ham.

Dave Tickner

Read more here:

Lingard to Everton: the most predictable transfer rumour of all time - Football365.com

By: Alex Holder, (Hashtag Ltd.)

Some weeks ago, there was commentary addressing the subject of cost as it relates to our treasured regional airline LIAT and it is unfortunate we all now sit and observe the very public regional disagreement about its future.

Yes, LIAT is not the most viable airline for any tangible operation, based on its current structure and top-heavy management style; certainly not form the business level. And, it is most unfortunate that we, as a region, have not been able to capitalize on our collective talents and ambitions to effectively grow this airline as a viable asset for us today, and our future generations.

Still, do we need to do away with it?

We are a CARICOM collective of nations and within that an OECS collective literally larger than the singularity that is Caribbean Airlines out of Trinidad and Tobago. Are we unable? Incompetent? Or unwilling?

Arguments from the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda as well as the former Chief Executive of LIAT augurs well with many consistent sentiments on the viability of what is truly ours.

And, while Antigua is poised to continue the legend that is the Leeward Island Air Transport (2020), we must still accept that LIAT has served more than the Leewards and it is, without doubt, the longest-standing Caribbean Airline.

Many things within the region attract opposition and indifference integration being top amongst them.

Why though cant we argue as strongly about the unfortunate restrictions of travel amongst CARICOM states, as we do about the actual airline that connects us all?

The simple answer, in my view, is we are too caught up with what is more important to us as individual states than what is important us a collective.

Looking at the United States or even the European Union, it is obvious that we have failed or outright refused to follow any guidelines form those that have established similar systems before us.

A collective currency is only so far-reaching within the Caribbean, with the EC dollar. Airlines are invested in by the selected few and freedom of movement is demanded accordingly.

But we are an Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) AND, we are a Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Some of us can relate to the challenges of immigration and movement. But lets not forget the advantages we enjoy as Caribbean nationals in another state.

Being able to land in London and travel the European Union without interruption. Being able to land in Miami and move the states without challenge. Traveling at a domestic level in each domain. Enjoying freedom of movement within a collective, that we are having so much difficulty achieving between our islands.

It is understandable that not every Caribbean destination is financially equipped to carry an airline on its own. But, it should be equally understood that some of us could to a large extent handle the collective burden of such an enterprise.

What we need to do is set politics and egos aside and allow the collective to be a collective. There is a reason insurance companies and banks work the simple trust and reliance on coming together and pooling of resources.

Dominica, Saint Vincent, Grenada, Guyana these are some of the economies within CARICOM that are not nearly as viable as that of Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, and Saint Lucia; but we are still a collective.

For too long we have allowed our individual development to affect the freedom of movement of our people. Forgetting that regardless of the individual moving, the cost is the same. The tax is the same. This is akin to some of us paying taxes two folds, and to others, it is a deterrent to even want to move.

How do we explain this unfortunate challenge to those who are stranded in islands that are not their native?

Do we expect them to travel to the United States, get quarantined for two weeks, then travel to their respective territories, and get quarantined again? Taking away four weeks of their liberty and time because we cant handle the simplicity of movement?

And, who are we to even entertain the idea that most or any of these individuals have a US Visa, or more so have the revenue to move that way.

Let us take it to another level and examine the challenges of CARICOM nationals without the CSME Free Movement Certificate or those OECS nationals who are free to move between the individual states. How are they expected to anchor themselves in non-native states for extended periods? Are we asking these people to pay for residences (temporary or otherwise) with non-existent incomes? Are our immigration departments prepared to overlook these challenges and allow these travelers to move on with their lives without a red stamp in their passports?

We are a collective and regardless of how we might view our territories, we are THE CARIBBEAN to the outside world a singular grouping. Our small islands do not matter to most. And that makes us responsible for each other.

LIAT is our airline. Not Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, St. Vincent, and St. Kitts, Nevis. It is ours as Caribbean nationals because we all contribute to each others economies in one way or another.

Unfortunately, some of us can look at LIAT despite that literal threat to our overall freedoms and consider dissolving it, as opposed to putting our minds together and establishing systems that cater to our individuality as a region with according airport and other facility taxes and considerations for regional movement.

The maturity of the Caribbean as a collective outside of the OECS and CARICOM as individual sub-groupings is demanded today.

Are we mature enough to step up, or do we subject ourselves to a consistent atmosphere where it is cheaper to travel directly on the likes of British Airways from Grenada to Antigua for less than is required to travel the same space on OUR regional airline?

Let us defy the odds and expectations of those that want to see differently and connect on this if not for anything else for our present, future, and collective history.

See the original post:

LIAT Discussion Bigger Than That Of An Airline And Travel; It Is About Us - St. Lucia Times Online News